Is it Time to Protest Yet?

by Leigh Graham · 2009-08-03 12:00:00 UTC
Topics: show more

More on those unemployment #s: Corrente takes a look at the National Employment Law Project report on unemployment - 1.5M Americans will have exhausted their unemployment benefits by 12/31/09 - and wonders if this is what will finally "break" us.  And by break I mean rise up and fight back against atrocious wealth inequality.

I'm skeptical.  Almost one-third of unemployed workers haven't worked in six months.  That's a long time to be home all day, surfing the internet, sending out resumes, playing with your kids, letting yourself go, feeling your self-confidence and sense of self-worth along with your "soft skills" just totally atrophy.  And from this sense of desperation we're going to fight for our economic rights?  Revolution doesn't come from desperation; it comes from a sense of entitlement that we deserve more.  We have to recognize our own oppression before we can revolt against it.  This idea that work = self-worth means that out-of-work Americans just aren't our go-to revolutionaries.  We're nothing without our jobs, and we get nothing from our society without them.  And we buy into this set-up.

We're coming on 6 months since we last had this conversation about worker protest.  As 500,000 Americans gear up to lose their unemployment benefits next month, seems like now's the time to have this discussion again.

What's it going to take, people??

(Photo of strike threat by janitorial workers in Santa Monica by Steve Lyons)

Leigh Graham
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