This image is from Haiti. It has been over 6 months since the January 12th earthquake that killed over 300,000 people, making it one of the worst natural disasters in history. Now, six months later, 1.7 million people are still homeless, and thousands of bodies still lie beneath the rubble that has not been removed because the country is too poor to afford it. The country was promised 11 billion dollars in aid, and has received less than 10% of that. Also, of that 10%, most of the money went to the U.S. military to pay for their brief and dramatic entry into the country shortly after the earthquake happened.
Haiti is in ruins, the people live in fear and poverty, and what is the U.S. response? Expand Haiti's sweatshop industry. Mr. Bill Clinton and his lovely wife Hilary are currently working to set up "free enterprise zones" in Haiti, bringing in more sweatshop companies in to the country, and further exploiting the people of Haiti. The average Haitian gets paid $3.09 a day working under horrible conditions for very long hours. The corporations that come in are companies like Gildan, a Montreal based company that is known to move constantly throughout South America, moving their operation to the least costly areas they can find to produce their t-shirts. If the workers unite and demand an even semi-reasonable wage for their work, the company abandons the factories and moves on to their next victim, leaving the people behind to die in impoverishment.
Haiti has been a long time victim of U.S. imperialism, and what should be a country rich with its ability to grow food year round, is in reality a country of horrible poverty and death. But this death doesn't matter to we fat Americans. In fact, we can't even see it. We don't even know it is going on. We can all walk to our dresser drawers right now and find a stack of clothes that are made in Haiti. We are children of a murderous empire, and somehow this shit has to fucking stop.
How racist can you get? Why is it that just because I am an American white male, I deserve a better life than a Haitian, or a Nigerian, or a Rwandan, or an Indonesian? My middle class upbringing sickens me, and I will work for the rest of my life to rid myself of this spoiled conditioning as much as I can.
We have to see that our country, and the greater world globalized system in general, is run by criminals, and these criminals dangle their entertainment and shiny goods in front of our faces to keep us addicted to their system. We are participants in their horrific schemes, because we don't do a god damned thing to stop them. Our compliance allows them to continue. Plain and simple.
But before we can stop them, enough of us need to recognize what they are doing, and what we are doing by complying with their system. We have to see the blood in our dresser drawers, on our plasma screens, in our ballot boxes, on our hands. It is not our fault, we did not set up this system, but the blood is certainly there. If we do not see the blood, then we are only half aware, and only half alive, and we will go down with the most destructive culture in the earth's history.
What this culture does to human beings is beyond horrific, and the criminals who run the culture care even less for the natural world than they do for humans. They are committing a global assault against all living creatures, and we have to wake the fuck up enough to even be able to respond to it. This work is difficult, but if we can start to really depend on each other, we may have a chance at one day actually stopping these mother fuckers. We must create a culture of mutual aid and cooperation, with both humans and the natural world. It is a dream that must become reality. The planet will not take much more. We have to choose.
For my video in this post, I want to share an extremely beautiful and intense reading by Wulf Zendik of his powerful poem, Quince. Please watch, and let it in. Goodnight friends.
Nice moves chief. I like it.
Posted by: Steve Sanders | 02/01/2012 at 02:50 PM