>> Is it possible that we just have an obsolete picture of what constitutes
>> a movement -- i.e., people marching in the street and at rallies?
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If you look at tumultous changes in history, they have almost all without
exception been accompanied by the appearance of massive street
demonstrations - what has come to be called "people's power" since the fall
of Marcos and the Soviet bloc. Where there is an absence of street
demonstrations, it is because people are simply not disaffected enough to
turn their grievances into organized extraparliamentary action.
The Iraq war, while widely unpopular, is being less intensely felt by the American people than was Vietnam, where the casualties were much higher, more young men and their families felt at risk, and the socialist movement - which the Vietnamese resistance represented - was embedded and had an appeal in Western societies that the Islamists can't match. That antiwar sentiment in relation to Iraq has been largely contained in the electoral system corresponds, IMO, to the absence of these factors.
But street demonstrations haven't been superceded by the internet or other modern forms of communication; in the right circumstances, these media greatly facilitate rather than retard popular mobilizations, and more quickly than the leaflets and posters of yesterday.