THE YEAR OF OUTRAGE: TAHRIR SQUARE TO ZUCCOTTI PARK

Jeremy Kinsman

The “Arab Spring” knocked off three dictators in North Africa and lit up hopes for democrats everywhere, while giving uneasy nights to a diminishing circle of authoritarians. The root grievances were about more than a lack of democracy. They were about fairness and accountability, a belief the system has failed, that special interests call the shots in their own self-interest and against opportunity for increasingly networked young people. Our foreign affairs writer Jeremy Kinsman connects the dots to the Occupy Wall Street movement, whose founders were inspired by the realization the grievances of young Tunisians and Egyptians were not in substance different from their own about the US system. He perceives rising anger in the US over bank bailouts and sharply increased income disparities at a time when the cruel reality for many Americans is they have no work, they have lost their homes or they can no longer afford college. He sees Occupy Wall Street as part of the rising global democracy movement, one aimed not at trying to supplant capitalism, but at wresting American democracy back from the special interests who had tried to buy it.

En évinçant du pouvoir trois dictateurs nord-africains, le printemps arabe a suscité de grands espoirs chez les démocrates du monde entier et donné des sueurs froides à bien des tyrans. Or les rebelles ne dénonçaient pas seulement l’absence de démocratie. Ils réclamaient surtout équité et responsabilité face à la faillite de systèmes où les intérêts particuliers d’un petit groupe privaient d’avenir une jeunesse de plus en plus réseautée. Notre collaborateur aux affaires étrangères Jeremy Kinsman fait le lien entre ces revendications des jeunes Égyptiens et Tunisiens et celles du mouvement Occupy Wall Street, qui ne sont en substance guère différentes. Devant le renflouement des banques et la montée en flèche de la disparité des revenus, il observe aux États-Unis la colère grandissante de tant d’Américains sans travail, qui ont perdu leur maison ou ne peuvent plus s’offrir le luxe d’étudier. Et il considère le mouvement des « occupants » comme un élan démocratique mondial qui vise non pas à supplanter le capitalisme mais à arracher la démocratie aux intérêts particuliers qui ont tenté de la confisquer.

Dégage! Dégage! signalling a wider “Arab Spring” has had global repercus- Tunis, January 2011 sions, including in North America. Globally, the mood of We haven’t seen such spirit here since 1969... “democracy rising” has been infectious. North Africa’s The Eagles young people have encouraged and inspired democracy First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin... activists and human rights defenders in autocratic societies Leonard Cohen from the Arabian Gulf to Cuba to China. The usual story...one law for the rich, the other for the poor. The loose coalition in the world “dictators’ club” cer- Robert Harris tainly registered the fates of their judged, fugitive or execut- ed North African colleagues. Some cracked down harder, but he year 2011 could well turn out to have been one most tried to show they were lightening up. In the region, of those remembered years of landmark outrage Arab leaders “all want to appear democratic, proactive, and T when assumptions changed. The recent uprisings standing up for people because they are embattled at against established order may not stack up in scope com- home,” according to the Carnegie Middle East Center. pared to the revolutionary explosions of 1848, but the haul- In Europe and North America, seemingly incomprehen- ing down of three adjacent dictators from North Africa sibly to many older commentators, a growing generational

