“The rich cannot accumulate wealth without the co-operation of the poor in society.” (M.K. Gandhi, The Mind of Mahatma Gandhi, p. 71)

For quite some time this year I have been looking for this quote from Gandhi. Now at the end of the year it appears in the daily/quote I receive from India.

I will need to look at the context of this quote but for me it represents the power of nonviolence that the poor hold in society. Without the cooperation of poor the rich could not accumulate the wealth they possess. This quote is especially poignant in the USA where 2% of people have more wealth than the other 98%. The gap between wealthy and poor is growing.

The poor having power over the wealthy is easy to say but difficult to achieve. The 2% keep the 98% divided and give them the illusion of power using elections. For example, about a year ago I predicted that the wealthy have decided to elect Hilary Clinton as the next president. Nothing has happened to change my prediction. In fact the leading Republican candidates are making Hillary, with the baggage she and President Clinton carry, look good, certainly the ‘lesser of two evils’ that my friends who vote tell me we need to elect.

Today a friend sent me a link to a news article: “Haitians Protest Outside Hillary Clinton’s Office Over ‘Billions Stolen’ by Clinton Foundation. Since my visit to Haiti I have been aware of this concern of Haitian people who call President Clinton, who controls their country, “devil”. One of the companions of our journey to Haiti, Bill Quigley, Associate Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights and a law professor at Loyola University New Orleans, wrote with another researcher a paper Haiti, Seven Places Where Earthquake Money Did Not Go. The billions, as protesters contended, did not make it to people of Haitian. A year after the earthquake when I heard on the local news in Costa Rica that the Clintons had turned the most fertile land in Haiti into an industrial park with a major sweatshop, I could not believe it. But I came home to find a New York Times article Earthquake Relief Where Haiti Wasn’t Broken showing it was true. Sadly the “powers that be” will not allow the media to consider this protest by Haitians to be considered and Hilary Clinton’s, who now represent the wealthy, drive to presidency will not slow down.

But we can consider what would happened if the 98% and not be controlled by the 2%. In this scenario the poor would rise and take back the power and wealth of the few.

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