Resistance Is ... Spreading

Occupy didn't die and it didn't go away. It's been here all along.


David Atkins at Hullabaloo:

Want to understand what's going on Turkey right now? It's not just anti-authoritarian protests against an increasingly autocratic regime. It's much deeper and more interesting than that. It's a protest against privatization, right-wing economics and religious conservatism

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Behold the unholy combination of IMF loans, corporate power, privatization and conservative religion. A Turkish blogger has more:

This is how it started. A small group of thoughtful, committed citizens camped out in the last green space of the city centre to save it from being sold out. Two nights in a row, authorities sent in the police to disperse them with massive use of tear gas and water cannons, as if they were disinfecting it from a harmful infestation.

There were dozens of wounded, tents were burned, there was blood on the streets. The park was closed and fenced in.

The people refused to accept it. Gezi Park has become a symbol for many more of their grievances. It’s not just against the private sector taking over the public space. It’s also against the assault on civil liberties under pressure from the religious right. And it’s a personal matter, with Reçep Erdogan.

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The police crackdown has led to events like this, in which a woman bravely stands up in the face of a fire hose:
 

One is reminded of that chilling scene in Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine in which the Iraqi worker at a state-run facility tells a reporter that he will convert to radicalism rather than watch the people's utility be privatized.

There is nothing that says that Islamism is in any way opposed to neoliberal economics. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. But more often than not, conservative religion abroad plays right into the hands of the multinational powers just like it does here at home, with precisely the same effects.

Resistance is key. Resistance against religious fundamentalism. Resistance against neoliberalism. Resistance against privatization of gains and socialization of losses. Resistance against the subjugation of green spaces, renewable energy and the environment to the profits of a very few.

A few brave Turks are showing that resistance. That's a great thing. Now it's up to the world to join them.

Already some have - back in Zuccatti Park.