Legitimacy and Crisis

I had to take a break from writing a paper on the Tea-Party for Gill Hart's class to share a few things.

These past two years have been pretty extraordinary in terms of the global reaction to the onset of austerity measures. Kris said something in class about the reverberating affects of various movements. Many things have happened, just in the span of this class. Last year in Greece there were massive riots and protests against the greek austerity-bail out ... And recently in Spain 3/4 of workers went on strike, the Air-traffic controllers refused to work and were forced, literally by gun-point, by the military (which occupied the airports) to continue working. Before these protests in France earlier this autumn, 3 million french students and workers took to the street to protest cuts to education, the raising of the age at which people are allowed to stop working without getting a penalty. (btw, lot's of people strangely reported that they were raising it from 61 to 62, that was just a small percentage of the population, most french-people are just like any other nation, they were raising it from 65 to 67 See this article. And now, in Britain the protests against education cuts were huge -- they were supported by a large percentage of students and workers and has changed both the student's and larger public's understanding of the present situation -- consciousness remains "hot". In the past few weeks in Italy there have also been riots and protests over austerity measures and education cuts. Now, in the past few hours with Berlusconi being narrowly allowed to continue his reign (by 2 votes), workers, students, concerned citizens, etc. have broken into various protests/riots across Italy...

Around the world Austerity is demanded. Around the world people have seemed to say: "Austerity for us? Austerity for the bankers, the very rich, not for us" ... well... there's lots to say, but I guess I'd like to point out that the world we know hasn't been around as long as living in it makes it seem. These are strange and changing times -- there's a lot to think about, especially when we are in school and learning all this stuff. I suggest though that dreaming from the space of your own life is very important. I don't think dreaming is idealistic, I think it's actually very necessary to understand what you want out of life and your problems with the current state of things: it lets your critique of the world flesh out into something relevant at all times of the day. The question of course is then that old nagging one: what is to be done. I might be naive, but I think humans are capable of so much good -- we shouldn't blind ourselves about the tenability of alternatives.