TIME magazine named teen climate activist Greta Thunberg its person of the year last week, but in truth, given that this has been a year of global unrest and efforts from the streets worldwide to counter the effects of an ever more rapacious neoliberal capitalism, the real person of the year who epitomises this moment may be the French public worker, on strike now for over two weeks to save the French pension system. 

People’s movements in Algeria, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Chile, Colombia and Bolivia after the coup have all challenged their various governments and made local demands for equality, with the movements often springing from what seems almost negligible offences as workers in Chile took to the streets after a four cent increase in metro fares. 

In each case the momentary cause of the uprising was a last straw and brought on, as in Chile, by what has been seen as rewarding the rich while taking more money from those who can least afford it.