Thanks to Cory Doctorow I came across this short but powerful speech given yesterday by Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn to the huge, young crowd at the Glastonbury music festival. He attacks Donald Trump and the austerity policies promoted by the political elites. He rails against war, greed, racism, sexism, homophobia, the denigration of refugees, and the destruction of the environment. He calls for unity and peace and human rights. He seems to be really energized and impassioned and yet relaxed.
He ends by quoting this stanza from the poem The Mask of Anarchy by Percy Bysshe Shelley that was written in response to a massacre and is a rousing call to arms. It goes:
Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number,
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you –
Ye are many — they are few.
Who is the US equivalent, I wonder. Do young Brits turn out to vote in higher numbers than their US counterparts?
The equivalent, both in politics and in terms of raising young voter turnout, is Bernie Sanders.
The Absolute Boy™