Occupy Wall Street reminds me of the youth unrest in America in the mid 1960s through the ’70s. except that then (like it was here), the youth were not as focused, i guess because of the drugs, the sex, and the rock’n’roll alongside the make-love-not-(vietnam)war and the civil rights movements.
this time, 40-something years later, the crowds on wall street and elsewhere in america and the world, may not be clear exactly how to achieve the change they want, but they sure are clear what they have had enough of, and the awesome meeting of minds and bodies is simply unprecedented and proving quite contagious.
check out these links i’ve posted on my facebook wall, tracking the movement, and the thinking that’s transpiring, evolving… i hope the prez and his peeps are paying attention too.
All power to occupy Wall Street
Occupy Wall Street Rages On Around The World
This Time, It Really Is Different
Zizek at Wall Street: “don’t fall in love with yourself”
There’s something happening here
My Advice to the Occupy Wall Street Protesters
What Will Become of Occupy Wall Street: A Protest Historian’s Guide
Saw Bill Clinton on Letterman and he warned that OWS can fall into the wrong hands if they don’t get their act together. He said something like, they know what they are against and that’s good but they can’t be just against, they have to decide what they are for otherwise those with an agenda will co-opt them. Parang make sense din naman. Kasi tignan mo yun Egypt, maganda ang umpisa pero ngayon mukhang military ang nakikinabang.
read the last link, My Advice to… from rollingstone.com’s Matt Taibbi who suggests focusing on five demands.
Though history teaches us mobile efforts on part of the people can prevail against overwhelming odds, the current globalized structure is unyielding to change or to reform. The elites are determined to back the corporate state, bail out failing banks and bankrupt nations at the cost of further austerity measure imposed on the middle and working class. I am pessimistic about the outcome of this movement though elements within the movement itself are sincere in wanting genuine reform. But as intellectuals like Samuel Huntington and Immanuel Wallerstein point out, any entrenched structured system (such as corporatism) is hard to revamp unless some the reformers themselves infaltrate the system from within. In my opinion, covert reform is sometimes better (and preferable) to overt action.
interesting. an inside job, covert reformers, in government? in the corporate system itself? they’d have to be very good and very creative.
“The planet Uranus (rebellion against tyranny) was in Aries from 1760 to 1769, the beginnings of the American Revolution. It returned to Aries in 1843 – 1851, when China had the Taiping Rebellion (25 million killed), and the US had the US Dred Scott decision, the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the stirrings of founding the Republican Party. The last time Uranus was in Aries was from 1927 to 1935 — with the American Tax Revolt plus rebellions in China, Arabia, Brazil, Turkey and Nicaragua. After a three month visit last summer, Uranus returned to Aries in April to stay until 2019. Now we have revolutionary upheavals in the Middle East plus middle-class revolutions like the Tea Party movement — or the emerging Occupy Wall Street movement, which is sweeping the US and Canada in over 100 cities.” — Georgia Nicols, Oct. 16, 2011 (www.georgianicols.com)
ah yes, the astrology of it. and let’s not forget the larger picture, still the cusp of the age of aquarius.