PGHIMC - Pittsburgh Independent Media Center

The Water Man
by Matthius Saturday, Oct. 02, 2004 at 4:23 PM

An interesting little tale about power.

Once upon a time, this village on a river was a thriving place. The people of this village (we will call it Solidarityville), had everything that they needed and nothing more. They lived off of thier surroundings and shared with one another. But one problem existed. The citizens of Solidarityville did not see any logical reason to seek the means to produce a representative. They could if they wanted to. Solidarityville's citizens had enough things to do. Negotiating your everyday setting is politics enough.
So as the flow of progress swarmed around Solidarityville, by-passing it for good or ill, the village recieved no attention/representation. Certain elite folks who did not live in a community the way the Solidartians did, had for years, owned much of the land up the river from this cool little village. I say cool in the sense that it was truly paridise. They had music of all sorts, restaurants, clubs, even youth sports. They raised much, like children and food to feed these children. They had it all eh'? Yes they did. They did not W A N T, they only provided for needs.
So what went wrong? Well, nothing went wrong. Nothing that the citizens of Solidarityville could control. Now remember those elite cats I mentioned? What happened was this. The elite cats had interests that the Solidartians did not understand. So they voted for them anyway, it did not seem important. The elite cats could get what they wanted whenever they W A N T E D it. A very open policy indeed. A few years later these elite decided that it was within the people's interest to let tax moneys go towards the building of a dam. The Solidartians did not care either way so they let it slide. Even though the elites did not say much about the situation, they tend to just do what they like without asking the people anyway.
Well after some time, the elite cats decided that they did not really have much of a use for a little self sustaining village. The land was an issue as well. So late one night (which is when the dam that the elite's had built is closed off from the public for some strange reason), all this water came rushing through the valley, leaving the crops that the people of Solidarityville had grown in ruin. Although, and thank God, only about 2 Solidartians died in this tide of water that can oppress anything in its path, the people had nothing. Some help was given but the means to which the people could insure a good harvest did not cover the losses. They had nothing. Especially representation.

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