Poor people do not "riot", the rich do.

[TheBigotBasher]

The UK government announced massive cuts to social security benefits, cutting housing benefits to those who are on low incomes or unemployed. There was quiet opposition but no real on the street action.

The UK government cut the support to the richest of students there are riots on the streets of London.

In the US the so called left get upset with the Obama tax deal because billionaires get to keep unaffordable tax cuts, there is little about the unemployed who will be more than grateful for an extension of their unemployment benefits.

I am rather scarily reminded of a comment made to members of Congress by the Bush regime if the bank bail outs were not passed. Paulson is reported to have said if the bail out was not passed the tanks would be on the street the next day. The poor would not have put them on the street.

[Creative]

1. Are you suggesting that tanks would have been mobilized against empty streets?

[TheBigotBasher]

3. The maximum bank loss was $32k

if protected. Someone going from $billions to $32k may have got a bit jumpy up and downy.

[Creative]

5. Oh, I get it. The tanks would have been their to clean up the corpses

of those jumping from the windows.

[readmoreoften]

2. Okay. Hands down dumbest post on DU ever. Public students in the UK are not "the rich."

School is basically free. Even Oxford and Cambridge. It's the working class out in the streets, not the RICH. Is this what the RICH look like to you.

[TheBigotBasher]

7. I assume you mean your post is the most stupid post on DU ever.

Cambridge and Oxford are not free. No British University is free. Tuition fees already exist in the UK, they were introduced by Labour as an up front fee. Now a bigger fee will have to be paid by richer graduates with no up front fee. Screw them.

The point I am making is that the real poor, those on benefits are facing real cuts and there was no big protest. Why? Real poverty allows no protest.

[readmoreoften]

12. How does incurring a debt make you RICH? Your logic baffles.

Until recently the schools were FREE. The neoliberal trend replaced that with a fee akin to a loan very recently, but that means nothing. How does taking on a debt make you rich? Your logic is baffling and you're ignorant of protest dynamics.

Poor people protest all over the world all the time. In favelas. In shantytowns in South Africa. In Nepal. In union struggles. Over water in Cochabamba Bolivia. The women of the Pakistani Workers Party went on strike last year--2 million women who earn a few dollars a month. It is ALWAYS the poor and working classes in the streets. Calling working class people who have a shot at a slightly better paying job "rich" is rightwing bullshit and inaccurate to boot.

If you're really poor, protest is all you have left.

[TheBigotBasher]

22. This is not the schools it is the universities.

After Blair Universities had fees that all students were expected to pay up front.

In part because that was introduced by Labour and not the Tories (or even more unlikely the Liberal Democrats) there was no protest.

Now students from poor backgrounds (such as those who get free school meals) will be exempt from those fees.

Those in the middle will have rates of repayment based on income levels.

The ones massively hurt are the richest of students. The UK has seen students rioting.

The very same coalition cut welfare benefits for the poorest of families and individuals. They will be hit much harder than young kids from rich families in 2013.

There was no protest.

Protest may be all the poor have left but the poorest are never in a position to make that protest effective.

[readmoreoften]

27. This is pitting the surviving working class against the working class who've been trampled on.

Luckily, the good people of the UK are smarter than you are and they understand solidarity when they see it. It is NOT banking students in the streets. That is complete and utter garbage. And they also know that the divide-and-conquer provision for the poor will be eradicated as soon as the surviving working-class people are priced out of an education.

You really buy in to right-wing propaganda against all evidence and rationality pretty easily don't you?

[bobbolink]

4. Is that why all of you keep ignoring us?

Forgot about the uprisings of the Civil Rights era?

Just keep ignoring the pain we poor folk are experiencing, and see just how poor people never riot.

Maybe, if you're lucky, in your neighborhood.

[TheBigotBasher]

13. I'm not disagreeing.

I am just curious about the priorities of the left.

Big cuts to welfare benefits in the UK, no big protest. Rich students get their support cut? Riots (of sorts).

The Obama tax deal, no objection to not doing anything for those who have been unemployed for more than 99 weeks but lots of jumpy up and downy for the billionaires getting a continued tax break. Who cares about them?

[bobbolink]

19. You are speaking to the "left". You are also speaking to a poor person.

Here is my suggestion... rather than basing your opinion on one circumstance, why not actually begin really LISTENING to what poor folk are saying?

Because if you do that, you will find that the anger...no, rage.... level is rapidly rising, and if Obama shreds the safety net further, you WILL see riots.

And that is never a good thing.