24 OPTIONS POLITIQUES DÉCEMBRE 2011-JANVIER 2012 The year of outrage: Tahrir Square to Zuccotti Park rejection of the “system” is discernible. House. The Vietnam War would run for have been virtual mentors of protest in In trying to find a year of mood at least four more years. The “culture the developed world. comparison, some see in 2011 the wars” would dominate American poli- But the risks are different. In the tones and shades of 1968, when tics for years and aren’t resolved yet. Middle East, young people are actually another generational firestorm swept The year 2011 presents a different dying for their beliefs; 1,200 young over youth in Paris, Berkeley, Tokyo, and more positive picture. There have men died to liberate Libya’s Misrata. Mexico City, Prague and campuses been happier concrete outcomes on The peaceful young marchers in Dara’a almost everywhere. some levels at least. Tahrir Square had in Syria, chanting the taunt “Sniper, Most of the aspirations then were for a while the euphoric triumphal sniper, what do you see? Here are our idealistic, but in a much more ideolog- impact of 1989’s fall of the Berlin Wall. necks, here are our heads,” are into a ical context than in somewhat post- It’s by no means a given that the dimension of frontal challenge to ideological 2011. Hippies and flower uprisings in North Africa’s Act 1 will be ruthless dictatorship that is existential- ly far removed in personal It’s by no means a given that the uprisings in North Africa’s risk from camping out in tents in still comfortable Act 1 will be followed by orderly democratic transitions in Western cities. their Act 2, but it’s at least in their hands and things there are The Internet has nur- changed forever. tured the notion there are shared perceptions of unac- children aside, some pretty hard-edged followed by orderly democratic transi- ceptable realities. The actual linear con- left-wing adversaries of embedded tions in their Act 2, but it’s at least in nection from Tahrir Square to what power flirted with violence. In the US, their hands and things there are became Occupy Wall Street was first impatient younger challengers of insti- changed forever. explicitly drawn by the Vancouver tutionalized racism scorned nonvio- Regionally and even globally, the anti-corporate magazine and Web site lent doctrines of the black Southern power of information technologies has Adbusters, which perceived a globally Christian leadership. Anger ramped up boosted the forward momentum of the common ground of discontent over old among draft-age youth being dragged spirit of Tahrir Square as far as New orders and failing systems. into harm’s way in an all-out war of York City, reversing the usual patterns Adbusters expresses in its literature a their elders’ choice in Vietnam. of influence in a way that mimics the pretty lofty ambition — to “reshape how In Europe, radical cells took up flattening out of power and influence power and meaning flow in the 21st cen- urban combat in what were to become in the world more generally. tury.” It certainly captures what the 60 known in Italy as the “years of lead.” Connected Arab youth radiates its percent of Middle Eastern populations uprisings outward through “netizen”- who are under 30 feel about the bold n 1968, violent shock became nor- held cellphone footage sent via clan- authoritarian and corrupted colours of I mal. Blows rained on the US — the destine satellite phones or proxy their own societies, as signified in murder of Martin Luther King set cities servers. Forty years ago President Hafez Yemen, where the protest movement is aflame, a president elected in a land- Assad could order the killing of 10,000 called “Taghyir,” or “Change,” after the slide less than four years earlier had no rebellious Shia citizens in Hama, Syria, emblematic rallying point for protesting choice but to renounce re-election, in the knowledge the news would not students. But it is also the leitmotiv of the and then the counter-hope of Bobby really get out to the wider distant more rhapsodic themes of Occupy Wall Kennedy was snuffed in Los Angeles. world. Today, his son Bashar’s bloody Street, as set out by a muse of the leader- In Europe, student contestataires outrages against Syrian demonstrators less movement, Slovenian philosopher brought France to a standstill in the are within hours uplinked to YouTube Slavoj Zizek: “They tell you we are évènements de mai, which forced and al Jazeera. dreamers. The true dreamers are those President De Gaulle into retirement, On the level of techniques, the who think things can go on indefinitely while Soviet tanks crushed the Prague tent encampments, sort of similarly as they are.” Spring. In Tokyo students poured into leaderless organization, and the res- the streets, and in Mexico City they olute nonviolent discipline, the narra- he Arab Spring hasn’t been just were gunned down. tives of Zuccotti Park owe a lot to T about obtaining the civil and What did 1968’s protestors accom- Tahrir Square. As Wendell Stephenson political rights North Americans and plish? Some university reforms, to be of the New Yorker reported in a recent Europeans take for granted. It’s about sure, but probably the most significant podcast from Cairo, there’s quite a lot more than bouncing dictators who outcome was a backlash by a “silent of pride on the part of Arab youth, have more or less cruelly monopolized majority” in the US that gave Richard long and humiliatingly isolated from power for 40 years. It is about lost Nixon a very narrow win for the White the global conversation, that they opportunity.

