Empty Store Fronts, a Poem

While riding around on errands today, I noticed an increasingly common phenomenon: empty store fronts. Small and locally owned, and operated, businesses are being driven out by massive mega-stores (especially cheap discount mega-stores like Wal-Mart, for example.) Local revenue and labor is being lost. Goods are imported from overseas. Large sectors of domestic manufacturing are going extinct, having been outsourced.

So I just wrote up this poem (very quickly - it's a first draft.) It's a reflection on this economic phenomenon of corporate power and the ceonsequential harm it does.

I hope it resonates with you. - bert

Empty Store Fronts

Stores closed down.

I see them.

Empty store fronts,

Peeling facades,

Broken windows.

All the capital,

It's being gobbled up!

By massive corporations.

Wealth conglomerated at tippy top.

Capital and labor markets,

shipped overseas.

(... and p.s. - please don't shop at Wal-Mart, and/or similar mega-stores.)

(p.p.s. see related post at OlyBlog: The Normal Course of Progress?)

[updated 9:54 p.m. 9/25/08]

I Should Like to Understand

I should like to understand how it happens that so many men, so many villages, so many cities, so many nations sometimes suffer under a single tyrant who has no other power than the power they give him; who is able to harm them only to the extent to which they have the willingness to bear with him, who could do them absolutely no injury unless they preferred to put up with him rather than contradict him. - Étienne de la Boetie

Civil Resistance - Nonviolent Direct Action

Scott McClellan is due to release a book in which he allegedly names names regarding the outing of Joe Wilson's wife, Valerie "Plame," as a covert CIA operative. Wilson had published an OP-ED in the NYT [linked], in which he called into question the veracity of Bush Administration claims of a specific threat from Iraqi WMD. According to McClellan, high officials (Bush, Cheney, Rove, among them) were involved in the outing. Read more about McClellan's new book here [salon] or here.

News has also breached the wire of another failure in the Democratic Congress to pass a bill that would require the substantial withdrawal of the US military from Iraq. (If that link doesn't work, try this one ["Dems bill on Iraq wouldn't end war"].)

The current system is not working. I want to stop the war. I want to protect our soldiers from being coerced into fighting an improper and unnecessary, aggressive war of occupation. I want to protect the Iraqi people from the harms that the occupation has wrought.

I want to see a civil resistance to this delinquent federal government. I believe that one of the most effective tactics that we can use is nonviolent direct action.

Remember that the democrats, elected under a mandate to end the (illegal, immoral, etc.) aggressive war of occupation - are not living up to their mandate. Congress, and the Democratic wing in particular, are derelict in their duty to exercise oversight.

The burden falls upon us, "the People," to enforce the rules that govern society. These rules (e.g. against aggressive war making) exist for the benefit of all people.

Wars of occupation that are designed to control natural resources - like the war over oil in Iraq - are inherently unjust and do immeasurable harm - to human beings, and to humanity in general.

There exists within all of us a human capacity to care, and to respond out of heartfelt emotions.

These deaths and this suffering never needed to happen.
Please, ask of yourself, what can I do to make it so my government doesn't wage unnecessary and illegal aggressive wars?

We, as regular people, can have an impact. We can have a beneficial impact. We can work to stop needless suffering.