u.s. voting, "trump is a symptom," genocide, and reality: further thoughts

image: self-righteousness and left activism

Yesterday I wrote about, among other things, why Americans should vote Democrat despite their very obvious shortcomings, blindspots, corrupt partisanship, militarism, support for the Israeli apartheid regime... and so on.

The reason is simple. Life will be substantially worse for ordinary people under another Trump presidency.

Life for workers will be worse.

Life for most women will be worse.

Life for most people of colour will be worse.

Life for all transgender people will be worse.

What little is left of US democracy may well be revoked.

The courts will be more biased than they are now. Justice will be less accessible than it is now.

It will be open season for bigtory of all types -- racism, misogyny, Islamophobia, antisemitism, homophobia, and especially transphobia. Even more than it is now.

There will be no progress on gun-law reform -- and there will be no possibility of progress on gun reform. This means that children will continue to die. Teachers will continue to die. Americans will continue to be slaughtered by their fellow citizens who have unfettered access to assault weapons. Parents will continue to live in fear that every day their children go to school, they may not return, or may live through unspeakable trauma. 

There will be zero progress on climate change, and zero possibility of progress.

A convicted felon and a rapist will be President of the United States. Almost every POTUS has been a war criminal. That doesn't in any way negate, balance, or validate putting a convicted felon in the White House.

My socialist comrades -- or people who I once regarded as comrades -- are correct about many things. Trump is a symptom, not the disease. Harris will enable genocide and other horrors. True and true. But when I hear that there is no real difference between a Trump presidency and a Harris presidency, I can only believe they are full of shit. And I must conclude that they are putting their high-minded principles, and perhaps their self-image, ahead of basic empathy and compassion. 

I wonder if leftist Canadians who are so adamant about the need to vote for neither Harris nor Trump have actually tried to imagine what it would be like for themselves and their loved ones living in the US under another Trump presidency. If they have, and still hold this belief, they are fools. If they have not, they are dangerously deficient in empathy.

American lives are not more important than Palestinian lives. Neither are they less important.

If this makes me less purely leftist, less socialist, less whatever-the-fuck, than these self-righteous revolutionaries, I couldn't give a fuck, and perhaps I should be glad.

rtod: democracy or oligarchy

 Revolutionary thought of the day:

We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.

Louis Brandeis (1856-1941)

capitalism won because it is better and other right-wing lies

In recent years, I see a greater awareness that capitalism -- at least in its present form -- is the root cause of so many issues that plague our society. This awareness makes sense, given how extreme the evidence has become. 

Proof is all around us

We grapple with the failures of capitalism every day, as the pressure to show "growth" (i.e., higher profits for shareholders) strains the limits of possibility.

The cycle of planned obsolescence has become so short, that if we buy the least expensive option for our needs, we're lucky if an item lasts more than one use. A more expensive choice -- something that in the past would have easily lasted 10 years or more -- might last six months.

If the price of a staple hasn't gone up, it's probably smaller. Or it very well may be smaller and more expensive. This has become so common that it's led to a new word.

Choosing between eating and keeping warm. Parents skipping meals so children can eat. Employed people supplementing their budgets with food banks. In Canada, one of the richest and most privileged societies in the world, nearly 20% of families report doing one or more of these at least monthly.

Then there's our Earth, which continues to be ravaged for profit, despite the global awareness that this has brought our species to the existential brink.

All this, and so much more, has led to a growing awareness that capitalism has been a total failure for the planet, and almost everyone and everything that lives on it. That the intersection of so many intractable horrors can be laid at its feet. 

This recognition is encouraging. Whether or not that recognition can lead to change is a different question, but this is certain: nothing can change without it.

The anti-socialist soundbites

In response to this widespread awareness, there are a few choice soundbites -- copy/paste responses people parrot without knowledge or understanding -- about the virtues of capitalism and the horrors of socialism. Myths. Lies.

One of the most common myths is that capitalism spread throughout the world because it is the natural state of humanity. That around the world, people adopted capitalism, and rejected socialism, because capitalism is a better system. That socialist governments have failed, because socialism is doomed to fail.

We could ask, did Christianity spread throughout the world because it was the best and most natural religion? In reponse, we could learn about the history of forced converstions: the Crusades, the Conquistadors, the Inquisition, Colonialism. Capitalism has a similar history.

Some facts

Here are some facts. 

In the US, socialist leaders were jailed, deported, surveilled, blacklisted, executed. Labour organizers were falsely accused of crimes, executed, beaten, blacklisted, ruined. 

Worldwide, democratically elected leaders were assassinated by the CIA.

Democratically elected governments were toppled by CIA-backed coups.

Countries were held hostage by IMF policies: drop your plans for a socialist economy, or we will ruin you.

In Latin America, leaders on the left have been murdered outright for generations, leaving new generations of socialists to start over without the knowledge and guidance of previous generations. The US, in most cases, was only slightly less brutal. 

Here's a partial list, off the top of my head. I'm not going to spend time linking, because everything is easily verified; there are dozens of good links about any and all. Skeptics can google. The Fox News crowd will close their eyes as per usual. (I googled only for spelling.)

Emma Goldman
Eugene V. Debs
Bill Haywood
The IWW
Patrice Lumumba
Salvador Allende
Jacobo Árbenz
Daniel Ortega
Queen Lili'uokalani
Mohammad Mosaddegh
José Santos Zelaya
Achmed Sukarno
Jean-Bertrand Aristide

Martin Luther King, Jr.: under constant FBI surveillance, leading to smear campaigns against advisors and associates, blackmail, and at least one FBI suggestion that King kill himself.

South Africa: when unconditional support for the apartheid state was no longer feasible, the IMF smashed the democratically constructed socialist constitution. (Don't see the connection between white supremacy and capitalism? There's a good reason to google.)

Joseph McCarthy
Taft-Hartley
The Chicago Boys
The IMF
Palmer Raids
Pinkertons
The Ludlow Massacre
Espionage and Sedition Acts
"Right to Work"

Illegal union busting, allowed to continue with impunity in the US and Canada. Legal union busting throughout Asia. In China, labour unions are illegal.

Stealth campaigns of climate change denial funded by the fossil fuel industries -- and the courts and laws that protect them.

* * * *

So yeah, sure, capitalism won by being better. 

Leftists are obsessed with self-blame. Activists are always on about "the failure of the left to..." -- [fill in the blank]. It's healthy to be self-critical -- and sectarian fighting has certainly hobbled movements. But we are not where we are because of the failure of the left. Might as well blame survivors of sexual abuse for being provocative. The ruling class recognizes people's movements as contrary to their interests, and acts accordingly.

hard times: we are ruled by banks, corporations, and the governments that enable them. it doesn't have to be this way.

In Canada this year, food bank usage hit an all-time high. In March 2022, there were almost 1.5 million visits to food banks -- 15% more than there were one year ago, and a whopping 35% more visits than in March 2019, pre-pandemic.

Food prices have ballooned at the highest rate in four decades. The Consumer Price Index, which approximates a cost of living barometer, has risen 6.9% since this time last year, which was already 5.9% higher than the previous year. At times over this past year, food prices had gone up more than 10%.

The price of gasoline is 13.2% higher than it was the previous year -- down from an eye-popping 22% increase a few months earlier. Most Canadians must drive in order to work; in most areas of the country, public transit is minimal. In urban areas, 17% of Canadians take public transit to work. In non-urban areas, a scant 2% do so. 

