Even the Republicanism of Indiana, sired as it was by the rigid
Lutheranism of German immigrants, is wildly different from the
libertarian, anti-government Republicanism of Montana and the Rocky
Mountain Front. They are not one. Except on the two-color map of
American politics, or Barack Obama's electoral playbook, which writes
off this vast region almost completely.
Neither of us fit in the
geo-ideological matrix contrived by the mainstream political
establishment. Neither do thousands of others, left, right and
anarcho-libertarians, who reside in the forgotten midsection of the
nation.
And not all of us are children of Ken Kesey and Ed
Abbey. Some follow in the footsteps of David Koresh, Reies Tijerina,
Randy Weaver, Elvira Arellano or Mary Dann.
A Red States
rebellion is breaking out. It's been going on for some time. Since
Reconstruction in the South and even longer in the West. The true West
of Wyoming and Utah, Idaho and Arizona. Where the stakes are high and
the odds are long. And the battles are waged over the essentials of
life: water, food, wilderness, human liberty.
Take abortion.
Largely cast as an urban issue by the flyover press, the real crisis
and militant resistance is happening in Utah, South Dakota, Mississippi
and Idaho-states where unwanted pregnancy rates are high and abortion
clinics are sparse and marked for extermination.
Consigned to
death row, the loneliest and most forbidding place in America? Fighting
for your life against the conveyor-belt execution industry of Texas is
qualitatively different from the struggle in Illinois or California
where activists and Ivy-league trained litigators are lined up to give
aid. In the grim chambers of the row of interior America you can't
expect to enjoy the right to a competent lawyer, a fair judge or
crusading journalism students. It's just you against the death machine.
Or
try being an environmentalist in the toxic towns of Libby, Montana or
Tonopah, Nevada, where cancer rates are soaring, the death threats
don't stop at prank calls and the cops are more likely to kick your ass
than rush to your defense. It's a lonely and dangerous struggle. But
people are doing it. Thousands of them. Fighting as if their lives
depended on it-which, of course, they do.
Out here there are no
fixed blueprints for resistance. No organizational flow charts for how
to plot a rebellion. No focus groups or pulse polls or field-tested PR
strategies or genteel formalities for grant applications. Marx would be
confused. The human spirit is the best guide. When Peabody Coal
announces its intention to evict your grandmother, dynamite her hogan
and strip-mine the family sheep pasture, you don't have time to consult
Weiden and Kennedy for how to spin it to your advantage or wait around
for a year on the infinitesimal chance that Pew Charitable Trusts might
drop you a few bucks.
You must act. As a group if you can, unilaterally if necessary. Militantly if you must.
While
the Forest Service sparks a chainsaw in the outback of Wyoming no
progressive from Vermont is going to stop them from ravaging the
countryside. That job is left to the people who inhabit the places that
are under assault day in and day out.
When the ATF or FBI come
busting through your kitchen door, rousting you at gunpoint from your
bed, roughing up your children, accusing you of being a rightwing
crazy, an illegal immigrant or an animal liberation terrorist, the ACLU
isn't likely to speed to Wallace, Idaho to bail you out of jail and
make your case a cause celebre for constitutional rights.
In
fact, the FBI could burn down your house, incinerate dozens of women
and children, and good liberals in New York and San Francisco will say
you had it coming. They already have. See Waco and Ruby Ridge;
Cove-Mallard and Wounded Knee.
This is the game plan the Feds
have used since the inception of our so-called constitutional republic,
and there have always been bloody consequences. Smoke out the
non-conformists, or better yet, murder them. Of course there is a
silver lining for the rest of us, and that's that these brave rebels
are the true heart of the nation. The people who bring about real
change. They are the freedom fighters. They are the sons and daughters
of César Chávez and Leonard Peltier. Without them, the government's
assault on its citizens and the environment would largely go unchecked.
Voting
on Election Day, seen as one of the only ways to democratically vent
our collective disgust, doesn't always do much good. In fact most of
the dissidents in Red America don't vote at all. And for good reason.
They know the system is rigged. Besides, they don't trust the
government or its policies anyway. They see what it has done for their
families and loved ones, and that's not much. They recognize they
didn't enjoy the benefits of those federal tax cuts. They know their
hardware shop went under because Wal-Mart moved to town. They see that
their Grandpa lost the family homestead because industrialized farms
began receiving huge subsidies from Washington. And they sure as hell
don't trust the so-called liberal establishment. Why should they? Life
under Hillary's husband wasn't any better than it has been under Bush.
The
resistance isn't always about revolution; it's about maintaining a
semblance of dignity in a world where such a thing is in short supply.
That's
why there has been a resurgence of organic farming in the Red River
Valley of North Dakota where farmers like Todd Leake are fighting
Monsanto and supporting their families through farmer's markets and
community supported agriculture. If you want to learn about the
negative effects of genetically modified crops, you don't need to
consult a study by a scientist from Berkeley, just talk to the Nelson
family of Amenia, North Dakota who stood up to Monsanto after the
company sued them for patent infringement.
Or take a trip down
to Colorado where feisty environmentalists are fighting the moneyed
interests of billionaire Red McCombs who is trying to build yet another
sprawling ski resort in the heart of the Rockies. These radical greens
are fighting McCombs in the courts and may soon plant their bodies on
Forest Service roads to block his bulldozers. Since we're here, may as
well take a trip due west to the outback of Escalante, Utah, where Tori
Woodard and Patrick Diehl routinely receive death threats for their
environmental activism. A few years back, a band of local yahoos
vandalized their home, threw bottles of beer through their front
windows, kicked in the front door, trashed the garden, and cut the
phone line to their house. It takes real guts to stand up in the
distant belly of the beast, where defending the Earth usually results
in a face-to-face confrontation with a bulldozer, a taser or a shotgun.
Down
in Texas, not far from where the government burned the Branch Davidians
alive, anti-death penalty advocates spared the life of Kenneth Foster,
who was to be put to death for a murder he didn't commit. Or traverse
Interstate 10 to New Orleans where passionate groups of local citizens,
without much help from the Federal government are slowly rebuilding
their forgotten neighborhoods. Many lost everything in the devastating,
preventable Katrina floods of 2005. But they refuse to give up. Since
we are in Louisiana, why not roll on over to the tiny town of Jena
where protests rage on over the racist incarceration of six black
youths who were unfairly imprisoned for beating a white kid.
This
book offers a just a few snapshots of the grassroots resistance taking
place in the forgotten heartland of America. These are tales of
rebellion and courage. Out here activism isn't for the faint of heart.
Be thankful someone is willing to do the dirty work.
Nope, we're
not supposed to exist. But here we are, in the flesh, with mud on our
boots and green fire in our souls—living examples of what Greil Marcus
calls the Invisible Republic. Deal with it.
Jeffrey St. Clair
is co-editor of CounterPunch and author of 11 books, including the
best-sellers Whiteout: CIA, Drugs and the Press; Al Gore: a User's
Manual; Five Days That Shook the World; and most recently Born Under a
Bad Sky. St. Clair was born and raised in Indiana.
Joshua Frank, a regular contributor to CounterPunch, is the author of
Left Out! How Liberals Helped Reelect George W. Bush and with Jeffrey
St. Clair of the forthcoming Green Scare: The New War on
Environmentalism. He hails from Montana.
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