Sort of an HR manual for activist/mutual aid groups. I appreciate the author trying to set forth some good principles to avoid common mistakes. But I'Sort of an HR manual for activist/mutual aid groups. I appreciate the author trying to set forth some good principles to avoid common mistakes. But I've seen plenty of groups try to embody the principles he lays down and none that have lasted very long.
A lot of his advice seems to come down to "be better people and work with better people." Helpful. ...more
Short and accessible book about one of the most heroic Americans ever. The author does a good job of not flinching from the horrors of chattel slaveryShort and accessible book about one of the most heroic Americans ever. The author does a good job of not flinching from the horrors of chattel slavery, the failure of reconstruction, the failure of the nation to, among so many things, pay her for her work as a Union soldier and nurse, and the failure of white feminism.
I learned from this book that Queen Victoria sent her a silver medal that was in Tubman's casket. What a fascinating bit of history. A British colony creates one of the most brutal system of slavery known to history. A British colony offers refuge to escaped slaves, including Tubman. History marches on. ...more
Searingly powerful book on what is necessary for freedom and how Trump, Musk, and Putin and working to thwart it for their own malignant ends.
Snyder Searingly powerful book on what is necessary for freedom and how Trump, Musk, and Putin and working to thwart it for their own malignant ends.
Snyder does an elegant job of weaving together how true freedom is more than freedom from some constraint; that it also requires us to be positively empowered to be free. That we need sovereignty, mobility, factuality, and solidarity. We must also be free to be unpredictable.
He introduced me a term that will haunt me: Sadopopulism. "Populism offers redistribution, something to the people from the state; sadopopulism offers only the spectacle of others being still more deprived. Sadopopulism salves the pain of immobility by directing attention to others who suffer more. One group is reassured that, thanks to its resilience, it will do less poorly than another from government paralysis. Sadopopulism bargains, in other words, not by granting resources but by offering relative degrees of pain and permission to enjoy the suffering of others.
Donald Trump proved to be a compelling sadopopulist, teaching his supporters contempt for others during his campaigns, then declining to build infrastructure as president -- precisely because it would have helped people." (148)
I feel this in my bones.
"Do not vote for a party that denies climate change. People who lie about the end of the world will keep lying until the world ends." (234)
Beautiful prose; insightful text; and absolutely heartbreaking. ...more
Traces some of the force in the current white supremacist movement to the United States' war in Vietnam.
Men came back from the jungle angry, afraid, Traces some of the force in the current white supremacist movement to the United States' war in Vietnam.
Men came back from the jungle angry, afraid, and feeling betrayed. They read The Turner Diaries. They organized. They lashed out.
Documents many of these men, their beliefs, their crimes, and in some cases, their deaths, in depressing detail.
Not all were soldiers. One, Robert Mathews, decided not to enlist after he learned the military was prosecuting William Calley for the My Lai massacre. He thought that massacre was justified. But his drive into violent white supremacy came from the same tumult, Belew says.
Belew clearly believes that there were at least three more, and probably many more, men who were involved in the Oklahoma City bombing who were no prosecuted.
A deeply disturbing book about who we are. ...more
Shirley Ann Higuchi, who wrote this book, is a well respected lawyer. A woman of means. She is the daughter of well respected parents. People who workShirley Ann Higuchi, who wrote this book, is a well respected lawyer. A woman of means. She is the daughter of well respected parents. People who worked hard and did good. People our nation interned in concentration camps because of fear, racism, and selfishness.
Higuchi's parents, including the Setsuko of the book's title, did not talk about their time in the camps, or the fact they and their community lost everything they could not carry. Instead, they set out to prove their worth to the nation that had betrayed them for specious reasons.
But trauma is passed down in more ways than language. The cuts are deep.
This book is an interesting blend of fairly neutral recitations of awful things that happened to other people around internment and searing personal experience. Higuchi's mother channeled much of her pain into making her children seem to win at Americana. But with that is a great cost. Higuchi's brother died in awful circumstances that were almost certainly informed if not directly caused by those traumas. People died in abject poverty, shunned and alone, because of Executive Order 9066.
We learned some things. George W. Bush did not allow concentration camps after 9/11. He cited what happened to Norm Mineta - a man interned as a child who became a cabinet secretary, among so many other things -- as the reason. The nation apologized and paid inadequate reparations. This book catalogs some of the work that got there. Good people built some monuments. Korematsu was formally overruled, though perhaps not in a way that would prevent this from happening again.
I can't say I enjoyed reading this book. Much of it is presented in a dry and distant way. The parts that aren't are wrenching.
But I'm glad I read this book. Japanese internment is an important part of the rich, wonderful, and heartbreaking tapestry of America.
Hard to read. We detained, tortured, and held innocent men without trial for years and years because someone who looked like them bloodied our nose. WHard to read. We detained, tortured, and held innocent men without trial for years and years because someone who looked like them bloodied our nose. We knew it was wrong and we did not stop because we did not want to admit we were wrong. We have done something monstrous. We have never been held to account.
