America’s divisions aren’t just about politics
Alec Macgillis lives in Baltimore. Tom Philpott lives in Austin.
Over the weekend, they met at the San Antonio Book Festival, at least virtually, to talk about their sobering new books on an increasingly dystopian economy that’s exacerbated by several issues, including climate change.
At first, their investigative works don’t appear to be related, but both illustrate a society in which its people are growing ever distant from one another, and it’s not just political.
We know how divided we’ve become, but at the book festival the authors were asked whether politics fully explains it. I played the role of moderator.
Macgillis wrote “Fulfillment: Winning and Losing in One-click America.” He uses Amazon to frame his thesis that giant corporations are turning cities into winners and losers.
While some have become centers of capitalism, others have become places of grueling, isolated workplaces with lots of turnover and no wealth-building.
Philpott, who’s also a former farmer, authored “Perilous Bounty: The Looming Collapse of American Farming and How We Can Prevent It.” It has been called “a must-read for anyone who eats and hopes to continue doing so.”
The nation’s two main sources of food production are endangered, he writes. California’s Central Valley, which produces fruits and vegetables, faces drought and dwindling water resources. The Midwest’s Corn Belt faces top-soil erosion that will impact crop yields and, ultimately, the nation’s meat supply.
“In California, we’re in a race to the bottom of the aquifer,” he said. “In the Midwest, we’re at a fairly crucial stage in the race to the bottom of the topsoil layer.”
If we don’t see it now, he says, we’ll see it when it shows up at H-E-B.
If we continue the status quo “without any serious change, pretty soon, I think we’re looking at a pretty dire future.”
He quotes a Hemingway character who is asked how he lost his fortune to explain what’s happening now. “He says it happened gradually — and then suddenly. That’s what we’re looking at here.”
Philpott makes a case for a regionalized, redundant food system that doesn’t depend solely on California and the Midwest for food production. Other places produce fruits and veggies, too.
He also cautions, “We can’t import our way out of this.”
“The federal government spends $46 billion propping up industrial food production,” Philpott said. “Let’s get some of that support and policy behind the kind of food production we actually need.”
His message has resonated with those farmers who grow for farmers markets and local markets.
“If you’re Amazon, relying on a giant workforce making $15 an hour, you want your employees to be able to get a $2 hamburger at Mcdonald’s,” Philpott said. “I’m here to tell you that’s not going to be around much longer if climate change proceeds without change.”
Alec Macgillis was just as fun to speak with at the book festival.
His book frames a story of haves and have nots around corporations like Amazon, where workers face stressful environments and ramped up production. He said the film “Nomadland” offered “too mild” a depiction of the company.
Data shows Amazon hired 400,000 additional workers in the U.S. in the last year, gained 50 percent more warehouse space and 40 percent more in sales.
“It has become the new factory job, where you can go for a while, except that it doesn’t pay well and isn’t unionized,” Macgillis said. “It’s also replaced retail work.”
While workers recently voted against unionizing, he said the vote was close, closer than Amazon wanted.
These divides are rooted in real things that are happening around the country. It’s what Tom (Philpott) has been writing about, which is happening in rural America. But it’s also what’s happening in these towns and cities that aren’t necessarily rural but feeling this left-behindness.
“We’ve ended up with these dystopian levels of wealth and unhealthy disparities that are bad for both places,” Macgillis said.
Winning cities end up with wage inequity, homelessness, lack of affordability, displacement and loss of character.
“We’ve let our geography get so out of balance partly because we let these giants get so big,” Macgillis said.
He and Philpott serve as emissaries between those divides, trying to get us to better understand one another.
When we get through the coronavirus pandemic, they hope people re-engage in their communities, not just with shopping, but with their arts communities, theater and movies.
They hope their books illustrate the need for solidarity.
“You’re connected to a worker at Amazon when you get a book from Amazon,” Philpott said. “You’re connected with a farm worker when you eat.”
Show some solidarity with them.