This is usually attributed to Russia's war on Ukraine, and supply chain interruption. Why would a faraway war impact the price of food in North America? Because everything, including basic survival, is subject to the irrational, mysterious ways of the market. The good old invisible hand of capitalism, causing good times and bad. And supposedly there's nothing we can do about it. Too bad, so sad. 

But there is something we can do. We can build a better system -- a rational system that privileges the needs of many over profits for a few.

It doesn't have to be this way

But in response to this crippling inflation, the Bank of Canada has raised interest rates, which harms people, and benefits banks. Raising interest rates to combat inflation has been shown to fail 100% of the time. 

That's worth repeating. The Bank of Canada is following a policy with a zero percent success rate. Unless your goal is helping banks, in which case it's spectacularly successful.

As Economist David MacDonald puts it:

History tells us that the Bank of Canada has a 0% success rate in fighting inflation by quickly raising interest rates. If a pilot told me that they'd only ever attempted a particular landing three times in the past 60 years with a 0% success rate, that's not a plane I'd want to be on. Unfortunately, that looks like the plane all Canadians are on now.

Free-market rationale says that rising interest rates will discourage borrowing and encourage savings. This seems little more than fantasy.

(1), mortgages are already borrowed, we can't un-borrow them, so increasing interest just increases the housing costs of real people. (2), the price of food and fuel continues to climb, so therefore, (3), ordinary people have even less money to save, if indeed they ever had any.

These rising interest rates and higher mortgage payments occur are occuring in a country where housing has become increasingly unaffordable. Rising interest rates are bad news for everyone -- except banks.

Meanwhile:

Exxon Mobil and Chevron raked in a mountain of profit this year. The net income for the world's oil and natural gas producers is set to double in 2022 from 2021, to a new high of $4 trillion. World Energy Outlook calls it "an unprecedented windfall for producers".

Loblaw, the corporate food giant, tried to package a routine holiday practice -- freezing prices on their store brand for a few months -- as noblesse oblige. Who do they think they're fooling? In the first quarter of this year, Loblaw enjoyed a 40% increase in profits compared with the previous year. 

Meanwhile:

Nearly a quarter of Canadians have been forced to cut back on purchasing food.

Whose government is this?

The Liberal Government defends interest rate hikes, even though this has squeezed many Canadians in a fight for survival, and pushes many into food insecurity or outright hunger. 

The Conservative Party criticizes the rate hikes, but that's just partisanship. History is quite clear on this point: if the Conservatives were in power, they would also support the Bank's moves, too.

Only Jagmeet Singh and the New Democrat Party speak out against this insanity.

But there's little enough that any party can do, as our laws are written to support big business and minimize government input. The NDP can call for investigations and strategies, but the fact is, a remedy would require an entire re-thinking of government's role in business. 

It would require a government that protects people from predatory businesses, rather than enabling their voracious greed.

All this could change. Laws are not found in nature. They are written by people. 

If the government governed for us, there would be laws against price gouging, there would be a "Robin Hood" tax, there would be caps on profits for essential goods. There would be a human right to food and shelter, and laws that supported those rights. 

Instead, the laws of the land are designed to maximize the profits of the few, not the needs of the many.

We must ask, who does the Government represent? If Trudeau's Liberals support policies that are killing Canadians, how can they credibly say they are representing the people who elected them?  

I am fed up

I am fed up -- I am way beyond fed up -- with governments that represent Loblaw, Suncor, and RBC. For the millions of Canadians who will only vote Liberal or Conservative, I ask, How's that been working out for you? 

In the US, there is no viable third option. That has enabled the march to the extreme right. In Canada, where there is a developed third party, the majority are afraid to vote for it -- even those who claim to support its platforms. Supposedly progressive people routinely advise and pressure others to not vote NDP. 

Obviously voting NDP will not magically fix these problems. But it would be a start. With Liberals and Conservatives, things will continue along the current path, which will only lead to greater wealth concentrated in the hands of fewer people. Then Canada will be well positioned for the desperation that allows fearmongers to incite scapegoating, violence, and all manner of repression. 

I have no illusions about the NDP. They are a political party, and therefore subject to the same pitfalls as any other. But if all the partisan politics are equal, only the NDP speaks for ordinary Canadians. 

Isn't it time to try something different? 

Further reading

David Macdonald, quoted above, is the senior economist for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, a progressive think tank that I am proud to support. You can read Macdonald's analysis here. 

Paul Krugman is also a good read on this topic. See his "wonking out" columns.

Here are three good stories on food insecurity in Canada -- all published pre-pandemic. Since that, it has gotten so much worse.

Wealth is health: The Reality of Food Insecurity in Canada

People Across Canada Are Struggling with Food Insecurity

More Canadians are food insecure than ever before – and the problem is only getting worse

Imagine something different.

What Would a Socialist Food Industry Look Like?

Capitalism and food: Hunger amidst plenty

Socialism for the bankers, capitalism for the rest of us -- so it goes

barbara ehrenreich, rest in power. i will miss you.

I was very saddened by the news that Barbara Ehrenreich had died earlier this month. She was one of my favourite thinkers and writers, and I found it difficult to bundle my thoughts and feelings into a tribute. 

From her last book, Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying, and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer, I know she rejected continuing with  cancer treatment after a certain point, so it was good to see that she died while in hospice care.

Why did Ehrenreich's writing mean so much to me?

She was a fierce champion of the working class.

She was fearless in her research and her writing.

She was a steadfast feminist, always examining the impact of policies and trends on women, especially working-class and low-income women.

She was clear-eyed and unrepentent. Ehrenreich's essay on the 2000 US election, "Vote For Nader," was widely shared. Then her post-election "Don't Blame Me", in Time magazine, strengthened my admiration for her. 

So many supposedly leftist writers will spend 1,500 words explaining why the Democrats suck, why the two-party system is broken, why we need a new or a different party -- then close with some version of "but that's all we got, so just shut up and vote for them". Ehrenreich understood a more complex picture.

I know there's not much point arguing with a party spurned. Scapegoating is, after all, so much easier than thinking. But, dear disappointed Dems, why not vent your rage on, for example, the union guys who voted for Bush because of his easygoing attitude toward firearms? (Oh, yes, I forgot, they're armed.) And before beating up on the Democratic defectors to Nader, wouldn't it be a good idea to pause for a little numerical perspective? According to exit polls, Gore lost 11 pecent of Democratic voters to Bush, compared to only 2 percent to Nader, who also drew votes from Independents and Republicans.

One of the major charges leveled against Nader voters is that we pretended - in some perverse kind of optical malingering - that we couldn't see the difference between the major candidates. Well, I'm capable of making fine visual distinctions. But a lot of people who probably never wandered near the Nader camp kept muttering, "Bush, Gore? Gush, Bore?" right up to election eve. This was, after all, the year the parties did their utmost to resemble one another. Recall that in August, after a Republican convention full of "compassion" and black gospel choirs, the pundits gave Bush high marks for making the Republican party look more like the Democratic party. But how hard was that? He wouldn't have been able to make the Republicans look like the Democrats if the Democrats had not already spent most of the past decade making themselves look like the Republicans - embracing capital punishment, unrestricted trade, welfare reform and the need to abolish the deficit. You call this a two-party system? I demand a recount.

. . . .

The staggering thing about the Democratic party's sense of entitlement - as in, "We own your vote" - is that it has made so little effort to hold on to its base. Labor, for example. Would there have been any worry about union members' defecting to Nader if the Clinton administration had spent even half as much time fighting to raise the minimum wage as it spent on pushing free trade with China?

