Fair is Fair: how liberals can win the 2020 election

Fair is fair . . . until it isn’t. Let’s face it. Republican conservatives and Democrat liberals don’t get along in America. Every day conservative and liberal leaders argue that the other’s political platform is unfair to citizens because of this and that. But are either of the parties’ platforms really ‘fair’? And why does one party’s platform seem more ‘fair’ than the other? In the new book America the Fair, Dan Meegan dissects what Americans see as fair and how our approach to politics is affected by it.

Who we are and how we think. Meegan, a cognitive scientist, holds the reader’s hand as he explains why we all think the way we do when it comes to justice and politics.

““. . . liberals are more concerned about care than conservatives, and conservatives are more concerned about fairness than liberals.”

Need vs. Equity. Let’s say you are at a potluck and everyone is being served a soup they all brought ingredients for. However, not everyone was able to bring ingredients, so there ends up being people that contribute more to the dish than others. To go along with Meegan’s definition, liberals would be the people at the potluck who are more concerned with everyone getting fed rather than keeping track of who brought what to make the soup. They focus more on the “need” aspect of the equation rather than the “equity” portion. Conservatives, on other hand, would be more concerned about everyone’s serving being proportional to what ingredients they brought to make the soup in the first place.

The power of fairness. Whether we lean toward being more need or equity-minded affects when our personal injustice trigger – that little voice in the back of our heads that goes ‘that’s not fair!’ – decides to go off. This is what gives us our predisposition to what party platform we align ourselves to. For liberals wanting to utilize this cognitive behavior to overturn conservative power in America, Meegan offers his new book as “a how-to-guide for Democrats hoping to make that happen.”

The Key to Liberal Success: There’s a reason why the Republican party is one of the oldest political groups in America. Its conservative leaders know how to convey its values in a way that appeals to the equity-minded citizens, while making liberal policies seem ineffective. This not only secures them the support of the equity-minded citizens, but also the more squeamish need-minded citizens who get cold-feet on election day. For liberals to stand a better chance against conservatives, Meegan claims that they need to convince more equity-minded citizens to join their cause.

“. . . if enough of them abandoned the Republican Party for the Democratic Party, the former would be rendered powerless.”

Hate the sin not the sinner: “If liberals are going to compete with conservatives and win back America, they need to develop and use frames of their own that paint a very different picture.” Meegan doesn’t think that liberal policies themselves are the problem – the problem is that liberal leaders keep phrasing their policies in ways that only attract need-minded people, and not “equity” minded people. If liberals were to find a way to make their policies sound fairer for the latter, then they would be able to attract more support.

With a couple of psychological tweaks here and there, liberalism could invite a larger following and truly flourish in America. Then, claims Meegan, the country might take another step in the right direction for creating more fair society for everybody.

You can find more information about the author, or purchase America the Fair, here.

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Christine Gaba is a senior writing major at Ithaca College with a minor in English. When she is not reading or writing you can find her playing her clarinet, in the kitchen baking, or at a coffee shop with friends.

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Also of interest:

Cornell University Press Podcast 1869, Ep. 69 with Dan Meegan, author of America the Fair:

https://soundcloud.com/user-972332815/1869-ep-69-with-dan-meegan-author-of-america-the-fair

 

 

Announcing a New Initiative: Preorder Specials

We’ve been learning so much from you all about which of our books you love, what we can do better, how you like to buy them, and much more. And with all that new knowledge, we decided that we want to make it easier and better for you to order our about-to-be-published books direct from us.

So, starting right now you can preorder our new books that are publishing in May, June, and July of this year for 50% off the retail price.* The special price only lasts until the book is published. Moving forward, right here on this blog, each month we’ll release the list of books that can be preordered at the special price using the special code.

Visit our website, choose your books from the list below, and enter the right code in your shopping cart. It’s that simple. You’ll receive the book shortly after it arrives in our warehouse. So, not only will you get a great deal, but you’ll also be one of the cool kids on the block because you’ll have the book sooner than most!

Reflections on America Fifty Years After Guns at Cornell

I was part of the 1960s generation that fought for civil rights, and we attacked rigid social mores regarding personal choices such as hair length and sexual abstinence before marriage. “Do your own thing” was the mantra of the 1960s. But while we rightly wanted freedom for personal lifestyle choices, did the “Me Generation” really intend to abdicate responsibility for defining and teaching basic moral standards of right and wrong essential for both the individual and society? Did we really intend to abdicate our responsibility to teach the eternal, enduring significance of values that celebrate personal responsibility, personal discipline, personal accountability, hard work, moderation, courage, and cooperativeness?

Reflections on Martin Luther King, Jr.

