BY STEVE JANOSKI
I was not paying attention, I admit it. But then again, neither was the rest of the media.
It's not on the New York Times home page, it hasn't been plastered across television screens, and nobody seems to want to speak on it - but it's happening, whether we all want to report on it or not.
These protestors who have been “occupying” Wall Street for the past three weeks, I'm not even sure who they are. The lone common thread appears to be that they are all young, liberal, and… well, that's it.
The few news outlets paying the protest any serious attention have said that some are protesting corporate greed, while others are protesting the undue influence that Wall Street holds over our politicians; recent statements released by the group have added such concerns as police brutality, union busting, and the economy to the list.
Chants have risen up in the concrete valleys of New York, with the refrain of “We are the 99 percent” and “They got bailed out, we got sold out,” and it's clear that the protestors are drawing inspiration from the freedom protests born of the Arab Spring.
For a while, they were easy to dismiss as a few hundred radical hippies trying to make something out of nothing, but as liberal celebrities like Michael Moore and Cornel West joined the fight, it began to garner more attention through, of course, social media outlets.
One particularly inflammatory video on YouTube shows Wall Street's elite dressed in their Sunday finest, drinking champagne and laughing dismissively while watching the protestors; Hunter S. Thompson himself could not have written that script any better.
And so this week, that rag-tag bunch of kids will be joined by the real heavyweights as several prominent unions embrace their cause, and endorsements from the AFL-CIO, the Transport Workers Union Local 100 (representing 38,000 New York city transit workers), and the United Federation of Teachers (amongst others) have come rolling in.
It is a safe bet that other labor organizations will follow their lead. People in other cities certainly have - protests in Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, and Washington, D.C. either have occurred or are being planned.
What this odd combination of old hippies, young hippies, union workers, and anyone else who is out of work and angry about it seems to be tapping into is the silent rage that those of us in the middle class hold because our prospects for the future were left for dead in the ashen wreckage of the “financial crisis.”
They're not socialists, but they don't want every government safety net torn from under them, and don't want corporations to be deregulated to the point of no return.
They're the ones who realize that while American manufacturing lies in hazy ruin, union membership - which helped create the vaunted middle class - has fallen to record lows, and the prodigious wealth disparity is growing every day.
They're the ones who are angry that, unless you're a CEO, there are no jobs, no money, and no raises - not now and, from news reports, it seems not ever.
This is not the first time this happened; a dozen years ago, there was a fight in the streets of Seattle that caught the world by surprise when the nascent anti-globalization movement announced its arrival by bringing tens of thousands into the streets to protest the World Trade Organization and the unbridled power that the massive, multi-national corporations were gathering.
The attacks of September 11 effectively undercut that movement, and the foreign wars of retribution that followed it made citizens focus more on the external threats than the internal.
But now, as those perils begin to fade and America stares down the barrel of yet another recession, it seems that Americans are finally beginning to cast their gaze inward and wonder what happened to the nation that they once knew.
It seems like it was a lifetime ago, but it's only been nine months ago since the now-legendary Mohamed Bouazizi lit himself on fire in the middle of the street in Sidi Bouzid.
His final words before committing that single act of defiance that ignited revolution across the Middle East?
“How do you expect me to make a living?”
Well, give Wall Streeters enough champagne, and I bet they'll come up with an answer for you.
Email: janoski@northjersey.com
Showing posts with label Mohamed Bouazizi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mohamed Bouazizi. Show all posts
Friday, September 30, 2011
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Americans need to fan Bouazizi's flames
BY STEVE JANOSKI
Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.
- Thomas Paine
Many times when you ask your typical apathetic American about politics, they'll offer one of two answers: "I don't really pay attention…it doesn't affect me" is the first, and "I'm only one person, what does it really matter what I do?" is the second.
But, as the flames of revolution tear across the Middle East's desert sands, we must remember that the firestorm that engulfs the region was lit by the sparks that blew off of one lone man's scorched body.
Mohamed Bouazizi was a 26-year-old Tunisian street vendor who made his living selling vegetables. Everything changed for him one day in mid-December when, according to a recent TIME magazine article, a policewoman confiscated his unlicensed produce cart, slapped him, spat in his face, and insulted his dead father.
Bouazizi went to the provincial headquarters to seek help from the local municipal officials- they ignored him.An hour later, he returned to the headquarters, doused himself in gasoline, and set himself ablaze in the ultimate form of protest. He died days later.
What even Bouazizi didn't know, however, was that his one strike of the match would ignite the rage of all of the oppressed who have long suffered under the harsh rule of their autocratic Middle Eastern dictators.
Tunisia fell first. Then, the protests began in Egypt - weeks later, their dictator of three decades, Hosni Mubarak, fled from Cairo.
Even more remarkably, the fervor has spread: protests have erupted in Libya and Yemen, Algeria and Bahrain, Syria and Iran, as the citizens take to the streets clamoring for the collapse of their governments.
Those governments, in response, have acted accordingly; as Jack London once wrote, "The Iron Heel is getting bold."The Black Hundreds have formed, and there are pitched battles on the boulevards as pro-government forces try to crush the rebellious with truncheon and tear gas, batons and bullets.
