In 1993 my husband, my 13 year old daughter, and I were part of an anti-war action that shut

[Luminous Animal]

down downtown San Francisco for 3 days. It was powerful and exhilarating and we waited for the rest of the U.S. to join in. They didn't.


Thank you U.S. for finally catching up;.

[aquart]

1. You don't know who will stand with you until you stand up.

Thank you for standing up first.

[Luminous Animal]

2. At the end of Mike Moore's movie, "Capitalism: A Love Story" he asked people to join him.

He seemed a tad deflated. Like me, he must be feeling pretty fucking good right now!

[MedleyMisty]

3. The internet wasn't nearly as well developed as then

I think that's a large part of it. Back in the early 90s it would have been a lot harder to instantly get the information from San Francisco out to the rest of the world. I was just 12 in 1993, but still - I know I never heard about anything like that happening.

[Luminous Animal]

4. There was no internet in the 30s and 60s. People hear what they want to hear.

And I certainly do not blame you at age 12 for not knowing what was going on.

[MedleyMisty]

7. I blame myself for it

Asked for and got a subscription to Newsweek when I was 10. And I also regularly watched the news back then. Spent the winter I was 9 reading every book in the local library on the Holocaust, which has given me a lifelong terror of fascism. But even if I had heard about it, it would have been through the filter of mainstream media. Unless I was on the internet in some political Usenet group or something (was that around yet?), and at the time my family couldn't afford a computer.

And no, there wasn't an internet in the 30s and 60s. But society was different in all sorts of ways back then. I wouldn't know personally, because I wasn't alive, but I imagine there was an incredible amount of things that led to what happened then. One thing - from what I've heard, the mainstream media wasn't as much of a corporate lapdog as it is now. I keep hearing about how real images from Vietnam were shown on American TV and how that helped turn public opinion against the war.

Gah, I don't know how to put it in words. I guess what I mean is - there's a ton of things that go into how society happens, and I was only observing the differences that the internet has made in the last 20 years.

One issue I can think of for the 90s that could be a societal issue more than a communication issue - I personally remember the 90s as being pretty good economically. And I rail at humans for not caring about others, but I'm slowly coming to accept it as a reality that I can't change. Look at how eager the great majority of Americans were to kill and maim and torture people in Afghanistan. I don't remember the first Gulf War clearly at all, but I imagine that the majority of people just fell in line with it and didn't care because hey, to them it was just green lights on their TV and they were basically safe and doing all right in their own lives. Unlike the current wars, the majority probably didn't connect the money spent on the war with their personal loss of economic security.

I remember reading about the massacre of Iraqi forces as they retreated and feeling sick though, myself.

Now, though - now the majority of Americans are definitely not safe and doing all right in their own lives. And I do think that the internet plays a role in increasing empathy with people in other countries, because now we can actually talk to them and make friends with them even if we can't afford to travel out of the country or if we live in a whitebread small town.

I didn't mean to imply that the internet was the only reason. Just that it does play a role in how quickly revolution and protests have spread over the world this year.

And yes, I know I'm not getting my thoughts across clearly here. Gah.

[Luminous Animal]

8. Oh no, you expressed yourself very clearly... and I so appreciate that you did so...

It is my view that the internet, though useful for rallying troops at a moments notice, is less important than face to face interaction. And that is exactly what is happening at OWS and every other occupation in the U.S. Human beings are forging policy face to face through "mic check"... they are challenging power with their physical presence.

[Fire Walk With Me]

5. K&R

[Downwinder]

6. It takes a while for a pot to come to a rolling boil.