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Quite the World, Isn't It?

The 2011 LA Times Festival of Books, and me

March 13, 2011
Tags: books, writing, nonfiction, fiction
Some more good news to announce: I'll be appearing at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books again this Spring, this time at the new venue at the University of Southern California (Used to be held at UCLA).

Details can still change but at this point I'll be talking about The Fear Within on a panel called "History: Democracy and Its Discontents," at 12:30 p.m. on May 1 (May Day, fittingly enough - I'll have to remember to wear red). The moderator will be author/journalist Celeste Fremon. So far, only one fellow panelist has been lined up - my former LA Times colleague Barry Siegel, author most recently of Claim of Privilege: A Mysterious Plane crash, A Landmark Supreme Court Case and the Rise of State Secrets, a riveting look at the sketchy legal case behind the legal precedent that gives the federal government the right to not respond to subpoenas if it invokes a "state secret" excuse. (Barry also offered a wonderful blurb for my book, so I owe him lunch). The third panelist is to be named later.

I'll update the blog when more details, including the specific site for the panel, are available. It will be followed by a book-signing, so if you plan to attend the Festival of Books please bring (or buy there) your copy of The Fear Within (available for pre-order at online sites and independent bookstores) and I'll be happy to sign it for you. Read More 
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The kind of thing that makes an author very happy

March 12, 2011
Tags: books, writing, nonfiction, fiction
Two of the defendants among supporters at a rally. Library of Congress photo.
From the forthcoming Publishers Weekly, the leading trade journal in the book industy:

The Fear Within: Spies, Commies, and American Democracy on Trial
Scott Martelle. Rutgers Univ., $26.95 (320p) ISBN 978-0-8135-4938-5

In this illuminating examination of a troubling episode in America's past, veteran journalist (and PW contributor) Martelle (Blood Passion: The Ludlow Massacre and Class War in the American West) recounts the celebrated 1949 trial of 11 American Communists for violating the Smith Act, which outlawed advocating overthrow of the government by force. All were public spokesmen of the minuscule American Communist Party. During nine stormy months, the prosecution was reduced to quoting Karl Marx and obscure Communist texts to prove that the defendants had advocated violent revolution. Martelle presents convincing evidence that the judge favored the prosecution, goaded by defense lawyers who the author admits were tactless and quarrelsome. In the end the judge sent every defendant and many of the lawyers to prison. Few readers of this gripping history will quarrel with Martelle's conclusion that the defendants suffered for expressing unpopular opinions. Further, says Martelle, many Americans, including political leaders, continue to proclaim that those who want to destroy America should not be permitted to "hide behind" the Constitution. Photos. (May)
Reviewed on: 03/14/2011 Read More 
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Maybe I should thank Rep. Pete King

March 10, 2011
Tags: current events, history
This feels like time-warp territory, and the House Un-American Activities Committee is back in full swing. It's called the House Homeland Security Committee now, led by U.S. Rep. Pete King (R-NY) and the target of the new generation of hearings is radical Islam. But the template is clear, and its existence serves as proof that we, as a nation, have learned little from the errors of our past.

One of the points of my forthcoming book, The Fear Within: Spies, Commies, and American Democracy on Trial, is that U.S. government has a long history of cracking down on First Amendment (and other) rights during times of stress, a history Geoffrey Stone detailed in his Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime from the Sedition Act of 1798 to the War on Terrorism from 2004. So maybe I should be thankful these folks are bringing this dark past back to life.

The Los Angeles Times had a brief item about L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca's showdown with the committee today, and the dialog is straight from the McCarthy era.
Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca shot back at a congressman who warned him during a congressional hearing Thursday that a Muslim group the sheriff supports is affiliated with terrorists and is "using" him.

The reference to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, whose Southern California branch Baca has allied with, came during a controversial House hearing on the question of whether American Muslims are becoming radicalized.

"You are aware" that CAIR is affiliated with Hamas, Rep. Chip Cravaack (R-Minn.) said.

"No I'm not aware," Baca interrupted.

"Let me bring this to your attention ... I'm trying to get you to understand that they might be using you," Cravaack said.

Baca, noticeably irritated, told the congressman that he is aware of no criminal allegations have been made against CAIR. If there were any such allegations, he said, "bring them to court."

"We don't play around with criminals in my world," Baca said before the packed hearing.

