Although you may not see me because the television doesn�t
tell you that I exist, I am here. You may not hear me phoning relentlessly to
my congressman, my senator and the men that I did not choose, who are unelected
and whose oaths of fealty are as sand, easily-shaped and quick to crumble.
I am the high tech worker trying to pay off debts that
sustained my family until I could find work at Wal-Mart. I am the executive who
works in a position that I once managed. I am the phone operator who can no
longer pay my own bill. I am the divorced mother who had to choose between her
job and her asthmatic child, but writes letters at night urging for work to
return.
I am the woman over 50 who cannot find work, because I
�might become ill,� �my brain is too old,� �my resume too impressive,� �my
education too extensive,� and I need to be punished for having divorced,
because it will impress the television ministers in their silken suits bringing
baskets of money. I am the programmer that is brilliant, but not as cheap as
those of India or China. I will be hired to fix their mistakes as a temporary,
but not as an employee. No one will know that it costs three times as much to
do it overseas, because the facts fall in different budgets and are lost in the
torrent of numbers. Every time that I phone my Congressman, he�s too busy to
listen. His young aide of 22 thinks that I am whining,
You will find our faces next to that of Cindy Sheehan. We
walked with her when she was in town. We could not go to Washington because
there was no money and the tires would not make it. You might find us or
someone like us working at grocery stores, pet stores, hardware stores and
selling whatever we still have on eBay. You may see us praying quietly at a job
fair hoping to be chosen. You might find us at court paying speeding tickets of
$400 for insurance that we did posses, because all the people with money did
not pay their tickets, but gave �campaign donations instead.� You might find us
signing petitions and carrying signs during those breaks from the two or three
jobs that we now work just to get by.
We don�t even have suits to interview in anymore. We missed
an interview two years ago, because our son�s racist school thought it more
expedient to call us at work and demand that we come home, because our son�s
feet smelled even though he bathed. We did not get that job and we haven�t had
another interview, because we could not explain because the reality was so
surreal that it would have been disbelieved. We have gotten fat on cheap food
and doing little but work.
We are the erased. The lines of our faces grown faint by the
buffeting. Our purpose reduced to survival. But still we decry what is
happening. We decry the evil, but our voices are hushed, ignored, minimized,
swept away by great winds like Rush Limbaugh, who has less education than we
do; or Bill O�Reilly, who hates all humanity possibly because he wasn�t nursed
long enough or he feels somehow inadequate; or Richard Cheney, who is both a
bad shot and an ulcerated pustule of a human being; or Karl Rove, who seethes
with hatred of those not as plump as he who made his adolescence unpleasant; or
George W. Bush and his mother, Lady Macbeth, on props from a closed Broadway
play staged by demons pretending to be in recovery.
This is what outraged looks like. We are not really silent.
We are not numb. Everyday, we call and write and email to convey our outrage,
our shock and fright and every day we are dismissed in a hundred different
ways. We get a response to a resume six months after it isI sent it out. We
receive letters almost daily from our senators and congressmen telling us how
little that we know. We get letters from possible employers telling us that we
know too much to work for them. If there is a way to be humiliated,
embarrassed, disenfranchised, impoverished or tormented, each one of us has
experienced it.
When you say that we do not care about the Palestinians, you
cannot know how much their plight resonates with erased people. We know what it
means to cry out and go unheard. We know what it is to wake up and discover
that the world is hostile and crazy. We know what not having been poor and then
being incredibly poor is like. We do care. These things that we have done,
which took us time, you diminish by writing that �no one is outraged� or they
�don�t have enough rage,� We wonder just who it is that you mean?
Rather than grow angry at each other, let�s begin to build a
way to resist
Let�s create jobs for those who don�t have them now. Let�s
come together and find homes and food and housing for each other. Let�s refuse
to fund these wars that only enrich Carlyle, Halliburton and their secret
friends in government.
Let�s sell things on eBay and start a fund for OUR
COOPERATIVE FUTURE . . . FOR THE COUNTRY THAT WE CAN BUILD TOGETHER.
Let�s tell MOVE ON and every other 527 that ads are fine,
but jobs are better. Instead of buying ads, pay people to put fliers on every
door. Pay people to go to congressmen�s offices and videotape everyone that
comes in.
Let�s start a letter writing campaign to all politicians and
tell them that we will refuse to vote for anyone that creates television ads or
attack ads of any kind. Let�s tell them to put that money into the fund to sue
this administration silly for all the money that it has looted.
Let�s begin to work together to remember who we are, love
our children and bring our country back.
Let�s refuse to buy products from companies that don�t
employ Americans or who spy on people. Let�s out every single company that has
stockholders of �influence.�
Let�s find that $2.3 trillion and use it to employ us.
Let�s cut off our cable and watch old time movies instead,
until they run real news and force their foreign investors out.
Let�s make it unprofitable to be a neocon or a neocon's
friend.
Let�s send millions of letters to the Pilgrim Club and tell
them all the wonderful things invented by people who weren�t ultra-wealthy.
Heck, let�s count them ourselves.
But let�s stop accusing other Americans of not caring. Let�s
start believing in each other and our country again. Let�s refuse to get pushed
around by a bunch of old men still trying to impress their daddies and who
can�t even wash their own clothes.
Gina
de Miranda, mother, woman, Texan, but American first of all.