Photo of the Day

"Good Indian" Mural
Alley, Nob Hill, Albuquerque, NM
Artwork by Ernest Doty, Ryan Montoya, & Jaque Fragua

Photo of the Day

Monk and Tiger

I found this online at the Buddha.FM site. Photo by Tejen Shrestha? 

Labor Day Reading: Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, by Chris Hedges & Joe Sacco

So what if big business makes a lot of money and gets away with murder? For decades, Americans have looked the other way, as corporations have hacked into the natural world and human life with a machete a mile long. We seemed to think it was the “American way,” all OK, as long as we had ours.

Until we didn’t.

Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt brings to light a series of lives in four severely impoverished American places, the direct casualties of capitalism unchecked. In a sequence of incisive personal interviews and graphic illustration, we begin to understand exactly what happens when everyday life is eviscerated by corporate greed. These vividly described accounts neatly slice through our tendency to convince ourselves that negative circumstances aren’t such a big deal unless they’re happening to us.

Chris Hedges

This hard-hitting book is a generous act: the product of two men who devoted years of their lives to diving into the heaviness and darkness that stop most of us in our tracks. Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer-winning journalist who logged two decades as a NY Times foreign correspondent in some of the world’s worst war zones, and illustrator Joe Sacco, the renowned creator of war-reportage comics including Palestine and Footnotes in Gaza, here graphically delineate the inner and outer landscapes of those most burned by raging greed. 

These war zones are close to home. Take southern West Virginia, where coal-mining giant Massey Energy has completely gutted the local landscape; contaminated air, soil, and drinking water; and flatly refused to comply with any legislation locals can pass through a corrupt legal system. It’s a striking example of how megacorps have plundered local resources to expand their own coffers while leaving community residents with Third World problems. “Disease in the coalfields is rampant,” Hedges states. “The coal ash deposits have heavy concentrations of hexavalent chromium, a carcinogen. Cancer, like black lung disease, is an epidemic. Kidney stones are so common that in some communities nearly all the residents have had their gallbladders removed. More than a half a million acres, or 800 square miles, of the Appalachians have been destroyed. More than 500 mountain peaks are gone, along with an estimated 1,000 miles of streams, which provide most of the headstreams for the eastern United States.”

Jenkinjones, WV. Joe Sacco.

“Mountaintop removal” is a euphemism. These corporate predators have actually completely removed 500 mountains in West Virginia alone. The entire Appalachian landscape has been radically and permanently altered—and rendered almost unlivable. Local residents, who recall their childhoods in a virtual Garden of Eden, have now given Last Rites to the natural world they've loved.  As resident Larry Gibson states, “Do you know what it’s like to hear a mountain get blowed up? A mountain is a live vessel, man; it’s life itself. You walk through the woods here and you’re gonna hear the critters moving, scampering around, that’s what a mountain is. Try to imagine what it would be like for a mountain when it’s getting blowed up, 15 times a day, blowed up, every day, what that mountain must feel like as far as pain, as life.”

Joe Sacco

The rape of nature--and humanity--is also a constant in Immokalee, FL, where scores of migrant laborers are captured into slavery and interned in shockingly cruel circumstances. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders once described this area as “the bottom in the race to the bottom.” Captive workers are routinely forced to work countless hours in 90-degree heat for sub-minimum wages that are often withheld from them or applied against an enormous fictitious “debt” they’re required to pay. Gouged by everyone from landlords charging $2,000+/month for overcrowded, ramshackle trailers, to company stores, to viciously abusive crew leaders, these people live lives that are in some ways more desperate than the original Southern slaves’. Ill from constant pesticide exposure, they lack any form of job protection or security, medical coverage, Social Security, food stamps, or legal protection. And when employers are done with them, they’re left with no income, food, or housing. Much of the workers’ suffering is directly caused by the unreasonable stipulations of large chain grocers and restaurants, such as Walmart, Burger King, and even Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s. Their demands  on suppliers to keep prices at rock-bottom have meant that migrant workers now receive even less than their previously minuscule wages. Some hope does exist here, however. The workers’ efforts at organizing, via the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, have begun to reap real results in ameliorating the situation.

Chris Hedges’ careful descriptions read like verbatim records of hell. If your heart is still intact, this is an emotionally draining book to ingest. And terribly infuriating, as these stories chronicle suffering that could easily be prevented if corporations considered their impact on human beings. However, the authors know that corporate compassion is unlikely. Despite Mitt Romney’s assertions to the contrary, corporations are not human. They thrive on being “no one,” and thus not having to concern themselves with matters of conscience or justice. As Hedges notes, “Corporate culture absolves all of responsibility. This is part of its appeal. It relieves all from moral choice.” Employees of Goldman-Sachs can look out the window and jeer at Occupy Wall Street protestors, while reassuring themselves of their own personal innocence as their employer jacks up commodities on the global food market, forcing thousands of people to go hungry and die of starvation each day. The technical jargon they’ve learned in business school masks the true nature of the proceedings, helping them conveniently ignore their own bloody hands.

