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G-20 Protestors: Who are they Anyway?

Well, they are the same people who made noise at the last economic summit, and at the summit before that, and at the summit before that... that. They're like a staple on the economic summit scene that command a large budget in of themselves. Indeed, every time the world's leading capitalists meet up to discuss "trade," the passionate amongst us - that's the anti-capitalists, the anarchists, the anti-war activists, and the environmentalists - make their way to wherever the "lucky" hosting city might be to let their "voices" be heard. Where most of us save for months on end so that we can party in Aruba, these people build their vacations around these type of economic summits. So, I am guessing anyway. Hopelessly idealistic and principled to a fault, the depth of these people's passion separates them from the rest of us who kinda just go with the flow. But this time, they've scored quite the audience and the support, thanks to the global economic melt down. But their new found supporters are hardly in it for the long haul. Their disappointment and frustration with the power structure is seasonal, indeed: just as the economy picks up, they'll gladly return to the system, which they have always known and served well. Not the passionate protestors though, which guessing from the crowd's youthful energy, have at least 10 to 15 years of protesting in them. After that, well, reality sinks in; they pass on the torch onto a new generation of believers, and grudgingly settle into a system, which they had fought so hard to crush. For a tiny few, protesting never goes out of style or fades quite like beauty does, so they'll champion their cause right to the very end. But for the majority, realty does eventually sink in: structures are deeply tied to human nature.

So, where will they be 10 to 15 years from now? Well, the anti-capitalists will continue to resent the inequality inherent in the system, but will try for modifications rather than the eradication they once sought. While some will try to make changes through public office, others will make their marks through civil society. And yet others will only be able to show their support by "voting" left every time an election comes by. They'll toil for the "man" at day, but will reserve their hearts for the "people" at night - after they've hit the gym, had supper with their spouses, and put their children to sleep. And for the super cerebral amongst them, they will be able to toil in one elite institution or another as they work through several revisions of their first book on Marx & Engels. That leave us with the hardcore few, the ideological purists, who would rather die than to sell their soul to the "man." Presumably, those few will live on the fringes of society, waiting on capitalism to crumble, but who really knows for sure...?

Now, the anarchists are intimately tied to the anti-capitalists, so I would think a similar fate awaits them also. There are, of course, fundamental differences between the two that certainly makes the anarchist's integration trickier than that of the anti-capitalist. Indeed, where the anti-capitalist is fundamentally driven by a desire to create an equal society for all, what drives the anarchists is the eradication of formal structures, like the state, which he sees as the source of all forms of oppression. I guess you can say anarchists have "power" issues. But who doesn't, eh? How many times have we heard the "power corrupts" expression? Anarchists just happen to identify it at the highest level. And if Noam Chomsky is the ultimate anarchist, then we can certainly assume their integration along the lines of the anti-capitalists. These people know how to reason well, if nothing else. As do the anti-war activists and environmentalists, I suppose. They actually don't face the same dilemmas as the other two as their issues are not necessarily tied to power structures. They're not trying to squash capitalism or the state. They just don't want people dying or abusing the planet. So, unless they aren't a cross between an anti-capitalist and/or anarchist, their integration into the "system" is probably the easiest.

At its core, the G-20 protests are anchored in deep and meaningful ideals that go beyond the current economic turmoil. Even when the market picks up, these people will be there, front and center of every high level conference, championing the best of human capacity. Of course, they seek the impossible, as the generation of protestors before them did: a utopian society that's never existed at all. For reasons that should make us all grateful, these people just don't care about human nature. Rather than swearing off humanity, and making their way straight into the woods, these people look and sometimes find ways of making life more tolerable for us all. And thank goodness, really. We need their idealism; we need their compassion; we need their selflessness; we need their pressures. Without them, we'd be a world of savages...

~Addis

Many men have imagined republics and principalities that never existed at all. Yet the way men live is so far removed from the way they ought to live that anyone who abandons what is for what should be pursues his downfall rather than his preservation. ~ Niccolò Machiavelli