By Joshua Daniel Hershfield
“America is
safer, but we are not yet safe”
House document plan for continuing the Bush agenda
If safety is the media supported, publicly allowed, seizing
of elections,
If safety is a war with no end, a holy war,
If safety is the bombing of village after village, city
after city, country after country,
If safety is a nuclear arsenal capable of blowing up the
planet 100x over and the willingness to use it,
If safety is the legalization of detention, interrogation,
abuse, and torture by government and military agencies,
If safety is the invasion and occupation of people’s land
for the sake of oil and CEO bank accounts,
If safety is having my conversations listened to, my home
searched without my consent, my mail read, my movements watched,
If safety is the testing of crowd control weapons on
demonstrators before using them on people around the world,
If safety is the fanatical funding of military might while
education and healthcare are left in the dust,
If safety is the ruthless attack on civil rights and basic
freedoms justified as a defense of “freedom,”
If safety is a legal system and society that denies women
the right to an abortion, to choose how many children they wish to have and
when they will have them,
If safety is the suppression and denial of information about
the state of our planet and environment,
If safety is a government that values corporate profit over
clean air, clean water, and poison free bodies,
If safety is a government that protects corporations who
dump their toxic waste into the back yards of working people and people of
color,
If safety is a government that protects corporate criminals
who treat the earth and its inhabitants like expendable tools or “collateral
damage” in the quest for financial profit,
If safety is the criminalization of homosexuality,
If safety is the literal interpretation of the bible worked
into laws and schools,
If safety is over 10,000 children starving to death every
day while the richest country in the world spends its money on military
weapons,
If safety is a city littered with cluster bombs,
If safety is a policy of genocide,
If safety is a country run by criminals, torture supporters,
religious fanatics, oil profiteers, sexist, racist, homophobes, who justify
their maniacal actions with claims of concern for my safety,
Then give me danger any day.