As we celebrated Martin Luther King, Jr., recently, my mind went back to where I was fifty years ago. An angry young man in my senior year at Cornell University. There was no King holiday then, as King had been assassinated just the previous year. Mentally and emotionally I was prepared to be one of those African Americans who would meet my destiny in a struggle against oppression and injustice that was much bigger than any one of us, and even much bigger than all of us. I thought we were the generation fingered by history to draw the line on America’s ill treatment of African Americans. It had to stop with us, in our time.

Fifty years ago, America was still in the midst of a battle to secure equal treatment for African Americans in public accommodations, employment, housing, voting, and other civil rights. I remember as a child traveling with my family through southern states like Virginia and North Carolina, and my father stopping at gas stations where, before purchasing gas, he asked if we would be allowed to use the restrooms. Many Americans today forget that this country practiced that kind of segregation. Similarly, at that time African Americans were routinely denied employment opportunities simply because of race. Qualifications did not matter. Many Americans today forget that this country practiced that kind of discrimination. De jure segregation was enshrined in the law, and de facto institutional discrimination was the social norm in America.

The petty discrimination of being denied access to public facilities was intended to dehumanize African Americans, and to proclaim every day that we were different and inferior. And the systemic institutional denial of economic opportunities was intended to ensure that African Americans remained poor and powerless. And each previous decade as you step back through American history was typically more brutal towards African Americans.

But the purpose of reciting this history is not just to remind us of where we have been, but also to focus on how far we have come. It is important to know history, and to understand how the world we live in has been shaped by the past, but it is equally important not to be a prisoner of history. By that I mean there is no point in suffocating our potential for today and tomorrow with ongoing animosity over the grievances of the past. The burden is too heavy. Many racial, ethnic or religious groups have some plausible basis for resentment and animosity about some historical injustice. The historical injustices are not all morally equivalent, but it’s unlikely that we will ever achieve societal consensus on their relative hierarchy. So just as a family cannot heal unless it lets go of yesterday’s anger, so all Americans of every race and creed and ethnicity must be open to reconciliation and healing. If we don’t let go of our racial and social resentments, America will not achieve its potential as a multiracial, multiethnic, and religiously diverse democracy wherein all citizens live in freedom and civic equality.

It seems to me undeniable that African Americans, other minorities, women, and the LGBT community have educational, economic, and social opportunities available today which are unprecedented in American history. Does this mean that our country has overcome all its problems? Of course not! The legacy of hundreds of years of slavery, and physical as well as psychological abuse and neglect, created a scale of human misery and dysfunctionality which cannot be reversed in just fifty years. But is America moving in the direction of becoming the country envisioned in its noble founding documents – the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights – unequivocally yes!

When I left Cornell in 1972 after completing a graduate degree, I committed to living in accordance with Dr. King’s creed – I would choose my friends and associates based on the content of their character rather than the color of their skin. That’s a decision I’ve never regretted.

Thomas W. Jones is author of the forthcoming, From Willard Straight to Wall Street: A Memoir. He is the founder and senior partner of venture capital investment firm TWJ Capital. He previously served as Chief Executive Officer of Global Investment Management at Citigroup; Vice Chairman, President, and COO at TIAA-CREF; ad Senior Vice-President and Treasurer at John Hancock Insurance Company.

Shaping a City, Ithaca, New York: A Developer’s Perspective

At 320 Pages with 115 photographs, published by Cornell Publishing, an Imprint of Cornell University Press, you will find Shaping a City a fascinating behind the scenes look at why and how Ithaca, NY has grown from a mud flat at the head of Cayuga Lake to the successful miniature metropolis it is today. For Ithacan’s, it is our story, our history, starting in the early 1800’s, and focusing on the most recent 40 years of real estate development. For readers beyond Ithaca, it will become the roadmap for how to shape your own small town from a vacant, under-utilized cross-roads to a vibrant, dense, thriving and attractive small city, and possibly —like Ithaca as recognized in a score of national publications—, turn it into one of the “Best Small Cities in the country.”

This book is my story of financial survival as I began renovating old houses and went on to be selected by the City and Cornell University as the Preferred Developer for Collegetown. It is the story of City politicians building the Commons pedestrian mall on our main street in downtown in 1974, and then rebuilding it again from 2013 to 2015.

It is the stories of over a dozen major developers and their projects, which have contributed to the revitalization of Ithaca—John Novar, Jason Fane, Gus and Nick Lambrou, Andy Sciarabba, Bill Downing, Travis Hyde Properties, Schon  Bloomfield, David Lubin, Joe Daley, Marc Newman and Bryan Warren, John Guttridge, David Kuckuk, Neil Patel, and others.

It is the story of how a group of us salvaged Center Ithaca, the largest building in downtown out of bankruptcy, and how philanthropist Jeb Brooks; music producer Dan Smalls; and our company, Travis Hyde, with assistance from the Tompkins Trust Company and the Ithaca Urban Renewal Agency, saved the 1600 seat historic State Theatre, and the 200 year old historic Clinton House from foreclosure and certain demolition.

