5 Dec

“Thank God,” said President Hoover, “we still have a government that knows how to deal with a mob.”

Click the images above to read an excerpt from Studs Terkel’s Hard Times (a collection of interviews about the Great Depression) that describes the forceful removal of veterans from Pennsylvania Avenue. The story of the Bonus March is being told by a 63-year-old man named Jim Sheridan.

I’m not against Occupy Wall Street — in fact I’m pro anything with the potential to make way for change — but I think this narrative reminds us that we’ve been here before.