Police Killings, Oppression including through Food, and Our Common Future

Local to Global Advocates for Justice: Reflections on this weekend’s St. Louis Riot, Oppression including Oppression through Food, the Illusion of Democracy and Our Common Future.

Local to Global Advocates for Justice: Reflections on this weekend’s St. Louis Riot, Oppression inclities face in the US and around the world: from mass incarceration, police killings, and lack of police protection to oppression through deadly food products, substandard housing, no and substandard education and substandard or no health care, that increase human frustration …View on fssg.blogspot.com Preview by Yahoo

Reflections on this weekend’s St. Louis Riot, Oppression including Oppression through Food, the Illusion of Democracy and Our Common Future

Rioting in St. Louis after police shoot ten times and kill unarmed Black youth Mike Brown. Our love goes to his family, friends and his community. The killing, yet another, is just the tip of the iceberg of the oppression poor and especially poor indigenous, Black, Latino and some groups of Asian communities face in the US and around the world: from mass incarceration, police killings, and lack of police protection to oppression through deadly food products, substandard housing, no and substandard education and substandard or no health care, that increase human frustration to intolerable levels. Trapped in economic and/or racial segregation, people and communities, including many middle class communities, furthermore have no no opportunity to influence society or voice their concerns because we exist in only an illusion of democracy.

The oppression our beloved communities face includes: (not complete) police killings, mass incarceration, housing oppression including the mortgage foreclosure crises, victimization by crime and lack of security, (in fact as we see people are victimized by those who are supposed to protect them–the police themselves) ; no jobs or slave jobs, no or mis-education, no and poor health care, targeted with unhealthy, deadly food products, victimized by drugs, sex offenders, and other human behavior hostile to humanity, environmental and toxic poisonings, climate injustice and all forms of oppression known to humanity. They are targeted by all our systems and oligarchies for exploitation from the physical to the psychological.

Our beloved poor (and many middle-class) communities are in essence living in open -air prisons. Our political systems appear to be completely controlled by a well-militarized oligarchy with the apparent power now to know our every move and thought (Snowden). These systems and oligarchies (Or is their only one?) appear to be creating, food and health, and environmental and human degradation in order to exploit humanity,our earth and universe in order to enrich and empower themselves.

To make matters worse, all this is being done in the name of a Black man–Barack Hussein Obama–(from “Hope” to hopelessness) to rub salt into a festering wound of the illusion of democracy, covering up fascism, as my Mexican colleague, Miguel Guzman, explains to me.

This is Palestine, this is Mathare and Kibera; this is Soweto, this is Vietnam, this is Monterey. This is Detroit. Same tactics and same people and same reason and same outcome: oppression of the people so that a few, the oligarchy, maintain power and they and their children and descendants enjoy the fruits of this Earth and Universe and our human potential.

Yet their actions appear to be leading us all, themselves and their families included, to an ultimate destination of destruction of all. (See Gustave Speth’s work on what the future holds if we do not change our ways.) Furthermore, the transcendent Thich Naht Hahn points out to us that they, the rich, members of the oligarchy, are not happy themselves; the rich commit suicide.

More thoughts to come, comments appreciated.

Maria Whittaker, Program Director
Local to Global Advocates for Justice

Local to Global Advocates for Justice
Sat, June 28, 2014 4 PM CT Eric Holt-Gimenez, ED Food First, kkfi.org, 90.1 FM KC Food Fight! Radio Program Please Share Widely! Food Fight! All Lives Matter!
View on fssg.blogspot.com Preview by Yahoo

KC Food Justice
http://foodhealthenvironmentaljustice.blogspot.com

“May my words increase love, understanding and compassion. May they be as beautiful as our children”.