The Alphabet Soup of GANGS and NATIONS

[Orwellian_Ghost]

I been reading the newspaper and don't like what I been readin'. Someone had the audacity to bring up the "G" word.

And G rhymes with T which stands for TROUBLE.

We got trouble right here in Granola City (GC). And trouble begins with the havenot's wanting what the have's have got. And Havenot's starts with H which doesn't rhyme with any other letter of the alphabet, just like R which stands for RACE.

Oops, did I say that?

Because GC knows that it has a race problem. And GC is a college town so we can study it because S rhymes with mess and that's what we have on our hands right here in GC. Now granola starts with g which also stands for gangs so we come back to square one.

Impromptu, semi-spontaneous and very unsanctioned incidents of wealth being re-distributed on the streets are occurring. Groups of young street urchins making trouble, doing what comes naturally when the leaders hail from a broken, largely marginalized and dysfunctional part of the community --can you say ghetto which also starts with g but because we dwell in GC and dwell rhymes with L which stands for Liberal, we can't use that word. The 'G' word, any g word for that matter. Except what you put in your cereal bowl.

Now, they've been studying this problem for decades. Gangs have existed since the beginning of time. Hey, didn't gangs of Neanderthals take down the woolly mastodon? And, gangs of slaves led by Spartacus caused all that trouble for Rome. Gangs of immigrants even provided material for a movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio. But they haven't solved the problem of street gangs in America yet because the real problem is capitalism which starts with 'C" and rhymes with G which, as we all know now, rhymes with T. And that stands for trouble. Gangs or nations, what have you, folks just covet what other people have, like Mideast oil, or a pair of sneakers or a nicer cell phone or a sense of being powerful in all of its permutations, whether it's terrorizing the streets of GC or building bases, maintaining huge standing armies and bullying the rest of the world under the pretext of safeguarding democracy. Capitalism fuels (no pun intended) the desire for what's bubbling in someone else's backyards or the fancy dancy sneakers on someone else's feet.

To extend the discourse, when people resent being marginalized, stomped on, ignored, downtrodden, they do something about it. Terror, after all, is the weapon of the less powerful. That damn T word. Where it all starts again, if you trouble which starts with T, you need cops which start with C. And suddenly you have a police state. Police starts with P and that leads to a diminution of D which, as we all know, is the first letter in the word democracy.

But that couldn't happen here!

Now liberals think that they can apply a band aid to the problems of society but, here in enlightened GC, the fault line between the have's and the havenot's has continued to fester despite the best efforts of do-gooders, social service agencies up the whazoo, and a hell of a lot of Talk which also starts with T but doesn't make the Trouble go away.

Because the problem of race in America started as a corollary to capitalism, plantation style, and you can't have one without the other. Which is a line of another song. And, speaking of songs ...

GC should stop trying to recreate Oprah's reading list, what with all the community reading projects we do around here. What the community should be doing is reprising some street theater. Get the whole town involved in producing music rather than producing committee reports, just like Robert Preston recommended in the film, The Music Man. COnvert the streets into a musical stage rather than an asphalt jungle.

How about if the whole town got together and put on West Side Story? "Tonight, tonight, won't be just any night." Start tapping toes, snapping fingers.

"Officer Krupke, you're really a slob.
This boy don't need a doctor, just a good honest job.
Society's played him a terrible trick,
And sociologic'ly he's sick

We are sick, we are sick,
We are sick, sick, sick,
Like we're sociologically sick!"

[flashl]

1. War of Words or Words of War?

After years of negotiation, Senators Dianne Feinstein and Orin Hatch were finally able to pass their anti-gang bill. In essence, the bill will make it easier to classify youth as members of gangs, and intensify the penalties for those who are charged with crimes. Despite its devastating implications, particularly for young people of color, the legislation was uncontested by Senate colleagues and publicly celebrated as a victory in the “War on Gangs.” As always, the language of war was used to sanitize a filthy set of politics.

Read More ...

[Orwellian_Ghost]

2. Yes

From link:

"For decades, politicians have used the rhetoric of war in order to draw public support for questionable domestic policy initiatives. In 1971, President Nixon launched a full scale “War on Drugs” that has heavily tipped the criminal justice scales against poor people, petty drug users, and small time dealers. More recently, after the September 11 tragedy, President Bush unleashed a War on Terror that has undermined any semblance of individual privacy and civil liberty for the entire nation."

[gatorboy]

3. You're Ezra?

EDIT: http://www.ithacasucks.blogspot.com/

Welcome Ezra! :hi: