LETTER TO THE EDITOR
In ancient times, siege warfare was a test of endurance. Armies would surround a city, cut off its food and water, and wait for starvation, disease, or despair to bring victory. No grand battle was needed. Just time, control, and cruelty.
Today, many Americans are beginning to realize: we’re living through a siege of our own.
But this time, it’s not waged with catapults or battering rams. It’s carried out with tax policy, deregulation, and indifference. The target isn’t a fortified castle. It’s working-class families. The invaders don’t wear armor. They wear suits, sit on boards, and pass legislation.
Over the past several decades, the walls that once protected ordinary people, fair wages, affordable housing, public education, accessible healthcare, have been quietly dismantled. Meanwhile, the cost of living has skyrocketed, union power has been eroded, and wealth has concentrated in the hands of a few. The result: a population increasingly encircled, increasingly desperate.
This isn’t a metaphor meant for shock. It’s a structure. Look closely and you’ll see it.
Wages have not kept pace with inflation. The federal minimum wage hasn’t increased since 2009. Yet the price of rent, groceries, childcare, and medicine continues to soar. This is economic strangulation. Like medieval siege armies surrounding a walled city, those in power are slowly squeezing the lifeblood out of communities.
What’s worse, the response from the top is not relief, but reinforcement. While ordinary people scramble to stay fed, housed, and healthy, the political class, led by a president who brags about his wealth and surrounds himself with billionaires, is trying to pass tax cuts for the ultra-rich and roll back the very services that give poor and working-class families a fighting chance: Medicaid, food assistance, public housing, and early education programs.
This is not negligence, it’s strategy. Just like in ancient sieges, the suffering of civilians isn’t an unfortunate side effect. It’s the point.
In the past, attackers would sometimes cut off city water supplies or burn farmland to force a surrender. Today, political operatives gut public services and blame the people for their own hardship. Starvation, then as now, doesn’t just mean a lack of food. It means a lack of options. And when people feel like there’s nowhere to turn, they’re easier to control.
But history also teaches us that siege does not always mean defeat.
Cities resisted. Communities endured. New systems emerged behind the walls. Just as ancient defenders dug secret wells or built inner stockpiles, today’s people are building mutual aid networks, food cooperatives, and community clinics. Organizers are rallying neighbors to demand higher wages, better schools, and affordable homes. Workers are striking again, refusing to accept crumbs while executives pocket millions.
These are the counter- sieges of our time.
We need to stop pretending this is a fair fight. The economic siege many Americans live under isn’t an accident. It’s policy. And if we want to survive it, we must organize with the urgency of those who know they are under attack.
Let’s stop asking why so many people are struggling to make ends meet and start asking why a handful of people have hoarded so much while the rest fight for scraps. Let’s stop blaming families for their poverty and start questioning the systems that keep them poor. Let’s stop waiting for relief from the same people who built the siege engines.
The truth is stark, but it is not hopeless.
In history, no siege could last forever. Eventually, the army had to retreat, the walls were rebuilt, or the people broke free. In our case, that breaking free will come through organizing, voting, resisting, and reimagining. It will come when we understand that justice is not charity, but balance. When policy no longer serves profit, but people.
America is a nation under siege. Not from outside invaders, but from the inside. From policies that prioritize wealth over dignity, and power over care. But if we name it, if we see the pattern clearly, we can fight back.
And we must. Because every day we wait, the walls close in.
-Chase Norris San Marcos
