I am on the train to NYC and the wireless connection seems to come and go on this "Downeaster".I got an email this morning from a Tea Party list that somehow got my name. One line in particular that stands out is "Arizona is being targeted by millions of illegal aliens for race riots!"
A virtual call to arms is now being sounded by some Tea Party organizers. One of them says:
"How many more Citizens must die before Washington realizes America is under a full scale attack? TeaParty.org will NOT negotiate our values. We will NOT stand down and we will NOT go silently into the night. "
Stephen Eichler J.D. Executive Director - TeaParty.org
It is supremely obvious to me that the ruling elite in America recognize that people of color will be the majority population in the coming years and they don't like that fact one bit. Just like the apartheid regime in South Africa, during the early 1980's, they are embarking on a dangerous and divisive strategy to turn angry white voters (who see the nation slipping away) against blacks and Hispanics. The white working class conservatives refuse to see that it is the corporations who have moved their jobs overseas - not the Mexican immigrant who in fact has also seen their economy destabilized south of the border by the corporate NAFTA trade agreement that threw many of them off their small farms as agribusiness moved in and took over their lands.
Tons of corporate money is now being pumped into the Tea Party movement to make leaders out of marginal people who otherwise could not have dreamed of getting their hands on such a cash infusion and non-stop media coverage.
I worry that the next step will be a national call for the cowboys (with their loaded guns) to come to Arizona in order to "defend the state from the rising hoards of brown skin illegal aliens". That is when the shooting could start. It would be a deadly mix of guns, racism, religion, and misguided social policy that will help to redirect the growing anger away from the corporate oligarchy who are ultimately responsible for the mess we have today in America. As Chris Hedges has previously written, this is how Yugoslavia came apart at the seams.
The primary thing we can do is continually point out to the public that our economic collapse has not been caused by Mexicans. It is the direct result of corporate policies to move millions of jobs overseas for cheap labor and the inevitable huge costs of endless war.
The coming national debate over immigration must be viewed in the larger context of corporate policies. People of good will had better speak out soon, loudly, and often, if we hope to avert an ugly fall to violence.
I've been thinking more about your comment that the status quo is now seeking people of color to join the ranks, not out of any sense of justice or equality but as a necessary concession to survival. It fits right in with entitlement thinking - whatever it takes to come out 'on top' can and will be justified...
ReplyDeleteThe Tea Party is just as scary as Hitler. And there targets for slaughter would be the poor of all colors.They and our society at large, has it in their brains poverty cost them money.
ReplyDeleteUs Poor no matter our skin tone needs to stand together and defeat poverty. Or so said Maya Angelous at her apperance at Augusta ME. Civic Center.
http://humanrights.change.org/blog/view/a_fools_errand_or_my_goodbye_post
I want to ask you, if you have the time please think about signing a petition at http://www.change.org/petitions/view/fix_american_courts_so_evidence_of_us_poor_is_heard.
When the poor who cannot afford a lawyer are denied use of the courts its one more step on the way to genocide, or in this case income cide. It not race, that is hated as much as poverty its self.
And yes the famous writer Maya Angelous, who is black says this is more than a race thing. I who is dark white, indian and not traveling to AZ any time soon, say the same. We must join hands and call for a livable wage for all.