Archives in the Digital Age
I’ve been asked to speak at Si Gerson’s memorial on Friday. In order to dig a little deeper into the Stanley Isaacs controversy and the Cacchione succession fight, I paid a visit to the Tamiment Library at NYU in order to look through Si’s personal files. The library has not yet had the opportunity to catalogue and file the 15 boxes of files that were donated this Spring, a few months after Si’s passing. Amazingly, I was able to find the files I was looking for quickly and easily.
Like most lefties with a long view, Si kept files for his own reference and for posterity. It’s all filed away by content type (articles, photographs, correspondence) and by subject. He’s got incoming and outgoing correspondence, thanks to the modern miracle of carbon paper. I recall corresponding with Si over CoFOE matters and thinking his typewritten, carbon-copied letters were anachronistic in the internet age. But, then, those letters were easily located, neatly filed away at the Tamiment library, and it’s made me worry about my own archives.
I’ve got so little saved on paper. I’ve regularly forwarded my files to Steve Rossignol, the Socialist Party’s archivist, who passes on material that becomes old enough to Duke University, but most of my files are on computer hard disk. I’ve managed to transfer files from hard drive to hard drive for about eight years now, but some hard drives have gotten lost along the way.
I have kept my computer files in a reasonable order (Free advice: incorporate the date, subject and recipient into the file name – such as 050211newsday_walmart.doc for a letter to Newsday regarding Wal-Mart written on February 11, 2005 – How else are you gonna keep all those Wal-Mart files straight over the years?), but hard drives fail and file formats change. Who’s to say any of this binary code gibberish will have any meaning sixty years hence?
More immediately, I’m concerned about the bulk of my correspondence, which is via e-mail. Beginning in 1998, I began saving incoming e-mails that I deemed important. In 2002, I began saving all outgoing e-mail, and in 2003, I began saving all incoming e-mail that wasn’t about Rolex watches, bigger penises, larger cumloads and moms I’d like to fuck.
The problem with saving e-mail is that you can’t really save it as discrete files (unless you’re completely anal and spend so much time filing correspondence that you don’t actually live a life worth documenting). It just gets saved as a big blob of a file that is forever associated with your e-mail program. For many years, my e-mail program of choice was Netscape, until buggy crashes and a huge archive of saved mail made it my program of no-choice. I’ve recently switched to Thunderbird, but almost wish I hadn’t. No e-mail program worth a damn seems to be able to import these files, and no program seems to be able to properly save and store my correspondence archives.
I’m seriously thinking about buying some carbon paper and dusting off an old typewriter, just like Si would have done.
Extra! Extra! Torch Summer Edition! Free to Download!
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Bigger, Faster, Harder: Organize My Teeming Masses, Baby!
The New York Times has published yet another of its series of articles encapsulating developments in the power struggle within the labor federation. It’s hard to express how disappointed I am in how this debate has degenerated. What started out as an exciting difference of opinion on the way forward for organizing masses of new union members, taking on Corporate America and winning huge gains for working families has wound up being just another acrimonious electoral campaign.
First, there’s John Sweeney, who, as a public speaker may be as electrifying as dirt, but is nevertheless responsible for a minor renaissance that saved “Big Labor” from a premature death in the mid-1990’s, and who would have been looked back upon fondly by historians for sparking the resurgence in labor’s fortunes that we all hope is just around the corner. Though he promised to serve just ten years when first elected in 1995 and even once attempted to amend the AFL-CIO’s constitution to mandate the retirement of officers who have reached 70 years of age, Sweeney, at 71, is actively dismantling his legacy in order to serve one more term (the history of such power struggles suggests that he should have rode off into the sunset and handed the reins to his #2, the widely-liked Richard Trumka). The Organizing Institute will be greatly scaled back. The Union Summer program (one of the only youth-focused union programs) will be scrapped altogether. And 30% of the AFL-CIO’s staff will be “downsized” in a mean-spirited effort to placate the opposition.
The opposition, meanwhile, has backed off their most radical plans for forcing mergers and jurisdiction consolidation. Their newest proposal basically calls for the Federation to do what the Sweeney administration did, but faster and harder, while shrinking its budget by diverting more money to the international unions whose intransigence and selfish agendas have undercut the goals of Sweeney, et. al.
My crude “faster, harder” double entendre is apt since, at the “Future of Labor Conference” at Queens College last Fall, SEIU Exec. VP Gerry Hudson boldly posited that “bigger is better” when it comes to union structure.
Harvard professor Elaine Barnard’s snarky rebuttal that “it’s not the size of the boat, but the motion in the ocean” should be even more appreciated now. While the various union presidents have beaten each other bloody over issues of personality and structure, an opportunity has been lost to wrestle with the labor movement’s strategy and message. Should we engage in large scale campaigns against major corporations to organize low-paid workers? Should we break with the Democratic party? Should we commit resources to the south or focus on improving laws in the northeast? Strengthen and improve international alliances and third-world coalitions?
Or should we replace a bunch of old white guys with a different bunch of not-quite-as-old guys and just keep doing what we’ve been doing, except faster, harder and with less dissent?
Goodbye, Jamaica Avenue
One of my favorite eccentricities of the neighborhood in which I grew up is about to be eradicated in order to “alleviate confusion.” In actual fact, it’s to alleviate racist fears.
I grew up in a neighborhood called Floral Park, which is situated in outer-most Queens – so far east, in fact, that the neighborhood is bisected by New York City’s border with Nassau county. Right on red? Well, if you’re on 258th Street, you’re in the clear, but if you’re on 259th, you’re risking a ticket, unless you’re north of 89th Avenue. Best of all, our southernmost border in Northeastern Queens is called Jamaica Avenue – except when it’s called Jericho Turnpike.
Built in 1809 by the Brooklyn, Jamaica and Flatbush Turnpike Company, Jamaica Avenue is one of the oldest and most central arteries on the island we call Long. In Brooklyn, it’s Empire Blvd before it becomes E. New York Ave. Throughout Queens, it’s always been Jamaica Ave., and in Nassau it becomes Jericho Tpke.
All of these transitions are seamless, except for the two-mile stretch where the avenue serves as the border between the city and suburbia, and is called Jamaica Avenue on one side, and Jericho Turnpike on the other. A few years ago, the business community in Bellerose, one of three neighborhoods split by the road, formed an association to promote business on both sides of the border. The association made an immediate goal of eradicating Jamaica Avenue. The effort was defeated at the time as a clear effort to whitewash the neighborhood. Jamaica is a predominantly black neighborhood in central Queens, Jericho is a name associated with the lily-white suburbs, but both names have equal standing along the two-mile stretch of border. Is the Bellerose business community interested in naming both sides “Jamaica?” Hell, no!
Unfortunately, it now seems that the City Council has given in and will rename the northern side of Jamaica Avenue, Jericho Turnpike. Score one more for a failed society that refuses to build affordable housing and votes down school budgets in the interest of keeping taxes low. Score one more against racial equality and social integration.