The economic crisis is driving the suicide rate up as people are losing their jobs, homes and faith in the system.Calls to suicide hot lines are rising with calls to the National Suicide Prevention Hot Line expected to reach 630,000 by the end of the year. In 2007, there were 33,185 suicides according to the CDC. In 2008 suicides were up 6% in Florida, 2.3% in Georgia and 7.8% in North Carolina.
So far this year, 140 US soldiers have committed suicide and a survey released in September reports that almost 8.3 million adults had serious thoughts of suicide in 2008 and 1.1 million of them attempted it.
"The number of suicides tends to rise with a state's unemployment rate." says one economist from the University of North Carolina Greensboro. * When you add to these deaths the millions that die from poor diet, lack of health care and other by products of the so-called free market the numbers probably hit the millions.
During the Oakland CA general strike in 1946, the police chief commented that while thousands were in the streets and away from their homes, therefore making them targets for robbers, crime actually decreased. The reason for this is clear to me, crime, like suicide is connected to social condition. When we are engaged in struggle; when we are fighting the system, we feel less isolated, not so helpless. Unity and solidarity with our kind, with workers and all oppressed people is a necessary component of struggle; racism, sexism and other forms of division introduced by the ruling class to divide us are weakened and overcome altogether; we move from mere victims of history to consciously making it .
The courageous struggle the students are waging against the capitalist offensive from Poland to Vienna, Los Angeles to Berkeley California; this is the answer to a healthier future. It's time for the worker's movement to join them and bring the power of Labor to the table.
*Wall Street Journal 11-23-09
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