On Thursday, December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Mrs. Rosa Parks felt her feet were too tired for her to stand up for a white man who had boarded after her. The bus driver ordered her to stand up and give her seat to the white man, but she refused. She was arrested and taken to the courthouse. By Monday afternoon, 5000 non violent protestors had surrounded the courthouse, sparking the beginning of the civil rights movement in the USA, the progress of which was televised to watchful nation. Now almost 50 years later, the idea of non violent protest has sunk into the national consciousness, and along with the disempowerment of mass consumerism, we’ve gotten to the point where the viewing public has been growing indifferent.
Unlike the generation that watched the riots of Berkeley, and participated in demonstrating against Vietnam, my generation has watched George Bush launch preemptive strikes against a nation some of the poorest people in the world, with no justification, and no proof. Whereas something like Watergate could bring down a presidency 20 years ago, false evidence used to start an illegal war, the president’s connection to the Saudi government, and evidence of Saudi financial backing for terrorism isn’t enough to challenge the right wing authority of the current president.
You can see why we’re apathetic: we reason that if justice doesn’t apply to everyone, and the world’s richest people are exempt from its reach, there is no use fighting for a just system. And we’re told that the way to happiness is not a collective movement – individuals can be happy by buying it, and getting to the top. One of the weirdest signs of our times is that we’re selling this version to ourselves. Thirty something’s are gaining respectable jobs in marketing and if anything the stuff they are creating further wraps us in the lies that you can buy empowerment if you play nice with the system.
I passed a bus shelter yesterday here in Amsterdam and the picture on it was impressive. A big handsome black guy, called ‘50 Cent’, looking ripped and mean, stood in front of a glass shattered by a bullet. The copy line, the line of his upcoming tour here, is ‘Get rich or die trying’. He’s just one year younger than I am. What this guy wants to do is get rich because that will make him powerful enough to buy whatever happiness he wants. When I looked him up on the net, his blurb says “He’s a man of the streets, intimately familiar with its codes and its violence, but still, 50, an incredibly intelligent and deliberate man, holds himself with a regal air as if above the pettiness which surrounds him.” His trajectory doesn’t seem to be tied to any thoughts of bringing people with him either, maybe he’s ‘above that’ – above changing the system so his people from Queens could have a better life?
I don’t have anything against this guy – he’s just an example for me that my generation measure personal power in what you can buy. And there’s some truth to that, but isn’t a sustainable or fair system.
I wondered what could wake us up from the apathy. I really did. After 9/11 the world reeled in shock. Afterwards came the grief and the anger. We all felt that. A collective feeling swept the world. The immediate feeling was horror. And that was the beginning of it. We watched as the US reacted. Even those of us that thought that retaliation *might* have been justifiable in that it routed the Taliban, even those people began to question when the second phase of the war machine rolled out into Iraq. Dismissing the posturing of Dubya, people began to say it was all about the oil. Having grown up with the media, we have become adept at reading between the propaganda, and we didn’t like what we were seeing.
So we went to the streets. By some counts 30 million people took to the streets the world over. For many people my age, this was the first protest they’d ever been on. For some of us it was old hat. I was there on Feb15 and March 22, my fingers freezing as I shot image after image of the variety of people, classes, and nationalities.
Since then I have seen and heard murmurs of a global civil awareness that just wasn’t there before. People really are worried about what the government of the one superpower is up to, and those feelings are rippling down through the dominant world culture. I’m not claiming that this is overt, and likely to shake a generation away from its apathy and addiction to consumerism. But I do feel that something new is happening, something is stirring, something global and critically aware that things are not progressing as they should. There is a risk that this energy, created by the global unified No War demonstrations, will dissipate, it's true, but the challenge is not to let it go. As long as people are aware that things aren’t right, and that possibly millions of other people think the same way, I think we have a chance.
4:19:18 PM 
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