From Tahrir Square to Wall Street
The word Tahrir in Arabic means liberation. The Zuccotti Park, which is the eye of the storm of recent protests in New York near Wall Street, was formerly known as Liberty Plaza Park. The similarity is more than symbolic.
Revolutions and social movements, scholars tell us, produce all kinds of outcomes some intended but mostly unintended. The recent unfortunate developments in Egypt that led to killings of 23 Coptic protestors in Tahrir Square send a chill. The Coptic Christians, who make up 10% of the Egyptian population, had experienced attacks from fringe groups of extremists before. It is different this time because of their clash with the military. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) has been in power since the fall of Mubarak regime early this year with a promise to return power to the civilians. Although the military government has asked the civilian prime minister to launch an investigation in the events that led to bloodshed, the future of the Arab Spring in Egypt hangs in the balance.
The word Tahrir, in Arabic means liberation. The Zuccotti Park, which is the eye of the storm of recent protests in New York near Wall Street, was formerly known as Liberty Plaza Park. The similarity is more than symbolic. Whichever way the revolution goes in Egypt, one thing the Egyptian protestors at Tahrir Square have already accomplished is that they have inspired protest movements in Spain, Israel, and now in the United States of America.
The protests at the Wall Street have been named as Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement. Their goal is simple. They know that the real power lies not in the Capitol Hill or the White House. The real power lies in the capital of corporate America. The corporate oligarchs who played a key role in the economic crisis were rewarded with bailouts where the poor were left to fend for themselves.
Like Peter Finch, the protagonist in the famed movie "The Network", the average Americans are now saying, "enough is enough." The shout is reverberating not just in Wall Street or in the camps of Zuccotti Park but also in 70 (and now more) places across the United States. And as in the Arab Spring, the new media -- Facebook, Twitter, etc. -- is playing a vital role in connecting people. The protest movement has gone global as fifty leading Chinese academics signed a petition of solidarity with the protestors, as if in a role reversal of the US reaction to the Tinanmen Square protests of 1989.
The mainstream Americans have always been suspicious of the Sixties style protest movements and in recent years with the rise of the conservative Tea Party movement, which was professedly in favour of the rich and those privileged groups whose bulging profits and corporate tax cuts reached obscene proportion.
A well-known German Marxist sociologist Clause Offe, who I was recently talking to, expressed his surprise with the turn of events. Offe was in New York on September 11 this year and he saw no hint of the simmering protests. It all looked patriotic and normal. Barely a week after that, on September 17, the first storm clouds of the OWS movements became visible. The turn of events is remarkable.
I too was walking down the Wall Street in July this year where the only heat bearing down on me was the hot summer. The rest looked placid and tourist-friendly. We visited a friend in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who ran a hardware shop -- not unlike the fictitious family in The Happy Days. Now retired, broken by old-age and ill-health he was not well, as his wife put it. Their daughter came back from work, her wage -- as she told me -- was an incredible $2.83 an hour. "This is well-below the minimum wage," I protested. "But my company gets away with it. The job market is bad and I need work," whimpered Lisa.
The protestors in New York have managed to put across their message loud and clear for the whole world to see. A poster in Wall Street says it all: "1% rich, 99% poor." The growing inequality in America, which was known to sociologists, careful readers of the New York Times op-ed pages or readers of the Nation, is now becoming public knowledge. The link between Washington and the Wall Street, explored long ago by the likes of C. Wright Mills, is now under the very nose of everyone.
The mainstream political parties are either in denial, dismissing the protests as "anti-American" activities of the hippies or are trying to coopt them, as the Democratic Party seems to be trying. Which way the protests go is anybody's guess. Will these protests morph into a revolution? Will they change the mindset of the Americans, especially those who have forgotten about social contract, the obligation of the state for the people? Will these protests bring to light the deeper problems of US-style capitalism and democracy of the rich? Could it be that the collapse of socialism that was the cause of celebration in the late 1980s and early 1990s was a prelude to the collapse of the unbuttoned, neo-liberal capitalism?
Capitalism will perhaps survive the wave of protests, but it is time for a new social compact to be drawn for all the parties involved -- a compact that would be truly inclusive of the majority -- poor, hippies, the middle class -- in other words, the 99%.
Comments