One of the many things that library school did not prepare me for was how to do effective peer review. The economics of peer review is that the more you write, the more you get asked to read other people’s work, either informally or formally (I define informally as when a friend or acquaintance asks me to look at something, formally is when a third-party like an editor asks me). As I’ve been reviewing more and stepping into some temporary editorial roles, it’s made me wish there was better guidance for archivists how to do peer review. I’ve often thought about how I could turn one of my reviewer or editor’s reports into a tutorial, but that would be a major breach of confidentiality. However, a timely event that shows how important peer review is just presented itself days before the Society of American Archivists annual meeting in Austin.
As I was packing for the trip to Texas, a friend tipped me off that the big chatter on Archivist Twitter was Frank Boles’ pre-print in American Archivist. The pre-print will be the subject of a lunch time discussion forum at the annual meeting. Having some skepticism about Twitter in general, I decided to print off Boles’ article and tuck it into my luggage to read and draw my own conclusions on the road down.
As full disclosure, the only thing I’ve published so far in American Archivist (AA) is a book review. I’ve been emailing with the current managing editor Cal Lee about something I’m thinking of submitting. And on the other side of the process, I have done peer review for the journal. I was recently asked to review another article a few days ago but turned it down only because I couldn’t make the timeline with other obligations. I know first hand how difficult it is to get good reviewers (“good” meaning both competent and reliable for meeting deadlines for reviewer reports), so I informed Cal right away. I do not know much about the internal workings of the AA editorial board.
In brief: if I were a peer reviewer for this piece, I would have recommended such drastic changes that I would have hoped the submission would not have gotten any further through the editorial process in its current state. Boles’ writing has serious issues and some alarming conclusions, but equally vexing is what happened with the editorial process and how this piece got this far.
I pulled my reviewer report from when I last reviewed for AA summer 2018. I am not sure if the reviewer form is still the same, but here is the report I would have written if the Boles piece were sent to me for review. I hope this helps those who aren’t familiar with the peer review process understand how a good peer review should prevent things like Boles’ article from ever getting this far. I might do a follow-up blog post talking about tips for peer review – if you want me to address anything specific in a follow-up post, let me know.
Reviewer comments for “To Everything There Is a Season”
Statement of Problem of Purpose (the theoretical or practical problem or challenge):
This articles proposes that there are three interlocking ideas that have predominated archival discourse in recent years: universal documentation, the role of social justice in archival appraisal, and the construction of archival power. The author argues that these ideas are counterproductive and proposes that archivists should answer first to the needs of their institution.
Relevance of the Topic (to the mission and purpose of the journal):
The theory and application of social justice to archives has been a topic of intense archival discourse, both within this journal and elsewhere within the larger archival profession. Topics of documentation methodologies and archival power have also been present in the journal.
Importance of the Topic (advancing thought on archival principles and practices):
This article represents a sweeping critique of several ideas that the author claims are connected, and are hurting archival practice. Some of these ideas – especially archival power and the application of social justice to appraisal – have been the sources of significant professional arguments over the last several years. The author drew on some of these past critiques in constructing their argument.
“Social responsibility” and other related ideas are part of the SAA Core Values, and a large number of archivists take it for granted that these are implicitly good things. A well constructed counter-argument can serve an important purpose in clarifying the shared norms around implicit values. However, a counter-argument is only as strong as it shows deep familiarity with the material it is critiquing. Counter-arguments must also not lapse into caricatures or superficial treatments of topics that a community deem to be of significant importance. Despite the importance of the topic and the useful role that counter-arguments can play, I do not believe this submission is a successfully constructed counter-argument, for reasons I will articulate through this report.
Contribution to the Literature (original contributions to the literature):
I have significant concerns about whether this article actually advances the point-counterpoint discourse that is an inherent part of any long-standing academic debate. This piece does not demonstrate a comprehensive grasp of either the published literature of archival social justice or the practical applications of it through current archival projects. In order to properly critique something, one needs to be familiar with the norms, literature, and standards of a particular community. My sense from reading this article was that the author has a very superficial understanding of the theory and application of the ideas they critique. Trying to bring together three somewhat related but ultimately independent ideas into one large critique means there is not enough space to engage in a meaningful dissection of each idea.
The author is often overly-reliant on the writings and ideas of others to make their argument for them. This muddies any claims of originality, since as the author points out, they are not the first to raise some of these concerns. While building on the ideas of others is normal, it is not clear what additional original research was added. For example, if the author had reviewed a selection of institutional collection development policies over the last 30 years to determine how social justice had impacted collection decisions, this would be a highly original contribution to the research.
In addition, the author is often reliant on straw man and slippery slope arguments. There are many, but I include two examples here. First, on pages 4-5 the author claims that other archivists have called for a complete and universal “documentary mirror” but have not acknowledged the challenges of doing so. This is not accurate, as many archivists who have called for us to challenge our approaches to collection and appraisal have also acknowledged that (to paraphrase Verne Harris), archives are but a sliver of a sliver. Another example appears on page 11, when the author presents a hypothetical scenario about whether the profession would embrace one set of social beliefs over another, pass a resolution at an SAA annual meeting, and potentially call into question the professional status of archivists who refuse to go along. This is a slippery slope argument because SAA is not a professional regulatory or licensure body similar to a bar or medical association, and has no power to materially sanction archivists who may disagree with prevailing norms.
Perhaps the greatest weakness that obscures how the author situates themselves in the existing discourse is that the author does not provide their own definition of social justice or power. Social justice is a term that is subject to a variety of different interpretations, and I suspect many individuals who are uncomfortable with the connotations of social justice and its historical associations with left-wing activism would be in agreement with at least some claims typically associated with social justice, particularly if they were presented under a different moniker. These include ideas like how societal power is not equally distributed and there are historical factors for this, or that accountability is not meted out equally. Because the author never defines what social justice or power means to them, as a reader I was left wondering if social justice simply means everything the author disagrees with.
Organization (of ideas and supporting points):
There are four main sections of this paper: the critique of universal documentation, the critique of social justice as a factor in appraisal, the critique of archival power, and a conclusion. The conclusion closes with three recommendations for where archivists should shift their attention instead. Many of these recommendations raise their own questions of relevance, application, and morality. However, the author devotes less than a page to these recommendations.
Drawing and Building Upon Relevant Literature (summary of the major points in the relevant literature):
This article does not demonstrate significant familiarity with existing archival literature, as well as practical applications of these ideas currently in existence, particularly those of social justice-influenced archival projects. In the critique of universal documentation, I would have expected to see a meaningful treatment of Helen Samuel’s documentation strategy work, and a consideration of the many projects since then that have built on documentation strategy (particularly those that exist outside of institutional constraints), such as the South Asian American Digital Archive, a People’s Archive of Police Violence, Documenting the Now, or Student Activism Now Documented (STAND). Also, the Levy Report of the 1980s is a touchstone for any discussion about the challenges of funding for archival operations, and the author should consider referencing this.
I also found that the author often made claims about the outlooks of certain authors without demonstrating a meaningful engagement with their work, relying instead on cherry-picked quotes. For example, regarding Christopher Hurley’s work, the author claims “Expressed somewhat differently, the approach to appraisal Hurley suggests is overly oriented toward bureaucracy and records management. In taking a narrow records management approach toward institutional records, Hurley carries forward without nuance the original purpose for which records are created.” This is a very strange interpretation of Christopher Hurley’s 2001 address to the ACA, which specifically delved into the role that accountability plays in government archives, and how governmental records mean different things for different groups. One of the major examples he used in his talk was the existence of British government records concerning Stalinist Russia and how these records were used in a lawsuit, but their disappearance impacted legal proceedings.
In addition to the cherry-picked sources, the author often has fairly questionable sources – for example, a reference to a conversation at a bar several decades ago (endnote #7) might be interesting in the context of a personal essay but is not an appropriate reference for a reviewed publication.
Methodology:
It is not clear to me whether this piece was submitted as a research article, a case study, or a perspective. I assume based on the length it was either a research article or case study. The author does not share a methodology for their critique, nor does the author provide any clear reasoning for why they chose the sources they did. In a well-constructed critique that relies mainly on existing literature, I would have expected to see something like “In reviewing articles published in the American Archivist over the last two decades, [number] of articles have been published concerning social justice and archives. This article will consider those that received the highest citations since 2000.” This would have demonstrated why they chose the sources they did – but without any clues, the reader is left with the impression that the author arbitrarily picked the pieces that most closely matched their pre-existing ideas.
