Wages of Rebellion by Chris Hedges

Wages of Rebellion:  The Moral Imperative of Revolt

By Chris Hedges

I first read Chris Hedges in Truthdig and was moved by a column he wrote about teaching young male writers of color in prison who turned in powerful work.

From a single niece I have three great- nephews languishing in the prison system; bright, beautiful boys who grew up in a society that, in their view at least, could not be bothered to consider finding a place for them.  Outside of the prison system, that is.

It isn’t that the family did not help; it is that families with limited resources are unequal to the task of repairing, of shoring up, what a racist, classist, system insists on tearing down:  the character, self-esteem, physical and mental health of our young.

In this book we are reminded that we are in the battle for our lives, our very existence, all over the world.  That anti-Earthlings, beings who care nothing about us, or the actual planet they and we inhabit, have hijacked the planet.  Hedges, who has been a war correspondent in some of the worse failed social orders in the world, warns that the signs are clear that we are ourselves now experiencing unmistakable markers of the disasters he has seen.  That our only recourse is revolt.  How to do that?  How others have done that, is the contemplation of this book.

It isn’t even about whether we will win, or can win.  It is, as always, about showing up.  Or, as my ancestors might have embroidered a beloved phrase:  finding joy and meaning and healing in the poetry of the struggle.  Or, what I would call: Being Alive.