Sunday, December 12, 2010

People learned a lot

6 comments:

Peter Ward said...

Richard "lenin" Seymour has done some great reporting on this, e.g...

I think the youth militancy in the UK now is truly amazing--the rest of us can only look on with envy...and shame.

Hattie said...

Our youth will get there. The British are just a little ahead of us, that's all. I can't imagine my grandkids putting up with a lot of injustice.

Ethan said...

Peter, thanks for the link--I haven't been following it nearly as closely as I should have been.

Hattie, I hope you're right.

miguel said...

the rest of us can only look on with envy...and shame.

Envy, maybe. Shame, not so much. People tend to mobilize when there is an issue of immediate self-interest at stake. These students are protesting dramatic cuts that may triple their university fees and the strong-arm tactics used by the police at their protests.

Middle-class American youth, as a group, have not been attacked in this way. Rather, they have been indoctrinated to the idea of going deeply into debt to go to school. They're still fucked, but not with any dramatic immediacy like the Brits are now.

This is not to say that Americans don't evince an indoctrinated stupor that seems to have no parallel in the Western world. Only that comparison to this particular situation in Britain doesn't reveal much about it.

Randal Graves said...

At least on idea of tuition, miguel is sadly right. Each time it goes up here, it's met with grumbling and a resigned shrug. Perhaps when all this debt turns into jobs for no one (ain't there just yet) then maybe.

But, given that it's been incremental, like most insidious changes in America, I doubt it.

davidly said...

Eloquent and inspirational, even for this cynic. The most perspicacious student knows the importance of forging a sustainable sense of solidarity with the working class, even as he struggles to land a place which doesn't include the daily toil associated therewith.

Sadly - and most unfairly, I'm sure - I can't help but have this nagging notion of Tony Blair lurking in the background. So, on the other hand, maybe this kid should just drop out;-)