So back off, Democratic avengers. Nader didn't steal Gore's election; he just mobilized some of the mounting disgust for money-polluted politics, with its battery-operated candidates and look-alike, corporate-welfare-state policies, whether they're labeled Democratic or Republican. All right, maybe the Republican disguise worked for the Democrats in 1992. But if you go around long enough in camouflage clothes, you're eventually going to be mistaken for, well, a bush.

What I loved best about Ehrenreich's writing was that she wrote for everyone. Although she was a columnist for The Nation, which was (before the internet) the preeminent left publication in the US, most of her writing had a broader target. She wanted to enlighten, educate, and also entertain, anyone who could read her. For me, this put her at the absolute top of the heap of feminist and socialist writers. 

A lifetime ago, I saw Ehrenreich read on a double bill with another great feminist writer, Katha Pollitt. When she signed my copy of The Worst Years of Our Lives: Irreverent Notes from a Decade of Greed, she said, "Hardcover! Bless you, supporting my family." Just a tiny personal memory from more than three decades of attention and admiration.

If you haven't read any of Ehrenreich's books, certainly begin with Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By In America, which has become a classic, then Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream, and Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking has Undermined America.

Her obituary in The Guardian is here. Both this, and the obituary in The New York Times, recount the birth of the idea for Nickled and Dimed. 

Barbara Ehrenreich, I will miss your voice.

who else turned 60 this year: celebrating the bc ndp

The great Tommy Douglas
was an MP for a BC riding in the 1960s.

I recently learned that the BC NDP -- the party I vote for, the party that currently leads the provincial government -- is 60 years old this year. 

There's a website showing highlights of the party's accomplishments. It's impressive, and it explains why I vote for them. 

In a sense, it explains why I moved to Canada: the fact that there's a viable party I can feel good about voting for, a party that shares my values. That means my politics are not freakish or extreme in Canadian culture. It means I belong here, more than I ever did in the US. 

Right now, both my MP (federal) and my MLA (as provincial representatives are called here) are both NDP: Rachel Blaney and Michele Babchuk (who was elected after long-serving Claire Trevena retired). They are both outstanding representatives. I met Rachel Blaney when Port Hardy held its first-ever Pride event; she came all the way up to Port Hardy to join in. 

* * * *

Many leftists are angry at the BC NDP for its support of the logging industry -- for allowing more forest to be logged. Now that I live in a "resource town," as it is called here, I see why this is. It's one thing to hear vaguely about the economic impacts of the failing logging, mining and fishing industries. It's quite another thing to see people struggle for survival in an area almost completely dependent on extraction. Or, as is often the case, struggle to remain in the middle class -- to have enough stability to pay a mortgage, keep the kids playing sports. In other words, the same concerns as millions of other families. 

This doesn't mean I want to see all the old-growth forests felled and all the oceans overfished. It means I understand the political struggle in a different way.

In BC, no party is going to form the government campaigning on shutting down the logging industry. If the BC NDP were too vocal about curtailing logging, it wouldn't win an election. And if the NDP doesn't win the election, it won't be able to do all the good things: support and expand child care, build affordable housing, expand health care, fund education.

And if the NDP isn't elected, not only won't we have a government doing good for all people, we would be suffering from all the very bad things the Conservatives or Liberals would most assuredly do. We'd suffer through corporate tax cuts and an austerity agenda. 

So the BC NDP walks a fine line. Logging families think the government is weak and gives in to the tree-huggers. Lefties and environmentalists think the party sells out by allowing too much logging. 

A brief history of the BC NDP

Perhaps this is what caused Rachel Notley's government to implode in Alberta. I don't know. (I'm sure someone will be along to tell us!) But when Canada's most right-wing province elected an NDP government, I knew that government would support the expansion of the tar sands. It could not be otherwise.

This doesn't speak to the faults of the NDP: it speaks to the reality and the limitations of electoral politics. 

It's also why the path to creating change must begin outside electoral politics, in the grassroots -- educating ourselves and others, gathering support, creating campaigns, applying political pressure. 

And it's why any win for the grassroots will always be partial -- will always be, on some level, a disappointment. But that doesn't mean it won't be significant and have a very positive impact on people's lives. 

* * * *

Here's something else I've heard from nominally progressive Canadians: the Liberal Party, historically, is responsible for everything that's good about Canada -- that all positive change in Canadian society has come under Liberal governments. While perhaps this is technically true -- since the NDP has never formed a federal government -- it's a false narrative. Would the Liberals have done anything progressive without pressure from the left? Without knowing that they might lose left-leaning, "liberal" (in the American sense of the word) voters? 

Here's a snip from a story in Canadian Dimension about the birth of universal health insurance in Canada. (Emphasis mine.) We know that the movement to universal health insurance began under the CCF, which later became the NDP. The NDP weren't in government, but their presence exerted the necessary political pressure on both the Liberals and Conservatives.

By 1964 the pro-Medicare forces in the country were riding the crest of public opinion during a period when the political culture was moving to the left. The political alignment of national parties saw six years of minority governments over three elections between 1962 and 1968, and this favoured those political forces attempting to move the country in a more progressive direction. The NDP was growing and this strengthened left Liberals who argued that their party must protect their left flank. This in turn encouraged the red Tories within the Progressive Conservatives, who argued that the party must move left to remain electorally competitive. All of this was occurring during a minority situation when an election might occur at any time and no party wanted to be caught on the wrong side of a popular issue like public Medicare.

It took fierce struggles within both the Liberal and Progressive Conservative parliamentary parties, but in the end the party whips forced the right wing into submission. The National Medical Care Insurance Act was passed in the House of Commons on December 8, 1966, by an overwhelming vote of 177 to 2. The starting date was July 1, 1968, and the Act provided that the federal government would pay about half of Medicare costs in any province with insurance plans that met the criteria of being universal, publicly administered, portable and comprehensive. By 1971 all provinces had established plans which met the criteria.

* * * *

Speaking of healthcare, when I moved to BC, I was surprised to learn that residents of this province paid monthly premiums. In Ontario, the cost of health insurance is calculated in provincial taxes, according to income. (Ours was about $1,200 per year for two people.) In BC, residents would pay monthly, also on an income-based scale. 

For the past decade, under Liberal governments, those costs had been rising steadily. In 2015, the maximum premium was $864 annually per person, or $1,728 per family. By 2018, the individual premium was $125 per month or $1,500 annually, and the annual family premium was $3,000. If you have good employment with benefits, that monthly premium may be covered by your employer. But obviously that's a condition that many people don't meet.

The BC NDP promised that, if elected, they would eliminate these fees. The Liberals trotted out charts and graphs supposedly proving that without these fees, the Province would go bankrupt. 

The NDP was elected, and it kept its promise: the monthly premiums were eliminated in January 2020. No services have been cut. Services continue to expand. 

Why wouldn't I vote for the party that does that?

* * * *

I hope many of you have seen this video of Mumilaaq Qaqqaq, then a Member of Parliament, speaking about her experience in the House of Commons, after deciding not to stand for re-election. It's a powerful speech, shared widely on social media. I hope you will watch it or re-watch it. 

Mumilaaq also explains why she stands with the NDP; she also specifically mentions my MP, Rachel Blaney.

 

what i'm reading: the cold millions by jess walter

There is an accepted wisdom that socialism and communism failed, and capitalism prevailed, because the former is bad, and the latter is good. That humankind rejected socialism and embraced capitalism, because socialism is unnatural and unsustainable, and capitalism reflects the natural human condition.

This accepted wisdom, like so many others, is a lie.

Jess Walter's novel The Cold Millions illustrates a slice of the truth that counters that lie. This excellent historical fiction illuminates one of the many ways that the dream of socialism was persecuted, suppressed, and ultimately killed by the people whose power it threatened. 

