"Major social transformation is closer than you may think"

[ellenrr]

"The retreat of the Occupy movement is a normal and healthy stage of its development. The next step is to generate majority support for our alternatives."


http://roarmag.org/2014/01/social-movements-transformation/

[Demeter]

1. From your post to God's Ears

for we surely need it.

[Pharaoh]

2. Bill Moyers is dead?

to it on the strategy page on Popular Resistance. Moyer expanded this 1987 article into, Doing Democracy, a book published in 2001, a year before he died.

[Joe Shlabotnik]

3. Its pretty hard to plan the perfect revolution.

But clearly there is the a growing, palpable sense that status quo is failing more and many people.

Now comes that moment of reflection. Reflection for activists to clarify their goals and messaging is one thing, more radical types already have very strong feelings of whats wrong and what needs to be done. But eliciting reflection on the part of the masses is a stumbling block of epic proportions.

People have never been more polarized, calcified and distracted as now. Most will try to hit the snooze button on the global awakening. Whats worse is that many will rationalize and externalize the problems and accept that a little bit of exploitation is ok, a little bit of tar sands are ok, a few degrees of warming are adaptable, people in other countries appreciate working for pennies, the 'job creators' are admirable heroes.... etc. There are insidious and powerful forces at work to keep people afraid of losing what little they have, and fighting each other instead.

It may take some catastrophe worse than the 2008 crash, (perhaps environmental related) to get people to reflect on our direction. And of course there will be opportunists trying to co-opt the energy along the way. Regardless, there is something faintly in the air heading into 2014, and who knows what it could be.

[sabrina 1]

4. This is true. And not just here, look at Europe, destroyed by the neo liberal policies of

Austerity. Everywhere there is opposition growing to the corrupt puppet governments Wall St managed to install.

It will definitely take time to change things for the better and to restore Democratic principles. But the greedy may have finally gone too far by bringing their grotesque policies to the First World.