POLICY OPTIONS 25 DECEMBER 2011-JANUARY 2012 Jeremy Kinsman

There was rampant economic dis- percent of Chileans report satisfac- he most efficient transitional sce- appointment in Tunisia and Egypt. tion with the democratic condition. T narios will probably follow suc- Young graduates felt they had no Americans can relate to this. A cessful post-1989 experiences in future in a regime where spoils went to New York Times/CBS poll cites 74 per- reconciling old and new orders. They insiders. Tom Friedman of the New cent of citizens as believing the US is will include “pacted” negotiations York Times took away from his visits “on the wrong track.” Eighty-nine between military rulers and citizens of that Tahrir Square was “less about a percent do not “trust government to the kind that permitted transfers of quest for democracy than for justice.” do the right thing.” Those two power from the military in post-Franco Polls bear that out. answers sum up why the protests of Spain or post-Pinochet Chile and that In fact, the uprisings had their 2011 have more public throw-weight should emerge in post-Mubarak Egypt, precursors in labour conflicts that than those of 1968. where the army has been reticent turned violent, in the mining sector The impact of the OWS can’t be about civilian authority at least until a in Tunisia in 2008 and through the measured by silly issues over whether constitution is negotiated and a head agenda-setting “6th of April move- tent encampments should or should- of state (with whom they can negoti- ment” in Egypt in 2010, which n’t be taken down or by sneers there ate) is elected. We may even perceive sought to prolong a politically signif- were ten times as many people run- change of that kind beginning in icant strike by textile workers. ning the Toronto marathon as in the Myanmar today, in Cuba, and some Accountability, fairness and jus- Toronto OWS site’s talk-in. I have glimpse its beginnings too in its spe- tice are the themes resounding with been to OWS sites in several cities in cial way in China. youth around the world. Camilla Canada, the US and Europe. The sev- Hopefully, democracies learned Vallejo, a fiery student unionist from eral hundred tent encampments, from the fall of three North African Santiago, Chile, who brought tens of each of which is different and all of dictators in whom we were way over- thousands into the streets to invested that the status quo march for deep change to the These relative increases mean that does not equal security. university system and society, the 1 percent’s has almost tripled its Consorting with and even labelled it “a world battle that ownership of the nation’s wealth, to subcontracting despotic rulers transcends all frontiers.” of unjust systems because The IMF’s Christine 23 percent, making the US just they claim to support us in a Lagarde warns of 10 lost years about the most unequal society in wider cold war or war on “ter- ahead for Europeans. North the world. Obama is completely ror” is a recipe for losers, a American commentators drone correct to insist on higher taxes for trap of false choices between on about technical issues tyrants or Islamists and chaos. involving European sovereign the top 1 percent. Other “peoples’ democra- debt, defaults and the impact cies” are theirs to work out and on bond holders and global stock which attract a variety of greenish we must help as best we can, bearing exchanges, newsworthy items for an and sometimes homeless outliers, are in mind that each trajectory is differ- insular and nervous readership that, not the point. ent and some rides are going to be however, really miss the point about The significant thing is that the rougher than others. the European public mood of despon- OWS connects a growing public But what about our democracies, dency. Recent visits show Athenians, mood to an arc of growing global the ones our own citizens perceive as Parisians, Romans, Dubliners anger that incorporates Arab Days of no longer working? depressed to their core about much Rage, the “indignados” of Madrid and It is astonishing that political cul- more than interest rates. Their spirits American anger over Wall Street tures in the US and in Europe haven’t are deadened by the failure of their bailouts and a much sharpened seemed to get their heads around what leaders and their systems to protect inequality of opportunity. Occupy Wall Street gets so easily, that the them, while enriching a gilded elite at The issues differ but the underly- system broke down. Incomprehension is the top of things. ing themes of protest are essentially in part because bubbled-up political lead- We have long celebrated the the same: the system has failed; special ers are themselves the system. dominance of democracy across interests call the shots; it is inherently Washington has had a decisive Latin America. But the results of a unfair. role over time but not the one that Latinobarametro poll in 18 countries Speaking personally as an inter- conservatives seem to want to believe. published recently in the Economist national democracy activist, I have George Packer Foreign Affairs laid it on show a 20 percent drop in Mexicans’ every hope that dictatorships every- the line: “The decisive factor has been confidence in their political system. where are going to go down. But it is politics and public policy: tax rates, Only 45 percent of Brazilians and 32 also a rational analysis. spending choices, labour laws, regula-

26 OPTIONS POLITIQUES DÉCEMBRE 2011-JANVIER 2012 The year of outrage: Tahrir Square to Zuccotti Park

The Gazette, Montreal Occupy demonstrators in Montreal, one of many Canadian cities to which the Occupy Wall Street movement quickly spread. Jeremy Kinsman writes that the Occupy movement is one of the important events of 2011. tions, campaign finance rules. Book ing in the way of happy days being “Conservatives for the American after book by economists and other here again is the size of government Dream” screaming “DEPORT THEM scholars over the past few years has and budgets. ALL!,” the state Senate leader who presented an airtight case: over the There are signs, though, that the sponsored draconian anti-illegal immi- past three decades, the government public is beginning to leapfrog the slo- grant laws has himself been bounced has consistently favoured the rich. gans and political leaders’ mental dead in a recall vote. This is the source of the problem; our zones. While support for local Occupy leaders and our institutions.” Voters in Ohio have bounced in a Wall Street tent encampments has since In the US, the pathetic Republican landslide referendum the anti-union decline, the Gallup Poll in October selection process is bogged down in law of the Tea Party Governor. In showed initial support for the goals of partisanship and the simplistic Tea strange Arizona where I saw last Occupy Wall Street outstripping that Party dogma that the only thing stand- month billboards sponsored by for the Tea Party 39 percent to 32 per-