The Cold Millions is set in the northwestern United States -- mostly Spokane, Washington -- in the early 20th Century. It was a time when a tiny portion of the population controlled vast resources, including governments and police forces, and the majority of the population lived in poverty and squalor. (Sound familiar?) There was a fledgling middle class, but it was only steps away from poverty, and so, easily frightened and controlled. 

Even though these oligarchs controlled nearly everything, they must have known their position was unsustainable, because they systematically broke or bought anyone who sought to change the prevailing conditions. Labour unions and socialists were constantly in their sights.

The International Workers of the World -- the IWW, often called the Wobblies -- particularly inflamed and enraged the ruling class. The Wobblies were (and are, they still exist) a special breed of labour organizers: they wanted to organize all workers, regardless of industry, regardless of the type or level of their skills. They were also well ahead of their time in standing up for all workers, including Black people, all immigrants, and all women. 

The IWW and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, one of the fiercest and most progressive labour leaders in history, figure prominently in The Cold Millions, intermingled with labourers, drifters, burlesque performers, hired thugs, corrupt police officers, yellow journalists, and other colourful characters. 

The central characters are a pair of Irish brothers, drifters and sometimes workers, caught up in their own survival and a vague desire for a better life. There are wonderful sketches of many characters' backstories, and intimate stories of love and loss, set against a sweeping backdrop of social unrest.

Jess Walter's history is well researched, and his fiction is lively and engaging. He weaves different and competing philosophies into the characters, and although he's clearly sympathetic to the workers, the book left me wondering where his own politics shake out.

Walter also paints a portrait of some American cities in their infancy, especially a Spokane and Seattle that no one would recognize today. These were towns with barely one foot out of the Wild West and Gold Rush days, mired in a wildly corrupt and chaotic brand of feudalism. I found this aspect of the history especially fascinating.

The Cold Millions is a thought-provoking book, and a solid, page-turning read.   

* * * *

A few more personal thoughts. 

I am drawn to anything about the IWW and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. Reading about them ignites my most deeply held beliefs, and makes me feel like I was born in the wrong time. I imagine I would have been a better labour leader in the days when workers downed tools and walked out of factories. People such as Flynn and Clara Lemlich and the New England "mill girls" are my spiritual godmothers.

In an afterword, the author sorts fact from fiction, and recommends further reading. I was so pleased to have read a few of the books on his list, most notably Big Trouble by J. Anthony Lukas, published in 1998, one of my all-time favourite books. At one point in The Cold Millions, there is a reference to the former governor of Idaho being dynamited by radical mineworkers (the survivors of a massacre he ordered). I immediately thought, Big Trouble! That's the event from Big Trouble!

what i'm reading: the sword and the shield: the revolutionary lives of malcolm x and martin luther king jr.

When I read a review of The Sword and The Shield: the Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr., I knew it was a book I'd been waiting for someone to write. 

I despise the way Martin Luther King, Jr. has been sanitized and diluted for public consumption. The version of King that is widely celebrated is a pile of sentimental goo that the real King would not have recognized, let alone endorsed. King's radical legacy is reduced to a kind of bland "why can't we all just get along". His memory is used as a pacifier. King is officially lauded because of the fear of Black violence, and the ruling class' desire to promote docility among Blacks.

So the public doesn't see King. Doesn't see the King who railed against the U.S. war in Southeast Asia, the King who marched with labour unions, the King who knew that without economic justice, desegregation was a hollow promise. The anti-capitalist King. The anti-imperialist King. The anti-war King. That King doesn't fit the program. (I used to write about this all the time, but at some point decided to discontinue this as an annual event on this blog. )

And of course, this diluted version of King is contrasted with an equally simplistic and false version of Malcolm X, reduced to a handful of scary quotes, and also without any real understanding of Malcolm's message or his methods. 

Malcolm connected the American civil rights movement to independence, anti-colonialist struggles all over the globe. He reached wide swaths of African Americans who were overlooked by, shut out from, the dominant civil rights narratives of the time. He questioned why violence against Blacks was accepted -- tolerated, condoned, promoted -- but Black people were expected to pledge not to defend themselves. 

Historian Peniel Joseph challenges us to see both of these leaders clearly. In The Sword and the Shield, Joseph contrasts the intellectual, philosophical, and political growth of both  men. He demonstrates how, over the course of their short lives, Malcolm and King's philosophies were moving towards each other, coming closer together, and how, by the time King was assassinated, their views had overlapped.

For me, one of the biggest takeaways from this book is that within movements, there is room for -- there is need for -- a multiplicity of methods. Sit-ins, freedom rides, mass demonstrations, Black Power, uprisings (so-called riots), teach-ins, government lobbying -- all of it worked together to create change. This includes violence or at least the threat of violence. No revolution has ever succeeded without that, an inconvenient fact that the deification of King is meant to mask.

I also enjoyed looking at what made both Malcolm and King great leaders. They both had tremendous personal charisma, and an uncanny ability to easily relate to people in all different circumstances, while always being genuinely themselves. They were both tremendous listeners, and humble. Perhaps most importantly, they both had the courage to allow their thinking to evolve. While their values were profound and unshakeable, they knew that we all have much to learn. They understood their lives as a journey of learning.

I found this book important and edifying, and I wish I could say I enjoyed it. It's less narrative nonfiction, and more academic and didactic, and I didn't find it an easy read. However, it's an important piece of the history of the U.S. civil rights movement, the Black liberation movement, and all people's movements. 

* * * *

I rarely do this, but I'd like to share one of the blurbs on the hardcover edition of The Sword and the Shield. There are four blurbs from an impressive quartet: Ibram X. Kendi, Diane McWhorter, Michael Eric Dyson, and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. I thought Gates nailed it.

Arguing against facile juxtaposition of the political philosophies of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, Peniel Joseph has written a powerful and persuasive re-examination of these iconic figures, tracing the evolution of both men's activism. The Sword and the Shield provides a nuanced analysis of these figures' political positions in addition to unfolding the narratives of their personal lives. Well-written and compelling, this important new book brilliantly explores the commonalities between the political goals of Malcolm and Martin.

* * * *

Researching this post, I found this excellent piece by human rights activist Imam Omar Suleiman.

Every semester in which I teach a course on Muslims in the Civil Rights Movement at Southern Methodist University, I give my students a selection of quotes from both Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X and ask them to guess who said what. So for example, I will posit the following two quotes and ask for their proper ascription:

"Ignorance of each other is what has made unity impossible in the past. Therefore, we need enlightenment. We need more light about each other. Light creates understanding, understanding creates love, love creates patience, and patience creates unity. Once we have more knowledge (light) about each other, we will stop condemning each other and a United front will be brought about."

"The majority of white Americans consider themselves sincerely committed to justice for the Negro. They believe that American society is essentially hospitable to fair play and to steady growth toward a middle-class Utopia embodying racial harmony. But unfortunately this is a fantasy of self-deception and comfortable vanity."

And every single time, they have been unable to identify the first quote as belonging to Malcolm, and the second to Martin. But it is not just a few students that have gotten it wrong. The American education system and most mainstream portrayals of Martin and Malcolm have been simplistic and sanitizing.

Martin is the perfect hero who preached non-violence and love, and Malcolm the perfect villain who served as his violent counterpart, preaching hate and militancy. The result is not just a dishonest reading of history, but a dichotomy that allows for Dr. King to be curated to make us more comfortable, and Malcolm X to be demonized as a demagogue from whom we must all flee. Reducing these men to such simplistic symbols allows us to filter political programs according to how "King-like" they are. Hence, illegitimate forms of reconciliation are legitimized through King and legitimate forms of resistance are delegitimized through Malcolm X.

