Bibliocracy - Thursday, May 21, 2026

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1. This is the law of all the land, all the land.
2. All the ink is black and the page is white.
3. Together we learn to read and write, to read and write.
4. Support for Bibliocracy Radio comes in part from PM Press,
5. which have provided copies of Days of Dissent,
6. Revolts, Strikes, and Rebel Histories by Gabriel San Roman
7. as thank-you gifts for KPFK's Spring Fund Drive.
8. Additional information is available at pmpress.org.
9. I was turning the radio dial on the car,
10. trying to find something other than the usual dribble and fluff
11. and nothingness on the rest of the airwaves,
12. and I just stumbled across KPFK,
13. and I was just drawn to it like a magnet,
14. and I was just listening to it intently,
15. And all of a sudden, I said, I have got to pull off the freeway here.
16. I found the nearest telephone booth.
17. I called my wife and said, you have got to turn on 90.7 FM.
18. I will talk to you when I get home.
19. This is incredible.
20. What I noticed was different right away was that people were being interviewed at length.
21. And when they were talking about the purpose for the station, the reason for being was to promote understanding among peoples of all races and from all countries and all classes.
22. and to provide information about the events of the world that were not reported or not reported completely or in depth by any of the other major news outlets, broadcast or print.
23. And I just thought that was phenomenal.
24. And I've been blessed ever since.
25. I know Pacifica doesn't take government funding.
26. Right.
27. But you did make a reference to the cuts in government funding of media.
28. You know, that's one of the things that this administration has corruptly done, which is strip funding from public media and then giving it to big corporations or to the rich.
29. And that juxtaposition, I think, really underscores the crucial role for truly independent media that relies on community support and doesn't get slammed once an evil government force comes in.
30. And that force in this country is Pacifica. It is KPFK. So everybody listening, if those phones aren't ringing now, people aren't going online right now, making contributions, please do it. Because this legitimate source for genuine news and critical commentary is unmatched. It's unmatched in Los Angeles and it's unmatched around the world. People really need to support the work that you and your colleagues are doing there.
31. Thank you, Robert Wiseman of Public Citizen. We appreciate you and we couldn't agree more.
32. You can make your donation online at kpfk.org or call us at 818-985-5735 and press option 2.
33. That's 818-985-KPFK.
34. The ink is black, the page is white
35. Together we learn to read and write
36. A child is black, a child is white
37. The whole world looks upon the sight
38. A beautiful sight Welcome back to Bibliocracy KPFK weekly independent booked show with your host Andrew Tonkovich editor of the Santa Monica Review and dedicated KPFK cheerleader
39. It's Thursday, May 21st at 2.30 p.m., our regular weekly showtime and time for part
40. three of my four-part conversation with journalist and historian, Gabriel San Roman.
41. halfway through today's show I will of course ask you again to please call 818-985-KPFK
42. to support not just bibliocracy but the regular Thursday afternoon 2 to 3 p.m. literary arts
43. programming block featuring the outstanding larb radio hour and bibliocracy too the larb radio hour
44. is a reliably brilliant program exploring every aspect of writing, and KPFK is proud to present it,
45. part of our station's commitment to celebration of the literary arts. Meanwhile, today's episode
46. of Bibliocracy features another of guest Gabriel San Roman's picks of the day in dissident history,
47. Subversive History, Radical History
48. His book, Days of Dissent, Revolts, Strikes, and Rebel Histories
49. is a radical day book documenting, explaining, and celebrating
50. people's history, our history, out now from PM Press
51. Now, for your listening pleasure, and indeed counting on your listener support
52. more with journalist and historian, Gabriel San Roman
53. who discusses and reads from that book.
54. It's May 21st, and I mention that because it's my pleasure to continue my conversation
55. with journalist, historian, and author Gabriel San Roman,
56. whose excellent Days of Dissent, Revolts, Strikes, and Rebel Histories will soon be out from PM Press.
57. If you've listened to the first two of these special Fun Drive editions of Bibliocracy Radio, you already know quite a bit about San Roman, but I'll start by saying that this book is indeed the subversive historian's daybook, written, assembled, curated, to demystify, to challenge, to provoke, and often to celebrate people's history, both of the U.S. and the world,
58. to remember rebel histories and not only institutional, corporate, military, or great man history.
59. Welcome back, Gabriel San Roman.
60. Thank you, Andrew. I'm glad to be back on Bibliocracy and helping KPFK's historic mission of independent media.
61. And thanks for being such a good sport.
62. We've had this pleasure of meeting and talking about the book,
63. And we've contrived this wonderful conceit where we're reading a particular entry on a day corresponding to when this show airs.
