olderI'm rereading The Pushcart War for reasons and am reminded again how it is not only science-fiction (set in the future!) and formally inventive, but also is a manual for collective action, resistance, protest, that is very relevant today. So here's a thread:
For those unfamiliar, The Pushcart War is a children's book by Jean Merrill, copyright 1964, with illustrations by Ronni Solbert, who was Merrill's partner for almost 50 years. It's framed as a history, but the dates of the events recounted are in the future, and they stay in the future, moving forward in time in every edition.
This is why I say it is science fiction, or at least speculative fiction: it imagines a possible uprising against oppression and tells that story as though it had already happened, from the perspective of a future in which the oppressors are totally unknown to young children. That's where the book begins: with a Forward (by an imaginary professor) about the importance of understanding how wars start.
The Foreword is explicit about the story being a metaphor "For big wars are caused by the same sort of problems that led to the Pushcart War." (The imaginary professor then praises the author's research while mentioning one small imaginary error in an imaginary statistic).
Then there's an introduction, signed by Jean Merrill, which emphasizes the importance of children, particularly, understanding how wars start. In the edition I'm reading now, this introduction is dated October 14, 2036, and the Pushcart War takes place in 2026.
The book proper (Chapter 1) begins with a specific act of violence: a truck runs into a pushcart. The story of this act is told in detail, with dialogue and dates and times and locations, & then it's explained that only reason we know all this is that it was documented on camera
Chapter 2 explains the winding trail of that accidental documentation very much by chance becoming a part of public record and eventually a tool for understanding the act of violence.
Chapter 3 telescopes out to make it very clear that the act of violence that "started" the war was not the beginning at all. It gives us the context for the rise of the trucks, and how crowding and terrible traffic became a point of pride for the city, making it hard to fight.
It also gives us context on the pushcarts, describing a thriving community with history and leadership and specific cultural knowledge.
Chapter 4 continues the contextualization, giving a sense of the power of the trucks, and includes the 100% boss move of several pages LITERALLY COPIED FROM THE TELEPHONE BOOK LISTINGS
Which, by the way, is a kid favorite.
Chapter 5 continues the ominous context. Chapter 6 gets to the politics. A mayoral candidate promises to reduce trucks, and this is a popular policy! And then the incumbent makes a speech reframing that policy and turns the race around.
The speech is a demonstration of political rhetoric and reframing. It starts by referencing the city pride mentioned earlier, then draws a chain of connections from the source of that pride - the size of the city - to big businesses, and from big businesses to big trucks, then sets up the opponent as being against rucks and therefore against progress (and peanut butter)
You can find variations on this same speech being given in the present by replacing key terms.
Chapter 7 is the skewering of experts, influencers, and the TV programs that enable both. It also has the crucial insight that while an influential person stating the situation plainly and publicly may have started the war, without that the oppression would have gone on unchallenged "until it was too late"
Chapter 8 uses an imagined primary source, a trucker's diary, simultaneouslly to humanize some truckers, show how seriously awful others are, give us yet more understanding of the catastrophic traffic conditions, and, through the description of a secret trucker meeting, to show us the strategy of the oppressors.
The leader of one of the big trucking company says "why pick on the poor trucks?", appropriating the role of victim - and doing it internally, as a leadership tactic/signal to all the truckers under him.
Then we have a diversion of blame onto the pushcarts - more on that soon. There's a neat aside about stereotypes of truckers, which sets up the really dangerous baddie, who gives us another example of tricky rhetoric.
First he says that he and the other leaders of the company "hear" about the problems with pushcarts from the truckers, who are out in the streets, that they wouldn't know themselves, but they get the facts from their employees - populism- and then it's clear what they have to do.
Look at this predating #Infomocracy by more than 50 years: "Louie explains that what we have got to do is to educate the public. 'When people complain about the traffic [...] we have got to tell the people who is to blame. Otherwise, they will be blaming the trucks.'"
Seizing the narrative, disinformation. Followed by a "'I know these people'" - dehumanizing a group- and then a bit of personal history he's not proud of: this CEO's father was a pushcart peddler. Class shame, probably immigrant shame as well although that's not explicit.
Then he mentions a "Master Plan" that will make everything better once these turbulent pushcarts are dealt with. The diatry writer asks other drivers about the plan and "they say it is probably the usual thing - to make things better for the truckers in the streets and maybe more money for the drivers."
Vague promises about a plan that followers interpret without evidence as benefit for them.
This is taking longer than I expected and I'm realizing I probably should have made it into an essay I could get paid for but anyway I'm going to take a break and I'll continue later because I love this book and have so much to say about it.
Ok but just a little more because this next bit's really good. Chapter 9 starts by telling us how the trucks have "an enormous advantage", because although the diary tells us they had already targeted the pushcarts, at the time no one knew: the attacks pretended to be accidents. Isolated, rather than coordinated. Sound familiar?
Then it describes in some detail the disinformation campaign. First we learn that people are talking, saying "'I hear it is the pushcarts that are to blame.' [...] Where they had heard nobody was sure." But the intrepid researcher of the book has an idea:
There's a weekly newspaper "published as a community service" by the baddie's trucking company. It's free to groceries stores to give customers and sent to city council members, etc. So here we have information pretending to be of the community and not-for-profit and in fact using the resources of a large company to spread propaganda by undercutting news sources that need to profit to function.
There's an anonymous columnist calling himself (pronoun as in book) "The Community Reporter" <- again, appropriation of community identity - and writing about "The Pushcart Menace" - a phrase with particular resonance in 1964.
azteclady has moved@older Holy crap.
Are we sure Robert Murdoch and the Koch brothers didn't read this and think, "hey, look, there's a handbook!"?
@older everything feels TOO familiar.
But then, if a strategy has worked for the wealthy before, they'll keep using it, won't they.
Heather@older Maybe you could publish a teacher's guide instead. I thoroughly enjoyed reading your summary and analysis, and I plan to pick up a copy for our library.
@older and of course we can't have that.
(Exxon and the 'individual' carbon footprint as they poison the environment and, often quite directly, people)
Alex is Adjusting@older how does that work in editions set after telephone books became obsolete?
I think the version I read as a child was the first one, in that I remember 1976 being an important year. So, retrofuturistic.
@WizardOfDocs yes, retrofuturistic!
As far as I can tell, nothing has changed except the dates.
As far as I can tell, nothing has changed except the dates.
@older so The Pushcart War has now had time to baffle a couple of generations of children
I want to see an actual update where the pushcarts organize in a Matrix chat and "hiya, Rose" gets the Victorian Language of Flowers trending on TikTok
Hank Green, are you listening?