It is the story of Ithaca Neighborhood Housing and its significant role in creating affordable housing in our community. It is the story of Carl Haynes and the Tompkins Cortland Community College purchase of the M&T Bank Building for its Ithaca Campus and as a source of income for the College. It is the story of the creation of Coltivare, an upscale farm-to-bistro restaurant that serves as a training laboratory for the Tompkins Cortland Community College students. It is the story of why and how our oldest bank, Tompkins Trust Company, chose to consolidate its operations and construct a new 7-story office building downtown.

And primarily, it is the story of the BID, our local business improvement district, the Downtown Ithaca Alliance, for which I served as founding member and president. Our Executive Director, Gary Ferguson has guided us through the formation of two, ten year Strategic Plans that have been created by the stakeholders of downtown, based on professional feasibility studies, the findings of  retail and marketing consultants, and approved by the City Council.

We have recognized that it is arts, dining, and entertainment that drive downtown revitalization, and we have formed a Tax Abatement Program that stimulates downtown development. There is much to appreciate, and much to learn, as developers, city and county staff and representatives, local banks, and often local philanthropists, work together in a spirit of cooperation and collaboration to create what has been recognized as one of the Best Small Cities in America! 

City centers are an under-utilized resource in our country and I invite you to read my book, and learn how the principles and values developed in Ithaca and set forth in Shaping a City, can perhaps be replicated in your community.

 Featured event:

Join #CornellPress author Mack Travis for Gallery Night: Book Release for Mack Travis’ Shaping a City this upcoming December 7^th, 2019; an event hosted by Downtown Ithaca & The History Center in Tompkins County.

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About the author of this blog post: As one of Ithaca’s major developers, as one of the founders, and former president of Ithaca’s Business Improvement District, and as a frequent lecturer at Cornell’s Graduate Program in Real Estate, Mack Travis is uniquely qualified to write this 40-year look back at the people and projects that have shaped Ithaca.

Gerri Jones, Professor Cleese, and Me

Last summer, Gerri Jones called to tell me that Cornell Professor at Large John Cleese would be coming to Ithaca in September for a week. She told me that she had scheduled me for a public talk with Cleese on September 11^th at Bailey Hall that would become the last chapter of the book we were working on together.

Since joining this amazing Press in 2015, moments like this seemed to occur with some regularity. I attended a poetry workshop at Olin Library café with a former leader of the SDS at Cornell, a Nobel Laureate and an A.R. Ammons biographer. Today, I am surrounded by correspondence rejecting Vladimir Nabokov’s novel in verse and a ledger that holds the 1939 pencil-written royalty entries for the publication of The Nature of the Chemical Bond. I am also keenly aware at times of Cornell founder Henry Sage and his wife Susan who initially occupied the mansion where I work. Gerri Jones fit right in as part of an emerging entourage.

A small family of deer mingled outside my window looking in my direction as if waiting for an answer. Surely someone else would want the opportunity to have this conversation. Gerri confirmed that she had cleared it with the Provost’s office, and that the Provost would be introducing us both. I still didn’t believe it was going to happen.

More than one year after that call and the event that formed the final chapter of Professor at Large: The Cornell Years, Gerri Jones passed away on August 10^th, 2018. She was 68. She died from an infection in the hospital while being treated for leukemia.

This mystical and extraordinary woman who first alighted upon the second-floor landing of the Sage House during a folk concert never got to see her book get published. It was Gerri who brought one of the world’s most impressive and hilarious minds to Cornell over a span of seventeen years.

“Start thinking about a plan for the conversation,” she instructed me.

 

As it always was with Gerri, I knew what she meant. Avoid the cliched version of the Professor. Don’t spend a lot of time on Python—which I already knew anyway. If my words didn’t energize Gerri—she became bored and disinterested. She’d make a face. You had to elevate your game to be on the field with her. Those words reverberated in the weeks after the call. I dove into the Cleese canon of books, movies, and television shows. His mind came first. I read the manuscript of lectures and talks over and over.

While studying the Minister of Silly Walks, I recalled Gerri’s return to Sage House after the folk concert wearing knee-length boots and John Lennon shades. She carried a white shopping bag of Cleese talks and lectures on CDs. She told us about the never before published lecture entitled “The Sermon at Sage Chapel” that included a passage about “The Psychopaths for Christ.”

I received word of her passing and attended her funeral. She was supposed to be in remission now.

Through her friends, I came to discover that this whole episode was another glorious chapter in the amazing life of Gerri Jones. She could tilt the universe in any direction. She brought the Dalai Lama to Ithaca twice as the house mother to the Tibetan monks. She carried Kurt Cobain’s ashes back to Courtney Love after the monks had prepared them. She had even used one set as a door stop. She broke Reagan’s blockade of Nicaragua. She was the pride of Central Islip High on Long Island. To everyone there, she was simply “Ger.”

