Tag: North American Free Trade Agreement

What is happening in America and Europe bears study and reflection. On the surface, we see a rightist drift, as fearful, resentful publics empower forms of politics that promise safety, especially regarding terror attacks that have blown up and bloodied world capitals recently. If we look closer, however, we see how economic insecurity, driven by the investor class, has waged an austerity war against working-class and poor people. For economic insecurity begets political insecurity.

The late Eldridge Cleaver, minister of information of the Black Panther Party, once said that when fascism comes to America, it won’t need a swastika; it’ll be singing Yankee Doodle Dandy – and waving American flags. Welcome to the New Fascism – unleashed will be the most racist, vicious and nationalist forces in the country. That’s what “America First” really means. (Guess who’s last?) “New Fascism” – also known as Trumpism.

Zapata’s legacy of integrity, dignity, self-determination and emancipation rang loud and clear to many, not as simply a worthy cost of freedom but a call to duty, to fight and challenge for a deserved justice. Zapata and the EZLN generalized their plight. Exposure itself can be a force when successfully framed: “Circumstances create man as much as man creates his circumstances.” As the vanguard, we must create ours.

I’ve been watching for days now as media reports display the growing hatred at the arrival of Central American children across the Mexican-U.S. border. American voices crackle with bile as they begin the drumbeat for their immediate deportation. They are refugees from want and war, almost all the result of U.S. interventions in Central America in support of murderous military governments and the mindless drug war.