Power to the people

I recently saw a video made in Panama depicting mostly indigenous people in opposition to the encroachment of transnational corporations into their country. They spoke of subjects I am intimately familiar with—what happens when corporate giants like Monsanto move in. You see, these companies sharpened their skills here in the United States long before they took over your countries. I found it disturbing that so many people connect these multi-national corporations to my homeland, as though all of us in the United States are willing participants in their subjugation. Yes, the companies do bear names that sound American. In fact they may once have been American and may still enrich certain wealthy elites that live here in the United States. But these beasts are international in nature. The owners live around the world, some here, some in Europe and some in your own country. They prey on us as well.

They don't call it the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund for nothing.

Do the makers of the video know that four multinational companies control the grain industry here also? (Monsanto, Cargill, Archer-Daniels-Midland, Con-Agra) That we must buy our seed from them. Then the fertilizer we must use. The pesticides. The herbicides. The equipment. Then we are forced to sell our products back to them without any control over what we pay for the things we need or how much our products are worth when we sell them.

I wonder if they know that a small independent farmer usually cannot sell his produce to the big grocery store chains.

I wonder if they know a case of canning jars for making pickles cost more than an equal number of jars with the pickles already in them.

I wonder if they know that nearly all poultry raised in the United States is owned by the company that owns and operates the processing plants and that farmers that raise poultry here are nothing but contractors, told exactly when where and how they will operate their own farm (Tyson owns the chickens, Cargill the turkeys).

I wonder if they know that only a handful of companies have wrested control of all the slaughterhouses in the United States. That if you raise beef, theirs is the only market for your animals.

I wonder if they know that laws are on the books that will soon require farmers and ranchers to install computer chips into the bodies of all livestock so their movement can be traced. That we will be required to keep a log of all animals on our own land, documenting each time an animal comes into or leaves our place.

I wonder if they know most of us are hopelessly in debt. That our currency is also devalued, that the privately owned federal reserve prints money out of thin air to steal our wealth.

There’s no need to own the land if you own the market for the products it yields and can control prices on both ends.

Yes, it’s true. There are people among us in the United States seeking freedom from oppressive government and corporate giants, the same giants that haunt your world. Innocent hard-working people with our own sacred customs and traditions.

Power to the people.