Turning the Page By Melina Paris, Arts and Culture Reporter
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Real News, Real People, Really Effective
ust like its community, Long Beach’s booksellers are interesting and unique and surprisingly plentiful. There are roughly 22 bookstores in town, an amazing number for a population of 470,000 people, 26 percent of them born outside the country, in the era of the internet. Most of those stores specialize in rare and used books, comics and collectibles and graphic novels, scholastic, Christian and sober living titles. By appearances, Long Beach bookstores exist in a specialized ecosystem tailored to particular interests. Across Southern California, meanwhile, one bookstore after another has closed. Midnight Special in Santa Monica, George Sand on Melrose, the Bookworm in Upland, Fahrenheit 451 in Laguna Beach, Caravan Bookstore in downtown Los Angeles, Papa Bach in West Los Angeles, the 100-year-old Williams Books in San Pedro — iconic shops that reflected a more idiosyncratic city. Across the national landscape, large corporate book sellers like Borders encroached on independent stores which were closing up shop everywhere. In their wake, online and big book sellers thrived. Amazon became the world’s largest book retailer. And Long Beach’s beloved Acres of Books, the largest and oldest family-owned second-hand bookstore in California, closed in 2008. But after Amazon’s entrance the corporates — the big-box stores and the chains — got crushed. Borders, for instance, went out of business altogether, leaving a gap for the indy bookstores to fill. Book lovers craved the distinctive storefront experience again. Harvard Business School professor, Ryan Raffaelli, author of the study, Why Independent Bookstores Have Thrived In Spite of Amazon. com. During a recent interview with NPR Raffaelli boiled down his findings: “The indies represent this high experience, a chance for the consumer to engage on a set of very personal dimensions, versus Amazon, which is really about, can I just get something quickly at the cheapest price?”
Page Against the Machine on Retro Row, an independent bookstore of power, strength and defiance
[See Turning, p. 3] Above, Page Against the Machine proprietor, Chris Giaco. Photo by Steven Guzman
A Constitutional Crisis Defined By Paul Rosenberg, Senior Editor
Green Omni Terminal plan under new scrutiny p. 4
For two years, Trump has insisted there was “No collusion!” between Russia and his campaign, but that claim was actually refuted by the Mueller Report, which also detailed multiple cases of obstruction of justice. Now he’s doing everything he can to block congressional investigations and hearings that could publicly expose his lies — and that’s only part of what he’s trying to block from public knowledge, and how he’s trying to undermine democracy.
On May 9, Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi said she agreed with House Judiciary Committee Chair Jerrold Nadler that the country was in a constitutional crisis. But that could prove to be an understatement, according to some — especially if Trump-selected Supreme Court justices support his efforts to obstruct congressional oversight and grab more power for himself.
May 16 - 29, 2019
Big Freedia headlines LB Pride Fest p. 9
— Mueller Report, pp 392-3, citing U.S. v. Nixon
Yes, collusion! Yes, obstruction of justice! So many crimes, you’ll say, ‘Stop! Stop!’
AG Becerra blows whistle on Carson hazmat site p. 5
“No person in this country is so high that he is above the law.”
“I do agree with Chairman Nadler, because the administration has decided that they are not going to honor their oath of office,” Pelosi said at her weekly press conference. The oath commits the President to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States,” which includes the “take care” clause— that the President “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” Nadler had defined the constitutional crisis more precisely. “We are in one because the President is disobeying the law, is refusing all information to Congress,” he said. “For him to come out and say he’s going to oppose all subpoenas, that’s a direct challenge to having a Congress that can function,” Nadler said. “It’s a direct assertion that he wants to be a monarch.” The focus has been Trump’s attempt to shut down any congressional followup to the Mueller Report, which — despite all GOP spin to the contrary — contains [See Crisis, p. 8]
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