http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/8161Ms. Rodriquez and Class Warfare; A Dime for a Dollar
by Timothy Gatto | Jun 17 2007
Edith Rodriquez, 42, died in a hospital, writhing in agony on the floor of the waiting room at Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital. For 45 minutes this woman lay dying as passers-by called 911 on their cell-phones, complaining that the hospital staff would do nothing for her as she vomited blood on the floor. The hospital maintenance team made sure that the bloodied vomit was cleaned from around her, but the woman was another matter. The staff just let her die for no other reason than that she couldn’t speak English and maybe that the people with her did not have enough clout to get her treatment.
This is not just another tragic story of crossed communications; it is another story of murder by class. Edith was Hispanic, overweight, and the people with her couldn’t speak the language that they were “supposed” to speak. If she would have been a white woman, accompanied by a man in a business suit that spoke the Queen’s English, I can just about guarantee that Edith would still be alive today. Even if she had died, she would not have died on the hospital floor, she would have died on an operating room table or a hospital bed recovering from surgery, but the floor? Not a chance. The waiting room floor is reserved for immigrants and poor people. 911 wouldn’t even act on the call because she was already at the hospital. (Oh those crazy Chicanos, they just can’t get it right).
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Meanwhile the mainstream media glorifies the people that have got it all as if they were some kind of new royalty. Will Paris go to jail? Good. While they are at it, they can take every one of these spoiled snot-nosed kids and put them in with her. That won’t happen though because there is a two-tiered legal system in this country, one kind of justice for the rich, and one kind of justice for the poor. With the rich, they get a lawyer, go through a bail hearing, get out on bail, and fight the courts while they sleep at home every night. For the poor, its jail, maybe bail. They go to court and the judge tells them to accept what he gives them and avoid a trial where or he will hit them with the maximum. A legal aid worker that’s underpaid and barely staffed tells that person to take what the judge gives them because it won’t get any better if they go to trial. They then take “the deal” and they go on probation or go to jail. Don’t tell me that this isn’t what happens; I have seen it happen more than a few times. If you are poor in this country, you are guilty until proven innocent; “Law and Order” is a fictional show on TV. Paris just decided to push the limit and they made an example out of her. Just because she went to jail, the court system feels sanctified for another few years.
Can I prove this? I sure can. Look at Amnesty International. We have more people in jail for non-violent crimes than any other nation on this planet! It’s all a con game. Every state, because of this wonderful War on Crime, gets Federal dollars for every day a person is held in County jails. The more people in jail, the more money the Counties make. The same goes for State Penitentiaries. The top industry in Florida isn’t their tourist industry or their citrus crops; it’s their prison system, same for Texas and Michigan.
This country is thriving on the backs of the working class. Meanwhile we are dying on the waiting room floors in hospitals, dying in prisons, dying in the deserts of the Middle East, all so the rich can get richer. The system is broken, the top 10% of Americans control 90% of the wealth, and it’s getting worse. Cuba has a better health system than we do. Almost every industrialized nation in the world has national health care. Meanwhile, these things never seem to be resolved. The same promises are given by every presidential candidate since I was old enough to understand; national health care, better wages, more prosperity and a government that listens, but they never come through.
Edith Rodriquez will be remembered for a few short days until another story comes along. You can bet however, that the news media won’t be banging their heads against the wall trying to find out how many more Edith Rodriquez’s there are out there. Meanwhile, life will go on, everyone pushed to the limit so that we can buy the latest “People” magazine to see what kind of new digs Tom and Katie will move into. This is class warfare, and I’ll bet you didn’t even know you were a part of it.