2011 a year of an amazing resurgence of grassroots resistance

international | anti-capitalism | news report Friday December 23, 2011 22:14 by Pól Ó Cionsalígh paulbkinsella at gmail dot com An Chúlóg, Báile Átha Cliath 17 0851478100

The year 2011 has seen an amazing resurgence of grassroots resistance here and around the world. In January and February, we saw the popular uprisings that brought down the U.S.-backed regimes in Tunisia and Egypt.

Simultaneously, a mass movement of workers and students arose against the attacks on public employees and their unions in Wisconsin and Ohio. For weeks the Capitol Building in Madison, Wisconsin was occupied and, in the middle of winter, hundreds of thousands marched and rallied outside. While the right-wing governors and legislators in both states succeeded in ramming through union-busting laws, it is especially noteworthy that the people of Ohio decisively overturned that state’s law by a 60-40% margin in November.  The Occupy movement that has swept the country and around the world that grew out of those mobilisations is providing vital logistical as well as political support to this electrifying new expression of popular opposition to injustice, war and inequality.