Discussion (develops major points with relevant evidence and solid reasoning):
The discussion is mainly embedded within the three critiques that structure the majority of the submission. The first critique the author offers mainly relies on thinly sourced claims and the assertion that universal documentation is both a widely embraced value and unrealistic due to resource constraints. This is a very short section of the manuscript, particularly given the breadth of work on how many archivists have written about their collection strategies in light of constrained resources. It is curious that the author claims that “archivists have failed to answer fundamental questions” as many archivists have written quite a bit about documentation strategy, and much of the discourse around post-custodial community archives explicitly touches on the creation of these archives in the face of institutional resource challenges.
The second critique concerns social justice and archives. In this section, the author draws on work by Michelle Caswell, Mario Ramirez, Christopher Hurley, Verne Harris, Rand Jimerson, and Mark Greene. The author then considers that norms about what is considered moral are subject to change, by exploring historical and current attitudes to slavery, prohibition of alcohol, and abortion. This section read far more like a distracting digression, because the author never connected how changing social norms around what is considered acceptable or moral should actually influence appraisal decisions. The claim that social norms are constantly changing is not in itself an argument against incorporating social justice into appraisal decisions. The author does not provide any concrete evidence of actual collecting decisions made by archivists to substantiate their claims that social justice is an inappropriate appraisal factor.
The critique of archival power draws largely on Rand Jimerson’s work, and then uses Christine George’s article about archival privilege as a case study. Unlike the first two critiques, the structure of this critique is improved by a) not trying to cover too much material at once and b) actually demonstrating the consequences of the idea that the archivist is critiquing.
Overall, author seems prone to false equivalencies that undermine many of their arguments. For example, equating stereotypes of young black men with older white men ignores the fact that stereotypes of young black men are contributing factors to disproportionate uses of state-sanctioned forms of control (whether from law enforcement or incarceration). While stereotyping may be unfair to older white men, it does not result in the same potential material consequences.
Conclusion (conclusion with justification from evidence presented):
I found the author’s conclusion to raise so many questions and concerns that I think if they are serious about their conclusions they should have led with them first. The claim that archivists should serve their institutions first and foremost, even under questionable circumstances, is an alarming conclusion to draw. As many scholars from other fields have pointed out, simply “following orders” is not consistent with many established legal frameworks. If the institution ordered archivists and records managers to destroy records in violation of state or federal records laws, would the author still make the claim that archivists are to “implement an institutional mission fully and well”?
The author needs to deeply consider the implications of the claim that archivists should take their main directives from an institution’s mission for three reasons. First, in many cases archivists have and exercise far more agency over institutional documentary missions than the author suggests. Archivists are often responsible for implementing institutional records management decisions, and collection development policies. Second, if non-archivist led institutional missions should override the expertise of archivists and professional practice norms, then one might ask – why even have a professional association of archivists? Very few other professions would comport themselves with such total deference to an institution’s needs. Doctors may work in hospitals run by healthcare administrators, but it is not healthcare administrators who are directly responsible for treating patients and exercising medical judgement. Faculty may work in universities managed by higher education administrators, but faculty maintain significant curricular control as part of their disciplinary expertise.
Indeed, institutional missions are often at significant odds with professional standards of practice. To use a current example, federal environmental agency scientists are increasingly finding that their work using standardized scientific norms and practices are being curtailed by political appointees. Rather than ceding ground to non-scientists, many are now resigning rather than compromising scientific integrity that changes with shifts from top management. Those unable to resign due to economic circumstances are finding other routes through union representation, anonymous tips to journalists, or whistleblowing to register their concerns. If archivists are to maintain professional integrity and standards – and most scholars of professions would argue are defined by professional norms, not institutional interests – I would hope archivists put into similar situations by their institutions would either resign or find ways to become a whistleblower or otherwise throw sand in the gears.
Mechanics (errors in usage, spelling, punctuation, and reference format):
The submission is largely free from any punctuation or spelling errors. One area of confusion is the reference to the judge in 1986 on page 15. It seems clear from reading this is a reference to the 1986 court case involving access to civil rights activist Anne Braden’s papers, though the author includes the example in such a way that implies it might have concerned the IRA oral histories case.
Additional blind comments to author:
I recommend narrowing the focus in this paper to just one issue to critique. Currently there is too much going on here to make an effective well-connected counter-argument. The treatments of the three issues seem superficial and the interpretations seem based on personal hunches and slippery slope arguments as opposed to evidence-based findings to support your analysis. Any counter-argument to widely-embraced community values needs to demonstrate a strong grasp of familiarity with how these values came about. I strongly recommend reading additional sources about documentation strategy, and current social justice archives projects such as Documenting the Now. Any claims that widely-shared norms are actually harmful need to be substantiated by evidence, not hypothetical situations.
If you feel strongly about your conclusions, you may wish to reorganize the paper to lead with these first, and show evidence for why you think these should be prevailing interests over the ones you critique.
Additional confidential comments to editor:
While I think there are legitimate counter-arguments to make regarding recent archival social justice discourse, I do not think this article in its current state meets that threshold. For any further consideration, it would need such significant and major revisions that it would be an almost completely different paper.
I found much of the tone of this submission to be needlessly provocative, such as endnotes #10 and #35. In many ways this submission read as a personal diatribe disguised as a journal article than an actual meaningful contribution to define the limitations of archival social justice. The topics the author raises are important ones and deserve to be treated both with care and professional due diligence. It does not seem like either consideration was a priority in the writing of this submission.
One of the upsides of the stressful year of applying and waiting for tenure is that it’s nudged me to reflect on how grateful I am for the people in my life who have given so much of their energy, wisdom, knowledge, and kindness. If you read articles about getting tenure, there’s a lot of emphasis on the individual – what you have to write, what you have to document, what you have to apply for, what you have to speak to, what you have to appear in, and most importantly, what and who you have to say “no” to. This weirds me out, because it plays into a lot of harmful constructions around what success looks like, portraying it as a solitary and highly individual quest. And it erases so much of the relationships and networks that help individuals reach success.
I would not have achieved tenure were it not for dozens and dozens of people who consistently said “yes” to me, and the communities that I am connected to deserve to be acknowledged for their role in helping me along the way.
I wouldn’t have become an archivist in the first place had it not been for the people who introduced me to the field, advised me on what the various paths were into it, and hired me for the archivist jobs I’ve had. I’m profoundly lucky in that I’ve reported to supervisors who probably trusted me more than I trusted myself and allowed me a lot of autonomy to figure things out and chart my own path. I’m grateful that they have been consistent advocates for my professional development.
I’ve been an archivist for over a decade now which blows my mind. The vast majority of archivists in my professional network I’ve met directly or indirectly through the Society of American Archivists, which has been my professional association “home” for almost as long as I’ve been in the field. Many archivists have a gregarious streak, and it didn’t take long for the SAA annual meeting to start feeling like an amazing cross between a college and family reunion. So many archivists I’ve met through SAA have become not just professional contacts but trusted confidants who I can call to discuss a range of messy ethical issues with. A few of them have even become close friends who I chat with so regularly that we’ve ended up traveling together or I’ve met their families when we pass through each other’s towns. I know this is cheesy but I really think archivists are some of the best people on Earth. We aren’t perfect, goodness knows we have so much work to do to be better collectively, but there’s something sublime about the fact that I know an archivist in almost every state who would show up for me in a pinch if I were travelling and got stranded within 50 miles of them.
One of the greatest joys of my career so far has been finding a niche where I can write and speak on issues I care about. For several years, this focus has been on archives, recordkeeping, the environment, and climate change. While climate change is anything but joyful, the co-authors and co-panelists I’ve spent time with writing articles and presenting at conferences on this topic have been some of the most thoughtful and generous people I’ve ever worked with. Being asked to speak at an event is such an honor that when I was asked to do a keynote for the first time I went into the restroom at work and cried because I was so bowled over by the thought that someone thought the things I’d been saying were worth having that kind of platform (for you astrology nerds keeping track of my chart, it won’t surprise you that I’m a Cancer moon).
Writing – for print or for a keynote – is really hard work. The only way to get good at it is to have folks who you can trust to be honest with you about what to keep and what to cut from your drafts. Having a go-to list of people who are willing to give me that kind of feedback is priceless, and with the exception of my hot takes on social media and my room temperature takes on this blog, everything I’ve ever published has scores of invisible ink marginalia from my most trusted comrades.
