INSIDE OUTSIDE USA

INSIDE OUTSIDE USA: It's hard to imagine how the "Occupy Honolulu" and "APEC Sucks" folks must feel seeing the viral nature and international news coverage of Honolulu entertainer Makana's guerrilla performance of his song "We Are The Many" from the belly of the beast on Saturday night.

For those who spent yesterday in a cave (or outside at the protests) it seems that the singer was invited to play "background music" at the big finale dinner for all the world leaders- the most secure of all ultra-secure events of the week- and instead played a 45-minute version of his latest song containing the decidedly Marxist first stanza of:

Ye come here, gather ’round the stage
The time has come for us to voice our rage
Against the ones who’ve trapped us in a cage
To steal from us the value of our wage

The irony can't be lost on those who have spent months fighting for the right to scream protestations at APEC delegates and assorted mucky mucks from environs so far from the action that they might as well have been in Kailua. Or on those camped out in Honolulu's Thomas Square Park since Nov. 5 who have received scant notice in the local media and certainly none nationally, probably because there haven't been any violent police actions to clear them out as continued to occur this weekend in places like Oakland and Portland.

The fact that one lone man wearing an "Occupy With Aloha" tee shirt under his jacket and singing what many would like to say to the exploitative elite could not only get inside but garner big time media notice while those who worked for a year to pull off their protests got bupkis, is discouraging to the many to say the least.

But the reality is that Makana didn't really get his message through to those attending the event either as reports are that most were so entangled in their own little worlds they didn't even realize what his song was saying. And those who did kind of shrugged.

APEC and all these other global free trade and investment organizations symbolize all that's wrong with the way so-called developed countries arrogantly think that by throwing around their investment capital they're doing people in lesser developed countries a favor by stealing their labor and natural resources and driving them into slum ridden cites and away from their often subsistence-farming-based villages until they so become dependent on ever-expanding industrialization they can't ever find their way back.

But even though our cries from the streets go unheeded in the world's ivory towers, it's nice to see someone get in their faces every once in a while.

For those who missed them here are the words of Makana's song We Are the Many

We Are The Many Lyrics & Music by Makana Makana Music LLC © 2011

Ye come here, gather ’round the stage
The time has come for us to voice our rage
Against the ones who’ve trapped us in a cage
To steal from us the value of our wage
From underneath the vestiture of law
The lobbyists at Washington do gnaw
At liberty, the bureaucrats guffaw
And until they are purged, we won’t withdraw
We’ll occupy the streets
We’ll occupy the courts
We’ll occupy the offices of you
Till you do
The bidding of the many, not the few
Our nation was built upon the right
Of every person to improve their plight
But laws of this Republic they rewrite
And now a few own everything in sight
They own it free of liability
They own, but they are not like you and me
Their influence dictates legality
And until they are stopped we are not free
We’ll occupy the streets
We’ll occupy the courts
We’ll occupy the offices of you
Till you do
The bidding of the many, not the few
You enforce your monopolies with guns
While sacrificing our daughters and sons
But certain things belong to everyone
Your thievery has left the people none
So take heed of our notice to redress
We have little to lose, we must confess
Your empty words do leave us unimpressed
A growing number join us in protest
We occupy the streets
We occupy the courts
We occupy the offices of you
Till you do
The bidding of the many, not the few
You can’t divide us into sides
And from our gaze, you cannot hide
Denial serves to amplify
And our allegiance you can’t buy
Our government is not for sale
The banks do not deserve a bail
We will not reward those who fail
We will not move till we prevail
We’ll occupy the streets
We’ll occupy the courts
We’ll occupy the offices of you
Till you do
The bidding of the many, not the few
We are the many
You are the few