Our Class, The Farewell Tour and more: Chris Hedges on C-SPAN
"I know I'm going to die in this prison, but I work as hard as I do so I can be a teacher like you."
[Image: a moment during the interview at which a former inmate and student calls in to the program.]
Published 2023-01-02
Chris Hedges returns to C-SPAN's BookTV after an eleven year period in which he authored six more books.
I appreciate the interviewer, Peter Slen. He was there eleven years ago. He is calm and prepared. The interviewee is not harried. Time given to provide long answers with context and nuance. So it is again on this second occasion with Mr. Hedges.
A theme which emerges early during the discussion are elements of Hedges' life: reporter, author, pastor and teacher. He has melded them. Perhaps his foreign correspondent journalism was a self-teaching in conflict, suffering and power. His calling to the church and writing led him to teaching in prisons for the last 13 years. He notes how when he began he and the few others providing the tuition would print out certificates on their home computers which had no academic value but acknowledged the work of the students. He celebrates the Rutgers University program, NJ Step, which provides academic accreditation to prisoners who complete the coursework for a Bachelor of Arts degree.
One of the books discussed is "America: The Farewell Tour". The Rutgers program is symbolic of the pathologies he describes in the book. The USA's mass incarceration is collective punishment, an echo of the economic sanctions which the USA regime imposes on non-compliant nations. The commercialized imprisonment system recreates slavery.
Hedges summarizes the USA crisis as the rupturing of social bonds, an atomization of society.
I hope you enjoy the interview as much as I have.
Sources
In Depth [with] Chris Hedges, C-SPAN, 2023-01-01
The “show” is 2 hours long.
Download: yt-dlp https://www.c-span.org/video/?524629-1/depth-chris-hedges
Note: the dowload is in "pieces" so one needs to wait for its completion before the assembly is complete.