Capitalism

Since the fatal shooting of Denver Crips co-founder Michael Asberry, Denver's corporate media has been thrilled to sell news announcing that a new wave of gang violence is sweeping our city. What the media fails to report is the consistent harassment people on Denver's East and West Side face from the most violent gang in town--the Denver Police Department. The media fails to discuss the city's failing education system, the pressures of racist employment practices, and the predatory recruitment of youth of color into the even larger gang--the U.S. military.

Advocates for social and environmental justice are often plagued by questions of efficacy? What works? What will win? What are appropriate means of using media to create social change? The answers to these questions, particularly the last, will influence the future --trajectory of mass and local movements.

L.A.-based community activist Orland Bishop explains how the American economic system that assigns value to competition and scarcity of resources undermines oneness, which is inherently relational and abundant.

from the Mother Jones blog:

In 2000, Illinois resident Marvin Weatherspoon (right) got a Bank of America credit card that he used to consolidate $12,000 in home repair bills, thinking the 4.5 percent introductory interest rate would help him get out of debt faster. Instead, though, eight years later, he has paid the bank more than $15,000, yet has reduced his principal balance by only $800. The reason? Even though he's paid his bills on time, Bank of America inexplicably raised his interest rate, first to 19.99 percent and then to 25 percent, where it is today.

By Greg Palast; Posted on ZNet

What color is your disaster? It makes a difference. A life and death difference.

Dig:

Population of San Diego fire evacuation zone: 500,000
Population of the New Orleans flood evacuation zone: 500,000

White folk as a % of evacuees, San Diego: 66%
Black folk as % of evacuees, New Orleans: 67%

Suppose you accept the proposition that economic systems evolved from cannibalism, to chattel slavery, to feudalism, to mercantile capitalism, to what we have today, industrial capitalism. Suppose you accept the proposition that our present industrial capitalist economic system is not in its final form, but still is evolving.

Below is the February 17, 2007 article titled "How Wealth creates Poverty in the World" by Michael Parenti. It should really be titled "How Capitalism Creates Poverty in the World."

by Michael Barker; September 02, 2007 Published on ZNet

To date capitalists have financially supported two types of revolution: they have funded the neoliberal revolution to “take the risk out of democracy”,[1] and they have supported/hijacked popular revolutions (or in some cases manufactured ‘revolutions’) in countries of geostrategic importance (i.e. in counties where regime change is beneficial to transnational capitalism).[2]

By JOSEPH KAHN and JIM YARDLEY Published: August 26, 2007 on New York Times
China’s industrial growth depends on coal, plentiful but polluting, from mines like this one in Shenmu, Shaanxi Province, behind a village store. No country in history has emerged as a major industrial power without creating a legacy of environmental damage that can take decades and big dollops of public wealth to undo. Read More from New York Times