The Future of Political Activism

Within the last few weeks, bloggers, twitterers and social network users have defeated SOPA / PIPA and brought down the Komen people. Do you now realize what a huge force we have become and why all traditional media journalists hate us so much?

At an anti-Putin protest in Moscow yesterday, a young man was making fun of Putin's suggestion that all Russian protesters work for Hillary Clinton. More photos of the protests here: http://toma-gramma.livejournal.com/783603.html

The future of political activism is online, people. Those who can get the greatest number of people to reblog, retweet, repost and facebook will end up defeating those who can invest the greatest amount of money and bring the greatest number of people to a protest.

Two days ago, a scandal broke in Russia where hackers accessed information proving that some of the most popular bloggers and Twitterers in the country had been receiving money from the government to mention Putin in a positive context or include heart-warming pictures of him (holding babies and practicing martial arts, the usual stuff) in their posts. Truly huge amounts of money have been paid out to counterbalance the negative publicity that honest bloggers have been creating for Putin.

The Russians are, as usual, ahead of everybody. Those in power in that country have realized that you now need to have the blogosphere on your side if you want to achieve anything. I predict that this trend will grow in the future and the blogs, the tweets and the social media will play a hugely important role in politics and activism in the near future.

Greedy Banks

Protesting greed. But why stop here? Wouldn't it be so much cooler to protest human mortality? Also, the weather could take some protesting.

Yes, banks are greedy. That’s kind of in their job description. Which is why that’s where we keep our money. For some reason, we don’t keep it in charitable institutions which will immediately distribute our savings to the needy. A bank that is not driven by greed, by the desire to make as much money as possible is no bank at all.

Since people often choose to be very obtuse about this topic, I’ll provide the following disclaimer: the banking industry in this country has engaged in activities that are outright criminal. They were aided in robbing the country blind by corrupt politicians. The removal of the regulations of the financial system has been a disaster and resulted in a global financial crisis. These issues need to be addressed, discussed, and protested as loudly as possible. Vague discussions of the big, bad greed annoy me so much precisely because they rob protesters of all credibility and make them sound like whiny, pseudo-Christian proselytizers.

In my efforts to find out more about the #Occupy movement, I only and exclusively consult sources that are very supportive of the movement. Whenever I see an article that sounds like it might be hostile to the protesters, I scroll it down without reading it. I do it because I really, really, really don’t want to be disappointed in the movement. But the images and the stories that the passionate advocates of the #Occupiers provide, do the job of disillusioning me about the protests perfectly well on their own.