TIME Person of the Year 2011 – the Protestor

It’s perhaps fitting that at a time when leadership around the globe in politics, business and elsewhere is proving so ineffectual in the face of the multiple challenges the world faces that TIME Magazine chose the generic protestor as its 2011 person of the year rather than a political leader or business person.

 

From the Guardian 'As Time's editor, Rick Stengel, argues, to celebrate the protester is to defend the idea "that individual action can bring collective, colossal change". This collectivity has spread like wildfire in the last year or so – each protest, revolution and occupation triggering new uprisings against state oppression, class inequality and police brutality. "From the Arab spring to Athens, from Occupy Wall Street to Moscow" declares the Time cover, with Stengel pointing out "the word protest has appeared in newspapers and online exponentially more this past year than at any other time in history".

But how to represent this collective subject, to give a face to this global anger? It is hard for the media and the state to forsake their need to celebrate (and punish) charismatic figureheads, especially when it comes to protest movements. But the anonymity, the leaderlessness (which is not to say structurelessness) of many of the global protests are indications of their strength and of their mass character.'
 

A video report from Alan Fisher of Al Jazeera is here     

So did TIME get it right and if not who would you chose as Person of the Year 2011?