Today these ideas were all put into action as an estimated 2.5 million French people took to the streets in a national general strike demonstrating their disdain for the government's reaction to the global 'economic crisis,' giving billions in bail-outs to banks and large corporations, and pursuing their 'reforms' in the pillage of social services, most notably health and education.

In Toulouse there was an estimated 80,000 strikers - or a tenth of the population - filing together around the city for most of the afternoon and evening, carrying banners, shooting fire-crackers, distributing flyers, chanting, talking, and graffiti-ing the windows of the multi-nationals.

It was not only a day of action in which people confronted the right-wing Sarkozy government's policies, but one in which people showed that solidarity with one another is more important than another day of pursuing one's career and personal goals, and that our collective reaction to this crisis will affect the future course of the world.

If only more around the world would take notice of the French example, stop their daily routine, and take action against neoliberal government bail-outs giving billions in public funds to the prime capitalist offenders, we would actually be able to construct a new and better world in the ruins of unjust and imperialist capitalist one.

http://www.countercurrents.org/galvin300109.htm