My colleagues at the University of Cincinnati have taught me so much, from technical skills (how to use GitHub) to informal coursework (a crash course in environmental history) to workplace solidarity (a front-row seat to shared governance and being a union member). Like all public sector environments, public universities can be challenging given the lack of public investment in common goods. But I’ve always felt very fortunate to work somewhere where I get along very well with my colleagues, and where there is a lot of mutual appreciation, support, and sharing of what we know with each other.
Sometimes some communities are a way station and not a place where you end up sticking around for very long, but you can still learn a lot from liminal spaces. Over the last several years I’ve spent some time in and out of a number of civic and political groups, all of which have contributed to my voice, writing, politics, and sense of responsibility for making archives meaningful to people who are not archivists. I am grateful to have been welcomed into those spaces while they, or I, lasted.
I think it’s important to end this on a note that recognizes that while getting tenure is an amazing achievement, there is a tendency – encouraged by the process of getting tenure – for people to wholly define themselves through their work. A few years ago I returned to an active religious life and community for the first time as an adult. It has been one of the most grounding things I’ve done to stay anchored and continually renewed for the long haul, and I’m grateful to those I worship with for the space they’ve held for me to slowly form this part of my life.
I’m so fortunate to live in a city where I have a very strong friend network, many of whom are such incredible women that I’m at a loss for words to describe how much they mean to me and how difficult it is to imagine my life without them. Some of these friends I knew from growing up here, but a number of them I picked up when I returned to Cincinnati, primarily through a fundraising group connected to Planned Parenthood. These friends, as much as my family, are what make Cincinnati home for me.
Cincinnati has been my home for almost all of my life because my parents live here. After I completed my MLIS while I was still in Louisiana, I knew I wanted to be closer to them and crossed my fingers I’d end up with a job within a day’s drive of Cincinnati, but luckily now I’m within a 10 minute drive of both of them. My dad and I regularly debate each other about religion, politics, and history which keeps both of us sharp in our respective writing. My mom and stepdad regularly make dinner for my husband and me, and both are such inspiring role models for developing local community networks situated around their musical activities. I’m also beyond lucky to have taken that detour to New Orleans, where I ended up with someone who had never been to Cincinnati before he met me, but the communities he’s built here have sustained both of us. I will be forever grateful to him for moving home with me.
Comments Off on I got tenure (and I had a ton of help along the way)
Yesterday the University of Cincinnati (UC)’s Board of Trustees officially approved my application (and dozens of other faculty members!) for tenure and promotion. It’s the culmination of a nearly year-long review period, and I’m still processing my feelings around what it means to get tenure, both on a personal level and in the larger context of higher education at the moment. The way I often handle my feelings is through writing, and while I’ve been doing a lot of private writing (towards the end of the waiting game, I kept a notebook in my work desk that said TENURE ANXIETY on the front and I wrote in it whenever I started freaking out), I’m taking opportunity to talk about what this means in a more public space.
As I went through the tenure process, I realized going up for tenure is a very mysterious thing to folks who don’t go through it themselves. Like most major life experiences, it’s hard to fully explain to anyone who hasn’t gone down the same path, which can make it feel very isolating and lonely. But because tenure is a significant personal milestone, while also being implemented very unevenly for academic librarianship, and while also dramatically eroded across higher education, I think it’s worth shedding some light on what it means and what it took (for me) to get to this place.
In colleges and universities, tenure is the ultimate job security for faculty – you’ll often hear people refer to it as a “job for life.” According to the AAUP, “a tenured appointment is an indefinite appointment that can be terminated only for cause or under extraordinary circumstances such as financial exigency and program discontinuation.” The way this works for pre-tenure (i.e. tenure-track) faculty is that after a probationary period of typically 5-6 years (though sometimes longer depending on disciplinary or institutional circumstances), a faculty member goes through a rigorous review process in which their work is evaluated by a series of reviewers. The criteria for achieving tenure varies radically across disciplines and universities. Some folks going up for tenure are in colleges or departments with very specific tenure expectations (e.g., you must publish X-number of articles in a specific set of highly-ranked journals), while others have more ambiguous criteria. If you do not get tenure, you typically have the remaining time in your probationary period to stick around, but then you are out of your job.
At many institutions, there is usually some type of pre-tenure review or reappointment at least a couple years before tenure. The idea behind this is to make sure you’re on the right path to eventually achieve tenure. For UC library faculty, it is not uncommon to be go through two reappointment periods prior to going up for tenure, during which you submit a dossier similar to the one you eventually compile for tenure. I started as an assistant librarian in late 2013, went up for reappointment and promotion in 2015, and went up for reappointment again in 2017. For reappointment you only have to describe and document your work under that specific period of review, but going up for tenure requires a review of your entire duration since you began your tenure-track position.
In order to apply for tenure, you have to submit a dossier that documents the last several years of your work and demonstrates clear growth, as well as an upward trajectory showing that you will continue to be a valued part of the university. You can review statement (which functions as a general overview of why I met the criteria for tenure and promotion) and the criteria for Library Faculty. At UC, we have an electronic dossier system, and we supply documentation as evidence showing how we meet the criteria for reappointment/promotion/tenure. In addition, we include copies of our CV, job description, recommendations from our supervisor, and letters of recommendation. My dossier included dozens of pieces of evidence including everything from records retention schedules I’ve written to my peer-reviewed journal articles to letters from leaders in the archival profession.
The first level of review is the Library Reappointment, Promotion, and Tenure (RPT) committee. Assuming the RPT committee recommends your application, then it goes to the Dean. Assuming the Dean recommends it, then it goes to the Provost. The Provost then makes a recommendation on your case to the University Board of Trustees. Then the Board of Trustees approves a long list of recommendations from the Provost. This process varies between universities (and even between colleges at UC), but in all cases, the idea is that your case goes through multiple levels of review (and usually in at least one early stage, the reviewers write a thorough evaluation of your work), often by people who don’t know much about your discipline, job duties, or areas of research.
I submitted my application for tenure and promotion in October 2018. I had been working on my dossier for several months before that, and it’s a good thing I did because about 6 weeks before the deadline to turn everything in, my dad had a massive stroke (which followed a number of very stressful hospitalizations earlier in the year for other issues he had). I am my father’s primary family member, and so I was dealing with visiting him in the hospital, then a rehab facility, and finally getting him into assisted living all while finalizing a dossier about the future of my job. I’m glad to say my dad pulled through the stroke OK, given his age, general frailty, and previous hospitalizations that year. But the toll my dad’s stroke took, combined with having to empty out and sell his condo in order to keep paying for assisted living, made an already inherently stressful year of waiting for my future to be decided even more fraught. I would not have managed to get through all of this had it not been for the immense support that my husband, my mom, and some very close friends provided to me.
After my dossier was submitted, the waiting game began. The Library RPT committee recommended me for tenure and promotion at the end of November 2018, and the Dean recommended me in January 2019. I received notice of the final recommendation from the Provost in early June, and the Board approved it a few weeks later. The entire process from submission to approval took over 9 months, but of course if you include the dossier preparation, the experience of going up for tenure took well over a year.
I worked very hard to get tenure – and I also got a tons of help getting here, and a lot of luck in ending up in a tenure-track position in the first place. I am very conscientious of how many wonderful and worthy people have been chewed up by institutions that rely far too much on precarious labor. First, tenure-track and tenured positions are declining across higher education while adjunct and contractual positions (i.e., positions with quite a bit of precarity and less stability) now represent the majority of faculty positions. There are multiple reasons for this, and I recommend looking at some of the reports from AAUP. Second, the faculty status and tenure status of academic librarians is all over the place – some academic librarians have faculty status but do not have tenure, some have a tenure-like situation which is not called tenure, some have neither, some have both. There is an entire website dedicated to academic librarian professional status categories, since some RPT committees at other universities require external reviewers who have both faculty and tenure status at their institutions.
I know how profoundly, wildly, fortunate I am to get tenure. I crave stability (it will surprise absolutely none of you at this point to learn I’m a Capricorn through and through), and Cincinnati is my hometown. I got my start in archives as a student worker in the library where I am now tenured. I’ve been educated or employed at UC almost all of my adult life, except for my 5-year detour in New Orleans, where I spent the earliest years of my archivist career and met my husband. Being able to continue to work as an archivist at a place where I have deep roots is exactly what I was hoping for. I know that the entire framework of higher education is fragile – particularly for those of us in the public sector. I feel a sense of relief that this process finally came to a happy end, but also a deep awareness that this is not a feeling many people who work in this field get to have.
