This Viral Video Is the Anti-Austerity Poem You've Been Waiting For

The scam of austerity explained.

By Adam Johnson / AlterNet

Yesterday, British Spoken word performer Agnes Töröka release an inspired, three-minute poetic call-to-arms for the austerity generation that quickly went viral, garnering almost 100,000 views by the end of the day.

In "Worthless" ,Töröka masterfully calls into question the unfair social contract inherented by todays youth: from nonstop internships to massive debt to the wholesale gutting of social programs. Underlying the spoken word poem is a biting sarcasm, contrasting the public funding of bank bailouts with the raiding of public trusts. She also wonderfully skewers the patronizing, "realistic" platitudes of austerity, from "cost cutting" to telling out-of-work graduates to focus on "polishing their CV's". 

It's a brilliant - and unexpected - piece of rage-fueled poetry that should speak to anyone who's been tightened, cost-cutted, and left to fend for themselves by a system that glorifies the rich while, time and time again, telling the rest of us we're "worthless".

Adam Johnson is an associate editor at AlterNet. Follow him on Twitter at@adamjohnsonnyc.

http://www.alternet.org/anti-austerity-viral-video-masterful-rage-filled-poem-youve-been-waiting?sc=fb