“The price of obedience has become too high”[i]
I was born in an era of complacence, which is coming to an end. Our country was stagnant, with many unable and unwilling to provide the catalytic energy necessary to change the systems of injustice that have been omnipresent throughout its history. My lifetime has seen a resurgence of racial violence, mirrored politically by a historic high of polarization[ii]. I came of age as Trayvon Martin (a boy three years older than myself) was shot dead in the street for walking while black; my adolescence has been marred by the countless acts of violence perpetrated on people of color in this country. And now, as Americans of all races have finally taken to the streets to voice our discontent with the injustice of the status quo, our rights are being suspended and infringed as the government takes unconstitutional action, repressing our freedom to express the fact that we will stand for inequality no longer[iii].
These infringements on liberty and equality have disproportionately affected the black and brown people whose oppression America has propagated and profited from since well before the United States was founded. Despite the nominal equality of rights provided by the Constitution, it has been overwhelmingly clear that the distribution of liberty in America is entirely unequal. Our nation prioritizes those whose race and socioeconomic standing privilege them with the freedoms and protections of the law. Such systematic oppression is by design: a controlling, empowered class can only exist as such if they oppress another to demonstrate their alleged superiority. In the COVID crisis, this dynamic of inequity has become blatantly apparent: black Americans have experienced outsized impacts of the virus, in terms of both economic and health-related consequences[iv]. This is due to a system that prioritizes the conveniences and comforts of its chosen contingents over the very lives and wellbeing of those it marginalizes[v]. For one example, Congressman Trey Hollingsworth, Republican of Indiana, expressed those priorities with alarming frankness, proclaiming that “in the choice between the loss of our way of life as Americans and the loss of life of American lives, we have to always choose the latter”.[vi] This choice prioritizes the free market and its profiteers over lower income working class Americans, many of whom are people of color.
Horrific as it is, this comes as no surprise for a nation with a tradition of subservience to corporate and government interest. In 1998 alone (the year of my birth), the government allowed three of the largest-ever corporate mergers[vii] (Exxon-Mobil; Deutsche Bank-Bankers Trust; Daimler-Chrysler). Before my third birthday, Congress passed the Patriot Act with near unanimity; since then, this blatant infringement of our basic rights to privacy has only been renewed and expanded[viii]. As our nation engaged in unconstitutional wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, our government claimed the right to designate anyone (even American citizens), as enemy combatants, and thus strip them of any protection from human rights abuses[ix]. America watched as prison camps were constructed in Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, where thousands were tortured in a violation of the principles which we supposed to promote. Beginning in 2014, we stood by as immigrants (fleeing from countries made unstable and violent by U.S. intervention) were rounded up and detained at our southern border; as children were crowded into cages and families were torn apart[x].
Government practices became opaque, censorship increased, and surveillance was accepted as a part of life in 21st century America. I grew up in a time when we allowed the largest financial institutions in the world to leave millions desperate and destitute; an era when the government protected these institutions, rather than the people they had so callously harmed out of greed[xi]. I watched as consulting companies with multibillion-dollar market caps advised even wealthier pharmaceutical companies on how to get millions of patients addicted to unnecessary opioid painkillers through practices of over-prescription[xii], and as the “war on drugs” was used to excuse police violence and state-sanctioned oppression on communities of color. I saw our elected officials attack and restrict the EPA, offering up the environment as a worthy sacrifice to a fossil fuel industry that profited from the destruction of our planet[xiii]. Across all industries and markets, corporations acted out of self-interest at the expense of the populace, justified by a society that celebrated the principles of free market capitalism above fundamental values of life and liberty.
And for what? Despite substantial increases in domestic GDP, the poverty rate was the same in 2018 as it was in 1979. That was before the recent period of crisis. Now, in the wake of the COVID pandemic, one in five American children do not have enough to eat, and the poverty rate is projected to climb to nearly 20% according to research from the Center on Poverty and Social Policy[xiv]. Moreover, wage and wealth inequality have grown substantially over the past thirty years, to a level last seen just before the Great Depression[xv]. Still, we accepted massive corporate bailouts, tax breaks for the wealthy, and the reduction of social programs and protections for the marginalized members of our republic. Now, we continue to witness the systematic persecution of people of color, which proceeds as flagrantly as ever.
In chemistry, catalysis is the process that facilitates fundamental change. It involves the input of sufficient energy to allow for the transformation of matter. Catalytic conditions are characterized, in part, by their instability: when a system endures so much pressure and heat that its molecules are compelled to clash and amalgamate. This process of vigorous collision allows change to occur[xvi]. For so long, our nation has sat back, watching a stream of injustices perpetrated in the name of economic growth or political stability. Now, during this time of crisis, the mood has changed. Perhaps, at last, enough energy has been introduced into our system to catalyze a new era, characterized not by complacence to oppression, but instead by an unflinching drive towards equality, liberty, and justice for all.
Author ID: Peter Fousek is a rising senior at Williams College in Williamstown, MA, majoring in English and Chemistry.
[i] Tempest Williams, T. “The Clan of One Breasted Women.” Psychological Perspectives (1990): 123–131.
[ii] https://www.pewresearch.org/topics/political-polarization/
[iii] https://lawandcrime.com/george-floyd-death/aoc-slams-nyc-judge-for-suspension-of-habeas-corpus-in-response-to-george-floyd-protests/
[iv] Wronski, L. New York Times|SurveyMonkey poll: April 2020. New York: The New York Times, 2020.
[v] Tankersley, J. “Job or Health? Restarting the Economy Threatens to Worsen Economic Inequality.” The New York Times 27 April 2020: Digitally accessed.
[vi] Flynn, M. “GOP congressman says he puts saving American ‘way of life’ above saving lives from the coronavirus.” The Washington Post 15 April 2020: Digital Access.
[vii] https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/the-10-largest-corporate-mergers-in-u-s-history
[viii] https://www.aclu.org/issues/national-security/privacy-and-surveillance/surveillance-under-patriot-act#:~:text=Hastily%20passed%2045%20days%20after,and%20credit%20reporting%20records%2C%20and
[ix] https://www.aclu.org/issues/national-security/torture
[x] https://immigrantjustice.org/issues/immigration-detention-enforcement
[xi] https://prospect.org/economy/repeating-the-mistakes-of-the-2008-bailout/
[xii] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/01/business/purdue-pharma-mckinsey-oxycontin-opiods.html
[xiii] https://insideclimatenews.org/news/27032020/coronavirus-covid-19-EPA-API-environmental-enforcement
[xiv] https://www.povertycenter.columbia.edu/news-internal/coronavirus-forecasting-poverty-estimates
[xv] https://www.povertycenter.columbia.edu/news-internal/coronavirus-forecasting-poverty-estimates
[xvi] https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/materials-science/catalysis