I’ve been tracking my reading for the last decade, and in 2018 I set a new personal record for books I read (19). I read a lot of awesome books last year, and inspired by my friend Ruth, I’d like to share a roundup of the thematic highlights.
Environmental history
Nature’s Metropolis (Bill Cronon): One of the canonical works of American environmental history. Cronon uses Chicago as his case study to show the relationships between the rural hinterlands and urban center. I have a new appreciation for the development of grain elevators after reading this.
The Thousand-year Flood(David Welky): This is a history of the 1937 Ohio River flood. It’s always struck me as a little weird how much literature concerns the Mississippi River, and how comparatively little there is on the Ohio. As I get into water issues locally and regionally, I’m trying to increase my knowledge of the Ohio River. Much of the current US environmental disaster response policy was forged during the New Deal, and this is a great look at how that played out during a massive wintertime flood that dramatically affected Cincinnati, Louisville, and Paducah.
The Hidden Life of Trees (Peter Wohlleben): If you need a gentle, lovely work of quiet non-fiction to make you feel better about the shitty times we live in, pick this up. Wohlleben discusses how trees live in community with one another, how they communicate, and how things like fungi are important members of forest communities.
Nuclear non-fiction and apocalyptic fiction
The Power (Naomi Alderman): This was a hell of a book to read within the fallout from the Me Too movement. A dystopia in which women gain the power to electrocute men, it’s a cautionary tale of how absolute power corrupts absolutely.
The Doomsday Machine (Daniel Ellsberg): Before he was known as the force behind the Pentagon Papers, Ellsberg was a nuclear policy researcher with the RAND Corporation. There was some wild shit in here, like the time RAND researchers came up with a plan to thwart a Soviet missile attack by STOPPING EARTH’S ROTATION. This book got a bit dense at times, but if you need some more nightmare juice for more sleepless nights for the remainder of the Trump presidency… pick this up!
Almighty (Dan Zak): Protests are often (weirdly, in my opinion) derided as being symbolic performance, and little more than that. I’ve never been moved by this argument, but if you’re someone who earnestly makes it, then I hope you’d at least be willing to admit that protesting the biggest symbol of state violence – nuclear weapons – is at least a hell of a target. If you’re not familiar with the Manhattan Project (i.e., the US military-academic-government project to create the atomic bomb), the Plowshares Movement (the most colorful anti-nuclear protest movement), or the Catholic Workers (a Catholic social justice movement midwifed by Dorothy Day, a Catholic anarchist and someone who I regard alongside Martin Luther King as an American prophet), then Almighty is a damn good crash course into these important chapters in nuclear history, and religious left history, centering around an ill-fated protest involving a veteran, a housepainter, and a nun at Oak Ridge.
Inequality
Titan (Ron Chernow): I’ve been trying to learn a lot about the history of energy and fossil fuels, and it became pretty clear that at some point, you have to dive into the history of Standard Oil, the first major oil company started by John D. Rockefeller. There still has never been any American as wealthy as John D. Rockefeller was, and there’s a pretty compelling argument one can make that Rockefeller and Standard Oil charted much of the path for American capitalism, environmental attitudes, and worker exploitation through the 20th century. I was disappointed by some of the paths Chernow took (as a socialist, long passages about the furnishing decisions of the Rockefeller estate at the expense of shorter passages about the Ludlow Massacre and other labor horror stories sent me into periodic fits of rage), but overall this is a fascinating book.
Automating Inequality(Virginia Eubanks): Ed Summers recommended this to me, and I know that anything Ed recommends about data and algorithms is going to be good as hell (good as in well-written, the insights are usually terrifying). Eubanks dives into a few case studies about how seemingly benign attempts by the state to automate things like benefits for people with disabilities, predicting the future likelihood for abuse to children tracked by family services, and triaging services for homeless people can lead to reinforcing the very inequalities that supposedly “neutral” technology was supposed to ameliorate.
Winners Take All(Anand Giridharadas): I have not been able to shut up about this book since I read it, and if there is one book right now that I wish everyone I know would read, it’s this one. You can read an essay-length version of Giridharadas’s book in his recent essay in The Guardian. This book delves into the favorite farce of rich people too high on their own supply – that they are best positioned to solve the problems they created in the first place. I loved this book for far too many reasons to list here, but one of the passages that sticks out in my brain is so vivid I have to share it with y’all here:
In her reluctance to be the only fool, Tisch was revealing the hold that the status quo had on her. Again and again, she had voiced an ideal for which in the end she was unwilling to sacrifice. It was important to her to feel superior to her rich friends, but she was unwilling to rush out in front of them and be the only one not to take advantage of a system she knew to be wrong. Her repeated confessions that she will not be the one to bring about the world that she swears she believes in sent a message to Darren Walker: If he wants a fairer system, he is going to have to seek it in spite of people like her, not with them at his side; he might have their moral support, but he could not count on them to make the decisions to change the system that made them everything that they are. “The people who get to take advantage of the system, why would they really want to change it?” Tisch said at one point. “They’ll maybe give more money away, but they don’t want to radically change it.” Was there anything she could imagine that would convince them otherwise—that could inspire them to pursue a fairer system? “Revolution, maybe,” she said.
Community repair
The Romance of American Communism (Vivan Gornick): One of my DSA friends recommended this to me, and after Winners Take All, this might be my second favorite book I read in 2018. Vivian Gornick grew up in a Jewish Communist home in New York, which gave her a great deal of familiarity with the subject material of this book. In the 70s she went back and interviewed tons of ex-Communist Party (CPUSA) members, and using pseudonyms, wrote up their stories (and often embellished them). It’s written in a somewhat dated style, but the stories are so wild and entertaining, thrilling and disturbing, that it’s hard to put down. I see so many echoes of what Gornick’s subjects talked about in today’s left, from the good (the thrill of winning unlikely victories) to the mundane (the basic tasks of organizing) to the bad (meetings that go on forever) to the ugly (mansplaining and party expulsion).
Bowling Alone (Robert Putnam): The popular sociological text of “why are Americans so lonely?” This book is nearly 20 years old so I guess now maybe it’s a classic?? While obviously some of it is dated, there is so much useful information in here. If, like me, you are a young person affiliated with an older institution (voluntary, religious, community, etc) that is wringing its hands about why “young people aren’t involved these days,” it’s good to remember that this trend has actually been going on for a long time, and can’t be blamed on millennials!
Conflict is not Abuse (Sarah Schulman): I felt really conflicted (pun intended) about this book. Schulman has some excellent arguments about the conflation of conflict with abuse and harm, when it is important to distinguish between the two. At the same time, I think she formulates what she believes to be a universal ethical framework based on her specific life experience in a way I often took serious issue with. Ultimately, this was a very thought-provoking book that forced me to think about how I deal with conflict resolution in real life.
What am I reading for 2019?
I don’t tend to stick to a reading plan (except for the year I only read women authors) – I’m generally a bit of a meandering reader, and often start new titles based on whatever titles are currently available through my library’s eBook program. I tend to juggle a few titles at a time – typically one I’m reading from most days on my bus commute to work, and a couple others on the back burner. Most of the books I read last year were eBooks. I occasionally worry I’m getting out of the habit of reading print books, particularly because a lot of books I eventually want to read are only available in analog.
Right now, I’m really interested in reading about water issues, filling gaps in my knowledge of important political history, and boning up on religious left thinkers. I recently finished a book about the Flint water crisis, am in the middle of a book about the French Revolution, and am occasionally dipping into Tolstoy’s The Kingdom of God is Within You. My only reading goal this year is to beat last year’s reading record – so if I hit 20, I’ll consider it a success.
White women screaming at Elizabeth Eckford during the integration of Little Rock High School, 1957
White boys smirking at Nathan Phillips during the Indigenous Rights March, 2019
It’s a rare event to see a headline originate in Indian Country Today, then pop up a few hours later in Cincinnati media channels, a few hours later on the Facebook feeds of progressives and leftists I know around the country, and finally the New York Times. The story making headlines was how a number of Covington Catholic High School students, in Washington DC for the March for Life were harassing a group of indigenous activists also in town for the Indigenous People’s March – an event meant to highlight many of the concerns of indigenous people, including the immense numbers of murdered and missing indigenous women. The videos on social media were even worse than I was prepared for, and the gleeful mob mentality of a bunch of mostly white high school boys harassing indigenous elders should be a wake up call for everyone who thinks that racism is a generational issue that will eventually go away when the current FOX news demographic peters out.
