Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt

by Chris Hedges

  18. Ibid.

  19. Ibid.

  20. Eric Model, “Camden Was Once a Hub of Music,” newjerseynewsroom.com, September 10, 2010.

  21. Jeffery M. Dorwart, Camden County, New Jersey: The Making of a Metropolitan Community, 1626–2000 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2001), 143.

  22. Ibid., 154.

  23. U.S. Census Bureau, “Camden (city) QuickFacts from the U.S. Census Bureau,” U.S. Census Bureau: State and County QuickFacts, http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/34/3410000.html (accessed 26 Dec. 2011).

  24. U.S. Census Bureau, “Table 18. Population of the 100 Largest Urban Places: 1950,” http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0027/tab18.txt (accessed 26 Dec. 2011). The calculation was made by comparing Census data.

  25. Ethel A. Lawrence-Halley, “Biography of Ethel Robinson Lawrence,” The Richard C. Goodwin Lecture in Honor of Ethel Lawrence, Rutgers University, Camden, http://goodwinlecture.rutgers.edu/lawrence.htm (accessed 26 Dec. 2011).

  26. State of New Jersey Department of Education, “2010 NCLB Report,” http://education.state.nj.us/rc/nclb/nclbreport.php?c=07;d=0680;s=030 (accessed 26 Dec. 2011).

  27. CamConnect, “CamConnect Analysis of Camden’s Municipal Expenditures,” www.camconnect.org/datalogue/budget_expenditures.pdf (accessed 26 Dec. 2011).

  28. Camden County Municipal Utilities Authority, “Welcome to the Camden County MUA,” Camden County MUA, Camden County Municipal Utilities Authority, http://www.ccmua.org/?p=165 (accessed 26 Dec. 2011).

  29. Katz, A1.

  30. Ibid.

  31. Dwight Ott, “Harmony in Camden, Now Faison and Primas Talk of Cooperation as the State Takeover Gets Closer,” Philadelphia Inquirer, http://articles.philly.com/2002-07-29/news/25356228_1_camden-mayor-gwendolyn-faison-state-takeover (accessed 26 Dec. 2011).

  32. Katz, A1.

  33. Ibid.

  34. Richard Rys, “They Have No Choice,” Philadelphia Magazine, May 15, 2006, http://www.phillymag.com/articles/feature_they_have_no_choice/page4 (accessed 26 Dec. 2011).

  35. Maureen Graham, “Informant Details Norcross Tape: John Gural Says the Democratic Leader Bragged about His Influence in a Secretly Recorded Chat,” Philadelphia Inquirer, March 11, 2005, http://articles.philly.com/2005-03-11/news/25419429_1_tapes-power-politics-political-opponents (accessed 23 Aug. 2013).

  36. Graham, “Informant Details Norcross Tape.” Also see: Josh Benson, “The Tale of the Tapes,” New York Times, April 10, 2005, www.proquest.com (accessed 23 Dec. 2011).

  37. Graham, “Informant Details Norcross Tape.”

  38. Carl Mayer, “How NJ Corruption Works Caught on Tape,” February 15, 2006, http://newjerseyuntouchables.blogspot.com/2006/02/how-nj-corruption-works-caught-on-tape.html (accessed 29 Aug. 2013).

  39. Rys, 4.

  40. Ibid.

  41. Ibid.

  42. Mayer, “How NJ Corruption Works Caught on Tape.”

  43. Katz, “Camden Rebirth.”

  44. James Osborne and Craig R. McCoy, “Powerful Medicine: How George Norcross used his political muscle to pump up once-ailing Cooper Hospital,” Philadelphia Inquirer, March 25, 2012.

  45. Ibid.

  46. Harold Brubaker, “New Details on Commerce Bank Sale George E. Norcross III Landed $7.6 Million in the Deal,” Philadelphia Inquirer, January 5, 2008, http://articles.philly.com/2008-01-05/business/25254334_1_proxy-statement-vernon-w-hill-ii-commerce-bank (accessed 29 Aug. 2013).