She loved Mardi Gras, dogs and Professor Cleese fiercely. They trusted each other and their chemistry was telepathic. She engineered a schedule that both challenged and protected him and left him with enough space to be creative. “I can’t read him,” he told Gerri during our second meeting after trying to discern the meaning of my facial expression. I can tell you that in that moment I felt absolute joy. My preparation for the talk had been rigorous and thorough. Professor Cleese had been talking about the brain and I leaned back in my chair and smiled. Yes, I had a little secret. I had known exactly what he was going to say before the words came out but I didn’t want to tell him that in the aftermath. Getting to know John Cleese is like learning how to play guitar. The chord structures are accessible, but they merely serve as a launch pad into an endless galaxy of improvisation.

I was ready for the public conversation and had enough confidence in his presence to suggest how the show was going to begin. After nearly falling off the chair with laughter, he agreed. Until now, Gerri was the only one I told this to in the hallway after we left Cleese that day. She and I have other secrets related to the book. Those we will keep. She swore me to it.

“We make a good team, don’t we?” She pinched my arm.

Photo courtesy of Slade Kennedy.

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About the author of this blog post: Dean Smith is the Director of Cornell University Press.

Happy Independence Day, India: Grassroots Resistance in India Past and Present

Since India won its independence in 1947, it has celebrated its victory over its bygone British colonial occupiers on August 15^th annually. In contemporary India the holiday is celebrated with parades, flag-raising ceremonies, and the singing of the national anthem, “Jana Gana Mana.” The festivities mark a celebration of the modern Indian state, but it is also day of remembrance and a repudiation of the repressive colonial powers of the past. Most of the princely states and regions that are now unified under the state flag of India were under the thumb of the British Raj for close to a century (and some lands had been under military occupation by the East India Company or other colonial interests for a least a hundred years before that). Thus, India is no stranger to foreign interventions, and it should be quite comprehensible that many Indians are still sensitive to soft and hard applications of power by outside influences.

Celebratory parade in India, photo by Jessica Falcone.

As I discussed in my book, Battling the Buddha of Love: a Cultural Biography of the Greatest Statue Never Built, when an American-based transnational Tibetan Buddhist group of mostly non-heritage Buddhists sought to build the biggest statue in the world, they became embroiled in a dispute with local Indians in Kushinagar. The Buddhist group, the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), wanted to build a 500-foot behemoth Maitreya statue in Kushinagar, the site of the Shakyamuni Buddha’s death about 2500 years ago.

A Buddha statue in Kushinagar, photo by Jessica Falcone

The “Save the Land Movement,” comprised of rural Indian farming families and their advocates, argued that the land acquisition of several hundred arable acres that had been organized by the state government for the Maitreya Project would be a complete disaster for those affected. In the process of arguing against the statue, locals said that even if they did consent to sell their farms, which most refused to do outright, the state was forcibly taking their land at far less than market value. While some Indian farmers felt that the project could offer some benefits to the local economy, they were almost in total agreement that the proposed process of land acquisition would be so imbalanced that they themselves would be shunted aside long before any potential benefits trickled down to their villages.

During my years of research on the Maitreya Project, I was often compelled by informants to think about how such a compulsory land acquisition on behalf of a foreign institution was not unlike a neocolonial incursion.

When I embarked upon ethnographic work in India in the mid-aughts, I did not seek to study the echoes of colonialism, but as many scholars in the region will attest, postcolonial India is haunted by the past, especially insofar as domination of the poor by the rich has continued unabated, albeit under new globalized, neoliberal, neocolonial guises. Even armed with the intellectual understanding of this history and cultural context, I naively hoped that the project that I was studying would be different. But my hope that the cultural logics of Buddhist morality would set this intervention on a more deliberate, ethical path were not borne out in fact. Most surprising to me, FPMT and its Maitreya Project, seemed utterly ambivalent about the local resistance movement directed against them.

A village protesting against the Maitreya Project, photo by Jessica Falcone.

An elderly woman in Kushinagar who counted herself as an anti-Maitreya Project protestor told me that she remembered Gandhi’s anticolonial protests from her childhood. She told me during our interview that they had beat the British and they would fight against this Maitreya Project too. On another occasion, I was approached by a local man, let’s call him Sanjay, who likened the Maitreya Project to a foreign parasite. He said, “We will win against the Maitreya Project. I am 100 percent sure that we will be successful. [Around 1600 CE] the East India Company came from London. The East India Company was also a ‘project.’ The Maitreya Project is like the East India Company.” When I hastily wished him and his peers well in their struggle against the Maitreya Project, he seemed skeptical and anxious.

And so, on the occasion of this year’s celebration of Indian independence, as I find myself thinking about Indian resistance movements past and present, allow me to share what Sanjay said to me by way of farewell, “We are stronger now. You tell them that we can’t be colonized again.”

