Poor people are gonna rise up
And get their share
Poor people are gonna rise up
And take what's theirs
-Talkin Bout a Revolution
Tracy Chapman
My sistren Chive, who's been living in Japan for the past two years, expressed shock earlier this week when talk of Occupy Tokyo surfaced. It seems an odd fit for a place like Japan where, in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake, there was no looting, people helped each other and pretty much carried on in a rather Zen Buddhist sort of way. We, the rest of the world that is, looked on with admiration at how, in comparison to what is still go-ing on in Haiti almost two years after their own devastating earthquake, the Japanese have rallied and moved on. The mental energy of a people who have existed for centuries with their civilisation always on the brink of destruction are likely to seize each and every day and make it count.
Seriously though, demonstrations against capitalism? Poverty is not something that I've ever associated with Japan, although I imagine that there must be people there who qualify as poor. It's like seeing a Euro-Trini in a maxi-taxi. You know it must happen somewhere and sometime, but you haven't actually seen it yourself so you're not sure if it's actually ever happened. But the Occupy Wall Street protest that has been spreading across the US and indeed to various parts of the world is an indication of how much people in coun- tries of supposed privilege are tired of the system that they've been spending the last two centuries trying to impose on the rest of the world.
The Wall, which was first built to protect the Dutch invaders from the indigenous people they stole the land from in the first place, is the frontline in this latest confrontation between the majority poor and the minority rich. And the sun is going down on the British Empire. And in Greece where Western civilisation was born, the people are eating the bread the devil knead. Like the rest of us. It's like the chickens coming home to roost for Western civilisation. Now the people who have sat by while their governments have waged wars against other people for the benefit of capitalists masquerading as liberators are realising that the profits the companies make do not in fact come back to them. Their American dream is a nightmare like it is for the rest of the world trying to pursue possession of its empty soulless trinkets that are supposed to make us feel like we fit in to their mode of progress.
The mysterious murders of so many African and Latin American leaders who were trying to wrest control of their natural resources out of the hands of multi-nationals and in so doing ran afoul of Western governments who couldn't let down the companies that had bankrolled their campaigns. The criminalising of having an opinion that is different to the mainstream. It's funny how the mainstream American media, after months of salivating up-to-the-minute, never-ending coverage of the Arab Spring, mysteri- ously can't find the time or space to show protests going on in their very own backyards. People in the West are finally exposing that what has come to be known and accepted as democracy is in fact a farce.
The fact is that you don't have to be a snazzy dressing dictator to oppress your people. You just have to be complicit with the rapists and bandits in the banking sector who do nothing but fondle figures all day to decide who will live and who will die of hunger or plain old invisibility. Occupy Wall Street and the occupations of spaces of power and authority by regular people warm the cockles of my anarcho-eco-feminist heart and in the same way that we have globalised greed, racism and the desire to keep up with the Kardashians, I also hope that we can globalise the desire to protest against injustice in whatever form it manifests itself. The demonstrations, the pro-tests, the civil disobedience are a means to achieving that democracy that people think they are entitled to.
The colossal failure of capitalism, or success, depending on which side of the poverty line you're standing, is that it fools you into thinking that you're an individual and that the rest of the people around you don't matter. That if you're a good worker bee and just keep your head down and make your money everything will be okay. But any system that so fundamentally goes against the basic law of nature-that everything and everyone is connected-is bound to fail, destined to destroy itself and the people who propagate these untruths.
Still, I imagine it will be a snowy day in hell before there is an Occupy Port-of-Spain or Occupy Ariapita Avenue. Unless of course this was sponsored by a political party that buses in supporters and offers them rum, roti or otherwise. Like when Papa Patos and his cronies used to coerce Cepep workers from La Brea to come to Port-of-Spain to have pro-smelter rallies, complete with rum, roti and very well designed and sloganned T-shirts.
A lot of us are still a little too drunk on our subsidised gas to wake up and realise that the more trees you cut down, the less food you will have to eat. And you can't eat concrete or money so it would probably make a lot more sense to plant trees instead of cutting them down to build more industrial plants. A lot of us think that Laventille and other hot spots are not our problem. But if one community fails we all do and we are seriously lacking in humanity if we continue to act like every Trinidadian/Tobagonian is not worthy of the same opportunities for education, healthcare, housing, food. We can't possibly Occupy Port-of-Spain when so many of us don't even occupy our own minds enough to think about the humanity we have and what we would do if we continue to lose it.
THOUGHTS
• Poverty is not something that I've ever associated with Japan.
• People are finally exposing that what has come to be known and accepted as democracy is in fact a farce.
• Any system that so funda-mentally goes against the basic law of nature is bound to fail.
