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Is the Arab Spring Coming to America?
If thousands of protestors start camping out in the financial heart of America on Saturday, New Yorkers can blame Canada.
That’s because the move to #OccupyWallStreet — as it’s known on Twitter — began with the Vancouver-based counter-culture magazine Adbusters in July.
“A worldwide shift in revolutionary tactics is underway right now that bodes well for the future,” it announced on its website. “On Sept. 17, we want to see 20,000 people flood into lower Manhattan, set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades and occupy Wall Street for a few months.”
“We did it because we had this feeling that America was ready for a kind of Tahrir moment,” says Adbusters co-publisher Kalle Lasn. “There is a lot of people who lost their jobs, who lost their houses. The whole country has been hurting and yet, somehow, the people who brought this on, they are getting clean away with it, without any justice being served to them.”
The movement accelerated two weeks ago when the hacktivist group Anonymous got involved.
But the New York City “General Assembly,” a loosely organized group of about 150, has been meeting on weekends to work out the logistics. They’ve been practising non-violent tactics, gathering legal resources, organizing lines of communication and setting up food committees.
They even did a test run Sept 1. Nine members camped out on Wall St. All were arrested; all were released within 24 hours without charge.
“People have a right to protest, and if they want to protest, we’ll be happy to make sure they have locations to do it,” New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg told reporters Thursday. “As long as they do it where other people’s rights are respected, this is the place where people can speak their minds, and that’s what makes New York New York.”
The activists are simultaneously so anarchic and democratic that they will not decide their goal until they are all assembled at Wall St. and Broad.
“There will be one simple demand of President Barack Obama that will resonate with the American people, something absolutely doable that the American people get behind,” explains Lasn.
Sleeping on New York City sidewalks is legal, as long as it is part of a political protest. In June, unionized city workers camped out for two weeks to protest budget cuts, in an effort dubbed “Bloombergville.”
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Show AllYou haven't understood my point. Any human being has the potential to become a leader or to take individual initiative.
What I was pointing out was that history shows pretty clearly that revolutions are almost always carried through by people like Roberspierre (a lawyer), Danton (a lawyer), Lenin (an intellectual and professional revolutionary), Trotsky (a lawyer and intellectual); Castro (a lawyer), Che Guevara (a doctor) -- the list could go on much longer.
Of course the participation of large masses of oppressed people is also required for a successful revolution, and in many such people rise to leadership positions as the revolution proceeds. But to pretend that disorganized masses of oppressed, homeless, and starving people are in a position to devise the strategy and carry out the organization that is neceessary for success is not helpful.
I also assume that gardenermorcal is not one of the homeless, starving people he or she so resolutely admires. Correct me if I'm wrong.
When foreign embassies are ransacked here in the U.S and female reporters are raped by hundreds of men then we'll know the "Arab Spring" has arrived in America.
What a load of tommyrot. As if the vast movement for liberation that has swept through so many countires from Syria through Bahrain and Egypt, Tunisia and Libya, that has caused the downfall of tyrants like Mubarak, Ben Ali, Gaddafi, and others is nothing more than riotous behaviour that breaches diplomatic protocol. As if the vast crowds of people who occupied Tahrir Square did not include many thousands of courageous women.
You have a weirdly skewed view of one of the most inspiring -- if imperfect -- events in modern history. Shame on you.
The downfall of Gadaffi came not from below, but from above in the form of FUKUSA bombing. Nelson Mandela supports Gadaffi. “Those who say I should not be here are without morals. This man helped us at a time when we were all alone, when those who say we should not come here were helping the enemy.” Nelson Mandela, referring to Gadaffi's support for the ANC during apartheid, when FUKUSA all supported apartheid, especially Reagan.
Gadaffi raised the standard of living in LIbya every year until Libyans had the highest standard of living in Africa (had, because FUKUSA bombed them back into third world penury). Gadaffi gave billions in oil dollar to other African countries for development
FUKUSA will now use their beachhead in Libya to attack more and more countries in Africa. Coming their way soon, drones, cluster bombs, and bunker busters, as if the poor in Africa didn't already have enough problems from centuries of colonialism and oil company oppression.
Like Saddam Hussein, Gadaffi did a lot of bad things (considerably less bad things than Hussein), but like Saddam, he did a lot of good things for his country, and like the disaster in Iraq, we will have many years of violence and human rights disasters in Libya.
In the US we had a "Tea Party." The Middle East has blood parties.
I think you may be forgetting the entire American Revolution, which was hardly a "tea party". In fact, it was extremely violent, with colonists taking up arms against the King and often enough against each other. Thousands emigrated rather than live under the revolutionary regimes; others took the side of the King and tried to thwart the revolutionaries. All this caused thousands of deaths and injuries.
Compared with the years long American uprisng, the events in Tunis, Cairo, Sanaa, and Manama were profiles in peace (except for the ruthless use of force by US armed "security" forces.).
perhaps the Arab Spring is the aquifer beneath Libya's sands.