Malcolm was never violent, not as a member of the Nation of Islam, nor as a Sunni Muslim. But Malcolm did find it hypocritical to demand that black people in the United States commit to non-violence when they were perpetually on the receiving end of state violence. He believed that black people in the US had a right to defend themselves, and charged that the US was inconsistent in referencing its founding fathers' defense of liberty for everyone but them.

Malcolm knew that his insistence on this principle would cause him to be demonized even further and ultimately benefit the movement of Dr. King, which is exactly what he had intended. Just weeks before his assassination, he went to Selma to support Dr. King and willingly embraced his role as the scary alternative. In every interview, in his meeting with Dr. Coretta Scott King, and elsewhere, he vocalized that the US would do well to give the good reverend what he was asking for, or else.

first celebrate, then organize: good things that happened in the 2020 u.s. election

United States Vice Presidents

After the positive result in the US election, so many of my fellow leftists refuse to find joy in the occasion. They seem determined to not admit that something good happened.

The worst president in the history of the United States has been handed his walking papers. This is a good thing! 

Does that mean I expect anything but business as usual from a Joe Biden administration? Of course not! But will Trump's ouster improve people's lives? Absolutely it will.

People's lives are more important than Marxist theory. Reform is not The Answer but it is a net positive, and that counts.

Some other good things happened in this election, too.

* The first female Vice President was elected! She is also the first person of colour to hold that position, both Black and South Asian. Does this mean I love Kamala Harris? Of course not! But visibility is important. Diversity is important. This moves the needle. Full stop.

* All four of the Congressmembers referred to as "The Squad" have been re-elected: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (New York), Ilhan Omar (Minnesota), Ayanna Pressley (Massachusetts), Rashida Tlaib (Michigan). They are all young, female, people of colour, and most importantly, progressive.

* Cori Bush!

* Stacey Abrams!

* Members of the Navajo and Hopi nations organized and turned out to vote in record numbers, despite very high rates of covid-19 in their communities. This had the direct result of flipping Arizona from Republican to Democrat, and that had a direct result in getting rid of Trump.

* Speaking of Indigenous people, a record number were elected to Congress.

* Sarah McBride became the first openly trans person to be elected to a state legislature in U.S. history.

* Ritchie Torres -- Black, Latinx, and openly gay -- will represent the 15th Congressional District of New York. And if you don't think electing an openly gay man is a Big Deal because it's New York City, you don't know the Bronx community that he will represent. 

* Jabari Brisport became New York's first gay, Black, state senator. Brisport is a socialist!

 

* Mississippi voted to change the state flag, to remove racist and traitorous symbols. 

 

* People voted in record numbers. Slightly less than half of these people voted for Trump, which is deeply disturbing. But increased engagement on the anti-Trump side is cause for celebration.

First celebrate, then organize!

rotd: love and labor in alliance

Revolutionary thought of the day:

Wherever capitalism appears, in pursuit of its mission of exploitation, there will be socialism, fertilized by misery, watered by tears, and vitalized by agitation. It will also be found unfurling its class-struggle banner, and proclaiming its mission of emancipation.

Love and labor in alliance, working together, have transforming, redeeming, and emancipating power. Under their benign power, the world can be made better and brighter.

Eugene V. Debs

what i'm reading: political graphic nonfiction: wobblies, studs terkel's working, people's history of american empire

Continuing the series, started here. I've decided not to review these books, but instead to post a cover image and a quote.

It was difficult to choose quotes for these books, since they are books about ideas and events, with hundreds of different people quoted and referenced. After flipping through the books and seeing quote after beautiful, stirring, inspiring, infuriating quote, I decided to pull the lens back to more general thoughts from introductions and prefaces.

Wobblies!: A Graphic History of the Industrial Workers of the World, edited by Paul Buhle and Nicole Schulman (many contributors)

The world of the Wobs was made up of immigrant workers without steady employment, health plans, social security or drug benefits (like the future that Republicans and many a Democrat envision), without any responsibility on the part of the filthy rich for the growing class of poor -- so much like the society around us today. The world of the Wobblies was one realized in its best moments by solidarity across race, ethnic, gender, and nationality lines. The Wobbly world and promise was wrecked, finally by the eager collaboration of corporate business and the military, liberals and conservatives, all of them committee firmly to Empire. Will the same thing or something like it happen, as the empire slides into crisis again/ Only time will tell. But what the Wobs did was to hold up an alternative, the alternative we need now more than ever. (2005, from the introduction)

Studs Terkel's Working: A Graphic Adaptation, adapted by Harvey Pekar, edited by Paul Buhle

This book, being about work, is, by its very nature, about violence -- to the spirit as well as to the body. It is about ulcers as well as accidents, about shouting matches as well as fistfights, about nervous breakdowns as well as kicking the dog around. It is, above all (or beneath all), about daily humiliations. To survive the day is triumph enough for the walking wounded among the great many of us. . . . .

It is about a search, too, for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor, in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying. . . .

During my three years of prospecting, I may have, on more occasions than I had imagined, struck gold. I was constantly astonished by the extraordinary dreams of ordinary people. (1974, from the original introduction by Studs Terkel)

Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do, originally published in 1974, is a compilation of interviews with hundreds of working people by the late great Studs Terkel, an oral historian and radio broadcaster. It is a classic text of sociology, labour relations, and humanity. Terkel published an updated edition in 1997.

The cover art of the graphic adaptation reflects the very famous original cover, shown here.

A People's History of American Empire: A Graphic Adaptation, Howard Zinn, Mike Konopacki, Paul Buhle

The history of the United States was written for many generations as a heroic conquest of land and its original inhabitants, and as the steady spread of democracy from border to border and sea to sea. It culminated in the current nation being uniquely suited by history, perhaps by divine destiny, to make the rules for the planet and carry them out when necessary. Every sacrifice made, by Americans and others, was justified by that end. Even when, by 1950, atomic and finally thermonuclear war threatened to wipe out civilization, the sense of rectitude remained firmly in place. Americans had sought to make the world a better place, a nearly perfect place, even if they had been thwarted in the task.

The Vietnam War changed the perceptions of a generation. Some few earlier dissenting historians, such as W.E.B. DuBois, had pointed toward a markedly darker national saga, but they had been not much heard. Then, an evident crisis in empire brought into view past crises of empire, internal as well as external, and the high price that had been paid for those crises. Another story began to be told, not of America as a wicked place or Americans as wicked people but of the trouble in the soul of an imperial nation.

Beginning in the 1960s, scholars of various kinds started to write widely about Indians, African Americans, working people, and women, of struggles for reform won and lost, of wealth gained at vast public expense in squandered dollars and lives. This was the saga of the internal empire, precursor in many ways to the transcontinental empire to follow. None of the scholars charting this empire epitomized the truth teller and political visionary better than the then young professor Howard Zinn. None reached as many readers, a decade after the decline of the social movements of the 1960s, as an older Zinn. A People's History of the United States (first published in 1980), its pages afire with lucidity, set a new standard for the retelling of the nation's story, this time linked closely to other peoples everywhere, and likewise to a distant human past and a hoped for future. (2008, from the foreword)

what i'm reading: political graphic nonfiction: biographies of emma goldman, muhammad ali, and eugene v. debs

I have been collecting graphic nonfiction with leftist political themes. I just love these books and am indulging myself in buying them.

