The rich and powerful do not care about past, present or future lives for the masses. For them, every day is a holiday full of warmth and food and fun and money.

After the annual national expression of the Thanksgiving myth which distracts attention from the actual experiences of the First People and the Pilgrims, thoughts of another myth came to mind—that evil rich people are really nice people waiting for the right dream. Then I read “My Unemployed Life: The Forgotten Woman” by Mollie Harper was posted on AOL online Nov 17th 2010 and sent to me. I have shared it with many. Some wrote back being saddened by it.. Here is a summary of her story: She is

a 41-year-old woman, never married with no children and unemployed now for 836 days.

In my previous life, I was a successful and effective CEO/CFO of a construction company where I increased annual revenues from $600,000 to $1.3 million in one year's time with a 10 percent profit to the bottom line. I covered my salary expense, increased the owner's annual compensation by $70,000 and increased the pay and benefits for all employees. . .  I met the owner's goal of more time off, giving him the opportunity to take six vacations in the last nine months of my employment, and paid quarterly profit sharing bonuses (based on company performance) to each of our 12 team members. I worked at the pace of a machine and loved every second of it.

A hard-hit industry

The construction industry was one of the first industries to take a hit when the economy crashed. Heartbroken, but determined, I watched and assisted as the well-oiled machine I helped build was disassembled one team member at a time until it was my time to leave. The last I heard, the owner has returned to work – running as a one-man entity and surviving the best he can. Since losing my job, I have literally applied to thousands of job opportunities, starting first in my current city, then branching out to Florida statewide, then countrywide, and eventually to jobs in Canada, Ireland and Scotland. With each passing month, then years, the reality set in that I have, in fact, been discarded, thrown out, no longer useful or desirable to any team anywhere.

“For a woman like me -- single with no children -- my career was my life . . . . coming to the realization that my experience and skills are no longer desired . . is the biggest and most painfully jagged pill I have ever been forced to swallow.

A slow, painful loss

. . .  the magnitude of loss that accompanies unemployment. What most people don't realize is that today's unemployed are the lepers in society from years gone by. The judgment and apathy you experience from others is indescribable at best. I was once surrounded by hundreds of friends, happy-hour invitations and social outings; now I am completely and unequivocally on my own. Single in the truest sense of the word. Oddly enough, my closest friends left first, within the first six months. And as each month passed, the phone calls of support lessened, the offers to help disappeared and e-mails went unanswered.

Although the isolation, rejection and abandonment by friends and family are so unbearably painful some days that I pray for days at time, I did find a strange new sense of empowerment in my new life. There is comfort in knowing that all of the false pretense, dead weight and lies are gone. While walking a daily tightrope of not knowing whether I might disappear into homelessness or suddenly get my lucky break is exhausting beyond any ability to imagine, there is something powerful about knowing that while you walk that rope alone, you at least walk it in truth with honor.

Before losing my job, my debts were paid on time. My credit score was 785. I was never late on my mortgage or car payments. I was neither rich, nor poor. I lived comfortably, never wanting or needing more. I gave generously to my friends and family, albeit putting little importance on saving. Since losing my job, I've lost my car. My first home, modest and old, is now in foreclosure. I have sold all of my jewelry, some furniture, my surround-sound system, childhood collectible dolls, bicycle and iPod. Golf clubs, extra bedroom set, dining table – anything and everything I have left is now has a price tag, listed in classified ads and being peddled to friends and neighbors for pennies on the dollar. But necessary pennies, needed to cover the most basic expenses of toilet paper.

A wise man once said ‘you can never give up, for you know not what the tide will bring in.’ So every day, I continue to create new resumes, apply to new jobs, network with prospects, old friends or colleagues, sell the last of my possessions and find small paying jobs wherever I can. Most importantly, every day I pray. I pray for a light to show me a way out of this darkness. I pray for all of the others who feel exactly like me -- unloved, discarded, forgotten. I pray for this country, for the blind to see. I pray for an awakening for you, for us all, before it is too late. I pray for one last chance to make a difference in this world before I disappear.

I wish Mollie’s story was unusual, unique. It is not. All over the country, people continue to be thrown away. On my TV, I listen to homeless citizens recounting their experiences in this community. They appear regularly on municipal channels supposed to broadcast “transparent” government meetings. The homeless are intelligent and articulate because, unlike the uneducated, unwashed hobo images of the past that are still presented by homeless-haters, homeless/jobless/foreclosed people are frequently well educated, highly experienced people from a wide cross-section of jobs and careers, who have lost their sources of income because of the machinations of the rich. The profiteers, supported by friends in high places, despite a so-called failing economy, are all making record profits while the homeless, unemployed and foreclosed are demeaned, denigrated and denied even the most miserly amount of help.

Even more heartlessly, the wealthy, power elite who decry “hand-outs,” spend inordinate sums developing propaganda tools with which they comprehensively flood the media to persuade those who have been robbed of all possessions to oppose estate taxes. This would be laughable if it were not evidence of the acceptance of death sentences for the poor. Those who have lost their homes and all possessions, whose lives are being cut short by lack of health care or suicide, who have nothing to leave their children but the road to foster care and/or incarceration, are standing up for estate taxes or are persuaded to join the military to prove patriotism. Those who join the military to earn citizenship for themselves and their families are not told that their families will be deported if they are killed. Those who encourage their children or other loved ones to join the military for future education benefits or to avoid unemployment are not told that those whose mental health deteriorates to suicide will be deemed cowards and traitors and denied burial with others who die in military sevice and are buried in Arlington National Cemetery. There is always a catch to offers extended by those who are enriched at the cost of the lives of others.

