Isak

Read Local

In the current issue of The American Prospect, I have an article about how independent publishers and literary communities are borrowing strategies from the food movement in their search for support.

It begins:

"When I get a little money, I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes." So said Desiderius Erasmus, a Dutch priest born less than 20 years after the printing press was invented. This holiday season, publishers might like to see his ilk in bookshops. Traditionally, the book industry depends upon the December gift-giving season to buoy its entire year. Many publishers shape their catalog around the six-week window of intensified shopping that carries particular urgency in the depths of a recession.

But this "make or break" bookselling strategy is one holiday tradition that a handful of innovative publishers are eager to end.

In search of sustainability, some publishers and booksellers are adapting ideas from the food movement. Community-supported agriculture (CSA) -- in which consumers buy a share of a farm's produce yield for the season -- translates to community-supported publishing (CSP), in which readers subscribe to an independent press that in return delivers books to their doorstep every month. "Buy Local" becomes "Buy Indie." And the do-it-yourself momentum behind home gardening parallels the energy behind literary chapbooks, a traditional form that's finding new popularity and legitimacy in the 21st century. More than a marketing strategy, the sustainability shift is carving out a place for diverse ideas -- even in an economic climate where mainstream publishers abhor risk.

My article is only partially available online right now (unless you a subscriber to TAP), so I hope you'll consider checking out a print copy. (UPDATE: In fact, the article is now fully available online. But check out the print copy anyway, because it's pretty and awesome.) Also featured in the December issue:

• "The Company We Keep", by Ann Friedman
• "Gay on Trial," by Gabriel Arana
• "Hope Against History," by Sasha Polakow-Suransky
• "Beyond Bars," by Adam Serwer

Choose Books: The Lost Massey Lectures

Why Choose Books for your gifts this holiday season? Glad you asked. It's because there are few things more fun than giving someone a book they fall in love with; it lasts longer and matters more than, say, necklaces or sweaters, while rarely being more than about fifteen dollars. What's more, your purposeful choice of books, purchased from indie booksellers, supports a vibrant and dynamic literary culture in a time when the book world is struggling and even literacy is horrifically low. Choose Books because you really can make a difference. Choose Books because it is joyful.

In this series, you can look forward an ongoing guide to books as gifts; at the end of the season, it will be collected as an attractive PDF for you to download. More than a mere list of my personal favorites, Choose Books is outward-looking, featuring outstanding books of very different styles for very different tastes (and ages). Learn more about this series here. 

The Lost Massey Lectures: Recovered Classics from Five Great Thinkers
Edited by Bernie Lucht

There is a wonderful Canadian cultural tradition, and it's called the Massey Lectures. CBC broadcasts an iconic and much-anticipated public lecture series that is described as a "feast of ideas." Each year, one of the brightest minds of our time is invited to give a series of broadcast lectures on a topic of their choosing--and the results are provoking, innovative and inspiring. This is a tradition that Canada has kept since the 1960s and, over time, many of the best lectures have been "lost"--that is, unavailable in any form to the public.

Here comes this collection to remedy that. The Lost Massey Lectures features Martin Luther King, Jr. speaking about creative nonviolence and oppression in "Conscience for Change;" John Kenneth Galbraith on economics and poverty; Jane Jacobs on Canadian cities and Quebec separatism; Paul Goodman on the moral ambiguity of America; and Eric W. Kierans on globalism and the nation-state. These lectures are not dense--remember, they were read aloud on national radio--but they are intellectual beasts, written with passion and care.

You can mine other outstanding Massey Lectures--including Margaret Atwood's Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth, Noam Chomsky's Necessary Illusions, and Doris Lessing's Prisons We Choose To Live Inside--here and here.

As a whole, it seems to me that The Lost Massey Lectures are to ideas what The Paris Review Interviews are to writing. This is a book to treasure. Or to give to someone else so they can treasure it.

Consider this book as a gift for people who are one or more of the following:

• The folks who lure you into conversations of big ideas, like God, government, the purpose of existence, morality, and so forth.
• People who are frustrated with soundbite culture and thinkers who stay "on message" at the expense of nuance.
• People who subscribe to The Walrus.
• Canadians. Naturally.

Recommended Edition:

House of Anansi
$24.95 / $18.95

While this is pricier than traditional paperbacks, this is both a substantial and beautiful edition of the book. I have seen the price vary at indie booksellers; there might be some issue with the original Canadian cost varying in American bookshops. I got my own copy for $18.95 in Ann Arbor. This edition includes an introduction by Bernie Lucht, the veteran CBC producer who has been the man behind the Massey Lectures since 1984.

Other Available Editions:

More Lost Massey Lectures
House of Anansi
$18.95

You might consider a gift that pairs this book with its companion. This edition features Nobel Peace Prize recipient Willy Brandt on the dangerous inequities between developing and industrialized nations; George Grant on the worsening predicament of the West through an examination of the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche; Claude Lévi-Strauss on the nature and role of myth in human history; Frank Underhill on the deficiencies of the Canadian constitution; and Barbara Ward, in the very first Massey Lecture, on the origin and predicament of underdeveloped countries in The Rich Nations and the Poor Nations.

