"The young people protesting reject this vain economic order. They have come to reclaim the future"

[marmar]

Occupy Wall Street rediscovers the radical imagination
The young people protesting in Wall Street and beyond reject this vain economic order. They have come to reclaim the future

• Police tactics attacked as officers pepper-spray women
• Occupy Wall Street: the protesters speak

David Graeber
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 25 September 2011


Why are people occupying Wall Street? Why has the occupation – despite the latest police crackdown – sent out sparks across America, within days, inspiring hundreds of people to send pizzas, money, equipment and, now, to start their own movements called OccupyChicago, OccupyFlorida, in OccupyDenver or OccupyLA?

There are obvious reasons. We are watching the beginnings of the defiant self-assertion of a new generation of Americans, a generation who are looking forward to finishing their education with no jobs, no future, but still saddled with enormous and unforgivable debt. Most, I found, were of working-class or otherwise modest backgrounds, kids who did exactly what they were told they should: studied, got into college, and are now not just being punished for it, but humiliated – faced with a life of being treated as deadbeats, moral reprobates.

Is it really surprising they would like to have a word with the financial magnates who stole their future?

Just as in Europe, we are seeing the results of colossal social failure. The occupiers are the very sort of people, brimming with ideas, whose energies a healthy society would be marshaling to improve life for everyone. Instead, they are using it to envision ways to bring the whole system down. .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/sep/25/occupy-wall-street-protest

[FarLeftFist]

1. Nailed the sentiment of today's youth. Exploding with ideas with no way to apply them.

[Fire Walk With Me]

2. This paragraph is particularly wonderful:

"What we've learned now is that the economic crisis of the 1970s never really went away. It was fobbed off by cheap credit at home and massive plunder abroad – the latter, in the name of the "third world debt crisis". But the global south fought back. The "alter-globalisation movement", was in the end, successful: the IMF has been driven out of East Asia and Latin America, just as it is now being driven from the Middle East. As a result, the debt crisis has come home to Europe and North America, replete with the exact same approach: declare a financial crisis, appoint supposedly neutral technocrats to manage it, and then engage in an orgy of plunder in the name of 'austerity'."

[tama]

4. Powerfull words

"Debt crisis has come home". We did it to South with economic hitmen and what not, neocolonialist debt slavery. And now we are forced to taste our own medicin. And the bitterness of the taste tells us that it is not our medicin, it's poison to all of us. Debt and debt driven consumerism.

[Fire Walk With Me]

5. Yep. The eaters have been driven home, and they are still hungry.

[nashville_brook]

3. shit yeah!

[FirstLight]

6. Keep it going!

I was watching video and it was way more than just a thousand people! Yes Please! scream it louder!

[rhett o rick]

7. It's important to continue to call our elected representative attention to the revolution that has

started.

[Luminous Animal]

8. "Most, I found, were of working-class or otherwise modest backgrounds,

kids who did exactly what they were told they should: studied, got into college, and are now not just being punished for it, but humiliated – faced with a life of being treated as deadbeats, moral reprobates."

Very good article. The quoted part above really resonated with me.

[madfloridian]

9. "the beginnings of the defiant self-assertion of a new generation of Americans"

Yes. There will be more. There should be more.

[gratuitous]

10. But, but, but, some of them are wearing masks and dressing in ways I find goofy!

So that, like, totally invalidates everything about this, and we can therefore dismiss this whole thing as a circus. Whew! As long as there's a nit to pick, we'll always be able to ignore public protests against societal sins.

[Fire Walk With Me]

11. Kick!

[louslobbs]

12. K&R

Lou