We like to demonize revolutionary consciousness as some sort of Marxist nation building concept. The idea of conscious choice to revolution, framed by communist concepts, must be bad, since everybody learned at the knee that commies were unsavory.

Of course, the epitome of revolutionary consciousness was Jesus Christ. Now, there’s a guy who stirred a nation (actually nation after nation) to action. He woke up minds, got people asking questions, shook up the status quo. He did this not by force, but by personality. Very, very scary concept to those who despise inspection and crave hierarchy.

Probably why there was such a concerted effort to build a religious hierarchal structure of biblical proportions. These damned revolutionaries, messing up a good thing.

Same wool, different eyes.

This country is coming up on something huge, and I don’t think we’re talking about it in any meaningful fashion. I’m talking about food, being hungry, and desperation. We’re far enough removed from the Great Depression that we can somehow romanticize men leaving families they can’t support to ride on trains and watch their dignity roll away from them like so much track. There is some level of lewd satisfaction in women trading sex for food, for other women to be held up as worthy for feeding hobo’s from their farm kitchens. We create pictures to sum up an era we didn’t experience.

We have no personal benchmark for the pinch of an underfed belly.

Michigan has been in its own mini-recession for years as its collapsing industrial base, particularly in the car industry, has cast more and more out of work. Now, one in eight residents of the state is on food stamps, double the level in 2000. — The Independent

Please don’t trivialize this by thinking “it’s just Detroit”, or “it’s lazy blacks on welfare”, or “who cares, don’t those idiots riot on Devil’s Night and burn up their city”? One in eight people in AN AMERICAN STATE is hungry.

But the trend is not restricted to the rust-belt regions. Forty states are reporting increases in applications for the stamps, actually electronic cards that are filled automatically once a month by the government and are swiped by shoppers at the till, in the 12 months from December 2006. At least six states, including Florida, Arizona and Maryland, have had a 10 per cent increase in the past year. — The Independent

These trends take awhile to start their pendulum swinging; they don’t stop quickly either. We need to look clearly at what is starting to take shape as the new American economic picture. It’s easy to cast stones while your belly is full, but for more and more Americans, this is not the case. People are losing their homes, their jobs, and more and more are burdened with the knowledge they can’t feed themselves or their children.

The revolutionary consciousness we need to adopt is one of national unity. We’d better care for each other, and be willing to stand up for the ones who’ve fallen. If we don’t we will have failed as a nation again, for the second time in 80 years, to pass the most basic of benchmarks of civilization and human development. We can’t figure out how to feed ourselves and our human communities.

‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.” — Jesus Christ

The revolution is in not succumbing to temptation to deride the poor, to mock the misfortunes of others and to somehow feel better about yourself because you aren’t among them. The revolution is in the reach of a hand, the raise of a voice, the rise of a community.

The revolution is in each of us.

Share This