I witnessed a teacher strike last year in B.C. Maybe they could take a page from this, and let’s just hope ClearChannel doesn’t adopt this tactic in their attempt at owning all the radio stations in the world.
Teachers striking in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca have seized at least eight private radio stations.
They acted after unidentified gunmen opened fire on a government radio station already under their control, injuring one of their colleagues.
The strikers used the stations to tell parents to ignore Monday’s start of the school year and keep children at home. [bbc]
The situation in Mexico is increasingly concerning. When I visited at the age of 17, staying in a hotel just off of the Zocalo[wiki], there was a labor protest outside of the government buildings in the square. It was full of people, loud speakers, and non-stop protest. For the most part, it was peaceful, but it was enough to freak me out a little bit. The country seems to be noticibly different now than those days, and these folks are going further than before to make their voice on the matter heard.
Protests are taking place in Vancouver about the current, political situation in Mexico. I think it confuses a lot of people as to what they are demonstrating for. There is a growing population of Mexicans here, so it makes sense. Around the world, it seems that not a lot of folks are paying a lot of attention to it.
A couple of years ago television, radio and print media in the west just couldn’t get enough of ‘people power’.
In quick succession, from Georgia’s rose revolution in November 2003, via Ukraine’s orange revolution a year later, to the tulip revolution in Kyrgyzstan and the cedar revolution in Lebanon, 24-hour news channels kept us up to date with democracy on a roll.
Triggered by allegations of election fraud, the dominoes toppled. The US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, was happy with the trend: ‘They’re doing it in many different corners of the world, places as varied as Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan and, on the other hand, Lebanon … And so this is a hopeful time.’
But when a million Mexicans try to jump on the people-power bandwagon, crying foul about the July 2 presidential elections, when protesters stage a vigil in the centre of the capital that continues to this day, they meet a deafening silence in the global media. Despite Mexico’s long tradition of electoral fraud and polls suggesting that Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador – a critic of the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) – was ahead, the media accepted the wafer-thin majority gained by the ruling party nominee, Harvard graduate Felipe Calderon.
Although Mexico’s election authorities rejected Lopez Obrador’s demand for all 42m ballots to be recounted, the partial recount of 9% indicated numerous irregularities. But no echo of indignation has wafted to the streets of Mexico City from western capitals. [malaysiasun]
The other thing to consider is that pretty much all of North America is now headed by conservative governments, excluding countries to the south of Mexico on that statement. I don’t have enough details to say that the Mexican elections were tampered with, but the similarities to the 2000 elections in the U.S. is interesting. Nothing in politics is ever innocent.
What is with 21st Century elections? Consider all the ones you listed above plus the US in 2K and 2K4, Mexico, Haiti and I just heard about the Congo having an election with no clear victor. And I know I’m forgetting some. Are we, as a species, falling into some bizarre lock-step where no matter what the current local situation all the available candidates are going to take the same stance and offer the same solutions? Could this be evidence of oligarcy becoming the dominant political form such that, despite the trappings of democracy, those in power have changed the laws to secure the perpetuation of their own power (see Russia and Venezuela)? Or have we just forgotten to count? Or is the solution possibly more disturbing? This is, in fact, the way things have always operated but due to the actual democratization of media it’s just grown harder and harder to hide the irregularities-harder and harder to sell the lie that “we” (whoever the “we” in question may be) are free people living in a democratic republic.
My bet’s a mix of oligarcy and media democracy but the uber paranoid explanation would make for a great movie.