A genius way to fight far-right book bans

And — gasp! — consequences for the Supreme Court?

Welcome to a Monday edition of Progress Report.

I just got back to New York after a weekend spent in the north of England, where I spent both Saturday and Sunday watching football, meeting people, and being honored by a community for my work on their behalf.

The circumstances of the trip, which followed an intensive year of research and investigating, as well as a bit of luck, require a bit of a longer explanation. I’m working on that now, and will send something good with the next newsletter, out in the next day or so.

Tonight’s newsletter is simply too crowded, as we’ve got a large feature interview and other headlines — there’s some breaking Supreme Court-related news that needs some real attention, among other things.

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Unfortunately, that’s not sustainable, so starting in November, new premium subscriptions to the newsletter will cost $6/month and $60/year. This is the smallest increase possible.

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Gov. Ron DeSantis’s Free State of Florida reached a new level of liberty this past summer when it was officially named the state with the most book bans in the nation. According to PEN America, Florida hit over 1400 book bans across its public schools and libraries between July 2022 and June 2023, good for an enormous 40% of the national total.

Florida’s achievement in suppression has been enabled by DeSantis and ex-pal Randy Fine’s obnoxiously named Stop WOKE Act as well as the statewide infestation of Moms for Liberty, which has seized hold of school boards and made life even more miserable for schoolchildren there. The images of school libraries with bare shelves, published in this newsletter months ago, ahead of this new school year, suggests that Florida’s more likely to extend its lead than experience a sudden renaissance in its appreciation for literature.

With a Florida Democratic Party in shambles, the resistance to the scholastic totalitarianism has been cobbled together by various groups doing the noble grunt work of hauling books around and holding giveaways in various communities. This month, that effort received a major boost from booksellers, the internet, and potentially, you.

BannedBooksUSA.org, which went live at the beginning of October, is a project designed to deliver banned books to people specifically in Florida. Powered by user donations, the site allows anyone to choose one of 600 banned books, pick a recipient, and have it shipped to their door, all for the cost of shipping. Donations are also targeted toward independent book retailers (more on that below) and organizations in Florida.

The site is the brainchild of Andy Hunter, the founder of indie bookseller platform Bookshop.org, Kayak.com founder Paul English, and Joyce Linehan, a member of the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners. Progress Report spoke earlier this month with Hunter about the project, how it’s performed thus far, the broader book banning movement, and their long-term plans.

Progress Report: How did this project get started? Whose idea was it?

Hunter: I think it was Paul's idea, that in response to book bans, people who are in communities where these books are being banned should just be able to get a free copy. And so they reached out to us because they were looking for a partner who could actually provide the books. And we thought it was a great idea. It's a great way to thumb our nose at the book-banners, and by providing the books for free, we’re making sure that there aren't economic hurdles for people who want to read these books.

So it's kind of a it's a twofer. You get to defy the book bans and get it into communities where these books are being suppressed, and on top of that, you also get them to economically disadvantaged communities and people who otherwise might not be able to afford these books.

What are the mechanics of this? Can you send anybody a book for free? Could I send them to the members of Moms for Liberty?

Hunter: The donations pay for the books and the books that are ordered have to be delivered in Florida. So if you're in Florida and you want to buy a book for yourself, you can do that, or if you know somebody in Florida who wants the book, you can buy it for them. The only restriction that we have is that we ask that people make sure the recipient wants the book — we don't people buying books for people who don't know they're coming or haven't agreed to receive them. We ask that somebody 18 years or older has agreed to receive the book.

Beyond that, anybody in Florida can order one or anybody can order one for somebody in Florida, they can also order them for school libraries in Florida or for public libraries or institutions. Anybody who could use one of these books can can get one.

So Bookshop.org site is a platform and conduit for indie bookshops — are they the ones fulfilling these sales and shipping the books?

We’re the ones who send the books. We do want to support independent bookstores, so what we're doing is taking 10% of the cover price of all these books and putting in the fund that is going to be donated to local bookstores in Florida. That way, we're supporting local bookstores at the same time that we're shipping these books, because we don't want to cut them out. It’s great to give away free books, but the stores that need to sell books, we want to make sure that they're involved too.

How has traffic been? Are people taking to it?

Hunter:We've shipped thousands of dollars worth of books. I think, at this point, over $5,000 worth of books have been shipped. And over $3,000 of new donations have come in [ed note: it has since doubled to more than $6000]. It was kicked off with $100,000 donation from Paul English, and so far, it seems like fundraising is almost keeping pace with the books being shipped as well.

