Pots and Pans

The viral video of the moment:



http://vimeo.com/42848523

During the Bushevik years, the Ché household often wondered why the People did not take to the streets with pots and pans the way the babushkas did in the Eastern Europe and the Old Soviet Union.

When I brought this question up in online fora, of course, it was ridiculed and denounced as if it were the query of an idiot. People cannot bring down governments or affect them in any way by banging on pots and pans! Everybody knows that. Besides, the babushkas had nothing to do with the collapse of tyrannical rule in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. The idea is absurd.

"Elections" were/are the only way to make political changes in this country.

The Casserole Manifestations are in Quebec, a foreign land, somewhere north of America, Land of the Free and Home of the Very Brave Indeed. The issue is vastly increasing higher education tuition along with something called Public Law 78 -- which needs more explanation than I can give it here, so read this:

http://www.quebecprotest.com/post/23710777930/law-78-a-heinous-deviation-from-the-spirit-of-the

(On the other hand, maybe not. It's translated from the French, and to say the issue remains somewhat obscure is to point out the obvious. Let's just say Public Law 78 is an extreme repressive measure designed to quash student protests. Another expression of Solidarity with Quebec students.)

Hundreds of thousands of Québécois are said to take to the streets nightly to manifest their disapproval of these measures. It's been going on for weeks.

It may go on till the Quebec government falls or the measures are rescinded.

These protests may not be successful in the short run, as governments all over the world have shown a distinct disinterest in the People's Will, especially when it comes to issues of War and Peace, privatizing education, public services and the public commons, and anything else that has to do with interference in the looting, plunder, and pillage of the Many by the Few.

Governments, by and large, do not care if the People take to the streets in their multitudes; governments will do what they and their owners and sponsors want, the People Be Damned.

The only time the People are listened to is when they support the neo-liberal, neo-colonial enterprise, viz: TeaBaggers, and unwittingly (or sometimes wittingly) the Revolutionaries who followed the Gene Sharp formulae.

The babushkas brought down the Soviet Empire, or at least the incessant racket of their pots and pans helped to destabilize it enough to precipitate its collapse, but neo-liberal regimes of plunder that replaced it are not exactly beloved.

In Quebec, at least, they know what they are fighting and fighting for.

May the rest of us learn.