Chris Hedges: At This Moment In History, Either You Are A Rebel Or A Slave

Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent and author, had this to say about the “Occupy Wall Street” movement last week:

“The only word that these corporations know is ‘more’…There is no way within the American system to vote against Goldman Sachs...Speculation in the 17th century was a crime. Speculators were hanged. Today they run the state and the financial markets… And of course the working class and the poor, and increasingly theĀ  middle class, have to pay the price.”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uz5RxhahHK0&feature=player_embedded]

On September 29th, Hedges also wrote on Truthdig.org:

There are no excuses left. Either you join the revolt taking place on Wall Street and in the financial districts of other cities across the country or you stand on the wrong side of history. Either you obstruct, in the only form left to us, which is civil disobedience, the plundering by the criminal class on Wall Street and accelerated destruction of the ecosystem that sustains the human species, or become the passive enabler of a monstrous evil. Either you taste, feel and smell the intoxication of freedom and revolt or sink into the miasma of despair and apathy. Either you are a rebel or a slave.

...The only word these corporations know is more. They are disemboweling every last social service program funded by the taxpayers, from education to Social Security, because they want that money themselves. Let the sick die. Let the poor go hungry. Let families be tossed in the street. Let the unemployed rot. Let children in the inner city or rural wastelands learn nothing and live in misery and fear. Let the students finish school with no jobs and no prospects of jobs. Let the prison system, the largest in the industrial world, expand to swallow up all potential dissenters. Let torture continue. Let teachers, police, firefighters, postal employees and social workers join the ranks of the unemployed. Let the roads, bridges, dams, levees, power grids, rail lines, subways, bus services, schools and libraries crumble or close. Let the rising temperatures of the planet, the freak weather patterns, the hurricanes, the droughts, the flooding, the tornadoes, the melting polar ice caps, the poisoned water systems, the polluted air increase until the species dies.

Who the hell cares? If the stocks of ExxonMobil or the coal industry or Goldman Sachs are high, life is good. Profit. Profit. Profit. That is what they chant behind those metal barricades. Read full article, The Best Among Us, at Truthdig.org.

700 United & Continental Pilots Joined Occupy Wall Street on September 28th

More links:

Occupy Together.org

Chris Hedges.net

OccupyWallStreet.org