Popular Protest

Perhaps some of you have heard about all the protests going on in Germany, France and England this Fall. Recently English students stormed Tory headquarters protesting austerity measures like increased tuition. Last week tens of thousands of Germans managed to delay a train delivering radioactive waste to a nuclear dump near Gorleben, a small down just West of the former Iron Curtain. For three days the major news networks were filled with reports of people hanging themselves from ropes above train tracks or tying themselves with chains to rails and roads. The train travelled from La Hague, France and into Germany where it met hundreds protestors filling the streets, train stations and even climbing on the tracks to delay the train’s progress. The radioactive waste had to be transferred on to trucks for the last few miles. At a street intersection just short of the final destination Greenpeace activists blocked the road with a vehicle disguised as a beer delivery truck. They retrofitted the truck and bolted it to the asphalt. Activists sunk themselves into drying concrete.
In Stuttgart, Germany citizens have been going to the streets week for week to protest the construction of an underground railway station. For months there have been weekly rallies with upwards of 80,000 people. Demonstrations this size have not been seen in this conservative southern German town for decades. Opposition to the construction plans have arisen because of the questionable benefits to public transportation and the immense costs, upwards of 5 billion Euros or almost $7 billion.
In France this Fall there were massive, country-wide demonstrations against the proposed increase of the retirement age from 60 to 62 (in Germany it has been increased from 65 to 67). The French protests were not only aimed at the increased age of retirement. As in Stuttgart, Gorleben and London, the protests reflect a general frustration among the public that they are being ignored by a class of political leaders interested only in serving their most persistent and powerful constituencies. Despite the danger of hanging my neck out the window, I might suggest that the Tea Party in the US garners much of it’s support from similar frustrations.
Why does the public feel alienated from the political process? Probably because they are. The lack of public participation in the political process in the US is much worse than in Germany or France. In these countries the election process is not dominated by million-dollar television spots paid for by private donations. In Germany, for example, each party is given equal amount of time for television commercials. Campaigning is limited to only a few months and you do not need a war chest of many millions of dollars to get elected. I furthermore see the majority-rule system in the US as extremely undemocratic. In the states only the voters who voted for the majority candidate are represented in parliament. Everyone else is left out in the cold. In Germany a party needs only 5% of the popular vote to gain seats in local or national parliaments. Elections on Tuesdays and having to physically register to vote are further factors making democratic participation more difficult in the US.
Even though it is easier to vote and find representation in places like Germany and France, large sections of the population feel disenfranchised. When the German government recently decided to extend the life of the countries nuclear power plants, it was obvious that lobbyists from the plant’s operators had influenced decision making. More than 60% of the public opposes these extensions. The multi-billion dollar train station construction in Stuttgart is also opposed by a vast majority of the population. Some claim that real estate investors have been central in pushing the project despite public opposition.
Of course it’s nothing new that plutocracy to a large extent best defines US and European systems. The wave of protests in Europe this Fall are a sign that people’s voices are being heard. The lack of violence during the protests in Germany are a positive sign that voices of protest will not drown out by images of stone-throwing youth. Such images serve only to feed prejudices and belittle serious public concerns.
The protests in Stuttgart surrounding the train project “Stuttgart 21” have been so successful that the government and industry interests have been forced to sit together with citizen interests groups to hammer out a compromise. The weekly meetings are aired live on television and the internet. This is an example of moving decision-making from the closed-doors of parliament onto the open-doors of public debate.