Call and Answer
Tell me why it is we don't lift our voices these days
And cry over what is happening. Have you noticed
The plans are made for Iraq and the ice cap is melting?
I say to myself: "Go on, cry. What's the sense
Of being an adult and having no voice? Cry out!
See who will answer! This is Call and Answer!"
We will have to call especially loud to reach
Our angels, who are hard of hearing; they are hiding
In the jugs of silence filled during our wars.
Have we agreed to so many wars that we can't
Escape from silence? If we don't lift our voices, we allow
Others (who are ourselves) to rob the house.
How come we've listened to the great criers--Neruda,
Akhmatova, Thoreau, Frederick Douglass--and now
We're silent as sparrows in the little bushes?
Some masters say our life lasts only seven days.
Where are we in the week? Is it Thursday yet?
Hurry, cry now! Soon Sunday night will come.
It is the Saturday of my life, most likely, as I just spent sometime at Cascadia Head, where the Salmon River and the Pacific Ocean battle it out during the various tides ebbing and flowing. Alone, with harbor seals popping their heads up, and their partner, a river otter, watching me look at two bald eagles looking for seal placenta to gobble up.
Here, visiting Canadian photographer Isabelle Hayeur, who is on a residency at Sitka Center for Art and Ecology, is shooting the Oregon Coast. The Canadian is here on the Pacific Coast of Oregon for first time, and her residency continues her exploration of water and land, people and ecosystems - to show the changes to the ecosystems caused by humans. Here, that Cascadia Head shot and the salmon hitting the Pacific near Lincoln City, Oregon.
That's the crux of the book, really: Brumback is asking the reader to judge for ourselves the depth of the conspiracy of the rich toward absolute control of the majority. Is there true evil in the world, or are all children borne of original sin?
Those toxins and carcinogenics and structural-violence systems were created, marketed, sold, defended, patented by men/women, in corporations. The sociopathic definition of a corporation is the same as the person, but can we give a free ride to the majority of people in the corporation who are just, to recoin my favorite phrase, Little Eichmanns?
In any sense, the embodiment of the Hudson Bay Company is the message in the Heart of Darkness, which reflects the individual as sociopath and the LLC as sociopathic, as the amorality of corporations is obvious from a million cases we all can tap into from the written record. That these companies - polluters - have gained personhood is compelling, from the start of this country's slide deeper and deeper into the morass of capitalism - set forth 133 years ago in 1886 in the Supreme Court case Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, This obscure case set the precedent that corporations have some rights under the 14th Amendment and were given de-facto personhood.
So, then, we have given corporations even higher status in this personhood allusion/legal definition in the Citizens United Case. What sort of person is a corporation?
Are they philanthropic and kind to their neighbors or are they the kind of people who will slit your throat to take your wallet?
For most of us in the Brumback class, we see the very nature of the corporation as both amoral and sociopathic.
They exist to make money, regardless of the social consequences. And they have gotten legal protections from the consequences of their crimes - a true Mafioso or cartel paying off the politicians and the cops and judges to gain unimaginable wealth and power over us, the 90 percent.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
2
2
1
