Reviews and Comments

Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen is worth your time. I found shocking revelations in each chapter that I was able to verify with Loewen’s footnotes and cursory fact-checking. In the book, Loewen reviews 12 American History textbooks and compares them with the primary and secondary sources they are based on. Loewen’s findings scare me:

- Through a variety of forces, history and historical actors are heroified: positive qualities and events are emphasized and negative ones are ignored.
- Ideas are absent. This allows the writer to present history as a parade of dates, battles, and laws that were inevitable and the result of government policy, not individuals and movements.
- All 12 American History textbooks center the history of male, affluent, European individuals, flattening true historical events and ignoring the contributions of individuals and movements of other genders, races, ethnicities, and sexualities that contributed to the current moment. The bias of textbooks leads students away from the interesting complexities of the past and towards a bland, false substitute.
- Textbooks are designed to sell copies and be accepted by schools, not to convey the past objectively. History textbooks are a mirror of the history that is most palatable to the greatest number of people.

History textbooks defend the actions of the American government against criticism. Citizens and history teachers must learn to think critically and use primary and secondary sources to understand the past and make choices about the future. High school history textbooks and some high school history classes will not do this for us.

After listening to the It Could Happen Here podcast, I was unable to find The Climate Leviathan or The Uninhabitable Earth at my library. I was able to pick up The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert (@ElizKolbert).

Kolbert briefly covers resistance to the idea of species extinction in uniformitarianism, the 5 extinctions in the geological record, and scientists who are studying the 6th extinction of the Anthropocene. Kolbert's fills the pages of 6th extinction with field journalism into frog extinction by chytrid fungi, coral reef destruction by ocean acidification, bat extinction by white nose syndrome, mass species extinction by the destruction of rainforest, and the extinction of large land mammals by human hunting. The grounding of her ideas in research done in the areas effected adds a great deal to the book.

If you don't fully understand the human threat to all other life on earth, this book provides a good foundation in ecology.

Lies Across America is an atlas of flawed public history markers across the United States by James Loewen. Like his other works of history targeted at the public, this book is well researched and written with evenhanded joviality and solemnity that creates an enjoyable read in what could have felt like a list of monuments. These are some highlights that caught my interest:

Adam Fortunate Eagle “discovered” Rome in 1973
In September 1973, on his way to the International Conference of World Futures, he descended from the plane in Rome in full tribal regalia and claimed the country "by right of discovery" in the manner Columbus had claimed America. Invited for an audience with Pope Paul VI, instead of kissing the papal ring, he offered his own ringed hand in return; the Pope grinned and clasped his hand. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Fortunate_Eagle

The pilgrims were not first, or even second to colonize North America

On September 28, 1542, Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo and his crew entered San Diego Bay--the first Europeans to visit California.

On May 14, 1607, a group of roughly 100 members of a joint venture called the Virginia Company founded the first permanent English settlement in North America on the banks of the James River.

The Mayflower arrived in Plymouth Harbor in 1620, after first stopping near today's Provincetown.

American Indians only roved for about a hundred years.
The white man started the classic image of plains Indians “roving” was started by General John Sullivan who burned the Delaware’s fields and forced them to live a nomadic lifestyle.

Southerners Served in the Union Army
Many southern soldiers remained loyal when their states seceded; 40 percent of Virginian officers in the United States military, for example, stayed with the Union. During the war, many Southern Unionists went North and joined the Union armies. Others joined when Union armies entered their hometowns in Tennessee, Virginia, Arkansas, Louisiana and elsewhere. Over 100,000 Southern Unionists served in the Union Army during the Civil War, and every Southern state except South Carolina raised at least a battalion. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Unionist

The slave labor that built Antebellum homes is usually ignored in historical markers, displays, and tours.

The Reverse Underground Railroad is the name given, sardonically, to the pre-American Civil War practice of kidnapping in free states not only fugitive slaves but free blacks as well, transporting them to slave states, and selling them as slaves, or occasionally getting a reward for return of a fugitive. Those who used the term were pro-slavery and angered at an "underground railroad" helping slaves escape. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_Underground_Railroad

ViktorFrankl survived the holocaust to write #MansSearchforMeaning. I don't say this lightly; Frankl cites one of the reasons he claimed not to succumb to suicide was bringing the insights he gleaned from the holocaust ,and its psychological effects, to the world outside of the Third Reich. He asks us to dispense with Freud's pleasure principle and Adam Smith's invisible hand and see the search for meaning in one's life as the motivating force of all people.

Facing the rise of authoritarianism, the endless, preventable plague, and the future throes of climate change, Frankl's insights are worth your time.