Where To Buy:

Your local independent bookseller. Find the shop nearest to you here. You might also want to prowl the used bookshops for treasures. If the book you want is not in stock, the bookseller will be happy to order it for you (almost always sans shipping); just ask! If there are really, truly no indie booksellers near you, consider ordering online from an independent bookseller, such as Brookline Booksmith or Powell's, and having it delivered to your doorstep. Another option: order online directly from the publisher.

Image Credit: Creative Commons, by jsome1.

Twenty Years Ago Today

... The first hole was broken in the Berlin Wall, cutting through a city and a continent that had been too long divided into "East" and "West." The Wall was one of the twentieth century's most destructive metaphors.

Today, the site of the Brandenburg Gate is a beautiful  pedestrian plaza marked by large openings ... inviting people to pass through. Fascinating comparison photos can be found here. For an overview of how the Berlin Wall came to be--with amazing, heartrending footage of how it affected Germans in the days soon after it was built--look to this excerpt from a BBC/CNN documentary on the Cold War:

Speaking: Gabriel García Márquez

Why is the originality so readily granted us in literature so mistrustfully denied us in our difficult attempts at social change? ... we, the inventors of tales, who will believe anything, feel entitled to believe that it is not yet too late to engage in the creation of the opposite utopia. A new and sweeping utopia of life, where no one will be able to decide for others how they die, where love will prove true and happiness be possible, and where the races condemned to one hundred years of solitude will have, at last and forever, a second opportunity on earth.

Gabriel García Márquez, from his 1982 Nobel Prize lecture, "The Solitude of Latin America"

LGBT Equality Struggle Goes to the Ballotin Kalamazoo

It may be autumn, but it's getting hot in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

That's where a non-discrimination ordinance intended to protect the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people is up for a public vote this coming Tuesday. In the final week, campaigns for and against the proposal are giving it everything they've got ... and, perhaps unsurprisingly, it is protection against gender identity bias that is generating the most controversy.

From The Michigan Messenger:

Perhaps because the “T” in GLBT remains the acronym’s least understood category, efforts to prohibit discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodations — as Kalamazoo’s proposed ordinance would do — have highlighted the confusion and in turn, have been met with stiff opposition.

If fact, equating transgendered women with bathroom perverts has become increasingly routine.

Last year, after the city council in Gainesville, Fla., enacted a nearly identical anti-discrimination charter amendment to the proposed ordinance in Kalamazoo, opponents successfully petitioned a public vote — and they kept their message to voters simple.

“Keep men out of women’s bathrooms” became the semi-official opposition mantra. A memorable TV ad featured a young girl stepping off a merry-go-round and walking into a women’s restroom. After the door closed, a bearded man in sunglasses and a baseball cap entered ominously behind her. Then a question is posed: “Is that what you want in Gainesville?”

Voters in Gainesville ultimately backed the anti-discrimination charter amendment this past March.

Over the last several weeks in Kalamazoo, campaign mailings and door hangers have revived the same molesters-will-prey-on-women-in-the-bathroom approach from Gainesville – even utilizing some of the identical graphics.

Mara Kiesling, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Transgender Equality, is well aware of the tactic.

“I understand there are some people who are uncomfortable. But you know what? They’re just uncomfortable,” she told Michigan Messenger. “That’s what civil rights are about — minorities who are not allowed to have the same lives as the majority because of our cultural biases. Most of these people are still uncomfortable with straight men being in a restroom with gay men. And there are a lot of people who are uncomfortable about being in restroom with people of different races,” she said.

... Keisling also noted that anti-discrimination protections for transgendered men and women have been on the books in Minneapolis since the 1970s — without a single bathroom incident.

“It’s not that it doesn’t happen much, it doesn’t happen,” she said.

One Kalamazoo is leading the equality campaign for the 77,000 city residents through a series of TV ads, last Sunday's march, and old-fashioned canvassing and phone-banking. If it succeeds, Kalamazoo will join more than twenty other cities across Michigan that have enacted a comprehensive non-discrimination ordinance, including Detroit, Ann Arbor, Lansing, East Lansing, Grand Rapids, and Ferndale. Look here to find more details on the Kalamazoo proposal.

Please consider donating to One Kalamazoo in this crucial final week, or volunteering, or spreading the word. And my god, if you are a Kalamazoo voter, vote yes on Ordinance 1856!

Think Little

There's a little piece of brilliance, right here in our midst.

Speaking: Dorothy Day

Isn't there something awfully smug about such piety--building up your own sanctification at the expense of the increased guilt of someone else? The turning of the other cheek, this inviting someone else to be a potential murderer, or thief, in order that we might grow in grace--how obnoxious! In that case I'd rather be the striker than the meek one struck. One would all but rather be a sinner than a saint at the expense of the sinner. In other words, we must be saved together.

