Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt

by Chris Hedges

  Those who resist—the doubters, outcasts, artists, renegades, skeptics, and rebels—rarely come from the elite. They ask different questions. They seek something else: a life of meaning. They have grasped Immanuel Kant’s dictum, “If justice perishes, human life on Earth has lost its meaning.”47 And in their search they come to the conclusion that, as Socrates said, it is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong. This conclusion makes a leap into the moral. It refuses to place a monetary value on human life. It acknowledges human life, indeed all life, as sacred. And this is why, as Arendt points out, the only morally reliable people are not those who say “this is wrong,” or “this should not be done,” but those who say “I can’t.”

  “The greatest evildoers are those who don’t remember because they have never given thought to the matter, and, without remembrance, nothing can hold them back,” Arendt wrote. “For human beings, thinking of past matters means moving in the dimension of depth, striking roots and thus stabilizing ourselves, so as not to be swept away by whatever may occur—the Zeitgeist or History or simple temptation. The greatest evil is not radical, it has no roots, and because it has no roots it has no limitations, it can go to unthinkable extremes and sweep over the whole world.”48

  There are streaks in my lungs, traces of the tuberculosis I picked up around hundreds of dying Sudanese during the famine I covered as a foreign correspondent. I was strong and privileged and fought off the disease. They were not and did not. The bodies, most of them children, were dumped into hastily dug mass graves. The scars I carry within me are the whispers of these dead. They are the faint marks of those who never had a chance to become men or women, to fall in love and have children of their own. I carried these scars to the doors of Goldman Sachs. I placed myself at the feet of these commodity traders to call for justice because the dead, and those dying in slums and refugee camps across the planet, cannot make this journey. I see their faces. They haunt me in the day and come to me in the dark. They force me to remember. They make me choose sides.

  There were times when I entered the ring as a boxer and knew, as did the spectators, that I was woefully mismatched. Ringers—experienced boxers in need of a tune-up or a little practice—would go to the clubs where semi-pros fought, lie about their long professional fight records, and toy with us. Those fights became about something other than winning. They became about dignity and self-respect. You fought to say something about who you were as a human being. These bouts were punishing, physically brutal, and demoralizing. You would get knocked down and stagger back up. You would reel backward from a blow that felt like a cement block. You would taste your blood on your lips. Your vision would blur. Your ribs, the back of your neck, and your abdomen would ache. Your legs felt like lead. But the longer you held on, the more the crowd turned in your favor. No one, not even you, thought you could win. But then, every once in a while, the ringer would get overconfident. He would get careless. And you would find deep within yourself some new burst of energy, some untapped strength, and, with the fury of the dispossessed, bring him down. I have not put on a pair of boxing gloves for thirty years. But I feel this twinge of euphoria again in my stomach, this utter certainty that the impossible is possible, the realization that the mighty can fall.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Eunice Wong, as she does with all my writing, edited, added passages, cut others, challenged and suggested ideas, and was my most steadfast and conscientious critic. This book would not be what it is without her. There were times when her editing was disconcerting, especially when she took my last chapter, printed it out, cut it up with a pair of scissors, and rearranged it on the living room floor. But once she had rearranged it the chapter was stronger and tighter. She also carried out major surgery with the Pine Ridge chapter. Much of the narrative of the book bears her imprint. She read and reread every sentence. I depend on her wisdom and her skills as an editor and a writer. That she is also beautiful, brilliant, a gifted stage actor, deeply compassionate, and as devoted and loving a mother as she is a wife makes our house a shelter from the storms of the world.

  This book could not have been written without the generous support of the Lannan Foundation, The Investigative Fund of the Nation Institute, and the Wallace Global Fund, which provided the funds for our travel budget. We made numerous trips to Camden, New Jersey; West Virginia; Pine Ridge, North Dakota; Immokalee, Florida; and New York. The flights, hotels, and car rentals were costly, especially when we rented four-wheel drive vehicles in South Dakota and West Virginia. Gas alone around Pine Ridge cost us more than $50 a day. We would not have been able to make these trips without the Wallace Global Fund grant. The Lannan Foundation is the rock on which I build my work. I would not be able to survive as a writer without them. And The Nation Institute has been my home and my supporter since I left the New York Times.