POLICY OPTIONS 27 DECEMBER 2011-JANUARY 2012 Jeremy Kinsman

cent. Probably there’s some overlap in billion in Washington political contri- women in the labour force in recent those numbers because though the butions over the last 20 years. Many decades push household income up). Tea Party has specifically different anti- wish that instead of succumbing to the The study put the increase for the government goals, it mines some of the Treasury and other economic techni- top 1 percent of households since same seams of anger. cians around him, he had gone to the 1979 in real terms at 275 percent, A signal distinction is that the mat with the fat cats of Wall Street that of the middle 60 percent at a 40 OWS movement doesn’t really have whose recklessness, greed and inherent percent increase and that of the bot- concrete goals. It is general, not specif- incompetence have spawned much of tom 20 percent at 18 percent. ic. In Tahrir Square, the unifying goal the global crisis — the stock Republican These relative increases mean that was to get rid of Mubarak. line that the blame for the economic the 1 percent’s has almost tripled its There’s no straightforward “plat- crisis that has hurt so many was rather ownership of the nation’s wealth, to form” in OWS, which is possibly what with Washington may be part of the 23 percent, making the US just about annoys the put-down journalistic reason why Republican congressional the most unequal society in the world. herds lost without campaign “take- leadership has a public approval rating Obama is completely correct to insist aways” and talking points. of 9 percent. on higher taxes for the top 1 percent. The movement is certainly tuned Al Gore called OWS the “primal According to a 2010 speech by to American anger. I keep reading in scream of democracy.” Americans see Secretary of the Treasury Timothy editorials, including in Canada, their democracy is being bought by Geithner, the top 400 income earners patronizing advice to the OWS folk wealthy interests at the expense of in 2007, who that year averaged over that their anger “shouldn’t be about ordinary citizens. In his Foreign Affairs $340 million each, paid only 17 per- the banks.” article on inequality and social cent in taxes, much less than the hard- decline, George Packer laid the blame pressed middle class. hy not? An article “Should on “organized money and the conser- W Some Bankers Be Prosecuted?” vative movement” for “a massive, gen- hat would not have been such a in the November 10 New York Review of eration-long transfer of wealth to the T politically volatile story when the Books by Jeff Madrick and Frank richest Americans...Democrats, too, economy was good. Partnoy sets out the case that those went begging to Wall Street and corpo- I used to shock more egalitarian bankers responsible for the mortgage rate America, because that’s where the European audiences with Krugman and toxic asset sale frauds should be money was.” data that 1 percent of Americans had doing time as well as paying fines. Citi, For the first time in over 70 years, over 20 percent of the wealth. They Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley growing income disparity is a public gasped. have each been fined hundreds of mil- issue. Here too, OWS, in self-identify- But I shocked them further with lion of dollars, but so what? They are ing as the “99 percent,” may be catch- the compensating upside news that still paying delusional bonuses while ing a politically defining wave. when polled, 17 percent of Americans millions of Americans have lost their Income inequality is not a new optimistically thought they were part homes. story. Paul Krugman was writing about of the 1 percent! The Wall Street bailouts and con- it in American Prospect as early as 1982. Such self-belief and confidence in trasting timidity in tackling the home- The Nobel laureate’s basic take has upward mobility have until now been owner foreclosure crisis are black hardened since, as the facts further the American story. Professor Jerome marks on President Obama’s score- darkened: the American working male Karabel of the University of California, sheet. As the New York Times reported on November 13: For the first time in over 70 years, growing income disparity is “Mr. Obama’s economic a public issue. Here too, OWS, in self-identifying as the “99 team failed to help him pre- pare Americans for the pain percent,” may be catching a politically defining wave. ahead. It has proved to be the defining mistake of the Obama has not seen his purchasing power Berkeley, underlines that in the Ameri- administration.” increase at all in 30 years, while those can hierarchy of values, equality of It’s true he was new to a job that in the top 1 percent have been boosted opportunity always trumped “equality had impossible challenges and that offi- several times over. of condition,” which is actually sus- cial advice was that saving the banks The Congressional Budget Office pected of being inherently un-Ameri- was a pre-condition to stabilizing the released in October a study based on can to begin with (along the lines of financial crisis. But more and more after-tax household income (not as candidate-tycoon Romney’s aspersions Americans are tuned to the fact the US dire as for the pay of male employees at Obama’s affection for Europe’s financial industry has funnelled $2.3 because increased numbers of “socialist democrats”).

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But Karabel caveats that absent So, for the sake of ending a year- More and more people indicate greater inclusiveness, growing end piece, let’s say that 2011 will be they are listening and, in consequence, “stratification” by income becomes remembered as a year when youth leaders may do so as well. Democrats much less acceptable. spoke out against dictators in North — including President Obama — are The fact is that upward mobility in Africa, successfully, and in the same speaking respectfully of the sort of America has become a myth, especial- spirit against the “system” in North defining going on by various OWS ly from the bottom quartile. America, Europe and elsewhere. people, though wariness about getting The fundamental reason is probably Looking back, we may see it was a into the political/partisan game is inadequate public education. year when significant things began to strong in the movement. Conservative William Kristol has written change. And Canada? Sound financial reg- that “good early education is the most Many Americans are finally ques- ulations and strong resource demand reliable escalator out of poverty.” Here, tioning what San Jose Mayor Chuck have kept Canadians mostly exempt the US simply fails. Public schools, fund- Reed calls “a series of mass delusions.” from the downsides of the financial ed mostly out of very differing local As he told Vanity Fair: “We’re all going crisis, so far, and hence on the margin OWS will help because many of their supporters are facing of global agitation. Our own OWS sites are thought ominous student debt. At the University of California, where of as eyesores by local in-state tuition has tripled in a few years to over $13,000, I retailers. But skip that: meet students facing crippling debt burdens at a time of high somewhere in their sleep- unemployment. walking, Canadians too get that there are very impor- property tax bases, which in some cases to be rich. We’re all going to live forev- tant issues at stake. Bank of Canada are capped, are indelibly handicapping er. All the forces in the state are lined Governor Mark Carney praised the the poorest children at the start. In up to preserve the delusion.” OWS instincts, remarkably astute on Denmark upward mobility is the world’s Europeans also began to acknowl- the part of a representative of the con- highest because the state ensures equali- edge that their aspirations and genitally conservative mindset of cen- ty of early public education everywhere. assumptions had become delusional, tral bankers. That fact becomes much harsher given low growth and birth rates, How hopeful it would be to pon- in an economy with 9 percent unem- aging populations and too-cushy pub- der that maybe Carney is the authen- ployment that hits the least educated licly financed pensions. Now the tic Canadian voice. Whatever, the most but is a challenge for recent graduates as well. More and more people indicate they are listening, and in Obama seems stuck consequence, leaders may do so as well. Democrats — with that economy, but he including President Obama — are speaking respectfully of the is in touch with the educa- tional realities, if only the sort of defining going on by various OWS people, though political discussion can get wariness about getting into the political/partisan game is there. OWS will help strong in the movement. because many of their sup- porters are facing ominous student knife has to go in, drastically, and Canadians too are stakeholders in debt. At the University of California, there will be unrest. Studies show that the global thought process about where in-state tuition has tripled in a episodes of violent demonstration democracy. Let’s hope we start to pay few years to over $13,000, I meet stu- and protest double when government attention. dents facing crippling debt burdens expenditure on services is cut. Get at a time of high unemployment. ready for some European versions of Contributing Writer Jeremy Kinsman Curriculum and grad school options Tahrir Square’s “Days of Rage.” served as Canada’s ambassador or high are weighed against debt. Some stu- There are times when leaders commissioner to 15 countries and organi- dents have to weigh whether they define historic choices. The year 2011 zations, including Russia, Britain and can afford to continue college at all, may be when movements of young the European Union. He currently heads which deepens that educational zone people who are resolutely and proud- a Community of Democracies program of inequality as pointed out above. ly without leaders are doing the for democracy development and is It’s all different in degree from the defining. Regents’ Lecturer at the University of angry unemployed university gradu- At a minimum, it does seem clear California, Berkeley. He is distinguished ates in Tunisia and Egypt, but the that a new definition of the public visiting diplomat at Ryerson University in feeling of being let down is the same. interest is in the emerging mix. Toronto.

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