  47. Mike Armstrong, “Local Investors Buy Inquirer, Daily News, website,” Philadelphia Inquirer, April 2, 2012, http://articles.philly.com/2012-04-02/news/31275701_1_new-owners-local-investors-newspapers (accessed 29 Aug. 2013).

  48. Alan Guenther, “The Palmyra Tapes,” The Courier-Post, February 16, 2003.

  49. Rys, 4.

  50. Katz, A1.

  51. Matt Katz, “How the Firms Know to Donate,” Philadelphia Inquirer, November 8, 2009, http://articles.philly.com/2009-11-08/news/24987955_1_invitations-political-action-commitees-business-owners (accessed 23 Aug. 2013).

  52. Ibid.

  53. Katz, “Camden Rebirth.”

  54. Troy Graham, “Sloan El Gets Term for Bribes,” Philadelphia Inquirer, April 20, 2007, www.proquest.com (accessed 26 Dec. 2011).

  55. James Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2011), 2.

  56. Ibid., 2.

  57. Ibid., 2.

  Chapter 3: Days of Devastation

  1. M. A. Palmer, et al., “Mountaintop Mining Consequences,” Science, January 8, 2010, 148–149. The levels of selenium near mountaintop removal sites are high enough to cause reproductive failure in fish and birds.

  2. “What Are the Stages of Mountaintop Removal?” http://endmountaintopremoval.weebly.com/stages-of-mountaintop-removal.html (accessed 10 Sept. 2013).

  3. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “U.S. Department of Labor, Career Guide to Industries, 2010–11 Edition, Mining,” http://www.bls.gov/oco/cg/cgs004.htm (accessed 27 Dec. 2011). Mining jobs are expected to decline by 14.5 percent from 2008 to 2018.

  4. Manuel Quinones, “Coal Industry Deploys Donations, Lobbying as Its Issues Gain Prominence,” New York Times, October 13, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2011/10/13/13greenwire-coal-industry-deploys-donations-lobbying-as-it-45582.html (accessed 27 Dec. 2011). A Republican senator who received the most donations from the coal industry this year is quoted: “West Virginia jobs and every American’s quality of life are at stake and I will strongly oppose any plan, Republican or Democrat, that makes war on fossil fuels and the working men and women whose families depend on the strength of these industries.”

  5. James Hansen, “Game Over for the Climate,” New York Times, May 9, 2012.

  6. Bill McKibben, “Armed with Naïvete: Time to Stop Being Cynical About Corporate Money in Politics and Start Being Angry,” Tomdispatch.com, January 5, 2012, http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175485/tomgram%3A_bill_mckibben,_buying_congress_in_2012/ (accessed 7 Jan. 2012).

  7. Ibid.

  8. Doug Mills, “In Oklahoma, Obama Declares Pipeline Support,” New York Times, March 22, 2012.

  9. McKibben, “Armed with Naïvete.”

  10. Jeff Goodell, Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America’s Energy Future (New York: Mariner, 2007), 4. The Powder River basin provides about forty percent of the coal burned in the United States.

  11. Erik Reece, Lost Mountain: A Year in the Vanishing Wilderness (New York: Riverhead, 2006), 3.

  12. W.H. Auden, “Bucolics II: Woods,” The Shield of Achilles (New York: Random House, 1955), 14.

  13. http://www.abandonedonline.net/industry/alpheus-coal-preparation-plant/ (accessed 10 Sept. 2013).

  14. U.S. Census Bureau, 2005–2009 American Community Survey, http://factfinder.census.gov (accessed 10 Sept. 2013).

  15. Geospatial and Statistical Data Center at University of Virginia, Historical Census Browser, http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/collections/stats/histcensus/index.html (accessed 27 Dec. 2011).