For as long as most of us have been alive, Congress, Presidents, state legislators and governors, mayors and city/county councils have been “discussing” what to do about poor people, now identified as the increasing homeless people—as if they have nothing to do with them, as if they are some strange, less-than-human beings whose condition is their own fault. When the largest percentage of the homeless were military veterans, many disabled (some as far back as Vietnam from Agent Orange), they were described as if they were a bunch of drug addicts deserving punishment for their own self-inflicted pain. Efforts to isolate them included telling them that the anti-war movement of the Vietnam-era, was actually against those serving in the military which was not true then and is not true now. The propaganda used to divide the nation includes calling people unpatriotic if they wish to save the lives of those in the military. The military seem to be indoctrinated against trusting non-military people and to ignore the common sense which has come from their own experiences. The fact that people are struggling against the injury and death of their sons and daughters, husbands and wives, many of whom have nowhere else to work, is disregarded, especially in the face of lies about terrorism, stories about non-existent weapons of mass destruction.

Every empire has exaggerated stories of glory to cover up acts of inhumanity. To prolong ther existence, empires expand the positive spin of their propaganda to persuade followers to remain loyal and convince opponents of the futility of resistance. The human spirit, however, has an indominable determination to be free. Despite the records of history which have repeatedly shown human spirit to be unstoppable, despots and oligarchies continue to believe they can maintain endless, absolute control by force and fear. In the period just before each empire has fallen, there have been more wars, more tortures, more poverty, greater concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, and collapses of religion and morality. Think of the Roman Coliseum—Circus Maximus—as one example of the last days of the Roman Empire.

Now this entire nation is submitting to demoralising touching of entire bodies and requirements to remove artifical limbs and other medical/prosthetic devices alledgedly to guard against terrorism. President Reagan once derided Gobachev with the words, “Tear down that {Berlin} wall” and millions celebrated its end, then mourned the countless people whose lives were shattered or ended in efforts to escape the torture, militarization, poverty and suffering under the Soviet system.

Was nothing learned from the world’s experience of the Berlin Wall that can be applied to the wall being built along the border between the US and Mexico? Where are all the religious and activists? Why haven’t US presidents called for the tearing down of this new wall? What have Mexicans and other Latinos done to warrant the level of hatred represented by a wall? It surely is not about terrorism or drugs. Terrorists have been caught coming in through Canada, not Mexico, and no wall is being built there. US presidents visit and maintain relationships with Colomibia, probably the largest source of imported, illegal drugs. Surely, Mexico does not top that. But no walls are being built there.. 

We are innundated with psychological strategies to condition us to obey without question. Like the Spanish Inquisition and Crusades of the past, people are tortured and murdered, tortured to confess something, then murdered or left brain dead. These acts were replicated in the Spanish, French, English, Dutch, Portuguese, Belgian and Danish invasions into the Americas, Australia, Africa and Asia where the same enslavement/extermination practices were used to extract as much of the resources as possible for monarchies, then capitalists and other organized governments pretending interest in a better world for workers—liars all!

If there is any doubt about the way the Germans and other Europeans closed their eyes to the extermination of 10 million Jews and others, including the sick and disabled and citizens of other countries, we have its re-enactment before us right now in Congo, Somalia, Haiti, Iraq, Afghanistan, and New Orleans, to name a few. Such horror is only possible with mass acceptance and participation. The hands are bloody of everyone who looks away when others are lied about, scape-goated, discriminated against, excluded, cheated, enslaved, raped, beaten, tortured, and killed, not to mention all the kinds of slave trade—children, women, sex, drug-related, war-rationalized.

There are so many religions and denominations within them. Which of the has the values, philosophies and missions supporting this inhumanity? Which are standing in opposition to it? What large scale organizations can be pointed to as faithful, honest advocates for humanity, justice, equality, kindness for all? Which are led by leaders exemplifying in fact what they say they stand for?  Who is responsible for all the silence? We are all already dying from a poisoned environment, from curable diseases, from hatred. Once it was known that Haitians had been infected with cholera, why were there not massive vaccinations? For the same reason that victims of Katrina are still homeles; the same reasons schools in poor neighborhoods are being closed and sold to “businessmen” to make a profit because the masses have been persuaded that it is better to go along with slow murder than to resist and be killed quickly. Yet empires cannot operate without workers. Companies cannot run without employees. Every venture must have those who implement it. Only workers, the masses of the grassroots/working class, can bring about positive, constructive change by refusing enslavement and opposing the dishonest, negative myths about  the homeless, unemployed and poor and exposing the real differences in what we all have or don’t have.

Reading Mollie’s story of invisibility because she is unemployed, I empathized with all that she continues to suffer and hope she survives. So many are being sacrificed for the greed and gain of others. Yet, however bad her circumstances, those who have spoken up for justice and equality have often suffered worse for decades. For them, the state of the economy and variations in industries are not the causes.  Mollie has captured one especially important point, the women having these experiences, especially women of color who are uniquely subjected to both racism and sexism, have increased in invisibility more than any other group and it is costing lives. The problems are identified; solutions are available, but only to those who refuse to be ignored and disposed of. If there is no will to survive, there is no survival.

BlackCommentator.com Guest Commentator Suzanne Brooks is the founder and CEO of International Association for Women of Color Day and CEO of Justice 4 All Includes Women of Color. Click here to contact Ms. Brooks.