  During the two years we worked on this book, Joe Sacco and I encountered valiant and courageous people who resisted not because they could always win, but because it was right. They often knew that the forces they faced were so large and so powerful that defeat was almost assured. But from Pine Ridge to Camden to West Virginia to Immokalee to Zuccotti Park, they fought back. And the rise of a concerted, nationwide Occupy movement to resist corporate power gives us all a hope that did not exist before September 17, 2011.

  We would especially like to thank Charlie Abourezk, who devoted tremendous amounts of time to help us on Pine Ridge, as well as Mike Red Cloud. We spent many hours with each of them, and they became good friends. Bill Means, Leonard Crow Dog, Jake Little, and Deborah Tobacco were also very generous in helping us navigate Pine Ridge. Father Michael Doyle in Camden, along with Lolly Davis, Brenda Hayes, and Dwight Ott, who for ten years covered Camden for the Philadelphia Inquirer and who took us around the city, were vital links. We would also like to thank Joe Balzano, who dropped his work to take us into Camden and was available for further questioning when we asked. In West Virginia, the Reverend Amanda Reed and the Reverend Jim Lewis devoted several days to helping us get to where we should go and see those we should see. It was only because of the respect so many people had for Jim and Amanda that doors were opened for us. Julian Martin, Allen Johnson, and the novelist Denise Giardina, whose lyrical and moving portrayals of working men and women in the coalfields are unsurpassed in contemporary fiction, were also very helpful. Larry Gibson was generous with his time and an inspiration to us, as he is to all who meet him. Ken Hechler was worth a book in himself. There are certainly few people alive today who knew Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and Hermann Göring. And there are even fewer political figures with his integrity. We would like to thank Vivian Stockman and Susan Lapis, along with SouthWings, for flying us over the Appalachians, although the devastation we saw made us heartsick. There were several people at the Coalition of Immokalee Workers who were very helpful with the book, first and foremost Greg Asbed, who read through the chapter and provided invaluable criticism. Marc Rodrigues, Laura Germino, Gerardo Reyes-Chavez, and Lucas Benitez gave us much help and time, as well as advice to do our story. Professor Stephen Marini, over a dinner at Wellesley College, urged me to focus my writing on the corporate state. It was wise advice and has resulted in the last three books. Finally, we would like to thank all the occupiers who were camped out in Zuccotti Park, especially Zak Solomon, Sandy Nurse, John Friesen, and Ketchup. You made the last chapter possible. You completed the arch of the book. And you will write in your deeds the next part of this story.

  I am grateful to Andy Breslau, Ruth Baldwin, Taya Grobow, and Jonathan Schell at The Nation Institute, as well as Roane Carey and Katrina vanden Heuvel at The Nation magazine. Carl Bromley at Nation Books, one of the finest editors in the business, was instrumental in forming the book. Michele Jacob and Dori Gelb are superb publicists who also care deeply about books. Patrick and Andy Lannan, along with Jo Chapman, at the Lannan Foundation have for years provided unwavering support. I am also deeply indebted to my former Eaglebrook School classmate a
nd friend Randall Wallace.

  John Timpane, as he always does, edited the final manuscript. There must be something he does not know, but I have yet to find out what it is. He is the filter through which I write, as adept with ideas as he is with line editing. And he even corrected my Spanish grammar.

  Anton Woronczuk was my research assistant and saved me hours of work. He is dogged, smart, and reliable. Anton also transcribed many hours of transcriptions, as did Chris Hohmuth and my son Thomas. Robert Scheer, who sets the gold standard for journalism and commentary, and Zuade Kaufmann, who publishes the Web magazine Truthdig, where I write a weekly column, along with the talented editor Tom Caswell, give me a weekly outlet and unqualified support. I would like to thank Ralph Nader, who knows more about corporate power and has been fighting corporations longer and more effectively than any other American, for his wisdom and friendship, along with Kevin Zeese, Margaret Flowers, Steve Kinzer, Peter Scheer, Kasia Anderson, Ann and Walter Pincus, Maria-Christina Keller, Lauren B. Davis, June Ballinger, Michael Goldstein, Gerald Stern, Anne Marie Macari, Tom Artin, the brilliant theologian James Cone, Ray Close, the Reverend Michael Granzen, the Reverend Karen Hernandez, Joe and Heidi Hough, Mark Kurlansky, Margaret Maurer, my mentor and former professor the Reverend Coleman Brown, to whom, along with my father, I dedicated my first book, Irene Brown, Sam Hynes, Sonali Kolhatkar, Francine Prose, Russell Banks, Celia Chazelle, Esther Kaplan, Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein, John Ralston Saul, and Cornel West, who along with Noam and the late Howard Zinn is one of the few intellectuals in this country who matters. Dorothea von Moltke and Cliff Simms, friends in Princeton, fight to defend the printed word with valor and courage.

