Bibliocracy - Thursday, June 11, 2026

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1. 🎵
2. The ink is black, the page is white
3. Together we learn to read and write
4. A child is black, a child is white
5. The whole world looks upon the sight
6. A beautiful sight
7. Welcome to Bibliocracy, KPFK's weekly literary arts show.
8. I'm your host, Andrew Tonkovich, editor of the Santa Monica Review,
9. and founding editor of Citric Acid, Orange County's unlikeliest online literary arts journal.
10. I'm also a proud member of the Community of Writers, which produces the podcast version of this program
11. and presents summer writing workshops in the California High Sierra,
12. as well as year-round online programs.
13. See communityofwriters.org.
14. Today I stray from the literary, but not far, to the political,
15. to civil rights, education, and higher ed union activism.
16. The arrest last summer of a fellow university instructor,
17. a professor at Cal State University Channel Islands,
18. and his trial captured the attention and imagination of many.
19. Dr. Jonathan Caravello is my guest this week, recently acquitted of the absurd felony charges brought against him by the United States Department of Justice.
20. Caravello's trial was a victory, but also an insight, a lesson, and a case study.
21. This is a smart, fun, and joyful conversation.
22. You can read more about both Caravello's case and the union and movement response at Truthout
23. in a March 11th essay titled, The State is Escalating Charges Against Protesters,
24. Labor Must Defend Them, which says it all. Now to my conversation with John Caravello.
25. My guest this week is a teacher and activist. You might recognize his name for both activities.
26. John Caravello is an instructor of philosophy and mathematics at California State University
27. Channel Islands, a union activist with the California Faculty Association, and to the point
28. of our conversation today, was acquitted in April of any and all charges in a frankly trumped-up
29. prosecution for standing in defense of immigrant workers last summer. His actions of solidarity
30. and resistance brought attention to the struggle, as has happily his victory over the United States
31. Department of Justice. I have never before today met Caravello. I've followed his activities and
32. chatted with his support team. He's exactly the kind of teacher I admire, and I'm so pleased to
33. welcome him as my guest this week to Bibliocracy. Hi, John. Hi, Andrew. Thank you for having me.
34. You are probably exhausted or exhilarated or otherwise nonstop talking about this very important gesture and more to the point the success perhaps lately a rare success but an inspiring success by way of
35. what you and I like to call justice. So not to make you go through the whole story, but you're
36. up there in Camarillo at the CSU. You're an adjunct, as we say, a part-time faculty member,
37. which means a lot to you and me because without the union, adjuncts have almost no protections
38. and almost no benefits. So shout out to our respective unions. And you were someone who
39. had been quite active in defending largely agricultural workers, but I think also parents
40. of your students and your students. And one day you had the audacity to return in the direction
41. of those who had thrown it. One of these, correct me if I'm wrong, sort of tear gas canisters.
42. At least that's the way the story was told. But here's how I'd like to start our conversation.
43. If a random pedestrian had been walking on a sidewalk and seen a dangerous explosive weapon
44. or device and thrown it to protect random people, they would not have been prosecuted
45. by the United States Department of Justice.
46. You, however, were an outspoken activist.
47. I had the great pleasure of seeing your testimony before the city of Camarillo, where you did
48. not pull any punches at all.
49. And now let's get to the good part, John.
50. Tell us about the trial and your acquittal.
51. So it's been nearly two months now, I guess, since my acquittal on all charges. I faced both a misdemeanor and a felony assault on a federal officer charge. The felony was because they framed the tear gas canister that I threw as a deadly or dangerous weapon. That's how they secured the indictment from the grand jury.
52. The trial itself is, I mean, to think back on it is emotional for me and surreal, but it's also something that I couldn't be happier sort of thinking about the results of it and all the, as I see a power that was built around using the U.S. courts, federal courts, no less, as a site of political struggle.
53. one of the main things that I've been telling people in interviews, but also just, you know,
54. one-on-one or when I speak to groups of people is that I challenge you all not to think about
55. this case as a case where justice was served. If justice really existed in this country,
56. in our legal system, then I would have never been charged in the first place.