Man's Search for Meaning was one of my uncle's favorite books. I know he took inspiration from these words in his final hours:

"I once read a letter written by a young invalid, in which he told a friend that he had just found out he would not live for long, that even an operation would be of no help. He wrote further that he remembered a film he had seen in which a man was portrayed who waited for death in a courageous and dignified way. The boy had thought it a great accomplishment to meet death so well. Now—he wrote—fate was offering him a similar chance."

May we all meet death with courage and dignity.

Source: antilogicalism.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/mans-search-for-meaning.pdf

In 1999, Monte Cullors was arrested and charged with terrorism while experiencing an episode related to his schizoaffective and bipolar disorders. His, Patrisse Khan-Cullors, watched in horror as her brother was charged with terrorism and jailed without treatment for his mental illness. Monte was tried while having another episode. Only the fundraising efforts of Patrisse, her family, and the LA activist community hired a lawyer who could free Monte Cullors.

On July 13th, 2013, Patrisse Khan-Cullors posted this to Facebook:

"declaration: black bodies will no longer be sacrificed for the world's enlightenment. i am done. i am so done. trayvon, you are loved infinitely #blacklivesmatter"

Patrisse Khan-Cullors and Asha Bandele tell the story of Black Lives Matter in When They Call You a Terrorist. I suggest that you read it: slpl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/1404940116

Bryan Stevenson is a social justice lawyer fighting for death row prisoners as the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative. Through the courts, he fought to remove innocent people from death row including children tried as adults, women falsely accused of killing their stillborn children, and police departments finding a scapegoat to appease white citizens.

Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad is a fantastical parade of horrors filled with complex characters that lay the true nightmare of American ideology bare while also exposing the force of ambition in the face of a brutal dehumanization.

Whitehead pulled no punches with Ridgeway, a slave catcher in possession of the protagonist, Cara. On page 181, Whitehead preforms what I call a brain depressurization: the author leads you to a conclusion with a such stealth that revealing the truth causes a cascading realization that leaves you gulping for air. This is Whitehead's horrifying summary of American ideology[spoilers].

“Of course not—it’s nothing. Better weep for one of those burned
cornfields, or this steer swimming in our soup. You do what’s required to survive.” He wiped his lips. “It’s true, though, your complaint. We come up with all sorts of fancy talk to hide things. Like in the newspapers nowadays, all the smart men talking about Manifest Destiny. Like it’s a new idea. You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?” Ridgeway asked.

"Cora sat back. 'More words to pretty things up.”

“It means taking what is yours, your property, whatever you deem
it to be. And everyone else taking their assigned places to allow you to take it. Whether it’s red men or Africans, giving up themselves, giving of themselves, so that we can have what’s rightfully ours. The French setting aside their territorial claims. The British and the Spanish slinking away."

“My father liked his Indian talk about the Great Spirit,” Ridgeway
said. “All these years later, I prefer the American spirit, the one that
called us from the Old World to the New, to conquer and build and
civilize. And destroy that what needs to be destroyed. To lift up the
lesser races. If not lift up, subjugate. And if not subjugate, exterminate. Our destiny by divine prescription—the American imperative.”

To be abundantly clear, Whitehead doesn't paint American colonization in a flattering light here.

Find the book here: slpl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/1351204116

On April 12th, 2015 at 8:39 AM, Freddie Gray made eye contact with Baltimore police officers and ran. Freddie is placed in a van at 8:42 AM after being arrested "without incident" and with "no force required".

On April 14th, Gray undergoes surgery for three broken vertebrae.

On April 18th, word spreads about Gray and protests begin outside the Western District Police Station.

On April 19th at 7 AM, Gray is declared dead.

Wes Moore and Erica L. Green interviewed Tawanda Jones, John Angelos, Marc Partee, Billy Murphy, Greg Butler, Nick Mosby, and Jenny Egan about April 25th to 29th to write Five Days about the most intense days of the Baltimore Gray protest.

"Freddie's short life underscores a dramatic truth: wealth and income inequality define modern American life. Millions of children are condemned to lives that are shorter, less healthy, and with fewer opportunities by virtue of their zip code and, often, the color of their skin."

Moore and Green's revealing work of journalism on the Gray protests is worth your time.

Five Days by Moore and Green: slpl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/1468480116

youtu.be/rzAeBQyNDSE

"I do want to evoke the case of a young woman by the name of Marrisa Alexander. You know the names of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. Add the name of Marissa Alexander to that list, a young Black woman who felt compelled to go to extremes to prevent her abusive husband from attacking her. She fired a weapon in the air. No one was hit. BUt in the very same judicial district where Trayvon Martin -- you remember that name -- was killed, and where George Zimmerman, his killer, was acquitted, Marissa Alexander was sentenced to 24 years for trying to defend herself against sexual assult. Recently she faced a possible resentencing to 60 years, and therefore she engaged in a plea bargain, which means that she will be wearing an electronic bracelet for the next period."
- Angela Davis in her Transnational Solidarities Speech in Istanbul, Turkey on January 9, 2015[1]
I read this in Freedom is a Constant Struggle by Angela Davis. I highly suggest your read it. If you listen to the audiobook, Davis reads it[2].
Hear Alexander describe her experience on the attached TED talk.
[1]https://polymorphouslyperverse.wordpress.com/2015/01/10/transcription-of-transnational-solidarities-resisting-racism-genocide-and-settler-colonialism-by-angela-davis/
[2]https://slpl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/2286226980

