TIME Person of the Year 2011

'The Protester' is the Time's 2011 Person of the Year, as the magazine honoured those who stood up for common people, from India's anti-graft crusader Anna Hazare to Tunisia's street vendor Mohammed Bouazizi, who set himself on fire sparking the Arab Spring.

 

Protester is rising in the world in a large scale, many reasons can behind them. Many global protest or movements like that, the Arab Spring, the Indignants Movement and Occupy Movement – as well as protests in Greece, Protest in India and Russia, and among others countries. Person of the Year (formerly Man of the Year) is an annual issue of the United States newsmagazine Time that features and profiles a person, couple, group, idea, place, or machine that "for better or for worse, ...has done the most to influence the events of the year."

The tradition of selecting a Man of the Year began in 1927 with Time editors contemplating newsworthy stories possible during a slow news week. The idea was also an attempt to remedy the editorial embarrassment earlier that year of not having aviator Charles Lindbergh on its cover following his historic trans-Atlantic flight. By the end of the year, it was decided that a cover story featuring Lindbergh as the Man of the Year would serve both purposes.

History often emerges only in retrospect. Events become significant only when looked back on. No one could have known that when a Tunisian fruit vendor set himself on fire in a public square in a town barely on a map, he would spark protests that would bring down dictators in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya and rattle regimes in Syria, Yemen and Bahrain. Or that that spirit of dissent would spur Mexicans to rise up against the terror of drug cartels, Greeks to march against unaccountable leaders, Americans to occupy public spaces to protest income inequality, and Russians to marshal themselves against a corrupt autocracy. Protests have now occurred in countries whose populations total at least 3 billion people, and the word protest has appeared in newspapers and online exponentially more this past year than at any other time in history.
Is there a global tipping point for frustration? Everywhere, it seems, people said they'd had enough. They dissented; they demanded; they did not despair, even when the answers came back in a cloud of tear gas or a hail of bullets. They literally embodied the idea that individual action can bring collective, colossal change. And although it was understood differently in different places, the idea of democracy was present in every gathering. The root of the word democracy is demos, "the people," and the meaning of democracy is "the people rule." And they did, if not at the ballot box, then in the streets. America is a nation conceived in protest, and protest is in some ways the source code for democracy — and evidence of the lack of it.
The protests have marked the rise of a new generation. In Egypt 60% of the population is under the age of 25. Technology mattered, but this was not a technological revolution. Social networks did not cause these movements, but they kept them alive and connected. Technology allowed us to watch, and it spread the virus of protest, but this was not a wired revolution; it was a human one, of hearts and minds, the oldest technology of all.
Everywhere in the year 2011, people have complained about the failure of traditional leadership and the fecklessness of institutions. Politicians cannot look beyond the next election and they refuse to make hard choices. That's one reason we did not select an individual this year. But leadership has come from the bottom of the pyramid, not the top. 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.

The Protester

 

Once upon a time, when major news events were chronicled strictly by professionals and printed on paper or transmitted through the air by the few for the masses, protesters were prime makers of history. Back then, when citizen multitudes took to the streets without weapons to declare themselves opposed, it was the very definition of news — vivid, important, and often consequential. In the 1960s in America they marched for civil rights and against the Vietnam War; in the '70s, they rose up in Iran and Portugal; in the '80s, they spoke out against nuclear weapons in the U.S. and Europe, against Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, against communist tyranny in Tiananmen Square and Eastern Europe. Protest was the natural continuation of politics by other means.

Prelude to the Revolutions
It began in Tunisia, where the dictator's power grabbing and high living crossed a line of shamelessness, and a commonplace bit of government callousness against an ordinary citizen — a 26-year-old street vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi — became the final straw. Bouazizi lived in the charmless Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid, 125 miles south of Tunis. On a Friday morning almost exactly a year ago, he set out for work, selling produce from a cart. Police had hassled Bouazizi routinely for years, his family says, fining him, making him jump through bureaucratic hoops. On Dec. 17, 2010, a cop started giving him grief yet again. She confiscated his scale and allegedly slapped him. He walked straight to the provincial-capital building to complain and got no response. At the gate, he drenched himself in paint thinner and lit a match.

A Year in the Making

 

The 2011 Person of the Year issue is the product of a year's worth of reporting and thinking. From the beginning of the Arab Spring, we dedicated an abundance of resources to this world-historical story. We also watched as the germ of protest spread to Europe and then America and now Russia. Last month, Kurt Andersen and I took a trip to Egypt and Tunisia to trace this spirit of revolution to its roots. Kurt, one of America's finest essayists and novelists, wrote the sweeping piece that explains the links and the larger meaning among the protests in dozens of countries. We were accompanied on that trip by deputy international editor Bobby Ghosh, Cairo correspondent Abby Hauslohner and reporter Rania Abouzeid, who is based in Lebanon.
Time termed as "remarkable" the common cause of the protests.
"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."
It said in Egypt the incitements were a "preposterously fraudulent" 2010 national election and the common act of "unforgivable" brutality by security agents.
In the US, three acute and overlapping money crises tanked economy, systemic financial recklessness, gigantic public debt along with ongoing revelations of double dealing by banks and the refusal of Congress to consider even slightly higher taxes on the very highest incomes "mobilized Occupy Wall Street and its millions of supporters."
In Russia it was the realization that "another six (or 12) years of Vladimir Putin might not lead to greater prosperity and democratic normality."
Time said people used the power of the internet, mobilising support for their cause though social networking sites Facebook and Twitter.
Protesters "used the Internet to find one another and take to the streets to insist on fairness and (in the Arab world) freedom." "They were all unhappy, they wanted change and they wanted better life," Time said. "Everybody is out there to unite their power for one common cause, one common expressionto get a better life". From Sidi Bouzid, Alexandria, Cairo to Madrid, Athens, London, Mexico, India and Chile, "citizens mobilized against crime and corruption; the loathing and anger at governments and their cronies became uncontainable and fed on itself," it said.