I was planning to review them, but I've decided to simply post images of the covers, the names of the books and the creators, and a quote from the person, group, or idea the book is about.

Dangerous Woman: A Graphic Biography of Emma Goldman, written and illustrated by Sharon Rudahl, edited by Paul Buhle

The greatest bulwark of capitalism is militarism. The very moment the latter is undermined, capitalism will totter. True, we have no conscription; that is, men are not usually forced to enlist in the army, but we have developed a far more exacting and rigid force--necessity. Is it not a fact that during industrial depressions there is a tremendous increase in the number of enlistments? The trade of militarism may not be either lucrative or honorable, but it is better than tramping the country in search of work, standing in the bread line, or sleeping in municipal lodging houses. (1908)

Muhammad Ali, written by Sybille Titeux de la Croix, illustrated by Amazing Améziane

If I thought the war was going to bring freedom and equality to 22 million of my people they wouldn’t have to draft me, I’d join tomorrow. I have nothing to lose by standing up for my beliefs. So I’ll go to jail, so what? We’ve been in jail for 400 years. (1968)

Eugene V. Debs: A Graphic Biography, written by Paul Buhle and Steve Max, illustrated by Noah Van Sciver

Foolish and vain indeed is the workingman who makes the color of his skin the stepping-stone to his imaginary superiority. The trouble is with his head, and if he can get that right he will find that what ails him is not superiority but inferiority, and that he, as well as the Negro he despises, is the victim of wage-slavery, which robs him of what he produces and keeps both him and the Negro tied down to the dead level of ignorance and degradation.

The man who seeks to arouse prejudice among workingmen is not their friend. He who advises the white wage-worker to look down upon the black wage-worker is the enemy of both. (1904)

how to afford a real social safety net: tax corporations, tax the rich, reduce u.s. military spending

As waves of shelter-in-place orders sweep over the continent, Canada and the US must figure out how to support an entire population thrown into unemployment and in need of food, fuel, shelter, and in the US, health care. A brief dip into recent history provides two very simple answers.

Demand corporations pay their share.

The corporate tax rate is at an all-time low (for modern times), offshore tax havens are rampant, and as if that's not enough, in the US the largest corporations are now receiving tax rebates to the tune of $79 billion.

Nearly 100 Fortune 500 companies effectively paid no federal taxes in 2018, according to a new report.

The study by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a left-leaning think tank, covers the first year following passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act championed by President Donald Trump, which was signed into law in December 2017.

The report covers 379 companies from the Fortune list that were profitable in 2018 and finds that 91 paid an effective federal tax rate of 0% or less. Those companies come from a wide range of industries and include the likes of Amazon, Starbucks and Chevron.

The new tax law lowered the statutory corporate tax rate to 21%, but the companies in the report paid an average rate of 11.3%. Fifty-seven companies paid effective rates above 21%. The report was first covered by The Washington Post.

The lower average rate means that the federal government brought in about $74 billion less in corporate taxes than if all the companies had paid the statutory rate, according to the report.

Canada is no different.

In 2013, Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper cut the corporate tax rate from 22.1% to 15%.

In 2018, Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau further reduced it, to 13.8%, the lowest among G7 countries.

Yet most profitable corporations don't even pay that much. Through a series of loopholes and mind-numbingly complex financial instruments understood only by corporate lawyers, corporations reduce their tax burden further -- often to zero, or even lower.

The accepted wisdom about corporate taxes -- that lowering them is an economic stimulus and raising them will cause businesses to leave the country -- has been proven false, again and again.

The current health crisis should put an end to any debate.

We need corporations to pay taxes, and we need the super-rich to pay their fair share, in order to keep our populace afloat. With hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people finding themselves suddenly unemployed, with no way to keep a roof over their heads, buy basic necessities, stay warm, and access health care, the needs of sociey as a whole must take precedence over the private stockpiling of wealth.

Think of this: in 2018, you and I paid more taxes than Amazon, the richest corporation on the planet. In fact, Amazon, which posted 72.4 billion revenue, enjoyed a tax rebate to the tune of $129 million. Tax refunds also went to Delta Airlines, General Motors, Eli Lilly Pharmaceuticals, Occidental Petroleum, and our old wartime buddies, Halliburton, to name just a few. For most Fortune 500 companies, the actual tax rate is -5%. That's negative five percent. So they pay zero taxes, and receive a tidy kickback.

This is not new. In the US, since 1968 corporate taxes have been steadily lowered by every administration, Democrat or Republican. The picture has only gotten worse as powerful corporations have ever-increasing influence on government.

This doesn't even take into account personal wealth. In 2018, US billionaires were given a lower effective tax rate than ordinary working people.

Now is the time for this dangerous trend to be reversed. Giant, wildly profitable corporations must not be allowed to suck resources out of our society and give nothing in return.

Reduce military contracts

The current US military budget is said to be $745 billion. But that doesn't include a whole raft of spending, in which public money is handed over to private-sector corporations such as KBR, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Boeing, Unisys, Lockheed Martin, Microsoft. (It's a very long list.)

The true cost of the US military budget is closer to $1 trillion. That is: 1,000,000,000,000.

No need to cut the salaries of officers and soldiers. No need to cut VA benefits or pensions. Just cancel a few slush-fund contracts. Those companies could continue to pay their lower-level employees until their retirement, purely from their profits.

* * * *

Tragically, cutting the military budget is a fantasy. The US will continue to waste more than 50% of its budget on its bloated military. But is reining in the worst excesses of the current tax system such an impossibility?

As much as Canadians love to blame everything on Trump, this has nothing to do with who lives in the White House -- or on Sussex Drive. Tory or Liberal, Democrat or Republican, the trend has not changed.

Stop asking "How are we going to pay for this?" Make everyone pay their fair share.

coronavirus exposes, part 2: there is a bright side, and it's socialism in action

A reader pointed out that my previous post is very negative, and doesn't mention any of the very positive responses to the pandemic that are being rolled out.

So:

A prohibition on evictions.

Water and electricity not being cut off for nonpayment.

Student loan forgiveness.

A relaxation of rules for employment insurance, and emergency funds for those who don't qualify.

In some cities, free public transit.

Paid sick leave. A suspension of rules about needing doctors' notes for sick days.

And

Every single one of these decent, humane responses to this health crisis injects a piece of socialism into our world.

When the crisis has passed, governments will have to work overtime to erase our memories and return to ruthless business as usual.

coronavirus exposes the darkest sides of unchecked capitalism and the gaping holes in our society

We're all struggling to take in the magnitude of coping with a global pandemic. Personally I've had to cancel a long-awaited vacation to vist family, and with libraries closed, I may soon be applying for EI. The shelves at our local supermarket are empty; we're hoping folks who did the right thing, remained calm and didn't hoard, won't be repaid with severe shortages.

And of course I'm hoping that the relatively fast and decisive actions taken by Canada and my own province of BC will protect us from the worst.

But I'm also acutely aware that my personal inconvenience is nothing compared to the misfortunes of so many others. I don't mean those who are necessarily sick with COVID-19. I'm thinking of those who simply cannot prepare, and those who are suddenly faced with a total loss of income.

All the families who live paycheque to paycheque, cobbling together an income from various part-time and casual jobs, who suddenly find themselves unemployed.

All the workers who don't qualify for assistance because they freelance, work off the books, don't work enough hours, or are otherwise under the radar.

People for whom the direction to "stay at home" is just cruel, because they live in over-crowded shelters or on the streets.

Custodial and janitorial workers who are cleaning the office buildings we've all abandoned, often with inadequate information or equipment.

People who can't afford private internet, and are now completely disconnected.