~ Dorothy Day, March 1952
From Dorothy Day: Selected Writings

No, Not That Kind of Hotline ...

From my new article at RH Reality Check:

If you are not quite 18 years old and living in Illinois, if you are pregnant, if you need to terminate your pregnancy and if you know that telling your family is not a safe or wise choice, then, as of this summer, you have only a single legal option.

You need to navigate a courtroom obstacle course to get a judicial bypass for your abortion.

And Leah Bartelt wants to be very clear about this: a judicial bypass is not a way to skip around the state’s new parental notification law, but rather, it is the very essence of the law. Bartelt says:

The media reporting on the (Illinois parental) notification law are saying that the ACLU is helping (minors) ‘exploit loopholes’ in the law,” said Bartelt, who is the reproductive rights staff counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union in Illinois. “This is incredibly frustrating because this is in the law. To say we’re exploiting loopholes is dishonest.

She added, “This isn’t bypassing the law; this is a due process right that the young women have.”

But let's think for a second: Imagine you're a minor in Illinois or one of the other thirty-four states that require parental notification or consent for abortions. Imagine you can't tell your parents about your situation; maybe one of your parents is responsible for impregnating you, or maybe they will kick you out of the house.

You have the right to a judicial bypass, but how in holy hell are you going to navigate the court system all by your 15 year old self--and while keeping it all private from your community?

That's where the hotlines come in. I spoke with the fascinating people at Jane's Due Process (in Texas) and the Illinois Judicial Bypass Coordination Project (in, um, Illinois), both of which host hotlines staffed by trained volunteers for teens to call when they need help. The hotline provides young women with information on the regulations, timelines, who legally needs to be notified and who does not. It also connects callers with a network of trained pro bono lawyers.

The context these hotlines come in, and what they're able to do, is nothing less than extraordinary. The work they do is uncommon, and as is evident, so crucial.

DETROIT STORIES:Grace Lee Boggs, Still Kicking Ass

Today and yesterday, Democracy Now! hosted a two-part interview with Grace Lee Boggs, the 94-year-od civil rights activist, philosopher, writer, and Detroiter who I happen to fall all over myself in admiration. We can count ourselves damn lucky for the chance to hear what she has to say.

Part One features Boggs reflecting on social change, the economic meltdown, and new visions of democracy:

Part Two features Boggs on the city of Detroit, mass protest, the evolution of race politics, and "the legacy of socialist thought in the U.S.":

Monthly Review Press has just reissued a book written by Grace's late husband and visionary Jimmy Boggs: The American Revolution: Pages from a Negro Worker's Notebook.

Together, Grace and Jimmy wrote the classic Revolution and Evolution in the Twentieth Century, which was reissued last year. Both books feature new introductions penned by Grace.

RIP Crystal Lee Sutton(The Real-Life 'Norma Rae')

Crystal Lee Sutton's bold work in organizing the workers of a North Carolina textile mill against low pay and poor treatment inspired the wonderful Oscar-winning 1979 film "Norma Rae." More importantly, her courage led to unionizing 3,000 employees at seven Roanoke Rapids plants owned by Stevens in northeastern North Carolina. Later, she helped lead organizing at J.P. Stevens, what was then the country's second-largest textile manufacturer.

On Friday, Sutton passed away after a long struggle against brain cancer at a hospice. She was 68 years old. 

From The Washington Post's obituary:

Ms. Sutton, a 33-year-old mother of three who earned $2.65 per hour folding towels at the J.P. Stevens textile plant, was fired in 1973 for her pro-union activity. Before the police hauled her off the factory floor, the 16-year veteran of the job wrote "UNION" on a piece of cardboard, climbed on to a table and slowly rotated so her fellow workers could see her protest.

Her colleagues responded by shutting down their machines, in defiance of management orders.

Her death is tragic enough, but here's the real burn: As Sutton suffered from cancer, her health insurance wouldn't cover her needed medications.

She went two months without possible life-saving medications because her insurance wouldn't cover it, another example of abusing the working poor, she said.

"How in the world can it take so long to find out (whether they would cover the medicine or not) when it could be a matter of life or death," she said. "It is almost like, in a way, committing murder."

She eventually received the medication, but the cancer (had taken) a toll on her strong will and solid frame.

Sutton's fight makes me think of the kind of courage and persistence that it will take to change how we care for the health of this nation's people. We do have an opportunity right now to change.

In her honor, let's get organized.

Sutton was once asked how she'd like to be remembered:

"It is not necessary I be remembered as anything, but I would like to be remembered as a woman who deeply cared for the working poor and the poor people of the U.S. and the world," she said. "That my family and children and children like mine will have a fair share and equality."

In the spirit of remembering Sutton, below is a video from the movie that told her story to millions. "Norma Rae" is movie that, incidentally, isn't just one of the best films about activism that you'll ever see, but also one of the best about rural life, about blue-collar workers, and about misbehavior.