American Underdogs Start Barking
A majority now see Barack Obama as a one-term president and he calls himself the “underdog,” but social networks may be changing the political landscape for 2012 in a way that the new medium of television did during the “youthquake” of the 1960s.
What started as a small disorganized rally on Wall Street three weeks ago is spreading to Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston and elsewhere into a movement.
“With little organization and a reliance on Facebook, Twitter and Google groups to share methods,” the New York Times reports, “the Occupy Wall Street campaign…has clearly tapped into a deep vein of anger, experts in social movements said, bringing longtime crusaders against globalization and professional anarchists together with younger people frustrated by poor job prospects.”
Back in the 1960s, TV made Americans previously politically voiceless and unseen—-women, racial minorities and especially youth-—visible to one another and to the nation as a whole. Power, which had been concentrated in a Washington establishment, was suddenly available to all who flooded the landscape with “body rhetoric” at rallies, protests and street theater for network cameras.
Now, as the Arab spring has shown, social networks can do the same even in entrenched autocracies. An American autumn is stirring against corporate power, bankers and the Tea Party zealotry that is holding Washington hostage during an economic crisis.
The problem with such pushback is that it looks chaotic—-and it often is—-but once started, it can take on a life of its own.
MORE.
6 Responses to “American Underdogs Start Barking”
OCCUPY WALLSTREET!
Now you see, this is what a truly grass roots movement looks like. Not THE paid for in advance, organized by corporate boards, complete with stupid costumes and historical regalia, store-bought Tea Party BS we have seen to date.
OCCUPY WALLSTREET!
OCCUPY WALLSTREET!
OCCUPY WALLSTREET!
I AM SO PROUD OF THESE PEOPLE!
I am as well. In fact I will be looking into joining them today. Wall St. got away with one of the most breathtaking swindles and manipulation of markets and OMG it looks like there are actually people who give a damn and care to organize enough to even get my non protesting ass off the couch to do something.
I’m no fan of the many excesses of corporate America but looking at some of the posted demands of the protest group, I’m not so sure they are that different.
They want changes but they seem to largely benefit themselves. If you’re a union worker or unemployed you benefit but it seems a lot of the rest of us would just be paying to a different master.
This is not to say that change is bad, or that we don’t need many changes made, but I think they need to be ones that don’t brand anyone who doesn’t fall into a specific group or grouping as the enemy.
I am proud of you too Slamfu!
Patrick-
What the heck are you talking about? What different master?
Capitalism needs to be under the power of the elected government, not in control of it. This is an anti-capitalism excessive power demonstration. Doesn’t matter if comes out democrat or republican, because no greater threat to freedom has ever been demonstrated against before in this country. Uncontrolled capitalism is the exact reason for nearly all our woes, encompassing nearly all our fears, encapsulating in one phenomenon the partisan division of our people. It is, without a doubt, the monster that stalks us and all free peoples everywhere.
Allen
I’m talking about the fact that while the protests have valid complaints, many of them lump all business/all capitalism into one group of ‘evil bad guys’.
As I think you know I’m self employed, I make a very modest income. But I would not benefit from any of the employee oriented proposals (IE living wage, health care, etc) since I am my own employer.
In addition, since I am seen as a business, many would expect me to pay the same taxes as a big corporation. Needless to say that would break me.
So *if* the proposals of the hard core were adopted, I’d be working longer for less money and would get nothing for it.
I wouldn’t consider that fair either, would you ?
In reading my reply about I note I used the word ‘many of them’ when I intended ‘some of them’