57. I wouldn't have had these trumped up charges to have to deal with over nine months.
58. But the trial was kind of what I expected with respect to it's being treated as sort of theater or spectacle, as I like to think about it.
59. You know, sitting there, stoic, trying to be stone-faced for three days.
60. That's how long it lasted.
61. I didn't end up testifying.
62. I told my legal team, wonderful legal team led by Knute Johnson, who did this case pro bono.
63. I told them I didn't need to testify on principle or anything like that.
64. I didn't feel like the courts were the place for me to take a stand for the simple reason of wanting to, you know, speak my own mind or for catharsis or something like that.
65. I have no doubt in my mind that I would have had an easy time sitting up there on the witness stand fielding the questions that I got from these as we like to call them during this whole ordeal the baby fascists who were sitting in the seats of the prosecution for the U government I think I could have answered their questions probably made them look like more fools than they already made themselves look like
66. but I didn't need to, right?
67. We had a three-day trial.
68. The first day was around seven and a half to eight hours long,
69. and it was all jury selection.
70. And some has been written about this already,
71. but I will be writing a much more in-depth recreation of the trial in due time.
72. I'm working on that right now.
73. But suffice it to say that there were many, many members of the prospective jury pool. There were 66 of them and a good portion of them were pretty clearly either not wanting to be there because they kind of realized how much ICE and the federal government, right, immigration control, all these federal agencies had been trumping up these charges, especially assault charges.
74. But some of them, and they even expressed this, they had standing, as they said, biases against immigration control. So I remember at least a few people getting struck from the jury pool for cause by the judge because they admitted that they could not be impartial no matter what.
75. One person even said that if I happened to hit one of them in the face with a tear gas canister, that they'd applaud. That gave the prosecution, I think, a really difficult time in choosing a jury. They only had so many strikes that they could use for whatever reason they wanted, right, as is the procedure for jury selection. And we had our own strikes as the defense counsel, of course.
76. The prosecution, though, had to use up their strikes on several people and could not ultimately, I think, rid the jury of the sort of people who would be sympathetic to me.
77. I always knew that not taking a plea, which I had been offered informally about two months after I got out of prison, not taking that plea would actually it would force me to take this all the way to trial, even if I knew the charges were trumped up.
78. And I knew that in taking it to trial, I would be essentially putting my faith in my fellow humans, right, which is wonderful and easy to say in a place like Los Angeles County. But of course, I can't help but think that if I had my trial somewhere else in, you know, anywhere from 35 to 40 different states, that maybe the result would have been different.
79. But, of course, the result was that I was acquitted on all charges. The deliberations, which happened on day three, happened for less than two hours, really probably around one hour at most. They came back with a full acquittal.
80. Hey, thanks for that review, Professor John Caravello. He's my guest this week on Bibliocracy Radio. And also, thanks, John, for that gentle corrective regarding the nature of justice. I so appreciate your framing of it in the larger circumstance.
81. And one hopes always that there would be organized groups and collectives and masses of John Caravellos, although we are seeing much organized resistance in this country to the kind of baby and adult fascism of the Trump administration and beyond.
82. And secondly, I'll say as a writer, as an editor, that I'm so pleased because apparently you anticipated my next question.
83. You are, in fact, working on some kind of a piece, I guess, about your experience.
84. And the only question I'd have is what genre would that sort of be in?
85. Are you doing a memoir, a philosophical, a kind of a critical, a personal angle, or a
86. combo plate of all of those?
