| Occupy has a different meaning for noncitizens |
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Lisa Sun-Hee Park and David Nujuib, fellow authors of “The Slums of Aspen: Immigrants and the Environment in America’s Eden,” are not the prophets of doom; they simply raised levels of consciousness of the American public. Lifting pernicious blinders off faces of Aspen’s elite should get some response, especially when blaming the victim for their own demise has become a typical response to poverty. Impoverished communities have existed and continue to exist in every state in the nation as poverty remains rampant. The expose unveiled a major contradiction inherent in class warfare, a blasphemous term being revived in the race for the presidency.
Poverty is persecution against a class of people. Its genesis has been debated vociferously for ages. Its excruciating pain is felt by Americans who once stood midway on the structural pyramid; but who now have tumbled down the social ladder of success as the pyramid crumbles. Poverty strikes at the minds and hearts of any society and old concepts that are being redefined. They are flowered with traditional clichés and contemporary meanings.
One of those adages is the concept of occupied. It is a nebulous term at best. As defined by Webster, it means to take control of space or to invade someone’s territory. For some, occupation means to steal land. Occupation sometimes is the first step in an all out war between rival factions. For those who incessantly occupied a Denver city park for the last two months, they did so because they have privilege. It is called citizenship. And although at the end of the day it was trumped by law, occupants were allowed a brief but meaningful stay in downtown Denver. They made a statement. They were considered by some as heroes and by others as deviants.
On the other side of the mountains in a place called Aspen, occupy has a different meaning for noncitizens. Surrounded by the privileged where the value of materialism reigns as a god and helps define the leisure class, lies an oppressed community; a pitiable extension of the downside of capitalism, hidden in the deep corridors of human greed. Latin American immigrants euphemistically referred to as “illegal aliens” are forced to occupy deteriorated space at the whims of the elite. They didn’t take it over. They are placed here hidden behind thin veneers of ignorance, separated from mainstream society whose lust for wealth is matched only by an incipient need to create more. For economic reasons, undocumented workers are bequeathed as renters, living in wretched conditions, followed by being blamed for their own pathetic living conditions.
Immigrants are marginalized throughout American society, although their labor is exploited as a commodity that produces wealth. According to Sun-Hee Park and Nujuib, immigrants in Aspen have been nestled on the outskirts of town, forced to reside “in trailer parks that are hidden along the highway in dangerous flood zones, and away from the commercial area.” Sociologists have termed this environmental racism.
Someone should take a trip to Aspen and inform our neighbors to the south that they are contributing to class warfare; something that is contradictory to capitalism. The polarization of classes is no more evident as “toy poodles with diamond encrusted collars” tour the outskirts on long leashes with their masters, reviving what Chicana/o sociologists termed the internal colonial model, a supposedly outdated theory, defined as a community within a community, controlled by externality. Surplus value seems to be trickling down to those who control the machine, while others wither away dreaming only of the good life.
Class warfare is being waged between the powerful and the powerless, with a dose of social control being leveraged as a “big stick.” Guess who has control of the big stick? Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), wealthy contractors, the elite and a dawdling administration that pays lip service to the powerless are seemingly conspirators with a desire to rid their community of the riff raff. Relying on Thomas Malthus’ economic philosophy, “that the increase of population is necessarily limited by the means of subsistence,” Councilman Tom McCabe desires to control population through public policy and render birth only to certain classes. Those who have spare time for leisurely activities can’t seem to spare any change to improve humanity.
Perhaps, the real lesson learned in this expose is not to turn a blind eye to poverty. Pick up the pen, pick up the banner, put on your marching boots and join the battle for humanity; but be careful not to bite the hand that feeds you.
Dr. Ramon Del Castillo is an Independent Journalist.
©2012 The Weekly Issue/El Semanario, Inc.
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