Could the recent protests outside the New York Stock
Exchange on Wall Street be signs of a fledgling American Spring?
They say imitation is the greatest form of flattery.
Surely then, perhaps Americans affected by a
moribund economy and political brain freeze in Washington are taking a cue from
the Arab Spring wending its’ way from Egypt to Libya and Syria to Yemen in the
Middle East.
Frustrated, ignored and impoverished voices fed up, joining
together, and demanding their governments and their social structure change.
Indeed, the world has cast a wary yet interested eye on the
rebellions in Egypt and Libya that have fueled the demise of oppressive regimes
that had previously been thought ironclad.
Remarkably, the Arab
Spring has given voice to the oppressed and disenfranchised thanks to the
ability to organize the masses that social networking online provides.
Sites like Twitter and Facebook have provided the linkage
necessary to reach other like-minded people with a populist rebellion message;
and most importantly, to give them a tool to mobilize in the thousands to
demand and force change.
Where Internet usage gets cut, then YouTube has been used as
a method of choice with which to transfer video snippets from a Smartphone
caught in the cross-fire to a video screen the rest of the world can see.
Clearly America’s sacred freedom is conspicuous by our absence.
Over 15 million unemployed and counting; billions given to
banks to bail them out but not the little people on Main Street, U.S.A. and we
can’t organize on Twitter and Facebook and exercise our right to freedom of
expression and let our collective voices of discontent be heard?
Where is our American Spring?
How is it possible that Middle Eastern societies with fewer
democratic freedoms and rights than the U.S. can rise up against despots like
Mubarek and Ghaddafi and Assad; yet America remains mired in not one but three wars
without end?
Was it so long ago that a little war in southeast Asia
called Vietnam gutted the nation’s hearts and minds in the late 1960’s and
early 1970’s when we didn’t have electronic distractions like video games and
all manner of smart-this-or-that?
As the song goes, ‘from little things big things one day
come’.
Perhaps the persistence of the small group of protestors in
New York is just the beginning of an American Spring. The kind of awakening that gets the
unemployed and uninsured and the politically disgusted and disenfranchised mad
as hell and not going to take it anymore into the streets for an American
Spring,,,,before inaction leads us to a cold dark winter of discontent.