87. That is a good question.
88. It's a question I keep getting asked.
89. I've never written something like this.
90. I got my training So by the way I teach just philosophy I have a sort of history or experience in tutoring math and I have a bachelor in physics but that really has nothing to do with
91. why I'm in a math department. The reason I'm in a math department at CSU Channel Islands is because
92. they don't have a philosophy department. The philosophy program is just housed by the math
93. department. So I don't actually teach math classes. I teach all philosophy. And that said,
94. my training is in analytic philosophy. So that dry, rigorous, sort of boring stuff that a lot
95. of people don't even really know exists. When they think philosophy, they think more, you know,
96. the ancient stuff or the what we call continental philosophy, the more obscure type thing, the
97. confusing stuff, as I like to put it. So this is my first time really writing anything that is much
98. less analytic than I got my training in. I have been telling people that it's going to be something
99. like a political philosophical memoir that weaves together the various philosophical and political
100. points that I want to make with the actual experience of going through nine months of
101. surveillance and incarceration. Even though, of course, I was outside of prison, I was still
102. suffering from the sorts of bail conditions, the restrictions on my movement, including an
103. ankle monitor and curfew and travel restrictions and drug testing, things like that. So it's been
104. coming together for a long time. It started as quite frankly, journaling, right? Like I had
105. plenty of people tell me when I first got out of prison to maybe get some stuff down on paper,
106. because that is a good way of processing it. And of course, I had some idea that that could work,
107. But I found myself sort of overflowing with the effects of trauma and what I can only describe, honestly, as PTSD, which I had never really experienced before before then.
108. And so I didn't really know I didn't know how to help myself.
109. And so I just it started flowing out.
110. I typed a lot of stuff on my phone in my notes app or something, and it was just journaling.
111. But then it started to come out in more poetic or artistic or philosophical ways.
112. And I was kind of bored, to be honest, being stuck in my house, you know, from 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. every day. And I just, it started taking shape. And I ended up finishing what I think may become the first part of my book within three weeks after I was out of prison.
113. And it covers only the day before I was arrested and the four days of incarceration that I experienced.
114. But it is a sort of beat by beat retelling of everything that happened.
115. And it weaves together a lot of stuff.
116. Does, however, leave out the incident for which I was arrested, in part because I was trying to be legally safe and not bring any feds to my door accusing me of admitting to doing something wrong.
117. Right.
118. I will be covering that in another part of my book.
119. So, you know, as it takes shape, who knows what it's actually going to turn out to be.
120. But that first part, you know, the vision in my head is that the first part is going to be the day before my arrest and then the few days of my incarceration.
121. And then the next part is going to be a huge part and it's going to be the nine months between my arrest and my trial.
122. And then the last part of the book is going to be a retelling of the trial and the aftermath of that.
123. You know, I knew there would be a lot of things coming to me after I was acquitted and I intended to hit the ground running and I did hit the ground running.
124. I had been building stuff with my support team beforehand to leverage whatever the decision the jury made was.
125. But it has gotten to a point that I didn't even expect.
126. I'm sure you're aware of the Trump slush fund, as they call it, the IRS slush fund, and the recent freezing of it, the temporary freezing of it in federal court in Virginia.
127. I was asked to be a plaintiff on that case, so I'm one of five plaintiffs.
128. on that case that froze those funds, which is something that I did not see coming. And it
129. happened so quickly. I'm still trying to process all of what's come from it. But it has been,
130. I think, really, it's kind of affirmed a lot about what I was thinking with respect to using
131. the courts as a site of political struggle to see how people are reacting to this so-called slush
132. fund, the anti-weaponization fund, and their re-centering of all their ire to the protesters,
133. rioters, whatever you want to call them, from January 6th, 2021. They're centering all their
134. hatred towards them, right? Instead of centering or directing their hatred and their ire and their
135. indignation towards the very structures that would ever lead to a movement where people broke into
136. the Capitol building, right? But where the vast majority of those people were actually
137. working class people, right? With very real grievances against our government and against
138. the state, right? So a system, a structure that allows for that to happen under the guise of
139. patriotism or something like that, but actually with white supremacy riding underneath, you know,
140. that system, that structure, and of course, it's capitalism, it's racial capitalism, it's white
141. supremacy. Those are the systems that I think we need to direct our indignation towards, right?
142. I'm so grateful for that further context, John Caravello. And I would expect nothing less from
143. a philosopher, frankly, and also a teacher. And indeed, what a bizarre literary device or literary
144. construct where you can't actually write down the, I guess, main plot element until after your
145. I hope you'll indeed sort of structure the book that way, because you seem to be someone who's very eloquent at and has no shyness at all about foregrounding the systemic problem.