All the people in the US without proper healthcare.

All the people dealing with serious mental health and addiction issues on their own, or barely managed through the grossly under-funded system.

This public health crisis has exposed the raw edge of capitalism and unchecked greed. If corporations paid their fair share, if our taxes were used for the public good instead of corporate welfare and tax breaks for the wealthy, if in the past 40 years CEOs salaries hadn't outstripped worker gains by an order of magnitude, we'd be in a better position to weather this storm -- all of us, including our most vulnerable members.

The housing crisis is not a force of nature. Long-term care homes don't have to be understaffed. Public school classes don't have to be so large, their facilities crumbling. These conditions are a result of government priorities, and of the undue influence of industry and corporations in our public institutions.

Looking at the long-term picture, we can easily see that it doesn't matter which of the ruling class parties are in power. Tory or Liberal, Democrat or Republican, the inexorable march of unchecked capitalism continues. Until we construct a new paradigm to manage governments and resources, it will only get worse.

Coronavirus should be teaching us a lesson about socialism. But once the storm has passed, no such lesson will have been learned.

help nominate tommy douglas as the face of the next $5 bill

There's a movement to put the face of Tommy Douglas on the next Canadian $5 bill. Wouldn't that be wonderful?

And wouldn't it be a kick in the pants to those who seek to privatize our health care system?

Go here to nominate Tommy Douglas.

#climatestrike vs my brain: i am struggling with pessimism and hopelessness

I started writing this post in September, after the global Climate Strike.

It was exciting to see that so many people -- millions around the globe -- understand the urgency and are willing to take to the streets. I thought, This is beautiful! This is amazing! ... and This won't change anything. Both at the same time.

I hate writing that. I hate feeling this way.

Along with Climate Strike, there are other positive developments -- extinction rebellion, for example, and an increasing number of civil disobedience arrests, both celebrity and ordinary. This will grow. More people will get involved and actions will become even bolder.

Yet I feel utterly pessimistic about humanity's future. I have lost hope.

Of course I know I'm not alone in that. Anyone who looks at the reality of climate change either cloaks themselves in denial, clings to shreds of hope, or vows to fight on without hope.

For me, this hopelessness is a kind of identity issue. I reflect on my own feelings and think, Is this me?

I've been an activist all my life. Integral to that has been a bedrock belief in the collective power of people's movements to change the world. I don't consider myself an idealist. I focus on the points in history where people's movements have produced change. And they are legion. Activism has re-made the world again and again. I know that, I still believe it, on a local or national level.

But when it comes to climate change, the threat to our entire planet and our species, I don't believe it. And that shakes me.

I still want us to fight, of course. We must fight. We have no choice.

But there is only one real solution to climate change, and that is abolishing capitalism. And to call that a pipe dream is an understatement on the grandest level. The corporatocracy is powerful beyond all measure. The ruling class will stop at nothing to retain profit and privilege.

Google "ways to stop climate change," and you'll find lists of ways to reduce your carbon footprint -- the usual suspects. All good, all completely inadequate, all deflecting attention away from the real issue, that a system predicated on so-called "growth" is unsustainable. That capitalism is destroying our planet and killing our future.

Australia

Even environmental groups that understand the need for collective, political action, such as (in Canada) the David Suzuki Foundation, fall well short of the mark. "Unite for bold climate action." "Get politically active and vote."

Yes, we should do both those things. But is there a party planning to restructure our economic system? Is there a party that will risk re-election by taking on the extraction industries? Is there a party that can move beyond window-dressing into a true sea-change of action? No, no, and no.

All around me good-hearted people are working hard to reduce their individual footprints, and working on the local level to do whatever they can. That's all good. Less plastic waste and less mindless consumerism are worthy goals. But while we're carrying our reusable shopping bags and not using straws, on the largest scale, it only gets worse.

My comrades talk about a socialist revolution. But revolution is infinitely more likely to bring some form of authoritarianism -- whether theocracy or military state -- than anything else.

The impossible economics of late-stage capitalism, have (predictably) given rise to a resurgence of xenophobia and fascism. As our world is (literally) burning with the need for cooperative, equitable, sustainable solutions, the ruling class doubles down on the unsustainable, unjust system that brought us to this dangerous place.

I've been struggling with this post, writing and deleting and writing and deleting, because writing this is worthless. No one needs my cynicism and my hopelessness. It does nothing, changes nothing. Cynicism and hopelessness are death-knells for activism, and without activism, we are lambs to the slaughter.

All I can do at this point is quote Gandhi: You may never know what results come of your actions, but if you do nothing, there will be no results.

Or maybe Beckett is more apt. You must go on. I can't go on. I'll go on.

laundromats, underground libraries, and criminal charges: a library link round-up

I have so many cool stories about libraries and librarians, scattered through multiple email and social media accounts. Lucky for you, I wanted to gather them all in one place. Thanks to everyone who ever sent me one of these.

* * * * *

Librarians in laundromats! Community librarians are all about taking literacy to the people. In library jargon, we're trying to reach the non-users. If that sounds a bit drug-dealer-ish, it's not a bad analogy: come get a taste, then come back for more.

The puns just write themselves: front-loading literacy, unhampered access... but the issue is deadly serious. You already know about food deserts. Well, there are book deserts, too. Neighbourhoods where libraries have been de-funded, bookstores are nonexistent, and families can't afford to buy books. In the US, great swaths of whole cities are book deserts. After all, there's no profit in bringing books to people who can't buy them.

* * * * *

Librarians as detectives! Meet the squad of librarians who track down half-forgotten books.

A few years ago, staffers in the New York Public Library’s reader services division drafted a blog post about how to track down a book when its title eludes you. This post spurred a follow-up, in which reader services librarian Gwen Glazer recommended library resources and a number of other strategies (among them are Goodreads groups, a sprawling Reddit thread called whatsthatbook, an indie bookseller in Ohio who is happy to poke around for a $4 fee). Thanks to Google—“how to find a book”—many stumped people seem to land on that post, and they have often written about their enduring puzzles in the comments section. The messages now number in the thousands. Glazer says she often arrives at work to see another 10 title requests.

To solve these little mysteries, Glazer recently assembled a team of sleuths from across the branches: Chatham Square, in Chinatown; the Jefferson Market, in Greenwich Village; the Andrew Heiskell Braille and Talking Book Library, near the Flatiron Building; and the Mulberry Street branch, in Nolita. At lunchtime on a recent Wednesday, they were gathered in that computer lab in the library’s offices—across the street from the soaring, spectacular Stephen A. Schwarzman Building (the Main Branch)—to nibble on homemade lemon rosemary cookies and apple, carrot, zucchini bread while they clattered away on their keyboards. Other members of the team participated remotely. The “Title Quest” hackathon was underway.

* * * * *

Saving books in Syria

I have this book from the library right now: in a Syrian town under siege, a secret library kept dreams alive.

There, the self-appointed chief librarian, a 14-year-old named Amjad, would write down in a large file the names of people who borrowed the books, and then return to his seat to continue reading. He had all the books he could ever want, apart from ones on high shelves that he couldn’t reach. He told his friends: “You don’t have TV now anyway, so why not come here and educate yourself? It’s fun.” The library hosted a weekly book club, as well as classes on English, math and world history, and debates over literature and religion.

The book: Syria's Secret Library: Reading and Redemption in a Town Under Siege, by Mike Thomson.

* * * * *

Ah, Florida. Land of sunshine and ignorance.

The Citrus County Commission came to a consensus at the end of October: The county should not spend roughly $2,700 annually to buy digital subscriptions to the New York Times for the 70,000 library-card holders who reside in the county.

