The Great Global Monopoly Game
by Carol Schiffler - 7/24/01

This weekend in the streets of Genoa, two young men, barely twenty years old, faced each other, one brandishing a fire extinguisher, the other a gun. Two young men frozen in a strobe light flash of time, both perhaps wondering what would happen in the next moment, and both most certainly unprepared for it.

Now one lies dead and the other is being treated for shock, while the real enemy hides behind closed doors playing a game called Global Monopoly, and the Players have long ago forgotten that the game pieces are real, live people. Maybe the game pieces have forgotten this too as they scurry from their beds to work and back to bed again. "Look at how tiny they are, Comrade Bush! How tiny, and how very, very busy!"

Sometimes the pieces fall off the board, and one of the Players stifles a nervous giggle. Most of the time, no one notices and the game goes on. This weekend, Carlo Giuliani fell off the board, The Players murmur polite apologies, but there are hotels to be built and money to be collected, and so they move on without him. It is not that they hated Carlo or wished him dead. Hate is not the reason they have such callous disregard for his demise. No. It is simply that there is no time to waste mourning for those who are no longer useful.

In the end, this is why the streets burn every time the Scary White Guys come to town. They burn in a kamikaze run against an insensate and unresponsive wall of money. They burn like a flare sent up in a vast and blackened sky, an S.O.S. launched by a sinking ship. "One hundred thousand people don't get upset unless there is a problem in their hearts and spirits," says President Jacques Chirac of France. And one hundred thousand people do not develop a problem in their hearts and spirits unless something, somewhere has gone drastically wrong.

What has gone wrong is that our leaders no longer listen to us. They are too busy talking to each other, to their corporate interests, to their media consultants. They send us pre-printed, electronic responses, while face-to-face contact is reserved for the CEOs of Enron, Exxon, Monsanto, and Raytheon. No one asks us if we would rather live beneath a noxious cloud of power plant emissions, or if we might instead prefer a nice, secure job there. We might like to know the facts, weight them, debate them, provide input. Maybe we could do this collectively; maybe compromises could be reached.

But we'll never know because in today's political paradigm, we have neither the facts about the things that affect us in our daily lives, nor the access to those who make decisions about them. What we have instead, is a global conglomeration of the rich and the powerful who hire people to convince us that whatever they want is right. Those who control all the stuff do not make policy. They make product. Then they package it, make it palatable and sell it to consumers who really have no alternatives. Here is the choice: buy or die.

Carlo was not buying, needless to say.

There are other options, and there are other things besides the Global Bank Book that must be brought to the economic negotiating table. Quality of life, environmental impact, health, security, even social and cultural concerns must be given equal weight when money changes hands. We have grown weary of cunningly crafted sound bites, stripped of meaning and devoid of content, uttered by men in expensive suits who have got where they are today by sticking to the script. Democratic societies elect people to represent them, and they elect them with the same expectations that have when choosing a doctor or seeking legal advice. They expect the problem to be identified. They expect soundly reasoned choices to be offered. A medic whose expert diagnosis and treatment plan consists of, "Well, Mr. Smith, your liver presents many complex challenges, but I have every reason to believe that a thorough review of the issue will provide new insight and hope for a brighter tomorrow," will soon find himself as lonely as the proverbial Maytag repairman.

This is the "problem" in our hearts and spirits, the excess heat in the core in the heat of the reactor. This is why economic summits so often take place against the backdrop of burning buildings and shattered glass.

Is it wrong to stand next to a police vehicle, roaring and threatening, a primal anger rising from deep within the soul? Maybe. But if this is an abomination, a crime against civilized society, please tell us when we might be invited to tea. If our protests do indeed represent an unforgivable breech of the social contract, please let us know when that contract is coming up for re-negotiation. Truth be known, we don't even remember signing it in the first place.

Carlo Giuliani will never get to take a seat at the table where the Global Monopoly Game is being played. He will never get a chance to roll the dice and choose his fate. They set him a little to close to the edge, you see, the game got a bit wild, and the Players barely heard him fall. Those of us left on the board look up into bleary, drunken eyes and gauge the sweep of a careless hand. And we squat in the shadow of towering hotels and whistle as we squeak by the electric company and some of us even breathe a sign of relief when we are sent directly to jail without collecting our three hundred dollar tax rebate. After all, at least we are still in the game.

And as the night wears on, piece after piece swallowed by the deep carpet pile below, we wonder in wordless rage how many of us will have to fall before the Players realize that the game is over.