State of Our World: Open_Notes 23

public education is deteriorating vs. the privatization of Health Care, the privatization of Public Education and the privatization of Punishment [Prisons as industry; profits enormous] - death penalty executions are now routine in the US; Texas and Florida [the Bush brothers] have the highest number of executions and prisoners, with Affirmative Action attacked in both -- we must think of the role we all play in society, the consent we give either implicitly or complicity; we do not question what we see in the media, we assume it is all facts, the statistics - what is the role of racism here ?? - the talk is all about Race Relations, but not about structural racism, the way the cards are stacked against people of color - the racially explicit laws have been removed from the books, but equality before the law is fiction - "formal equality" does not take into account *forced poverty* [and enforced] and the implications - formal equality at the level of the law conceals much !!

State of Our World: Open_Notes 23