Something that I think is missing from the national coverage is that there is something deeply and disturbingly evocative of Cincinnati’s culture within the actions of the young men. We need to talk about Cincinnati suburban white flight and the role of parochial schools. Because if we don’t acknowledge this, then we’re only going to keep seeing this happen over and over.
Suburban white teenagers doing racist things keeps happening over and over and over in this region. For non-Cincinnatians, Covington Catholic is in Northern Kentucky, and Northern Kentucky is very much a part of the greater Cincinnati region. Lots of people live in Northern Kentucky who commute across the river to work in Ohio, and vice-versa. At Mason High School (a public school in a northern suburb), black kids received targeted racist SnapChat messages last January. At Kings (another suburban high school), white basketball players wore jerseys with racist slurs on them. A month later, Elder High School (a Catholic high school on the west side of Cincinnati) students chanted racist and homophobic slurs at a rival Catholic high school’s players during a basketball game.
Sometimes, it’s also the adults engaging in this. A Mason teacher told a student he might be lynched. At Kings, a teacher joked about a student being deported. And when students try to speak up, to be on the side of social justice? Sometimes adults try to shut them down – like one Northern Kentucky student at Holy Cross High School, who was barred from giving a speech school authorities deemed as “political and inconsistent with the teaching of the Catholic Church.”
What do all of these schools have in common? Some of them are public, some of them are parochial. But all of them are extremely white, reflecting the fact that with a few exceptions, white people who live in the greater Cincinnati area by and large do not send their kids to Cincinnati Public Schools (CPS) – the largest educational environment in the region where white kids would routinely encounter plenty of students who don’t look like them (and the schools that white CPS parents favor are getting whiter).
White people sending their kids to white schools is not a new or unique phenomenon to Cincinnati. It is often perpetuated by where white people move – the suburbs – that are very white. The growth of suburban development is directly linked with white people exiting the city and seeking “good schools” combined with government policy that helped create racially segregated housing patterns. The suburban sprawl around the city of Cincinnati is very white – while Hamilton County (where Cincinnati is located) is around 66% white, the surrounding suburbs are more than 80% (and sometimes more than 90%) white.
But even when white people live in more diverse areas like the city, they still take steps to send their kids to white schools. According to this story in the Atlantic, 2/3 of urban schools are non-white, which is pretty similar to the numbers within Cincinnati Public Schools (approximately 63% Black, 6% Multiracial, 5% Latino, 2% Asian/Pacific islander, and 0.1% Indigenous). I am not a demographer, so the following is some rough back of the envelope math. According to the Census, Cincinnati’s city population is 50% white. Yet the CPS enrollment of white students as of a couple years ago was around 24%. There is obviously some kind of disparity here, between the white population that lives within the city and where their children go to school. Again, I am not a demographer but I suspect that for white parents who live in the city, the disparity is at least partially, if not wholly, explained by white parents who send their kids to private schools – particularly parochial schools. Unfortunately, it is hard to do back of the envelope math for this one, as the state of Ohio only collects data for public schools.
Research shows that white kids who live in diverse areas and go to diverse schools are way more sensitive about the historical and current impacts of racism in American life. You can have a great curriculum that talks about the history of land expropriation from indigenous people, about redlining of neighborhoods that kept out people of color, immigrants, and Jews, of highway construction projects that destroyed black communities – but lived experience is a greater teacher than curriculum. And when white kids are mostly interacting with other white kids in an environment where white parents are choosing to live around other white people, white kids doing racist shit is almost inevitable.
Let’s talk about parochial schools in Cincinnati, because I think this part is critical to understanding what happened in Washington DC.
Cincinnati’s historical relationship with Catholicism runs very deep. Parish social events are a massive part of the social fabric of the city. It is not unusual to see many people with ashes on their forehead on Ash Wednesday. During Lent, many parishes have Friday fish fry dinners that are open to the public. On Good Friday, there are television crews at a historic church high up on a hill where people climb the stairs and pray the rosary. During the summer, parishes have huge festivals that serve as fundraisers for the parishes’ activities. Many parishes with large festivals also run schools.
There are so many Catholic schools just within the Archdiocese of Cincinnati that as of 2013, it is now the sixth-largest parochial school network in the country, despite the Archdiocese being the 44th biggest Catholic diocese. There are over 100 Catholic schools within southwest Ohio. Across the river in Northern Kentucky, the Diocese of Covington (part of the Archdiocese of Louisville) has over 30 schools.
The modern anti-abortion movement also has deep roots in Cincinnati, and it is deeply tied to the presence of Catholic institutions in the city. John Willke was a major figure within the anti-abortion movement, starting one of the country’s first Right to Life* chapters; Willke was educated at Roger Bacon, one of Cincinnati’s Catholic schools. The Archdiocese of Cincinnati’s approach to the sanctity of life reveals a nearly monomaniacal obsession with abortion – despite the fact that Catholic social teachingroutinely calls for also opposing the death penalty, calling for an end to rampant militarism, and taking action on climate change. When you take a look at the Archdiocese of Cincinnati’s webpage about life issues, it is overwhelmingly concerned with abortion. The Catholic Telegraph, the Archdiocesan newspaper, is also almost exclusively concerned with abortion in its section devoted to life issues.
Legislation to end abortion is about one thing: universal imposition of a particular set of political and religious beliefs on others who do not share these beliefs. For all their handwringing about morality, it bears repeating that many religious groups do not share the Roman Catholic clerical opposition to abortion, and in fact, and many Catholics themselves support abortion access (according to 2018 figures, about 51% of them).
One thing I wish people outside of Cincinnati knew is how much parochial schools are involved with anti-abortion activities. The Cincinnati Archdiocese provides significant support for local teenagers to attend the March for Life and Catholic Telegraph has slideshows depicting smiling groups of mostly white local Catholic high school teenagers in DC, and for those who couldn’t make it due to weather concerns, cheerfully grinning and holding up signs declaring ABORTION KILLS CHILDREN in front of the local Planned Parenthood clinic that is the last remaining abortion provider in the region.
I think it’s the grinning that sets me off the most, because it’s so similar to the smirk by the young man standing in the way of the indigenous elder. I can’t decide whether it’s the gleeful naivete of young people who have no idea what they’re talking about, or if it’s the gleeful arrogance of young people who have been recruited into the ranks of ideologues. Either way, it’s a stance that serves to close off any recognition of perspectives contrary to what these young high schoolers have been told are the only moral ones by every adult authority figure in their life.
That’s ultimately what this comes down to: mostly white, mostly middle to upper-class, mostly suburban young people being told that they are on the side of righteousness and morality. This stance is what is taught in schools, what is taught in their churches, what is taught in their homes. When someone who doesn’t look or think like them interrupts this world view, they are turned into an obstacle to confront and stare down, not a new perspective to listen to, and learn from. This is what is so jarring about the young men harassing the indigenous elders – despite the protestations of the school and the Covington Diocese that the MAGA students don’t represent their teachings, to the contrary – they’ve been exceptionally well-trained in the art of imposing a singular world view on others.
Whenever these stories come up, someone always asks, “Where are the parents?!” I’d suggest that they are right there in the middle of it all – living in white areas, sending their kids to white schools, and perpetuating a belief system that it is OK for children to harass others who don’t share their sense of white patriarchal systems of control. Over and over, I hear as a childless person I am not supposed to criticize other people’s parenting choices. But as a white person committed to ending white supremacy, I don’t see how I have any choice but to question parenting decisions that reproduce systems of racialized and gendered authoritarian control. What’s good for one’s children may just be poison for everyone else who has to live with them.
Since the Me Too revelations last year, it’s become obvious how pervasive and all-encompassing misogyny is that most men only recognize its presence by its most violent manifestations. The prevalence of rape and sexual assault is a moral and public health crisis. It has to be eliminated. But the enormous amount of sexual and gender-based violence does not exist in a vacuum; it is a product of a misogynist culture that every one of us is marinated in from head to toe, from cradle to grave.
Rape is one of the most brutal and violent forms of misogyny, but eliminating rape and sexual assault will not eliminate misogyny. And this is where I find myself turning in circles. Although it’s been several years since I have had direct experience with threatened or actual physical violence by a man, the men in my life routinely act in ways that dehumanize me and other non-men. I believe that violence against non-men exists on a spectrum, where ignoring the needs and undermining the work of women and nonbinary people creates a subtle foundation for more overt acts of violence. Not all men commit acts of overt violence, but all misogynist-based violence is rooted in the dehumanization of non-men. And many men are exceptionally skilled at daily acts of dehumanization.
