The Children of Flint -- Uniting Against Divide and Conquer

The Children of Flint

by Cindy A. Matthews

The children of Flint--they haven't gone away. They still need clean water to grow and thrive. Why didn't the mainstream media ask Trump or Clinton in the recent debate about how they'd clean up the toxic water in Flint and elsewhere in our country? Why didn't they ask about how the candidates would help the children of Flint who have been permanently crippled by the lead they consumed in their "safe water supply"? Why isn't the mainstream media and the establishment candidates insisting Michigan Governor Rick Snyder be sent to jail for crimes against humanity or at least recalled?

Simple answer--there's no money in cleaning up a dying city's water supply. Flint doesn't have enough rich donors to make any difference in the odds of the Donald or Queen Shillery winning the White House.  I mean, really. Have you ever heard of a super PAC called "Poisoned People for the Establishment Candidates"? The citizens of Flint don't buy enough luxury cars or consider fracking waste water or dumping an overload of pesticides onto our fields to run off into our streams, rivers and lakes a good thing, so the corporate sponsors of the mainstream media news outlets don't care what happens to the good people of Flint, Michigan (or the thousands of other towns in America in similar straits). 

Update: Flint now faces a Shigellosis epidemic as well:  http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-6

Face it--the rich and powerful one-percenters of 21st century America don't give a rat's ass for a city effectively killed off by NAFTA that is altogether too poor, too black, too old, too young or too infirm to even register on their social radar, let alone their consciences. What they don't know can't hurt them, right?

So, why do the rest of us, who have more in common with the children of Flint than the children of the corporate oligarchy, allow this travesty to continue? Many Americans simply don't understand how the class system works in our country and how these differences in class have caused--and continue to cause--environmental crises such as lead and other toxins in our water supply. The following short video explains how the class structure in the U.S. operates and how we've become blind to the fact that not every American belongs to the "middle class" in the year 2016. Watch and learn:

 

Can you see how the dots are connected? How keeping ordinary Americans in perpetual debt is all a part of the one-percent's plan to make even more money off us? How they don't want college students to be able to pay off all their student loan debt?  We are their cash cows, and they don't want us talking to each other and comparing notes and injustices. 

No, an educated and informed populace is a very dangerous thing. (The major reason they couldn't allow Bernie Sanders to win the Democratic nomination. He opened far too many voters' eyes to the reality of their situation. How dare he!) The 99% of ordinary Americans must be divided and kept apart so we can't come together and take on the 1% and create a more just society. We must be kept desperate and divided and constantly in debt. We are easily conquered and controlled that way. 

And so the super-wealthy establishment continually promotes the ancient divisions of race, gender, and religion to keep us poor working slobs squabbling among ourselves. Because if we're fighting each other, they can easily draft us into fighting more endless wars for them. Their military-industrial complex can continue to bring in more and more profits for them, not us, of course. (We're just good for cannon fodder.)

It's not a vast tin-foil-hat-wearing conspiracy. It's just the way things are. The way things have been allowed to progress in the United States of America--but it doesn't have to remain this way.  

We the people, the "Children of Flint" can rise up and fight back. We can unite against the elite's policy of divide and conquer. But first, we have to recognize how the system itself has been set up; how it is exploiting those we're supposed to respect in authority, and how under the illusion of  "keeping order" the system is being used against us and not for us. 

The following insights from Bern Notice give us the details.

Dividing the Working Class
by Bern Notice

We have seen many deadly tragedies recently that have involved the police. In the unlikely event that you aren't aware, there were two deaths of American citizens (Alton Sterling and Philando Castile) and the death of five police officers in Dallas, Texas. As one would expect, it garnered heavy coverage on the major media networks and is the subject of conversation nationwide.

References: http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/06/us/baton-rouge-shooting-alton-sterling/

http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/07/us/falcon-heights-shooting-minnesota/

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/09/us/dallas-police-shooting.html?_r=0

This piece is not intended to cover that which has been said on every news network or by most social media commentators. This piece is to note what is missing from the conversation. The problem with police shootings is not the sole problem, but a symptom of a bigger problem. That problem is deliberate and systematic division of the average working class citizens in America.

