So, you're sitting in the coffee shop, the campus lounge, the living room or maybe at the nite club just before the band goes on. It's early November and either Kerry won the election and you might feel a bit relieved about the future of America, or Bush bambozzeled the American public again and you are on your third cup of java or shot of whiskey. Now look around for a moment and think about what is the state of American
politics today.

We are still at war in Iraq, with US troop deaths occuring daily. We are still giving Israel billions of dollars every year to suppress Palestinians. Iran, Syria, North Korea, Cuba and a whole host of other countries we can't pronounce or find on the map are potential targets for the war on terror. Our military budget is bigger that the GNP of most countries in the world. At home we have thousands of jobs leaving our communities each month, while corporations get richer. Millions of Americans have no health insurance, yet pharmecutical companies receive subsidies from taxpayers in order to make drugs which many of us can not afford.

In Michigan, companies continue to dump industrial waste into rivers and lakes because they know that the public will get to pay for the clean up. The auto industry will continue to fight against the slightest fuel efficiency standards, while marketing a new line of SUVs with on board computers and DVD players. McDonalds, Burger King, Coke, Pepsi, Taco Bell, Pringles, Reeses, Oreos, and Starburst will continue to build brand loyalty amongst and increasingly obese population they claim they are not responsible for.

OK, OK, so you might be asking yourself right now "what the hell is this guy trying to do by making me feel so bad." What I am try to say is that regardless of the outcome on November 2, we have a great deal of educating and organizing to do. Unfortunately, we have not spent a great deal of time talking about what kind of world we want to live in. Instead we have been running around trying to put out the fires caused by war, rape, racism, homelessness and jobs that pay less than a liveable wage. Many of us have been busy with elections and just trying to put our fingers in the dike of many social ills. We are overwhelmed and feel we need to respond right away. We are bombarded by constant media messages that paint a bleak picture of things. What to do? What to do?

Get ready, here comes the media part. Remember, this is the media analysis, the media watchdog column for Recoil. My suggestion is, start reading books. What? Yes, you read that correctly. Start reading books! Look, more and more of the information we get is in the form of soundbites, little doses of information that are usually out of context. Sometimes we react to them and we do stuff that doesn't seem to get us anywhere. Quite often it's because our analysis, our understanding of an issue is limited, so our actions have a limited impact. Take the war in Iraq. We want it to end and for the Iraqi people to have freedom. We think that our government is well intentioned and just made a mistake. We think that John Kerry can do a better job of winning the war. We have been reading MoveOn.org instead of good analysis from writers like Larry Everest and Nafeez Ahmed who have published Oil, Power & Empire: Iraq and the US Global Agenda and Behind the War on Terror: Western Secret Strategy and the Struggle for Iraq. Both of these books provide the all important historical context of US relations with Iraq and show that our government has never had an interest in promoting democracy in that country.

Former State Department official Bill Blum in his newest book Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire begins the book with this question: What does American foreign policy have in common with Mae West? There's the story told about the Hollywood sexpot showing off her luxurious home to someone. "My goodness, what a gorgeous home you have," exclaimed the visitor. And Mae West replied: "Goodness had nothing to do with it." Blum goes on to demonstrate in his third book on US foreign policy that "goodness has nothing to do with it." All 3 of his books have been published by Common Courage Press, a small indy book publisher based in Maine. This small press, which started in 1990 has also recently published Been Brown so Long It Looked Like Green to Me: The Politics of Nature, by Jeffrey St. Clair. In this book the author makes the point that one of the reasons for such atroctious environmental policies under the Bush administration is because many of the same things were happening under Clinton, or at least that the groundwork for Bush policies was done under Clinton.

Then there are the writings of the incredible Indian thinker Arundhati Roy. In a recent collection of essays published by South End Press called The Check Book and the Cruise Missile, she reflects on the world wide anti-war demonstrations before the invasion of Iraq, "It was fantastic. But it was symbolic. Governments today have learned to deal with that. They know the day after tomorrow, opinions can change, or be manipulated into changing. Unless civil disobedience becomes real, not symbolic, there is very little hope for change....These marches and songs and meetings of today, they are beautiful, but they are often mostly for us. If all our energies go into organizing these things, the we don't do any real damage to the establishment, to the empire." Important words for future anti-war actions. South End Press has also recently published Policing the National Body: Race, Gender and Criminalization; Take the Rich Off of Welfare; and Dishonest Broker: The US Role in Israel and Palestine by Naseer Aruri. South End Press is a co-op publishing house that also is connected to Z Magazine and the online news source ZNet.

Every year more and more Indy book publishing efforts get off the ground. A few years ago Seven Story Press began publishing it's Open Pamphlet series. These short books that you can fit in your back pocket take on issues like the war on terror, censorship, civil rights and the globalization movements. They were designed like the old labor press books that workers could fit in their back pockets so they could read during break or on the factory floor. Then there is Soft Skull Press. Just a few years old, this publisher has decided to target a younger audience with titles like Bomb the Suburbs, and Hey Kidz Buy This Book: a radical primer on corporate and governmental propaganda and artistic activism for short people. And when talking about great Indy book publishers one can not leave out AK Press, which recently gave us Not a Dimes Worth of Difference, Ya Basta: 10 Years of Zapatista Resistance, and On the Justice of Roosting Chickens: reflections on the Consequences of US Imperial Arrogance and Criminality by Native Scholar Ward Churchill. A great place to get AK Press books is at Vertigo Music. Tell Herm I sent ya.

So unplug for a while. Take the long view of things. Read a book by a radical Indian activist. Think about the US as Empire. Develop an analysis that will lead to effective change. Write your own book. Start your own publishing group. Tell Barnes & Noble to take a hike!

Jeff Smith's only addiction that he's willing to admit to is his book buying. Visit him sometime this winter and sit around the woodstove with a book or 2. jsmith@grcmc.org