The New York Times reported on Friday that dozens have been killed in streetfights in Libya; in Bahrain, security forces launched an attack on sleeping protestors, on women and children, that left four dead and scores wounded.Still, the people chant, "You cannot keep us down!"
In Iran, the opposition figure who led the protests against the results of the 2009 "election", Mir Hussein Moussavi, has disappeared as protests reach a fevered pitch. Some fear he's been "detained," and there are hints that the nation may be on the eve of civil war.
For years I have scoffed at the idea that America could push democracy on another country. I've repeatedly quoted the old saying that if the idea of democracy is so good, you won't have to push it on people- they'll steal it.
However, it takes a steel spine to stand face-to-face with the point of a bayonet and demand it, and even I, ever the idealist, am shocked by the strength and passion being shown by these brave souls.
I have heard some say that the United States must be wary of these protests and their results because some of the outgoing regimes are friendly to America, and we don't know who will take over in the power vacuum.
While that may be true, that line of thinking is also why the rest of the world hates us so much- the fact that a brutal dictator was friendly to the United States doesn't mean that the blood of his murdered citizens washes off his hands any easier.
For once, Americans, look past the confines of our borders, and be, just for the moment, citizens of the world! Realize that what these people are doing is the very thing that our Founding Fathers, so revered by both left and right, did all those centuries ago: seizing power from the cruel and unjust and declaring that they'd rather die on their feet than live any longer on their knees.
Every soul that leaves a corpse on the glowering streets of any Middle Eastern capitol is joining the ranks of the greatest of the world's patriots, from those Frenchmen that stormed the Bastille in 1789 to the Germans who took sledgehammers to the Berlin Wall.
And with the living, the spirit of every American patriot, from Thomas Paine and Sam Adams to Thomas Jefferson and Washington himself, stands defiantly, called back to action once more.
Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.
- Thomas Paine
Many times when you ask your typical apathetic American about politics, they'll offer one of two answers: "I don't really pay attention…it doesn't affect me" is the first, and "I'm only one person, what does it really matter what I do?" is the second.
But, as the flames of revolution tear across the Middle East's desert sands, we must remember that the firestorm that engulfs the region was lit by the sparks that blew off of one lone man's scorched body.
Mohamed Bouazizi was a 26-year-old Tunisian street vendor who made his living selling vegetables. Everything changed for him one day in mid-December when, according to a recent TIME magazine article, a policewoman confiscated his unlicensed produce cart, slapped him, spat in his face, and insulted his dead father.
Bouazizi went to the provincial headquarters to seek help from the local municipal officials- they ignored him.An hour later, he returned to the headquarters, doused himself in gasoline, and set himself ablaze in the ultimate form of protest. He died days later.
What even Bouazizi didn't know, however, was that his one strike of the match would ignite the rage of all of the oppressed who have long suffered under the harsh rule of their autocratic Middle Eastern dictators.
Tunisia fell first. Then, the protests began in Egypt - weeks later, their dictator of three decades, Hosni Mubarak, fled from Cairo.
Even more remarkably, the fervor has spread: protests have erupted in Libya and Yemen, Algeria and Bahrain, Syria and Iran, as the citizens take to the streets clamoring for the collapse of their governments.
Those governments, in response, have acted accordingly; as Jack London once wrote, "The Iron Heel is getting bold."The Black Hundreds have formed, and there are pitched battles on the boulevards as pro-government forces try to crush the rebellious with truncheon and tear gas, batons and bullets.
The New York Times reported on Friday that dozens have been killed in streetfights in Libya; in Bahrain, security forces launched an attack on sleeping protestors, on women and children, that left four dead and scores wounded.Still, the people chant, "You cannot keep us down!"
In Iran, the opposition figure who led the protests against the results of the 2009 "election", Mir Hussein Moussavi, has disappeared as protests reach a fevered pitch. Some fear he's been "detained," and there are hints that the nation may be on the eve of civil war.
For years I have scoffed at the idea that America could push democracy on another country. I've repeatedly quoted the old saying that if the idea of democracy is so good, you won't have to push it on people- they'll steal it.
However, it takes a steel spine to stand face-to-face with the point of a bayonet and demand it, and even I, ever the idealist, am shocked by the strength and passion being shown by these brave souls.
I have heard some say that the United States must be wary of these protests and their results because some of the outgoing regimes are friendly to America, and we don't know who will take over in the power vacuum.
While that may be true, that line of thinking is also why the rest of the world hates us so much- the fact that a brutal dictator was friendly to the United States doesn't mean that the blood of his murdered citizens washes off his hands any easier.
For once, Americans, look past the confines of our borders, and be, just for the moment, citizens of the world! Realize that what these people are doing is the very thing that our Founding Fathers, so revered by both left and right, did all those centuries ago: seizing power from the cruel and unjust and declaring that they'd rather die on their feet than live any longer on their knees.
Every soul that leaves a corpse on the glowering streets of any Middle Eastern capitol is joining the ranks of the greatest of the world's patriots, from those Frenchmen that stormed the Bastille in 1789 to the Germans who took sledgehammers to the Berlin Wall.
And with the living, the spirit of every American patriot, from Thomas Paine and Sam Adams to Thomas Jefferson and Washington himself, stands defiantly, called back to action once more.
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