The chapter ends with some terrible sexism about how women can't shoot pea-shooters accurately, only slightly mitigated by the woman in question leveraging stereotypes ("Who would suspect an old lady") and the excellent motto "By Hand"

To Be Continued! Just realized I should hashtag this thread too: #ThePushcartWar
Also, my new book THE MIMICKING OF KNOWN SUCCESSES comes out tomorrow!!! It is fun and genre-bending and getting great reviews, please ask your fave indie bookstore and/or library for a copy!

Sorry for the long break [it's release week!!! *squeeeeeee*] In Chapter 14 we see the reaction to the pea-pin campaign, which mostly emphasizes again the value of a stealth attack: the truckers are confused, and in their confusion score some own goals.

There's also a warning about not pea-shooting non-trucks (because a particularly avid peddler zings a woman who "insulted his sauerkraut.") "That will only make trouble," says General Anna. #ThePushcartWar

That's perhaps a risk to the "make it fun" approach to protesting; it can be easy to get caught up in the fun, like Harry the Hot Dog does, and forget to keep the action focused on its goals.

There's also this interesting observation: "What most infuriated the truck drivers was that no one seemed to feel sorry for them." That conveys again the victim mentality of the truckers. Their relative power, and threat, has been implicit for some time; the pushcart action makes it explicit, and so the people of the city, though inconvenienced, are generally in favor.

"the fact that the trucks themselves were the most inconvenienced by this new development seemed to cheer people, and they did not complain too much." #ThePushcartWar #CollectiveAction

Then in Chapter 15, Frank the Flower gets arrested for shooting a truck tire.

(giving you all a moment to absorb this shocking news)

Frank becomes a hero by admitting to all 19,000 or so flat tires that the Police Commissioner is aware of. He manages to avoid harsh treatment by portraying himself as (I quote) "a crackpot" (not a strategy advisable today)

The peddlers (hearing the news in newspaper extra editions and on the radio) immediately gather to discuss. They realize Frank is taking the blame to save them. Some want to give themselves up; some want to avenge him with more tires. But they quickly realize that either of those will undermine his sacrifice: they need to continue the fight, and they need to do it differently, now that the cops are on the look out for pea-shooters.

Chapter 16 gives us a couple of lessons about politics, power, and influence. 1st, the truck co. owner Big Moe disagrees with the Police Commissioner accepting F-the-F's statement, and he does it publicly which makes the Police Commissioner double down #PushcartWar

He does this by telling Big Moe to go sit on a pea-tack, another kid favorite moment.

Instead of following his advice, Big Moe calls the mayor. And here we learn that after the "peanut butter speech" equating big trucks with big business and big business with progress AND winning the mayor's re-election, the truck companies each gave the mayor 1000 shares of stock "as a token of appreciation."

"With all these tokens, the Mayor could not help having a real interest in the trucking business." *glares at lobbyists, all lobbyists*

So the Mayor takes Big Moe's call and passes on his "friendly suggestion" for a pea-tack squad to the Police Commissioner, who has to do it. Fortunately the pushcarts locked down their pea-shooting hard so pea-tack squad finds nothing. But...

There are new outbreaks of flat tires! In three different sections of the city! dun dun DUN!

In Chapter 17 we learn that kids have taken up the pea-shooting campaign, to devastating effect. A few things here:
1. "Fun" forms of protest spread.
2. Fortunately in this case, some of the discipline carried over: the kids ONLY shoot at truck tires.

3. We see the peddler with the best record, the one who darted a woman because she insulted his sauerkraut, being protective of the tactic. He doesn't want the kids involved because they were making it "a joke" - a great example of resistance, in a tight group, to new allies. Fortunately the other peddlers are fully appreciative of the kids and talk him down.

4. Another example of kids being active and powerful! All with a kind of sly humor. It's noted that even kids "too strictly brought up" to use a pea-shooter help the cause by just hanging around trucks and making them nervous.

A lot of the chapter is about the "Frank-the-Flower Clubs" that spring up among the kids, and it's just brilliant and funny fictional ethnography of the subcultures that arise sometimes in the wake of protest

And those subcultures become cool, because they're semi-secret, and that has reverberations up into very official and uncool arenas.

In chapter 18 the trucks, unable to manage the attrition caused by children with pea-tack shooters, temporarily retreat and "It was like a holiday" #ThePushcartWar

"The whole city was jubilant.
Except for the truck drivers, of course." The trucking leaders realize this is bad news for them because "Once people became accustomed to having the freedom of the streets again, they would object to the return of the trucks."

This is pure #SpeculativeResistance. Merrill describes in some vibrant (but unfortunately sexist) detail what the city is like without trucks, gets us to imagine it too, and shows the truck companies realizing that they can't let people experience a better city/world because they will refuse to go back

This is why we have to imagine, advocate for, and build temporal or spatial pockets of a better world, so that people can experience what they're missing and no longer believe the lie that it is impossible.

Refuse to go back.

Back to the story! The truck companies, seeing the possibility of a better world that excludes their excess power, once again lean on the levers of that power: Big Moe calls the Mayor. The Mayor calls the Council, and they propose taxing tacks for everyone under 21. lol, lmao.

For the truckers this isn't enough: yes, children are their main concern at the moment but what if adults - like Frank the Flower - take up pea-tacking? The Mayor is skeptical but here is where that protest->subcultures->coolness->elite dynamic comes into play.

Frank the Flower, a flower vendor, wore a hat with flowers stuck in the brim, which helped convince the Police Commissioner he was a "crackpot". Kids with peashooters imitated this, making their own hats with paper flowers or cheap flowers from other pushcart peddlers.

Now, Big Moe tells the Mayor, there is a fancy Fifth Avenue store selling a Frank-the-Flower hat "for ladies" at $29.95 (apparently a shocking price). Big Moe says "Children are bad enough. But if the ladies get into this, we are finished."

Every time I've read this, I wince at the sexism of women expressing themselves through shopping and influencing events through being wives. But without excusing that, I'm now noticing the class element of this more. Capitalism translates popular opinion into expensive hats. "The ladies" - which means not women, but wealthy (white, married) women - are a barometer of public opinion for these fairly out-of-touch powerful men.

Still hate it.

Anyway, "The Mayor saw the danger." The City Council changes the new ruling to tax tacks for everyone.

Notice that tax tacks? There's a lot of tacks taxing in Chapter 19. This is a fun/challenging book to read aloud. Anyway, the tacks tax is super unpopular, "as all students of American history know, [...] the most unpopular tax in the history of New York City."

Which, considering some of the taxes implemented in NYC since this book was published (cigarettes, giant sodas, probably more?) feels both ambitious and prescient.

Everyone hates it, except the pushcart peddlers because, aside from the fact that they're not shooting right now, they used pins not tacks so they don't care.

Teachers go on strike, which means more kids are out on the streets shooting at trucks, and since they use pins and tacks interchangeably, they don't care either.

A classic poorly targeted policy. But what gets rid of it is geopolitics and supply chains: (in this world) most tacks come from England. England argues the tax is a violation of "Section 238 of the British-American International Tack Agreement" and threatens direct intervention.

The President calls the Mayor, the Mayor calls the Council - note again the elegant demonstration of hierarchies of power - and the tax is repealed, leading to a tack-buying spree.