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About the author of this blog post: Jessica Falcone is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Kansas State University where teaches about South Asian and Asian-American cultural and religious worlds. Her book, Battling the Buddha of Love: a Cultural Biography of the Greatest Statue Never Built, will be released on September 15, 2018 by Cornell University Press. Since the release date of Manikarnika: the Queen of Jhansi was postponed until next year, she will be celebrating India’s Independence day by watching the movie, Lagaan, for the hundredth time.

What Does Faith Demand? Elizabeth Seton and the Beliefs of Others

This summer has found Americans arguing over religion. What do we think of a baker who refused, on grounds of religious liberty, to make a cake celebrating a gay couple’s marriage? Should Catholic hospitals consider offering contraceptive services if they’re the only hospital in their region? Is it ever a good idea to turn to Scripture in order to justify or criticize government policies? Arguments like those made news. Other moments, in which someone looked with kindness, indifference, or contempt at a neighbor’s hijab, or crucifix, or flying spaghetti monster bumper sticker, didn’t. But in their daily accumulation, those small encounters also make history: the history of how people who disagree on things they consider supremely important, decide how and whether they will live in peace.

Next month Cornell University Press will publish Elizabeth Seton, my biography of the woman who in 1975 became the first native born American citizen to be canonized in the Roman Catholic Church. Seton (1774-1821) changed her mind about her beliefs more than once during her life, and she also changed her mind about whether what she believed in should affect the society around her. As a very young woman, Seton laughed at the idea that faith needed any particular doctrinal content: if one found one’s way to cheerfulness and harmony, then all was well. This form of religion neither inspired Seton nor offended anyone else.

 

In her early thirties, after years of personal tragedy and spiritual inquiry, Seton converted to Catholicism. Her new faith allowed her to create a women’s religious community whose spiritual daughters serve others to this day. It also left Seton ablaze with certainty that only those who believed as she did were on the path to salvation. Her efforts to convince others of this angered many in her cosmopolitan Manhattan circle: they thought that faith should be held privately, its edges smoothed to avoid friction. Seton felt her friends’ and family’s insistence that she should keep her faith to herself was an assault on her beliefs and good intentions. Friends and family found her proselytizing a violation of their right to be left alone.  Everyone felt unfairly judged.

Within a decade, Seton had once again changed her mind. And although she continued to believe that the Catholic Church was the only safe path to God, she no longer tried to persuade others to follow it. Neither the venerable magisterium of the Catholic Church nor the First Amendment, its ink still damp, deserve the credit for this view; Seton’s growing desire for harmony and her growing spiritual humility do. She now believed that her faith imposed a different kind of obligation than she’d first believed, an obligation to offer specific, loving attention to those around her. Nurturing relationships, not spreading doctrine, would be the external manifestation of her faith. She wanted, she wrote, to “constantly find occasions of rendering [others] good offices and exercising kindness and good will towards them.”

As the summer’s arguments show, living harmoniously when people disagree vehemently will always be challenging. So will the act of creating a faith community that makes no unwanted claims on those outside it, but is meaningful to those within. Yet I think often of the principle Elizabeth Seton set forth late in her life: “Fear nothing so much as not to love enough.” Amid our many (and necessary) arguments, this seems like a promising place to start.

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Related upcoming event of interest: Living History Tour 

For more on Elizabeth Seton visit:

Daughters of Charity Federation

National Shrine of Elizabeth Seton

About the author of this blog post: Catherine O’Donnell is an historian at Arizona State University.  She writes and teaches about early America, religion, and the Atlantic World.

THE HEADSCARF IN THE UNITED STATES (or the celebration of freedom on this 4th of July)

The Fourth of July is so close you can almost sense it. And to most people, it feels like freedom and independence. But how does it feel to the Muslim American women wearing a headscarf (or hijab) on that day?

The question about the headscarf, its meaning, and, more than anything, the experience of the women that wear it, has fascinated me for a long time. Maybe because some people don’t seem to think much about it, beyond the simple act of wearing a scarf in itself; maybe because to others, it evokes sentiments of distrust and anxiety, led mainly by stereotypical images propagated on TV.

In April 2014 I traveled to Turkey and asked questions about this practice myself. Because I knew little about it, I was surprised to find out that most Muslim women embraced the covering of their hair, and sometimes their whole body, as an expression of their identities. They talked about religious liberty, their sense of femininity carefully embroidered and woven in cloth.

A few years later, as I strolled the streets of Casablanca, Morocco, I was witness to the same phenomena. Arm in arm, gossiping in their burkas, or with smiling eyes in a hijab, women were voicing their beliefs. How is it that I had not seen through the veil of my own cultural bias, unable to understand the subtleties of wearing a head-covering scarf?

