A little over two weeks ago, Carl Gibson, a 23-year-old former Mississippi Public Radio reporter fired for leaking Mississippi Public Broadcasting emails, was inspired by the grassroots protests of poor and middle-class British citizens facing deep budget cuts.
The UK Uncut movement targets corporate tax dodgers and was spread largely by social media, as were the protests in Cairo and Tunisia. The template for bringing that model of grassroots direct action to the United States was described in an essay by the Nation's Johann Hari, "How to Build A Progressive Tea Party." Gibson's father sent the article to him as something he ought to look into himself.
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"We want to reframe the national debate about how to deal with this recession: Instead of saying 'what can we cut from the budget because we can't possibly raise taxes on anyone,' why don't we make the two-thirds of corporations that don't pay any income taxes pay their fair share? If we did, the U.S. Treasury would recoup $100 billion a year, a trillion dollars in a decade," he says.
