“It was curious to think that the sky was the same for everybody, in Eurasia or Eastasia as well as here. And the people under the sky were also very much the same–everywhere, all over the world, hundreds or thousands of millions of people just like this, people ignorant of one another’s existence, held apart by walls of hatred and lies, and yet almost exactly the same–people who had never learned to think but were storing up in their hearts and bellies and muscles the power that would one day overturn the world.” ~ George Orwell, 1984, Book 1, Chapter 10
All movements begin with that one person who dares to stand up and say, “No more.” Followed by another. And another. And another.
The civil rights movement began long before Martin Luther King or Rosa Parks, but instead with that first slave who defied his master.
The women’s movement began long before the 1848 Seneca Falls convention and the adoption of the Declaration of Sentiments.
The union movement began long before the first union strike, but with that first laborer who questioned the conditions under which he was expected to work.
The nascent Occupy movement is changing our national conversation. Issues that have been ignored for thirty years by the media are starting to seep into their broadcasts and their online and print journals. The movement itself is defiantly unattached to any political party or leader, and is defiant in refusing to adhere to the rules the powers-that-be would like them to follow. The Occupy movement isn’t tidy. No, they didn’t come with a specific set of demands and solutions. But they, WE, all understand what lies at the root of it all: the growing wealth disparity in the country and how, in so very many ways, the deck has been stacked in favor of those at the top. The movement is growing and it will morph and mature. There will be missteps along the way, no doubt.
But for the first time in a very long time, I’m feeling the tug of hope.
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” ~ Mahatma Ghandi
Me, too.