Letters: Who, really, is America for?

AS I READ in the paper recently that another mentally ill person has managed to obtain a gun to kill other people, I have come to the realization that America is no longer about Americans. America has come to represent something insidious and evil; it is a place where Americans go to die.

It is a place where people starve to death, and seven out of 10 Americans are food-challenged, which means that they do not know where their next meal is coming from.

America is not about them.

It is a place where three million children go to bed hungry in this "great country" every night.

America is not for them.

It is a country where the elderly die from too much heat in the summertime and too little heat in the wintertime.

America is not about them.

It is a place where young people graduate from college with huge financial debt, and cannot get a job.

America is not about them.

It is a place where the black population makes up roughly 15 percent, but almost half of the populations in prisons is black and minority.

America is not about them.

It is a place where we are told by the government that the food we eat is safe for us, but Americans ingest GMOs and insecticide-laced food, as well as chemical-laced food from China.

America is not for them.

It is a place where education is slashed and people cannot get adequate health care.

America is not for them.

It is a place where our veterans not only cannot get adequate health care but where the Veterans Administration is keeping secret logs to make it appear that they are serving our veterans.

America is not for them.

So if it is not for us, then: Who is America for?

America is for the 5 percent of the population who control the wealth in this country. America is for the gun manufacturers that have put enough guns on the streets for every man, woman and child to have one, and continue to make more, while they buy off our lawmakers and stop commonsense gun laws that will protect us.

America is for the pharmaceutical industry, which continues to market and put out drugs that are harmful to us, yet the government tells us they are safe. Then the lawyers and pharmaceutical companies settle, and those of us who are hurt get some paltry sum for our lifetime injuries.

America is for China, which owns much of this country and continues to import harmful foods and clothing that hurt and harm us.

America is for the global corporations that see us as a way to make money, as they feed us foods that are laced with GMOs and continue to refuse to label those foods; if they are not harmful, then why don't they want you to know what you are eating?

America is for the clothing manufacturers who use flame-retardant chemicals that harm us; it is for the companies that sell us bottled water in plastic containers that leech harmful chemicals into the water that kills us.

America is for anyone and everyone, whether it is a private person or a multinational corporation, no matter how dark your agenda is, who can afford to buy off our political leaders on the city, state and national level with money and campaign contributions.

So, where does that leave us?

Where does that leave the other 95 percent of Americans who seem powerless and without hope? As I ride the subway coming from another doctor's appointment I see the cold faces of my fellow Americans. They are without hope and we all just shuffle through another day as we are taken advantage of, as we are manipulated by the media, as we are molded to just not care anymore.

We exist only to fulfill someone else's agenda and someone else's America!

The poor exist only to prop up the rich!

So what is the solution?

We have to stop being manipulated by the media; we have to pay attention to what our political leaders are doing in Washington. We have to stop being manipulated through racial hatred as we hate those who look different from us but are in the same boat that we are. We have to demand that they educate our children, pass gun laws that protect us so that Sandy Hooks do not happen anymore.

In other words, we have to open our eyes and see, pay attention to the games that are played on us, and only then will America be about all Americans and not just those 5 percent who think that they have the rights to tell the other 95 percent of Americans that they do not have any rights.

Robert Glover

Philadelphia