750 Years of Paris by Vincent Mahe

 In a harrowing image, the Protestants of Paris are stabbed, run down and lanced by knights, thrown out of windows, and hanged from the roof. In a later scene, a procession marches past banners and flags. Then the building is torn down, a bigger one built in its place, massive holes mar the façade, larger windows are put in, people drink tea on the balcony and more. 750 years of history come and go in this book, told through the story of one particular building.

My first reaction to this book was the illustration. It uses very simple imagery, in the form of faceless people and blocks of color. In some ways it reminded me of the 1950’s children’s books here in the USA. As for the story, there isn’t any text, but the chronology is shown using the building as an example. In each era, the view changes to reflect the times. 1950’s Paris has movie posters, cafes, and trucks passing by. The 1968 unrest has burned wood and barricades. Then the building gets a facelift, and a glass solarium added to the roof. A procession of demonstrators march past, in support of Charlie Hebdo.

Though I don’t want to take attention away from Vincent Mahe’s work, it does remind me even more of Will Eisner’s Dropsie Avenue series.  In that set of comics, Eisner gave us 120 years of a South Bronx neighborhood, shown through the changes to a building. New tenants came and went, new owners bought and sold it, good and bad things happened in there. In a lot of ways, Paris is like New York; it was built on history, saw major changes to the nation, was a hotbed of radical ideas, had an immigrant population, changed dramatically every time there was a war, and became a center of food, art, literature, music, and philosophy.

My research shows me that the author is a Paris-based illustrator, and his artwork looks a lot like Herge’s Tintin. Maybe Parisians like this style, with stark blocks of color? As for the publisher, the book came from Nowbrow press, which gave us an equally great book about Robert Moses.

Kill City: Lower East Side Squatters 1992-2000

Ash Thayer’s Kill City is almost a sequel to Ken Schles’ Invisible City. While Schles’ 1988 photo essay portrayed an empty neighborhood, Thayer’s photos portray the flowers that bloomed where a tree had died. She lived in and photographed the See Squat on Avenue C and 9^th Street, an area known as Alphabet City, one of several buildings in the area inhabited by squatters. The residents fought to stay in the buildings, going all the way to court to have their squatters’ rights made permanent. Some succeeded, others were evicted.

A little background on the author; Thayer came from Memphis Tennessee, didn’t get along with her southern peers, went to SVA, had no money for rent, and found the “See Squat” via word-of-mouth. The book has an intro by Reverend Fran Morales, where he tells us how the locals, themselves poor and marginalized, didn’t want the squatters there. Most of the squatters were young and white, while the “locals” were mostly Hispanic. Both groups, however, were really in the same dire circumstances, and if it weren’t a squat full of young whites, it would’ve been a squat full of junkies. Take your pick.

One of my favorite things about this book is that it documents the clothing styles of the time. There’s no city glamour here, green, brown, and navy blue predominate, lots of workmen’s clothes, no high heels or designer duds. The author points out that androgynous looks were popular among young people at the time, with Doc Martens being the norm for both genders. Perhaps it’s because the boots last a long time? Or maybe these kids came from rural towns where everyone worked in farms or industry? I also surmise that the 1990’s Alphabet City, not yet the “hipster” enclave it is now, wouldn’t have been a place to see socially competitive people in colorful clothing. You wouldn’t have seen NYU students walking down Avenue C in Tommy Hilfiger in 1993.

The characters are very original, and colorful, in the figurative sense. There’s a photo of a girl with dyed blonde hair and bushy armpits, and another who was pregnant at the time and raised the child in the squat. One of the kids I recognized, a 13 year old boy named Jean Paul Toulon from Madison Wisconsin, whose photo was in the book Neo-Punk and Tribal Body Art. Thayer says that he’s dead now.

As the years progress, the squatters get “cleaner” as they settle in, fixed up the buildings, found ingenious ways to get water and electricity, put in new stairs, and got evicted. Fashion styles go from green arm pants and black tee shirts to rock tee shirts. Perhaps the US Army was dumping surplus uniforms after the 1990’s cutbacks, which might account for the prevalence of green pants everywhere. I didn’t see any silkscreened tee shirts in the book, perhaps it wasn’t as prevalent at the time? There aren’t a lot of murals, and I’m going to guess that these squatters weren’t all artist, though the author was. Tattoos were few and sparing, with only one color ink. Tattoos weren’t yet all the rage like they would be by 1998, and they would probably have been too expensive for these people anyway. Some are clearly on drugs, like the ones with tattoos on their faces.

