Is This The Only Way To Bring About Change?

I have been following what has been happening in France over the past couple of weeks with growing fascination. In a world were governments seem unable to work on solutions to problems facing their citizens is massive protest the way to achieve results? When politicians act inert under an atmosphere of the corruption caused by lobby groups and their dollars, do elections even matter anymore? Is there ever a time when ordinary people must fight the culture of fear created by a media that wants to see us at war with each other rather than challenge the true villains responsible for our suffering? Why is war and profiteering more important that jobs, health care and education? Why do many suffer to maintain the wealth of a few?

Yeh, yeh. I know. That is just more of Cal's radical socialist balloon juice. I am just as much a believer is a person pulling up their own bootstraps and getting the job done but how is that even possible when the rules are against the little guy? The game is rigged and the rules are designed to keep us down rather than lift us up.

Was it always like this?

"French workers took to the streets again on Oct. 19. It was their ninth day of action since September and their fourth general strike in a month; these strikes have involved as many as 3 million workers at a time.

A general strike on Oct. 12 scheduled to last one day became an unlimited strike in some sectors, especially by public transport workers, truckers and refinery workers. They have stopped or impeded much transportation in the country — truckers drive at a snail’s pace on the highways and gas stations run dry.

A key element in the week before this latest general strike has been the growing presence of high-school youth in the struggle. Hundreds of schools were closed down and young people have been joining the demonstrations. In some of the 260 cities affected on Oct. 19, confrontations have taken place between reactionary President Nicolas Sarkozy’s police and the youth, notably in Lyon.

It has been a tradition in French history that the class struggle, once it bursts into the open, goes much further toward completion than in other European countries. This was true with the 1789-1793 revolution, with the Paris Commune of 1871 and the general strikes of 1936 and 1968. It is worth watching to see if the class struggle against austerity, begun so heroically by the workers in Greece this year, is spreading to a large and powerful imperialist country. And to wonder what impact it will have this side of the Atlantic."