  16. Ibid. The national median home value is six times higher.

  17. U.S. Census Bureau, American FactChecker, http://factfinder.census.gov (accessed 10 Sept. 2013).

  18. U.S. Census Bureau, “2005–2009 American Community Survey,” http://factfinder.census.gov (accessed 10 Sept. 2013).

  19. Rob Goodwin, “Report from Citizens’ Inspection of Coal River Mountain,” Coal River Mountain Watch, http://www.crmw.net/crmw/content/report-citizens-inspection-coal-river-mountain (accessed 27 Dec. 2011).

  20. “Electric Power Monthly,” http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly (accessed 10 Sept. 2013).

  21. “A One-Two Punch in the Fight for Clean Water,” Appalachian Voices, http://appvoices.org/2012/08/23/a-one-two-punch-in-the-fight-for-clean-water/ (accessed 10 Sept. 2013).

  22. Naomi Spencer and Rosa Lexington, “The Social Crisis in Appalachia Part 3: Environmental Disaster and Private Profit,” World Socialist Web Site, July 27, 2010, http://www.wsws.org/en/artcles/2010/07/app3-j27.html (accessed
27 Aug. 2013).

  23. Ibid.

  24. Ronald Wright, A Short History of Progress (Toronto: House of Anansi, 2004), 102.

  25. “Ocean life ‘facing mass extinction,’ ” Al Jazeera English, June 21, 2011, http://www.aljazeera.com/news/americas/2011/06/20116216141857396.html (accessed 28 Dec. 2011).

  26. Derrick Jensen, Aric McBay, and Lierre Keith, Deep Green Resistance: Strategy to Save the Planet (New York: Seven Stories, 2011).

  27. Mike Pflanz, “World Water Day: Dirty Water Kills More People Than Violence, says UN,” Christian Science Monitor, http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Africa/2010/0322/World-Water-Day-Dirty-water-kills-more-people-than-violence-says-UN (accessed 28 Dec. 2011).

  28. Dr. Pieter Tans, NOAA/ESRL (www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/) and Dr. Ralph Keeling, Scripps Institution of Oceanography (scrippsco2.ucsd.edu/).

  29. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, “3.7.3.3 SRES scenarios and their implications for future CO2 concentration,” GRID Arendal, http://www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc_tar/?src=/climate/ipccc_tar/wg1/123.htm (accessed 27 Aug. 2013).

  30. Ben Geman, “Amendment That Says Climate Change Is Occurring Fails in House,” The Hill, December 28, 2011, http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/154445-house-votes-down-climate-science-amendment.

  31. Paul Bahn and John Flenley, Easter Island, Earth Island (London: Thames and Hudson, 1992), 211–212.

  32. Ibid., 212–213.

  33. Harry M. Caudill, Night Comes to the Cumberlands: A Biography of a Depressed Area (Ashland, KY: Jesse Stuart Foundation, 2001), 273.

  34. Ibid., 275.

  35. Ibid., 280.

  36. Alison Knezevich, “Prescription Drug Abuse Takes Deadly Toll in W.Va.,” Charleston Gazette, January 15, 2011, http://www.wvgazette.com/News/pillage/201101151175 (accessed 28 Dec. 2011).

  37. State of West Virginia, “Facility Locator,” West Virginia Division of Corrections, http://www.wvdoc.com/wvdoc/PrisonsandFacilities/tabid/36/Default.aspx (accessed 27 Aug. 2013).

  38. Naomi Spencer, “Economic Transformation of Welch, West Virginia: From Mines to Prisons,” World Socialist Web Site, August 3, 2010, http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/aug2010/welc-a03.shtml (accessed 28 Dec. 2011).

  39. Rebecca Jarvis Scott, Degrees of Freedom: Louisiana and Cuba after Slavery (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008), 85.

  40. Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States (New York: HarperCollins, 1999), 276–277.

  41. John R. Commons et al., History of Labour in the United States, Vol. 2 (New York: Macmillan, 1921), 502.

  42. Zinn, 354.

  43. Lon Savage, Thunder in the Mountains: The West Virginia Mine War, 1920–21 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1990), 19.

