The Eradication -- and the Triumph -- of the Tents

The Center of Revolutionary Energy has shifted back to Egypt, with much rumbling in Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal. The European Explosion will not be far behind the renewed/continued uprisings in Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and Syria.

All these rebellions and revolutions are being driven by similar and mighty forces: an entire generation has seen its future stolen by a handful of supremely greedy and bone stupid Masters of the Universe, abetted by whatever government agents and goons they have been able to purchase.

It is the same everywhere. The Triumph of Globalism.

Countered by...

Tents.

Tents can have a powerful symbolic presence. Compare the rage of the authorities against tents and tarps and all that they symbolize to their languid indifference to the suffering of the People, and their winks and nods toward those who have looted societies, destroyed communities, and failed to answer the simplest
request for basic dignity by their long suffering supplicants.

Where once we may have needed tumbrils and guillotines to put the fear in the Overclass, now all it takes is tents and tarps.

But look at the images:

This is video of a homeless camp in Sacramento in 2009.




This was Haiti five months after the Earthquake of 2010:



This is Al Jazeera's Sebastian Walker's report from Haiti filed in September of this year:



This is a Syrian refugee camp in Turkey this week:



This is a Somali refugee camp in Kenya in August:



Tunisia, April, 2011:



UC Davis, yesterday:



UC Berkeley, November 17:



UCLA, November 17:




New School New York, November 17:




Of course we could post any number of additional images of the pervasiveness of tents and camps and displaced persons and on and on. It is the image of our era.

Why?

Some time back I posited the notion that "we are all Haitians now." And the truth of it is plainer than ever. That's why the decision to use tents as the symbol of the Revolution was brilliant.

Even though the original acampadas in Madrid and Barcelona were vacated by June, the notion of Occupation through tented encampments has spread globally. There is no stopping the idea.

And the Powers That Be are trembling. The house of fraud and deceit and exploitation they have built is shuddering. It will fall, and I doubt many of us are ready for the collapse to come. Nobody expected the #SpanishRevolution, after all. Acampadas is a phase in the Revolution, not the Revolution itself. Camps are necessary, but camps are not the Revolution.

They are demonstrations.

They demonstrate how the dispossessed and refugee and homeless and poor and near poor and the lost and the seeking and all the rest of us are linked all over the world. They are demonstrations of community. They are demonstrations of what could be if the good will of the People is unleashed. They terrify the Overclass.

Onward!