A Daily Terror

Commentary By: Mumia Abu Jamal

The power of the media to condition consciousness is vast:

For, with the merest mention of a word, say, for instance, "terror," a flood of images roar through the mind, like a well-placed row of dominoes, each falling one into the other, tumbling like a hard, dry, crackling wave: terror, terrorism, the twin towers of midtown Manhattan, planes circling like metallic vultures, plunging into solid rock and steel, flames, smoke, and humans blown into dry dust. Osama bin-Laden; Mullah Omar; Saddam Hussein, (fill in the blanks).

Those are the thoughts we have been conditioned to think by the media. We have virtually no choice in the matter.

There is though, another terror that ravages the land:

It affects not thousands, but millions. It affects Whites, Blacks, Anglos, Latinos, Citizens, Immigrants, Male, Female, Gay, Straight, Jew, Gentile, Northerner, Southerner, from Maine to Mississippi. It is the terror of financial failure.

The terror of not getting next week's paycheck. The terror of being fired; of being unable to pay rent (or the mortgage); of seeing one's children wracked by hunger.

This is the silent terror; the hidden terror. Indeed it is the invisible terror that is all too real.

It is one that the State not only refuses to fight, but refuses to acknowledge.