  44. Zinn, 183.

  45. Shirley Stewart Burns, Mari-Lynn Evans, and Silas House, Coal Country: Rising Up Against Mountaintop Removal Mining (San Francisco: Sierra Club, 2009), 231.

  46. Ibid., 231–233.

  47. Ibid., 232.

  48. Ibid., 233.

  49. Ibid., 233–234.

  50. Ibid., 235–236.

  51. “Elk Run Completes Coal Stockpile Dome,” Coal Age 170, no. 9 (2002), 4.

  52. Shirley Stewart Burns, Bringing Down the Mountains: The Impact of Mountaintop Removal on Southern West Virginia Communities (Morgantown, WV: West Virginia University Press, 2007), 111.

  53. Shirley Stewart Burns, et al., Coal Country, 237–238.

  54. “Massey Energy Company, Inc. Clean Water Act Settlement,” U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, http://www.epa.gov/compliance/resources/cases/civil/cwa/massey.html (accessed 31 Dec. 2011).

  55. “25 Miners Dead in WV Coal Mine Explosion, Massey Energy Mine Cited for Hundreds of Safety Violations,” Democracy Now!, April 6, 2010, http://www.democracynow.org/2010/4/6/25_miners_dead_in_wv_coal.

  56. Sabrina Tavernise and Clifford Krauss, “Mine Owner Will Pay $209 Million in Blast That Killed 29 Workers,” New York Times, December 6, 2011, A16.

  57. Adam Liptak, “Trip to Europe Has Repercussions in West Virginia.” New York Times, Jan 15, 2008, www.proquest.com (accessed 28 Dec. 2011).

  58. Jeff Goodell. Big Coal, 45.

  59. Jeff Goodell, “The Dark Lord of Coal,” Rolling Stone, Nov. 29, 2011.

  60. Lon Savage, Thunder in the Mountains: The West Virginia Mine War 1920–21 (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1990), 19–24.

  61. Ibid., 70.

  62. Ibid., 165–166.

  Chapter 4: Days of Slavery

  1. Philip Martin and J. Edward Taylor, “Ripe with Change: Evolving Farm Labor Markets in the United States, Mexico, and Latin America,” The Regional Migration Study Group, University of California, Davis, February 2013.

  2. In 2000, the U.S. Department of Labor described farmworkers as “a labor force in significant economic distress,” citing “low wages, sub-poverty annual earnings, [and] significant periods of un-and underemployment” to support its conclusions. The CIW reports that the USDA reaffirmed the Labor Department’s findings from 2000, demonstrating that farm laborers remain “among the most economically disadvantaged working groups in the U.S.” and that “poverty among farmworkers is more than double that of all wage and salary employees.” http://ciw-online.org/CIW_at_future_of_food.html.

  3. “Background Statistics: Market-fresh Tomatoes,” United States Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service (last modified June 10, 2008), http://www.ers.usda.gov/News/tomatocoverage.htm.

  4. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “All Charts, Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries, 2010.” U.S. Department of Labor, http://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/cfoi/cfch0009.pdf, 16.

  5. Daniel Carroll, Ruth M. Samardick, Scott Bernard, Susan Gabbard, and Trish Hernandez, “Findings from the National Agricultural Workers Survey (NAWS) 2001–2002,” U.S. Department of Labor, March 2005, p. 47, http://doleta.gov/agworker/report9/naws_rpt9.pdf (accessed 27 Aug. 2013).

  6. Coalition of Immokalee Workers, “Facts and Figures on Florida Farmworkers,” http://www.sfalliance.org/resources,09FactsFigures.pdf (accessed 10 Sept. 2013).

  7. Coalition of Immokalee Food Workers,” CIW 101,” http://www.ciw-online.org/101.html#facts (accessed 1 Jan. 2012).

  8. Barry Estabrook, Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit (Kansas City, MO: Andrews McMeel, 2011), 75.

  9. Coalition of Immokalee Food Workers. “CIWNews: CIW at the 2011 Future of Food Conference, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.,” http://www.ciw-online.org/CIW_at_future_of_food.html.

