Harry Belafonte said back in 2004 on Democracy Now: "Somebody, in trying to get a better price for good, is going to have to say that we just can’t keep running after the fast food market. Somebody is going to have to make a sacrifice. Somebody is going to have to put their body in front of the machine. Somebody is going to have to die. It’s the way things are. It’s the way things have been."
Those words stuck with me.
There's an irony. People die everyday, sometimes out of self-sacrifice. But we don't know about it.
When Mohamed Bouaziz incinerated himself a year ago today, he set off a flame felt far and wide.
But often, people self-sacrifice and no one seems to notice. Like in November 2006 Malachi Ritscher immolated himself in Chicago against the Iraq war. And virtually no one seemed to notice.
Perhaps people are getting killed all the time and we just need to see it.