Great response by Baca. But what's next? "Are you now, or have you ever been, a Muslim?" This is deplorable conduct by our elected representatives. Combine it with the rank opportunism of the anti-union push in Wisconsin, Ohio, and Tennessee, and the State of Michigan moving to give its governor the power to rule municipalities by fiat, and you have to wonder why more people in more places aren't exercise the First Amendment right to free assembly - while we still have it. Read More 
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On David Broder, and the passing of a class act

March 9, 2011
Tags: current events, politics, press
I've been in a bit of a funk since reading the news this morning that David Broder had died of complications from diabetes. He had, for decades, been one of the best and most influential political journalists in the country, a standing surpassed only by his gentlemanly and generous manner.

David's longtime colleague at the Washington Post, Dan Balz, wrote this very nice tribute summarizing neatly what made David so influential. I've been a fan of his work since the early 1970s, when I was first thinking about going into journalism, and was drawn by his political coverage. It was, as I mentioned to Balz in an email exchange earlier today, one of the reasons I gravitated to campaign coverage.

Two anecdotes. I crossed paths with David several times over the years, which was a bit of a rush for me. During one trip David asked me to join him for dinner in some remote spot where he, of course, had eaten many times before. His cell phone rang while we were at the table, and it was his wife. He chatted for a moment and then said he was having dinner with a friend and would have to call her back. He overstated the relationship (we barely knew each other) but it was a moment of personal pride, and one that I cherish, that he would use the word. His inclusiveness should be contagious.

Another time during the 2004 primaries David and I were on the same bus in some significant primary state (2004 Kerry campaign in South Carolina? Edwards' bus? I don't recall specifically, and the specifics don't really matter). I had complained about having to write two stories to be ready depending on what the primary day results would be. The LAT hadn't sprung for the full exit poll data, or at least wasn't forwarding it to me. Late in the afternoon David wandered back and asked if he could sit down next to me, then flipped open his notebook to where he had written down the exit polls through the second cycle and said something to the effect that it might help me decide which version of the story to spend the most time on. It's one thing to share with a colleague; something else to so generously help out someone who in theory is your competition. It was a small moment but obviously memorable moment, and indicative of what a class act David was, beyond being a tremendous journalist.

None of us is irreplaceable. But David was pretty damn close. Read More 
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A couple of other things to remember today

March 7, 2011
Tags: history
Photo from the Chicago Daily Tribune the day after the Ford Hunger March.
Those of you who follow me on Facebook (and if you don't, please do go over there and friend me up) know today is my birthday, an event I rarely spend much time celebrating. But I do take a certain pride in sharing the day with two notable events that appeal to some of my more radical impulses, and my belief in the power of collective action to make social and political change.

The first came on this day in 1932, a bitterly cold afternoon in Detroit. In the depths of the Great Depression, with hundreds of thousands of Detroiters out of work, local communists and other political radicals arranged for a march on the Ford Rouge plant in the adjoining city of Dearborn. The march was a demand for food, work, and other aid from Henry Ford and his auto business, built through the labor of Detroit workers. Ford had struck a recalcitrant position during the Depression (which I'm detailing in the Detroit: A Biography book project I expect to finish by the end of the month), refusing on principal to donate to local charities.

The march began under the watchful eye of Detroit police officers, but once it reached the Dearborn city line, all hell broke loose. First fire hoses, then guns, were turned on the marchers, who responded with fusillades of rocks. The bullets won. Four marchers were killed that afternoon; a fiifth died three months later of his injuries. The response from local police and the Wayne County district attorney: A crackdown on, and round up of, pro-union agitators in Detroit, and calls for the arrest of the national communist leader William Z. Foster who had the previous day encouraged Detroiters to join the march. None of the Dearborn police or Ford security men were held accountable. But the march became a rallying point for progressive activists who continued to push for aid for the starving working class in Detroit and elsewhere.

The second event came a generation later, in 1965, when some 600 Civil Rights activists had barely begun a protest march from Selma to Montgomery before the Alabama state police met them with clubs and tear gas (in the picture at left, future U.S. Rep. John L. Lewis is beaten bloody by police). The marchers were routed, but in their failure they helped catalyze a movement. Two weeks later, armed with a court acknowledgement of their right to march in protest, some 25,000 people walked from Selma to Montgomery demanding the extension of civil rights to African Americans. Five months later, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 into law.

As I said, a couple of other events that occurred on this day in which we should all take pride, and which, as a nation, we ought not forget. Read More 
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The Supreme Court, and noxious speech

March 2, 2011
Tags: current events, history
Credit: Steve Petteway, Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States.
There hasn't been much the current U.S. Supreme Court has done that strikes me as right, and reasonable, but this week they've hit two opinions that have been somewhat heartening.

