Defeat: Same Story, Different Day

Last night, the House of Representatives authorized DR-CAFTA by a two-vote margin. Slimy Republicans held the debate an extra hour, so that Bush administration officials could wretch the last few votes they needed. Rep. Sherrod Brown, an opponent of DR-CAFTA, mentioned that one of the quotes that came out of Bush's meeting with Republican House members was that, "We will twist arms until arms are in a thousand pieces." There's your government, folks. Twisting arms until arms are in a thousand pieces so we can force our economic wanderlust all over this world.

I apologize for being away for five days, and then posting something as deflating and defeating as this. Worse, I'll be gone for another week, traveling to Las Vegas for a conference. So this will be the last thing I write for about another week.

I'm going to include a poem below that was written by a friend of mine, Jean Stokan. Warning: it's not a pick-me-up. But it summarizes so well how truly bad this economic agreement is, and puts a human face on what our government did last night. In the 1980s, we sent military and weapons to Central America to further our economic agenda. Now, as Jean Stokan writes, 'the bullets are different this time,' but often times twice as deadly.

The Bullets Look Different
They smile
so clean in their State Department neckties
talking of free trade, profit margins, markets opening.
The saliva of profit drips from their lips.
Exports are booming; record wages for CEOs.

But I know what that language means.
It means that in El Salvador
you can buy Iowa corn cheaper than what's produced by the campesinos
who can no longer even subsist.

It means that, unlike immigrants,
money and capital can cross borders
scouring the world to see which desperate third world people will accept a lower wage.

It means that outside the sweatshops in Honduras
are empty sheets from birth control pills
forced upon women daily so a pregnancy doesn't slow the work.

I held the hand of a woman, whose maquila boss beat her
till her baby bled out.

Globalization, free markets, neoliberal economics--these fancy glorious patriotic words.
But this is the language of crushing people
robbing the hope of the young
robbing the poor of their lives.

This language means that their hands are 'round the necks of third world babies
as they squeeze and squeeze
babes too weak to whimper
and it's all so clean, hidden

Their bullets look different this time.

Who hears the last breath of a malnourished child?
Who notices the sunken eyes of the millions of
the expendable ones.

Desperation is shrieking
screaming at us
screaming
silently.

How will we wake the people up?
How will we remove the fingers 'round the babies necks.

We must wake the people up
We must
We must.