The issue of Islamic head-covering and the political and social debates on the topic are as multiple as they are complex. This 4^th of July, I invite those interested in unveiling its construction and political consequences, to listen to our latest podcast with Bozena Welborne, Aubrey Westfall, and Sarah Tobin, co-authors of The Politics of the Headscarf in the United States.

On this Independence Day, their book provides us with a chance to hear from Muslim American women, to learn about their values and beliefs, and how they express their identities in a country that aims to be the model of democratic pluralism.

 

 

“I love identifying myself as that, as a Muslim American, especially in that order, too, because this is my country and my religion is the most important to me. But after that, like . . .  this is where I was born, this is where I was raised and I was born with these values, American values of tolerating freedom of expression and freedom of religion and freedom of the press, and I think that’s one reason why our country is so successful is because we’re tolerating so much diversity and therefore people from all over the world can come and bring their talents into our country. So, I take a lot of pride in that phrase, Muslim American.”

—The Politics of the Headscarf in the United States (p.162)

 

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Recommended artist to follow with this post:

http://www.boushraart.com/

 

About the author of this blog post: Adriana Ferreira is the Social Media Coordinator at Cornell University Press. She is grateful to have had the opportunity to travel around the world and meet people from various countries, with different cultural values and religious beliefs, and to be part of a diverse, multi-cultural and heterogeneous community.

 

A Photographer Grows in Brooklyn

Before leaving California in October 1970, to return to NYC, I bought a 35mm camera at a San Jose pawnshop. Because it was the heavier of the two cameras in my $30 price range, I chose a Nikon rangefinder. I was lucky, 22 years old and wanted to be a photographer.

Back home, I took a photography class at the School of Visual Arts, a job with the telephone company and began photographing my family and friends in South Brooklyn. I never felt comfortable at SVA so I rented a small storefront in Sunset Park and set up my own black and white darkroom. I bought a paperback book on photography, and carried it everywhere, reading and re-reading every section.

I returned to college and graduated in 1972. Over the next few years, I completed a Masters degree and worked as a cab driver, cameraman, waiter, photographer’s assistant, bartender and carpenter. But no matter what I did to earn money, I kept photographing. I made my own prints in a variety of darkrooms – almost always ill equipped for washing big prints. So I often used a bathtub.

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Looking back on it now, I smile thinking of my eager young self. I walked around South Brooklyn with my camera and a hand-held light meter, recording each exposure in a 2 x 3 inch spiral notebook. I enjoyed working as a photo assistant in a Manhattan commercial studio, but deep down always preferred photographing in my neighborhood.

Somewhere around 1975, one of my mother’s cousins gave me a Speed Graphic. This classic camera – made famous by Wegee and familiar to me as the logo of the New York Daily News – used 4×5 inch sheet film.

It was quite a while before I was ready to meet the challenges of photographing with a large format camera but I learned.

When I began learning about the craft and art of photography, I was influenced by Robert Leverant’s book Zen in the Art of Photography: “A camera is an extension of ourselves. An appendage to bring us closer to the universe.”

My universe in the 1970’s was South Brooklyn where my ongoing interest in photographing working class family life and religious expression began. Although I photograph throughout NYC with a variety of cameras, I still like to shoot family events in BxW with an old medium format camera.

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About the author of this blog post: Larry Racioppo was born and raised in South Brooklyn, and he has been photographing throughout New York City since 1971. Living in Rockaway, NY, with his wife, interior designer Barbara Cannizzaro, and their dog, Juno, he can’t believe his good luck.

You can pre-order and learn more about his upcoming book, BROOKLYN BEFORE, here.

What happens when we feed birds?

Feeding wild birds is probably something so familiar, so everyday, so commonplace—so tame perhaps—that we can forget that this is a fundamentally artificial activity. In virtually every case, the types of food we use to attract birds to our house yards—typically mixtures of various seeds but sometimes leaf-overs from a family meal—are entirely different to those they consume in their natural diet. Our feeders also concentrate birds into closer interactions than they would normally tolerate, often bringing together species which would never have anything to do with each other. Even the structure of the feeder itself is starkly unnatural: a swaying glass cylinder or a conspicuous platform, typically in an open and potentially dangerous setting.

Celebrating Our Cornell University Authors

As Commencement Weekend (May 22–24) fast approaches, it seems an opportune time to highlight some recent books whose authors and editors teach at Cornell University. The range of topics represented in this selection of books by Cornell professors published by the Press since 2013 (and forthcoming in Fall 2015) provides a glimpse of the broad scope of both our list and the university’s curriculum:

Mobilizing against Inequality: Unions, Immigrant Workers, and the Crisis of Capitalism, edited by Lee H. Adler (ILR School), Maite Tapia, and Lowell Turner (ILR School)

Cornell: A History, 1940–2015 by Glenn C. Altschuler (American Studies) and Isaac Kramnick (Government)

Introductory Food Chemistry by John W. Brady (Food Science)