Eleanor Roosevelt said, "Pit race against race, religion against religion, prejudice against prejudice. Divide and conquer! We must not let that happen here."

If you stop and think about it for a moment, this is exactly what has happened. People group together and hate each other over religion, race, or sexual preference. We fight over political affiliation as though that is more important than addressing the lack of remediation of our infrastructure, education system, the environment, the economy (as it affects career prospects for working class citizens) and government corruption.

Corporations, politicians and multimillionaires grant themselves pay hikes, tax breaks and exemptions from laws that they either lobby for or pass into law. On the other side of that coin, our wages stagnate or plummet, our tax rates increase, and we are subject to more vague laws where you can be detained indefinitely without due process.

Reference: https://en.wikipedia.or /wiki/National_Defense_Authorization_Act_for_Fiscal_Year_2012

 

The Department of Defense had protesters listed as a low level terrorist threat until challenged by the ACLU.

https://www.aclu.org/blog/speakeasy/dod-aclu-we-surrender

So, as our schools are dilapidated and woefully inadequate, the quality of education suffers. This makes the next generation of citizenry easier to control and potentially less likely to question the status quo.

Reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoFkabTbthM

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/02/02/u-s-students-improving-slowly-in-math-and-science-but-still-lagging-internationally/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-breslin/why-public-schools-dont-t_b_7956518.html

As a result, instead of recognizing the real problem and uniting to force reform, we either stay on the sidelines out of frustration or are blissfully unaware of how we and our progeny are being screwed--some because they are too wrapped up in their own personal fiefdoms and subgroups to realize that we have more in common with the people in other groups than we do with those in power.

Some stay on the sidelines because they are too busy working two jobs to feed a family with wages that were below the poverty line years ago. As a result they are disconnected from politics and get their information from the other arm of the oligarchs--the corporate media.

The corporate media is driven to make a profit, not to educate and inform. Therefore, it is in their best interest to entertain you with "reality TV" as opposed to informing you on how your rights and freedoms are being chipped away piece by piece.

Even if it was profitable, it would not be in their interest to truly inform you. The corporations that own these networks (Universal, Viacom, Time Warner, Disney, etc.) are also major campaign contributors and make a killing off of advertisements during political elections. They also can use their campaign contribution to lobby for special favors from the candidates they helped get into office.

These same politicians will use the tax code to lobby for votes but won't implement common sense measures to rectify issues like what has happened. They could have made body cameras mandatory in all states after the Trayvon Brown incident, which would make it clear what happens during an arrest.

State and federal politicians could have ensured that police officers who have conducted themselves improperly would answer to a separate court system outside of the judiciaries that they interact with on a daily basis. That would ensure oversight and impartiality.

These are a couple of relatively easy and reasonable solutions to at least start with to remedy the issues involving police, but those in power don't enact them. Why? Maybe because it's easier to control a population that is fighting each other than it is to actually bring about real reform and curtail the corruption that is plain for all of us to see. 

It's not just a police problem. It's systemic.

Bio: Bern Notice is active in the political revolution, fighting against the corrupt system with his words. You can find him on Google+.

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Is there a political party that genuinely wants to help ordinary Americans take on our corrupt system of government by the oligarchs? Does anybody running for the presidency in 2016 really care about our children's future? Stop and listen to Dr. Jill Stein and Ajamu Baraka of the Green Party at their Green Party Forum and see if you don't agree there are still champions fighting for ordinary Americans...

 

Other video interviews with Jill Stein and town halls with the Green Party are available all on one web site:  www.whoisjillstein.com 

You can learn more about Jill Stein's run for the White House at her web site www.jill2016.com and  more about the Greens at www.greenpartyusa.com

  
Think outside the box. Unite with others against the corrupt system of divide and conquer. You want a future to believe in--not just suffer through--right?