High unemployment and expectations among a bulging youth population, cost of living pressures, aging long-time rulers and government that isMore…
All posts tagged Arab Spring
The Congo: A Revolution Deferred
In the run-up to last November’s presidential elections in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cassandras were easy to findMore…
Living Politically
Less than ten years ago, a day of international protests swept across the globe, involving millions of human beings for nearly a full 24 hours. It was a global protest against the United States starting a war against Iraq, and was, as far as we know, the first coordinated global protest against state-sponsored violence. A few years before that, at a World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle in 1999, a series of intense, angry protests against global economic injustice began. These actions occurred repeatedly over several years, and across several continents. As recently as the winter of 2011, there were enormous protests in Madison, Wisconsin against anti-union legislation. The protests were explicitly focused on class and inequalities, not just on wealth, but also on the discrepancy of power between the very rich and the rest.
Amorous Analogies: How #OWS Connects the Dots
In a social theory graduate seminar about a year ago, Peter Marcuse, a radical lawyer and urban planning prof, cameMore…
Global Solidarity and the Occupy Movement
On December 1, 2011, twenty-four people joined together in a small Pennsylvania town to show their solidarity with the protesters of Tahrir by targeting a company that makes tear gas used in the suppression of crowds in Tahrir Square. Their numbers were not great, but their example anticipates the kind of consequential solidarity that could develop globally. More than a message gone viral or a day of simultaneous protest about inequality’s injustice, focused actions that publicize the chains of injustice linking distant sites can transform the ways in which we think not only about solidarity, but the conditions movements seek to change.
Return of a Repressed Res-Publica
Wendy Brown in a special issue of Theory & Event: For three decades, American populist politics have been largely reactionary, instigatedMore…
