"A daily terror"
[Col. Writ. 12/8/01] Copyright 2001 Mumia Abu-Jamal

The power of the media to condition consciousness is vast. For, with the merest mention of a word, say, for instance, "terror," a flood of images roar through the mind, like a well-placed row of dominoes, each falling one into the other, tumbling like a hard, dry, crackling wave: terror, terrorism, the twin towers of midtown Manhattan, planes circling like metallic vultures, plunging into solid rock and steel, flames, smoke, and humans blown into dry dust. Osama bin-Laden; Mullah Omar; Saddam Hussein, (fill in the blanks). Those are the thoughts we have been conditioned to think by the media. We have virtually no choice in the matter.

There is though, another terror that ravages the land. It affects not thousands, but millions. It affects Whites, Blacks, Anglos, Latinos, Citizens, Immigrants, Male, Female, Gay, Straight, Jew, Gentile, Northerner, Southerner, from Maine to Mississippi.

It is the terror of financial failure. The terror of not getting next week's paycheck. The terror of being fired; of being unable to pay rent (or the mortgage); of seeing one's children wracked by hunger.

This is the silent terror; the hidden terror. Indeed it is the invisible terror that is all too real. It is one that the State not only refuses to fight, but refuses to acknowledge.

After the Sept. 11th disaster, at least 800,000 people have lost their jobs. Dishwashers, maids, hotel workers, computer employees, travel agents, booking agents, and the like. But as stunning as that figure seems to be, it is but a mere percentage of a larger problem.

Before the 11th of September, indeed according to economic indicators since March 2001, at least 8 million people were out of work due to the economic recession.

8,000,000 people!

8,000,000 invisible souls, unemployed, gripped by a terror that almost defies description.

Why is that not a national emergency?

Why no mass mobilization, nor media-orchestrated outrage? Is it because they are poor, and the poor are expendable?

The corporate media, the possession and instrument of the wealthy, has no interest (and sees no profit) in educating either the poor or working poor in the failures of an economic theory or system which works for them yet betrays the poor. It is not in the interest of the established to show the holes in the "economic miracle." Globalists wish to ignore this ugly reality.

What does the Dow Jones Industrial Average, or the S&P rate, or the latest Nasdaq mean to 8 million unemployed?

A year ago, economists were proclaiming the end of the business cycle, boasting that the only way stocks could go was up. Their boasts came on the eve of a recession.

In a time when the poor are treated like lepers, when their dreams are dashed, a daily terror reigns.