The commissioners were not shy in sharing why they thought it was a waste of money.

“Do we really need to subscribe to the New York Times?” one commissioner asked during the meeting.

“Why the heck would we spend money on something like that?” asked another.

Commissioner Scott Carnahan appeared the most passionate against approving the funding, alluding to political reasons as part of his decision.

“Fake news, I agree with President Trump,” Carnahan said. “I don’t want the New York Times in this county. I don’t agree with it, I don’t like 'em, it’s fake news and I’m voting no. They can take that money and do something else with it ... I support Donald Trump."

Yup, there are people out there who support Donald Trump and control library funding. File under horror.

* * * * *

Elijah Cummings, a bright light in the US Congress, died a few months ago. In an interview on "60 Minutes," captured here by School Library Journal, Cummings talked briefly about why libraries mean so much to him.

“The people who helped me the most were the librarians,” Cummings told Steve Kroft in a 60 Minutes interview broadcast in January of this year, adding that the public library was the only integrated institution in his neighborhood.

Speaking about the librarians, whom he credited with staying past their regular working hours to help him with his schoolwork, enabling him to get out of special ed, the longtime Baltimore congressman and chair of the House Oversight Committee got emotional.

“There are a lot of good people who really care,” he said.

Staying past their regular working hours? Hmm... that sets off my union radar. But I actually have a small personal memory of the Enoch Pratt Free Library. Once when Allan was researching at the Babe Ruth Birthplace and Museum, I spent a day there. It's a beautiful library, a true temple of learning. I love knowing it was the first place in Baltimore to integrate.

* * * * *

Rank your favourite fictional librarian!

Where does your favourite fictional librarian stack up? I may not know every reference here, but I fail to see how anyone could rank higher than Rupert Giles.

* * * * *

LitHub recently ran an excerpt from Eric Klinenberg's Palaces for the People, a love letter to the public library and a plea for proper funding: Libraries Are Even More Important to Contemporary Community Than We Thought -And They Should Be Funded Accordingly.

In recent years, modest declines in the circulation of bound books in some parts of the country have led some critics to argue that the library is no longer serving its historic function as a place for public education and social uplift. Elected officials with other spending priorities argue that 21st-century libraries no longer need the resources they once commanded, because on the Internet most content is free. Architects and designers eager to erect new temples of knowledge say that libraries should be repurposed for a world where books are digitized and so much public culture is online.

Many public libraries do need renovations, particularly the neighborhood branches. But the problem libraries face isn’t that people no longer visit them or take out books. On the contrary: so many people are using them, for such a wide variety of purposes, that library systems and their employees are overwhelmed. According to a 2016 survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, about half of all Americans aged sixteen and over used a public library in the past year, and two-thirds say that closing their local branch would have a “major impact on their community.” In many neighborhoods the risk of such closures is palpable, because both local library buildings and the systems that sustain them are underfunded and overrun.

In New York City, where I live, library circulation is up, program attendance is up, program sessions are up, and the average number of hours that people spend in libraries is up too. But New York City doesn’t have an exceptionally busy library culture, nor is it a national leader. The distinctions belong to other places: Seattle leads the nation in annual circulation per capita, followed by Columbus, Indianapolis, San Jose, San Francisco, Jacksonville, and Phoenix. Columbus has the highest level of program attendance: five of every 10,000 residents participate in library activities there each year. San Francisco and Philadelphia are close behind, as are Boston, Detroit, and Charlotte. New York City trails them all.

New York City also ranks low in per capita government spending for the system. The New York Public Library receives $32 for every resident, on par with Austin and Chicago but less than one-third of the San Francisco Public Library, which gets $101 per resident. . . .

Doing research in New York City, I learned that libraries and the social infrastructure are essential not only for a neighborhood’s vitality but also for buffering all variety of personal problems—including isolation and loneliness. And while these problems may be particularly acute in struggling neighborhoods like East New York, they’re hardly confined to them. . .

Why have so many public officials and civic leaders failed to recognize the value of libraries and their role in our social infrastructure? Perhaps it’s because the founding principle behind the library—that all people deserve free, open access to our shared culture and heritage, which they can use to any end they see fit—is out of sync with the market logic that dominates our time. (If, today, the library didn’t already exist, it’s hard to imagine our society’s leaders inventing it.)

Klinenberg posits some other reasons library funding is so disposable, but I (unfairly) ended the quote here. Libraries are antithetical to capitalism.

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In Michigan, a woman faced criminal charges, including up to 93 days in jail and a $500 fine, for failing to return two library books. Seriously. She was unable to receive overdue notices, because she was moving frequently, on the run from an abusive relationship.

I haven't found a follow-up to the story, but I'm hoping the bad publicity caused the Charlotte Community Library of Eaton County, Michigan, to step back into sanity.

Meanwhile, increasing numbers of libraries are going fine-free. There are many barriers to library use, but perhaps none are as pernicious to low-income people as the fear of fines. My own employer has eliminated fines for children's materials, thanks to the advocacy of children's librarians, and we hope to see the same happen for teen materials.

The Urban Libraries Council has charted the progress of fine-free systems on a map.

Enoch Pratt Free Library, Baltimore, Maryland

This story about fine-free libraries in the Washington Post mentions the Enoch Pratt Free Library -- the very one that welcomed and helped a young Elijah Cummings, quoted above.

Last week, the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore announced it was eliminating fines on overdue books and materials. Though borrowers are still responsible for replacement costs for lost items, the Pratt erased $186,000 in outstanding penalties for 26,000 borrowers and reinstated 13,000 users whose cards were previously blocked due to unpaid fines. In doing so, it joined a growing number of libraries across the country that have decided to go fine-free.

Eliminating these fines serves a laudable purpose: The policy can expand access to library services among groups that might otherwise struggle to return materials on time or keep up with payments, including low-income families, people with disabilities and the elderly. In some cases, as patrons return, fine-free policies can actually work to improve library circulation — and even the library’s bottom line. The Pratt, for example, relies on library fines for less than a quarter of a percent of its annual budget, a figure it believes it could largely save in reduced staff time collecting and processing fines.

Proponents of library fines argue that they incentivize borrowers to return books on time and teach personal responsibility. But there is little evidence that fines have any effect on the timely return of library materials. In fact, much of the existing research suggests that they do not affect overdue rates and instead deter readers from borrowing materials in the first place. Libraries have also found that fines heavily affect low-income families and children, excluding the very patrons who rely on libraries the most.

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In Idaho, people are going into public libraries and hiding books that are critical of Donald Trump. The most amazing part of this story is that pro-Trump people use libraries. Or that they can read.

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Just for fun, what are the strangest questions NYC librarians have ever been asked?

The questions posed below are selected from a cache of those written on file cards between the 1940s and the late 1980s, as far as we can tell from the dates on each card. When the staff of the Library discovered them a few years ago in a small gray file box, they inspired awe, laughter, and, most importantly, the box provided a snapshot of the interests of people coming into the Library. Some clearly reflect the times and particular concerns of the day while others could just as well be asked of NYPL—or Google—today.

Buzz Feed brings us (via a Reddit thread) the weirdest things that have happened to librarians at work and the same from two years earlier. Many of these may be amusing, but in reality, they are workplace issues faced by library workers every day.

Working with the public, in (often) the only public space open to all people, carries with it serious health-and-safety risks. In urban libraries, this is a pressing concern, often under-addressed by library boards and municipal governments. In rural libraries, where library staff often works alone, hours of drive-time away from emergency services, it is no less pressing.