The revolution is coming (the revolution is here)

Is It Fear of Uprisings or Altruistic Punishment?

Sunday 24 April 2011

by: Antonia Darder, Truthout

 

(Photo: Thomas Hawk / Flickr)

If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. - Frederick Douglass, 1857

As the uprisings are spreading around the world and in the United States, there are many who feel fear, reticence and intense skittishness about what is transpiring. Yet, this anxiety, rather than surprising, is well cultivated by the contemporary hegemonic forces that govern our lives. More...