  10. Ibid.

  11. “Ending WalMart’s Rural Stranglehold,” The United Food and Commercial Workers, http://www.ufcw.org/docUploads/AG%20Consolidation%20White%20Paper2%2Epdf?CFID=13478539&CFTOKEN=85387754.

  12. Carolyn Dimitri and Lydia Oberholtzer, “Marketing U.S. Organic Foods: Recent Trends from Farms to Consumers,” U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service Bulletin 58, September 2009, http://www.ers.usda.gov/media/185272/eib58_1_.pdf (accessed 10 Sept. 2013).

  13. “CIW at the 2011 Future of Food Conference.”

  14. Estabrook, 25.

  15. Geoffrey M. Calvert, et. al, “Acute Pesticide Poisoning Among Agricultural Workers in the United States, 1998-2005,” American Journal of Industrial Medicine 51 (2008): 883–898, doi:10.1002/ajim.20623. “The rates provided should be considered low estimates of the magnitude of acute pesticide poisoning among agricultural workers.”

  16. “CDC-NIOSH Publications and Products-Impact: NIOSH Pesticide Poisoning Monitoring Program Protects Farmworkers (2012–108),” Center for Disease Control and Prevention, http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/2012-108 (accessed 2 Jan. 2012).

  17. Estabrook, 27–28.

  18. Ibid., 28.

  19. David Ricardo, On Wages (1817), excerpted, Fordham University, Internet History Sourcebooks, http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/ricardo-wages.asp (accessed 1 Jan. 2012).

  20. John Bowe, “Nobodies,” The New Yorker, April 21, 2
003, 122.

  21. Estabrook, 74.

  22. Lawrence H. Feldman, Colonization and Conquest: British Florida in the Eighteenth Century (Baltimore: Clearfield, 2007), 19, 275.

  23. Ron Field, The Seminole Wars 1818–58 (New York: Osprey, 2009), 3.

  24. Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States (New York: HarperCollins, 1999), 146.

  25. Tommy Rodriguez, Visions of the Everglades (Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2011), 29.

  26. Historical Census Browser, http://mapserver.lib.virginia.edu (accessed 27 Jan. 2010).

  27. Paul Ortiz, Emancipation Betrayed: The Hidden History of Black Organizing and White Violence in Florida from Reconstruction to the Bloody Election of 1920 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2006), 61.

  28. Cited by Leon Litwack, Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow (New York: Vintage, 1999), 273.

  29. Ibid., 272.

  30. Matthew Mancini, One Dies, Get Another: Convict Leasing in the American South, 1866–1928 (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1996), 3.

  31. Estabrook, 98.

  32. “CIW 101.”

  33. Edward R. Murrow and Fred W. Friendly, producers, Harvest of Shame, CBS News, November 26, 1960.

  34. Coalition of Immokalee Workers, Florida Modern-Day Slavery Museum pamphlet.

  35. Ibid.

  36. Barry Estabrook, “Politics of the Plate: The Price of Tomatoes,” Gourmet, March 2009, http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/2000s/2009/03/politics-of-the-plate-the-price-of-tomatoes (accessed 1 Jan. 2012).

  37. Estabrook, Tomatoland, 10.

  38. Ibid., 92–93.

  39. United States District Court. Middle District of Florida, Fort Myers Division, Case 2:07-cr-00136-JESDNF. Document 130, July 16, 2008, www.news-press.com/assets/pdf/A411691592.PDF (accessed 2 Jan. 2012).

  40. Monica Campbell and Tyche Hendricks, “Mexico Corn Farmers See Their Livelihoods Wither Away/Cheap U.S. Produce Pushes Down Prices under Free-trade Pact,” San Francisco Chronicle, Monday, July 31, 2006.

  41. “Congressional Testimony: Coalition of Immokalee Workers, Government Reform Committee,” Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights, http://www.rfkcenter.org/node/244 (accessed 2. Jan 2012).