Riots, demonstrations and new agencies of change
Saul Landau
An angry demonstration virus spreads
to country after country in response to negligent and callous political leaders
who have ignored the basic needs of their citizens. Instead, they have bowed or
eagerly catered to demands of multinational corporations and banks, thus
deepening the already profound world’s income gap. In 2011, billions face hunger,
or even starvation. A smaller elite has accumulated even more wealth.
In 2011, the shit hit the proverbial fan. The “Arab Streets” revolted. In
Greece, Spain and England the socialists had already assumed the politics of
the capitalists. The banks became the means and ends for policy.
Millions of Greeks took to the streets to protest cuts in basic rights their
ancestors had won in struggle; not gifts from benevolent governments. Citizens
in the streets, where they belong, beget police brutality.
Then “indignados” or angry young unemployed crowds in
Spain demanded jobs and respect. Police responded brutally, predictably. Like
Greece, Spain has a socialist government. Yet, “the unemployment rate for
Spaniards under the age of thirty is around 40 percent – about twice as high as
the overall rate. This fact alone explains much of the indignation behind the indignados,” says Jordi Pérez Colomé in Commonweal
Magazine.
London’s Daily Mail labeled rioters in several
British cities “feral teenagers," referring to adolescents and post
adolescents hurling bottles, stones and bricks, setting fires and looting. The
cops, recipients of some of the tossed missiles, could not contain these
indignant urban protesters.
Familiar TV scenes ensued. Frustrated police chased citizens to whom the Prime
Minister had appealed as worthy voters. Anger over his policies, however, made
them worthy of his condemnation: "social misfits,"
"bandits," and "violent, irrational people." He had already
condemned them by cutting off services the Labor
Movement had won decades ago.
Prime Minister Cameron’s moral righteousness conflicted with revelations of his
coziness with corrupt police officials linked to the
Murdoch gang. Add large-scale unemployment to a government intent on pursuing
austerity for the poor and gluttony for the rich. Britain's upper crust sucks
in 100 times more than the bottom classes. Eleven million employed people still
live below the poverty line. In Tottenham, where the London riots erupted, “75
per cent of children were classified as ‘struggling’. About 650,000 London
children live like this.” (Stephen Hume, Vancouver Sun, August 17, 2011)
To alleviate a century plus of class war between workers and owners, poor and
rich, the advertising geniuses found their real opiate: get the masses addicted
to shopping, living vicariously through lives of the rich and famous; re-live
youth by watching sports on TV.
The fruits of capitalism, spreading poverty and unemployment, plus billions of
dollars for the few, routinely get portrayed as the result of personal
failings, bad luck or stupid life choices, not as systemic design flaws.
England, Greece, Spain and the United States experience high levels of
unemployment. The governments respond by slashing budgets for education and other
needed services. Simultaneously, governments arrest the homeless and hungry,
what Barbara Ehrenreich called “criminalizing
poverty.”
Horatio Alger’s American Dream and its British equivalent exist only in the
oratory of Michelle Bachman and Rick Perry, who continue to assume the
possibilities of non-existent social and economic mobility. After 30 years we
can say: Reagan’s trickle down theory worked – poverty has indeed trickled down
(David Harvey).
Urban poor and unemployed in some countries caught the activism virus. They
demanded housing in Israel, not settlements in Palestinian territory. In India,
a fasting anti-corruption leader got jailed. Even in China citizens had enough
crap (pollution and corruption) and staged demonstrations.
In August, Chilean students caught the fever. TV videos showed people pounding
on pots and pans (cacerolazo) only this time the
atonal music-maker-housewives were not protesting against the Pinochet
dictatorship and army officers’ wives were not trying to intimidate the Allende government.
The early August demonstrations in Chile resonated with a new musical theme: we
are young people and deserve to become the actors on the stage of our history.
TV cameras panned to the rhythms of hands thumping pots. Citizens had re-claimed
their streets. They erected barricades and lit fires in front of the heavily
armed police who fired tear gas. Then the cops beat those who dared occupy the
streets.
For 17 years, Pinochet had imposed military fascism to teach Chileans
obedience. In 1990, he submitted to an election and got voted out. A coalition
of Christian Democrats and Socialists restored democracy, but not socialism.
Right wing President Pinera has pushed for the full
return of the aggressive “free market” Pinochet had violently enforced after Allende’s attempt to create a more equal society. In
response to “freedom” for capital to control all aspects of life tens of
thousands of young Chileans took over schools and streets demanding free and
high quality education.
Like students in Allende’s Unidad
Popular era, Chilean youth have became actors in their own drama, driven by the
need to rid Chile of “privatization mania” that extended to education.
Like their counterparts around the world, the students eschewed traditional
political parties who have betrayed poor and working people. See Adrian
Wright’s “Chile shaken by student revolt”.
We have witnessed new agencies of change on the world stage. Where are the
script writers? Or will the new actors write their own?
Saul Landau is a Fellow of the Institute
of Policy Studies in Washington D.C. His
film WILL THE REAL TERRORIST PLEASE STAND UP is distributed by Cinema Libre Studio. His other films include LAND OF MY BIRTH and STEPPIN,
both made on Jamaica’s Democratic Socialism period under Michael Manley in the
1970s. They are available from roundworldproductions@gmail.