I Will Not Subsidize Big Oil with the Blood of My Sons and Daughters.

By Lloyd Hart

As interesting as Charles Rangel's military service equity proposal might be to get people to think about the invasion of Iraq in real terms of sacrifice, equal rights never meant becoming like the feudal lords that oppress you in the first place. The Rangel bill will never make it through the House let alone to the Senate and most certainly will not be signed by the Commander and Thief. So the poor and working-class white and minority population of the U.S. will serve up their sons and daughters as the poor and working-class everywhere have always done since long before the rise of the Roman Empire. The feudalism in this equation is not lost on me and as long as the poor and working-class keep making the choice of military service as a means to rise up economically, to get an education and then to use their own blood to publicly subsidize the corporate feudal powers of today, peace and democracy will never exist.

Using the poor and a working-class to militarily oppress the poor and working-class is quite simply classic feudalism. Whether there be a draft or an economic system where people are paid just enough to live and reproduce, this behavior could only be described as feudalism. And in all conscience I cannot cooperate with a system that would use my sons' and daughters' blood on the battlefield as a public subsidy to the oil companies or for any other industry for that matter. Take the pledge "I Will Not Subsidize Big Oil with the Blood of My Sons and Daughters" and e-mail it to all the parents you know, especially those that have son's and daughters being shipped to the Gulf as we speak.