Working

StudsOne of America’s great socialist leaders, Studs Terkel died last week during the pre- election hoopla. What made Studs Terkel stand out from all the other Americans of lesser stature was his respect for the average working person as a human being. He proselytized on behalf of the common people, even as American society increasingly began to devalue those who actually do the work of society, as opposed to holding up high those that are profiting from the work of others.

Studs was best known for his book,WORKING, which was not a novel, but rather a book of interviews where working people told of their lives. In today’s America, the reading of this book would be a revelation for many, who grew up and learned only the warped values of the Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Cheney Era.

See Democracy Now for interviews and programs about Studs Terkel, a Great American leader of the First Class, the American working class.

This deformed thing we call Justice

America seems poised to possibly elect a law professor into the White House later this year. Funny that this legal specialist, who taught LAW for 10 years at the University of Chicago, has remained strangely silent as the US government instituted torture into its legal codes, eliminated Habeas Corpus, and trampled whole sale on the US Constitution.

I don’t remember a bleep of protest from this legal specialist during these recent times. Where were you Barack Obama? Your specialty is law, you hide that fact??? It’s because you kept so silent, is it not? You and your party are collaborators, aren’t you?

But this is not about Barack Obama and his loud silence. It is about America’s attitudes toward the police. It is about this deformed thing in America we call Justice. It is about how the people trust the police’s word, even though there is so much evidence that the police consistently fabricate testimony, fabricate evidence, and fabricate the supposed need for their own reproduction as a cancer upon our country… one that is growing, growing, growing., just like the military.

I opened up Parade in the Springs GagShit newspaper this morning to see the question posed, ‘Do we need more police?’ Shouldn’t the question actually be, ‘Don’t we need less police?’ or ‘Are we actually safer with this growing number of police plaguing the US?’ What would your answers be to these questions? Please tax me more, I want more jails?

I borrowed this phrase ‘the deformed thing we call Justice’ from Joe Bageant’s column titled Old Dogs and Hard Time Joe is the closest approximation we have today in America, to having a live Junior version of Studs Terkel on hand. His writings always seem to highlight the real working class issues in America, and I love reading him! Power to the People, Joe!

Here is my last question… Can we really have anything other than a deformed ‘justice’ in a country that hates the common person so much? We don’t respect the common people, for all they do is just work without being able to buy that much. How despicable is America’s attitude toward them.

Dominant elite culture thinks it a crime that poor people who work and consider them lowest on the totem pole! Shame on the common people for being so low and poor!, You Guys. It’s a crime these days to be working poor! Don’t you know it?

Yes, many in America really still want to imprison yet more of the poor and working class. For that, we need yet more police, yet more ‘law’, and yet more weaponry. These perverts… this lowe echelon of worker rabble… are seen to be like foreign Muslims almost. Show them no mercy! Yes, that’s what it’s like in America with this deformed thing the powers-that-are call Justice. ‘Justice’, in the opinions of the authoritarian elites, are them ordering the kicking around of the people who actually do the hard work. The poor are considered dumb louts for doing the work we all depend on! They deserve to be punished think so many of the self- righteous, wanna-be top A-holes!