I recently saw Raj Patel speak in New York on a panel with Naomi Klein and Amy Goodman. I was impressed by what he had to say, so I bought his books after the talk. Stuffed and Starved is actually something that I have been planning on reading for some time now and seeing the author in person was the impetus I needed to finally pick up a copy. When I mentioned it to M his response was, “Raj Patel is the highest example that I have of badassness and professional success!” I couldn’t agree more, particularly since M made this comment in Arabic, a language in which it makes more sense and has a smoothness that is untranslatable: “Raj Patel howwa masali el a3la fil siya3a wel nagaa7 el professional.”
The following are two passages from The Grapes of Wrath which Patel quotes in his chapter on farmers committing suicide, some out of desperation, some in defiant acts of protest, but in all cases, in rates that are far too high to be neglected.
A man can hold land if he can just eat and pay taxes; he can do that.
Yes, he can do that until his crops fail one day and he has to borrow money from the bank.
But – you see, a bank or a company can’t do that, because those creatures don’t breathe air, don’t eat side-meat. They breathe profits; they eat the interest on the money. If they don’t get it, they die the way you die without air, without side-meat. It is a sad thing, but it is so. It is just so.
‘It’s not me. There’s nothing I can do. I’ll lose my job if I don’t do it. And look – suppose you kill me? They’ll just hang you, but long before you’re hung, there’ll be another guy on the tractor, and he’ll bump the house down. you’re not killing the right guy.’
‘That’s so,’ the tenant said. ‘Who gave you orders? I’ll go after him. He’s the one to kill.’
‘You’re wrong. He got his orders from the bank. The bank told him, “Clear those people out or it’s your job.”‘
‘Well, there’s a president of the bank. There’s a board of directors. I’ll fill up the magazine of the rifle and go into the bank.’
The driver said, ‘Fellow was telling me the bank gets orders from the East. The orders were, “Make the land show profit or we’ll close you up.”‘
‘But where does it stop? Who can we shoot? I don’t aim to starve to death before I kill the man that’s starving me.’
These quotes bring home to me the inhumanity of banks and large corporations, and the hopelessness that people who come up against them experience. It is this inhumanity that makes it possible for them to exploit the poor. Empathy is an essential human trait that I think we share with a number of animals as well. The banks and corporations, however, seem to be devoid of a capacity for empathy and true feeling, and are therefore immune to our protestations, and impossible to kill. This is all the more poignant in light of yesterday’s supreme court decision allowing for unlimited corporate spending on political campaigns under the guise of protecting free speech; a decision that places us all in the position of a man standing between a bulldozer and his home, impotent because the real agents of his oppression are not even people to whom he can raise his voice, or his arms.
