where have all the rebels gone?

doesn’t it seem like we’re missing this generation’s rebels?

are we seriously to believe that internet activism – the theft of files, the hacking of computers, the exposure of great mistakes of the status quo politicians – is really to make up for the general lack of rebels in our streets?

where are the people thoroughly disgusted with capitalism’s excesses and their creation of a modern left society without the shackles of that old world?

where are the kids’ building solar heated homes for the homeless, streaking down the roads demanding an end to the automobile, repelling down office buildings demanding for the enslaved to leave work and be free?

it certainly feels like we’re back into an era of complacency.  potentially, defeating the world bank and the IMF has been left to the third world.  we haven’t really been protesting their excesses much after we decided the security threat of doing so was too great.

we haven’t really been de-activing the corporations through shareholder activism, have we?  sure seems like wal-mart is taking on a new approach to labour relations these days, doesn’t it?  sure seems like greenwash is being washed away from the corporate spin machine, doesn’t it?

where have all the rebels gone?  did they cash in their rebellious youth for a wage and a mortage and a dog?

or is my world view just a little too narrow – they are there, restoring power to the powerless, restoring water to the victims of privatized greed, building the fortresses that will function to hold thousands… in some far off, distant land… building new economic structures, revitalizing what it means to have “credit unions,” putting co-operative enterprise back into co-operatives… are they out there, somewhere?

I’m just wondering.  I have been searching inside myself, and I haven’t found them.  so they must be somewhere, somewhere, right?