The first was the decision that found corporations have no right to privacy when dealing with the government and regulators (AT&T had sought to keep public records sealed). This was a bit of a surprise given its earlier ruling on campaign spending that effectively equated corporations (and unions, which regular readers of this blog know I support at a genetic level) with individuals, and thus they have the right to spend what they want in political campaigns. Our republic is the worse for that one - elections are expressions of voters' sentiments, and giving corporations and unions free rein to spend perverts what should be a discussion among individual voters.

Then the Supremes followed with a dicier, but right, call in the case of those highly objectionable morons, the Phelps family, who run around the country proclaiming that God hates everything - including soldiers killed in foreign combat. It's an emotional issue, and today's ruling that protects the rights of the noxious to speak has lit up social media sites (my comments here, in fact, are reprised from a discussion on my Facebook page).

There are many reasonable people who believe the Phelpses should be muzzled, especially when they protest outside military funerals. My sentiments are with the families of the dead, but we as a society have to move beyond the emotional and stand with the protesters' right to protest, as noxious and twisted as they might be.

The problem lies in who gets to define the conditions under which free speech can be abrogated. I despise these protesters, same as I despised the neo-Nazis marching in Skokie, Illinois, a generation ago. But their First Amendment right to free speech is inviolable, as hateful as the exercise of it might be. Years ago there was a group in the midwest somewhere that found an ingenious way Read More 
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Jonathan Lethem and an enviable gig

February 28, 2011
Tags: writing, authors, fiction
A couple months ago I drove up to Pomona College near Los Angeles and sat down with author Jonathan Lethem in his new office, where he's now teaching (the resulting profile is here at Pomona College Magazine).

I have to admit to a stream of jealousy. Lethem has a great gig as the tenured Roy Edward Disney Professor in Creative Writing, where he teaches a couple of courses a semester to students who are serious about writing and literature, and has time carved out to pursue his own writing. In this environment, a steady gig for ANY writer is a Godsend (note to hiring committees: I'm available).

Lethem is a smart guy, self-aware and but not overly self-promoting, striking the right balance. We talked a lot about the writing process, and he made a point that syncs with one I make to aspiring writers when they ask about the actual process of sitting down to write. “Nobody is trying to stop you from writing," Lethem said about the distractions he's had to overcome throughout his career. "You just have to structure your day so that you get to it.”

And that is the process in a nutshell. If you're waiting for the muse to strike, you'll never write. If you're waiting for a big commission to come along, you'll never write. To be a writer, obviously enough, you have to write. There is always time; it's just a matter of where writing fits in on your list of daily priorities.

Chris Offutt once wrote something about his own early adulthood that he was an actor who never acted, a painter who never painted, and a poet who never wrote poetry, though he had pretensions to being all those things. He did, eventually, become a writer - by writing.

To be it, you have to do it. So what are you doing wasting you time reading blogs? Disconnect from the electronic world, and write. Read More 
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If this is 'class war,' who started it?

February 27, 2011
Tags: current events
Slowly, over the course of the past few decades, in the name of both corporate profits and lower consumer prices, we have bled our nation dry. We see the results in a jobless economic recovery - corporate and business profits are rising; domestic hiring remains moribund. We see it in the fiscal crises striking all levels of government - high unemployment means reduced spending and thus reduced sales and income tax revenues. We see it in the daily frustrations of tens of millions of working people pointing fingers at each other as being the problem - non-union versus union; legal citizens versus the undocumented.

The backlash in Wisconsin, which spread Saturday to state capitals elsewhere in the country (including many of my friends who went to Lansing, Michigan), is a significant moment in a long-building sense of outrage by those most affected by national economic polices that place corporate health and profits ahead of the health and sustainability of American families, and communities.

Robert Reich, labor secretary to President Clinton (who helped create some of the current troubles with his blind faith in NAFTA and other free-trade agreements), hit precisely at the key reason our economic recovery has been so weak. Even when corporations are profitable, the bulk of Americans are not sharing in it (and with loopholes that mean only one in three corporation pay income tax, this isn't helping government, either). In a consumer-based economy, the consumers have run out of money.
The truth is that while the proximate cause of America’s economic plunge was Wall Street’s excesses leading up to the crash of 2008, its underlying cause — and the reason the economy continues to be lousy for most Americans — is so much income and wealth have been going to the very top that the vast majority no longer has the purchasing power to lift the economy out of its doldrums. American’s aren’t buying cars (they bought 17 million new cars in 2005, just 12 million last year). They’re not buying homes (7.5 million in 2005, 4.6 million last year). They’re not going to the malls (high-end retailers are booming but Wal-Mart’s sales are down).
Reich blames Republicans. I don't. They certainly are at fault for this egregious attack on public employees' rights to collective bargaining, and for playing classes and ethnic groups off against each other. But the Democrats have been just as complicit in the rush to free trade, without concern for the devastating repercussions that created the current conditions.

