A Tardy Report on Democracy from the 2010 LA Times Festival of Books (Red Emma)

By Red Emma

The purposeful failure of the anti-immigrant law and order folks to consider the conditions which create—no, demand—the predictable migration of Mexican and Central American workers to El Norte (NAFTA, for example) suggests a clear choice about how far to think. Anybody who allows themselves to consider cause and effect will of course find it logical and reasonable to choose not to draw a line at Tijuana or in the desert sand, to let their minds break through somebody’s wall or fence. But that would mean looking (and learning) beyond the border, itself a contrivance of wealth and privilege, history and empire and violence, a demarcation, finally, of the lack of imagination.

No duh, right? Oh, and sorry for the Big Speech.

Meanwhile, the very best—and worst—moment of the two days I sat at my own modest booth last weekend at the 15th annual Festival of Books at UCLA offered an amusing illustration of this variety of choosing, and choosing where and when to think. Or not. It arrived when I saw the Scientologist from the “Galaxy Books – Fiction by L. Ron Hubbard” booth next door offer a tract to Father Gregory Boyle, walking by on his way to be interviewed about his memoir, Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion, recounting his work at Dolores Mission and as founder of Homeboy Industries. Talk about not knowing, or caring about your audience!

Dressed like a cowboy ("Hopalong" L. Ron, I dubbed him) the cultist offered the radical priest a copy of his silly magazine proselytizing for a Ponzi scheme-religion founded by an insane sci-fi hack writer. You could not make this up, and yet it must happen all the time. It spoke to me of the boundaries and assumptions which define discourse in our fitful democracy, and the need to understand what we are willing to consider, to imagine.  And what we should perhaps not, and how best to respond.

Helpfully instructive and yet wildly funny this moment was, for at least two reasons, but who’s counting?  First, the cluelessness of the cultist as regards the famous figure himself, author of a stunning autobiography telling the story of his ministering to former gangbangers and founding a business to employ them. Why would he want to join Scientology? Second, funny because it’s possible that only Reporter Red saw this perfect scene at all, through a throng of attendees there to learn, listen, read and think, a singular celebration of the life of the mind and of civic engagement struggling itself with the rip-off artists and parasites, all of whom can also rent a booth at this ad hoc Marketplace of Ideas. 

You’ll have to trust me that, indeed, the moment actually occurred in the alphabet soup tureen of democracy and literacy, reaction and hucksterism that is the Festival, where are sold “book products” and stupid genre fiction, self-help and, yes, that one book somebody has written and self-published, ridiculous or heroic. 

Under "heroic," file of course Father Boyle and one Frank Dorrell, whose publication and distribution of Joel Andreas’s comic book narrative Addicted to War finds Mr. Dorrell and his volunteer crew at their very own booth every year. The poor guy must cringe when he sees Red Emma coming, each late Sunday afternoon, to shake his hand and offer thanks and admiration. Dorrell has sold, given away or otherwise gotten out into the world something like half a million copies of this amazing comic book critique of US imperialism. 

Under "ridiculous" or maybe just "clueless," consider the religionists. The Holy Koran was available, it seemed, at every corner. For free! Imagine. Amusingly, its promoters stood hollering their “truth” at one location not fifty feet from the nutty Ayn Rand “Objectivist” crowd and an Asian mother-goddess cult filming visitors to its booth posing with people dressed in furry animal creature costumes. (Science fiction is religion. Religion is science fiction. I cheered myself later by purchasing a big bumper sticker from the atheist booth: “No Gods, No Masters.” But that’s just Red.)

I hoped, wickedly, that the Islamists or goddess-worshippers or other believers might get into it with the Scientologists or Jews for Jesus or the Buddhists, all of them also at the Fest. Alas, they are all respectful of each other because, well, no crook wants to mess with a good deal, a con game with thousands of potential marks, rubes and innocents. The Space Monkeys next door actually persuaded grown adult American parents to surrender their names and email addresses (!) after posing the saps’ defenseless children for photos—not with a big stuffed animal but with, yes, a Scientologist pirate, Captain Thetan maybe. Aaargh!

But there was, thankfully, redemption, though you had to look for it. Against and beyond the spectacle of the religionists, cultists and parasites, highlights for Red included meeting the founder of PM Press, a legendary fellow named Ramsey Kanann who thirty years ago started the alternative publishing house AK Press.  

At his booth I purchased my very own Chumbawamba t-shirt

—and a newly re-released copy of my friend Monona Wali’s award-winning film “Maria’s Story” on DVD. 

I also got to shake hands with cartoonist Lalo Alcaraz at the KPFK booth, where he was giving away free copies of his U.S. Census 2010 comic book, available in English and Spanish, and check in with the good folks at Heyday Books and The Nation magazine and chat with artist J. Michael Walker, author of the magnificent and beautiful All the Saints of the City of Los Angeles.

So many good people, doing such good, true and honest work. Even as so many of our fellow citizens are, it seems, not able or allowed to see the beauty and power of art to inspire resistance and community because somebody is trying to convince them that pretend is real. But finding the genuine would mean knowing where to look for it.  Perhaps next year Red will write up a helpful critical guide to the Festival? Do Festival attendees even know who the Galaxy Fiction people really are? Do they know the appropriate response to offer proselytizers? Clearly, the religionists and cultists imagine they know us. Because they don’t know us, we are their potential victims. We should fight back.

We should identify ourselves.