64. So I may have gotten the math mixed up in a few places, but the themes are a tremendous through line of Gabriel's amazing attention to details, to broad themes, to issues and events and people and connections, which make this such a really terrific and beautiful book and very much necessary for activists, for fellow scholars and for students.
65. It the kind of book that a person could I don know maybe gift to a younger person heck an older person But to that end let just be clear This is a book that can go on the shelf pretty close to Howard Zinn People History of the United States
66. You are in that particular tradition.
67. You are in the tradition of some friends of ours who did a People's Guide to Orange County
68. and others who have done People's Guides to New York, Los Angeles,
69. so that the people's part of this equation is very much important to a people's historian such as yourself.
70. One of the things that I've really appreciated in reading these is that I had a sense, Gabriel,
71. that I had heard them before in your voice and that clearly they had been so important to you
72. that they made it to the final cut, as it were, after your many years of doing the radio features.
73. So that this is indeed, help me out, it's a day book, it's a calendar of commemoration,
74. but it's also a kind of a reverse index, so that there is no index to the book, because the book
75. is itself a bibliography. It's a built-in kind of annotation. And it's also a way for people,
76. which is what I'm going to do, just wake up every morning and see what happened on this particular
77. day in people's history. Days of Descent, I hope, is a book that people can pick up and
78. basically start anywhere. Obviously, you can go through the whole calendar year of January
79. through December. But, you know, it's obviously inspired by Mirrors, a wonderful book by the late
80. Eduardo Galeano. And that's a book that has been on my shelf for almost 16, 17 years, and I continue
81. to go back to it. They are vignettes about the histories of almost everyone, or the stories of
82. almost everyone, as he puts it poetically. I didn't want this to be just like an almanac. I wanted it
83. to have a greater storytelling element to it so that people could come back and basically
84. recapture memory of historical events. But it also wants to thread through these histories,
85. subtly suggesting that if these movements on these various topics and issues had some sort of
86. convergence, that the world could change. The world could change. And in terms of the story of the
87. United States, the history of the United States, you know, in a previous episode where we discussed
88. the labor movement and missed opportunities, you know, a lot of the left labor movement throughout
89. the late 19th century into the 20th century, the color line is such a pivotal obstacle and still is
90. to this very day. But there were efforts to basically overcome that obstacle, which were
91. thwarted, which were red-baited, especially when it concerned Black labor leaders and Black
92. organizations seeking for anti-racism within the labor movement and betterment of the working class.
93. And, you know, basically this book, I also consider it a bit of a time machine.
94. You can basically punch in a date and travel back and experience my
95. interpretation of events and evaluate them and hopefully they carry this resonance with readers for years to come Cause that what I most interested in Obviously media has significantly changed from the time that I entered as a radio producer at
96. KPFK in 2005. There is a very soundbite style of consumption through social media
97. and people scroll through reels and TikTok videos and whatnot. This is my research.
98. This is sometimes my original research that I'm presenting in a vignette form because there is an economy there that I think reaches readers where they're at now.
99. And as much as this is immediately a book of interest for students, activists, academics and whatnot, really the target audience is people that have a sense of something being off about the narratives they hear in popular culture and media.
100. This is something that can really kind of just further that awakening across an array of histories, mostly centered in the United States.
101. So I'm hoping to reach outside of the typical audience and readership and make an appeal to people that, you know, have a sense of society, but don't have a deep historical sense of how we got to where we are today.
102. And each of the vignettes insists, provokes, and engages, and almost demands that you turn the page or double-check your own historical memory or consider the resonances.
103. I don't want to get too much further in this episode without celebrating, as it were, May 21st, which is a short but very impactful entry that obviously happens about halfway through the year, about halfway through the book.
104. And folks will remember much of this important day, but Gabriel brings to it a perspective and an analysis which adds, again, a kind of profound resonance.
105. May 21, 1979.
106. A jury ready to return a verdict in the murder trial of Dan White, a former member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, on May 21, 1979.
107. The previous November, he had entered City Hall with a revolver and killed the city's mayor, George Moscone, and Harvey Milk, a popular gay supervisor.
108. Jurors found White guilty of the lesser crime of voluntary manslaughter in the controversial trial.
109. When word hit the streets, crowds gathered in San Francisco's gay-friendly Castro District and angrily marched on City Hall.