  Lisa Bankoff of International Creative Management handled the contracts for the book and is, as she has been throughout the years, a joy to work with. Nicole Aragi, Joe’s agent, was also of great assistance in helping to facilitate this joint project

  Finally, I am, first and foremost, a father and a husband. And my four children, Thomas, Noëlle, Konrad, and Marina, along with Eunice, are the center of my universe. “Kiss and a hug!” Konrad will shout as he bursts through the door of my office. They are a balm to my soul. I don’t want any of them to grow up too quickly. I hope they will always come home often.

  NOTES

  Introduction

  1. James Gustave Speth, “We’re Number One,” Yes Magazine, March 22, 2011, http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/on-american-superiority (accessed 26 Dec. 2011).

  Chapter 1: Days of Theft

  1. “2010 Whiteclay Year End Statistics,” Nebraska Liquor Control Commission, http://www.lcc.ne.gov/Revenue%20Docs/2010%20Whiteclay%20Year%20End%20Stats.pdf (accessed 7 Nov. 2013). The cans-a-day statistic was calculated using the figures provided by this source.

  2. “Pine Ridge Indian Reservation Demographics (2009),” Red Cloud Indian School, www.redcloudschool.org/history/072409_PineRidge_FactSheet.pdf (accessed 23 Dec. 2011).

  3. Ibid.

  4. Ibid.

  5. Nathaniel Philbrick, The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn (New York: Penguin, 2010), 139.

  6. Ibid., 138–139.

  7. Evan S. Connell, Son of the Morning Star: Custer and the Little Bighorn (New York: History Book Club, 1984), 177.

  8. Philbrick, 258.

  9. Ibid., 210.

  10. Ibid., 3–4.

  11. Kingsley M. Bray, Crazy Horse: A Lakota Life (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2006), 192–195.

  12. Max Weber, “Science as a Vocation,” (speech, Munich University, 1918).

  13. Connell, 330–332.

  14. Herbert S. Klein, Population History of the United States (West Nyack, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 159.

  15. Sitting Bull, Tatanka Yotanka, “Behold, My Friends, the Spring Is Come,” in Robert Blaisdell, Great Speeches by Native Americans (New York: Courier Dover, 2000), 166.

  16. Ibid.

  17. PBS.org. New Perspectives on the West. “Archives of the West, 1887–1914. The Dawes Act; February 8, 1887,” http://www.pbs org/weta/thewest/resources/archives/eight/dawes.htm (accessed 30 Jan. 2012).

  18. Gregory J. Dehler, The Encyclopedia of North American Indian Wars, 1607–1890: A Political, Social, and Military History, ed. Spencer C. Tucker, vol. 1 (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2011), 229.

  19. “Dawes Act.”

  20. George Orwell, 1984 (New York: Signet Classic, 1950), 35.

  21. The Storm: Guns, Bibles and Governments (Washington, DC: The National Museum of the American Indian, October 2007).

  22. Andrew Jackson, “To the Creek Indians,” in Daniel Feller, Harold D. Moser, and Laura-Eve Moss, eds., The Papers of Andrew Jackson, Volume 7: 1829 (Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee, 2007), 112.

  23. Ian Frazier, On the Rez (New York: Picador, 2000), 39.

  24. “Pine Ridge Indian Reservation—Civic Life & History,” http://blackhillsknowledgenetwork.org/node/4813 (accessed 10 Sept. 2013).

  25. Matthew Williams, “Reservation Road,” Time, February 26, 2011.

  26. Pine Ridge CDP, South Dakota, “Profile of Selected Economic Characteristics: 2000,” U.S. Census Bureau, DP-3.

  27. Stephanie M. Schwartz, “The Arrogance of Ignorance; Hidden Away, Out of Sight and Out of Mind,” Native American Times, October 15, 2006.

  28. Ibid.

  29. Peter Matthiessen, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse (New York: Penguin, 1992), 316–369.

  30. “Shannon County QuickFacts from the U.S. Census Bureau,” U.S. Census Bureau, modified December 23, 2011, http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/46/46113.html.

  31. “Census Bureau Releases 2009 County Characteristics Population Estimates,” hyyp://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/population/cb10-82.html (accessed 10 Sept. 2013).