146. And that comes through loud and clear in the way you tell your story, by which I mean, of course, our story, one which clearly demands scrutiny of a completely upside down system.
147. Let's move to another issue which you briefly alluded to because we want to do a further shout out in solidarity to your legal team, your support team and the CFA.
148. Now, you're the one who was singled out.
149. You're the one who insisted on making the courts and this opportunity, if you will, a site of political theater, of political struggle, of political education.
150. But your comrades and your colleagues were incredibly supportive. So tell us a little bit about how those three groups kind of worked.
151. So leading up to the arrest, I had been working with two local rapid response network, immigrant rights organizations, VC Defensa, which has become particularly well known because they've been rated and named in federal warrants and such.
152. And I'm sure being investigating all sorts of stuff. And 805 on DocuFund, who is part of a larger immigration rights coalition.
153. I was working with them. I was volunteering with both those groups, attending volunteer meetings,
154. know your rights panels, doing the basic patrolling that we see of so many people
155. in our area and all across the country at this point, doing that patrolling of our neighborhoods,
156. making people aware when ICE was there, documenting, all that stuff, so on and so forth.
157. You know, so first and foremost, like shout out to the people on the ground doing that work,
158. continuing to do that work all over the country for no compensation for no celebrity credit or anything like that right They are doing it because they know this is the right thing to do that these operations are kidnapping operations
159. to line the pockets of billionaires who have stakes in these private detention centers,
160. of which they're building more and more of, right, across California and the country.
161. And then, of course, shout out to my wonderful Union California Faculty Association,
162. In particular, Margarita Berta Avila, our wonderful president, she did not balk. She did not hesitate whatsoever after I was arrested and immediately sprung into action along with a large contingent of fellow CFA members from around the state.
163. because CFA, of course, covers faculty, counselors, coaches, and librarians from all CSU campuses
164. across California. And that's 22, 23 campuses, right? She got together with them and immediately
165. got to work trying to find me, trying to get me released once they did find me because they didn't
166. know where I was for a couple of days there. And then, of course, finding me a legal team that
167. would do the case pro bono. Just in the nine months that followed, the support team that was
168. created to not just defend me, but help me build power or help us, I should say, help us build
169. power as we use this as a site of political struggle. It was just nothing short of amazing.
170. We had meetings, you know, basically weekly for nine months where my co-workers from around the
171. CSU, so fellow CFA members, CFA staff, our wonderful, wonderful staff, and shout out to
172. Blanca and Sandra, who were there every step of the way. Shout out to some of my co-workers at
173. Channel Islands who are fellow CFA members like Kendall and Georgina, who threw themselves right
174. into the middle of this and helped lead the organizing efforts to ultimately get me free and,
175. I think more importantly, build power as we went through this whole ordeal together.
176. You know, sometimes when we'd meet, it was, especially right at the beginning, it was about
177. like what I needed personally, right? Like if I had everything I needed for my well-being,
178. my mental well-being, my physical well-being, people sent me care packages, they sent me
179. poems, poetry, like all sorts of stuff, right? Sometimes we would meet and they would help me
180. prep for a meeting with my legal team, right? From the firm that took on my case. Because often I
181. felt like I was out of my element, even if I'm eloquent. If I have a PhD and stuff like, you
182. know, to sit in a meeting with a bunch of legal experts and attorneys and advocate for yourself,
183. in a way that would not just keep you safe, but, you know, not force you to put your head down
184. and wallow in the danger of having federal charges hang over your head. That's difficult.
185. So I had people with me who I would talk to beforehand, part of my support team who would
186. come in and advocate for me, speak on my behalf, sometimes make sure I covered all the things I
187. wanted to cover, bring up all the things I wanted to bring up. Sometimes it was or eventually it
188. sort of morphed into a greater organizing team where we had dual, almost seemingly contradictory
189. ideas of what needed to be done. And those ideas, seeming contradictory ideas were, you know, like
190. to keep my head down, to be as safe as possible so I can win this trial and see another day so I
191. can fight another day. Right. And then on the other hand, it was not screw that this is a political
192. persecution or political prosecution, right?
