Cooper - I know it’s not as shallow as this, and there needs to be something besides just a void where materialistic cheerleading used to be, but I feel like, in between saying nothing and saying “go out and buy stuff to show your support for anti-terrorism” after 9-11, there’s got to be a way to address the prioritizing of things over people, because it’s not just faceless corporations who do that.

I’m not speaking specifically to black leadership in this area now, as I do not fancy myself to be a black leader or an adviser to black leaders. Just thinking that there’s some kind of relationship between corporate greed and, for example, my relief and pleasure at being able to buy a new tote bag for $25 at Target versus my frustration at prices in department stores. I don’t want to/can’t afford to spend $100 or more just to cart my miscellaneous stuff to work with me and not have it be in an ugly bag. And woo hoo, Target saved me. But, well, I am being lazy in this discussion by not knowing exactly what the hell I’m talking about in terms of where that tote came from and why I could get it for $25, but I read something at BFP’s recently where she talked about the costs of making things versus what people get paid to make them. I’m pretty sure, in other words, that it didn’t take one person one hour to make that bag where they got paid $25 for that hour. So somebody else’s time and life is worth less than what a cheap tote bag cost me at Target?

I love that bag, and I love being able to afford things I want. And goddamn do I want things. I just wonder - is that a false equation, are there other things that could be possible besides I get cheap bag vs. someone else gets livable wage?

Pardon the long comment, but it made me think of another thing - there was a strike in LA at the hotels near the airports because they were paying housekeeping and maintenance staff non-living wages. (I think they might still be doing that, even though a city ordinance passed requiring wages to go up. Sneaky bullshit went on in fighting it, and I’m not sure where it ended up or if the fight is ongoing.) And it was shocking to me that the argument - the straight faced, this is legitimate, can you imagine the sorrow and loss if this were to happen argument - was that people who stay in those hotels might have to pay more a night if the wages went up.

People who stay in nice hotels (these were nice hotels) have more of a right to stay in a nice hotel than the people working there have a right to be able to afford food, rent, medicine…

That to me is partly about corporate greed - really those hotel chains just did not want to part with any of their profits - but also about individual entitlement, consumerism, materialism. I have to hope both can be confronted, because I certainly believe that they prop each other up equally.

“Neither is calling on the American people to confront our materialism and militarism or challenging and proposing alternatives to Corporate globalization. At this critical period in human history that is what we should be requiring of ourselves and of any presidential candidate, whatever their race, gender or religion.”

I would love to know how one goes about “confronting the American people about their materialism”? It would be easier, and more successful to address worldwide corporate globalization if we were not a corporate owned state ourselves.

I’d like to start there.

And, hello, I like your blog, don’t remember if I have introduced myself here before, but I am a reader.