Better to listen now, and to actually care enough to PUSH OBAMA to help poor folk, rather than to use your energy "questioning" the left.

[TheBigotBasher]

24. I'm speaking as someone who is unemployed.

The UK Coalition government cut benefits for the unemployed. There was no protest.

Student fees for the middle class whiners got raised and there are riots.

The only time riots were threatened in the US was by Paulson if bankers did not get their money.

[bobbolink]

29. When all the groups can come together and support each other, only then will things change.

[TheBigotBasher]

37. They do not though.

Labour introduced up front tuition fees which while increasing the numbers of students cut the numbers of people from poor backgrounds who went to university. Social mobility fell under labour.

There were no protests.

The coalition government cut benefits for the poorest. There were no protests.

The coalition scraps fees for the poorest and increases them for the richest suddenly there are riots?

In the US an extension of unemployment benefits is supposed to be rejected because the rich get a (yes undeserved) tax cut?

Who protests for the unemployed?

[bobbolink]

39. You keep saying the same thing, so I will make it clearer for you.

When YOU are willing to speak up for poor people here and now, then we will be more willing to speak up for middleclass people who are facing unemployement.

That is reasonable, but simply ignored.

[Turborama]

32. The students have the NUS and are easy to organize

Who's going to organize the unemployed to protest not getting enough benefits? Serious question, no snark involved.

[TheBigotBasher]

34. Thank you.

I think you have now got the point I am trying to make.

Students have the NUS. There is no Union of the unemployed.

[readmoreoften]

36. There are leftist organizations who also organize the unemployed.

But, of course, those organizers have jobs and are therefore "rich" by your standards (apparently.) Unemployed and working socialists have been building an unemployed union in Chicago. It was going okay in June. I don't know how it's going at the moment.

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. you do realize, of course, that UK universities

have been free since the 1950s, right?

That was what the Master Plan in Claiformia was based on until it was essentially destroyed....

THey had a few tuition increases like minimal, a few years ago, like the UC System. This will cut off most of the student body and return the system to it's provilidged position

There are days I want to do this.

:banghead:

[TheBigotBasher]

9. No they are not.

Tony Blair's New Labour replaced student grants with student loans and introduced fees for all students.

[nadinbrzezinski]

11. And they were still fairly affordaable

current oplan is to close off universities for all middle class and poor students That is why they are pissed.

[TheBigotBasher]

14. Current plan is to make University free to poor students,

and reduce the payments of those who are likely not to go to law and banking.

[readmoreoften]

21. No its not. Who is feeding you this bullshit?

[TheBigotBasher]

26. Not Faux News.

Read the actual bill.

[readmoreoften]

28. I know who's in the street and why. And it ain't bankers, whether or not the neoliberals put in a

"dire poverty" provision to make themselves look good. It triples tuition while the bankers get richer. Enough said.

[TheBigotBasher]

38. So who is "in the street"?

Why were they protesting now and not when benefits were cut?

[readmoreoften]

40. Because it takes time to organize, that's why. Protests are organized, not spontaneous cries of rage

Most students who protest are arts and science upper division and graduate students from poor and working classes at public universities: everything from sociology undergraduates, people studying drug abuse counseling, language majors, political science majors, econ majors, to math majors and science majors. There will be some law students there--those studying social justice law and those who want to help the public. There are no corporate lawyers and future business execs there. Various leftist, anti-racist groups and socialist groups are involved because those hardest hit by tuition raises (no matter what the stated policy) are working class students. If law students are taking a hit, it will be the social justice lawyers from muslim immigrant communities that will take the hit.

The point is solidarity and resistance to ALL austerity measures. Many of the students know they are facing unemployment in the future and they don't need to be burdened with debt even if they are currently working or they're 17 year olds with parents who have union jobs.

[TheBigotBasher]

41. These people

[readmoreoften]

44. Um. This is obvious a parody. Get real.

It's just completely disingenuous to insinuate that people in tuxedos are the ones in the streets when these are the real people in the streets.

[readmoreoften]

45. If you think women in pearls and men in tuxes are in the street getting beaten by cops

you're out of your mind and ignorant of history.

[Turborama]

18. The fees Blunkett introduced in 1998 were originally means tested and were a max £1k

Then in 2004 they were turned into "variable fees" and went up to £3k. Today they were raised to a max of £9k. That's an increase of 900% in 12 years!

Until 1997 students could go to university, study for free and get a grant. Now students have to pay back loans AND massive fees which can add up to over £50k (plus overdrafts) after a 3 year degree.

