There is, at the heart of American society, a profound disquiet about the overwhelming powers of government, one which waxes and wanes according to the felt needs of the time. That’s partly because, while we say the government was formed to support freedom, we know that this wasn’t true. We know that the government was an instrument of despotic and tyrannical power, especially when it comes to Black people. This government began in slavery, not in freedom, unless one argues it was begun to protect the freedom of some to enslave others. Thomas Jefferson, in his notes on the state of Virginia, describing slavery, called it a system of “unremitting despotism.” That he was at once an alleged freedom fighter and an owner of several hundred slaves gives us some sense of the contradiction at the core of the new nation.
Government, then and now, supports the efforts of the wealthy at the expense of the many. It is an instrument of wealth and corporate power. Those who saw the quicksilver response to Wall Street’s problems and the half-hearted responses to the unemployed, the foreclosed, the hungry and the homeless, should take that lesson to heart.
The bubbling light crude poisoning the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, right now, is a direct result of neoliberal deregulation, which frees businesses to profit, but also to create multi-national disasters. It’s government in hock to capital and capitalism run wild. And while the media hypes about environmental damage to Louisiana, Texas or even Florida, have you noticed no one has mentioned Mexico’s East Coast or Cuba’s West coast? Globalization is here, and it ain’t pretty. Only great and sustained resistance can change that tune. From death row, this is Mumia Abu-Jamal.
These commentaries are recorded by Noelle Hanrahan of Prison Radio.