Hard to read. Needs to be read. May it make us better. ...more
I have not read this book since before Obama was president and John Roberts was Chief Justice. The world seemed so different then. I would have said iI have not read this book since before Obama was president and John Roberts was Chief Justice. The world seemed so different then. I would have said it was a truth universally acknowledged that America was born a rich tapestry of utopian ideas of dystopian practices but we were, by acknowledging the dark truths, becoming better.
But now a substantial portion of my fellow citizens are absolutely dedicated to denying that our nation was built on other people's lands using other people's sweat and blood. They want to pretend we have, as a nation, lived up to our creed because we have removed the most racist of our laws.
This book, patiently, with dignity and grace, gives lie to that. I suspect it would be banned by the anti-critical race theory legislation that has infected so many states.
This passage particularly grabbed me:
For too long the depth of racism in American life has been underestimated. The surgery to extract it is necessarily complex and detailed. As a beginning it is important to X-ray our history and reveal the full extent of the disease. The strands of prejudice toward Negroes are tightly wound around the American character. The prejudice has been nourished by the doctrine of race inferiority. Yet to focus upon the Negro alone as the "inferior race" of American myth is to miss the broader dimensions of the evil.
Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race. Even before there were large numbers of Negroes on our shores, the scar of racial hatred had already disfigured colonial society. From the sixteenth century forward, blood flowed in battles over racial supremacy. We are perhaps the only nation which tried as a matter of national policy to wipe out its indigenous population. Moreover, we elevated that tragic experience into a noble crusade. Indeed, even today we have not permitted ourselves to reject or to feel remorse for this shameful episode. Our literature, our films, our drama, our folklore all exalt it.
Our children are still taught to respect the violence which reduced a red-skinned people of an earlier culture into a few fragmented groups herded into impoverished reservations. This is in sharp contrast to many nations south of the border, which assimilated their Indians, respected their culture, and elevated many of them to high position.
It was upon this massive base of racism that the prejudice toward the nonwhite was readily built, and found rapid growth. This long-standing racist ideology has corrupted and diminished our democratic ideals. It is this tangled web of prejudice from which many Americans now seek to liberate themselves, without realizing how deeply it has been woven into their consciousness. (141-42)
I had not remembered at all his story about a gas chamber being used in a southern state in the 1940s. (129). They installed a microphone so they could hear the condemned die. The first person so executed said, as the chamber filled with deadly gas "save me, Joe Lewis," over and over again. This will haunt me.
A short little book that can be read in a few hours. It should be. The text begins with the author deciding to go to jail and ends with a clarion call for reparations. Well worth the time....more
A social history of how we have treated disability in the USA footprint. Starts with the First Nations, which, I learned from this book, had sign langA social history of how we have treated disability in the USA footprint. Starts with the First Nations, which, I learned from this book, had sign language long before Europe did. At least some tribes treated congenital disabilities as a mark the parents violated the social contract.
Cotton Mather, of course, believed disabilities were a punishment for sin. The colonies were fairly open to disabilities, she says, as long as people could still labor. (26). By 1701, though, the colonies were enacting laws to exclude the disabled. They were not wanted in our shining city.
By the mid-1700s, those who could not work were the responsibility of their local communities. Then, as now, communities did not want them. They would be made to work, if possible. A Samuel Coolidge (Not that Samuel Coolidge) who would stomp half naked in the streets screaming obscenities. The town kept him on as their school teacher, occasionally locking him in the school house at night so he'd be available to teach in the morning. (32). When he became too disordered to teach, he was locked in a single room for the rest of his life.
One town apparently got really good at smuggling those it did not want into other jurisdictions by cover of night. Two days ago, a presidential candidate may have tricked and trafficked refugees across many state lines to dump them, inadequately clothed, in front of the Vice President's home. The more things change . . .
By the end of the 1700s, American states were passing laws to exclude people who were assessed as likely to become a public charge. (75). Ship captains were having to pay bonds insuring they weren't bringing in such people. And some slavers were dumping people who were disabled by the voyage off the sides of the slave ships because the insurance was worth more than the likely sale proceeds. Sharks followed slaver ships, I'm told. May we be forgiven . . .
For centuries, Blacks and women were treated as disabled. And yes, the franchise is formally expanding, but that is not the lived reality of so many of us.
From this book, I learned that Washington is the second state to pass a forced sterilization law during the eugenics enthusiasm of the early 20th century. Ours allowed the state to sterilize habitual criminals. Many allowed the state to sterilize anyone with a disability. I knew we had the law, but I did not know we passed it so fast. Or that 685 people were sterilized under this law. (114). The New Jersey Supreme Court promptly found their version unconstitutional under the equal protection clause. (116-17).
The book also documents heroism; people stepping up to demand our society treat everyone as if they matter. Most were themselves in the affected communities, but they are most effective when other people step up - which apparently, the Black Panthers did.
Law has made a difference, but the idea that some people are the deserving disabled and some people are not is still deeply embedded in our culture. And even those deemed deserving often aren't treated well.
A good book about our moral development as a society. I hope....more
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