The economy is everybody’s business
Economics is the air we breathe
When all has been commoditised
There is no escaping its pollution
No wilderness untouched
No soul unscathed
Indoctrinated by ideologies
Incoherent in thought
Where is the value in a tool
That trades life to ‘make a killing’
This mechanism spreads disease as excess grows
Free trade is a myth, the labourer cannot move
Trapped in their plot this is their plight
Rulers seize with might
The workers right to life
A life should have reward
A life should have joy
A life should have security
A life should have leisure
A life should have a chance
A life should have dignity
This is the life profit should buy
There will come a shift
When no more can be borne
Exhausted all faith
The belief will rise from within
If you dare to live a dignified life
Unified by peace, terror subsides
Take another look, read a book
It is not as hard as it seems
To set the human spirit free
-Camille Delaquise
This poem appears in RISE, Camille’s second contemporary poetry collection. The economy is everybody’s business explores economic life as a moral and political structure that reaches into every corner of existence — rejecting systems that commodify people and insisting instead on dignity, security, leisure and peace as the true measure of value.