I think you probably know this already, it's more for others who may not.

Any idea what has happened to the fees for foreign students, if they can get in now?

[somone]

16. Yep, California's educational system was the envy of the world

especially when the Browns were governors

[Mike 03]

8. I respectfully disagree. TARP saved the economy. NT

[TheBigotBasher]

10. I agree

You are missing the point. TARP worked but it was passed on the basis tanks would be on the street if not passed. So who would have caused that riot to put tanks on the street?

[WinkyDink]

15. Peasants' Revolt, 1381. French Revolutiom, 1789.

[readmoreoften]

20. The Paris Commune of 1871. Black civil rights struggles. Stonewall.

All rich people doin' what rich people do best: tellin' rich people they're gonna make the rich people pay.

[WinkyDink]

30. You are suggesting the Civil Rights movement was led by the RICH?

And you were saying?
Paris Commune (French: La Commune de Paris, IPA: ) was a government that briefly ruled Paris from March 18 (more formally, from March 28) to May 28, 1871. It existed before the split between anarchists and Marxists had taken place, and it is hailed by both groups as the first assumption of power by the working class during the Industrial Revolution.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Commune

And "Stonewall" had zero to do with an economic class struggle.

[readmoreoften]

33. Try to learn to read sarcasm without the tag.

I know exactly what the Paris Commune was.

Obviously, the civil rights movement was not lead by the rich.

And Stonewall had EVERYTHING to do with class struggle. It wasn't the wealthy gay people in the streets. It was the poor gays, the queens, the African-American and Latino LGBTS, the homeless gays, and a few working class dykes who fought with police for 6 days during the riots. They also fought to stand up for the straight black bathroom attendant who was also arrested. Black panthers, yippies, and communists also joined the riots, although the LGBT community did the lion's share of the fighting.

[Canuckistanian]

17. The "richest of students" are the ones rioting? Is this a joke?

ALL students just had their tuitions TRIPLED.

Don't you think that there may be a student or two that AREN'T rich?

[TheBigotBasher]

31. I just watched ABC

which reported that.

All students did not have fees tripled. Those from the poorest families - who I care for as that is where I come from had theirs scrapped.

The point I am making is that the real poor can no longer afford to protest and when they need the nice middle class or rich students to protest for them, they are no where to be found.

[readmoreoften]

35. Try to remember that ABC has been trying to compete with FoxNews for about 5 years now.

Look it up on MediaMatters and FAIR.

[somone]

23. What poor people did in 1358:

Excerpted from A Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman

...On May 28, 1358, in the village of St. Leu near Senlis on the Oise, a group of peasants
held an indignation meeting in the cemetery after vespers. They blamed the nobles for
their miseries and for the capture of the King, “which troubled all minds.” What had the
knights and squires done to liberate him? What were they good for except to oppress poor
peasants? “They shamed and despoiled the realm, and it would be a good thing to destroy
them all.” Listeners cried, “They say true! They say true! Shame on him who holds
back!”

Without further council and no arms but the staves and knives that some carried, a group
of about 100 rushed in fierce assault upon the nearest manor, broke in, killed the knight,
his wife, and children, and burned the place down. Then, according to Froissart, whose
tales of the Jacquerie would have been obtained from nobles and clergy, “they went to a
strong castle, tied the knight to a stake while his wife and daughter were raped by many,
one after another before his eyes; then they killed the wife who was pregnant and
afterward the daughter and all the children and lastly the knight and burned and destroyed
the castle.” Other reports say that four knights and five squires were killed on that night.

Instantly the outbreak spread, gathering adherents each day to join with torches and
burning brushwood in the assault upon castles and manors. They came with scythes,
pitchforks, hatchets, and any kind of implement that could be made a weapon. Soon
thousands—ultimately, it was said, 100,000—were engaged in attacks covering the Oise
valley, the He de France, and closer regions of Picardy and Champagne, and raging
“throughout the seigneurie of Coucy, where there were great outrages.” Before it was
over more than “100” castles and manors in the territories of Coucy and Valois and the
dioceses of Laon, Soissons, and Senlis were sacked and burned and more than “60” in the
districts of Beauvais and Amiens...

[Matariki]

42. And yet, the oppressors still live on, and the peasants are still peasants.

*sigh*

[TheBigotBasher]

43. Indeed.

Except the oppressors no longer need to oppress, the peasants are good enough to do the oppression on their own as a result of Faux News.

[Duer 157099]

25. If nothing else, I've learned a valuable new phrase today

"Jumpy Up and Downy"