If you browse through the free newspapers provided to us (NYT) you may notice a common theme of budget cuts and crises. Not that I’m inferring this is at all new – as disasters occur daily, whether we like it or not. However, being blasted with the “more of the same” rhetoric does not help in conveying the reality that said disasters do not occur in a vacuum! In fact, I’d argue much of the economic and political issues that we are facing here are also the plights of those around the world.

Putting aside the egoistic based sense of nationalism that so often plagues our country, regardless of which “spectrum” you consider yourself laying on, it’s a common understanding that what goes down in the U.S. may also be going up (in flames) in other parts of the world. Take London as an example. While never unbiased, the mainstream media portrays the goings – on in the UK as many different things.  From a totality of these reports, we can gather that social issues including race and class have breached the surface. While policing and security have recently stepped up their games, some say it’s a bit too late considering the property and revenue losses to local and other business that have occurred over the past few weeks.

Why are there uprisings, labor strikes, and all around “chaos”? Because the cemetery that are the unions and the zombies that are the people finally exemplified to the public that they’re fed up with their daily drudgery. Their call to action was not one dictated by a military officer, but rather a silently understood necessity. Historically in the labor movement, wildcat strikes were seen as most effective. That is, strikes that are not thoroughly planned beforehand, and are executed without the knowledge of the boss.

Solidarity amounts in taking a step back for a moment and surveying the grand scheme as opposed to focusing one’s energy on the minute and personal.

People begin to see the power in unity. They no longer rely on the abstract; they may begin to disregard the things will never change mentality because they have made a coarse decision to ignore the headlines. Instead of flipping through the morning paper and nodding along, people begin to see that headlines are created with Business in mind, and not our business. After all, why should the news be less about us, and more about what they think we are?

So as you slam your hand on the alarm clock another morning, remember you have a choice. We all have to listen to the boss, to the teacher, but we can choose also, to listen to each other. It may not balance your checkbook, but it has potential of balancing your (maybe ill weathered) disposition.