where do we go from here?

Elana Levy

Revision History
• April-May 1992	Newspaper: Funded by Syracuse University students.
The Alternative Orange: Vol. 1, No. 5 (pp. 4-5)
• August 27, 2000	Webpage: .
DocBook XML (DocBk XML V3.1.3) from original.

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when you ask: where do we go from here?
who is the “we” that you see?
when you say “we”:  who do you see?
you don’t have to tell me,
but you do need to speak to yourself
honestly.

did you see the children in sao paolo in ciudad de guatemala o mexico
living on the streets,
or the hundreds of thousands of young girl prostitutes in thailand
waiting for the next customer,
whose jetted in for some r&r
before flying his next sortie,
or the child sleeping next to her mother
in the fortysecond street subway station of the irt,
or lila’s family who caretakes a home on penita’s beach
receives twenty dollars a month
her children eat rice only for their main meal and
can no longer go to school because the books for the children
in nicaragua are no longer free
thanks to the government supported by our country.
or the syracuse mother who gets called by the school
to pick up her sick daughter but has to wait for her check for
the month’s food so she’ll have enough money to pay for the taxi
to pick up her child and then take her to the clinic to be
seen, where will the money for the milk come from by the end of
next week?
or the child in brazil who is kidnapped off the streets
so his eyes can be used by a first worlder to see,
or the child in india whose parents sell her kidneys,
otherwise how would any of them eat?
or the girlchild in egypt who’s sold as a wife to a kuwaiti
oilslurper even if it is only for a couple of weeks.
did i forget to mention the zairean whose resources
and labor have been stolen for a century by the most civilized
belgiques? or the salvadoran sewing for twelve dollars a week,
along with her sister in taiwan and the philipines.

so where do  we  go from here?

perhaps the better question is how ?

how do we rise from where we feel
stuck and hopeless and very unclear because we’re all here
wanting to do what will make it better and make us feel better,
if only we knew what that would mean.

what’s better for we is the question
not what’s better for me.
i know what i’m saying doesn’t make you happy with me.
my comfort or what’s defined as good by this society may in
fact not be what’s best for the rest of the we.
so sorry.
some people who you’d always hoped would respect
you and understand where you’re coming from might not quite
see it as you see
but despite that
you now decide to speak out and do it anyway no matter what the
consequences might be.
perhaps they’ll start calling you communist or traitor or
whatever is your worst feared scream
because you say: what about the people who are iraquis? and
don’t the libyans have a right to judge their own people or at
least go through the world court as they deem?
did the u.s. allow the vietnamese to judge those who on their
children the napalm released?
or can the chileans try kissinger for helping pinochet
round up tens of thousands in the bogata stadium in 1973?

here in syracuse do i dare speak of the panam 103? because
they’re arabs does that mean we use some other measure of
fairness and equitability?
stupid question, huh. obviously elana, it does, can’t you see.
after all an american doctor on u.s. national radio said
proudly: yes i saw marks on the chest of the dead palestinian
man who died under interrogation in the israeli prison in
Hebron, but no i won’t call it a beating or torture because
saying the words “beating” or “torture” will cause controversy.

so how do we go from here?
without fear.
without fear of being labelled by them who do the
labelling because we know that if we speak loud and clear with
lots of information and how it really is people will hear.

to whom do we speak?
do we spend our time watering down what we mean so master walsh
or mr. young or moynihan or others up there in d.c. will hear
or grace us with ten minutes of their aide’s ear.

again you and i may disagree.
but i say speak truth to the people the we,
the powers know the “truth” already. they know they’re
getting all the money they know that lowering the capital gains
tax means more money just for their coterie, the top 1% (in
fact in the last decade it’s meant $92,000 more for those
bushees) they know.

it’s our job to uncover and share with the rest what’s behind
the smoke screen of the u.s. so-called democracy.
you’ll no longer get invited to their offices for the ten
minute once a year,
but what’s the loss, for real.
when we speak clear enough for hundreds then thousands to
listen connect and come together as we
who then’s going to do the asking to be seen?

so how do we learn what’s real how do we include the subway
sleepers the end of the month empty refrigerators the children
of brazil working in the mines twelve hours a day for u.s.
companies the mozambiquans with arms and legs cutoff by the
troops supported by this great democracy.

as the song goes: every “step you take”
i won’t be watching you but i hope you will be.
every step you take,
every step you take,
that’s exactly what i mean.
check it out. in your life, what is your we ?
where do you live? who lives on your street ? who comes to
your house to eat? who wrote the book you’re reading? on what
do you spend your money? how do you spend your time? what do
you mean when you say: i have a right to spend my money or my
time for what’s good for me. do the new curtains or the new car
or the basketball game help you become what you always wanted
to be?

“what do you want to be when you grow up?"  did you answer: watch
tv? what do  you want to be?     someone who makes a difference,
makes a difference to whom? maybe that’s the question you need
to answer honestly.

i know i’m a little fanatical, but that’s why you asked me to speak. you’ll go away saying she’s crazy, i have a right to my curtains and my basketball game. i work hard all during the week. do you think the child working in the mines on the border between brazil and bolivia isn’t working hard too. or the mother in india who walks ten to fifteen miles each day just to get the wood she needs so her family can eat. and each year it gets further because the logging companies cut down the trees. how do you make your fifteen or twenty or thirty or forty or whatever thousand per year when they make now in nicaragua six hundred if they’re among the lucky who work. is it because they deserve less than we?

so how?  what’s the key?
you do know it IS our fault.
as a matter of fact the problem does begin in this country,
the bucks do begin and end here.
becoming part of the solution means
deciding who do you mean by we
and with every step you take
act accordingly.

it’s about learning from the third world here and overseas. being clear about your ideology. (there she goes again that fanatic). friends: do they (the bushees) or do they not have an ideology? how come they get to define their position as: “Objectivity” or “all the news that’s fit to print or see”. it’s only in the u.s. that people don’t understand what the word “imperialism” means. everywhere else people are very clear, and for the three billion or more who can hardly eat they may not speak english but imperialism is international language of the mind the stomach and the feet and is never pretty never not ugly.

we need to create the means within the belly of the monster to pass along and magnify the voices that inform us as to what imperialism and liberation mean.

(i’m not saying it’s easy. and the better we get at it the more personally dangerous it’ll be, especially for those of us not defined as european-american by this society.)

you are what? against capitalism. don’t think what we have is a democracy. communism is not dead. are you f’g crazy? maybe they’re not better off now in east germany? (tempted to tell you my criticisms of before but that’s the defense and anyway not the point you all know that only too well what about food and homes and jobs and health care that’s no more, you willing to speak about these?)

voting for clinton or tsongas or harkin or kerry (can you tell them apart without the name cards honestly) maybe that’s not the epitome of democracy?

voting to decide whether the factory should stay in tonawanda
or wolf street rather than move to a
right-to-work-without-rights-state or country
might mean more to most people. then maybe we can begin to
discuss the concept of democracy.

having everychild attend public schools, cuomo’s children bush’s grandchildren and david rockefeller the third and the fourth, little h.l. hunt and all the little gettys. all attend only public schools with the same money allocated for every seat in every state in every county in every city inner or outer. hmmm i wonder how the schools then would be. we’d begin to talk then about what’s meant by equality. every university free. why not? it’s true in most of the world’s countries. and they even pay you to study. now that’s what an education president would decree.

come out and say what you believe could be.

speak out. loudly. let them call you crazy. you can call me,
i’ll sympathize, make you some tea. know you’ve decided who is
your “we”. know you’re becoming exactly who you’ve
always wanted to be.
we’ll learn from each other
as we learn from the rest of our
we.

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