By Mary Getlein

What Have They Done To The Rain? was written by Malvina Reynolds. Malvina’s song was protesting nuclear testing on the people and livestock of Utah in the 1950s. Most of the people and the livestock got cancers, and died. Malvina’s emphasis was on children and families – to protect our world, our planet  from our own greed. Our greed cuts down the old-growth forests. Our greed is killing our children! We sell arms, we sell video games that train young boys how to kill. We kill our children – we feed them horrible food, food that will make them sick and give them life-long diseases. We kill our children – we quickly diagnose them and put them on psycho-tropic drugs, whose side effects might manifest as homicide, suicide, or both.

We kill our children – we lock them up for false charges to ensure we have a huge population of prisoners. California’s cash crop is prisons. California is free-falling right now. They can’t pick up the trash on Venice Beach, but they can put thousands of brown, black and low-income whites in jail. We kill our children. Every one of the corporations related to this is making a “killing” on killing our children.

The real point of Occupy for me is taking off the every day glasses of “I’m ok, screw everybody else.” The notion that if you’re “ok”, then things are really “ok” for the rest of us. They’re not. Unemployment is high, rents are high, people are living in their cars, if they have cars. Poor people are being discriminated against and harassed, while rich people who commit REAL crimes are let off the hook.

Occupy is calling a pig a “pig”. (Sorry to all the real pigs). How many houses do you need? Seriously. How much wealth does one person need, when he can go out in the streets and see people sleeping on the sidewalk? And these are not all young run-aways. A lot of these people are old. They spend their days going to food pantries, or begging on the Boardwalk, and finally going to sleep on the sidewalk at night.

Since when did the notion of having a Third World country inside the United States become a good one? This is a frightening scenario. More and more people living in the street, while the rich people drive around in limos, fly around in helicopters, and generally have  a good time.

So what happens when all the people in the streets get sick? All the people in the streets are stricken by small pox, bubonic plague, cholera, typhoid, measles … Pick one, any one. All are highly contagious diseases and ALL the poor people are sick. Not just a little sick – FRIGHTENING sick, with big huge boils forming all over their bodies. Where their bodies collapse and they die with blood exploding from every orifice. “Highly contagious” – which means everybody gets it. Then what? Then you would see a mass exodus  from wherever the rich people live – oh yeah, they’ll be on the first plane out of here (remember Katrina?). Then all the poor people DIE, then years later, when the government has finally decided it’s safe to go back, they let the rich people back.

I have no problem believing in the real history of this country which was based on greed, taking all the land, killing all the Native Americans, destroying their language, their customs, their belief system.

Today on Reservations there are huge amounts of alcohol and drug abuse. You can’t tell me this is not deliberate. This is deliberate. This is just as deliberate as the amount of liquor stores in South Central L.A. More liquor stores than grocery stores. Genocide! The first thing the Army did when they got out West, was to give liquor to Native Americans. So they got strung out on alcohol. They never had alcohol, or sugar, in their lives until the white armies showed up. When your culture is destroyed, and they give you alcohol – you drink. And watch your culture, your life, go down the tubes.

The psych drugs they give us don’t work. 70% of people taking anti-depressants say they don’t work. We’re basically guinea pigs for their edification, and their profit motive. They have convinced us we need all these drugs, and we have to pay accordingly. It’s  the capitalist system at its best! They are the doctors, your are the patient, and you do what they say. But if these drugs don’t work, or end up killing the patient, all the doctors can say is “I’m sorry.”

If we were healthy, if we didn’t spend most of our lives on the freeway … what kind of life would that be? If you knew your neighbors and talked to them, what kind of life would that be? If you could realize that everything you do has an impact on the planet, and we are losing eco-systems and animals so fast, could we change? Could we hear the cries of other people in our country, can we hear the cries of the poor? Can we hear the cry of the tree that got cut down? Can we hear the cry of the seagulls over the polluted sound? Can we hear anything, except the relentless beating of our hearts, and our own selfish needs?

We have to care again. We have to really love each other, because if we can love each other, maybe we can love someone else. Hating each other is not working. We have to find a common ground, and that is this – we need to help our planet. To survive our time upon the Earth.

