ECONOMY: Detroit Economic Summit Protest?

I wrote about the ECONOMIC SUMMIT in Detroit with big shot CEOs talking about what to do to get us out of our economic doldrums. I also talked about my wife participating in a PEOPLE’S SUMMIT / TENT CITY to get economically deprived people to protest the meeting of the very people who basically pushed us into this mess.

An article in the Detroit News by Laura Berman laments the end of the era of protests since very few people showed up to protest and you would think that as many people bitch about their economic circumstances, there would be many trying to make their voices heard.

The few people that did make it to the tent city to protest were mainly old people; old socialists, communists, revolutionaries, anti-imperialists and now Green Party members. The common lament was that young people are just not joining and don’t even care.

Young people care through Twitter, Facebook, Blogs and emails. They care in the seclusion of their rooms with an electronic voice; their only protest tool.

Yes, masses of people marching in protest have been and still are very effective at bringing change to something they perceive to need change but here at the economic summit they remain silent and absent.

People seem to be mad as hell about what is going on in this country, about what is happening to our economy and at the people that caused this mess in the first place BUT is it fear about their own welfare and a basic ignorance as to what is really happening to them that keeps them sitting quietly at home – maybe.

I noticed that the protest organizers did not have any strong agendas they were promoting. Most of what I saw was old, tired socialist / communist slogans; they were not relevant to today’s problems. Others were just echoing things they would like to see with no ides how to make them actually happen: stop foreclosures, save jobs, no plant closings, no gas and electric shut-offs and on and on…

Other economic summits around the world have attracted violent mobs of young people screaming for anarchy and down with capitalism, etc…………..but here in Detroit, the summit is poorly attended because people can’t afford to come and its only a “discussion” forum so no binding decisions will be made - so why protest?