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

Thursday, July 15, 2010

The G20 Plan for Prosperity: Rubber Bullets and Shredded Social Safety Net

by Paul Jay from New Deal 2.0. The author who usually does the interviews for The Real News Network writes about his observations and significance of the recent G20 summit in Toronto.
The Toronto G-20 summit sent a message to poor and working people in Europe and North America. “You will pay for the global financial crisis through cuts to your social safety nets. There will be no taxing of those who actually caused the crisis and made fortunes in the various bubbles over the last decades.”
He also observed that it was easy for the Canadian ruling class to suspend the civil rights of Canadians. You see, these rights are always subject to be ignored at the whim of the governing classes everywhere. Laws are designed to regulate and control the behavior of working people, and any rights that they theoretically enjoy can be removed at any time.
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