Activists Offer Path for Labor’s Renewal
by Randy Shaw‚
Jun. 19‚ 2008
In 2008, organized labor helped secure the Democratic presidential nomination of Barack Obama, who would become the most pro-labor President since Franklin Roosevelt. But despite labors’ political gains, the pace of organizing new workers remains slow. Less than 10% of private sectors workers are unionized, and labor’s manufacturing base continues to shrink. Bill Fletcher, Jr. and Fernando Gapasin are longtime labor activists who are among those who have concluded from these and other facts that the nation’s unions are in a state of crisis. Their new book, Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and A New Path Toward Social Justice, offers a critical assessment of the labor movement while pushing unions to build a broader working class movement for social justice. The authors raise many provocative claims, some of which will prompt disagreement. Yet their aim appears less to achieve consensus than to provoke a reassessment of many of labor’s commonly accepted premises. The book will likely achieve this, and should spark considerable debate among those concerned about the labor movement’s future.
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Huffington Brings Progressive Analysis to Popular Mainstream
by Randy Shaw‚
Jun. 12‚ 2008
Arianna Huffington has done what many thought impossible: she has brought her left-wing critique to high-profile entertainment shows like Leno and Letterman, and created a website, The Huffington Post, that is the closest thing we have to a national progressive daily newspaper. Huffington has brought progressive politics to the masses by the lucidity of her writing, a focus on short, easy-to-digest news items, and her site’s heavy reliance on entertainment/gossip items typically found in People magazine and TMZ.com. Those who enjoy Huffington’s thoughtful columns will also like Right Is Wrong, which serves as a one-stop shop for those looking for facts and arguments challenging the traditional media and political status quo. Reading the book in the wake of the media’s often-hostile approach to both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton is illuminating, as Huffington shows how the media pundits of the world are “tough minded” toward progressives while looking the other way toward abuses by the right-wing and the Bush Administration.
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Unmasking John McCain
by Paul Hogarth‚
May. 29‚ 2008
With a frightening number of Democrats saying they plan to vote for John McCain if their preferred candidate does not win the nomination, it’s time to evaluate who the senior Senator from Arizona really is. Two new books help answer that question. In The Real McCain, Cliff Schecter offers a gloomy portrait of a hot-tempered right winger whose opportunism has earned him mistrust from even those who share his beliefs. But it’s Free Ride: John McCain and the Media by David Brock and Paul Waldman that answers the more fundamental question: how does McCain get away with a “maverick” reputation that he does not deserve, and why does the press corps give him such fawning coverage when they gladly tear other politicians apart?
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Maintaining Bohemia in a Gentrifying San Francisco
by Randy Shaw‚
May. 15‚ 2008
During the late 1990’s, a zine in the form of a newsletter emerged in San Francisco’s Central City with the unusual name, Turd-Filled Donut. This title belied what was often an insightful and provocative look at the city’s politics. I never knew the people behind the publication, but its co-creator, Erick Lyle, has now put out a book that includes both stories from that publication as well as other materials he wrote from 1997-2005. At its heart, On the Lower Frequencies is the story of how some twenty-somethings sought to survive in San Francisco through their art, music, and political engagement at a time when most of their brethren were arriving in the city for high-paying jobs in the booming tech industry or in corporate offices downtown. Lyle raises some important questions about the prospects for an ongoing counterculture in steadily gentrifying cities like San Francisco, and also about the effectiveness of non-traditional strategies for impacting urban politics.
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The Politics of Homelessness and the “Quality” of Urban Life
by Randy Shaw‚
May. 01‚ 2008
Despite nearly three decades of widespread visible homelessness in America, the traditional media--as San Francisco Chronicle readers well know--remains a fount of misinformation in assessing causes and solutions. This makes the release of Alex Vitale’s City of Disorder particularly timely. Vitale worked for the San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness in the early 1990’s, and is now a Professor of Sociology at Brooklyn College. His book is the most balanced analysis yet produced of the origins, and political impacts, of the backlash against public camping, sidewalk drinking, panhandling, “squeegee men,” illegal peddling and other “quality of life” issues. Although Vitale focuses on New York City, his analysis also helps explain San Francisco politics. While he agrees that homelessness is a product of decades of inadequate federal spending on low-cost housing, he make a convincing case that “urban liberalism”--embodied in policies adopted by such liberal mayors like David Dinkins and Willie Brown--has contributed to rising homelessnes and its link to public disorder.