  32. Donald R. Prothero, After the Dinosaurs: Age of the Mammals (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006), 151.

  33. Matthiessen, 553–554.

  34. Richard Erdoes and Alfonso Ortíz, American Indian Trickster Tales (New York: Pantheon, 1985), 485–486.

  35. Dee Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2007), 122–146.

  36. Ibid., 146.

  37. Peter Nabokov, Native American Testimony (New York: Penguin, 1999), 117–118.

  38. Mark Diedrich, Sitting Bull: The Collected Speeches (Rochester, MN: Coyote, 1998), 118.

  39. Robert E. Gamer, The Developing Nations: A Comparative Perspective (Dubuque, IA: William C. Brown, 1988), 180–181.

  40. Ward Churchill, Since Predator Came: Notes from the Struggle for American Indian Liberation (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2005), 186.

  41. Ian Frazier, Great Plains (New York: Picador, 1989), 117–118.

  42. Ibid.

  43. Matthiessen, 37–38.

  44. Frazier, 145.

  45. Churchill, 209–210.

  46. Dirk Lammers, “Widow of Civil Rights Activist Ray Robinson Wants Him Home,” Associated Press, April 27, 2012.

  47. Leonard Crow Dog and Richard Erdoes, Crow Dog: Four Generations of Sioux Medicine Men (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), 234–241.

  48. Churchill, 214.

  49. Matthiessen, 100.

  50. Ibid., 444–600.

  Chapter 2: Days of Siege

  1. “News in Brief,” Philadelphia Inquirer, October 7, 2010, www.proquest.com (accessed 26 Dec., 2011).

  2. Barbara Boyer and Darron Simon, “Camden Gang Slayings: Story of Frenzy, Brutality: A Year Later, Details of Carnage in a Rowhouse,” Philadelphia Inquirer, February 21, 2011, A1. The fourteen-year old girl is now serving a twenty-year prison sentence for aggravated manslaughter. She avoided a life sentence by pleading guilty.

  3. August Wilson, Gem of the Ocean (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2006), 28.

  4. Adam Liptak, “Inmate Count in U.S. Dwarfs Other Nations’,” New York Times, April 23, 2008, A1.

  5. Michelle Alexander, “Tomgram: Michelle Alexander, The Age of Obama as a Rac
ial Nightmare,” http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175215/ (accessed 26 Dec. 2011).

  6. Imamu Amiri Baraka, Tales of the Out and the Gone (New York: Akashic Books, 2007), 31–32.

  7. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Community Planning and Development, “The 2011 Point-in-Time Estimates of Homelessness: Supplement to the Annual Homeless Assessment Report December 2011, http://www.abtassociates.com/Reports/2011/The-2011-Point-in-Time-Estimates-of-Homelessness.aspx (accessed 26 Dec. 2011).

  8. Charles Duhigg and Keith Bradsher, “How the U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work,” New York Times, January 21, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/business/apple-america-and-a-squeezed-middle-class.html (accessed 23 Aug. 2013).

  9. Ibid.

  10. Sue Halpern, “Who Was Steve Jobs?” New York Review of Books, January 12, 2012, www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/jan/12/who-was-steve-jobs/?pagination=false (accessed 12 Feb. 2012).

  11. Duhigg and Bradsher, “How the U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work.”

  12. Charles Duhigg and David Barboza, “The iEconomy; In China, the Human Costs That Are Built Into an iPad,” New York Times, January 26, 2012.

  13. Camden, which had forty-eight homicides by early December 2011, was named the second most dangerous city in America, second only to Flint, Michigan, according to the 2011 CQ Press City Crime Rankings. Camden was also named the second most dangerous city in 2010.

  14. James Osborne, “Camden Agrees to Regional Police Force,” Philadelphia Inquirer, December 9, 2011.

  15. U.S. Census Bureau, 2005–2009 American Community Survey.

  16. Ali Kokot, “Pa. Ranked 2nd in Black Homicide,” Daily Pennsylvanian, February 2, 2011, http://thedp.com/index.php/article/2011/02/pa._ranked_2nd_in_black_homicide (accessed 26 Dec. 2011). Pennsylvania’s lax guns laws are considered significant contributors to the high rate of homicide among the black population in the state.

  17. Matt Katz, “Camden Rebirth: A Promise Still Unfulfilled,” Philadelphia Inquirer, November 8, 2009, A1.