BA: I wouldn’t call the movement “passive.” Sitting in your chair, hip and cynical, sucking on a pipe and doing nothing is passive. Power is based on violence no matter how calm things appear; when effectively challenged it always bears its teeth.
off-spring of the events abroad. Remember too that Tunisia was more than that famous self-immolation. Wikileaks released documents that enraged the Tunisians. The US continues to imprison and torture Bradley Manning who initially leaked the papers.
>> Outside of the US there has been a wide ranging series of uprisings, particularly the in Middle East. Governments like Tunisia and Egypt have been fully overthrown/removed and the politicians/dictators are currently being brought to justice. While this is happening at the same time as Occupy, the approach and the scope of those involved in the Arab Spring uprising are radically different and much more popular, with tens of thousands of people taking over Tahir Square, as opposed to low thousands at most in the US. Do you feel the situations outside the US are so different that they provoke a larger response or is it that American’s themselves are less likely to go to the streets in order to affect change?
Before Tahrir Square, those kids were seen as crummy, passive, stupid, uninvolved, apolitical, and irrelevant. No more. They changed themselves/they began to change the world. It can happen anywhere, anytime, and it’s always thus: look at Mississippi in 1963, South Africa in 1985, Tianenman Square in 1989, and on and on.
BA: The Arab Spring is still in play, and it has not fully accomplished anything. Stay posted. Occupy is also in-the-making, a work-in-progress, and surely an
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This article originally appeared on NO CTRL: goo.gl/ZJuba