[...]
BILL MOYERS: Fit this all together for me. What does the suffering of the Native American on the Pine Ridge Reservation have to do with the unemployed coal miner in West Virginia have to do with the inner-city African American in Camden have to do with the single man working for minimum wage or less in Immokalee, Florida? What ties that all together?
CHRIS HEDGES: Greed. It's greed over human life. And it's the willingness on the part of people who seek personal enrichment to destroy other human beings. That's a common thread. We, in that biblical term, we forgot our neighbor. And because we forgot our neighbor in Pine Ridge, because we forgot our neighbor in Camden, in Southern West Virginia, in the produce fields, these forces have now turned on us. They went first, and we're next. And that's--
BILL MOYERS: What do you mean we're next?
CHRIS HEDGES: Well, the--
BILL MOYERS: We being—
CHRIS HEDGES: Two-thirds of this country. [...] and the rest of us are proles. I mean--
BILL MOYERS: Proles being?
CHRIS HEDGES: Being an underclass that is hanging on by their fingertips [...]
Full Show: Capitalism’s ‘Sacrifice Zones’
Moyers & Company -- July 20, 2012
There are forgotten corners of this country where Americans are trapped in endless cycles of poverty, powerlessness, and despair as a direct result of capitalistic greed. Journalist Chris Hedges calls these places “sacrifice zones,” and joins Bill this week on Moyers & Company to explore how areas like Camden, New Jersey; Immokalee, Florida; and parts of West Virginia suffer while the corporations that plundered them thrive. [...]