Wednesday, June 01, 2011
What if they held a revolution and nobody noticed?
This is not a rhetorical question. Apparently, Spain has had people marching in the streets for the last two weeks. Who knew? Not me.
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Probably because these were peaceful demonstrations in the midst of local elections. No blood, no overthrown dictators, no juice for the ever bloodthirsty global media :)
ReplyDeleteThe movement itself outgrew its expectations, and some people have hopes that it will evolve into something with enough momentum to cause an impact in the next year's national polls. But it's not a revolution, and there's no actual short term challenge to the system.
Cheers.
By the way, from the wikipedia article one could get the impression that they were asking people not to vote, as an act of protest. That's not accurate.
ReplyDeleteWhat they were asking is that people shouldn't vote for any of the two dominant parties, but rather, for alternative smaller parties that never get enough votes to even have a seat. One of their slogans was "Don't vote for them".
Of course, politicians from both dominant parties were quick to characterize the movement as a call for abstention, some international press echoed those views. And the slogan was often quoted as "Don't vote", leaving out the telling "for them" bit :)
Fortunately there was some support in several US cities
ReplyDeletehttp://www.elmundo.es/america/2011/05/21/estados_unidos/1306010783.html
(sorry, I didnt find it on the news in English, I think the Washington Post had some references)
This is a global crisis and only global actions will tackle the situation. Many movements in the US have similar connotations, i.e Wisconsin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_jnOXhDF6c
In Greece this kind of peaceful concentrations are increasing in the latest days. And you probably already know about the protests in Arabic countries