The world tuned into our election, and they have kept watching. Newspapers track Obama’s attempts to rescue America’s economy while struggling European nations pass stimulus packages through their own legislatures. Meanwhile, those of us who are still receiving emails from lists we joined during that unprecedented surge of political activism that resulted in our new Administration are once again being needled from our inboxes to get involved. Meetings in living rooms, public support strategizing, and letters to Congress abound. These efforts test our most cynical instincts: do we really have a voice in this government?
Europeans favor different tactics to deliver a message to their leaders. In the past weeks, protests have broken out in France, Britain, Bulgaria, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, and Spain over the worsening economy, the security of workers and wages, and calls for protectionist policy and other government intervention to abate the crisis. The French, in particular, expressed anger over their government’s support for failing banks.
In Ireland, weeks of sometimes violent protest after the collapse of the country’s banking system led to the dissolution of the government and emergency elections. Governments around Europe worry that further economic decline could lead to greater civil unrest; the Guardian went so far as to state “Revolt is in the air.”
Sound familiar? Well, yes and no. Surely we Americans have just as much to be angry about. Yet while we gather in our living rooms, are asked donate what little remains of our savings to promote Obama’s battered stimulus package, and try to peacefully summon the meager political might we just remembered that we had, Europeans take to the streets in millions, causing their leaders to tremble in fear and even resign. What is amazing is not so much that they demonstrate with such ease but that they do it with such conviction in its political potential. Perhaps the Obama nation could use a lesson or two from our European neighbors in this regard.
I have long been impressed with the Spanish penchant for mounting a demonstration. At times, I have seemingly bumped into one or another of these marches almost daily as I make my way around the city center. I think back to my former life in corporate America; was I allowed to leave work to protest? Well, the issue never came up but I’m sure the suggestion would have been laughed at. A few years ago I asked a student of mine what the office policy was on attending protests during business hours; he said that in France, where he was from, it was actually encouraged. It was seen as a completely acceptable reason to leave the office.
While most of the demonstrations I’ve witnessed over the years were probably symbolic in effect, they do reflect a populace who readily exercises their right to assemble. The economy is in shambles, jobs are disappearing into thin air, wages and prices are falling, xenophobia and protectionism rear again — what do Europeans do? Well, they protest, and how. Governments fall. Leaders tremble. And what are we doing in America? Writing letters! And our government goes about its partisan business and our bank executives give themselves bonuses and whine about $500,000 salary caps.
To many, Obama represents a new era in American politics. His election is significant not only because of the color of his skin or the great challenges he faces. It was the inclusiveness of his victory that struck such a nerve around the world, the fact that we all — even millions outside America’s borders — felt like it belonged to us. And perhaps this small awakening, this spark of activism and its pleasing result, combined with the current global economic miasma will cause us to wonder to what further lengths our political muscle stretches; what else can we make happen when we’re truly upset with the status quo? After all, we don’t have to wait for elections for opportunities to make our deafening voices heard .
We only need look across the Atlantic to see what holding your leaders accountable can look like, though messy and unstructured it may seem compared to the sleek efficiency of the Obama machine. Yet, while Europeans marvel at how Obama came to happen in a nation that seemed so bloated and stagnant, all through the power of the Internet and a call for democracy in action, we can look to their example for another side of democratic participation. Following their lead, let’s not let our anger lead to useless fatalism but harness it productively to continue to demand and enforce change from our leaders.
I think protesting in France is like going to brunch here. I remember signing a petition in grade school to keep Rags to Riches on the air. Shows you where priorities lie. The point, though, is that we don’t live in a participatory culture anymore, and this regards all levels of life not just political. When we get back to more self-reliance, relying on our communities and ourselves to do what we’ve gotten used to paying others to do, everything will be affected, I believe.
Thanks for the post Jacki! Your article reminds me of a politically moving moment I experienced a couple of years ago… It didn’t happen in the US (despite all of the atrocities that our government has committed during my lifetime), but here, in Spain. After the March 11 bombings in Atocha station, which happened to take place within a week of national elections, people didn’t go out and start wars, but they looked into themselves, to their own government, analyzing what could possibly cause a reaction like this. And after taking to the streets and expressing their anger and disgust in their conservative “Bushist” leaders, they ousted the government . It was an act of defiance against a system that wasn’t governing the way the people demanded to be governed. And to be a part of that made me realize that political action by everyday people could actually make a difference. As you say Jacki, Americans can take a lesson from that book. Obama was definately a step in the right direction, but now lets see if we can keep walking….