Hedges and Sacco also take on the political landscape, which has played a huge role in the American death spiral. While politicians everywhere are known for their corruption, the authors help us understand how their bribe-taking leaves nothing to “trickle down.” A prime example is Camden, NJ, where not only has the city’s entire economy (except for drugs) been sent overseas, but the chance of a recovery is nil thanks to crooked politicians like George Norcross, who pocket relief funds doled out by the government. We see Camden's trajectory in the story of Joe Balzano, a 76-year-old former dockworker whose life spans much of city's rise and fall. Here, Sacco’s illustrations bring the man’s biography to life. But the hero of the chapter is Lolly Davis, a kind-hearted grandma who has mothered countless children discarded by their addict parents. She’s a stellar example of the power of acting on one’s principles with simple human kindness in the face of disaster all around us.

Camden Transition Area. Joe Sacco.

Sprinkled throughout Days of Destruction are amazing philosophical quotes that lend moments of transcendence and even hope to an otherwise bleak account. As someone who wonders daily if I’m the only one who sees (or cares) what’s happening to the country, I feel better knowing that this state of affairs is being keenly observed by an extremely articulate thinker/writer like Chris Hedges. “As societies become more complex they inevitably become more precarious and vulnerable. As they begin to break down, the terrified and confused population withdraws from reality, unable to acknowledge their fragility and impending collapse. The elites retreat into isolated compounds, whether at Versailles, the Forbidden City, or modern palatial estates. They indulge in unchecked hedonism, the accumulation of wealth, and extravagant consumption. The suffering masses are repressed with greater and greater ferocity. Resources are depleted until they are exhausted. And then the hollowed-out edifice collapses. The Roman and Sumerian empires fell this way. The Mayan elite became, at the end, as the anthropologist Ronald Wright notes in A Short History of Progress, ‘…extremists, or ultraconservatives, squeezing the last drops of profit from nature and humanity.’ This is how all civilizations, including our own, ossify and collapse.”

Occupy Wall Street. Joe Sacco.

Hope and possibility are front and center in the book’s concluding chapter, “Days of Revolt.” Hedges hunkered down with the Occupy Wall Street movement in Zuccotti Park (for which he was arrested), and here chronicles its history and principles. He attributes some of Occupy’s success to forging new systems that operate outside traditional lines, instead of attempting to work within a broken system. He asserts, “The only route left is to disconnect as thoroughly as possible from the consumer society and engage in acts of civil disobedience and obstruction.” The authors make the fine point that nonaction is equivalent to complicity, that standing on the sidelines and declaring one’s innocence is tantamount to enacting radical evil. As Hedges notes, any act of rebellion, no matter how small or seemingly futile, is helpful in chipping away at corporate power and making the point to other potential activists that revolution is possible. “Power concedes nothing without a demand.”

In the winter of 1989, Hedges was a New York Times reporter covering Prague’s Velvet Revolution. One night, after 20 years of exile, Marta Kubisova, Czecheslovakia’s most popular singer who had been silenced by the Communist Party, took the stage in Wenceslas Square. After two decades of being relegated to factory work, she once again began to sing. Her song was “Prayer for Marta,” the defiant anthem that had originally sparked her banishment. And the words that came forth were these: “The people will once again decide their own fate.” Hundreds of thousands of Czechs sang in thunderous unison. Less than two weeks later, the socialist government collapsed. 

Pine Ridge Reservation, SD

Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt is a punch-packing, heart-breaking, and ultimately invigorating book, the one that those of us who have felt so disheartened in the last 5 years have been waiting for. It pulls no punches in demonstrating a truth that’s easy to understand and hard to ignore: for most, corporate greed has shredded what was once possible in America. 

“The idea that life will get better, that progress is inevitable if we obey the rules and work hard, that material prosperity is assured, has been replaced by a hard and bitter truth. The American dream, we now know, is a lie. We will all be sacrificed. The virus of corporate abuse—the perverted belief that only corporate profit matters—has spread to outsource our jobs, cut the budgets of our schools, close our libraries, and plague our communities with foreclosures and unemployment. The virus has brought with it a security and surveillance state that seeks to keep us all on a reservation. No one is immune. The suffering of the other, of the Native American, the African American in the inner city, the unemployed coal miner, or the Hispanic produce picker universal. They went first. We are next. The indifference we showed to the plight of the underclass, in Biblical terms our neighbor, haunts us. We failed them, and in doing so, we failed ourselves. We were accomplices in our own demise. Revolt is all we have left. It is the only hope.” 


Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, by Chris Hedges & Joe Sacco. Nation Books, 2012.

Check it out! This review can also be read at the NY Journal of Books: http://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/review/days-destruction-days-revolt

Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt website: http://perseuspromos.com/hedges/daysofdestructiondaysofrevolt/

Walmart's Walton Family: Richer Than You, Me & 49 Million Americans Put Together

This morning I heard something on Truthdig radio that should disturb everyone with a beating heart.  According to the Forbes 400 list of the world’s wealthiest individuals, 6 members of Walmart’s Walton family now hold as much wealth as the bottom 41.5% of all Americans, or 49 million families. This translates into a $102.7 billion pie split among a half-dozen Arkansawyers, or $17+ billion per head.  While in recent years, American families have seen a median drop in wealth of almost 39 percent (!), these wiley Waltons have bucked the trend by augmenting their own wealth by 22%.

Anyone in their right mind could reasonably draw the following conclusion: Here in America, those who exploit the most win. Those who create the most suffering for their fellow humans are the ones who are most lavishly rewarded, with the biggest bank accounts, the nicest homes, the finest vacations, the cushiest private jets, and the greatest legacies to leave their likely satanic spawn.

Thus, I have a few questions: Why are we not out in the streets, venting our outrage? Why is no one seemingly very upset about these figures? Why are the polite among us not organizing boycotts? Why aren’t the less polite hiring planes and firebombing Walmart roofs?

Is this a freakin’ JOKE? The wealth of 49 million families in the hands of 6 outrageously greedy people? Who is allowing this to continue unchecked and why do idiots still believe that capitalism should not be regulated?

People are dying of starvation and illness, and Walmart’s waddling swine are sitting on more money than anyone could possibly spend in 10 lifetimes. Certainly not sharing it with their workers, the bulk of whom are given food stamp applications in their employment packets. Certainly not sharing it with on projects to benefit the poor, who so willingly flock to their stores because they can’t afford to shop at those with higher prices. Certainly not in the ways that other billionaires, such as Bill & Melinda Gates, have sought to fund projects for the betterment of humanity. Of course not. If you eliminate poverty, you eliminate Mall Wart’s success. L’Estat suddenly doesn’t live at the blood bank anymore.

And the blood of the poor is splashed all over this money. The Evil Empire is famous for its low-paying, insecure jobs, lack of benefits, and dearth of respect for its workers. People take these jobs because desperate times have made them desperate to feed their families. In earlier times, this principle was known as “taking advantage of people” and was generally frowned on. But no. Wally’s overt greed in the million jobs they control has meant that parents can barely feed themselves and their children, kids go without medical care, and mom and dad are frequently not home because they’re working 2 or more jobs. When Walmart fails to offer proper health insurance, families must turn to public health assistance, which shifts the burden onto American taxpayers. In addition, local governments routinely hand Uncle Wally your dollars in tax breaks (totaling $1.2 billion in 2007; much higher now).

When you have more than 100 bill sitting in the bank, is it really so very onerous to pay your workers a living wage? In 2010, Walmart CEO Michael Duke earned roughly $16,827 per HOUR. The average Walmart employee, even working full-time, would come home with that per YEAR. How is that OK? Why has the state of Arkansas not passed a minimum wage bill that would prevent Walmart from exploiting its workers? Three guesses.

When someone does manage to wrench benjamins from the fists of these Arkansas dough boys, it’s mainly in the form of matching grants. Meaning that the nonprofits must do great amounts of fundraising as well, taking away from the time they can devote to helping others. And while I’m sure the Waltons are busily patting themselves on the back for attempting to widen educational opportunities for the low-income residents of their home state (whose poverty they continue to perpetuate), what would a school run by Cheapo Depot really look like? Teachers making 6 bucks an hour? No frills like desks and blackboards? A cafeteria serving factory-farmed, pesticide-, transfat- and sodium-laden food (which will ultimately fuel many future visits to the Walmart pharmacy)? The Mall Wart logo draped over everything? Civics classes in how the Republicans made America great? Teachers teaching whatever history the Waltons deem appropriate, whatever Creationist crap they decide to offer, with lots of economics classes on how to make a buck off the backs of the poor, how to put other families' businesses out of business, and how to tyrannize your vendors?

Maybe when you’re part of one of the richest families that’s ever lived, what you really owe the world is a little more than foisting your completely-out-of-touch ideas on their school systems. And maybe you owe the world a bit more than sitting around raising cutting horses, like Alice Walton.

