The Capitalist Matrix

I've been reading Katherine Boo's meticulous study of a slum near the airport in Mumbai, Behind the Beautiful Forevers (Random House, 2012). Boo spent years shadowing several families and a group of teenagers in a shantytown called Annawadi and concludes, "What was unfolding in Mumbai was unfolding elsewhere, too. In the age of global market capitalism, hopes and grievances were narrowly conceived, which blunted a sense of common predicament. Poor people didn’t unite; they competed ferociously amongst themselves for gains as slender as they were provisional. And this undercity strife created only the faintest ripple in the fabric of society at large. The gates of the rich, occasionally rattled, remained unbreached. The politicians held forth on the middle class. The poor took down one another, and the world’s great, unequal cities soldiered on in relative peace" (237).

That's about what I have concluded about the Occupy movement in Portland. Rattled a few gates. Faint ripple in society. Relative peace of the status quo. Suffering goes on as before. The skyscraper in this shot, the one that towers over Portland, is a bank building. I didn't have to create that symbolism.

Walkingmarj and Veronica recommended Boo's book, and I'm glad I read it, thank you!