Justice

Click in the flash area below, then press your keyboard's up arrow to fullscreen. SpaceBar mutes and un-mutes the sound. Move your mouse to deflect meteors.

(this was written in spring 2010 as the second half of my final paper for Gender Class and Race at MassArt, when I gave up on connecting things back to the original topic and just started ranting.)

In the headlines these days is the Arizona lawmakers’ efforts to allow police to stop and ask for documentation from anyone who looks suspiciously like an illegal immigrant (i.e. Mexican.) There has been public outrage, yet those interested in maintaining power and dominance are still able to get laws passed which allow for the oppression and exploitation of non-whites. It is a minority of self-interested, stubborn, ill-informed, racially competitive, whites, fueled by fear, driving forward liberty-encroaching legislation, in the name of protecting our people from some dark, exotic Other. While it is a determined minority of whites who are fearfully responding to a perceived wave of ethnicity set to take over “Our Country,” it is the less-rabid majority of whites who allow this force to gain traction. Many whites have allowed their latent racial prejudice, normally suppressed by ideals of American equality and/or the desire to be a “good person,” to be riled up by extremist fear mongering.

Though perhaps unsupportive of the more destructive policies, activities, and ideologies pushed forward by the forces of elite capitalist greed, in a democracy, those who sit idly by, who prefer to be uninformed about those issues that don’t have an immediate effect on their own lives, are complicit through their indifference in allowing self-interested sociopaths to strengthen their grip on the reins of U.S. government institutions and global markets, and to exploit the Earth and its most disadvantaged populations for the expansion of corporate and personal wealth and power. Corporate

What is it that our troops are dying for anyway?

It's the new imperialism. Of course America won't conquer a foreign land and enslave its people, but it DID kill thousands of people and overthrow a government in an attempt to make a foreign government more like the American government. America's way must be right, because America is always righteous, RIGHT? It sure is a shame those Iraqis don't appreciate what we're trying to give them. The American Dream. It's what everybody wants. To live in a country where the citizens grow complacent and while their shepherd blinds them to the truth that everything is not alright, that society is falling apart, but the government is unwilling to make any change that would truly benefit its citizens, let alone humanity as a whole.

I honestly don't think this one demonstration will change anything. We need more. Bigger. Widespread. We need a real revolution. I fear that this country has grown too accustomed to it's sedentary lifestyle and nobody has the guts or the power to really affect what's happening to us.

You can fall in line like your leaders hope you will, or you can stand up and take action toward change. Revolution is what America was FOUNDED on. When a Real American sees an injustice, (s)he must act to correct it.

Don't get me wrong, I fully appreciate and respect the soldiers for joining the military to protect their friends, families, and fellow Americans, but Iraq needs to stand on its own. Ongoing occupation of Iraq is only increasing the Iraqi disdain for America and for the new government brought in by America. A free Iraqi government must be operated and defended by the Iraqi people, not a foreign power. How are Iraqis supposed to feel any patriotism or unity with