He was part of the New York Times team that won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for the paper’s coverage of global terrorism. Repression of speech and scholarship on Palestine needs to end, Macron says Islam ‘in crisis’, prompting backlash from Muslims. “People breakin’ into homes, stealin’ whatever they can to sell or pawn, just to keep up with their drug habit.”.

The clinic handles federal and state black lung applications. Chris Hedges . Divided Under Trump: The Strange Death of American Civility, Chechnya’s Dance: Reviving tradition after the war, The Italian Doctor: Fighting COVID-19, isolation and uncertainty, A Hard Road from Home: Journalists and Actors, Macron says Islam ‘in crisis’, prompting backlash from Muslims. By 2008 that number had risen to 390. He held a job for 11 years for Turner Vision, a company that took orders for satellite dishes. He went into renal failure. We're making a movie about media representations of Appalachian American people. Heizer, seven weeks later, dies of a drug overdose, sitting on the living room couch in front of the big-screen television. Hi my baby. I remember walkin’ down my mom’s steps and gettin’ in the ambulance. None of them worked in the mines. In towns like Gary, communal living is common. On the Pine Ridge Lakota reservation in South Dakota, where our book Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt opens, and where the average male has a life expectancy of 48 years, the lowest in the western hemisphere outside of Haiti, those who endured the long night of oppression found solace in traditional sweat lodge rituals, the Lakota language and cosmology, and the powerful four-day Sun Dance which I attended, where dancers fast and make small flesh offerings. The hollowing out of America, up close and personal. The Roseanne saga confirmed that in the US, some forms of racism are opposed vehemently, while others remain tolerated. “You seen a lot of people depressed after that, wonderin’ how they were gonna make it, how they were gonna pay their bills, how they were gonna live, how they were gonna pay their mortgage,” says Leach. Drug overdoses are the leading cause of accidental death in West Virginia, and the state leads the country in fatal drug overdoses. After they put me on the respirator, I stopped breathing on my own. Not far behind OxyContin is Suboxone, the brand name for a drug whose primary ingredient is buprenorphine, a semisynthetic opioid. “When I was workin’ at the hospital I seen ODs all the time.

You gurgle with every breath. I guess some people that hang and live in this area, they just have to turn to somethin’.”, “Since the drug problem is so bad you see the crime rate as well,” Leach says. Appalachian filmmaker returns home to examine the media’s stereotyping of hillbillies and the American cultural divide. I can remember that.”, “Welch used to be a boomin’ place,” Vance says. Will there ever be accountability? The men scratch out a meager existence, mostly from disability checks.

“Except for when the mines would go on strike,” adds Hovack.

It's gotten really bad for a lot of folks. so what do you think is important in 2016 for everyone? And then I remember in Charleston wakin’ up an’ they had my hands restrained so I wouldn’t pull the tubes out. In the coalfields of southern West Virginia, it was the fundamentalist and evangelical protestant churches, and in the produce fields of Florida, it was the Catholic mass.

He is preparing to start a course to become licensed as a Methodist minister and serves the two local United Methodist churches, neither of which muster more than about a half dozen congregants on a Sunday. He had a massive heart attack. “I can remember my mom goin’ to take me to Penny’s and Collins. “I went to school here in Gary, and when the plant closed down I was ’bout twelve or thirteen and my friends in school would say, ‘My dad and mom, we’re movin’ ’cause they have to go look for work,” Hovack says. He has written for numerous publications including Harper’s Magazine, the Nation, Granta, and Foreign Affairs, and is the author of the bestsellers Death of the Liberal Class, Empire of Illusion, and War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. It’s bad. His life with his two roommates is sedentary. What has Russia gained from five years of fighting in Syria? And a couple of 60- or 80-milligram pills sold at the Pines is a significant boost to a family’s income. The men sit in front of their flat-screen television and chat about friends, classmates, and relatives who died of overdoses. Chris Hedges is a senior fellow at The Nation Institute and writes a weekly column for Truthdig. The Mortician of Manila: Inside the Philippines’ ‘war on drugs’, Ahmad the Architect: Rebuilding Schools in Northeast Nigeria, Al Jazeera Centre for Public Liberties & Human Rights. who's amazing the jobs around here where the money is gone. “They will insist to us they are crazy. He quit in his senior year, went right into the mine.”. Fault Lines examines the influence of the coal industry over West Virginia’s politicians and its impact on residents. The depression and the pain. He tells us he has been struggling with his weight – he weighs 324 pounds (147kgs) – as well as diabetes, gout, and kidney stones. OxyContin – nicknamed “hillbilly heroin” – is king. The coal mines was all they ever knew. The most common billboards along the roads are for law firms that file disability claims and seek state and federal payments. He worked at Welch Community Hospital for six months and then as an assistant manager of the McDowell 3, the Welch movie theatre.

