by Al Staggs

Structures of gross inequality

push their weight against our citizens.

Freedom is only a word, not a reality.

Capitalism is holding liberty hostage.

Lower our flags to half mast,

for symbolism without substance

is a farce and a tragedy.

The most damaging violence in this society

comes from the perpetrators

of its lethal structures of tax cuts,

hedge funds, prime mortgages,

inflated incomes and excessive luxury

for those perpetrators, the super-rich,

while the rest of us are powerless

to change our economic fate.

Financial structures of this nature

are always legal, though seldom moral.

It boils down to 21st-century slavery,

and perhaps only another civil war

could free the economically enslaved

from this extraordinary and cruel inequality.

Originally published in Mammon We Trust