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

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Mexico: Youth on the Front Lines of Protest Movement

Click here to access article posted on Up Side Down World, orig. source Inter Press Service. 
"We need to be the ones to provide the answers to the questions of our times, because we are the main victims of the voracious policies of capitalism," says Alexis Jiménez, a 23-year-old ethnologist who has spent the last two months camping out in front of the Mexico City Stock Exchange. 
The Occupy movement is occurring nearly everywhere in the world because neo-liberal policies are being imposed upon most of the world by the hegemonic Empire.

Mexican activists, as activists in this struggle all over the world, are creating new strategies and tactics to combat neo-liberal policies, the Empire and its surrogates.
The so-called Youth Camp on the National Disaster and Emergency issued a declaration which established two main priorities: the strengthening of social movements in all regions and the creation of their own media.
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"We recognise as a basic form of coordination and forging links with local populations the occupation of public spaces to draw the community into debates, using the tools of popular education and liberating art to generate active hope, as an engine of human happiness,"....
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"It’s not easy. We’re used to following figureheads, so it’s hard to understand a horizontal movement without leaders, where all decisions are made by consensus. But this is a process, and one we hope will continue to grow and multiply," said Barousse at the camp in Coyoacán.