For many, the very mention of bombs puts one in mind of attacks by terrorists. Although, in fact, the most well-known such attack, 9/11, wasn’t a bombing at all, but a plane hijacking used to target symbols of wealth and power.
But this isn’t about such bombs. It’s about social, economic and racial bombs; ones long-planted by politicians who are out of office, ones which we are seeing arise today. Millions of people are terrified, in deep fear of the bleakness of their futures as joblessness, foreclosures and even poverty threatens their dreams. We’re all witness to the vast amounts of wealth passed to the banks and investment firms that caused the great economic upheaval of 2008.
Public wealth went to private businesses in a way that was unprecedented, even as public services got defunded, and as citizens who invested in bogus stock scams got swindled, left broken and dazed. And while corporate media types mock the Tea Partiers, they missed the deeper flood of fear driven by economic experiences that pervades the land, feeding rivers and tributaries of racism, xenophobia, paranoia and hatred.
These pale trees we see are the sproutings of NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, that Clinton-signed-and-supported bill, which saw the leakage of manufacturing jobs to Mexico and later to China. Those jobs, once gone, are gone forever. For business, given the option of cheap, non unionized labor, will always go for it, for this simply means more profits.
And while these politicians served their corporate pay masters well–who were even rewarded when they leave office–they served their constituents and voting publics poorly, setting them on the grim road to economic and social disaster. For what future have they wrought? The only viable jobs left are service jobs: serving up burgers at McDonald’s, or gigging as prison guards or soldiers in brainless wars abroad. Schools are defunded and college education increasingly becomes the private preserve of the wealthy and well-to-do. The bombs are ticking. From death row, this is Mumia Abu-Jamal.
These commentaries are recorded by Noelle Hanrahan of Prison Radio.
