Article: People Get Ready

People Get Ready

While the game is rigged
in favor of the Rich
they still depend
on us
to spend enough
to support them in the style
to which we've allowed them
to become accustomed.

When we turn around
and make a gift to them
of the wages
we slave so hard to make
by exchanging them
for mindless consumer fluff
we're saying that it's OK

that we don't need an increase
in the minimum wage
that we, and our kids,
don't need healthcare and education
that it's OK for products
to kill or to injure us
while we can't sue the companies
that made them

that we enjoy the eternal chains of debt
weighed down by fees that feed
finance corporations
that we don't need
clean water, clean air or pure food
and that we could care less
about Iraq troop escalation

that we'd trust Social Security
in the Wall Street Casino of Greed,
that temple of
corporate privatization,
that it's all right with us
if our Congressmen represent
those whose campaign contributions
bought and paid for them

that it's OK to take the taxes
we pay to maintain
our transportation infrastructure
to subsidize
the world's leading dealer of death
the United States military industry

that rather then find out the truth
and act
we'd prefer to just keep shopping

(that's called voting with your money)

that it's too much of a bother
to take time out from buying
to participate
in representative democracy.

We're saying we're willing
to take anything they dish out
as long as we can have
our big-screen plasma TVs,
mass-produced "designer" fashions
for the Lower Class
and fast food that causes
heart disease and diabetes,

the alcohol, tobacco and "legal" drugs
they sell to us to keep our senses numbed,
corporate-owned
violent sports and video games,
the gossip tabloids
to which we've all succumbed,

the big-dick, macho pickup trucks
a guy's sure shows he's a real man,
the environment-destroying SUVs,
flesh from factory farm
concentration camps,

engagement diamonds dripping with blood,
coltan for cell phones
purchased with murder and with rape,
and cheap Dollar Store goods
made by slaves in East Asia
where our jobs went
so corporations could escape
paying a living wage
for the work they need done
and skim off more of the profit
only Labor can create.

Citizens-turned-consumers won't acknowledge
we're the losers in an on-going Class War,
a deliberately designed crusade
to keep most of the American people poor.

They sell us cheap knock-offs
of their designer lives
and let us pretend
we could really be one of them.
Heads up!
They wouldn't touch us with a 10-foot pole
or piss on us if we
caught fire in front of them.

By continuing
this mindless shopping binge
we're feeding the monster
that's eating us up.
Remember, Consumer -
OUR - Spending
is a large part of
the country's Gross National Product.

So WE THE PEOPLE
have the power of the purse
and there are
way more of us
than there are of them.
By stopping this obscene
orgy of shopping
we can bring this
predatory system to an end.

Freedom is NOT a Chase Visa card.
Revolution's NOT a Chevy pickup truck.
We're the SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF LIBERTY.

STAND UP!

STOP BUYING!!

HAD ENOUGH?!!

"The limits of tyrants are proscribed by the endurance of the people they oppress."
- Frederick Douglass

- Vi Ransel