We have to have respect for our children and not lock them up at the first offense. Do you really want a future population of young adults to come out into society after spending most of their lives in the prison system? This is a scheme to serve only the rich billionaires who proposed it in the first place. By arresting someone, you automatically condemn them to the criminal caste. Why should anyone care about a criminal? So prisons get away with solitary confinement, overcrowding, and many ways to put your life in danger while you are locked up. This is just an eerie reminder of the way society treated black people in slavery. They viewed them with a dollar sign over their heads . If they treated them halfway decent, it was only to increase their profit margin.

The white owners would rape their female slaves and then sell their own children down the river, to avoid the “disgrace”. The way we sell our own children down the river is buying killer video games and letting our child play them. They desensify in a devastating way, and they basically train your kid in Army situations. Do you want a trained killer, age 14 – at the height of hormonal hatred for their parents – living in your house? Do you really believe violent video games had nothing to do with all those young adolescents  going to school and killing other adolescents?

Now a new way to kill your female adolescent child is opening up – Republicans running for office want to repeal Roe v. Wade. Remove the legality of abortion and open the door to criminal, back-alley abortions for the poor. Many patients who are requesting abortions are in their teens, and already have two or three babies. If  a young mother, living in poverty, requests an abortion, I would say give it to her. And provide her with help with the children she is already raising.

The Republicans are going after women. People want to know why women aren’t fighting back. Maybe women are trying to keep their job in these times of no jobs, or part-time jobs. Unemployment has run out, people can’t pay their rent, they are evicted, and suddenly another family has hit the streets. So yeah, maybe that’s one reason women are not fighting back.

Maybe they are tired. Maybe doing something requires too much energy, when you are raising your daughter’s kids, because your daughter is in jail.

Maybe you are scrambling for a place to live before you lose everything and are left on the curb. When you’re on the curb, it’s pretty hard to fight back.

Maybe you don’t understand what feminism is. I have heard a lot of women say ” I don’t really feel like I’m a feminist, because I have nothing to rebel against. I don’t feel like I’ve ever been discriminated against.” Most of the women saying that were young, full of energy, health  and beauty. But try looking for a job in this job market, when you’re over 60 and you’re not young, cute and healthy. You’re “old”, your back hurts a lot, your hands are starting to swell up with arthritis, and you’re scared. Who is going to hire you? As what? A greeter at WalMart, or the guy who hands your your coffee at McDonald’s? All day on your feet, at age 65, is this what you thought it would be?

Maybe we already know who the enemy is, and we don’t have to go to policy meetings to figure this out. Republican men in $6,000 suits are trying to reduce women to a secret? “Oh, did you hear so and so’s daughter had an abortion?” This is not the question. The question is when are these guys going to get a clue?

They are suffering from the Messiah complex and they actually believe they are working for Christ. What would Jesus do? Well, he always said stuff like love each other, and be kind to each other. Love should be the center of your life. These people are haters and they hate anything they can’t control. They are against reproductive rights for women and have a totalitarian approach to a medical episode in the life of a woman. They should stay out of a woman’s womb. If they hate women, they hate themselves, because they came from a woman. Or is it because they were raised by women, and women were viewed as subservient?

The Republicans need to look over on their side of the street – what have they done to sell the country out?

We are not stupid people. We do not believe the lies and the stupidity coming out of the ruling class. Democrats … Republicans … they’re all the same. Rich men in expensive suits, plotting new ways to dehumanize the planet. And kill your kids.

They don’t care. Remember Katrina? Remember George W. Bush – quite possibly the stupidest President we ever had – drained all the money out of the US budget to pay for two horrible wars? The guy had a big grinning face all the time. George Bush Senior had a great partnership with the Sheiks of Saudi Arabia. After 9/11, when all the planes were grounded, they were given secure passage out of this country (George Bush – Head of the CIA! Get it?)

Remember? Don’t forget your brain while you go vote. Don’t vote for Republicans – because they actually do want to kill your kids. Prison or war, who cares?

The motto of the ruling class has always been “Keep the poor people down.” Which means all of us who ain’t rich, and ain’t on the other side of the line drawn in the sand.

1% or 99%? Which side are you on?