Aww: London Rioters, Hurt By Cuts in Social Spending, ‘Lacked Hope," Says NY Times
European-based New York Times reporter Nicholas Kulish filed a big-think off-lead Wednesday from Madrid, “ As Scorn for Vote Grows, Protests Surge Around Globe ,” and became the latest Times reporter to suggest that the rioters who burned and looted shops in London for shoes and smart phones were actually impoverished outcasts engaged in political protest. Hundreds of thousands of disillusioned Indians cheer a rural activist on a hunger strike. Israel reels before the largest street demonstrations in its history. Enraged young people in Spain and Greece take over public squares across their countries. Their complaints range from corruption to lack of affordable housing and joblessness, common grievances the world over. But from South Asia to the heartland of Europe and now even to Wall Street, these protesters share something else: wariness, even contempt, toward traditional politicians and the democratic political process they preside over. They are taking to the streets, in part, because they have little faith in the ballot box. “Our parents are grateful because they’re voting,” said Marta Solanas, 27, referring to older Spaniards’ decades spent under the Franco dictatorship. “We’re the first generation to say that voting is worthless.” Economics have been one driving force, with growing income inequality, high unemployment and recession-driven cuts in social spending breeding widespread malaise. Alienation runs especially deep in Europe, with boycotts and strikes that, in London and Athens, erupted into violence. But even in India and Israel, where growth remains robust, protesters say they so distrust their country’s political class and its pandering to established interest groups that they feel only an assault on the system itself can bring about real change. Kulish relayed arguments of a left-wing writer who sympathized with the rioters, blowing right past the irony that these alleged victims of social-spending cuts were coordinating riots with expensive high-tech equipment.
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on September 29, 2011. Filed under