I encourage you to watch this interview.
- If you’ve ever been afraid to stand up for what you believe in, this will give you a reason why.
- If you’ve ever been to an occupy protest, this interview will help you see your efforts in a larger context.
- If you are wondering where next for occupy, this interview gives you a clue.
- If you ever felt the need to say silent to save your job, this interview speaks to you too.
What if you didn’t have to stay silent?
This is not a full transcript of the interview. These are just a couple of points that might be interesting to you. Listen to the whole thing, there’s a lot in there about dead zones like Camden NJ, and West Virginia, and South Dakota, that have become economic sacrifice zones, and how they may hold our future, wherever we live.
In this interview with Bill Moyers, Chris Hedges says, “Big institutions attract careerists. They won’t rock the boat, to save their career.”
Bill Moyers asks: “Did you pay a price when you called for the end of the Iraq war?”
Chris Hedges replies: “To remain silent would have been the price.”
That is why I started this blog. Because remaining silent about the messed up nature of the nonprofit world would have been the price.
We started out fundraising because we wanted to help our causes and frankly, we needed the money.
It’s become a thing that we do, as a career, currying favor with corporate oligarchs with corporate foundations and sponsorships. Of course, not all of us do this. but the majority of us have tried to get grants and corporate sponsors, tried to get people in power to listen to us by trying not to look too radical, by trying to look harmless enough to get a little money.
- Have you ever said to yourself, “I’m sick of being harmless”?
- Have you ever thought, “I’m sick of dressing corporate when we have a radical mission”?
- Have you ever said, “I’m sick of pretending that the corporations don’t have an agenda to market themselves as good through us, while continuing to build bombers”?
- Have you ever felt, “I’m sick of keeping my mouth shut, of allowing corporations to use us as a smokescreen”?
- Or even decided, “I’ll have no self respect left if I have to stay silent one more day”?
Then join us. Join the dissent. Join the movement.
Bill Moyers: Do you think you can accomplish more as a dissenter than as a journalist?
Chris Hedges: It’s not a question that I’ve asked, it’s just something that you have to do. I knew that denouncing the Iraq war was career suicide. Institutions are inherently demonic. There is always a time for us to defy institutions we believe in to stay true to our moral core.
Those of us who care about speaking the truth or if you want to call it that, dissent, then that will mean a clash with institutions that have supported us.
Chris Hedges: “Revolt is all we have. It is our only hope. It is our only hope.”
Revolt means non-violent civil disobedience. If we don’t fight, we are finished, we’ve signed our own death sentence. Resistance and fighting for the sanctity of life is always worth it. If we don’t fight, we ARE finished, and we’ve signed our own death sentence. Resistance becomes a way to protect our own dignity, our own self respect.
Bill Moyers: H.L. Mencken writes, “The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naive and usually idiotic. A radical likes his country more than the rest of us and thus is more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched.
He is not a bad citizen turning to crime. He is a good citizen driven to despair.”
Read Chris Hedges new book, Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt.
You are a good citizen driven to despair.
You don’t have to move to Canada or somewhere else to have a better life.
We must have hope that we can create a better life here. And we must dissent. Publicly. Because when the history books are written, there is only one moral side to be on.