GRASS ROOTS REVOLUTION: THE BEGINNING OF HISTORY

A new era of grass roots revolution has dawned! This is not a repeat of the 1960s 'political-cultural revolution'  of protests by middle class youth that had a bright future and protested against the materialistic and hypocritical conservative values of the 1950s generation. In the 1990s, apologists of capitalism and liberal democracy argued that the fall of the Soviet bloc marked the 'end of history'. Today Europe is encountering the beginning of history. 

The under-40s generation is indignant because it has grown up with institutions serving the political and business elites while bankrupting the future of the youth and potentially of the next generation as well. This is not about 'generation X', about cynicism, about neo-nihilism; this is about institutions that reflect social injustice at the expense of the broader social classes, and for the benefit of the small minority composed of  the business and political elites.

The beginning of history is spreading throughout Europe and it transcends established political parties whose goal is to serve the narrow agendas that perpetuate the privileged social class. On 29 May 2011, all major European cities will have mass demonstrations like those of Spain's Puerta del Sol. This is a grass roots movement that has an international impact on ordinary people of disparate ideological and political backgrounds. As a movement it has its own powerful dynamic, but it can only be useful to society if it is organized in order to change the status quo, as the Spanish manifesto of the 'indignant' protesters demands.

MANIFESTO

"We are ordinary people. We are like you: people, who get up every morning to study, work or find a job, people who have family and friends. People, who work hard every day to provide a better future for those around us. Some of us consider ourselves progressive, others conservative. Some of us are believers, some not. Some of us have clearly defined ideologies, others are apolitical, but we are all concerned and angry about the political, economic, and social outlook which we see around us: corruption among politicians, businessmen, bankers, leaving us helpless, without a voice. This situation has become normal, a daily suffering, without hope. But if we join forces, we can change it. It’s time to change things, time to build a better society together. Therefore, we strongly argue that:

• The priorities of any advanced society must be equality, progress, solidarity, freedom of culture, sustainability and development, welfare and people’s happiness.
• These are inalienable truths that we should abide by in our society: the right to housing, employment, culture, health, education, political participation, free personal development, and consumer rights for a healthy and happy life.
• The current status of our government and economic system does not take care of these rights, and in many ways is an obstacle to human progress.
• Democracy belongs to the people (demos = people, krátos = government) which means that government is made of every one of us. However, in Spain most of the political class does not even listen to us. Politicians should be bringing our voice to the institutions, facilitating the political participation of citizens through direct channels that provide the greatest benefit to the wider society, not to get rich and prosper at our expense, attending only to the dictatorship of major economic powers and holding them in power through a bipartidism headed by the immovable acronym PP & PSOE.
• Lust for power and its accumulation in only a few; create inequality, tension and injustice, which leads to violence, which we reject. The obsolete and unnatural economic model fuels the social machinery in a growing spiral that consumes itself by enriching a few and sends into poverty the rest. Until the collapse.
• The will and purpose of the current system is the accumulation of money, not regarding efficiency and the welfare of society. Wasting resources, destroying the planet, creating unemployment and unhappy consumers.
• Citizens are the gears of a machine designed to enrich a minority which does not regard our needs. We are anonymous, but without us none of this would exist, because we move the world.
• If as a society we learn to not trust our future to an abstract economy, which never returns benefits for the most, we can eliminate the abuse that we are all suffering.
• We need an ethical revolution. Instead of placing money above human beings, we shall put it back to our service. We are people, not products. I am not a product of what I buy, why I buy and who I buy from.

For all of the above, I am outraged.
I think I can change it.
I think I can help.
I know that together we can.I think I can help.
I know that together we can.

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