110. Police clashed with demonstrators, touching off the White Knight riots.
111. Twelve cop cars burned.
112. Later on, cops entered the Elephant Walk, a popular bar in the Castro,
113. trashing the establishment and clubbing its patrons.
114. The violent intimidation did little to quell indignation.
115. The people took the streets again the next day, Milk's first birthday, after his death.
116. That's so sweet because now I want to go back to one of my other calendars
117. and write something about the birthday of Harvey Milk, whose life is celebrated.
118. And you bring us to that point where he becomes, I'm sorry, a martyr, where he becomes a symbol of a very important cause.
119. And you give us that sort of context or background that's so important and that's so required, really, in order to make sense of things.
120. This is Andrew Tonkovich interrupting today's show to raise money for KPFK.
121. You are listening to the third show in a four-part series.
122. featuring my interview with author and one-time KPFK programmer Gabriel San Roman,
123. the subversive historian, on his book which has just been released,
124. Days of Dissent, Revolts, Strikes, and Rebel Histories.
125. If this conversation intrigues, inspires, and engages you, you know what to do.
126. Please donate now to KPFK.
127. It's our Spring 2026 Fund Drive, and we need your support.
128. We depend on your support, and we celebrate your support.
129. Call now to donate to Cape Hifke and show that you are a fan of Bibliocracy Radio.
130. For a donation of $100, we are offering a special thank-you gift during this Fund Drive,
131. a copy of That's Right! Days of Dissent, Revolts, Strikes, and Rebel Histories.
132. It's an acknowledgement of your support for this station and this program and is much appreciated by this host.
133. Please call KPFK now at 818-985-5735.
134. That's 818-985-KPFK.
135. Your support of this program and of KPFK is needed now.
136. Please do call the station at 818-985-5735, 818-985-KPFK now.
137. KPFK is the only place on the radio dial where you will hear an extended conversation about books with readings by the authors.
138. I hope you're enjoying the series I'm presenting during our Fund Drive,
139. especially since it features one of our own, a one-time KPFK programmer whose voice you might
140. recognize and remember, the subversive historian himself. I've featured many important, talented,
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154. Book reviews and author interviews are hard to find easily and Bibliocracy and the LARB Radio Hour are the only regular weekly book shows on the Southern California FM airwaves Sure there are podcasts and there Substack and paywalls and downloads
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159. Now, back to my interview with Gabriel San Roman, author of Days of Dissent, a KPFK exclusive.
160. when we spoke earlier you kind of called out what is sometimes called the boring way that history
161. is taught and that's usually with dates that people are asked to memorize and then i don't
162. know what your feeling is gabrielle but it's almost like those dates are used to limit instead
163. of expand the territory around it so that you look in Gabriel San Roman's book and July 4th is not
164. the expected official required patriotic date. You look at other dates that you think might have
165. some kind of significance and your job as the people's historian, as the subversive historian,
166. is to expand and bring depth and analysis to something which we've been told we're supposed
167. to respect in a particular way. So indeed, subversion. Absolutely. I think this is a work
168. that looks at classically history from below. And it's not to say that biographies of people in
169. power, like presidential biographies, aren't worthy endeavors. I enjoy reading those biographies.
170. I read biographies of Lincoln.
171. There's more than you could ever read in a lifetime.
172. But that is history, but it's not the only history.
173. And history is an interpretation of the past.
174. And it is inescapably a political task as well.
175. When you focus on the decision makers in a top-down history from above, that's a certain
176. sensibility of approaching this discipline.
177. But when you definitely take a look at what people were doing from below, that's an interpretation that is inherently political as well in the sense that it is seeking to give proper placement to the popular struggles that may not have achieved what they were after, but move things forward in the furtherance of justice.
178. It takes a lot of courage that's worthy of being remembered when it comes to the murder of Harvey Milk and the decision to hit the streets after police violence.
179. Harvey Milk is the protagonist in this story, but every person that made that decision to
180. be unafraid of the baton and take back to the streets to express this miscarriage of
181. justice in the sense of there being involuntary manslaughter charges instead of murder Every one of those folks from below that took to the streets without fear or with fear and did it anyway that part of our collective history And maybe you know
182. ordinary people doing extraordinary things is a story that's untold. And yeah, memorizing dates
183. is an old method of pouring in knowledge and making it extremely boring, which
184. may or may not be intentional. But, you know, this book is governed in a sense by a calendrical
185. format, but it also subverts that too as well, because it's not just this day in history,
186. it's this day in history from below. Again, I think that it appeals to particularly young people.
