Living at the mercy
of world markets As a result, every time there is a price spike in the
global commodities marketplace, Africans
suffer disproportionately compared to
citizens on other continents.
What can we do as educational and cultural workers, at this crucial moment in history, when corporate revenue expands as the job market shrinks, when there is such a callous disregard for human
suffering and human life, when the indomitable human spirit gasps for air in an atmosphere
of intellectual paralysis, social amnesia, and political quiescence, when the translucent hues
of hope seem ever more ethereal, when thinking about the future seems anachronistic, when the concept
of utopia has become irretrievably Disneyfied, when our social roles as
citizens have become increasingly corporatized and instrumentalized in a world which hides necessity in the name
of consumer desire, when media analyses
of military invasions is just another infomercial for the US military industrial complex with its huge
global arms industry, and when teachers and students alike wallow in absurdity, waiting for the junkyard
of consumer life to vomit up yet another panacea for despair?