Welcome to the world of militarized police. Fueled by cash and handouts from the federal government's racist War on Drugs, local police departments across the country have been not-so-slowly collecting military grade weaponry and equipment to unleash in raids and standoffs.

In an ominous video posted to the Internet in June, fighters for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (al-Dawlah al-Islāmiyyah fi al-Iraq wa al-Sham) taunt unarmed members of the Iraqi security forces.

A depression swept the country. Five hundred banks closed down; 15,000 businesses failed. Unemployment rates in major cities reached 20 percent or more.

In 2012, the median household income for the census tract that covers the downtown core of Spokane was $16,503. Low income apartments dot the urban landscape. Retired seniors, the disabled and the working poor stroll outside their apartment buildings.

If you read the Spokesman-Review last week, you might have seen the alarming news that Spokane Transit Authority put the much needed remodel of the downtown bus plaza on hold.

One day, he told me he was from Bethlehem in Palestine. He started to tell me about what life was like in Palestine: clean water was scarce, poverty was endemic, military checkpoints degraded and humiliated people, settler roads cut the occupied territories up and made it impossible for people like him to travel, he had to go through Jordan when visiting home because he would be detained if he tried to return through Israel.