We’re hoping we can make it self-sustaining, and then maybe expand to other states like Texas that also have active book bans going on.

As someone who runs a book retailer platform as your day job, have you seen a significant increase in books that have been banned by schools?

Hunter: I think that the book bans generally increase the sales of the books that are being banned. That's what I've seen so far. I don't know if Ron DeSantis is really trying to suppress these books, or if they're just kind of creating this culture war and noise to distract from other issues and to fundraise. But if they are actually trying to get people to stop reading these books, they're failing miserably, because if anything, they're just giving these books more visibility.

A book like the graphic novel adaptation of The Diary of Anne Frank has definitely gotten new life because of the attempts to ban it. I think a book like Gender Queer has gotten a ton of attention because of the attempts to ban it. I think that Toni Morrison would be an established member of the canon no matter what, but because of the book bans, people are so outraged that Toni Morrison is on the list, she’s just in the news more. People are talking about how important a book The Bluest Eye or Beloved is, and that's good.

I think the book bans are terrible. But I think it's good that people are outraged and talking about how important Toni Morrison is as a byproduct of this.

Do sales appreciably increase in particular places?

Hunter: The bans receive national news attention, and the national news attention gives more exposure to the book. So it's not like we see a ton more [sales] in Florida or Texas where the bans are very active. But BannedBooksUSA.org, which is the site that we helped launch, is explicitly only sending books to Florida residents.

So far, it's exceeded our expectations in terms of sales and fundraising for the first week, we're really happy with how much we’ve been able to do. And those books are going directly to Florida residents. And there definitely seems to be a ton of interest.

Have you heard from any pissed off lawmakers or conservatives?

Hunter We've only gotten positive feedback from we've heard from librarians and from groups like Florida Freedom to Read. And from booksellers in Florida, it's been very positive. We haven't gotten any kind of response yet from, from politicians. Certainly nothing from book banners.

You mentioned wanting to do something in Texas at some point. Is there a timeline on that? Do you want to take it national?

We would love to have it scale. I think it's important to stand up the book bans wherever they happen, and some of the laws in Texas are even scarier the ones in Florida. Teachers in Texas have been fired for teaching these books and they're trying to make anybody who supplies these books liable for, so they can be fined or punished.

If you're a small bookstore, if you're a library, or you're a school in Texas and you provide one of these books to somebody who wants to read them, there’s a chance to that you can be fined or fired, and those kind of laws are extremely chilling. Even worse than pulling a book from a library shelf, if you're going to be driven out of business if you sell one of these books to a school, that’s even scarier.

Would you be able to avoid that by being out of state?

Hunter: No, I think we would be liable. I guess we would just fight it. I mean, that's what the American Booksellers Association is doing. They're going to court and going into the legal battle, because there are some things that are worth fighting for. And that's one of them.

It seems like most people would back you — the book banners represent just a small number of lunatic parents, really.

Hunter: It's just so insane to me that they're focused on books in a world where parents give their kids iPads and send them off into their rooms and they can go to all kinds of violent games or pornography or whatever. They’re all giving these phones to their kids, but what's really dangerous is they they read Toni Morrison? They should be getting on their knees and thanking God if they catch their kid reading Toni Morrison.

You can donate, send, or request a book at BannedBooksUSA.org.

🤯 Don’t look now, but it seems as if Senate Judiciary Committee chair Dick Durbin is considering the possibility of actually doing his job.

A mere six months after the lawyer for billionaire Nazi memorabilia collector Harlan Crow told Durbin to take a hike, the Illinois Democrat and his vice chair, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, have threatened to subpoena Crow if he doesn’t produce a list of all the gifts, loans, and other treats he’s provided Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas over the years. Crow has gone so far as to offer a little sampling of the most recent gifts and trips given to Thomas, but refuses to disclose them all.

“By accepting these lavish, undisclosed gifts, the justices have enabled their wealthy benefactors and other individuals with business before the Court to gain private access to the justices while preventing public scrutiny of this conduct,” Durbin and Whitehouse said. “It is imperative that we understand the full extent of how people with interests before the Court are able to use undisclosed gifts to gain private access to the justices.”

They also threatened to subpoena Federalist Society sicko Leonard Leo, who masterminded the far-right takeover of the judiciary and organized an Alaskan fishing trip that was by Samuel Alito. The third target of the probe, conservative moneyman Robin Arkley II, paid for Alito’s journey

The committee could vote on issuing the subpoenas by November 9th. It’ll take a bare majority to pass, so no Republicans need be involved. I’m still skeptical — who knows what they’ll ask these evil fellas — and don’t think an inquiry about the deep rot of corruption in the Supreme Court can be limited to some private questioning.

