The
Mall of America was under protest Saturday December 20, the biggest shopping day of the year. The protest brought the #BlackLivesMatter conversation around to questioning the fuel of capitalism and the resulting systemic oppression -- that being
PRIVATE PROPERTY.
Soundcloud audio clip from the protest, captured by MPR News
Private property, but its not, When $250 million dollars of public money goes to the expansion of MOA (Mall Of America) - this is OUR PROPERTY.
It's time to demand an end to police violence and the murder ...
The organizers called out the use of public funds toward expansion of private property. The mall's policy posted indicating it is private property. Security and police operated on the basis it is private property. However, tax payers, the public, should have claim on this property and have rights surrounding it - having bought into a stake in the privately claimed property through paying taxes allocated to its expansion. We live in a country that believed that
taxation without representation was wrong and we went to war against an "oppressive regime". (Yes a Tea Party link)
This call out at the event is extremely significant as our current culture examines injustice and how it is having an impact in many lives. United our voices carry much farther, however our current culture is one predicated on division. Revolution would be uniting through our differences, discovering love and equality, and understanding the price to pay could very well be a whole lot of ego and "stuff" that gets in the way toward unity.
#BlackLivesMatter
The assembly called forward the injustices of the system which has seen increased police violence against black and brown people across the country.
From the story at MPR News:
The Mall of America set up security checkpoints at its main entrances in anticipation of the event, which comes at the height of the final pre-Christmas shopping rush. The connection wasn't missed on protesters, who chanted "While you're on your shopping spree, / Black people cannot breathe."
There will be plenty of articles that go into depth on the division being experienced through racism, privilege, and prejudice. What we may not be discussing are the economic roots of injustice.
CONSUMERS EMBRACING LOCALISM vs GLOBALISM
As long as we remain consumer-centered instead of producing what we need we remain part of a system that oppresses. There are ways to change and the path starts within each of us. We have to turn back to being friends with each other, being brothers and sisters to each other, and unlearning the ways of individual triumph which creates few winners and many losers.
CONSUMERISM - IS DEMAND BEING MET?
We have to understand the modes of production have moved from manual labor to mechanized. If less human labor is required, why are we not experiencing abundance? Why are we being told that we have to invest what we earn to have what can be made commonly available? Why is the market pitched at an economic class, the middle class, which is sliding into obscurity? We are teetering at the bring of revolution but the vision is not clear for so many - that we each must closely examine how we are tied into a system that extracts everything we gain turning it over to the few who have control over production. This is not winning.
EQUALITY IS THE ROOT OF ABUNDANCE
Are we losing access to knowing how to produce? Have we turned over the understanding to engineers creating machines that spit out what is "claimed to be desired" into a market that requires reaching up to attain? Abundance doesn't look like reaching up and losing in the process. This paradigm of abundance is going to be at odds with being labeled as entitlement by many. It is a matter of restructuring policy and procedures to enable equality for all. Continuing to call out for "haves and have nots" in the restructuring process results in failing to achieve gains in equality.
WHAT IS DEPENDENCE TODAY?
This is a recent article discussing GOP economic and political posturing for growth - The GOP's Entitlement Challenge:
“This is particularly troubling given the fact that full-time employment moves people off of government dependence and into self-sufficiency.
The manner in which "job creators" operate is one of maximizing profit and thus minimizing human labor. This creates an elusive dream of full employment when in fact this would gum up the works of maximizing profit - the currently held common reason for corporations to exist. It becomes important in a capitalist model that consumers are removed from the productive work force and positioned to purchase what they have lost access to creating.
Sadly for the economic model of corporate capitalism entitlement becomes a result that they simply cannot face. It makes no sense within the capitalist mind. Abundance can be a result of efficient production and ends up being the undoing of corporate control of the means of creating it. Abundance saturates the market, drives prices down, provides equality and none of this works in a capitalist model requiring profit and markets magnifying difference as value.
COLONIALISM AND GENTRIFICATION
Current culture has many questioning the subjugation of indigenous or long-term residents in desired areas. The quest to privatize everything is common now. Mainstream media has stopped reporting on people in the way of "progress" who are being jailed or killed. Those that are identified as different are the easiest to say are lower value, lower class, and easiest to subjugate through culture and societal norms. People divided are easier to control. People who don't understand the control structures they serve are even easier to control. Far too often we contribute to the system that dis-empowers our growth. Why are we doing this - the answer becomes "meeting our needs through a market bent against our survival". A market that extracts our commons, turns them into products, puts a price on the things we need for living and insists we must pay to be consumers of our commons.
EMBRACING THE COMMONS
Value is created through claims of scarcity and making something winnable by few. It rests in privilege generated through society and making certain "RIGHT" exists and what is not right is labelled as "WRONG" or OUTLAWED. In an equitable society everyone not only has access to winning, they are included. We would be working toward the healing of differences and sharing freedom. Critical dialog is an essential part of listening and being heard and all should have access to this.
Our commons - the water, air, land, good food, housing, and education needed for life not only need made available - they must be accessible to all. Economic models that draw out class lines and claim entitlement by the disadvantaged as wrong are in fact destroying access to our commons. Quite often when commons move to private property and ownership by the few, many suffer and likely die. This is why uniting to save public spaces and transparency in governance of resources are critical concepts to embrace and uphold as we discuss equality.
We can all win - but it will take unlearning eons of market mentality, ownership, bullying with might makes right, and patriarchy. It'll take a lot of healing communication with each other, lots of listening and critical conversation, meeting people face to face, trust, forgiveness, and integrity. It'll be a time of noble equality and ascension of our human condition. It will take steps that appear small and insignificant to some, yet be monumental when others hear of them. It's going to take being human, learning to be complete (healing) our short-comings, and discovering we can't do it all. We need each other.