They pool their resources to pay for food, electricity, water, and heat. The term Hillbilly was born here and more recently the idea of the heart of Trump country. Pushers are often retirees. He was Medevac’d to a hospital in Charleston, the capital of West Virginia, where he stayed for four days. OxyContin takes a few hours to kick in when swallowed. An’ H&M. She recently died of a drug overdose. When he graduated from the consolidated high school in Welch in 1987, Leach drifted. “I had degenerative disc disease and I hurt my back. What has Russia gained from five years of fighting in Syria? He tells us about a high-school classmate, an addict living in a shack we can see from the window. In Camden, New Jersey, it was the power and cohesiveness of the African-American Church. Trump tests positive for COVID-19 – What happens next? From: Witness Hillbilly: Beyond the stereotypes in the heart of US’s Appalachia.

“I became disabled back in late 2006,” Heizer tells us. The painkillers OxyContin, fentanyl – 80 times stronger than morphine – Lortab, as well as a wide variety of anti-anxiety medications such as Xanax, are widely abused. "Hillbillies” are often portrayed as backward people, an image that's far from the truth. Harry M Caudill, in his monumental 1963 book Night Comes to the Cumberlands, describes how relief cheques became a kind of bribe for the rural poor in Appalachia. They will tell us, ‘I know I’m not right’. That's where my granny Shelby lives. These diseases are common in southern West Virginia and have contributed to a steady rise in mortality rates over the past three decades.

Heizer heated the newer pills in a microwave and snorted them – leading to his recent overdose. It promises to handle “Social Security. “Disability and Injury Lawyers,” reads one. They can make a few hundred extra dollars a month on the sale of their medications. Veterans. Nagorno-Karabakh: Armenia says ready to work towards ceasefire, Trump denounces ‘all white supremacists’ including Proud Boys, Al Jazeera Centre for Public Liberties & Human Rights.

Divided Under Trump: The Strange Death of American Civility, Chechnya’s Dance: Reviving tradition after the war, The Italian Doctor: Fighting COVID-19, isolation and uncertainty, A Hard Road from Home: Journalists and Actors, Macron says Islam ‘in crisis’, prompting backlash from Muslims. In West Virginia, however, the drug of choice was OxyContin, or “hillbilly heroin”. Appalachian filmmaker returns home to examine the media’s stereotyping of hillbillies and the American cultural divide. Hovack was given $40,000 from the Federal Emergency Management Authority to relocate. Then his children, as public charges, could draw enough money to feed the family”. The men, who rarely leave the house, mention the high bails being set for selling drugs, with some reaching $50,000 to $80,000. Obtaining the monthly “handout” became an art form. The three men are the sons and grandsons of coal miners. Those who have legal prescriptions also sell the drugs for a profit. The Mortician of Manila: Inside the Philippines’ ‘war on drugs’, Ahmad the Architect: Rebuilding Schools in Northeast Nigeria, Al Jazeera Centre for Public Liberties & Human Rights. His struggle with drugs, which he acknowledges but does not want to discuss in detail, led to his losing his position at the theatre.

Heizer says that after the drug companies began releasing pills with a rubbery consistency, they could not be ground down. If the pills are crushed, mixed with water, and injected with a syringe, the effect is immediate. A decade ago only about 5 per cent of those seeking treatment in West Virginia needed help with opiate addiction. And for fun, addicts, especially the young, hold “pharm parties”, in which they combine their pills in a bowl, scoop out handfuls of medication, swallow them, and wait to feel the result. “When you went to Welch you really thought you went somewhere.”. It took place at his mother’s house. Car Wrecks.

Dealers, many of whom are based in Detroit, travel from clinic to clinic in Florida to stock up on the opiates and then sell them out of the backs of gleaming SUVs in West Virginia, usually around the first of the month, when the government cheques arrive. Heizer speaks in the slowed cadence of someone who puts a lot of medication into his body. He stopped breathing. It also handles what in the local vernacular is known as “the crazy cheque” – payments obtained for mental illness from Medicaid or SSI – a vital source of income for those whose five years of welfare payments have run out. Chris Hedges is a senior fellow at The Nation Institute and writes a weekly column for Truthdig. The shack has no electricity or running water. What has Russia gained from five years of fighting in Syria? Witness - Al Jazeera June 22 at 6:02 AM Imprisoned for a hate crime, Angela King, a white supremacist at the ... time, shares how women of colour "rehumanised” her. He lost the job when the company was sold.

“The medication was goin’ into my lungs. They live on the margins, check to check, expecting no improvement in their lives and seeing none. “Used to be about three thee-ay-ters in Welch many, many years ago,” Leach says. The reliance on government checks, and a vast array of painkillers and opiates, has turned towns like Gary into modern opium dens. We investigate how the toxic partisan divisions of the Trump era have eroded civil norms vital for US democracy. Nagorno-Karabakh: Armenia says ready to work towards ceasefire. Workers’ Comp.” The 800 number ends in COMP. They retreat into the haze of alcohol – Pine Ridge has an estimated alcoholism rate of 80 per cent – or the harder drugs, easily available on the streets of Camden: from heroin to crack to weed to something called Wet, which is marijuana leaves soaked in PCP. Al Jazeera World The Database: Collecting the world's financial data We investigate how some private companies use personal financial information and the human impact this has. I was workin’ at this convenience store. I remember at Welch, they put me on the respirator and then transferred me. Chris Hedges is a senior fellow at The Nation Institute and writes a weekly column for Truthdig.