Posted by In a recent story in the Guardian, that paper reported about the Los Angeles International Airport’s exclusive terminal for the mega-rich. In that exclusive lounge for celebrities and billionaires, there is a screen showing the main terminal for people like us, who work for a living.
The screen reads: “Here is a glimpse of what you’re missing over at the main terminal right now.” The images show people struggling with luggage and waiting in long lines.
In 2010, the law firm of Steven J. Baum in New York – the ‘foreclosure mill’ which represents huge mortgage lenders – had a Halloween party with attendants dressed as foreclosed or homeless people in a mocking way.
And more recently, we were treated to images of the wealthy in congress laughing as they passed healthcare legislation that will doom thousands to death.
This is what the rich think of the rest of us. We’re a joke. A punchline.
When you read these stories, if you’re like most people, you get angry. You begin to think, ‘How do they think they can get away with this?’
It’s easy. They make you hate someone else instead of them.
The last two days have marked the anniversaries of two unfathomable tragedies. Chances are, if you are from the United States, you haven’t heard too much about them.
On May 13, 1985, Philadelphia police bombed a house that served as a headquarters/home for the MOVE organization, killing 11 people, including five children.
MOVE is a black liberation organization that describes itself as “a family of strong, serious, deeply committed revolutionaries founded by a wise, perceptive, strategically minded Black man named JOHN AFRICA.”
It seems unfathomable to many that a police department would bomb a home and kill 11 people and that the tragedy would go virtually unremembered and remarked upon by national American media.
Simply put, MOVE is a group that has been deemed ‘unworthy’ by the billionaire class and their propaganda machine. The group was – and still is – too pro-black, anti-capitalist and environmentalist to be a ‘worthy victim’ by America.
On May 15, Palestinians commemorate Nabka Day, to remember the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced or killed and the hundreds of villages destroyed by the state of Israel following Israel’s Declaration of Independence in 1948.
It’s likely if you are an American, you haven’t heard about Nabka Day. We have been told again and again by capitalist news and entertainment media that Arabs are not only “unworthy victims”, but they are an evil civilization that needs to be destroyed.
Even now, supporting the Palestinian people through the horrors of their daily lives is a controversial stance in the United States. Virtually no mainstream politician in the United States unconditionally supports the Palestinian people. Laws have even been passed targeting people who protest on Palestine’s behalf.
What does MOVE and Palestine have to do with you, the average American?
Everything.
The rich want you to hate anybody but them. So they will have you believing YOU are worthy while the “unworthy” are being killed. They get you to engage in the same heinous behavior they engage in with their parties making fun of working people.
The one thing that would truly scare the rich is if we all stopped believing their lies and coming together in solidarity.
Let’s do that. Let’s organize a new world without capitalism and war.
The Forge News 