( – promoted by buhdydharma )
(Cross-posted at Wild Wild Left)
In the aftermath of a tragedy 50 years ago, Woody Guthrie wrote a song about the deaths of migrant workers in a plane crash in Los Gatos Canyon. They were being deported, and when they died, the newspapers didn’t consider it necessary to mention their names. They’d been born on the other side of the Rio Grande River, which rendered them inferior to white, church-attending Americans and negated the need for any respect.
The skyplane caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon,
A fireball of lightning that shook all our hills.
Who were all these friends all scattered like dry leaves?
The radio said they were just deportees . . .
Woody Guthrie didn’t consider them to be just deportees. They were human beings, their lives mattered, so he honored them with a eulogy, he said goodbye to them.
He knew a river runs through this land of capitalism. The wealthiest one-percent of Americans live on one side of that river. The rest of us live on the other side. To the wealthiest one-percent, we have no names. Our lives don’t matter, we’re just migrant workers in their fields, we’re just miners in their mines, we’re just numbers on a balance sheet, and unless we cross that river and scatter them like dry leaves on the wind, workers in their fields and miners in their mines is all our children will ever be.
They’ve been waging class warfare against us for decades, they’ve been waging class warfare against the whole world for decades.
In Vietnam, in Afghanistan, in Iraq, the war machine of capitalism ramped up, the skyplanes took off, the bombs fell, and a fireball of lightning shook all their hills. And then shook them again, and again, and again. It was called Rolling Thunder, it was called Shock and Awe, it’s called “defending freedom”. But it’s not defending freedom, it’s class warfare. In Southeast Asia, in the oil fields of the Middle East, the workers and farmers and villagers died in the hills and they died in the deserts, they died in the valleys, and died in the plains.
Insurgents or not, it didn’t matter, on both sides of the Mekong, they died just the same. They died and are dying in wars of conquest and profit, on both sides of the Tigris, they die just the same, on both sides of the Kabul, they die just the same, under the bombs of the skyplanes, they die just the same.
If we don’t take responsibility for what has been done in our name, and for what is still being done in our name, if we don’t redeem ourselves as a nation, if we don’t cross that river that runs through this land of capitalism, to scatter the wealthiest one-percent like dry leaves on the wind . . .
The Big K will.
It’ll deal with them and it’ll deal with the rest of us. There won’t be any distinction made between the guilty and the complicit. Karma won’t give a fuck about that. On both sides of the river, we’ll die just the same.
Like a fireball of lightning, Karma will shake all our hills. And we’ll die in the hills and we’ll die in the deserts, we’ll die in the valleys, and die in the plains. And when Karma has judged us as we have judged others, we’ll deserve being cast from the world as just deportees.
Adios, Wall Street traders, L.A. and Topeka,
You won’t have a name, when you ride Karma’s airplane.
The world will forget you, the world will move on.
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2012 tick tock tick tock
Tarkio is a very good album. However, I was specifically thinking about this tune: Song From Platte River
Here’s to Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. And to all those
Native Americans whose aura resides in the authentic soil/soul
of America
We ignore it at our peril
Seriously
doing his dad’s songs. Karma is ongoing and the battle between the ‘classes’ is not ever won. It just keeps coming back with new actors on new stages. Trouble is that it’s hard to figure out who is on what side of the river when the ‘leaders’ all sooner or later start taking like hayseeds or Yaley’s. They take turns in our show, and don’t worry edger they are about to ‘reform’ immigration and build another Great Wall to hold back their slaves and keep the drug war from spilling onto our side.
I don’t know how we have been able to invade Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, etc., killing their citizens right down the line, torturing them, hand-picked assassinations, demolishing their homes, farms, etc. and robbing their resources, and have yet to be stopped from any of this war criminal activities. To say nothing of the “WMD” effects of the use of white phosphorus and depleted uranium (the dust of which remains in the air ad infinitum) has caused and continues to cause major illnesses. Iraqis suffer cancer all over the place and new-borns are born deformed beyond belief. (Israel’s declining quality of its sperm production has now been affected by the depleted uranium.)
Immigrant workers have received much of the same treatment — often picked up in the middle of the night by raids, separated from their wives and/or children, thrown in jail and often tortured and die, too from lack of medical care. I have never understood the “urgency” with which this removal of immigrants came about and why it did! But it’s profitable business for prisons, you know. So much per head. Then, too, since there are no decent jobs here, it may be that the effort to be rid of them is so that those of us on the other side of the river can take on the jobs they once held. You know, working in the field, picking fruits, vegetables, grapes, etc. without a break and no break from the heat of the day — some have succumbed. Or washing dishes in some restaurant somewhere, or doing the landscaping for someone’s lawn, etc.
Our war crimes are continuing and endless. Our treatment of people domestically is on-going and endless.
If war crimes are NOT called out and held accountable, then it sets a precedent for any country in the world to do as we have done and commit the same war crimes.
Global warming’s pace is happening much faster than had been predicted. The wars, themselves, are the biggest polluters of our environment.
We are headed for third world status if global warming does’t get us first. There will be KARMA!
Author
the rain falls on the good and the bad it does not distigiush….
and catastrophea will be metted out to the the silent and the strident as well….
as you say karma actually does not give a shit….
as this process continues being correct will provide no cover….