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By Elia Meurisse (*)
From New York to Tokyo, from Madrid to Sydney, the 15th October 2011 young people around the world were outraged. In all the most important capitals of the world we have observed the formation of new youth movements, which have given life, through a bottom-up process, to large peaceful demonstrations. Young people are angry, are outraged by the management of governments regarding the unsolved crisis in the Occident. Unemployment and insecurity are the calls that resonate from the streets of indignation within the palaces of power on both sides of theAtlantic.
The movement of “indignados” is born in Europe the 15th May 2011 (1), during the Spanish administrative elections. The aim is to promote a more participatory democracy and foster common solution to the crisis, giving voice to those who usually do not. Young people from around the world want to make their voices heard and to say something about a system that doesn’t work. The strong powers, economic and financial, wish to maintain the status quo, barring a real chance trough this crisis. It’s a slit that is going to shape inside society? Yes, a society that seeks way out of the whirlwind of mass economy and recovers a lost identity, opposite to a policy that has failed to find sustainable long-lasting solutions.
In my opinion, the positive elements in what is happened are mainly two. The first one is the ability of young people, as demonstrated by the Arab Spring, to get organized and use internet as a resource for the new civil society that is emerging in the recent years. The second is the ability of young people to get still indignant and do it at international level, going beyond the boundaries of the States.
Indignez-vous! It is the reference book of these young movements. The author, born in 1917, is a Jew active in French Resistance, arrested, tortured, escaped from the concentration camps and thankfully eluded the gallows, after the II World War has become a French diplomat and has contributed to the draft of the “Universal declaration of Human Rights”, declarative text and, for this reason, non-legal but nevertheless crucial for the realization of inalienable rights by millions of men and women subjected to exploitation, discrimination, oppression on the planet. Today, 94 years, with fighting spirits, the book is targeted to the youth of his country, but not limited to them, urging them to come out from indifference, the worst of evil, and to seek, and will not be difficult to find, indignation reasons: «there are concrete situations, says Stephane Hessel, the treatment of immigrants, the undocumented, the Roma, The Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, the world’s poor get poorer, that must take resolute action to push civil society actions»(2).
In Chinese the character for express crisis is composed of two words: the first means danger, the second opportunity. The economic crisis has shown the weakness of national government institutions and of the soft supranational cooperation phenomena.Europeand Occident need more democratic institutional structures that can reshape the patterns of development on a global scale, by proposing new forms of economic development, social welfare and new structures of political control. In this sense, the European Federalist Movement (MFE) and the World Federalist Movement (WFE) working for the creation of a true democracy of citizens, in which economic and social policies are developed together and in order to assure a future for the new generations. In 1987 the Bruntland Report (Our Common Future) defines sustainability as «development that meets present needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs too» (3) (WCED, 1987). The feeling is that the old political class has failed to take account of future generations, so now young people take to the streets and want to dismiss governments.
Young people who took to the streets represent the danger of violence social tendencies, which must to be controlled and avoided anyway, but they also represent the opportunity to provide direction in Europe and the world towards the creation of new instruments capable of achieving new socio-economic policy, to create a true democratic institution in Europe and the world and define sustainable long-lasting strategies. According to J. Habermas, «as long as the policy will take place behind “closed doors”, faraway from the citizens, the European project will not have the strength and credibility necessary for its operation and development» (4). It’s a necessary transition and our task is become indignant to find the strength to propose this change. Indignation is a way to create an opinion, to inquire, to know what is happening around us.
So, indignez-vous!
References
(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Spanish_protests
(2) Stéphane Hessel, Indignez-vous, ed. Indigène éditions, 2010, Montpellier
(3) WCED, Our Common Future (Rapporto Bruntland), ed.OxfordUniversityPress, 1987
(4) Jürgen Habermas “Sulla costituzione europea” ed. Suhrkamp, 2011
(*) Master degree in European Affairs and International Relations. Project Developer in the field of International cooperation, active citizenship, democratization and youth empowerment. From 2009 Director of World Wide – Social promotion.
February 2012