by Mark Evans

IS There oppression in America today, the "land of the 
free and the home of the brave"? Is it not oppression 
that there are fifteen million homeless
souls in America, driven like cattle who can find no 
pasture, marginalized, and treated like criminals by the law? 

Is it not oppression that the land, once taken by 
force from the Native Americans, was stolen again
 and given to the railroad magnates and the
timber barons, who have raped and looted it these 
seven generations? 

The earth does not belong to any man, nor should it.
 The Indians knew that. We are merely stewards upon it.
 The Torah also states, "The land shall
not be sold forever." But they have parted my garments 
among them and over my vesture they have cast lots. 

Is it not oppression that four hundred white men control 
seventeen trillion dollars worth of the resources of 
North America? Have you seen the
jungle camps or visited the cardboard shelters of those 
who are without? Is it not oppression that seven 
families control five grain cartels that
control the merchandising of all the grain of the world? 
All barley, all corn, all millet, oats, rye and soybeans, 
all wheat, rice and
potatoes-controlled by seven families? 

Tom Jefferson's vision of an educated, agrarian America 
of yeoman farmers was crushed by the system of usury-debt 
capitalism, excessive
railroad rates, and brokers gambling in grain futures on 
the stock exchanges of New York, London, and Chicago. 

The troika of bankers, grain cartelists, and 
businessmen-in-government betrayed the promise 
of a continent for prosperity (true abundance, not the
chimerical promise of politicians) that existed in 
potential for the many, but was murdered by the 
greed of a few. 

IS IT NOT oppression that the family farm has been 
sold down the river and that Agribusiness has gobbled 
up the Midwest, that Standard Oil owns
more than a quarter of the Central Valley, that the 
lumber cartels-Georgia Pacific, Boise-Cascade,
 Louisiana-Pacific, and Weyerhauser occupy the
forests? 

IS IT NOT oppression that the powers-that-be are 
building more prisons to house "repeat offenders
"-America's angry children, who grew up
twisted, victims of a vicious system that was constructed 
to benefit the two percent who own ninety-eight percent 
of the wealth? 

IS IT NOT oppression that the CIA runs the heroin 
and cocaine traffic into the U.S., while the DEA, 
state and local law enforcement hypocritically
bust non-union drug dealers, pushers who haven't 
paid their dues, and the occasional user, for 
window-dressing? The War on Drugs is a War on
Us-the tailor-made excuse to implement police-state, 
neofascist programs such as the Crime Bill. Who benefits? 
It is only the bond-holding class. 

Ah, the bond-holding class, that worthy elite of fine 
old families, oppressors all, whose greed knows no 
bounds, whose insolence is amazing. A
people conscienceless, amoral, who would have us build 
bigger prisons to keep all those "ruffians" and 
"ne'er-do-wells" off the streets. A dialogue
inside a bond-holder's head: 

"Yes, and while we're at it, why don't we just throw 
in those poets, Marxist 
intellectuals, radicals, social agitators, and other 
trouble-makers.
Three strikes you're out are two too many. How about 
one strike? After all, 
nature abhors a vacuum, and a prison, once built, 
must be kept full. 

"But for the present, just build the prisons and the 
"reeducation" labor camps. 
Prisons always run in the red, and we like that 
because the banks
which have bought the bond issues the states have 
floated to build the prisons, 
tender us a tidy dividend. 

"By and by we'll mount a media blitz on television 
explaining why we have to 
put these incorrigibles to work in prison to pay their 
way, so to
speak, and then we'll job them out to slave for a 
few measly cents a day to 
corporations which, of course, we own." 

It is oppression that the establishment media has
 propagandized the 
suburbanites into believing the answer is bigger 
prisons and that the middle
classes have believed the lie. 

It is oppression also that says "There are too many
 people, and that the homeless 
are "useless eaters." But this lie, more subtle, 
has been tailored to
fill the pipes of liberals and "deep ecologists" 
and acquiesces to the holocaust 
of the homeless. 

Let those who think there are too many people 
fly over the vast, uninhabited 
former forests of the Pacific Northwest now 
decimated and looted by
the Wall Street junk bond cronies of Reagan and 
Bush, but owned, still, 
by a very few corporations, which inherited or 
purchased them from the
timber barons, who got them by fraud.

"Exodus ," Bob Marley said. But where to go? 
And how to get there? 
The real struggle here, as in Chiapas, is land
 reform. The means to end the
oppression of the homeless? A series of class-action 
suits to nationalize 
the looted timber lands and open them to homesteading 
again. And then the
homeless refugees and they who have no work may do the 
work that's to 
be done-the planting of the pear and pine, the apple 
and the fir, the walnut
and the vine, and corn and cucumber. And thus 
restore the earth that has 
been raped and robbed by greed and lust and 
the oppressor's hand.
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