the four occupations of planet earth [View all]

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http://www.nationofchange.org/four-occupations-planet-earth-1324305648

On the streets of Moscow in the tens of thou­sands, the pro­test­ers chanted: “We exist!” Tak­ing into ac­count the com­ments of states­men, sci­en­tists, politi­cians, mil­i­tary of­fi­cials, bankers, artists, all the im­por­tant and at­tended to fig­ures on this planet, noth­ing caught the year more strik­ingly than those two words shouted by massed Russ­ian demon­stra­tors.

“We exist!” Think of it as a sim­ple state­ment of fact, an im­plicit de­mand to be taken se­ri­ously (or else), and un­doubt­edly an ex­pres­sion of won­der, verg­ing on a ques­tion: “We exist?”

And who could blame them for shout­ing it? Or for the won­der? How mirac­u­lous it was. Yet an­other coun­try long im­mersed in a kind of pop­u­lar si­lence sud­denly finds voice, and the demon­stra­tors promptly de­clare them­selves not about to leave the stage when the day -- and the demon­stra­tion -- ends. Who guessed be­fore­hand that per­haps 50,000 Mus­covites would turn out to protest a rigged elec­toral process in a sud­denly restive coun­try, along with crowds in St. Pe­ters­burg, Tomsk, and else­where from the south to Siberia?

In Tahrir Square in Cairo, they swore: “This time we’re here to stay!” Every­where this year, it seemed that they -- “we” -- were here to stay. In New York City, when forced out of Zuc­cotti Park by the po­lice, pro­test­ers re­turned car­ry­ing signs that said, “You can­not evict an idea whose time has come.”