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The
Man Who Knew Too Much
by
Stephen Wing
As the Recycling Coordinator at work, I take professional pride
in diverting as much “waste” as possible from the dumpster
out back.
At times I'm accused of taking it personally. In my defense,
a friend once declared that recycling is a passion for me. That's
a rumor I want to correct before it gets around.
 You
see, I was raised to believe that it's wrong to hurt people.
For me it doesn't take much passion to avoid shooting or stabbing
or strangling other people; it's a habit I picked up early, just
going to Sunday School.
Besides, in all those movies, TV shows and detective novels, people
who hurt other people always paid for it in the end. Even in the
game CLUE, the murderer was always caught.
Then one day I woke up to find I had become a character in a movie
myself – an Alfred Hitchcock thriller. I'd become The
Man Who Knew Too Much.
It's easy to avoid shooting or stabbing people, I realized.
But it's almost impossible to avoid poisoning them, because
all these manufactured products I keep bringing home are made
of industrial toxins, which inevitably leak into the environment.
Meanwhile – sinister coincidence – the cancer rates
keep climbing.
I was a witness to the perfect crime!
I was also an accomplice, just by knowing.
Poison is clearly the murder weapon of choice, because people
are getting away with it every day. Regular people like me, along
with the corporations that supply the lethal weapons lining our
bathroom shelves and leaking into our groundwater.
But shouldn't chemical poisoning be considered a case of “accidental
death?”
A few years back, investigators discovered that for thirty years
the entire plastics industry had conspired to keep secret its
research into the health effects of polyvinyl chloride, while
many of its workers died early deaths from cancer. Now, health
authorities are questioning the safety of PVC in everyday items
like teething toys for babies – already banned in Europe.
No, these deaths are no accident. They are the “acceptable
risk” of providing me with molded disposable plastic in every
imaginable shape, size and color. It has to be a conspiracy, at
the highest levels! Even the makers of CLUE left the most popular
murder weapon out of the game, along with the nastiest villains.
No one wants to hear it. I'm the Man Who Knew Too Much.
But maybe you know more than you're letting on. Do you live
near a landfill? A paper mill? An oil refinery? A plastics plant?
A bauxite mine? An aluminum smelter?
Would you want to live near any of these things, with their wonderful
smells and invisible toxic releases?
Would you pitch in and help your neighborhood resist one coming
in?
The cry of “Not in my back yard!” might save us yet.
But the Man Who Knew Too Much says if it's poisonous for your
neighbors, it's poisonous anywhere it goes.
Somebody lives near the paper mill that made this grocery sack.
Somebody lives near the oil refinery and the plastics plant that
made this bottle. Somebody lives near the bauxite mine and the
aluminum smelter that made this can. Somebody lives near the landfill
where this dumpster gets emptied.
On the whole, these “somebodies” tend to be poor communities
of color. Toxic corporations know that while everyone wants their
products, no one wants their waste.
At Clark-Atlanta University, the Environmental Justice Resource
Center can show statistically how companies target communities
with little money, education or clout, ensuring that chemical
pollution primarily affects those who can least afford medical
care.
It's called “environmental racism,” and it's
global. Most manufacturing jobs have now migrated to the Third
World, where workers and communities have little protection, and
the World Trade Organization is constantly pressuring for less.
The chemical industry won't warn us what we're getting
in our air, water, and consumer products. The Bush administration,
repaying the industry's financial support, won't enforce
our environmental laws. It's up to the voters to send a message
to the government. And the voters whose health suffers most are
the poorest ones, the people no one listens to.
The Man Who Knew Too Much just wanted you to know.
It's my privilege to bring you what is probably the most unpopular
message of all time: what you do counts. Your daily actions matter.
Even your garbage is a sacred responsibility. Remember the Four
R's: Reduce, Re-use, Recycle, and... Ritual.
Why ritual? To the conscious person, recycling – a dance
of “waste” transformed to “resource” –
is a ritual of energy exchange with the Earth, a symbol as well
as an example of the circles within circles that ultimately turn
the entire universe. Ritual is how we humans consciously participate
in nature's sacred cycles.
Thank you, Creator Spirit! Thank you, Mother Earth! Thank you,
all my relations!
Stephen
Wing is a poet and activist whose work reflects themes of ecology, spirituality
and peace. For information on seasonal celebrations, contact him at
stevew@newleaf-dist.com
or 770.948.3445
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Ecology
