protest

Journal of the mental environment

Time for another tea party

Why are Americans passively accepting the greatest tax rip-off of all time?

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 3:28 pm — Posted by Paul
| 42 comments

In 1773 a mob of American colonists famously dumped crates of tea belonging to the British East India Company into Boston harbor. It was a direct action by citizens against the tax regime of the British government, and just one of several incidents that ultimately led to the Revolutionary War.

More than two-hundred years later Americans still notoriously abominate taxes. They hate taxes so much that they deny themselves a privilege taken for granted by every other civilized nation on earth, namely, universal healthcare.

So how can they just sit quietly by as the greatest tax rip-off of all time is inflicted on them?

The $700,000,000,000 bailout package approved by the senate yesterday will place a tax burden of several thousand dollars on every man, woman, and child in the U.S. and that’s on top of the huge debt they already bear. It is a burden that exceeds by an order of magnitude the burden that the British tried to place on the American colonists after the Seven Year’s War. More significantly, it is the result not of justifiable expenditure, but of corruption at the highest levels.

Yet all is quiet. No protests in the streets, no angry mobs, no latter-day Boston Tea Partiers tarring and feathering the crooked politicians and bankers who made it all possible.

Exactly what do you have to do to people in the twenty-first century to provoke direct action?

The whole world is watching

In November 1999, tens of thousands activists helped shut down the World Trade Organization in Seattle. The story of the Seattle protests has now been turned into a feature film.

Thu, 18 Sep 2008 2:13 pm — Posted by Lauren
| 10 comments

Global justice activists, environmentalists, union members, farmers, students, anti-capitalist activists and countless others helped shut down the World Trade Organization in Seattle in November of 1999. It was a defining moment for the movement against corporate globalization. The historical Seattle protests have now been turned into an independent fictionalized film. Democracy Now! spoke to the film’s writer and director, Stuart Townsend, as well as David Solnit, one of the key organizers of the WTO protests and co-founder of the Seattle WTO People’s History project:
[via DemocracyNow.org]

STUART TOWNSEND: One thing that’s happened is, since Seattle, because of Seattle’s success, you know, it’s very hard now to actually protest, have real dissent, because there’s two-mile exclusion zones. The Navy is out there in Cancun stopping protesters. And every event, every G8 event, any World Trade Organization meeting, now has massive security. And at the RNC and the DNC, where I was there, as well, I mean, it was very hard to really have any form of real dissent. So I think that’s a problem that, you know, you guys have to deal with as activists.

AMY GOODMAN: What are your hopes for this film?

STUART TOWNSEND: My hope is to inspire people, particularly a young and new audience, who—you know, most people don’t remember this event. And I was shocked when I sort of found it—you know, like found it. I was like, this is an incredible, important event about so many important issues. You know, even look at the financial crisis of two days ago, that’s the same system that people were fighting against in ’99. And, you know, we’re now reaping those—you know, the whirlwind of that.”

Stuart Townsend and David Solnit on Democracy Now

Interview with Battle in Seattle’s writer and director, Stuart Townsend, as well as David Solnit, one of the key organizers of the WTO protests and co-founder of the Seattle WTO People’s History Project on DemocracyNow.org