“But they also privatize people’s lives to much more of a degree than when people had to go to meetings and act collectively,” he said.
As society has digitized, the US left has splintered, Aronowitz said, losing the confidence to mobilize people as it did in early 2003 when millions protested the looming Iraq invasion.
As a result, “many people have put their faith in electoral politics rather than direct action,” he said.
Jonathan Williams, who runs Student Peace Action Network, says it’s not just a matter of apathy or a shift to campus issues like soaring student debt; there has been what he calls a “criminalization of dissent.”
Williams said he was arrested along with other activists and journalists at a demonstration at last year’s Republican National Convention and detained for four days.
As US support for the Afghan mission retreats Obama is mulling whether to send more troops.
Todd Gitlin, a former SDS president in the 1960s who now teaches at Columbia University, says a “critical mass” of youth against the war has not materialized to bring huge numbers out in protest.
If Obama approves the Afghan troop request, Gitlin said, “that might be the trigger.”
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