Beaulieu writes..."We can’t have a nation where more than 50 percent of the people pay nothing in income taxes." 50% of Americans have no money. Full employment would solve that problem. The other 40% (the top 10% pay next to nothing in comparison to their total incomes) are funding useless wars in which over 50% of all discretionary spending is allocated to.
I agree that both parties are to blame, but they are very successful at placing the blame on the bottom 90%. The country is awash in excess cash... it's just that it is hoarded by a very tiny portion referred to as the wealthy elite.
Another way to improve tax revenues is to increase the insulting minimum wage. Anyone who earns minimum wage still falls under the official category of 'poverty' (just over $11,000 for an employable individual in the U.S.) even though doubling the minimum wage would still result in people earning subsistent wages. The one example of "model socialism" in the U.S., (the military) is an excellent example of how we can provide the basic necessities of life while paying people respectable wages. Of course the one knock against the military is that your primary mission is to preserve the status quo for the super rich & multinational corporations.... even if it entails murdering your fellow citizens.
Let's keep our focus on the handful of nasty corporations with their subservient minions in the media and Washington.
Starkraving writes... "power corrupts the powerful. greed impoverishes the greedy. oppression enslaves the oppressor."
Not necessarily. Slavery existed in the U.S. for over 200 years and when it came to an end, it was not the slaves that rose up, but a conflict between wealthy, special interests. With today's incredible ability to slaughter people in the hands of the State, it is unfortunately quite easy for the wealthy to protect their little corner of the world while they employ half of us to kill the other half. All over the world there are numerous examples of a handful of super rich living amongst millions and million of hungry and sick people with no credible threat to the status quo. Of course the U.S. is unique in that there are more small arms amongst us than people, but that could quickly change if the elites felt sufficiently threatened by it. Only in Hollywood do we see the oppressed successfully rising up against their oppressors. Even in Egypt, the removal of Mubarak hasn't fundamentally changed anything to date. Hunger, unemployment and illness are just as prevalent there now as before the 'Arab Spring'.
It is up to the people to find ways of relieving the elite of their masses of hoarded cash. These hogs are starving the people, and must be stopped.
Your account of the emancipation of the slaves is not really very accurate. Slaves and freedmen had a major role to play in convincing Americans that slavery was wrong, in many cases simply by fleeing to Canada. The abolitionists built an organized constituency for ending slavery that politicians had to take into account. Both these factors helped bring about the split among elites that caused the collapse of the old Constitution and its renovation by way of the Civil War and the victory of the antislavery movement. No doubt there were other important factors as well, but it is a mistake to ignore the democratic, popular activities that were so crucial.
The military is not socialist because it is not democratic, either in its goals or its functioning. Socialism is more than a government program, it is a struggle for real equality, political, economic, intellectual, and otherwise. Government is one tool among many that can be useful in the socialist struggle. In the US it has been used mostly to thwart socialism.
The widespread possession of small arms in the US has always been a restraint on social advance. The struggles for civil rights, for feminism, for gay rights, for union rights, etc, etc, have always been non violent. In Egypt, Tunisia, and Syria, the liberation of the people has come from non violent mass action. (Yes, it is imperfect. What isn't?) It has been armed individuals and groups that have all too often come forth to use them against those who are working for equality and freedom, as with the Ku Klux Klan, the assassins of Martin Luther King jr. and Malcolm X, and many more.
The Arab Spring didn't even come to Arabia. The oligarchs are still in power.
The people of Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Yemen, Libya, and Bahrain are all Arabs (aside from minorities). What is your point?
Agreed. Nor should anyone forget the violent uprising that took place when people in the 13 colonies revolted against the British Crown.
I would also add that the various revolutions repudiated the debts that had been imposed on their peoples by the reactionary regimes the overthrew. The new oviet government also made public the secret reaties signed by the Tsarist regime.
As the current version of capitalism undergoes its slow asphyxiation, the millions it has sacrificed to its greed and stupidity would do well to recall the way previous generations dealt with the arrangements made by those whose power they overthrew.
This will be the American Winter of Discontent.
Yep. It sure is. We're on the way.
Finally, an end to the rape of America by...
Oh. Wait.
When's the new iPhone coming out???
It looks so cool...
That just about sums up the credibility issues with this movement.
"Is the Arab Spring Coming to America?"
Yes, it is called the "American Fall".
Answer to title question posed...."No".
It isn't going to work that way here. And 'here' didn't really allow the spring to turn into 'summer' - 'there'. Spring is often the metaphor for hope of course. That did happen. And what happens when peoples' hopes are smashed and co opted?
We live in the heart of the empire. That alone puts us in a different position. Also. Americans aren't a 'people' with deep historical roots. I personally think the u.s. is more of a concept than a reality. I think it was an experiment that, like any other, became mythologized. I think we are seeing what it turned into. Obviously, it wasn't fool proof. And the 'founding fathers' weren't omniscient. They were human beings who were undoubtedly very intelligent. And a product of their own historical epoch.