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So here we are, mid-December 2011.
Looking back, January 2011 started with Jared Lee Loughner going on a shooting spree in Tuscon, killing a Federal Judge five others and injuring 14, including Congresswoman Gabriel Giffords. A few days later, the first protests began in Libya. That month Tunisia's authoritarian government was overthrown. Then in early February, Egypt's Hosni Mubarak was unseated after 18 days of mass protest.
At the same time, a rebirth of the American left sprung up in Wisconsin, as newly elected Governor Scott Walker vaulted himself into the spotlight by legislatively assaulting state workers and setting off a constitutional crisis. Citizens of Wisconsin brought back a forgotten protest technique – the mass occupation. They stayed at the capitol building and camped and marched in the freezing cold.
And that was just the first two months!
Since then, we've seen the US government held hostage with the threat of a government shutdown and the previously unimaginable threat of debt default. The governments of Yemen and Syria went to war with protesters. Saudi Arabia invaded the tiny US military outpost country of Bahrain to put down a protest movement there. Libya became entrenched in a civil war and NATO became the Air Force of the rebellion, eventually unseating Moammar Gadhafi. A super-earthquake and tsunami destabilized nuclear reactors in Japan, leading to the worst (ongoing) nuclear accident in history. Osama Bin Laden was killed. Diplomatic relations with Pakistan crumbled. Massive fires, floods and tornadoes ravaged towns while US politicians moved even further apart on legislation to avert climate change. Over 1,000 demonstrators were arrested protesting the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, in the largest act of civil disobedience in decades.
Then, on September 17, a protest against economic injustice called the “Occupy” movement began. Since then, the economic conversation in the US has shifted away from the slash-and-burn politics of budget cuts, tearing off the cloaks of the corporatocracy and sparking a fundamental debate over the deep political, economic and social inequality in the US and across the world. Just today, international shipping is being disrupted by Occupy actions on the West Coast.
It's been intense, to say the least. We, the people of Truthout, have been doing our best to bring you non-commercial news and trustworthy analysis of these revolutionary events as they’ve unfolded. We'll continue to cover 2012 with all of our passion. We need you to help us make sure we can keep the lights on and our servers humming.
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