Ain't no trouble on the mountain, but there's trouble down here below!

American civilization must be saved before it is destroyed by greed and corruption. We must restore civil behavior and provide public agencies that will truly serve the needs of the people. We The People of the United States have secured the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but we are denied access.

Today our government recognizes two types of citizens, live persons, and corporations. Malfeasance at the corporate level has caused a great economic recession, but the massed monetary resources of the corporate "personage" makes the perpetrators immune to all but token persecution.

Citizens have lost their homes, jobs, and pensions -- real people are suffering. Food stamps have been cut, children are hungry, our tax dollars wasted -- trillions (!) for the gambling debts of major banks, trillions for illegal wars, billions for poorly placed foreign aid. Mother Earth is desecrated by the continued burning of fossil fuels, drilling in the Arctic, fracking, mountain top removal, GMO proliferation. Nuclear power has the chance for accident, the need for plutonium and other isotopes to be stored for millenia -- and how many nuclear weapons do we need? -- zero!

Our governments threaten all life on earth! The U.S. favors war and austerity, enabled by the collapse of our democratic process. The people have no voice, our "representatives" in no way represent us -- and we sit inert! Where is the rage?

With the Occupy movement stymied, silenced and co-opted by the forces arrayed against it, we nevertheless see evidence of deep rage all around us. You'll see it in the anger of a homeless veteran. It appears as domestic violence, gang loyalties, road rage, theft and thuggery. Our society has evolved to accommodate the sublimation of stress through popular entertainment, drugs, alcohol and a wink at the illicit. Our anger shows up as hopelessness, a shooting rampage, a suicidal assault on a police officer.

Our proper rage has been silenced by generations of discouragement. The disintegration of our public schools, lack of critical thinking, elevation of the quest for the dollar above all virtue, lives filled with daily struggle from dawn to dusk, all these conspire to make us incapable of feeling, or too tired to express what should be great outrage!

And there are informed citizens as well, who assess the enormity of the forces arrayed against us and remain silent, seeking solutions in a state of isolation.

Subdued by power and convention, effective rage not forthcoming, what can we do to create the change we so urgently need? How do we get the money out of politics, squelch the lobbyists, rescind corporate person-hood? It can be done, it's been done before, it will take a Constitutional Amendment to do it!

It's been suggested that if every non-profit organization added governmental reform as a second priority after their main mission, we could mobilize a majority of Americans to back a 28th Amendment, and any further legislation required to return government to the people.

Don't get mad, get even!

-- Don Baraka