It was announced on Wednesday morning that the Time Person of the Year is ‘The Protester.’ The decision was revealed by managing editor Richard Stengel on the “Today” show. The finalists include Admiral William McRaven, Congressman Paul Ryan, and Kate Middleton according to Stengel.
Representative Gabrielle Giffords and Steve Jobs did not make the list of finalists because they appear elsewhere in the magazine. Stengel said that “It’s not a lifetime achievement award.”
Each year since 1927, the magazine has bestowed the famous honor on a person, a group of people, or an idea. In 2010, the winner was Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
This year’s group includes protesters from all over the world. Those protesters include the masses who helped fuel the Arab spring to the anarchists in Greece to the Occupy Wall Street movements all over the United States.
Journalist Kurt Anderson wrote in the cover story for Time:
“It’s remarkable how much the protest vanguards share. Everywhere they are disproportionately young, middle class and educated. Almost all the protests this year began as independent affairs, without much encouragement from or endorsement by existing political parties or opposition bigwigs. All over the world, the protesters of 2011 share a belief that their countries’ political systems and economies have grown dysfunctional and corrupt — sham democracies rigged to favor the rich and powerful and prevent significant change. They are fervent small-d democrats.”
That segment is courtesy of Time and the Huffington Post.
The magazine paid reference to the ousting of Moamar Ghadafi, claiming “the people who toppled governments and brought a sense of dignity to a people who didn’t have it before.”
“For capturing and highlighting a global sense of restless promise, for upending governments and conventional wisdom, for combining the oldest of techniques with the newest of technologies to shine a light on human dignity and, finally, for steering the planet on a more democratic though sometimes more dangerous path for the 21st century, the Protester is Time’s 2011 Person of the Year,” Stengel said in a statement.
In Tunisia, protesters witnessed the toppling of Ben Ali, a dictator, which then spread to Egypt and Libya. Other protests in Syria, Yemen, and Bahrain occurred after the successes of Egypt and Libya.
The Occupy movement continues to rage on in the West, which coincides with the announcement of Time naming the protester the person of the year. Back in 2006, another controversial person was named on the title, and it was ‘you.’ The cover featured a mirror-like surface, reflecting the person holding the magazine. The magazine is sold in thousands of countries across the globe, with the United States being one of them. The Occupy Wall Street protests in the United States are being removed by police forces serving eviction notices.