Book Excerpt: Big Sky Rebels

Tag : Marker Tie

An Excerpt from Red State Rebels: Tales of Grassroots Resistance inthe Heartland (AK Press)  You can go home again, but it might break your heart or turn yourstomach. Even if your home is Montana. Perhaps especially here,where there is so much to lose.
 
No, Montana is not what it used to be. Corporate behemoths havetaken over small family-owned farms, and public forests have beensquandered and sold to the highest bidder.

Poverty and racism runrampant. Native Americans are being corralled onto even tighterplots of land. But while things seem disheartening, voices of hopecontinue rumbling across the Big Sky Country.
With Montana, like so many other "lost cause" states, notfitting neatly into the Blue State/Red State dichotomy, even ThomasFrank would be baffled. Don’t get me wrong: this is stillRepublican country. Oversized SUV bumpers flaunt "W"stickers, and almost every Ford truck touts a yellow "SupportOur Troops" magnet. There is no question that theseflag-waving Montanans overwhelmingly voted for Bush in 2004.
 
Having grown up on the eastern side of the continental divide inBillings Montana’s largest city with a population exceeding90,000—I know this area well. Dubbed America’s drugstricken "Crank Capitol" by Time in the late 1990s,Billings is nestled beneath the shadows of 500-foot sandstonecliffs.