Empire of Language: Toward a Critique of (Post)colonial Expression by Laurent Dubreuil (Romance Studies) 

The Thirtieth Anniversary of the Phelps Dodge Strike

This summer marks the thirtieth anniversary of the long, often violent, community-rending—but for women, in particular, sometimes empowering—Phelps Dodge Strike in the copper towns of Arizona. Cornell University/ILR Press authors Barbara Kingsolver (Holding the Line) and Jonathan Rosenblum (Copper Crucible) both wrote books about the Phelps Dodge strike that continue to be taught today at universities like Gonzaga, University of Minnesota, George Mason, and elsewhere. Professor Anna O’Leary, a leader of the women’s auxiliary of Morenci Local 616 who teaches at University of Arizona in Tucson, writes in a letter to the Latinopia blog that “…[M]any striker families moved on to other places in search of work and a new life. For many, it was a period of uncertainty and struggle and adaptation. However, being able to keep our heads held high in knowing that we were on the right side of history, helped in this period of adjustment as they brought other rewards to our children and a different future that had been difficult to envision at the time.

Rosenblum asked Morenci Miners Local 616 former president Angel Rodriguez to write a few words about why, alongside economic matters, his members belonged to the union:

“30 years ago on June 30, 1983, over 2,000 miners went on strike against the copper giant, Phelps Dodge (PD) Corporation at its Morenci, Ajo, Douglas and Bisbee operations and its refinery in El Paso, Texas. Copper miners at PD had gone on strike every three years. The general feeling among union leaders was optimism that in this round of negotiations we could avert a strike. The copper industry was feeling the effects of a slow economy and a market glut of copper worsened by foreign copper imports. According to the industry, the price of copper was not enough to cover the costs of producing the red metal and still make a profit. At the time, I had been President of Local Union 616 since 1977.

The company was proposing to terminate the 1980-83 contract and all other agreements, settlements, letters of understanding, dating back to the 1950’s…The company’s proposals were an obstacle to any meaningful negotiations on any level as they were steadfast and unbending. They weren’t looking for concessions, they wanted total capitulation. Thinking back, this was one time where our unity worked against us. At the time, we were firm in our position that whatever pattern was set by one of the other copper companies, that would be the basis for a settlement not only for us, but all the other copper industry negotiations. . . . The company had hired scabs to replace us and eventually led them to petition for a decertification vote. Needless to say, all the unions overwhelmingly lost the election, After 32 months, strikers were placed on the preferential hiring list and eventually many were recalled and resumed working for the company without union representation. The strike was a bitter strike with striker on scab and scab on striker violence and police brutality. In short, the aftermath was a divided community where families and long-time childhood friends remained bitterly divided. A way of life was destroyed.”

Rodriguez underlined what that way of life had meant to the mining community, especially the political participation of Mexican Americans:

“The union became the vehicle for Mexican Americans to run for political office and win elections to city, county and school boards and in some cases, state offices. It instilled the value and importance of being registered and voting in elections to elect their supporters to public office. Membership in the union was an empowering experience that gave the miners and their families the ability to standup and fight for the right for their children to speak Spanish when not in class at school without being punished. They fought for the right to walk into the movie theater and sit in any area other than designated/segregated area. They fought for the right for their children to go to the swimming pool on any day of the week, not only on the day before the pool was to be drained, so the Anglo kids could go swimming in ‘clean’ water the following week. They were able to go bowling where previously that had been denied service at the bowling alley, unless they were working there. The union empowered the miners to desegregate the restaurants that didn’t serve ‘Mexicans’ and be served. The miners’ families fought for the right to use the public library in Morenci.
In the midst of the hardships on the miners and their families, they always found a way to alleviate their hardships by engaging in community events that entertained them and helped them mix the good with the bad. It strengthened their bond.
What workers could accomplish once they felt the power a union could bring them!”

Recommended Reading List for the New SEIU President

As Mary Kay Henry begins her tenure as the President of the Service Employees International Union, we’d like to suggest the following ILR Press titles for information, guidance, and inspiration—

A New New Deal: How Regional Activism Will Reshape the American Labor Movement by Amy B. Dean and David B. Reynolds

Power in Coalition: Strategies for Strong Unions and Social Change by Amanda Tattersall

Working for Justice: The L.A. Model of Organizing and Advocacy by Ruth Milkman, Joshua Bloom, and Victor Narro (editors)

A Shameful Business: The Case for Human Rights in the American Workplace by James A. Gross

Building More Effective Unions, Second Edition by Paul F. Clark

Safety in Numbers: Nurse-to-Patient Ratios and the Future of Health Care by Suzanne Gordon, John Buchanan, and Tanya Bretherton

Counter Culture: The American Coffee Shop Waitress by Candacy A. Taylor

Global Unions: Challenging Transnational Capital through Cross-Border Campaigns by Kate Bronfenbrenner (editor)

