For the past week and a half eyes have been on Ferguson, MO, where in the wake of the shooting of Michael Brown protesters have been clashing with police forces. Brown, who was unarmed, has become the latest victim in a line of young black men who have been killed by police on questionable grounds. In response to protests by community members in Ferguson, police forces have been using rubber bullets and tear gas as well as military vehicles. Journalists have been arrested for on scene reporting, leaving their role to citizen journalists on social media to report first-hand what it's like to be in the midst of a tense situation and Constitutional nightmare.
Tensions in Ferguson are decades old with Brown's shooting being the last straw. The majority of Ferguson's population is black, and poor. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, makes note of this, and the bigger economic picture in this piece he penned for Time. Abdul-Jabbar argues that poverty is the bigger issue we need to tackle, and that many of the issues that can intersectionally be under that umbrella (race, sexuality, gender rights) have been used to manipulate and distract the poor from their overall economic oppression through pitting the poor against one another. He notes we are aware of economic oppression, noting the recent popularity in Dystopian themed franchises like The Hunger Games, but do little to fight it as a whole.
There is no denying that poor vs. poor exists. The blue collar employee who makes a barely living wage sneering at a family on welfare being an everyday example. The largest example is the Tea Party movement, a movement of the economically oppressed acting as the social muscle of an organization orchestrated by mega-billionaires to meet their own personal interests. Progressives joke that they're just a group of racist, sexist, homophobes who get duped by Faux news all the time, but they're just as poor, if not more poor, than the rest of us.
The real question is if Abdul-Jabbar's call to action is possible? Can everyone living under economic disadvantage cast aside differences to stand against a common oppressor? Is that asking for too much in a nation where citizens are deeply impassioned by their social stances on issues? Is he ignoring the impact that issues such as race have on poverty?
Dystopian books and movies like Snowpiercer, The Giver,Divergent, Hunger Games, and Elysium have been the rage for the past few years. Not just because they express teen frustration at authority figures. That would explain some of the popularity among younger audiences, but not among twentysomethings and even older adults. The real reason we flock to see Donald Sutherland's porcelain portrayal in Hunger Games of a cold, ruthless president of the U.S. dedicated to preserving the rich while grinding his heel into the necks of the poor is that it rings true in a society in which the One Percent gets richer while our middle class is collapsing.