Imperialism In America Today

It is fair to say that everything we know about society, how to make a living, and our leaders has been misguided over the years. We have gotten so used to the way we have been living our lives without realizing the suffering and dangers that others are going through. We have our blinders in place and if we see anything that society is uncomfortable with, we try to ignore it and go on living our lives like nothing has ever happened. Imperialism has used the economic, military, and cultural influence of the United States on other countries (Boundless). As imperialism is being use to make other countries civilized when “in fact, destroying other cultures and robbing people of their humanity, diversity, and identity” (Shiva 97). The United States

Corporations have been so power hungry and driven by greed that they ruin the land with pollution, over-industrializing cities, and destroying cultural values. With corporations heavily polluting the environment, “in 1978 Chemical Waste Management, a company that specialized in handling toxic waste,chose the community of Emelle, in Sumter County, Alabama, as the site of its new toxic waste dump” (Loomis). The city of Emelle, Alabama, which was more than ninety percent African American, and the surrounding county being made up of nearly two-thirds African-American residents, became the perfect site to dispose of the chemical waste, but the town was uninformed of the local corporate building and waste disposal. “The company dumped polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and other toxic materials at the site. Despite claiming it was safe, the company racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines” (Loomis). The racist actions from Chemical Waste Management affected areas in Port Arthur Texas, Chicago’s South side, and Saguet, Illinois in which the majority of the population was African American. It takes companies like Chemical Waste Management that get people angry enough to start environmental justice movements to protect the low-income neighborhoods. Corporations are slowly ruining communities as more industrial sites

A more recent example would be Standing Rock Indian Reservation as the Dakota access pipeline was being drilled in to transport oil. The process as destroyed the indian reservation community and the pipeline has cause environmental issue with the pipeline leaking oil. With environmental movements out there to right the wrongs in the world, Shiva focus on how economic, ecological, and social crisis demand a new way of thinking and living on earth where following earth democracy principles helps us realize that “earth democracy is based on living cultures which are life nourishing that help us promote peace, care, and compassion” (Shiva 10). By using these principles helps us reconnect the culture with the community and promotes diversity of the places that have been destroyed over time. The real question remain on how will we make the switch from big corporations ruining our daily lives such as global monoculture to Shiva’s earth democracy principles of living cultures? She simply answers this by the “economy shapes culture and culture shapes the economy” (Shiva 102). We need to reevaluate our economy and make big changes to switch our economic state of the unstable constellation of the three economies to the stable constellation. It would involve shortening our market economy and expanding nature’s