I spend a lot of time thinking about the ways in which the vast majority of my male friends, relatives, coworkers, and comrades routinely disappoint me and let me down. This probably isn’t healthy; it’s honestly pretty depressing. I also doubt I’m the only woman who does this. As a socialist feminist, I believe a better world is possible, and making a better world means prioritizing the healthy ways in which men, women, and nonbinary folks can build liberatory relationships with one another. Over the last year I’ve tried to articulate the common qualities among the men I enjoy spending time with, who I feel safe around, and who I trust.
I want to be clear that this list is not a shortcut or way to instantly eliminate misogyny. Men can still do all of these things and perpetuate misogyny. But it’s telling that I can count on one hand the men I know who consistently do all of these things:
1. They consume media, art, music, journalism, literature, and ideas by women and nonbinary people as much as men
From popular culture to various literary canons, the work of men predominates most of what we read, see, hear, and think about. It’s intellectually lazy and embarrassingly boring to only read and watch and listen to shit created by people like you. Casting your media consumption net wide and far helps one empathize with perspectives that are not their own. ALSO it seems like (most of) the men I know somehow have more time to read than (most of) the women I know, probably because they have less caregiving duties in their life (in which case, holler at me, I have hundreds of books from my dad’s library I need to find a good home for).
Women writers and artists and musicians are constantly having to fight against the notion that their work is somehow specifically feminized because of who created it, while men are more often afforded the honor of creating “universal” work. When men enthusiastically consume the work of people with different gender identities, it normalizes the idea that work written by people other than men has universal appeal.
2. They publicly cite and promote the work of women and nonbinary people who they aren’t related to or trying to profit off the relationship, and they trust the expertise and leadership of genders different from them
This is a huge one for me, partly because I work in higher education, and repeatedly during my life I’ve been one of a handful of women in men-dominated leftist groups that have veered uncomfortably close into toxic masculinity. Citing my work has major material benefits for me professionally. It’s really important that it’s not just me saying “I am a leader in my field, here are some articles I wrote” but to have leaders in my profession, which includes many men, behind me saying “Eira is a leader in our field, the article she wrote had XYZ impact on the profession.”
In political work, I need men to trust my expertise and to trust non-men’s leadership collectively. Leftist men who gatekeep and hoard cultural and social capital in political work are far more of a threat to leftist organizing strength than any right-wing troll. If your organizations and coalition-building activities don’t reflect the overall gender distribution of your corner of the world, and you aren’t concerned about fixing that, good luck with pulling off the revolution.
3. They volunteer to Do The Work and then actually do it
I have a tendency to take on a lot of work (no doubt part of gendered socialization) in the various professional and political arenas of my life, though I’m getting better at drawing my boundaries and making my limits visible. The men in my life that I really appreciate often say things like “I want to ensure this work isn’t totally falling on you, how about I write the first draft/call this person/organize this meeting?” Note: this is very different than saying “tell me how I can help.”
Telling someone you can help without a specific offer of assistance places the burden back on me, and then it’s easier to just say “No, I’m okay” instead of sitting around thinking of what I can delegate. The other thing the men I appreciate do is that they follow through. If they’re not going to make a deadline because Life Happened they’re proactive about letting me know when they’ll Do The Thing so I don’t have to ask them what is going on. I’m beyond overwhelmed with everything I’m trying to juggle between caregiving for my elderly father, dealing with the eternal “doing more with less” mandate of working in public higher education, maintaining my own sanity and relationships, and surviving late-stage capitalism. Men who don’t shoulder their fair share of the work, or men who say they will and don’t, make my life much more difficult.
4. They do emotional labor
Emotional labor is an expansive term, but from my perspective, it’s all of the small ways in which one tends the garden of their various relationships, professional, romantic, friendly, comradely, and neighborly alike. A garden requires planting new seeds, weeding harmful things, paying attention to it, and feeding it through sunlight, water, and nutrients.
Our relationships are the same way. Offering a hug to someone who is going through a rough time, remembering your family’s birthdays, checking in with a friend you haven’t heard from for a while, inviting people at work to go to lunch with you, expressing appreciation for both the daily work of others and when they go above and beyond – these are all vital acts of emotional labor that pay off enormously in building solidarity with one another. It means a lot to me when men at work ask me about how my father is doing even if it’s been weeks since the latest eldercare emergency, or when men from other areas of my life ask me about a specific workplace challenge I mentioned months ago. Women are very much socialized to do these things, and we tend to give more emotional labor to men than we receive in return. It is absolutely vital and world-repairing work that men need to take on.
These are the things I wish more men would push themselves to do – and hold other men to the same standards. Our collective lives and freedom depend on it.
The big change around our house these days is quite literally around our house. Working with an organic landscaping business, we ripped out our front yard and replaced the grass with a variety of native and pollinator-friendly plants. Whenever we tell people about this, one of the first questions folks have is “How do the neighbors feel?”
Bee balm
A robin playing near the ferns
I’m delighted to report the neighbors are pretty into it. The front yard still requires a considerable amount of weeding (something we hope will taper off as the plants grow together), so I’m often out working in the front yard on weekends. I’ve met more of my neighbors just in the last few months than I ever did mowing my lawn, and many of them stop to say how much they enjoy our yard.
But the sweetest joy of our yard has been seeing the bees and other pollinators working the plants. The world may be collapsing around us, and indeed bees are in the insect canary in the coal mine. But I feel like with every bunch of flowers, I’m throwing them a small life raft. There are few everyday sights that move me as much as watching bees enthusiastically buzz around flowers.
###
I recently saw Robin Kimmerer speak at FGC Gathering (a large conference for Quakers). Kimmerer is a professor in the SUNY system, and the author of Braiding Sweetgrass. Robin’s talk was incredibly moving, but what stayed with me was her call for transitioning from the “it-ness” we ascribe to non-human animals and plants and natural elements. We refer to birds as ‘it,’ we refer to trees as ‘it,’ we refer to rivers as ‘it.’
Kimmerer called on us to consider using kin as “a pronoun for the revolution”, inspired by her indigenous language, for the creation around us. She notes how and why to use “kin”:
Kin are ripening in the fields; kin are nesting under the eaves; kin are flying south for the winter, come back soon. Our words can be an antidote to human exceptionalism, to unthinking exploitation, an antidote to loneliness, an opening to kinship.
The day after I heard Robin speak, I was checking the news and saw one of the most profound acts of bearing witness to our kin in recent memory. A mother with her child on her hip confronted Scott Pruitt, a man who probably thinks of anything winged or feathered or mossed or leafed as “it”, saying to him:
“Hi, I just wanted to urge you to resign because of what you’re doing to the environment and our country,” Kristin Mink told Pruitt inside a Teaism restaurant in downtown Washington, not far from the EPA’s Pennsylvania Avenue headquarters. “This is my son. He loves animals. He loves clean air. He loves clean water. Meanwhile, you’re slashing strong fuel standards for cars and trucks, for the benefit of big corporations.”
And a day later Scott Pruitt resigned.
I don’t know whether he resigned because of the mother and her child. I don’t know if it was because Pruitt realized that being a sleazy capitalist selling out future generations involves less harassment if it’s dictated from a board room than a public office. I don’t know if all that righteous Quaker energy pouring out of Toledo was bending something in Washington DC.
But I know that bearing witness for our kin, kin who are collapsing en masse, kin who cannot speak for themselves, is one of the most sacred acts we can engage in as a way of trying to repair so much of what has been broken in the march towards elevating innovation over creation. I’m so grateful to that mother and her child for speaking out for our kin.
###
A few weeks after I was in Toledo I joined about 75 others to go speak out against proposed deregulation of Ohio River pollution control standards at a public hearing, the only public hearing to be held in a region of 5 million people who get their drinking water from the river. As I was driving down the highway the only thing I prayed for was to pack the hearing. And as I crossed the Brent Spence bridge and could see the Ohio river below out of the edge of my vision, I silently said to kin, “I’ll do the best I can for you.”
Many members of the various faith and political communities I’m connected to showed up. And then I yelled at the commissioners for my allotted 5 minutes for public comment and after that I ended up getting interviewed by a local news station.
This is what I said in my testimony:
Good evening commissioners. My name is Eira Tansey. I am from Cincinnati, and I get my drinking water from the Ohio River. I am a member of the Metro Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky Democratic Socialists of America. The Democratic Socialists of America is an organization of over 45,000 people across the United States fighting against a capitalist system that silences the voices of working people.
