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May 21, 2007
This is development? Some days I'm convinced they're making fun of us.
On the front page of Saturday's Diario Libre newspaper I noticed several items of interest:
- Headline: Las gasolinas suben a niveles históricos. "Gas prices reach record highs."
- Headline: Los apagones han vuelto con fuerza a barrios populares. "Blackouts have returned with force in poor neighborhoods."
- Large photo: Flatbed semis unloading dozens of palm trees in an urban area.
- Photo caption: "At the rhythm of hatchet and machete, mayor Roberto Salcedo continues his aggressive march to remove Santo Domingo's leafy trees and replace them with palms."
I'm not sure if the Dominican media – owned by the country's wealthiest handful of families – thinks we're too stupid to connect these four items, or if they're so arrogant that they think no one can do anything about it anyway.
The government-regulated cost of regular unleaded gasoline is at $4.68 a gallon, and premium sits at a robust $5.03. Electricity service in the barrios has gone from bad to rock bottom. Yesterday I visited a friend who hadn't been able to turn on so much as a fan or a lightbulb in eight days.
So how does our elected civil servant respond to the mounting economic crisis that affects the great majority of his constituency? He decides to use the public funds at his disposal to replace one kind of tree with another.
I imagine the politicians and their backers in their air-conditioned offices, kicking back and having a good chuckle over their latest practical joke.
The juxtaposition of articles and photos in Saturday's Diario Libre is as clear as if the mayor had just come out and said: "This is not democracy and it never has been. But we're going to keep on doing whatever we feel like, because no one can force us to do otherwise. And besides, palm trees are very pretty."
May 4, 2007
This past Tuesday was International Workers' Day. May 1 is only one day, and most workers around the world don't even get it as a paid holiday. But it serves as a reminder of the advances workers have acheived in the struggle for equality and human rights.
Ani DiFranco put it this way: "I am indebted joyfully to all of the people throughout history who have fought the government to make right."
I'll let the speakers speak for themselves.
The topic: war overseas.
The first passage was spoken by a man in U.S. government, the second and third by people who fought that man's policies to make right.
— 1 —
In strict confidence ... I should welcome almost any war, for I think this country needs one.
— 2 —
Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder.
In the Middle Ages when the feudal lords who inhabited the castles whose towers may still be seen along
the Rhine concluded to enlarge their domains, to increase their power, their prestige and their wealth
they declared war upon one another. But they themselves did not go to war any more than the modern feudal
lords, the barons of Wall Street go to war. The feudal barons of the Middle Ages, the economic predecessors
of the capitalists of our day, declared all wars.
And their miserable serfs fought all the battles.
The poor, ignorant serfs had been taught to revere their masters; to believe that when their masters
declared war upon one another, it was their patriotic duty to fall upon one another and to cut one
another's throats for the profit and glory of the lords and barons who held them in contempt. And
that is war in a nutshell.
The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has
always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the
subject class has had nothing to gain and all to lose - especially their lives....
If war is right let it be declared by the people. You who have your lives to lose, you certainly above all others have the right to decide the momentous issue of war or peace.
— 3 —
If America has entered the war to make the world safe for democracy, she must first make democracy safe in America. How else is the world to take
America seriously, when democracy at home is daily being outraged, free speech suppressed, peaceable
assemblies broken up by overbearing and brutal gangsters in uniform; when free press is curtailed and every independent opinion gagged.
Verily, poor as we are in democracy, how can we give of it to the world? We further say that a democracy conceived in the military servitude of the masses, in their economic enslavement, and nurtured in their tears and blood, is not democracy at all. It is despotism--the cumulative result of a chain of abuses which, according to that dangerous document, the Declaration of Independence, the people have the right to overthrow....
Gentlemen..., when we asked whether you would be prejudiced against
us if it were proven that we propagated ideas and opinions contrary to those held by the majority,
you were instructed by the Court to say, "If they are within the law." But what the Court did not
tell you is, that no new faith--not even the most humane and peaceable--has ever been considered
"within the law" by those who were in power. The history of human growth is at the same time the
history of every new idea heralding the approach of a brighter dawn, and the brighter dawn has
always been considered illegal, outside of the law.
Gentlemen of the jury, most of you, I take it, are believers in the teachings of Jesus.
Bear in mind that he was put to death by those who considered his views as being against the law.
I also take it that you are proud of your Americanism. Remember that those who fought and bled for your
liberties were in their time considered as being against the law, as dangerous disturbers and
trouble-makers. They not only preached violence, but they carried out their ideas by throwing tea
into the Boston harbor. They said that "Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God." They wrote a
dangerous document called the Declaration of Independence.... They were never within the law.
— & —
1. Theodore Roosevelt, 1897. He would soon get his "splendid little wars" – in
Panama, the Philippines, Cuba, Hawaii and Samoa. Roosevelt's philosophy: "Our manifest destiny is to absorb the territory of our neighboring nations that are too weak to oppose us."
2. Eugene V. Debs, 1917. We always heard this Hoosier's name mentioned in Indiana history lessons in school, but never learned anything about what he said or wrote. Looking back, I'm not surprised. Debs ended up getting ten years in prison for this treasonous speech during World War I.
3. Emma Goldman, 1917. This excerpt is taken from her address during the trial for which she was being accused of counseling men to oppose the WWI Conscription law. |