🗳️ Voters are making their voices heard in Ohio, where early voting is up a tick from the unusually large turnout for the special election in August.

Once again, the rush is being driven by a constitutional amendment related to abortion rights. After Republicans’ attempt to sabotage the amendment process failed miserably this summer, Ohioans are now voting on a constitutional amendment to codify abortion rights in the state constitution.

There have already been 200K early votes cast, of which 110K have been cast via absentee ballot; at this point in August, the total sat at 192K votes submitted, with 93K of them sent by mail.

Secretary of State Frank LaRose’s office decided to call both referendum Amendment 1, clearly in hopes of confusing pro-choice voters, who had to vote no in the first round and yes in this one.

The GOP, very much aware that it’s on the losing side of this issue, has been trotting out sad attempts to trick voters all fall. Just this weekend, Gov. Mike DeWine suggested that if Ohioans voted down the constitutional amendment, perhaps the legislature would agree to add exceptions for rape and incest to the six-week ban that was passed in 2019 but is currently on hold while under review by the state Supreme Court.

The pondered-upon exceptions are both meaningless — a six-week ban shuts down clinics and makes most surgeons too terrified to consider the procedure — and almost certainly a head fake anyway. The Ohio Supreme Court is dominated by conservatives, making it likely that it will uphold the ban, and the state legislature is once again so gerrymandered that the Republican supermajority is very unlikely to feel enough pressure to pass any changes.

🚗 💪 The UAW’s first ever simultaneous strike of the Big Three is over — at least for now — after reaching tentative agreements with GM and Stellantis,

As in the deal struck with Ford late last week, both GM and Stellantis agreed to provide at least a 25% pay raise for all workers over the course of the four-and-a-half year contracts, with a 33% maximum pay raise going to long-time employees. All three deals also returns the annual cost of living adjustments that the companies had eliminated when they were bailed out by the federal government in 2007.

Those terms alone are light years better than the pattern that was set during the economic crisis, when the workers sacrificed to ensure the survival of the companies and received only 16 years of stagnation and suffering in return. The most recent contract, hashed out in 2019, provided a 6% annual increase over the life of the deal, with no COLA and a much longer pathway to the top pay rate.

With COLA, long-term employees will reach a 33% raise over the course of the deals. Whereas it took eight years to reach that summit in the past, it will now take just three. Top pay for assembly line workers will jump from $32.05 to $42.60 while “skilled” trades workers will leap from $36.96 to $50.57.

Not every aspect of the contracts are the same; GM agreed to allow the union to include its electric battery factories, including a joint venture, while guaranteeing the UAW fair opportunities to organize future battery plants. Ford did not put its own joint battery ventures on a plate for the UAW but did agree to produce electric and hybrid vehicles in unionized factories.

Organizing there will have to be a bit more arduous, but indications are that workers are inspired in ways that didn’t seem possible a few years ago.

It was only last year, in fact, that the UAW’s former leaders were convicted of corruption and the union entered into a consent decree with the federal government that mandated the first direct leadership elections in autoworker history. Shawn Fain, an electrician who looks like an accountant and talks like a populist brawler, won a close election on promises to reform the union and get more aggressive in negotiations with the automakers.

Around 50,000 of the union’s 150,000 members at the three companies eventually walked the picket lines, with workers from additional factories joining over the course of the six-week strike. The new tactic, which Fain called a “Stand Up strike” in a nod to the sit-down strikes of 1937 that first won the UAW recognition at the Big Three, was a novel counterbalance to the companies’ financial and tactical advantages.

Designed to prolong the union’s fund for striking workers, keep spirits up, and create additional leverage during negotiations, it was especially useful in the multi-company battle.

By striking against all three legacy automakers, Fain was able to play them off one another, rewarding companies that made progress by keeping their employees at work and expanding picket lines at those that wouldn’t budget. When the UAW struck a deal with Ford on a tentative CBA, Fain immediately sent workers back to the manufacturing facilities, putting further pressure on its competitors to hammer out their own deals.

Now, with its fund for striking workers still flush and a clear strategy to win massive gains for workers, the UAW will turn its eyes to non-union car manufacturers, where workers are searching for union representation. A campaign is beginning to come together at Tesla, which represents the big bad when it comes to worker treatment.

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