#Occupy Goes To The Opera

How cool is this? The Occupy crowd went to the Met Opera House in New York last night, to point out the injustice of the 1% claiming that philanthropy excuses them from paying taxes. I love opera myself, but the problem with philanthropy is that it gets spent on things that make the rich feel good: opera, donkey charities, art funds while claiming that they're doing good. With taxes, democracy decides where the money needs to go.

But I digress. The Occupy people don't hate opera either. And, it turns out, the opera people don't hate Occupy. The performance was Philip Glass's Satyagraha, his sprawling minimalist eco-conscious, democratic masterpiece based on Ghandi's early life. When it was all over, the composer himself strolled past the police blocks - with some of the opera-goers - to quote the Bhagavad-Gita to the multitude (from about 3.00):

"When righteousness withers away and evil rules the land, we come into being, age after age, and take visible shape, and move, a man among men, for the protection of good, thrusting back evil and setting virtue on her seat again."

As slogans go, that's not bad.