Global
Before the march began, Leisure thanked the demonstrators gathered at Fountain Square for “standing up for what is right and just.”
“I pray every day. I pray my son will be the last one to die. But I don’t think he will be. They have not made any changes to ensure that this will not happen again,” she said. “Who will be the next parent to lose their child?”
The multiracial crowd made its way through the Cincinnati streets chanting, “No justice, no peace! No racist police!” Banners were carried on the edges of the crowd reading, “Amnesty! Release all prisoners from the mutha fuckin’ rebellion!” and “Stop police brutality, Shoot back!”
The fatal shooting occurred early April 7 when a Cincinnati policeman, Steven Roach, chased Timothy Thomas into an alley and shot him in the chest at close range. The cop pursued Thomas because he fit the description of an individual sought by the police for 14 warrants, all of them misdemeanors or traffic violations.
Friends said Thomas had left the apartment he shared with his fiancée, Monique Wilcox, and his 3-month-old son, Tywon, to buy cigarettes. Thomas had recently earned his general equivalency diploma and secured a job as a laborer. He was planning to marry his fiancée in June.
By the morning of Monday, April 9, protesters were gathering in the streets, demanding justice. Thomas was the fourth black man killed by Cincinnati police since November, and the fifteenth such victim since 1995. A police news conference about the death of Thomas suggested a whitewash.
An estimated 30,000 to 50,000 demonstrators filled the streets of this Canadian city in what has become an uprising of opposition to closed and elite international trade negotiations. Demonstrators argued that the global trade negotiations of the FTAA only serve the interests and privileges of international finance capital, while the most basic interests of citizens, consumers, workers and the environment are regarded as disposable “trade barriers” by trade bureaucrats.
The surface reports of the recent Quebec City trade talks belie their real import. The mainstream media reported on the heads of state, the official pronouncements, free trade as if it were. The U.S. president declared the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) is about “liberty and democracy.” We saw images of the police fighting protesters, the tear gas, and the fence “protecting” those gathered to negotiate an agreement.
Nowhere in the mainstream media did we read substantive stuff of the drama. No one mentioned the power being wrested from sovereign states, giving corporations the right to sue governments when health or safety or environmental policies limit their capacity to make profits. Nowhere was there debate about the proposed expansion of corporate power to challenge governments’ “monopoly” on public services. Nowhere was there a call to accountability for the fact that under NAFTA the U.S. has lost hundreds of thousands of jobs, while Mexican workers’ wages have fallen even lower than pre-NAFTA earnings.
In the Winter 2001 issue of the Free Press, P. Thomas Harker wrote on “The Scoop on Proficiency Tests.” In short, he disapproved of the present statewide testing system. One of several reasons Harker gave, “Schools cannot mass produce uniform children . . .”
This taxpayer is a proficiency test supporter, of a sort. Accordingly, I’ll offer a different viewpoint.
Most people will agree that, strategically speaking, having a successful public school system is very simple. First, citizens collectively define what the students should learn. And, then teachers teach this curriculum to their students. The purpose of testing is to see if, in fact, the kids have learned the stuff they are supposed to. If not, the students restudy what they missed on the test. Then they get retested. Etc., etc.
Let us examine the economic downturn in this country as it affects our every day lives. What is the purpose of a recession or depression? First, a laid off worker is more apt to accept a lower paid job when they do find work and the idea is that they will work harder when they do go back to work. Also the people still working are expected to work harder to hold on to their jobs. Then to it makes it easier to fill the low paying jobs that no one else wants to do.
Another fact is the Armed services have been having trouble recruiting people to serve in the military lately. When jobs are more plentiful young people are not going to take up a trade, as quickly, where you learn how to kill people, and then go and practice your skills on the poor people of the world who do not agree with your ideology.
Nuclear Annihilation
Atomic Radiation
Eroding Nation
Sighing in relief
As it welcomes Armageddon
Holy Night
No-Fly Zone
Somalian Bones
Palestinians Stoned
Indians Alone
And hear the cries of the Natives
As they perish in the hive of the WASP
All is Calm
L.A. Riot
Jury Quiet
Media Diet
Suicidal Pilot
That ignites the blazing inferno
destroying everything in its path
All is Bright
Unfathomed Illiteracy
Racial Bigamy
Sexual Indiscriminancy
Government Secrecy
Obscuring the views of its toy soldiers
As they ride off into the darkness of the dawn
Round yon Virgin Mother and Child
Duke of Sales
Mendacious Tales
Polluted Wells
Permeating Smells
Choke the smiles of innocent consumers
Who unsuspectedly greet the silent killers
Holy Infant so Tender and Mild
Menacing AIDS
Asexual Plays
Incestual Gaze
Abortive Phase
Choosing the rights of another
In order for Columbus to start on the path toward sustainability, the citizens of Columbus must abandon materialistic desires and live respectfully with the natural environment. In Peter Hawken’s book The Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainability, Hawken states, “Society must recognize that ecological principles apply absolutely to human survival, and that if we are to long endure as a world culture, or as a group of local cultures, we will have to incorporate ecological thinking into every aspect of our mores, pattern of living, and most particularly our economic institutions.”