Yes,Yes, in Europe they take to the streets! That’s for certain. But I wouldn’t go so far as to chalk it up to Euro-activism and American complacency. Especially in regard to protests that are economically-driven, you really have to take a had look at underlying Economic philosphies which have divided Europe and American for the past two decades.
Since Regan and the free-market capitalists swept in, unions, the most powerful protectors of workers rights, have shrunk at an amazing pace in the US. THink about it– how many colleagues do you know that are unionized in the US? It wasn’t always that way. And in Spain, virtually anyone with a job is part of a union, and even non-unionized professions are represented by the big labor unions, whose voice is very loud and very persistent.
We in the US, have had it ingrained in us that the free, unregulated markets are the only way (look where that got us!!) and anything getting in the way of the market’s gears will cramp our unfettered American prosperity.Look at Europe, we laughed, and their pathetic 3-percent growth…
So while strong European unions take to the streets to protest job losses, and demand that the governments protect their economic interest, we remain helplessly bound to our free-trade accords, and look impotently at regulation agencies that have fallen asleep on the job, themselves having doubted their own usefulness during so many years of “boom.”
While one can easily make the argument that strong unions have hindered economic prosperity at times– we must also recognize that the lack thereof has played a major part in the current economic panorama- the widening of the rich-poor gap in the US, while executive pockets have grown heavy and middle-class’s standard of living has steadily declined over the past decade.
I think that we have also lost sight of the fact that unions in the beginning of the century, were what put in place things like regulated work days, decent pay, and much safer conditions.
So it should be of no surprise that as the economy worsens, we look to our checkbooks, and not our protest power when it comes time to fix things. After all, who is there to do the organizing?
Look at the few strong standing unions left–the united autoworkers union, the steel union, specifically, and you will surely see precisely where the organized protesting is still being done as the rug keeps sliding out from under us.
Whether that is enough to get us out of this economic mess, i doubt it.
thanks for the comments guys!
emily – i agree with your point about participatory culture. and it’s sad that most of us can only count e-mail petitions as examples of protest in action. it’s interesting that you use the words “self-reliance” because here in Europe, Americans are seen as very self-reliant people…because we don’t have the socialist safety net enjoyed here and because kids leave home at 18 and never come back. interesting to consider this (a shift towards or away from self-reliance?) in light of obama’s stimulus package, the perception of “socialism” in the u.s.a., and what will be the fallout from the financial meltdown.
ariel – thanks for your example of the aftermath of the madrid train bombings. spain’s reaction to that tragedy has been heralded as a lesson not only in the possibility of peaceful effective demonstration for change but also for tolerance, in their avoidance of the easy answers of xenophobia or anti-muslim sentiment.
kelly – while i agree with you that unions give people the organizational tools to protest, as well as a mandate to do so, i don’t necessarily agree that they hold the solution to the current crisis. when the labor movement started, unions certainly made a huge contribution to the standards of american workers at the expense of the robber baron executives of their day. and their contribution is certainly not forgotten. but now it is often the unions who are strangling industry. look at the situation in detroit where union pension plans are drowning the u.s. automakers. the word “union” often has a negative connotation because of the abuses of power that they have exercised historically. (and i say this having worked closely for years with the construction unions in new york city)
my point is that unions, like corporate executives, are neither always good nor always bad and that in a situation like this crisis, where almost every person is being affected somehow, our outrage should bypass the lines of who works for whom and be directed loudly at the greater target…a government with the power to make changes that affect us all.
Great post, Jacki! I am glad that Americans are NOT protesting at the moment — at least not protesting anything the Obama administration is doing. I think everyone realizes that the new government is not the one at fault for the current economic situation, and that those now in the White House are doing everything they can to fix things — at least that is the impression I get from all the emails I receive from President Obama.
However, I DO think a protest on Wall Street wouldn’t hurt, to express our disgust with the greed that has perpetuated this disaster and to call for real reform in financial regulations. As an example of Americans making use of their right to assemble, I remember the protests of early 2003, when so many Americans tried to prevent the war in Iraq. I have to say, I prefer more seldom, more meaningful demonstrations to having a protest-happy society. I think the serial protesters in Europe run the risk of being the boy who cried wolf.
I would be interested in knowing how much impact all those email chain letter protests that get sent around really do – I am hoping they are effective as this seems like the 21st century form of protest. Who has time to take to the streets? I just heard a great NPR story about cities starting to conduct public hearings online and via telephone so that, for example, working parents can “attend” school board meetings. Surely technology, in light of Obama’s success during his e-campaign, can be used effectively as a form of protest.