And that is why I am here today: because only a few years after the water crises of Flint and Standing Rock, we are on the verge of another nightmare in which regulators are more interested in carrying out the wish list of polluting industry than protecting the health of the public.
Make no mistake: the public does not want this commission to abdicate its authority and responsibility for setting regional unified pollution control standards. Many of us want you to make existing standards stronger. Over 97% of the responses from the 900 pages of first round public comments called on you to do just that.
We have been told that a majority of ORSANCO’s commissioners favors Alternative 2, a path towards deregulation that happens to line up with the interests and stated preferences of polluting industry. We have been told that the federal Clean Water Act is sufficient to clean up the river, but this is anything but reassuring. As Mary from West Virginia wrote to you on February 22: “If state and EPA agencies’ work is adequate, why do I keep reading that the Ohio River is the most polluted inland waterway in the country?”
Ohio’s status as one of the dirtiest rivers in the country can be directly traced to several of the companies who have requested this commission to gut pollution standards. Alcoa, AKSteel, American Electric Power, ArcelorMittal, FirstEnergy, Duke Energy, Jupiter and Aluminum have all had dozens of Clean Water Act violations in just the last 3 years.
The majority of the commission has not acted in good faith. ORSANCO’s own reporting has found over 100 pollutants for which it has issued standards that are not found elsewhere within federal or state guidelines. It is outrageous that the only public hearing during this comment period is happening at an out of the way hotel in the middle of the week. It suggests the commission is not very interested in hearing from the public. So we must ask – why is a majority of ORSANCO leadership more interested in protecting polluting industries than in protecting the 5 million individuals who depend on the Ohio River for their drinking water?
Could it be because half of the commissioners have ties to polluting industry themselve? They have either worked directly in the mining and energy industries, or they represented them as clients of their consulting firms and law practices. Commissioner Snavely of Kentucky retired from Excel Mining. Commissioner Caperton of West Virginia worked at Massey Energy. Commissioner Flannery of West Virginia is on the National Coal Council. Commission chair Potesta of West Virginia has represented clients like DuPont, who has been one of the worst polluters of all.
This is not sound science or policy making. This is the fox guarding the henhouse door. If the commission guts regional pollution control standards, it is selling out the health and safety of everyone living downstream from polluting industry for the ability of corporations to make more money.
###
I don’t know what’s next, for the river, for the bees in my yard, for the animals and the toddlers who love them being carried on their mother’s hips. I’m worried for my kin. Bearing witness on their behalf is the only thing I know how to do right now.
Sometime between Trump’s election and inauguration, I posted something on Facebook to the effect of, “I see many of my friends using language of despair and hopelessness that really scares me. I desperately need all of you to remain in my life. Please do whatever it takes to get rested and ready for the road ahead.”
I still feel this way. I want to share some of the reflection I’ve done on what it means to build community in a time of frightening chaos.
The most important thing you can do right now in this absolutely terrifying hellscape is to build a community of people, preferably in either close proximity or frequent contact, who care for you, and both hold and inspire you to the standards of bravery and accountability you aspire to. This is the foundation for surviving the foreseeable future.
One of the things that distinguishes many Americans right now from previous periods of historical trauma is our collective isolation from a cohesive sense of community identity. Many of us move far from home for education or work. We are told that a mark of success is to do just this – to take opportunity wherever it is. For many middle-class people (particularly in my profession), we take it for granted that uprooting our households and families every few years between cities is the normal price we pay for career success. We rack up student loans in the thousands for the opportunity to do this, without gauging how damaging it is to have to find new friends every couple years. Many of us suffered spiritual trauma so we don’t have a religious community we can count on. What passed for activism for many years was writing a check to a good cause instead of grassroots organizing. After working a long day at an exhausting job it’s far preferable to come home and hang out with Netflix than to go to a neighborhood meeting where people drone on about traffic control measures.
It’s a blessing to see people in the streets protesting the latest fuckery of this administration. At the same time you often hear folks saying, “why aren’t there more? why aren’t we shutting everything down RIGHT NOW?” But I think this misses something: that ambient despair and hopelessness – a large part of why people stay at home – are most effectively held in check by a sense of community solidarity and identity. And the courage people need to stick their necks out is bolstered by community identities that reinforce the importance of doing the work of standing up for others. It’s a lot easier to go to a protest if you know your friends will be there. It’s tolerable to go to a boring neighborhood meeting with droning people if you already have post-meeting beers set up. Many of the most revolutionary social justice acts through history were done by participants who were part of a strong community, knowing that if something adverse happened to them, they could rely on their community to care for their family or homes or even themselves. When you don’t have community identities where this is a normal part of life, it’s a lot harder to go out in the streets or turn up for the work that repairing the world requires.
Here’s where I need to explain some of my own personal history and why I feel such a deep conviction on why y’all need to make building community priority #1.
The first activist-y thing I ever did was joining Food Not Bombs as an awkward teenager. Some of the folks from those days have become lifelong friends for me, but more importantly, we all showed up at anti-Iraq War protests. Fast forward to New Orleans. I joined a pretty badly organized infoshop and radical library. I eventually fell away from it, but I met some awesome people that I still stay in touch with. They remain my connection to what’s happening on the ground in the South.
A few years ago I decided to move back to Cincinnati, where my parents still lived and where a few friends were left. I have a great job, and I hope I keep it for a long time. But a couple years ago, I had the realization that because I have roots here, I’m staying in Cincinnati for the long haul even if my job goes belly up. I decided to choose building community over building a career. In the end, I think it’s a better safety net and quality of life, especially as the safety net of government vanishes.
My husband and I are not planning on having children, and being childless fundamentally colors your perspective on community in many ways. I know that if I want to make sure I have someone who cares about me in my old age, I have to build deep and dense networks across space and time. And because I don’t have children, I have the time and resources to invest into strengthening the communities that I’m part of, in ways that are sometimes challenging for parents with extensive caregiving obligations. Therefore, I feel a fundamental ethical obligation and expression of my values is to devote myself to community building.
Community building looks like lots of things to different people. For me, building community locally has meant investment in political, advocacy, and religious life. I’m involved with local Planned Parenthood advocacy, the Cincinnati DSA chapter, and a Quaker meeting. I am terrified for what the future will bring, but I know that it’s a lot easier to feel that I’m Doing The Work and that I’m Not Alone when I participate in these spaces. I’ve been urging my friends to find their own communities where they can be a part of something larger than themselves. Communities with shared values and organizing principles are critical to shoring up a sense of being anchored amidst the hurricane of terror swirling around us.
This is what my faith says about the importance of community:
Each of us lives in multiple overlapping and interconnected communities. Some we are born into, while others we choose to join. Each one provides us with an opportunity to test, refine, and express our beliefs, attitudes, and preferences. Claiming membership in a community is a way to define ourselves to others. As we live into that commitment, community can be more than just a group of people. It can embody our testimonies – a way we witness to the world about what we believe to be most important.
It really freaks me out to see people I love going “LOL WE’RE FUCKED!!!!” whenever the news keeps getting worse (as it inevitably does). And at this point, maybe even if we are fucked, we can all go down together sharing some comforting memories of friendship and Doing The Work of repairing the world instead of our last memory being horror scrolling through the latest Vox hot take.
All I know is this: if The Revolution ever breaks out, it will be a hell of a lot easier to launch myself into it from a potluck at my house or Yet Another Committee Meeting than if I’m sitting on my couch alone binge-watching some dumb dystopian tv show. I’ve never felt like Black Mirror or The Handmaid’s Tale or fucking social media could reach out and hug me whenever I’m freaking the hell out, but when I spend time with my community I always have that comfort at hand.
I don’t know what the future will bring. People are justifiably terrified. There is no one coming to save us. We have to save ourselves, with each other. Please go join a group of people who are already Doing The Work. Make it your top priority. You need it. I look forward to seeing you at the next meeting.
Ten years ago last week, I received a job offer to work at Tulane University as a paraprofessional archivist. I was graduating from the University of Cincinnati in the summer of 2008, at the same time the economy was collapsing. I had been a student worker at UC’s archives, and thought maybe I’d like to become an archivist. So I sent tons of applications for staff positions out into the wind, hoping I could get a paraprofessional job for a while before deciding whether I wanted to pursue my MLIS. The only response I got was from Tulane, and all my interviewing was over the phone. The first time I ever set foot in Louisiana was when I drove down there, with my dad, to move in to my new city.
