Urban decay in the US, chiefly afflicting the "inner city" (Black and Latino neighborhoods). This ruin is in Charlotte Street in the South Bronx, New York City.
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]oday is the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr's birthday. How appropriate to write about one of the most important issues he spoke and marched about: Ghettoes. The 1970s rock group War had a hit song in their ' The World is a Ghetto ' ( 1972). So apropos now in our 'Year of the empire 2019':
Walkin' down the street, smoggy-eyed
Looking at the sky, starry-eyed
Searchin' for the place, weary-eyed
Crying in the night, teary-eyed
Don't you know that it's true
That for me and for you
The world is a ghetto
Information point in Venice's ghetto. Even today, this ancient part of the city may be less sordid than most of its US counterparts.
The term Ghetto comes from the Jewish area of Venice in 1516. Its dictionary definition is ' A part of a city, especially a slum area, occupied by a minority group or groups'. Students of the Jewish Holocaust will recall the ghettoes created in Poland for the Jews. Steven Spielberg's great masterpiece film Schindler's List (1993) captured the horror and deprivation of the Cracow Ghetto. Obviously, that type of ghetto will always be placed on the top of the list along with today's Gaza Strip, guarded so efficiently and free of humanitarian aid by the Israelis. Is there some sort of terrible comparison here, whereupon the relatives of many who were destroyed by the Nazis are now responsible for ditto to the Palestinians? Food for another column, yes?
Our nation, one of the most prosperous in the world, can it still have ghettoes? Well, going by the dictionary definition of course Amerika has always created ghettoes. Maybe not as brutal as the two aforementioned ones, but still harsh as can be. When far less than one percent of our populace earns mega millions each year (the actual figure is put at something like 0.0001%), there is only so much left to share among we the 99+ %. If you use a high school economics class's lesson plan, and say that there are 10 people in a group, with $100 to go around, and one in the group has $70, then the other nine have to share the remaining $30. If shared equally that comes out to $3.00 each. This is in reality what is going on not only in Amerika, but throughout the industrial world ruled by "US-style neoliberalism"—the modernised, "polite" word for capitalism.
What our Amerikan ghetto system does is not so much to keep we working stiffs in, but to keep truth, justice and economic fairness OUT! Practically since its inception, what is labeled the ' mainstream media' has been doing the bidding of the fraction of that 1% who rule us. Yes, rule. We are repeatedly given propaganda through this media telling us that we are a democracy and a free enterprise system. Yet, anyone with a junior high school education must realize that the majority of our ( so called ) elected officials are within or bordering on that less than 1%- meaning they have lost any semblance of knowing the travails of working stiffs. The ( so called ) free enterprise system is in reality a corporate behemoth that keeps us all in this ghetto of lower pay, dead end jobs, inferior health coverage with a ' cut or drug' medical system, no real safety net and diminishing government services.
For all intents and purposes inhabitants of the ghetto live in another nation within America.
Yes, there are levels of ghettoization, each one surpassing the other in just how low people can sink. Sadly, for people of color, the ghetto has existed for them far longer than for we with white skin. Yet, the Fat Cats who run this empire have gone on overdrive to screw all of us, regardless of how we look or sound. To stand behind the banner of either half of the One Party/ Two Party system does nothing to alleviate working stiff pain. Period! As exemplified by MLK Jr. only mass protest and mass realization of who the real ' criminal class ' is can offer a road for change—and liberation. King did not just ' talk the talk', but ' walked the walk'. Isn't it time for we from Ghetto Amerika to do the same?
PA Farruggio
MLK Jr. Day 2019
The Russian Peace Threat examines Russophobia, American Exceptionalism and other urgent topics
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Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found
In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” — acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump — a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all.— Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report
