
Canadian students took the streets to oppose tuition increases. They confronted police and braved violent repression day and night until their demands were meet. What do proponents of traditional non-confrontational social-justice tactics have to teach new activists? Fuck-all. Fuck them and the nonviolence riding-horse they rode in on.
Tag Archives: student protests
Eduardo Galeano on students and their enthusiasm: keeping the Gods inside
Via Adbusters and AcampadaBCN: Eduardo Galeano interviewed in Plaza Catalunya, Madrid, in the midst of the student protests in Spain:
I was in El Sol, and here I am seeing a reecounter.The same energy of dignity and the same enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is a Vitamin E, “E” for enthusiasm, which comes from a little Greek word whose hidden meaning is: “keeping the Gods inside”. And every time I see that the gods are inside, inside one person or more, in things, in nature, in mountains and rivers, I realize that’s what was waiting to convince me that life is worth living.
So I am very happy to be here, as I was in El Sol, because this is a testament that life is worth living. That living is much, much more than political pettiness, who wins or loses. And it’s much more than one’s personal life too, than what you can lose or win. That all matters very little in this other world that awaits you, this other world that is possible. It’s in this world’s belly.
This is a pretty rotten world. The world we’re born in is not very hopeful, but there is another world in this one’s belly that is waiting. It’s a different world, and the labour will be hard. It’s not easy for it to be born. But one thing is sure, it’s beating in this world we have here.
There’s another world beating inside this present one. I see it in these spontaneous demonstrations. Here in Plaza Catalunya and in El Sol in Madrid, which I’ve fortunately been able to follow. I know that there are many more and they are a testimony.
Some ask me: “Well, what’s going to happen? And how will all this end up?”
I simply answer what comes from my own experience and say “Well, nothing.”
I don’t know what will happen, and I don’t really care. I’m concerned about what’s happening now. I’m concerned with present time. And what this present time tells us of another possible time yet to come. But what that will be in the end, I don’t know.
It’s as if I were to ask myself that every time I fall in love, when I experience a deep, true love. When I feel I am alive and wouldn’t care if I died while it’s happening.
So, well, love is like this. It’s infinite while it lasts! It’s important that it be infinite while it lasts. Not to plan everything as if one were part of a bank budget. Let’s see, how much is the balance, the total… What is he expecting?! Probabilities.
Let’s ask the statistic gods… There’s “Standard & Poors,” which has a pretty eloquent name, because it means “Average and Poor.” Let’s see what awaits us, “average or poor”?
And what the hell do I care what awaits us?
Kent State remembers the 4th of May
Did you think lone hooligans waving the Anarchist flag under the noses of police was a new thing?
On May 4, 1970, after several days of student protests at Kent State University, the Ohio National guard opened fire on the students, killing four and wounding nine others. Sparking a wave of campus revolts proclaiming “They can’t kill us all.” The Kent State students weren’t protesting the Vietnam War, but the just begun US invasion into Cambodia. Is this going to sound familiar? MAY 4 is commemorated every year.