As for the humble proletariat, what we need to do is put the fat cats at Waldemort on a massive diet. This involves a personal commitment not to feed the predators. There are plenty of other stores selling the wares that Wally does. It might just be worth a few extra cents to shop elsewhere and send the message to the exploitation machine that we know and care about their shameful actions, and we’re not going to let them get away with grossly increasing poverty in our lifetime.

As Frederick Douglass noted, "Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."

Let the riots begin.

http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/walmart_heirs_own_more_wealth_than_bottom_40_percent_of_americans_20120803/

(http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/knocking_on_bashar_al-assads_door_20120723/) 

Photo of the Day

Mask
November 2011
Albuquerque, NM

Photo of the Day

Wave
Ashland, Oregon, Fall 2009

A Girl Becoming: Joy Harjo’s Crazy Brave

photo: Carlo Allegri

Most people I know from NM have a first-time-I-saw-Joy Harjo anecdote, and they're often tales of delight, as if having discovered a seashell in the desert. 

My own such story harks back to 1995, when I was a music critic assigned to cover a concert Harjo and her then-band Poetic Justice were giving at the Paolo Soleri stage in Santa Fe. I knew little of who Joy was, and gasped a bit when she took the stage, so strong was her resemblance to my mother (the late artist, poet, and children's book author Lois Utz). As she began to sing, play sax, and recite strands of deliriously beautiful poetry, I came to understand that she was not just my mom's physical twin, but aligned with her soul’s spirit as well. The evening left me in a state of awe--simultaneously magnetized by this poet-musician’s mystical presence and euphoric at having been brought back to my mother’s face and submersed in the great continuum of art and spirit.

As Joy and Poetic Justice subsequently performed local gigs and released albums, I was fortunate to be able to interview her and attend several of her shows and readings. She was even, for a short time, my neighbor in Albuquerque, when I was enduring a season of hell. (The irony of living proximate to Joy during heartache was undoubtedly lost on me then.)

Harjo's memoir is as graceful and lovely as the artist herself. The book limns the earliest parts of her life through her early 20s, as she grew up in Oklahoma, nurtured her muses at IAIA and UNM, gave birth to 2 children and mothered 3. It is a tale of difficulty and struggle, with only occasional periods of respite. Its title derives from the name Harjo, which means “crazy brave.”

What distinguishes this volume from most memoirs are the author’s shifts into metaphor, dream, and poesy. These lyrical junctures form a lovely collage of image--the fragments apt echoes of the moments she describes. Their presence not only heightens Harjo’s description but also denotes the inspirations for several of her famed poems.

There’s plenty of pain here, both in Joy’s immediate family and in her nexus of Native community. And after the extended description of her stepfather’s abuse, I felt overcome by sadness and the vivid sense of being trapped by a predator, and tabled the book for several days. When I returned to it, I remembered that some of our most moving art derives from its creators’ deepest wounds, via the openings that give wisdom when pain forces one to seek it. And that shrouds of darkness have their seasons, which flow but also ebb.

Like the ache of a Patsy Cline song, the prose often reflects a bittersweet quality. “My mother would sing along with Patsy as my father would take his keys out of his jacket and hold open the door for her. He’d carry a fifth from the bootlegger next door. He’d take a swig while my mother gave instructions to the babysitter. I remember whimpering because I knew that the magic of beauty is dangerous. It is easily taken apart and destroyed. I had seen it happen other times when my parents came home, bringing the party with them. I had seen her dresses ripped. I had seen the jewelry and lipsticks scattered and broken by my father’s rage.” 

Crazy Brave’s subtlety and brevity can belie the richness it holds.  The book touches on  many facets of growing up creative, sensitive, and financially impoverished. Yet it is Harjo's ability to hear and see into the future that sustains her, a "knowing" that carries her through times of abuse, fear, and great despair. And given the acuity of her suffering, it would have been easy for her to succumb.

She writes, “A palm reader would tell me in the Eighties that in the palm of my left hand exists an alternate lifeline. In that line was a girl of sixteen or seventeen. She was dead of a drug overdose on the street of a California city.”

While Crazy Brave is not overtly political in tone, it does finely illustrate the toll that marginalization has taken on the Indian nation, which in a relatively brief time has gone from being 100% of the U.S. population to 1.2%. Many have been lost to drink and tuberculosis, which Joy links to internalized sorrow. While explicit indictments are not her style, Harjo reminds us of the degree to which alcoholism and domestic violence have scarred our Native populations.

After 164 pages, this rich torte of a book ends too soon, prior to most of the successes Harjo has known in her creative life. I wanted to hear more about her writing process and her journey in taking up musical performance in her fifth decade. About the ways in which she has contextualized and transcended the difficulties of her past.

I’m hoping that more about which has been borne will be born.