I spent five years at Tulane, during which I got my MLIS while I was working full-time. It was probably the most formative five years of my life. New Orleans is where I became an archivist, where I met my husband, where I learned a lot about how the history of a city as complicated as New Orleans is both a warning and inspiration for how to navigate a chaotic future. I moved back to Cincinnati in 2013 for professional and family reasons, and I’ve now lived back here almost as long as I lived in New Orleans. As a lifelong Ohioan, Louisiana is the only other place I’ve ever built a life, and I carry a bit of New Orleans in my heart always.
I’ve been back to New Orleans a couple times since moving back to Ohio, but the trip back for this year’s Rare Books and Manuscripts Section conference hit me right in the Feelings Department. The 10-year anniversary of my job offer at Tulane also meant that I’ve been an archivist for a decade. In 2008 I took my first leap into archives in New Orleans, and in 2018 here I am, back in the same city where I got my start, presenting about the impacts of climate change on the profession. I go up for tenure later this year, which comes with all of its own anxieties. Cincinnati is my home – it’s where my family lives, my roots are, where I have a house, and where my husband and I are very deliberately cultivating our communities for the long haul. But I’m so profoundly grateful that even several years later, New Orleans still feels like a very familiar second home.
New Orleans is not an easy place to live in. When I moved down in 2008, I had to evacuate just a couple months later for the first mandatory evacuation after Katrina. I rode out another hurricane a few years later, but my now-husband’s apartment lost power for several nights. The heat was insomnia inducing, to the point where we had to go visit some wealthy family friends with a generator out in the suburbs just so I could sleep for a few hours. When my husband and I had been back in Cincinnati for several months, at one point we turned to each other and said, “We haven’t had to boil our water for several months.” My salary in New Orleans was just a hair above the poverty line, and there was a house down the street from my second apartment in the Lower Garden District where a man had been murdered in a mistaken identity drug dealing ordeal. I jogged past it early on the mornings I would go for a run, and I tried not to look at the front door very hard.
But the thing about New Orleans is that there is no place like it on Earth. I sewed a new costume every year for Mardi Gras. I learned how to cook red beans and rice. I was too poor to drink good beer, so Miller High Life will always taste like a damn good night out. My friends and I made bike maps of the city, organized zines in the info shop, and baked each other deliberately ugly birthday cakes and beautiful homemade king cakes. I doubt I ever went more than a week or two without dancing at some live music. Before I moved in with the man I eventually married, I had four roommates – three of whom were locals. One, the daughter of a shrimping family, helped me find out my shellfish allergy wasn’t as bad as I thought it was and I’ve been safely eating shrimp and crawfish since. One made the best damn gumbo I’ve ever had and then his family guided me through my first Passover Seder. One would bring home fresh soy milk her mother made a few miles away in New Orleans East. I learned a lot about how to be sensitive to an entire city’s collective trauma around being drowned and forgotten. “Y’all” entered my vocabulary and has never left since, and I hope it never will.
It felt so good and so right last week to see old colleagues and friends, dance to brass bands, eat the kind of food that the Midwest can never manage to turn out, and sweat in the ubiquitous sauna heat of the city. This country – this world – is profoundly lucky to have New Orleans. And I feel so fortunate I got to experience it first hand for the time that I did.
(I originally wrote this on Facebook on May 26, 2018, the day my Irish sisters, brothers, and cousins voted to repeal the country’s abortion ban. And now Argentina might be moving in a similar direction. As the US slides into ever more repression of women’s basic human rights, it’s been a joy to witness these victories across the world.)
I’ve been crying on and off with joy and thankfulness since Ireland voted to repeal its abortion ban. I’m so glad to report that it looks like the tiny village of Gurteen in County Sligo, where my branch of the Tanseys came from, went narrowly for the Yes to repeal, by just a few dozen votes. I wrote a long reflection last night trying to figure out why I couldn’t stop bawling my eyes out. Here it is:
On the evening of the 2016 federal election, my dad was the one who phoned to tell me the election was called for Trump. I had gone into a total media blackout after finishing up my duties as a poll worker. I guess that after busting my ass for more than 12 hours to do my part for participatory democracy, I’m glad I learned the shittiest global news of 2016 from someone I love rather than from a TV screen.
Today I got to deliver equally dramatic election news to my father, but I’m glad to say it was far more joyful: that Ireland repealed its abortion ban. I had a much more emotional reaction to this than I anticipated – I saw the exit polls saying the vote to repeal was almost certain as I was getting home from work, and I started crying in the middle of the sidewalk before I even walked through the door.
I think, in large part, my emotional reaction is because of my father.
My dad carries a lot of identities, but probably the most consistent one is that of being an Irish-American. He has a picture of Ben Bulben as his laptop wallpaper. He has an old faded map of the counties of Ireland hanging on his wall. He has shelves and shelves of books about Irish and Irish-American history. He constantly rants about the Notre Dame “fighting Irish” mascot and the phrase “paddy wagons”: both are profoundly offensive to Brian Tansey. The only thing he finds more offensive than Irish stereotypes are people like Bill O’Reilly: Irish-Americans who forgot what kind of discrimination Irish immigrants once faced in the US, but who now turn around and spit on today’s immigrants.
My dad is old enough (85) to have briefly experienced the old-school anti-Irish sentiment that once circulated in bourgie WASP circles, and still talks about the time he got called a “mick” when he was attending Columbia University in the 50s. My dad schooled me on Irish-American history starting with coffin ships up through Irish-American city ward machine politics, and it was threaded through with tons of colorful family legends: like how when James Tansey left County Sligo in the 1890s with his buddy for Liverpool’s docks, they were stumped on where to go next. The coin flip decision turned up America – otherwise it was Australia.
And as if you needed any further proof of how seriously my dad takes his Irish-American identity, well, uh, he’s the one who named me “Eira.” Which, at least in my dad’s telling, was a feminine homage to Éire (the Irish word for Ireland). I’ve yet to find any scholars who can verify this as an accurate variation. Oh well, it’s on the birth certificate. And so every day, when I have to spell out my name on the phone or have someone ask me about it’s origins, I’m reminded that a larger part of my genealogy traces to Ireland, and that my Dad sure wanted me to be reminded of this every day until I expire.
My dad and I have travelled to Ireland together, twice. The first time was when I was studying abroad at the University of Sheffield back in 2006, and the second time was when I was living in New Orleans, in 2011. Both times we got a car and drove up to County Sligo where our Irish ancestors came from. On our most recent trip, we visited the tiny village of Gurteen in County Sligo where Dad’s grandfather came from. We visited with Father Joe, the parish priest, who took us on a tour of the area and pulled out some marriage records from his office desk that mentioned some of our family names. Father Joe even helped us meet and connect to some distant relatives. Dad still talks about the salmon dinner Father Joe served us, I still remember the Guinness pints we drank at the bar where there were pictures of the local darts team with men who had the last name Tansey and the same dark curly hair as mine.
While we were there, it was very clear that the country was moving apart from the church. This was when the Irish leadership and the Dail were told telling the Vatican off for their handling of the child abuse scandals. The stories of how generations of Irish women were systematically abused at the hands of the Catholic laundries were well-known. Ireland was definitely finding its way to an identity that stood apart from Catholicism. It was so affirming to see Ireland resoundingly and democratically pass gay marriage a few years ago. And now this? Y’all. I’m so happy.
Where I live in Ohio, it’s a never-ending horror show of how much politicians want to destroy women’s fundamental human rights to bodily autonomy. I have no doubt that if Pence and Kasich have their way, they would immediately try to create their own 8th Amendment in the United States. Goodness knows they’ve both tried everything up to that point in Indiana and Ohio. I’ve been mulling over what my moral responsibilities will be to my fellow women, and wondering how much we’ll have to relearn the lessons of the Jane Collective. Or more likely, Women on Web, which has helped many Irish women obtain an abortion in the last several years.
Victories for women’s fundamental human rights are so precious and rare these days. Every day I am reminded that I live in a country that profoundly hates women, that does not trust women, and that is led by men who only value women as grabbable pussies or as reproductive chattel.
To see that there is a country in the world today where a majority of voters cast a vote to trust women as opposed to inscribing hatred for them is extremely moving. And tracing some of my own background to Ireland makes me feel a profound connection to all the women whose stories were never told, many of whom suffered terribly, but whose work reverberates across the generations.
Thank you, Ireland, for giving us a bit of light in these dark times. I am so proud, but more importantly, I am inspired.
