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Protests Are viral. Just ask the French.

Posted by: | October 12, 2011 | 3 Comments |

You don’t have to be poor to know that the lower and middle class are beginning to show their frustration with current economic policies around the world, but at the core of every social movement is a close-knit community of organizers waiting for their chance to spread the word.

In France, protesting is considered more of a national pastime. Strikes being the French people’s weapon of choice, protesting has always been a recurring practice, the most prominent of which being the strikes of May, 1968. These movements are often highly publicized and can devastate the economy. Just refer to last year’s pension reform strikes, or the closing of the Louvre in 2009.

But how do these dissidents organize?

There’s no more efficient way to bring a large group of people together to support one cause than to use the system of spoken word. The French did it in the 18th century, the British did it before that and now thousands of Americans are doing it all over the country.

Occupy Wall Street started through word of mouth among a group of New Yorkers fed up with the way Wall Street controlled economic policy in our country, and now it’s blossoming into a nation-wide event. Whoever said spoken news was dead was wrong. Just ask the French.

under: Comm 455
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