From Mumia Abu-Jamal
A daily terror
The power of the media to condition consciousness is vast.
For, with the merest mention of a word--say, for instance,
"terror"--a flood of images roar through the mind, like a
well-placed row of dominoes, each falling one into the other,
tumbling like a hard, dry, crackling wave: terror, terrorism,
the twin towers of midtown Manhattan, planes circling like
metallic vultures, plunging into solid rock and steel, flames,
smoke and humans blown into dry dust. Osama bin-Laden; Mullah
Omar; Saddam Hussein (fill in the blanks).
Those are the thoughts we have been conditioned to think by
the media. We have virtually no choice in the matter.
There is, though, another terror that ravages the land. It
affects not thousands, but millions. It affects Whites, Blacks,
Anglos, Latinos, Citizens, Immigrants, Male, Female, Gay,
Straight, Jew, Gentile, North erner, Southerner, from Maine to
Mississippi.
It is the terror of financial failure. The terror of not
getting next week's paycheck. The terror of being fired; of
being unable to pay rent (or the mortgage); of seeing one's
children wracked by hunger.
This is the silent terror; the hidden terror. Indeed, it is
the invisible terror that is all too real. It is one that the
state not only refuses to fight, but refuses to
acknowledge.
After the Sept. 11th disaster, at least 800,000 people have
lost their jobs. Dishwashers, maids, hotel workers, computer
employees, travel agents, booking agents, and the like. But as
stunning as that figure seems to be, it is but a mere
percentage of a larger problem.
Before the 11th of September, indeed, according to economic
indicators since March 2001, at least 8 million people were out
of work due to the economic recession.
8,000,000 people!
8,000,000 invisible souls, unemployed, gripped by a terror
that almost defies description.
Why is that not a national emergency?
Why no mass mobilization, nor media-orchestrated outrage? Is
it because they are poor, and the poor are expendable?
The corporate media, the possession and instrument of the
wealthy, has no interest (and sees no profit) in educating
either the poor or working poor in the failures of an economic
theory or system which works for them yet betrays the poor. It
is not in the interest of the established to show the holes in
the "economic miracle." Globalists wish to ignore this ugly
reality.
What does the Dow Jones Industrial Average, or the S&P
rate, or the latest Nasdaq mean to 8 million unemployed?
A year ago, economists were proclaiming the end of the
business cycle, boasting that the only way stocks could go was
up. Their boasts came on the eve of a recession.
In a time when the poor are treated like lepers, when their
dreams are dashed, a daily terror reigns.
Reprinted from the Dec. 27, 2001, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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