The kids are not alright - Updated 2X
In fact, the kids are damn angry. They have a right to be. Their future has been stolen by the new century robber barons on Wall Street and in corporate boardrooms all over the world. This is why they OccupyEverywhere.
I'm glad they are taking their message to the streets instead of just bitching on the social internets to each other. Their plight needs a human face to personify the victims of government sanctioned greed. But Charles is right, it does their cause no good if they act out their anger in scenes of mayhem. If it ends like this, then it will all have been for nothing.
I support this movement, but when I see video of protesters screaming at cops who are just standing there, wagging fingers in their face and deliberately provoking confrontations, then they start to lose me. And if they're losing me, then they're not winning over any converts. As I said on Twitter yesterday, the angry vibe is ruining the peaceably assembled motif.
Update: All that being said, this live stream of the march on Brooklyn Bridge at 7:25 tonight is breathtaking. This is a powerful, and peaceful, statement. Awesome.
Update two: And these 99% projections. Brilliant. Twitter machine telling me people cheering, cars honking for that one. And police scanner eavesdroppers saying 32.5 thousand are marching. Peaceably. This makes me unreasonably happy.
[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]
I'm glad they are taking their message to the streets instead of just bitching on the social internets to each other. Their plight needs a human face to personify the victims of government sanctioned greed. But Charles is right, it does their cause no good if they act out their anger in scenes of mayhem. If it ends like this, then it will all have been for nothing.
I support this movement, but when I see video of protesters screaming at cops who are just standing there, wagging fingers in their face and deliberately provoking confrontations, then they start to lose me. And if they're losing me, then they're not winning over any converts. As I said on Twitter yesterday, the angry vibe is ruining the peaceably assembled motif.
Update: All that being said, this live stream of the march on Brooklyn Bridge at 7:25 tonight is breathtaking. This is a powerful, and peaceful, statement. Awesome.
Update two: And these 99% projections. Brilliant. Twitter machine telling me people cheering, cars honking for that one. And police scanner eavesdroppers saying 32.5 thousand are marching. Peaceably. This makes me unreasonably happy.
[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]
Labels: Activism, Civil Rights, society
posted by Libby Spencer at 7:17 PM
1 Comments:
Fuck the pigs. They deserve all the contempt we can give them these days. Maybe if you spent time in the trenches, Libby, instead of writing about it on the internets, if you were getting beaten, maced, having your tents confiscated and your books thrown in the trash, then perhaps you could afford to be a little angrier than you are.
Sometimes, blood and iron does save the day. Abolition wouldn't have ended as quickly as it had were it not for John Brown's taking of Harper's Ferry and the Civil War. How much more delayed would the gay rights movement had been were it not for Stonewall?
And do you think civil rights completely came into its own through peaceful protest and the Emancipation Proclamation?
While I do not relish the idea of martyrs, in order for this movement to get massive public sympathy behind it is for someone to act as a martyr. They almost had it with Scott Olsen. But if this movement continues for much longer, eventually a cop somewhere will cross the ultimate line.
Then all bets will be off.
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