March 8, 2000
Friends,I voted yesterday, but I'm not proud of it. It feels like collusion with a system that is so dysfunctional, so out of touch with the real issues facing the world and the real values of the people living in it, that it cannot possibly do anything but harm.
On my recent trip to Nezahualcoyotl, Mexico I went with a guy to walk his dogs. We went through the dump on the edge of the Lago de Texcoco, a flat marshy open area (you see it from the plane when you fly into Mexico City, just east of the airport), a place where you can let your dogs run free.
I first read about "Neza," a city of three million on the southeast edge of Mexico City, in "Five Families," by anthropologist Oscar Lewis. Writing in the early 50s, Lewis described the lives of five Mexican families. One lived in Neza. At the time it was a collection of squatters on the margin of the capital, populated by the poorest, latest migrants to the city. I had also read about the dump. Maybe not this dump, but I know I've read that garbage collection is a well-organized and politically powerful sector, and that unions are protective of the right to pick through the garbage for recyclable materials. In Neza garbage is collected in horse drawn carts with PRI emblems on the side. They carry it to the dump and deposit it in huge mesas of garbage that are picked over for valuables. Tumbled shacks of corrugated iron sit among the piles, many with "PRI" painted on the doors. A Mexican flag flies over one shack.
The dump is a village within the city, and it's a particularly rough and tumble place. I wouldn't wander in there alone, but with a guy that knows the place, three big dogs and broad daylight, I'm pretty comfortable.
We talk. He doesn't speak English; my Spanish is rudimentary. But somehow
we cover a lot of ground. He tells me that the Salinas government had planned
to subdivide the old lakebed and sell off parcels for development, devastating
one of the last large open spaces in the basin, but that the economic crash
of 1994 stopped the project.There has been some new development, however, and looking west over the dump I spot the familiar shapes of new prison towers, standing like rooks at the corner of a chess board. I saw the same shapes from the bus between Tijuana and Mexico City, and I've been seeing them more and more up and down California highways. New prisons. In Mexico, as in the US, a real growth industry. Filled there, as here, with poor people caught with drugs.
In the dump with my new friend, looking out at that new prison, we talked
broadly about the war on drugs and the rise of the prison industry. How
some people are securing money and power from it and develop a strong special
interest in perpetuating the war, and how the war on drugs serves the interests
of the elites by building a strong mechanism for repression of the lower,
dissatisfied class. For a long time (TOO LONG! and no results...the war grows and grows...the prison population doubles...worse than China) I have been a critic of the war on drugs. I have argued repeatedly and whenever I get the chance, that the drug war is worse than the drugs and is robbing our society of the chance to build a better world, one with more peace and justice for all, and the pursuit of happiness, too! But in the Neza dump I saw the war from yet another perspective and felt even more angry and helpless.
I asked the guy if he votes. He said no, and shrugged as if I'd suggested
something that was total bullshit. But what about the PRD? Cardenas? The
democratic opening? He doesn't believe it. To him they are all the same.
SHORTLY AFTER I returned home, the US passed the two million mark--two million people incarcerated in the US. Double the one-million prison population of 1990. More than in China which has three times the population. Every president since Nixon, of whichever party, has escalated the war on drugs. And they've done it for the crassest political motives. Fear sells. It gets votes. It pleases special interests who support candidates.
Two hot recent news stories illustrate what war does to society: the trial of four New York policemen for the murder of African immigrant Amadou Diallo, and the growing Rampart Division police scandal in Los Angeles. I think most politicos try to spin these as isolated instances when things go bad. In reality they are just what you expect in a war zone, which is how the police treat the inner city..
Yesterday in California, Prop. 21 and the two other anti-crime initiatives passed overwhelmingly. The voters have the Rampart Division scandal in their face and they still vote for this shit! Prop. 21 made it easier to try kids as adults. It didn't say anything about South-Central kids versus Beverly Hills kids...do you think they will be equally touched by this law? Now the PROSECUTOR rather than the judge decides. And more juvenile crimes get mandatory adult prison sentences. I just heard dramatic statistics that juveniles in adult prisons are much more likely than the general prison population to be raped and to commit suicide. This bill was part of Pete Wilson's anti-crime package that he couldn't get through when he was governor. He put it on the ballot, thinking that he also might be on the ballot as a presidential candidate. I wonder, deep in his heart, does Pete Wilson think it's important to turn the screws even harder on some poor injured child? Does he think that to protect good people from the bad ones that we have to continue to escalate the war on crime? Or does he do some cold-blooded calculations and decide that fear and war are good hot buttons that he can use on a gullible, sensation-driven electorate.
People voted for it...they continue to support it. The buttons work. And who does it hurt, really? Just the throw-aways. The people at the bottom who have no place in the high-tech efficient world where money changes hands. The ones who can't get work, or can't get to work on time. The people for whom the system doesn't work and will never work, and who are injured by it. Bad people. Heck, those people don't even vote!
I voted, but I did it with a sense of despair. I feel like it's 1968, but with no strong voice opposing the war. The war isn't even on the radar screen as an issue. It didn't come up in the presidential debates. We are awash in blather about "the drug problem" and "the crime problem."
There is a crime problem. There are bad people who have no respect for others, who take their stuff and enjoy inflicting pain and suffering.
There are drug problems. I bet everyone reading this has known someone with a substance-abuse problem of some kind. Just as we know people who have problems because of the food they eat, or in their relationships. Life is full of problems. We should wish each other well and try to help each other out when we can.
And then there are prohibition problems. Prohibition problems are gnawing at our gut, sapping our resources, discrediting our institutions, damaging our communities beyond repair. And for what? Are we close to eliminating drug abuse? I don't think so. Do me a favor, please. The next time you hear or read a phrase like "drug-related killing," ask yourself if it is really drug-related, or is it prohibition related. Is it drugs that have things so messed up, or is it the war on drugs that is fueling an endless cycle of suffering and oppression?
ONE MORE THING...This Thursday, March 16, the House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on a massive aid package for Colombia. Most of it is military aid. Clinton asked for $1.3 billion, but the House Appropriations Committee increased it to $1.7. Internationally, the war on drugs, like the war on Communism that it replaced, is leading us to do even more atrocious things than we're doing to our own people. Call your representative and senators (they will vote on it shortly) and urge them to reject all military assistance for Columbia. Point out that instead of committing our resources to war and violence, we should be putting them toward positive social programs (including drug treatment). We can build a world with more peace and more justice, where more people will feel they have a stake in their communities and a valuable role to play. Let's put our resources toward THAT kind of world and stop the futile, ugly decline into police statism.
The congressional switchboard for all representatives and senators is (202) 224-3121, or go to http://thomas.loc.gov/ and find your representative's home page and number.
I'm going to sign off for now. I have a lot more to say about this, and I don't think I've come close to expressing the despair I feel over these issues. Yeah, I vote. But I feel like a fool.
Peter
Copyright 2005 Peter Rashkin. All rights reserved. |
"Copter in Colombia"--Folger "Coffe Can" Houston's great song about Chief Black Hawk and military aid to Colombia