We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Monday, February 21, 2011

Resistance to Austerity: It's not just for Europeans

by Jesse D. Palmer from Slingshot Collective (Berkeley, CA).

This organization doesn't mince words! 
We can demand a different way. A system that keeps you busy doing meaningless jobs you hate to more quickly undermine the planet's ability to support life and make a tiny number of people rich and powerful so they are unaccountable to everyone else is a crazy system. It isn't the type of system you want to see recover -- it is the type of system you want to go out into the streets to overturn. Many millions of people who see through the confusion will be out on the streets in 2011. Will any of them be in the US? Will you be there? What can we do to be part of the future, and not the past? 
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