Where are the Social Critics Today?

Here is a song that I find beautiful, but when you pay attention to the words, it should make you stop and think. This song was written about Mexican immigrants who anonymously died in a plane crash. The words are by Woodie Guthrie, but this version is sung by his son, Arlo Guthrie:



The real tragedy is that Woodie Guthrie sang about the plight of migrant workers half a decade ago. The problem has gotten worse, and I don't see anybody writing anything as stirring as the song by Woodie Guthrie. The horror is beyond comprehension. The US declared war on the rest of the world because 2974 died in the Sept 11, 2001 attacks. But far more have died in the desert or suffocated on locked up trucks crossing the border. Here are the facts as reported by MPI:

From January 1995 through March 2004, more than 2,640 migrants died – more than one death per day in the last four years. Deaths occurring along the Arizona and Texas segments of the border have increased ten-fold since the implementation of the concentrated border enforcement strategy. Border-wide, the probability of dying versus being apprehended by the Border Patrol has doubled since 1998. These statistics understate the number of fatalities, since they include only those migrants whose bodies have been recovered by the Border Patrol and Mexican police.

What I find amazing about this song is how honest & perceptive it was. I wonder... where are the social critics of today with a voice as strong as Woodie Guthrie?

Plane Wreck At Los Gatos (Deportee)

The crops are all in and the peaches are rott'ning,
The oranges piled in their creosote dumps;
They're flying 'em back to the Mexican border
To pay all their money to wade back again

Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita,
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria;
You won't have your names when you ride the big airplane,
All they will call you will be "deportees"

My father's own father, he waded that river,
They took all the money he made in his life;
My brothers and sisters come working the fruit trees,
And they rode the truck till they took down and died.

Some of us are illegal, and some are not wanted,
Our work contract's out and we have to move on;
Six hundred miles to that Mexican border,
They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves.

We died in your hills, we died in your deserts,
We died in your valleys and died on your plains.
We died 'neath your trees and we died in your bushes,
Both sides of the river, we died just the same.

The sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon,
A fireball of lightning, and shook all our hills,
Who are all these friends, all scattered like dry leaves?
The radio says, "They are just deportees"

Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards?
Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit?
To fall like dry leaves to rot on my topsoil
And be called by no name except "deportees"?