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Chris Hedges calls for rebellion baby boomers cheer

Chris Hedges was on stage Tuesday, May 12, at the Toronto Reference Library calling for a rebellion. And his audience a sold-out crowd of largely middle-aged Torontonians took every opportunity to cheer him on.

If you follow the work of the American Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, author and anti-capitalist activist, you know that Hedges is more than ready for rebellion, even though, by his own admission, he looks more like a prep school graduate than a resistance leader.

Since leaving his post as a foreign correspondent with the New York Times a decade ago, Hedges has published impassioned treatises on the misdeeds of the Christian right, the impoverishment of American culture in late capitalism and the failings of small-L liberalism.

He has also engaged in high-profile activism. He was first arrested in 2010 for chaining himself to the White House fence in an anti-war protest. During Occupy Wall Street, he was again taken away in handcuffs, this time for conducting a public mock trial of Goldman Sachs with fellow occupiers. (Their guilty verdict didnt quite stick.)

All this first-hand experience of rebellion finally led to a book on the subject: Hedgess Toronto appearance was part of his promo tour for Wages Of Rebellion ($32, Knopf), which examines resistance and revolutionaries in history and how to tap into that insurgent energy today.

Hedgess sometimes meandering chat with NOWs Susan G. Cole, peppered with references to rebels and dissidents, at times had the quality of an insider gossip sesh. He commented on Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, Che Guevara, Martin Luther and Bernie Sanders. (He told me he didnt want to run for president because he didnt want to end up like Ralph Nader.)

He even threw in unsolicited commentary on Jian Ghomeshi to show hes Canada-savvy. His assertion that Q had only ever been an embarrassment to the CBC received a mixed response.

The lighter, conversational tone of these observations was balanced with a weightiness more common to Hedgess work. After all, he has spent years dissecting the collapse of the American empire and can seamlessly interweave a critique of the prison industrial complex with an analysis of the film American Sniper.

Hedges described his call for (non-violent) civil disobedience as a necessary last resort, the only recourse available to confront corrupt power structures and hold them accountable for the societal inequalities they profit from.

Though the audience might not fit the stereotype of the tattooed, pierced protesters Hedges usually marches with, they were roused all the same.

They sought advice from him during the Q&A. When asked about how to handle the upcoming federal election, Hedges denounced electoral power as a whole, citing Idle No More and the Quebec student protests as movements worth supporting.

The question is not how you get good people to lead, he suggested. At best they are mediocre like Obama at worst they are evil like Harper. Thinking elections are going to solve our problems is to misread power. Power is the problem. Our job is to make people in power afraid of us.

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