Why We Revolt

[marmar]

from YES! Magazine:




Why We Revolt
When and how does the moment come when people stop believing in the power that has ruled them? When and how do ordinary people discover their own power?

by Rebecca Solnit
posted Mar 24, 2011


Revolution is as unpredictable as an earthquake and as beautiful as spring. Its coming is always a surprise, but its nature should not be.

Revolution is a phase, a mood, like spring, and just as spring has its buds and showers, so revolution has its ebullience, its bravery, its hope, and its solidarity. Some of these things pass. The women of Cairo do not move as freely in public as they did during those few precious weeks when the old rules were suspended and everything was different. But the old Egypt is gone and Egyptians’ sense of themselves—and our sense of them—is forever changed.

No revolution vanishes without effect. The Prague Spring of 1968 was brutally crushed, but 21 years later when a second wave of revolution liberated Czechoslovakia, Alexander Dubcek, who had been the reformist Secretary of the Czechoslovakian Communist Party, returned to give heart to the people from a balcony overlooking Wenceslas Square: "The government is telling us that the street is not the place for things to be solved, but I say the street was and is the place. The voice of the street must be heard."

The voice of the street has been a bugle cry this year. You heard it. Everyone did, but the rulers who thought their power was the only power that mattered, heard it last and with dismay. Many of them are nervous now, releasing political prisoners, lowering the price of food, and otherwise trying to tamp down uprisings. .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.yesmagazine.org/peace-justice/why-we-revolt

[msongs]

1. YES magazine is a very fine and useful mag - "fighting America's corporate coup d'etat"

http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/fighting-americas-corporate-coup-detat

Amy Goodwin interviews Naomi Klein on why citizens are fighting back in places like Wisconsin.

"we're not paying for your crisis" citizens versus corporations

[midnight]

2. I know the powers that be are listening.... They have made it ok to suspend the miranda rule, and

and interrogate all domestic terrorists.... I suppose they have the fluidity to make domestic terrorism any thing they want....