While
listening to the radio some days ago in the Washington DC metro area, there was
an interview of an air traffic controller in the Frederick county area. The subject
was so upset that as part of the United States federal government austerity or
sequestration magic, his job would be vamoosed from federal funding. The
shocked controller went on to indicate his right wing leaning support for cuts
within the government but wondered aloud why his job should be on the cutting
block. This is not unique as corporations and individual members of the elite
1% club have used their stooges such as the main street pan-international media
to wage regimes of miseducation against public sector workers around the globe.
So from
Cyprus to London England, from Greece to Wall Street America, and from
Wisconsin to Ohio there is the renewed mantra to blame the victims of corporate
malfeasance and victimize the fatalities of individual greed instead of the
so-called makers. When middle income folks within the private sectors lose
their jobs and are unable to secure and provide for their families they are
quick to point fingers at government workers instead of taking an objective
look at the global corporate gluttony. They become impotent to challenge the
transfer of jobs abroad and the automation of businesses to render people
obsolete in various employment arenas.
These
economic casualties which are perceived as mere collateral damages but are
actual systematic offspring of our global economic systems are depressed,
demoralized, and dejected and become unable to connect the dots between the
disparities in income within their former organizations and their present
conditions. There is a failure to link the corporate jets and CEO bonus to the
devastation permitted on the common folks. Ours is a race for the crumbs that
seeks to scavenge and be content for what miserly benefits that greedy elites
deem necessary for us to survive on. We are swift in condemning homeowners that
lost their homes in loan mortgage crises without realizing that they were ponds
of the banking cartels and/or turning a blind eye to the same scams which the
bankers have used from Spain to west coast states in America such as Nevada and
California.
Consequently,
we are presented with a Europe of unimaginable dichotomy like in the bible
(religion) for butter (resources) days. At the same time we have more
Portuguese and Spaniards heading to Angola than at any time since the global
slave trade economy. We now have Europeans openly embracing fascism politics
and cultural xenophobia. Amidst the petroleum wealth and boom in Luanda no one questions
the Europeans for their workers permits. But in Europe and America it is easier
to pick on the foreigners instead of organizing against those from within that
specialize in setting up tax havens, shipping jobs around the globe to pay the
lowest cost, and reaping astronomical profits. On US television there is an
open call to move monies and investments to Ireland whereas urban and rural
unemployment remains off the chain with the ensuing societal cost.
Paradoxically,
the race to the bottom is sanctioned by politicians and
the corporate media types who are beholden to the corporate status quo. As such
they have the masses divided and fighting themselves, for example poor
Europeans in America against African Americans and Latinos and African
Americans against immigrants. Whilst they keep us bickering and competing for
the lowest common denominators, the Dow Jones and other leading financial
markets are creating no jobs, depressing wages, gambling with the savings of
folks, forcing municipalities into bankruptcies, but making record earnings for
the economic/financial gurus and members of the exclusive 1% club. These
entitled classes would rather hoard monies and properties to service 3-5centuries
of their descendants, whence people are poor, homeless, and dying today.
Nnamdi F. Akwada MSW, BA is a Social
Justice Activist