The shared honour for protesters beat the traditional individual contenders, who included Admiral William McRaven, commander of the US mission to kill Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden. "There's this contagion of protest," managing editor Richard Stengel said on NBC television. "These are folks who are changing history already and they will change history in the future." The list centered on heavyweight political figures such as McRaven, Chinese dissident Ai Weiwei, and influential Republican Congressman Paul Ryan. There were also an emotional nod for Kate Middleton, who was credited for putting a spring back in the British monarchy's step with her wedding to Prince William.

Persons of the Year

Year	Image	Choice		Time Period
1927		Charles Lindbergh	USA	1902–1974
1928		Walter Chrysler	USA	1875–1940
1929		Owen D. Young	USA	1874–1962
1930		Mohandas Gandhi	British Raj	1869–1948
1931		Pierre Laval	France	1883–1945
1932		Franklin D. Roosevelt	USA	1882–1945
1933		Hugh Samuel Johnson	USA	1882–1942
1934		Franklin D. Roosevelt	USA	1882–1945
1935		Haile Selassie I	Ethiopia	1892–1975
1936		Wallis Simpson	USA	1896–1986
1937		Chiang Kai-shek	Republic of China	1887–1975
		Soong May-ling	Republic of China	1898–2003
1938		Adolf Hitler	Germany	1889–1945
1939		Joseph Stalin	USSR	1878–1953
1940		Winston Churchill	UK	1874–1965
1941		Franklin D. Roosevelt	USA	1882–1945
1942		Joseph Stalin	USSR	1878–1953
1943		George Marshall	USA	1880–1959
1944		Dwight D. Eisenhower	USA	1890–1969
1945		Harry S. Truman	USA	1884–1972
1946		James F. Byrnes	USA	1879–1972
1947		George Marshall	USA	1880–1959
1948		Harry S. Truman	USA	1884–1972
1949		Winston Churchill	UK	1874–1965
1950		The American fighting-man	USA
1951		Mohammed Mossadegh	Iran	1882–1967
1952		Elizabeth II		1926–
1953		Konrad Adenauer	West Germany	1876–1967
1954		John Foster Dulles	USA	1888–1959
1955		Harlow Curtice	USA	1893–1962
1956		The Hungarian freedom fighter	Hungary
1957		Nikita Khrushchev	USSR	1894–1971
1958		Charles de Gaulle	France	1890–1970
1959		Dwight D. Eisenhower	USA	1890–1969
1960		American Scientists	USA
1961		John F. Kennedy	USA	1917–1963
1962		Pope John XXIII	Holy See/Italy	1881–1963
1963		Martin Luther King, Jr.	USA	1929–1968
1964		Lyndon B. Johnson	USA	1908–1973
1965		William Westmoreland	USA	1914–2005
1966	Image not Available	Baby Boomers
1967		Lyndon B. Johnson	USA	1908–1973
1968		The Apollo 8astronauts	USA
1969		The Middle Americans	USA
1970		Willy Brandt	West Germany	1913–1992
1971		Richard Nixon	USA	1913–1994
1972		Richard Nixon	USA	1913–1994
		Henry Kissinger	USA	1923–
1973		John Sirica	USA	1904–1992
1974		King Faisal	Saudi Arabia	1906–1975
1975		American women	USA
1976		Jimmy Carter	USA	1924–
1977		Anwar Sadat	Egypt	1918–1981
1978		Deng Xiaoping	People's Republic of China	1904–1997
1979		Ayatollah Khomeini	Iran	1902–1989
1980		Ronald Reagan	USA	1911–2004
1981		Lech Wałęsa	Poland	1943–
1982		The Computer
1983		Ronald Reagan	USA	1911–2004
		Yuri Andropov	USSR	1914–1984
1984		Peter Ueberroth	USA	1937–
1985		Deng Xiaoping	People's Republic of China	1904–1997
1986		Corazon C. Aquino	Philippines	1933–2009
1987		Mikhail Gorbachev	USSR	1931–
1988		The Endangered Earth
1989		Mikhail Gorbachev	USSR	1931–
1990		George H. W. Bush	USA	1924–
1991		Ted Turner	USA	1938–
1992		Bill Clinton	USA	1946–
1993		The Peacemakers	Palestine, South Africa, Israel
1994		Pope John Paul II	Holy See/Poland	1920–2005
1995		Newt Gingrich	USA	1943–
1996		David Ho	Republic of China/USA	1952–
1997		Andrew Grove	Hungary/USA	1936–
1998		Bill Clinton	USA	1946–
		Kenneth Starr	USA	1946–
1999		Jeffrey P. Bezos	USA	1964–
2000		George W. Bush	USA	1946–
2001		Rudolph Giuliani	USA	1944–
2002		The Whistleblowers	USA
2003		The American soldier	USA
2004		George W. Bush	USA	1946–
2005		The Good Samaritans	Ireland/USA
2006		You
2007		Vladimir Putin	Russia	1952–
2008		Barack Obama	USA	1961–
2009		Ben Bernanke	USA	1953–
2010		Mark Zuckerberg	USA	1984–
2011		The Protester