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Chris Hedges: The Pathology of the Rich White Family

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from Truthdig:   The pathology of the rich white family is the most dangerous pathology in America. The rich white family is cursed with too much money and privilege. It is devoid of empathy, the result of lifetimes of entitlement. It has little sense of loyalty and lacks the capacity for self-sacrifice. Its definition of friendship is reduced to “What can you do for me?” It is possessed by an insatiable lust to increase its fortunes and power. It believes that wealth and privilege confer to it a superior intelligence and virtue. It is infused with an unchecked hedonism and narcissism. And because of all this, it interprets reality through a lens of self-adulation and greed that renders it delusional. The rich hite family is a menace. The pathologies of the poor, when set against the pathologies of rich white people, are like a candle set beside the sun. There are no shortages of acolytes and propagandists for rich white families. They dominate our airwaves

Black Lives Matter: Justice for Freddie Gray

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What did you expect? I don’t know why we’re so surprised. When you put your foot on a man’s neck and hold him down for three hundred years, and then you let him up, what’s he going to do? He’s going to knock your block off. -- President Lyndon Johnson The mainstream/elite/white media tend to frame the parameters of discourse within their perspective, which differs from the perspective of the majority of people in the Unites States and around the world. Through doing so, they influence public opinion and solidify personal biases. They suppress the voices of victims, of the marginalized, and of the vast populace who does not enjoy the privileges of money and power, as do those in the elite, prestige media. Here are some of the voices of the oppressed:

What? Me? Racist? (Yes, America. You are.)

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If you don't get this, you just might be a  ....

In Solidarity - Fight for $15

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Low-wage workers cannot make a living - not even close - on their paltry wages. Taxpayers subsidize the economic profits of wealthy multinational corporations by helping these workers to survive via public assistance (which is increasingly being cut in order to send tax dollars instead to the coffers of the already rich). Even $15 an hour will still keep most workers in poverty, but it is a start toward the $22 or more per hour that every working American deserves to live a comfortable and dignified life. Low-wage workers include those in service professions, at fast-food establishments, big-box stores, and department stores (i.e., most if not all, corporate establishments). They include restaurant workers, teachers at for-profit educational organizations, elderly care workers, disabled care workers, and adjunct professors. Basically, low-wage workers are among some of the most important and ubiquitous laborers in our midst. They - we - deserve so much better. It is criminal and immo

A Belated Happy MLK Day and Condolences to the Ava DuVernay and her Film Selma

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“Over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action'; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a ‘more convenient season.'” --- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter From Birmingham Jail And about "Selma" ... It is not surprising that such a beautiful, historically accurate, well-executed, poignant, and consequential