187. I think a vignette is a way to be succinct without sacrificing storytelling. Again,
188. And I don't want this book to be, I didn't want it to be an almanac.
189. I wanted it to be something that sings, something that tells stories, that's pretty well fortified
190. with research.
191. And like I said, my greatest hope is that this resonates and it's something that's on
192. people's bookshelves that they can return to time and time again and gives them hope
193. and courage that a better world is not only possible, but it's on its way.
194. I think I heard you say something that's so important and that echoes from our first conversation.
195. When the so-called patriots, the Trumpists, these folks with their heroic narratives, they never fail at anything.
196. But you've been very honest just now in pointing out that struggle often results in disappointment, failure, and tragedy.
197. Is there something maybe temperamental there or intellectual or philosophical that maybe you've just helped me see in a way that I haven't thought of before?
198. Whereas we're grownups, we should not be infantilized with stories of faux heroism.
199. And your job is to actually illuminate and explain, not just blow the trumpet horns in this laudatory way.
200. And that's something that can fall prey to history from above or below.
201. It's definitely difficult to introduce all the nuanced perspectives within a vignette. I mean, that's just inherently challenging. But it is an aim of mine to basically chart the failures, chart the shortcomings, but also chart the character arcs of people that were deeply imperfect and where they were at the end of their lives.
202. like Jeanette Rankin, the first congresswoman who was a pacifist in her votes. As a suffragist,
203. she fell prey to white supremacist appeals to white men in terms of getting white women the
204. right to vote. At the end of her life, she was protesting the Vietnam War, showing inconsistency
205. of her pacifism. But joining her in that protest was Coretta Scott King against the Vietnam War.
206. And so the sisterhood against the war, just a few decades later, was much more diverse than the one
207. that she considered and marched with in the right to vote for women.
208. And so I do want to introduce nuance.
209. I do want to introduce character arcs in terms of the history, because it's just, you know,
210. if you're taking patriotic history and we see on social media, a lot of appeals to basically
211. have pride in the settler narrative and that's being promoted on official government accounts
212. on social media And Manifest Destiny succeeded territorially The expansion from sea to shining sea happened It is historical fact But at the same time when you read Days of Descent
213. you have to consider the total warfare on indigenous populations. You have to consider
214. the massacres that I detail in horrific manner and as a morality call. And, you know, it's not
215. where is morality today versus when the massacre happened at Wounded Knee or the Maria's River
216. Massacre or any of the Mystic River Massacre. It's actually ironic that a lot of these massacres
217. are by rivers because water is the giver of life. But in history, in the United States,
218. It's the site of so much death.
219. And to remember that is to not forfeit your morality for the victory tale.
220. And to basically understand, like, there were people, white people, you know, that are highlighted in the book who morally objected to these things.
221. It was not a monolithic opinion that the slaughter of Native peoples was inevitable, blessed by God, and correct.
222. And so, yeah, I mean, in terms of history and patriotic history, you know, if you want to basically brush over the deaths of women and children, Native American women and children, noncombatants and basically neutral tribes, that's poor history.
223. And I, you know, in terms of morality, it's really poor morality.
224. Thanks for that.
225. It definitely speaks to the ethos of your book.
226. and your own conscientious effort to be both accurate and honest,
227. but also to take a particular position.
228. Thank you.
229. Thanks always to Board Operator Osman Flamenco
230. and Intrepid Engineer Mark Maxwell,
231. as well as all the staff and volunteers at KPFK.
232. Please do call the station now at 818-985-KPFK
233. to show your support, ask for a thank you gift, and invite others to listen and donate.
234. Thanks for listening, and tune in next week for the final part of my special Fund Drive series on
235. Days of Dissent by Gabriel San Roman, Thursday at 2.30 on Bibliocracy.
236. And now a child can understand This is the law of all the land, all the land
237. Oh, the ink is black, the page is white Together we learn to read and write, to read and write
238. I was a cutter in a factory in New York when there were factories.
239. All the factories, the garment industry left New York back in the 80s and early 90s.
240. So there's not too much left.
241. And then I drove a cab in New York.
242. So I joined the union.
243. Of course, at one point, labor was 34% of the population back in the day.
244. Now we're down to 7%.
245. Eighty-seven million Americans did not vote.
246. What does that tell you?
247. apathy and complacency. Pacifica is the only station that really gives out the true voice
248. of this country.
249. Well, California primaries are here.
250. There's 14 candidates running for mayor.