Forum Post: Egypt? Use Czechoslovakia as well.

Submitted for your consideration:

There is another antecedent movement to OWS which most Americans who are wary of the Arab Spring would likely appreciate, and that's the Charter 77 movement begun in Czechoslovakia, which eventually contributed to both the collapse of the imposed government and the Velvet Revolution.

Salient parts of Charter 77 could be:

"Charter 77 is a free, informal and open association of people of different convictions, different faiths, and different professions, who are linked by the desire, individually or jointly, to insist on the respecting of civil and human rights in out country and throughout the world..."

"Charter 77 is not an organization, it has no statutes, no permanent organs and no organised membership. Everyone who agrees with the idea behind it, participates in its work, and supports it is its member."

"Charter 77 is not a base for opposition political activity. It wants to serve the general interest like many similar examples of civic initiative in various countries - West and East. It does not want to lay down its own programs of political or social reforms or changes..."

To be sure, there are differences. Charter 77 did want to directly engage their government as intermediaries in civil and human rights from the beginning, for instance; but they lived in a rather different system than we. I find the likenesses more compelling than the differences.

I'm sorry if this has been discussed; I've not seen a single mention of Charter 77 in this Forum but there are an awful lot of posts to weed through.

The original Charter is posted on line in pdf format for those interested, and the history of that movement is well known past its end game.

Just thought I'd throw that into the mix...

thanks for listening