Illegal logging in community forests,
Oil drilling in indigenous territories,
Mining concessions in native soils,
These have become our warzones.
Activists hailed as terrorists,
While global agribusiness is
Paraded as unchallenged
And unchosen liberator.
Forever on the right side of progress;
Writing its history
With cheques,
And laws,
And body bags.
Outsourced resource consumption
Underpinned by
Marginalisation,
As countries too poor to ask
(Or too rich to care)
Turn ancestral lands
Into contemporary killing fields.
Defenders fall in muted protest;
Their deaths the tip
Of melting icebergs,
As slow violence bleeds
Through grubby hands
And filthy greenbacks.
Trading alms for avarice, we
Wash our hands in waters
That we first turned black,
And which now run red.
A protest against the Rampal coal-fired power plant in Bangladesh (Photo Credit: Gmanwar.bd,