Die Peasant… Die

Die Peasant… Die

I have to admit that it’s growing more and more difficult for me to come up with new shock and awe writing campaigns for all of my Urban Latino Magazine blog supporters.

Yet somehow, someway I manage to stumble onto a new astonishing topic almost weekly. A topic that I know will make the readers ask, “What the hell?”

Furthermore a subject matter that will make people stand up, pay attention and have a strong reaction to what it is I’m trying to raise awareness about.

In other words, I love to make you all angry in hopes of building a revolt and bringing about positive change!

And of course this week was no different as I innocently pressed play on a Michael Moore documentary titled, “Capitalism… A Love Story.”

For those of you who know me well enough, you’d know that I’m a chronic crier when I watch love stories play out on the silver screen; it always makes me emotional when they find their Mr. or Mrs. Right and live happily ever after…

And in keeping true to my emotional side, this documentary (love story) made me cry rivers of tears, tugged at my heartstrings and once again managed to make me feel very disheartened to be represented by this American government of ours.

Oh shit, did I just say that out loud and blog it for the world to read?

I guess I should prepare for all of the, “Leave our country spic,” comments that are going to come my way as a result.

After all, lord knows we’re not allowed to be anti-government without also being considered anti-American. Truth is though, I could care less at this point as I am continuously exposed to just how dead inside we all must be, to continue to allow the tyranny of this government to rule with an iron fist… minus any opposition.

Yes, mi gente… I do want a revolution. And it seems that hunter Bob from Middle America is starting to feel the same way… Maybe we are headed in the right direction after all.

Shortly after Moore’s documentary opens, an older Caucasian farmer (Bob) says, “There’s gotta be some kind of a rebellion between the people that have nothing… and the people that’s got it all…”

Seems that after doing everything he was supposed to do to live out the American dream, the refinancing loans on his family farm and home, had finally inflated beyond the point of affordable payments. Thus leaving him in the street with the rude awakening that this country is no longer the land of the free… only the land of the rich.

As the foreclosure madness swept through this country like never before, the banks found ways to maximize their cost ability and instead of paying clean up services thousands of dollars to prepare foreclosed homes for resale… They offered one final slap in the face of a thousand dollars to the evicted residents to leave their lost homes spotless.

“Here’s your check… now get the hell out!”

While the majority of this country continued to slide into the depths of poverty, the rich gained more wealth than their wettest dreams could’ve afforded them ever imagining…

Citibank released a top secret memo to its richest shareholders stating that this country was no longer a democracy; it was now a plutonomy, a fancy way of saying, an economy that is ruled by the very wealthy.

The country was now being run by the top 1% of households in America who now owned more wealth than the bottom 95% of households combined.

We were losing our lives, our jobs, our homes, our pension plans and life savings, while at the same time making the richest people in America 700 Billion dollars wealthier. What a sweet deal for them, huh?

In this same memo, Citibank wrote, “The most potent and short-term threat would be societies demanding a more ‘equitable’ share of the wealth.”

As Michael Moore stated, this basically meant that their only fear was that of the peasants revolting. And the peasants surely did…

Do you remember that vote for change we all excitedly and ecstatically cried about back in November 2008? Yeah, the new black president one… You know, the Obama is here to save the peasants vote that sent us to the polls in droves.

What a victory that was for we the peasants…

Unfortunately, we had no way of knowing that Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, UBS, JP Morgan Chase & Morgan Stanley began to fill his coffers in a way that would assure some loyalty just incase he did win the presidency.

They bought favor to ensure that the Treasury Department remained just another arm of Goldman Sachs and that’s exactly what’s happened since Obama’s been in office.

No Change, No Hope, No Victory after all… for We the People!

Make no mistakes about it… This country is being run by Wall Street bullies and the wealthiest of Americans whose only goal is to keep the poor man poor… while retaining their own family fortunes.

And when all else fails and these global corporate giants need just a few more bucks for themselves, they have one final trump card… a card nicknamed ‘dead peasants insurance,’ by the companies that take out life insurance policies on their employees without ever having to inform them.

Companies including Dow Chemical, Procter & Gamble, Wal-Mart, Winn-Dixie and Walt Disney… those bastards aren’t making enough money off their magical kingdom empire… they have to pump just a few more bucks out of dead employees. Isn’t that some shit?

The companies collect millions of dollars on low-level employees, while family members often have hard times gathering burial money to send them off peacefully. It’s capitalism at it’s best.

A few days after seeing the documentary I still felt sick to my stomach… I mean literally sick in a way that barely allowed me to keep my food down… and then I just about lost my food when I saw one of the most ignorant men in America take the stage at the BET Awards…

Yep, there he was singing and dancing for the other ignoramuses in attendance… Mr. Kanye West himself rocking a gold chain, so exaggerated, so costly, that it could’ve moved a family of five out of the back of the van they now call home and given them a decent shot at a real life.

I know… I know… it’s not Kanye’s responsibility… But it still makes me nauseous to see such a ludicrous display of gaudiness and wealth being splashed all over the screen keeping us all blind to the true plight of America’s downfall… Keeping us stupid… Keeping us def, dumb and blind.

According to the people that now own most of this countries wealth… It’s those types of brainwashing displays of wealth that keep the rest of us dreaming, believing that it’s within our reach… the American dream…

They truly don’t want us to wake up, only to discover that we can’t even get a job to meet our most basic human needs…

They are successfully erasing the imagery of poverty out of our minds.

You don’t believe me?

Drive down any downtrodden neighborhood on any given day and see the hundreds of people lined up just trying to get a decent meal…

Now go Google “food bank lines…” and see how many pictures come up… very few, very small lines…

Now tell me they’re not hiding the truth of what’s happening to this country from us…

After all… we’re just peasants… voiceless, emotionless, unworthy peasants!

Unwilling to demand change… unwilling to even speak out about it.

Citibank was right… we’d only ever be a “short-term” threat.



Ivan Sanchez is the author of Next Stop: Growing up Wild-Style in the Bronx (Touchstone – Simon & Schuster, 2008). The book is the first memoir released by a major publishing house written by a Puerto Rican from the Bronx. Sanchez is also the co-author of It’s Just Begun: The Epic Journey of DJ Disco Wiz, Hip Hop’s First Latino DJ (powerHouse, 2009). He was awarded the National Novel honors for his first fiction offering and is currently working on several new books about NY Latinos. He is also the co-host of Rebel Radio on Urban Latino Radio.