But the blame for the underlying problems lies with us, as individual consumers and voters. As consumers,  Read More 
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Why Wisconsin matters to all of us

February 25, 2011
Tags: current events
Mine guards during the Colorado coal strike, the subject of my first book, Blood Passion: The Ludlow Massacre and Class War in the American West
The unfolding of the absurd events in Wisconsin hasn't had the same drama as the revolutions sweeping across North Africa, but it could have a longer-lasting effect on America's (growing) working and (shrinking) middle classes. Below is an op-ed I wrote last week but couldn't find a home for. It still deserves an airing, I think:

It’s one thing for a political leader to take a principled stance against the power of public employee unions in state and local politics. It’s another thing entirely when you threaten to unleash a military force against them. And in raising the specter of calling out the National Guard in a possible showdown with public employees in Wisconsin, Gov. Scott Walker has touched one of the most painful scars in American labor history.

No wonder union supporters have reacted with so much anger.

Why should we all care about what’s happening to state workers in snowy Wisconsin? Because Walker’s draconian move is not an isolated act. Similar, if less sweeping, proposals have aired in Ohio and Tennessee to try to undo what has become the recognized right of public workers to organize and, using the strength of their numbers, to improve the conditions and wages under which they work.

Walker’s efforts in Wisconsin are the most reactionary, and would limit about 175,000 state employees’ collective bargaining rights to wages alone, which in any case could not increase beyond the rise in the cost of living without a public referendum. That doesn’t leave much to negotiate over. And this clearly isn’t about saving the state money. It’s about power.

Political moves against workers’ rights further evidences the staggering gap between the relatively small tier of political and financial elites, and the growing ranks of the working poor. And for many, the sight of thousands of protesters  Read More 
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American idiocy, and Sharia law

February 23, 2011
Tags: current events, history
When I was writing The Fear Within, wedged in the back of my mind was that as venally idiotic as some of our political figures were in the 1940s and 1950s, at least those days were behind us. Now it looks like our national fear is back. But instead of torching civil liberties over political beliefs, the modern flashpoint is religion.

Tennessee legislators are pushing a bill that would make observing Islamic Sharia law a criminal offense punishable by 15 years in prison. Its ostensible aim is those who would act to replace the U.S. government with an Islamic state. Specifically, the proposed law says "knowing adherence to sharia and to foreign sharia authorities is prima facie evidence of an act in support of the overthrow of the United States government and the government of this state through the abrogation, destruction, or violation of the United States and Tennessee Constitutions by the likely use of imminent criminal violence and terrorism with the aim of imposing sharia on the people of this state."

Note that acts are not required, just belief. The parallels to the 1940 Smith Act, which was the basis for the prosecutions I wrote about, are eerie. Chillingly so. Then, membership in the Communist Party was, according to the federal government, a de facto effort to violently overthrow the U.S. government, since theoretical communism called for the violent destruction of the capitalist state. This law would say the same thing about followers of Sharia law - whose interpretations vary widely. Belief is tantamount to action, and thus illegal.

Yes, fundamentalist Sharia law carries some draconian elements. But so does the Christian Bible - eye for an eye, anyone? Modern, mature societies and religious observers are capable of placing such outdated directives within their proper historical context. When was the last time an adulterer was stoned in Tennessee? Or a thief's hand cut off? Or, conversely, a mosque burned or an abortion provider attacked by Christian fundamentalists? (For the record, I'm an atheist).

This is religious intolerance at its most naked, an attempt to codify hatred. Burning mosques apparently isn't drastic enough in Tennessee, a place where crimes in the name of Christian extremism occur far more often than crime rooted in Sharia. The problem lies not in the faith, but in extremism, regardless of the religion at hand. And we have laws governing extremist acts in our criminal codes.

These proposals to criminalize the expression of religious faith are preposterous. We're being governed by Chicken Littles, though in truth we do keep electing these bozos, so we only have ourselves to blame. And you have to wonder whether we should redraw some of our existing legal lines. Could it be a hate crime to propose a law that would criminalize faith? Read More 
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