Alcohol, Atheism, Anarchy: The Triple A Threat to the Pro-Capitalist Salvation Army
No local news media outlet is interested in this story, UNTIL, there is an incident there, like the one in April 2018, where a distraught and mentally stressed veteran was denied his humanity and his dignity by the same culture of starvation and thus was shot by a SWAT team, seven bullets to the arm and torso. Not one of the people working at the center is a veteran, and the all-female staff and social services folk have little understanding of the soldier's plight, and, in fact, many mock the lives of former veterans now on the skids. Imagine any of the people coming out of social work programs or human resources departments or personnel and leadership classes getting down with this amazing concept.
Our cultural workers must serve the people with great enthusiasm and devotion, and they must link themselves with the masses, not divorce themselves from the masses. In order to do so, they must act in accordance with the needs and wishes of the masses. All work done for the masses must start from their needs and not from the desire of any individual, however well-intentioned. It often happens that objectively the masses need a certain change, but subjectively they are not yet conscious of the need, not yet willing or determined to make the change. In such cases, we should wait patiently. We should not make the change until, through our work, most of the masses have become conscious of the need and are willing and determined to carry it out. Otherwise we shall isolate ourselves from the masses. . . . There are two principles here: one is the actual needs of the masses rather than what we fancy they need, and the other is the wishes of the masses, who must make up their own minds instead of our making up their minds for them.
Ahh, yes, the Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung now so misappropriated and maligned, but read it here, The United Front in Cultural Work.
Little do most of the veterans who are white know they are part of a permanent class of underprivileged (and that oppressed and underprivileged grouping includes minorities in urban settings and cities) coming from cities and rural settings.
The very last paragraph in Freire's work should be the emblazoned quote on all hoodies these veterans wear to protect them from the wind and cold and rain of being homeless in Portlandia:
This work deals with a very obvious truth: just as the oppressor, in order to oppress, needs a theory of oppressive action, so the oppressed, in order to become free, also need a theory of action. The oppressor elaborates his theory of action without the people, for he stands against them. Nor can the people-as long as they are crushed and oppressed, internalizing the image of the oppressor- construct by themselves the theory of their liberating action. Only in the encounter of the people with the revolutionary leaders-in their communion, in their praxis-can this theory be built.
The obvious is never stated anymore in the workplace -
- "We are the majority, the leaders and managers and supervisors are not doing the work, and their decisions are not in the best interest of us, the worker, or the people we serve/service/manage/ teach/heal/assist."
- "We hold the key to the success of the business, agency or organization."
- "We can work to undermine the power of the mis-managers."
- "We can heal each other and work clandestinely to help each other at work and outside the workplace."
- "We can and should subvert the abuse of power and the graft and corruption of the management and systems within the power structure."
- "We are not unfree and we are not going to become oppressors as we break the chains of our own oppression."
- "We are human in an inhumane system."
- "We are not the sum total of our wages, our position in the workplace and our perceived worth/lack of worth in society."
These maybe lofty or Utopian ideas, but what else do we have as social service workers tasked to put band-aids on the gaping sucking chest wound of our society, where 30 percent of American children live in poverty, and where 60 percent of Americans are literally several paychecks away from losing it all.
For the veteran, both the believer and non-believer in the patriotic mumbo-jumbo, collective action seems a no-brainer in a system that supposedly inculcates everyone to be part of a team, and in theory, where one single soldier doesn't stick out. However, this band of brotherhood/sisterhood is a myth, as the soldiers have been indoctrinated to believe that their service in uniform was and is a crusade against the many faces of the enemy against our way of life; that American firepower around the world - with themselves as fodder for the empire - is god-given, hands down. Which means, veterans who are homeless struggle to square exactly how that happened in a country they were supposedly "defending." They come up with many straw men and whipping posts to condemn for their downward spiral.
War, Collateral Damage, Returning Vets - An Industry for the Many
High schools and even colleges welcome recruiters often to "career day" events. The organized murder game is often their only option for employment or educational advancement. But should they return home from a deployment damaged, with PTSD or in financial straits they are generally scuttled out of the spotlight. Suicide, domestic abuse, and homelessness are skyrocketing among them, but you would hardly know that if you watch cable news or read most mainstream newspapers. True, they are occasionally trotted out onto podiums by politicians for empty patriotic accolades, but only if they are telegenic and useful for the continuation of the war machine. Should they dissent from the narrative, they are rendered invisible.
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The ones rendered expendable by the American mainstream media, who are seldom if ever spoken of, are the civilian victims of the American Empire's endless wars, occupations and covert actions. They are ghosts that roam the sphere without glorious tombs in which to repose. No imperial-sanctioned, wreath clad monuments adorn their graves. No days of remembrance. They may have met their end in the killing fields created or fostered by the Empire thanks to a brutality paid for in full by the US taxpayer, but they are not important enough to be mentioned by the American media except maybe in passing. It is as if uttering their names might summon a spirit of vengeance from a mountain of corpses, the sediment of imperialism itself.
This mythology runs through the social services too, as their concept of the hero soldier is refracted through the looking glass of Hollywood and the massive propaganda machinery of the Pentagon, our government and a usurped history of this country's adventurism into the death knoll of so many millions of people worldwide in this empire's short history. War is a Racket is more than 84 years old, but oh-so relevant!
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