The Sex of Class: Women Transforming American Labor by Dorothy Sue Cobble (editor)

From Predators to Icons in the New Yorker

From Predators to Icons: Exposing the Myth of the Business Hero by Michel Villette and Catherine Vuillermot is prominently featured in Malcolm Gladwell’s article “The Sure Thing” in the January 18, 2010 issue of the New Yorker. An abstract is available here: The Sure Thing

Here’s an excerpt:
“Michel Villette and Catherine Vuillermot set out to discover what successful entrepreneurs have in common. They present case histories of businessmen who built their own empires . . . and chart what they consider the typical course of a successful entrepreneur’s career. . . . The truly successful businessman, in Villette and Vuillermot’s telling, is anything but a risk-taker. He is a predator, and predators seek to incur the least risk possible while hunting.”

On the Irish Waterfront featured in the Wall Street Journal

Edward T. O’Donnell reviewed On the Irish Waterfront: The Crusader, the Movie, and the Soul of the Port of New York by James T. Fisher in the September 9, 2009 Wall Street Journal. Here’s an excerpt:

“It may be hard for some to imagine an era when the waterfronts clustered around New York City constituted America’s dominant commercial port. Yet as late as the 1950s the region’s 900 piers—spread over Manhattan’s West Side, South Brooklyn, and Hoboken and Jersey City, N.J.—handled more cargo than any port in the world. This is the setting for James T. Fisher’s On the Irish Waterfront, a fascinating work of history that explores the rise of New York’s commercial port from the early 1900s to the 1950s and the corruption that eventually infiltrated all levels of the cargo business, until a crusading priest helped to put a stop to it—and inspired a classic film along the way.”

Read the whole review here.

Counter Culture in Publishers Weekly

Great review of Counter Culture: The American Coffee Shop Waitress by Candacy A. Taylor in September 7, 2009 online edition of Publishers Weekly:

“Oral historian, photographer and former waitress Taylor turned her aching joints into the springboard for a mission: uncovering the experiences of diner waitresses in this sociological overview. Most are “lifers,” now senior citizens who abhor the idea of retirement. Others may see these women as uneducated service workers, but waitresses see themselves as psychologists, nurses, and family to their beloved regulars, who expect a little sass with their ham and eggs. Along with their extraordinary work ethic and oversized personalities, there are reminders of the occupational reality of below-minimum wages (which must be supplemented by substantial tips) and lack of medical and retirement benefits (which might be one reason these lifers just can’t stay away from their greasy spoons). With color photographs (mostly by Taylor) of waitresses in their diners on almost every page plus feisty first-person anecdotes about how the women handle nasty customers and customers who sneak out without paying the bill (one waitress threw a ketchup bottle at them), this unique perspective is much like the professional diner waitress–difficult to pigeonhole, impossible to ignore.”

Counter Culture was also featured as one of the “Indie Top 20” books in Publishers Weekly on August 31:
“This book has been eight years and 26,000 miles in the making, and we are very proud to be publishing it,” says publicist Jonathan Hall. What appeals to Ron Watson, lead buyer of the university press group at Ingram, about Taylor’s photographic homage to career waitresses is that it offers “great social history in a very commercial package at a bargain trade paperback price.”

Condensed Capitalism on Truthout

On the Truthout blog, Condensed Capitalism: Campbell Soup and the Pursuit of Cheap Production in the Twentieth Century by Daniel Sidorick is reviewed by Seth Sandronsky, who points out the timeliness of this particular example of well-done labor history:

“This book is useful to the Facebook generation. It is entering a labor market where owners use automation and the speed-up to intensify the working day and wring more profits from the increased productivity. It almost sounds like the 1930’s, when workers at Campbell and at firms across the US rose up to form labor unions where none existed. Almost.”

Read the whole review here.

James T. Fisher speaks about Karl Malden in the Irish Echo

In an article published before the news of Karl Malden’s death was known, Peter McDermott of the Irish Echo interviews James T. Fisher, author of On the Irish Waterfront: The Crusader, the Movie, and the Soul of the Port of New York, about the Rev. John M. “Pete” Corridan. Corridan, the priest upon whom Malden’s character in On the Waterfront was modeled, died 25 years ago, on July 1, 1984:

Remembering Fr. Pete

Agitate! Educate! Organize! on PopMatters

On the PopMatters blog, Emily F. Popek reviews Agitate! Educate! Organize!: American Labor Posters by Lincoln Cushing and Timothy W. Drescher. She writes: “The core of this book is obviously the images it contains. Vivid, striking, colorful, arresting and at times even shocking, these posters speak loudly with voices of sorrow, righteousness, defiance and humor. Having such images recorded in digital form and archived with information about when, where and by whom they were created is of incalculable value to those who study American history or the history of populist visual art forms.” Read the whole review here.