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Backlash: The Undeserved War Against Susan Faludi
by Randy Shaw‚
Apr. 10‚ 2008
“This, sadly, is the sort of tendentious, self-important, sloppily reasoned book that gives feminism a bad name.” --- Michiko Kakutani, New York Times, Oct. 23, 2007
Susan Faludi is among the nation’s pre-eminent nonfiction writers. Her two prior books, the landmark Backlash: The Undeclared War Against Women and the less successful but also provocative Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man, stimulated wide-ranging public debate. But Faludi’s most recent book, Terror Dreams: Fear and Fantasy in Post 9/11 America, received far less attention. While most reviews were favorable, perhaps the most prominent was New York Times reviewer Michiko Kakutani’s unusually harsh critique. I think the reason Terror Dreams did not enter the public debate, and that Faludi’s journalistic credibility has been attacked, is that she effectively challenged the fundamental integrity of the United States media machine. Terror Dreams uses the media’s preference for fantasy over fact in its 9/11 coverage to demonstrate how “facts” are fabricated and widely spread regarding a broad range of issues to serve certain ideological agendas. Faludi hit too close to home in Terror Dreams, and the media industry responded by ignoring her message and demeaning her journalism skills---but this is a book that every progressive and media critic should read.
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Baxter’s Literary Puzzle
by Dana Crowell‚
Mar. 27‚ 2008
Charles Baxter’s The Soul Thief is not a typical novel. It is not formulaic. It is not plot-heavy. And, its characters are not predictable. Rather, The Soul Thief is Charles Baxter’s literary experiment to merge fiction and the real, a literary game for the literary-minded. Baxter’s novel grabs you on the first page and doesn’t let go.
The novel is set in the early 1970’s, “days of ecstatic bitterness and joyfully articulated rage,” and then jumps several decades into the present. It tells the story of Nathaniel Mason, a graduate student, and his relationship to a small circle of friends and lovers in Buffalo, New York.
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Latinos Still Struggle to Overcome Baseball’s Racial Biases
by Randy Shaw‚
Mar. 13‚ 2008
San Francisco Bay Area baseball fans have little to look forward to this season, which makes this the perfect time to relive past successes. Adrian Burgos Jr.’s Playing America’s Game fills this need, as it features a great cover photo of Giants legend Juan Marichal and explains how the Giants scouting system once led the league in finding quality Latino players. But Burgos has done much more than remind us of the rich history of such Latino Giant stalwarts as Marichal, Orlando Cepeda and the Alou brothers. He has written the best book yet on the history of Latinos in American baseball, particularly focusing on how they were impacted by baseball’s color line. Burgos shows that the disparate treatment of dark-skinned Latino players did not end when Jackie Robinson joined the Dodgers in 1947, but continues to this day; Bay Area sports fans saw this firsthand when KNBR sports talk show host Larry Krueger made racist comments against the Giants Latino players and manager Felipe Alou in 2005. Burgos provides a wealth of critical insights about the social context by which native Spanish-speaking young men play baseball in the United States, and all serious baseball fans should read this book.
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Talkin’ About My Revolutions
by Dana Crowell‚
Feb. 28‚ 2008
The front cover of Hari Kunzru’s novel, My Revolutions, features a bold, upraised fist suggesting that inside the book’s iconic cover is a story about resistance, confrontation, rebellion. Having enjoyed other novels set during the Sixties, I eagerly opened My Revolutions only to be greeted by a short poem by the reflective, mystical, Sufi poet Rumi. I did a double take. What did Rumi, a poet who dwelt on the mysteries of the inner life, on love, and spirituality, have to do with a novel whose cover graphically suggests worldly action, external politics, and, most likely, violent revolution?
Reading Rumi’s short poem, “I used to have fiery intensity, and a flowing sweetness … Was I dreaming then? Am I awake now?” didn’t answer my question, but it deepened my curiosity. I was so intrigued that I read My Revolutions in three days, reveling in Kunzru’s protagonist’s fierce intensity, the “sweetness” of his idealism, while finding new wisdom in his philosophical insights, honest perceptions, and bittersweet analysis of revolutionaries in the underground and of the events that caused the breakdown of his much loved revolutionary world.
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Bock’s Beautiful Children Lives Up to the Hype
by Randy Shaw‚
Jan. 31‚ 2008
July 24, 2008