193. And you need to meet this with a political defense in the streets, hyper public, right?
194. And so what ended up happening was, you know, I had certain people advocating for that
195. second thing.
196. And so we got to work on that sort of stuff as well.
197. And I have a wonderful coworker from a different CSU campus who wrote a really good article for Truth Out talking about academic freedom and my case and other cases surrounding it who helped me put
198. together talks that I used as my first public talks back in February, and who eventually helped
199. me create what became a cross-union between maybe four different big unions in California,
200. cross-union coming together for a press conference the day after my trial. And the idea there was to
201. bring awareness to not just my case, very much not just my case, but other cases where people
202. have nothing close to the support or network that I had, right? So I had the deep, you know,
203. pleasure and honor to meet several other LA locals who had been repressed in similar ways to me.
204. who had been brutalized, incarcerated, faced charges, and had to even go through trials.
205. And, you know, the ones I've met won their trials.
206. But as much as these trials are ultimately seeming to favor us, the people, there are people going down for this.
207. So I do want to shout out that there are two people, two young, two women who are, I believe, indigenous women,
208. who are part of what is called the Baldwin Park Three in Los Angeles.
209. And both of them were prosecuted and ultimately imprisoned for stalking charges
210. where they were following an ICE agent.
211. And there's been less press about this,
212. but they have a hearing, an appeal hearing coming up on Monday,
213. actually, in Los Angeles at, I believe, 10.30 a.m. at the federal courthouse over there.
214. And if there's one wish that I have from what comes out of all like this whole ordeal, it's that whatever model of support that was used to both defend me and build power for me and us will be ultimately copied and pasted on other cases so that other people don't have to worry.
215. Hey, thanks for that. In our remaining minute here, since you're a teacher, since you are a public intellectual, and since this is ostensibly a book show, I'll just ask, John, what's your favorite book in terms of philosophy, history, memoir, whatever that you'd like to recommend to our listenership, or perhaps that has been significant to you or that you've enjoyed teaching at CSU Channel Islands?
216. That's a good one. That's a good one. I'll give a couple. One is Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed, which is, you know, right, aligned with this idea of liberation education. In short, how am I going to condemn ICE and immigration control operations in my class and then not go to the site of an ICE raid two miles from my campus and look my students in the eye, right, who are part of this community and be like, no, I really am against these things, right?
217. Like education should be about liberation.
218. The other one I would say is elite capture.
219. I forget the tagline on there, but it's by Olufemi Taiwo.
220. And I've taught that several times in an ethics class.
221. Basic idea is that the elite have captured everything from us, including identity politics,
222. and they are wielding it against us.
223. And we need to start thinking more towards a constructive politics, not just a politics
224. that is aimed at dismantling all these systems, but one that is, you know, towards the construction
225. of a new politics that works for the people. You're terrific, John Caravello. We admire you.
226. We with you Folks when we fight we win and we do it together That right Guest has been John Caravello lecturer at CSU Channel Islands Thank you so much for your time and for your solidarity and for your example
227. And thanks so much, John Caravello, for being my guest this week on Bibliocracy.
228. Hey, thank you for having me, Andrew.
229. Thanks for listening.
230. And thanks to John Caravello.
231. Thanks to board operator Osman Flamenco and bibliocracy engineer Mark Maxwell.
232. Tune in next Thursday at 2.30 for another celebration of the literary arts or of activist struggle on bibliocracy.
233. Oh, the ink is black, the page is white.
234. Together we learn to read and write, to read and write.
235. And now a child can understand
236. This is the law of all the land, all the land
237. Oh, the ink is black, the page is white
238. Together we learn to read and write, to read and write
239. Their robes were black, their heads were white
240. The schoolroom doors were closed so tight, were closed up tight.
241. Nine judges all set down their names to end the years and years of shame, years of shame.
242. Their robes were black, their heads were white.
243. Oh, the slate is black, the chalk is white, the words stand out so clear and bright, so clear and bright.
244. And now at last we plainly see the alphabet of liberty, liberty.
245. Oh, the slate is black, the chalk is white
246. Together we learn to read and write
247. To read and write
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