I live in Fremont, NE.
As maybe some of you are aware from the recent national news coverage, we have joined the ranks of American cities that have chosen to make it ‘more illegal’ to exist within the borders of our town without documentation of citizenship.
57% of those who turned out to vote in the election yesterday made the decision to pursue this path....a path that require all renters to now have a permit to rent a dwelling in our fair town, including the ever-increasing aged population that resides in our many assisted living facilities. Further, they have made it a ‘crime’ to harbor ‘illegals’ or to employ ‘illegals’. Further, the local police force will be allowed to employ ‘reasonable suspicion’ as a basis to stop someone and require proof of citizenship. Mind you, we are a town of 25,000, with an estimated Hispanic population of 2,000.
There was no valid catalyst or reason for this push. The crime rate among our Hispanic population is little different than among the Caucasian population. The default rate for unpaid medical charges at the local hospital is comparable. We have not suffered Hispanic gang related crime waves. The only ‘catalyst’ for this action came from the politically motivated agenda of Kris Kobach from Kansas.....you know him from the G.W. Bush cadre.
From the outside view it is enough of a tragedy at face value, given that this ordinance will marginalize 2,000 of our citizens, creating an atmosphere of suspicion, hostility, and overt racial discrimination. However, the true tragedy lies in the fact that this little side show is only a mild symptom of the real problem within our town and within our nation. No one is really asking what the hell happened to get us here.
The issue in Fremont, NE, and in Farmer’s Branch, TX, and in Hazelton, PA, and in every other corner of this nation are directly the result of unregulated and unchecked greed through ‘free markets’ and ‘globalization’.
When NAFTA became law in 1994, the result destroyed the agricultural economy of Mexico, displacing millions of farmers and farm workers in direct and related industries. Closely following on the heels of this collapse was the radical devaluation of the Peso due to the threat of foreign investment being pulled from the country because of the growing social unrest. When currency collapsed, interest rates soared to 59%. Given all the wonderful benefits from NAFTA, millions of Mexicans fled across an unsecured border, refugees from the neo-liberal policies of economic colonialism.
Back home, NAFTA was the final ‘tool’ necessary for our own industries to completely neuter Union Labor, lay off auto and heavy industrial workers enmasse, and ship the jobs South. In addition to the benefits of low cost labor, they were able to import the finished products back into our country without tariff. What a deal.
For 20 years, all that we have heard from our American companies is that we must give wage and benefit concessions to help them ‘remain competitive’ in the market. I guess that is really code for ‘We want you to compete for your job against someone in a poor foreign country that is making about 1/5 of your pay.’
We have suffered through a series of recessions and ‘jobless recoveries’ (what the hell is a jobless recovery?), as more and more of our jobs are shipped to foreign countries. We are seeing rapid growth in low paid ‘service’ jobs, commission based jobs, and ‘contract’ positions. Along with a loss of real income, we are also seeing the evaporation of any meaningful benefits support in this new reality. The ‘wealth gap’ continues to widen, with more and more of our population being shoved down to near-poverty levels.
The wealth reaped from 20 years of economic pillage allows these interests to control the political process within our country. Through legislation, they continue to shrink their contributions to the public coffers, leaving an ever-shrinking treasury to support our crumbling infrastructure of roads, cities, schools, and social safety nets.
As heartened as I was to have a progressive surge 2 years ago, we still see a broken system of governance hopelessly locked in a stalemate, with political maneuvering trumping any effective outcome. The air is electric with the political vitriol and hate of the ‘right’ pitted against the ‘left’.
All of this is just a very sad side show designed to keep us all occupied and divided. We fiddle while Rome burns.
It’s not just immigration. It is abortion, ‘drill, baby, drill’, same sex marriage, 2 wars, DADT, terrorism, it is (place your favorite topic here). While we all fight about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, we continue to circle the drain.
We live in a country that wants us to ‘trust’ our retirement savings to the people who are ‘too big to fail’. We live in a country that wants to turn over our only social support to these same folks to manage. We live in a country that has great medical care.....if you’re rich, and if you do get sick and old, you will quickly lose 40 years worth of savings to get well. We live in a country that wants to privatize education for profit, or allow religious zealots to receive public funding to proselytize and perpetuate. We live in a country that demands unregulated free enterprise, clinging to a broken and corrupt economic model for the benefit of the few.
All the while...they keep us occupied jousting windmills.
The good and well balanced folks of the Tea Party cry for revolution............I agree.
In the words of a great man: "Isolated individual endeavor, for all its purity of ideals, is of no use, and the desire to sacrifice an entire lifetime to the noblest of ideals serves no purpose if one works alone, solitarily, in some corner of America, fighting against adverse governments and social conditions which prevent progress. To create a revolution, one must have........ the mobilization of a whole people........and the exercise of militant unity......."