I’m reading Chris Hedges’ and Joe Sacco’s
new book, Days of Devastation, Days of Revolt, and I am engrossed. It is
tremendously well done. It doesn’t tell me a thing I don’t know about the “sacrifice
zone” and the strip mining of the American citizenry. It does tell it in a
clear, concise, direct, human and compassionate way. It is moving to read and
not overly emotional or polemic. I agree that the only response is revolt.
Here’s a piece from the book as Julian
Martin, a seventy-four year old retired school teacher and son of a coal miner
tells his story about his southern West Virginia homeland.
“…They were plenty smart. But the highly
talented, creative people have been sucked out of the Appalachians.
“It’s a sacrifice zone,” he says:
It’s so the rest of the country can have
electric toothbrushes and leave the lights on all night in parking lots for
used cars and banks lit up all night long and shit like that. We have been a
national sacrifice zone. Hell, that phrase was created thirty-five, forty years
ago. Now it’s terminal. There’s no way to stop it. I haven’t had any hope for a
long time. But the only reason I keep goin’ is, why the hell not? I’m goin’
die. Shit might as well hold my head up. I don’t want Bill Raney, the president
of the [West Virginia] Coal Association, to be able to tell his lies without
somebody saying, “Bill, shit, that’s not true.”
These corporations are goin’ to strip
the whole country. If you face this reality you become a guerilla. You blow up
the damn thing. I can’t go there, because they will put me in the penitentiary,
and I don’t want to go there. I know they would catch me eventually.” Hedges and Sacco, Days of Destruction, Days
of Revolt, Nation Books
