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

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

David Graeber: On Playing By The Rules – The Strange Success Of #OccupyWallStreet

Click here to access article by David Graeber from Naked Capitalism.

This fairly length piece provides a very good description of how opposition to our Wall Street run government reached critical mass this Fall and materialized as the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Clearly, if progressive change was not possible through electoral means in 2008, it simply isn’t going to [be] possible at all. And that is exactly what very large numbers of Americans appear to have concluded.