Internet The Voice of Protest !

Lead story,NY Times Feb. 3rd, has once again got me thinking about the role of the Internet as a voice of protest. One of my favorite organizations is Planned Parenthood. Remember when I was seven my mother dies from a botched abortion. In my blog Feb. 10, 2011 "On Abortion" was about that nightmare. The extreme right wing has been forever trying to put Planned Parenthood out of business. The Susan Komen Breast Cancer Cure Foundation decides suddenly to withhold its annual contribution of millions of dollars to Planned Parenthood. Komen decided they could not contribute to P.P. because an entirely separate budget does abortions. Clearly the hand of the right wingnuts who oppose even "family planning" is at work here.

For the second time in a couple of weeks the rolling anger expressed through the Internet has forced a major issue on to the front pages. Even Mayor Bloomberg jumped into this bruha with a $250,000 donation. In California all seven of the Komen affiliates took exception to the decision. fact is that PP is the major Breast Cancer screening organization in the country. That simply means poor women have a place to go to get a checkup.

A short time ago there was an another eruption on the Internet over a Congressional Bill to start censoring the Internet over “copyrighted or intellectual ownership” of Internet published stuff. That outcry caused a bunch of GOP Congressmen to have their names removed from the Legislation. Then of course there is the whole Arab Spring phenomena. Many observers have said it was generated by the Internet and especially the social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin etc. I must admit that my early response was mostly doubt. Now I am working hard to try and understand this phenomena. Anyone interested in social change cannot afford to ignore this new informer agitator, organizer.

David Brooks, In the same issue of the Times, writes a column about how many young people have found a way to express themselves through the Internet. He voices a concern that these people are very good at expressing frustration with existing institutions. Brooks says, “This seems to be a moment of fervent protest movements that are ultimately vague and ineffectual.” He says the problem is they have no ideas as to how to replace these broken institutions. Brooks suggests that these people were taught to think for themselves. The result is they have no ideas to ground them in how to see alternatives to what is.

Brooks, unkowingly referred to people like me who were taught to think like Marxists. Yupp, that's right and that what helps me see how we might change institutions so that they are more responsive to the needs of the 99 percent.

“RUMMAGE THE PAST FOR A BODY OF THOUGHT THAT HELPS YOU UNDERSTAND AND ADDRESS THE SHORT COMINGS YOU SEE." Thank you David Brooks. That is precisely the kind of education I got as a child from my Socialist family. No I don’t want to exchange capitalism for what existed in the Soviet Union. That was not Socialism. That was an abomination called “the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Just a new version of the old Czar Ivan the Terrible. No, I think of socialism as lived by the early Kibbutz settlers in Israel. Yes of course we could argue all these issues but it gives me a jumping off point for correcting some of the present days worst offenses against equal opportunity for all as suggested in the Constitution.

The Internet needs a large dose of discussion about alternatives to what is. The Arab spring is a good example of what happens when there is not any clear ideas about what to transform in the existing order of things to berth a new order. That is except the Muslim Brotherhood. They have a pretty good idea of what they want. The Tahrir Square demonstrators demanded Democracy. That’s nice. It doesn’t say how the society institutions are to function. That's what our Founding Fathers spent a couple of years figuring out. Even that has needed adjustments as an agrarian society became an industrial one. Yes I am becoming more understanding of the Internet as a voice of protest. Good but not enough. How do we make it a place where ideas for new more equitable ways of organizing society is presented as alternatives to the status quo?