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

Sunday, September 12, 2010

S11 ten years on — World Economic Forum blockade

from Green Left (Australia).

The global justice movement, in which Seattle in 1999 played such an important role in starting, continues to battle the global capitalists wherever they show up. This weekend these rulers of the world are meeting in Melbourne. 

The ongoing protests serve to lift...
...the veil which separates the people from the sense of their own power...; it may get nailed back up again, but it won't ever be the impenetrable wall it appeared to be before.