"What was interesting during the protests in Ferguson last summer was that Palestinian activists noticed from the images they saw on social media and television that teargas canisters that were being used in Ferguson were exactly the same teargas canisters that were used against them in occupied Palestine. And as a matter of fact, a US company which is called Combined Systems Incorporated stamped CTS (Combined Tactical Systems) on their teargas canisters. And activists noticed these canisters in Ferguson. And so what they did was tweet advice to Ferguson protesters on how to deal with the teargas. And so they suggested, among other things, –this is one tweet: “Don’t keep much distance from the police. If you’re close to them they can’t teargas. Because they’d then teargas themselves.” And a whole series of really interesting comments about how activists in Ferguson who probably confronted teargas for the first time in their lives. They didn’t necessarily have the experience that some of us have with teargas. But I’m trying to suggest there are connections between the militarization of the police in the US, which provides a different context for us to analyze the continuing, ongoing proliferation of racist police violence, and the continuous assault on people in occupied Palestine, the West Bank, and especially in Gaza, given the military violence inflicted on the people in Gaza this past summer."

- Angela Davis in her Transnational Solidarities speech in Istanbul, Turkey on January 9, 2015[1]

If you want to learn more about the transnational solidarities between people protesting anti-democratic violence, I would check this article out: www.972mag.com/photos-same-tear-gas-used-in-ferguson-and-west-bank/

I read this in Freedom is a Constant Struggle by Angela Davis. I highly suggest your read it. Davis reads for her own audiobook.
It is wonderful.[2].

[1]https://polymorphouslyperverse.wordpress.com/2015/01/10/transcription-of-transnational-solidarities-resisting-racism-genocide-and-settler-colonialism-by-angela-davis/
[2]https://slpl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/2286226980

John Brown was an American abolitionist, a devout Calvinist, an intuitive sheep herder, a terrible businessman, and a revolutionary idealist and freedom fighter.

Brown and his followers killed 5 supporters of slavery in the Pottawatomie massacre, commanded anti-slavery forces in the Battle of Black Jack (June 2) and the Battle of Osawatomie (August 30, 1856).

John Brown then set his sights higher. He found 6 wealthy donors in the north, allied with General Tubman, wrote a constitution for a new country without slavery and printed it for distribution, gathered 950 pikes for freed slaves, and on October 16, 1859 he led 21 men to take the armory and rifles at Harper's Ferry. Brown fought to start and arm a slave rebellion in the south that used the Blue Ridge Mountains as a base of operations.

Brown failed to start a slave rebellion and was captured, tried, and hung for his crimes. Brown met his death without fear, tears, or weakness. Authorities in Virginia prevented Brown from speaking from the scaffold, so Brown slipped a prophesy to his hangman on a piece of paper:

"I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land can never be purged away but with blood."

Brown's raid struck fear into the hearts of whites and slave-owners in the south. Brown was the spark that ignited the kindling of the American Civil War.

161 years later, we are still fighting for de facto equal treatment under the law in the United States.

***

John Brown's exploits are fictionalized in The Good Lord Bird by James McBride: slpl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/1462917116

Showtime is adapting The Good Lord Bird for release on October 4th, 2020. You need to watch the trailer: www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-Tm63y-S4s

I just finished Tony Horwitz's Midnight Rising, a history of John Brown's life, raid, and impact: slpl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/1145850116

Huey P. Newton had two ideas that are worth knowing.

1) Armed community defense is a strong revolutionary tactic that had the power to inspire ghettoized black people in the late 1960s. The CIA felt it was necessary to remove this threat using subterfuge with their Counter Intelligence Program (Cointelpro). By ending the Vietnam War draft and other methods, the US government stopped the insurgency by pacifying Black Panther allies.

2) America is the last large colonial power. Past colonial powers conquered other countries and placed them under colonial rule and later, allowed them self-determination. America imported a colony of black slaves. Slavery Abolitionists fought the Confederacy to liberate America's colony incompletely. Jim Crow laws, white supremacy, the drug war, racist loan laws, hiring practices, and policing continue to treat Black Americans as a colony and not equal citizens.

Current police violence and state repression are suppressing police abolitionists who would free America's colony and provide de facto equal treatment under the law.

Read Black Against Empire.

https://slpl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/1205795116