Who would you want to go to war with?

You say you want
to go to war.
Destroy the enemy.
War, against
Who?

What if you were the daughter of a father or mother
stolen by the prison industrial complex, operated by
for-profit companies, which
had already built a cell for them when they were
reading below grade level in first grade, already
being pipelined into a system that benefits
corporations like Honda, Sony, or Whole Foods.
Who would you want to go to war with?
Bill Clinton a prime advocate for the “Three Strikes Law,”
which helped to drive up the prison population?
Teachers or government employees, whose retirements funds
are some of the biggest investors in private prison companies,
like CCA and GEO Group? Or Hillery Clinton who accepts money
from these groups?

If you were a 16-year-old Bermese refugee,
you might want to go to war with a Karen soldier
responsible for wiping out your village
slaughtering your family and taking the land
to establish a palm oil plantation.
Maybe you’d want to go to war with the U.S.A.,
seventh largest importer of palm oil, or
India, number one.

If you were a 13-year-old Pakistani boy,
who saw his grandmother blown into bloodied pieces
by an American drone, running through the dark
toxic air to try to search for her body parts
to no avail, who would you want to go to war with?
The United States, responsible for more than 450 strikes?
The manufacturers of weapons of mass destruction like
Blackwater or General Atomics based here in San Diego,
the master-mind behind the predator drones used
to strike Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Syria?

If you were the mother of a 12-year-old
African-American boy from Cleveland
murdered callously in the park, told that your son
was shot because he fit the stereotype of
“the criminal black man with a gun,”
who would you want to go to war with?
The police? The Americans that look for a reason to
justify the murder of a child?

If you were an eight year old girl from Dehli, India,
working 15 hours a day in garment sweatshops,
some among the worst to taint human conscience,
making beautifully beaded shirts with your tiny
blistered fingers, to be shipped to Europe and the Unites States,
Who would you want to go to war with? Target, Wal-Mart, the GAP,
perhaps every consumer who has never demanded
to know how goods are produced?

If you were the mother of a girl living around the mines
in Bolivia, or Guatemala, or The Congo, or Niger,
and your daughter was raped or trafficked into a sex ring
by one of the rebel groups competing for power and control
over these mines, which supply the minerals
for the electronics we consume,
Who would you want to go to war with?

If you were the son of an absent father
whom you had not seen for ten years,
because he had to migrate to another
country to find work to pay the loan he
defaulted on after his land was taken over by
GMO seeds, and he was forced to
take out the loan to maintain the “indestructible” seed,
who would you want to go to war with?
The IMF? The World Bank? Monsanto?
Governments that benefit from Free Trade Agreements.

Who is the enemy?
Who do we blame?

We’ve all become the enemy in this blaming game.

We are all part of the terror and the terrorized.

It’s time to confront the greatest enemy:
The fear and ignorance within.

Painting shared by Curanderismo, the Healing Art of Mexico​ and created by Rick Ortega.