He never missed a single mortgage payment yet the banks took his property nevertheless

AN OPEN letter posted on Facebook by an Oakey veterinarian has gone viral on the internet. The Chronicle understands the post has received more than two million shares and views through social media. Dr David Pascoe’s 1000-word, open letter to the Australian public addresses what he calls “corporate terrorism” and states that farmers are being “bullied, threatened and abused by both banks and mining companies (and) forced off their own land”. It has been shared thousands of times and attracted hundreds of comments of support. To see the letter, visit Dr Pascoe’s Facebook page. The Chronicle was unable to reach the veterinarian for comment. Read the letter here: Charlie Phillott (left) The Australian December 2014: and Florence Owens Thompson (Dorthea Lange) March 1936 (originally photographed in b&w; and retouched) AN OPEN LETTER TO THE AUSTRALIAN PEOPLE: Dear Men and Women of Australia, There are two photographs on this page, and while they might look like father and daughter, they are separated by two nations, one ocean and some seventy years. Yet incredibly, they are both part of the same tragedy, the kind that leaves deep and irreparable scars on a nation and its people for a lifetime. The young woman who was born in 1907. The elderly man who was born twenty seven years later in 1934. The photograph of the woman was taken in the Great Depression of 1936 when the man was a two year old boy. Her name was Florence Owens Thompson and she was a 32 year old mother of seven who was photographed sitting homeless in a tent. The image was published across the newspapers of America and it managed to enrage the nation, because people could not believe that Americans could be treated in such a way. It forced President Roosevelt to act, to step up and become a leader for his times: he launched soup kitchens, work gangs, programs for the homeless, dams and roads and railways were built – and he gave his people hope. John Steinbeck later wrote a book called The Grapes of Wrath which became an American literary Icon. It was about a drought that made the farmers penniless – and how the banks had forced them off their land so they could sell it on to the big powerful corporations.



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