MB Civic

Gupta at Al Jazeera ..

The real power of a social movement, from the 1960s to the Tea Party, is not to recombine existing activists in a new formation but to bring in the previously non-political. At occupations, experienced organisers marvelled at the ability to have meaningful conversations with people of radically different backgrounds and politics .. those who lack healthcare, had homes foreclosed upon, are unemployed, stuck in low-wage jobs, are homeless, subject to repressive immigration laws, burdened with student debt, opposed to destructive energy extraction or angered by corporate personhood and a political system corrupted by money could find common cause and unite against a common enemy .. David Solnit, who works with Occupy San Francisco, indicates one reason why the Occupy movement appears to have faded away, “Any movement has its mass mobilisation and its in-between times… We need a better measuring tape than numbers and public space and whether it’s amplified through media owned by the one per cent.” Simply put, corporate media are inclined to dismiss a movement that wants to chop up corporations – if not eliminate them entirely

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