Welcome to both of you.

I’m from MI where, for a variety of reasons, we have more diversity than everyplace but CA, which I think makes it easier for smaller farms (though of course a lot of those are fruit farmers).

I had hopes that having Stabenow as Senate Ag Chair, she might be able to push for policies that encourage more diversity and smaller producers.

But here we are, still with no Ag Bill.

Can you both address the role of the Ag Bill in this system and how we might get out of the Ag logjam we’re in?

I was wondering if it was also a preconception about skin color. She was quite light skinned, but I imagine a lot of white people assume she must appear darker skinned, forgetting how mix-raced the South (and the US generally) really was and is.

That’s it then. It was a class on Latin American pop culture, probably in 1995. I did my PhD in CompLit.

Jeanne:

I’m going to have to move to following along on my phone now, but one personal question. I think you and I were in a class at UM together–maybe Francis Aparicio’s? (I’m Marcy Wheeler in real life.) Am I remembering right?

In any case, thanks so much for joining us–great book. I wish you great success with it.

It was Nixon that got me wondering about it, actually, because of his Sleeping Car Porters activism.

One of the things the book makes very graphic in that sense is the sexual danger, both rape of women and false accusations of men. That’s something we of course know, but the book does make it clear how pervasive it is as another race-based pressure.

I also couldn’t hep but imagine that in another time Parks would have made a great lawyer, she spent so much time documenting crimes.

Right. I was familiar with that much about her file. That’s part of what got me wondering. How much were they infiltrating these groups? How many activists had turned informant?

I know that’s really hard to tease out, but the tensions you described, particularly on lines of class/politics made me wonder.

Seems like Parks has been an icon for so long (I live in Grand Rapids, so we’ve already got a statue and square named for her) but she’s always been a cipher.

But I would also imagine that people who knew her work — or their kids and friends — would be really grateful to finally have a nuanced story of her told.

One of the reasons I asked about the labor and class aspect above is because her story has too often been described as a black story, and not a gender/class/general organizing story. I hope this changes that.

Given the questions about FBI files pertaining to King and Parks–and the red-baiting pressuring some of the organizing–as I was reading I was wondering how many of the people in the book had had their FBI files FOIAed?

What’s your sense so far of whether more general readers or more scholars are picking it up?

Welcome Jeanne!

I haven’t finished your book, but it’s really engaging.

I haven’t read other Rosa Parks bios. One of the most fascinating things I’ve found so far was the rich tapestry of gender and class and labor issues you capture. How would you say that compares with the scholarship before your book?

Brian

I’m curious: in your work on the film did you ever talk w/some of hte Anons about more targeted targets? Yesterday’s Fed hack is new, it seems, in that it goes after some of the real powers that be in society.

Hedrick

In your Powell memo you emphasize that it was written UNDER Nixon.

I’ve always known when it was written, but never thought so much about that.

That really seems to say something about the corporate view towards democracy. I mean, the response to the memo was served to push BOTH parties to serve the corporate interest. But it also makes it seem all the more audacious, arguing that a Nixon or an Eisenhower wasn’t enough, you had to have a Reagan, a Bush 2.

Hedrick

AS I was reading about CEO salaries and other ways corporations gutted their companies, I kept thinking about an idea I’ve had: why couldn’t Soros and Buffett start a new stock market where participants agreed by certain rules that would ensure long-term, rather than short term thinking?

As it is, companies are so busy responding to Wall Street, they’re not making anything anymore, at least not of value. That’s not giong ot change with the incentives Wall Street gives executives.

I’ve started reading your book but haven’t gotten to that chapter yet.

How much of the move to 401ks was about making everyone a “stakeholder” and to free up a lot of money to further inflate the financialization of our economy?

No relation. At least not as far as I know.

Yeah, Covertino. What you said.

Perhaps. I’m still shocked things like the HSBC non-charge for funding terror hasn’t attracted more attention.

In any case, thanks for an important addition to this field! Good luck with the book tour.

And thanks for joining us here today.

And yet, that was another egregious double standard. THey charged ricin–ridiculously, not least bc in that case the only incriminating ricin convos were not recorded and the informant there was REALLY easily impeachable. But they didn’t charge it as a WMD.

Though even with the Schaffer Cox case there were some really big questions about how the informants worked. At his sentencing they did suggest there would be follow-up, though Ryan Reilly has one of their informants blabbing his mouth off.