We live every day in this society, whether we like what is going on or not.
Just because we have to shop for clothes at K-Mart or at some fancier place doesn't mean we have accepted how these clothes are made or accept the economic system that lives on cheap labor of other countries.
For a change, let's really try to be honest about our history.
First of all, this country was founded on something I did not have the opportunity to live through. Nevertheless, I still see it being played out today, in a tragic drama unlike any episode seen on the soap opera "Days of our Lives."
I have learned about waves of immigrants from Europe seeking a better life in America, as good a life as those gold-covered television backdrops you see on religious channels. Most of these immigrants were forced into economic slavery, also know as indentured servitude. They were treated the same way people are treated in the sweatshop armpits all across U.S. cities and across this world.
Those who think like U.S. Attorney General Ashcroft, who now leads this anti-immigrant stance, do not want us to remember that this country was founded on the sweatshop and cotton-field labor of millions of immigrants and slaves, which created the worst experience of genocide on the indigenous nations of the Western Hemisphere.
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I am not inventing anything, but simply pointing out some relevant history that the 6 'o'clock news easily seems to forget.
Whether we accept to speak out against these economic injustices we see everyday or not, we still must live through it and learn from it. Young people can not be shadows of the older generation or silent echoes for the future. It is like that great saying, "We must understand history in order to know how to live in the future," which could not ring truer than in today's times.
I think it is appropriate to mention another one of Bush's quotes that weighs as heavy as a Styrofoam cup: "The terrorists want us to stop flying and buying, but we will not give in to these evil-doers."
What is amazing, first of all, is how does he know what the terrorists want if we don't even know where Osama bin Laden is? What also is incredible to me is how far we are able to reduce this war on terrorism to a celebrity death match between "our economy" and "evil-doers" while four to five million Afghans are facing starvation.
What this logic translates to is that on an everyday level, the act of shopping or getting on a plane is more important than how people are treated around you or treated when they made your nice pants.
Apparently it is even more important than the health of this planet, since we refused to sign the Kyoto Treaty which would hopefully cut down on global warming. Even Dick Cheney, who always seems to suddenly appear here and there out of some hiding place, says that the Kyoto protocol would hurt the American economy. Our confidence to know what is "really" going on, essentially, has been compromised for consumer confidence - the confidence to buy things.
Wasn't our economy supposedly unstable before this war?
Well, someone says it woke up feeling fine today -- maybe because they bought those new pants? Our economy may be doing well, but I don't see public schools getting any better, or International Monetary Fund and World Bank policies treating "third world countries" any better. I still see a growing prison industrial complex, and an increasing rate of bombardment on our youth of violent images.
It is as if culture has been reduced to one Big Mac of entertainment with a side of MTV fries. May we work toward being more conscious of our history?
As the great rapper, Mos Def says, "Shine a light on the world, for the world to see." Then maybe we can truly stand united.
Eduardo Galeano once said, "Culture nowadays is largely reduced to entertainment." Contradictions go as deep as commercials with Phillip Morris showing it's wrong for kids to smoke only after going to court in which they won over the government but whose image was tarnished.
Then you have Budweiser, showing that drinking is the only way to fun, even though it is killing more people than all overdoses on drugs and has destroyed generations of families.
Add to that Shell, a company that is still polluting the Nigeria delta coast which Ken Sawo Wiwa was killed trying to protect, hanged by the Shell-controlled government, saying they are taking care of the environment.
Baby don't make no fast moves tonight.
by Maceo Carrillo Martinet
Daily Lobo Columnist