Kill City isn’t about art or hippies, but the primitive origins of bare-bones capitalism. The squatters aren’t using the building as a drug den; their time is spent fixing the buildings and looking for food. The cops called them spoiled rich kids, Giuliani thought they were frivolous, local minorities called them interlopers, but they were wrong. By fixing the buildings, they contributed to the city, and they didn’t steal from people or stores. New York City lost an opportunity when it ended the Homesteader program in the 1980’s, which is why the abandoned building was empty when the squatters moved in. I suspect that the city was holding onto the buildings, predicting (correctly) that the value would rise, allowing old debts to be paid off.

I’m surprised that this book is not widely circulated in New York City nowadays, it’s a great piece of history for the city, especially when you want to see how the city has changed. The buildings were abandoned, along with other inner-city neighborhoods, thanks to Levittown and white flight. In the 1970’s, fuel costs skyrocketed, and the landlords couldn’t raise rents to cover the heating costs. The landlords abandoned the buildings as a tax write-off, and they fell apart. Heating these uninsulated structures would’ve cost a fortune.

I am grateful that Thayer took the time to document the neighborhood, and her photos are top quality. In contrast to the technology obsession of today, there was more handwork going on in the 1990’s. Everything in the photo essay is done by hand. While some might say that the squatters were hippies, I see it as business. Doesn’t capitalism begin when someone tries to make something out of what they have? 

Rural Communities

Rural Communities

by Cornelia Butler, Jan Flora, and Stephen Gasteyer

Here’s an example of business butting heads with government; a rancher gets fed up with Colorado elk damaging his fences, but the state wildlife authorities always say the same thing; no shooting! He organizes a conference with the authorities, local hunters, ranchers, farmers, and whether they’re invited or not, the “tree huggers.” Both sides dislike each other; the ranchers think of environmentalists as a nuisance, and the environmentalists regard the ranchers as resource-raiders. They do have something in common, in that they both want the elk to live. Without the elk, there won’t be any hunting. But at the same time, without the rancher’s cows, there won’t be any burgers, and the meat industry will lose jobs.

The conflict between the rancher and the wildlife authorities is one of many examples that the author gives in his book. Rural Communities discusses how far flung and remote communities can collectively effect change, but it requires a great deal of grass-roots effort. Unenlightened about progressive ways, the locals, whether rich or poor, can have a tough time working together to achieve goals. If a town depends on a coal mine for jobs, and the people want something done about pollution, there will be conflict.

In the chapter Culture Capital and the Family, we see how the rural working class miners, loggers, and farmers clash with the educated residents. The working classes may view the more educated ones as an adversary, but at the same time, the farmers will suffer if mine tailings pollute the water. If the forest is logged down to stumps, there won’t be any deer hunting. If the water is silted from strip mining, you can forget about fishing.

Another issue in this book with regard to economics is the conflict between industry and education. Blue collar wages are often higher than those for teachers and office workers, so why go to school? If you can make $45,000 a year in a coal mine and much less as a teacher, then why would a kid want to go to school? The author discusses how some towns invest in technical education, which benefits the industry, but labor skills can just as easily be learned on the job.

There are links here to the world economy to world economy, such as tariffs on imported produce and coal. But even tariffs can’t save a company town, because the demand for cheap furniture outpaces the need for quality. A furniture factory in the USA, with regulations on waste disposal and work hours, can’t compete with a factory in China. For all we know, a Chinese factory could be using slave labor.

There weren’t a lot of surprises here, because I’ve seen country towns with municipal conflicts between all classes. Anyone who saw the 20/20 episode titled Hidden America: Children of the Mountains can see the problems with drugs, health, pollution, and crime that rural towns can have. But I thoroughly enjoyed the case studies that the author uses. He makes clear that when a town can’t reach a consensus, everything stalls and there’s no improvement.

Prophet: The Life of Leon Trotsky

Let me begin by saying that I’m no fan of Leon Trotsky, and I think a whole lot of his ideas would never have worked. I’m also no fan of Communism and I believe that it can’t work. However, this book is wonderful, because it shows how Trotsky and Stalin, both ruthless in their drive for power, had opposite ideas on the goal of the Soviet state. Published in England in the 1950’s by a Soviet exile, and now reissued by Verso Books, this biography of the Communist leader gives great insight into the origins of all the horrible things that happened in the Soviet Union.

Trotsky was not anti-capitalist in a way that would destroy the economy. On the contrary, he knew that business was necessary for the nation’s industry to survive. Lenin, who like most Communist leaders had never held down a job, bulldozed everything in his way. Stalin, who considered Trotsky a nuisance, set up a phony economy that was built on slavery and lies.

This biography was originally in three volumes, which makes it a long book to read. However, even though it was written by a dissident, it isn’t overly biased. We get a good, clear view of Trotsky’s philosophies and his personal life. It shows you how the Soviet Union could’ve become a success, but was ruined when Stalin made himself into an emperor and ruined it.