Can We All Get Along?

[unhappycamper]

Can We All Get Along?
by Randall Amster
Published on Saturday, July 10, 2010 by CommonDreams.org

The cauldron of hatred and anguish bubbles over like oil slowly seeping into fragile marshlands. The ravages of perpetual warfare rend the fabric of society and sow the seeds of mass insanity. Racism forms a patina over our relations as four centuries of unspeakable atrocities are elided from our master narrative. Politicians prattle, pundits pander, and plutocrats prosper while families grieve and rifts widen. The clock ticks mercilessly and no one seems the wiser.

Where exactly does one cast their gaze anymore to find shelter from the storm? War, conflict, and violence permeate every aspect of modern existence - from our oil-soaked daily lives to the harsh inevitabilities of geopolitics. States legalize racial profiling and ethnic subordination, creating a climate of fear and antipathy. The environment is everywhere a casualty of war, yet the people who orchestrate its devastation are immunized from rebuke while those challenging their impunity are treated as de facto terrorists. And still, we can't even legally limit the most outlandish firearms in our midst.

~snip~

No more. We cannot afford to continue in this manner for another second - our very existence is in peril, and I would rather risk ridicule than court complicity. Not too long ago, in a situation reminiscent of the despair now felt in Oakland and elsewhere, an ordinary person spoke an extraordinary truth in plain and plaintive words:

"People, I just want to say, you know, can we all get along? Can we get along? Can we stop making it, making it horrible for the older people and the kids? ... It's just not right. It's not right. It's not, it's not going to change anything. We'll, we'll get our justice.... Please, we can get along here. We all can get along. I mean, we're all stuck here for a while. Let's try to work it out. Let's try to beat it. Let's try to beat it. Let's try to work it out."

On the streets of America, yet again, a young life is extinguished by the arm of the state, a person of color perishes at the hands of a white oppressor, a martyr is created and justice is barely upheld. In the killing of Oscar Grant by officer Johannes Mehserle, we witness a microcosm of the entire paradigm on which the pervasive violence of our lives rests. Grant, a black fast-food worker with a high-school equivalency and a rap sheet, father of a four-year-old daughter; Mehserle, a white police officer with educational opportunities and a spotless record, father of a child born on the day after the shooting. Grant, a victim even before that fateful morn of January 1, 2009, and Mehserle, groomed for the role of oppressor - their destinies now linked forever.

[Lost4words]

1. K & R!!

[ixion]

2. Indeed. We must get along, or face extinction.

in my opinion. k/r