Why the World Must Know: Publisher Margo Baldwin on Guantánamo

"Guantanamo just outraged me," wrote Margo Baldwin in a recent e-mail interview.  President and publisher of Chelsea Green Publishing, Baldwin took the initiative to get the book Guantánamo: What the World Should Know written and published.  The results are unfolding on the Narco News Bulletin front page and can be purchased at the Salon Chingón giftshop.

Baldwin could herself have written a good-sized article, if not a book, on the United States government's capture, incarceration, inhuman treatment, and unstopping interrogation of foreigners at its military installation carved off of Cuba's sovereign land:

The media's coverage of Guantanamo has been incredibly simplistic.  They just don’t deal with the larger legal issues about what’s going on.  They never discuss the basically unlimited powers that Bush has taken on as commander-in-chief, never discuss the idea that detaining people indefinitely goes against 400 years of the rule of law.  Nobody seems to make the connection that if he can do it to those people he can do it here or anywhere.  Pathetic!  Then, when [Guantánamo co-author Michael Ratner and the Center for Constitutional Rights] did win the cases before the Supreme Court, it basically hasn’t made any difference.  The Bush administration has continued to deny any legal rights to the detainees and the media don't even mention it.  Incredible!

Margo Baldwin founded Chelsea Green with her husband Ian in 1984, but had left day-to-day running it in 1992, as did Ian in 1998.  Chelsea Green had become the leading publisher of books on sustainable living, and today has well over 200 titles in print, including the best-selling The Man Who Planted Trees, The Straw Bale House, and Eliot Coleman's The Four Season Harvest and The New Organic Grower.  But after the company had a very bad year in 2002, and faced with the prospect of having the company sold, Baldwin stepped back in instead.

I knew that if the company was to survive and prosper that we had to break out of our "environment/sustainaibility" niche and do books, not just on the how-to, but on the politics of "authentic" living, which includes human rights, social justice, war and peace issues, and resistance to the culture at large. Because they're all connected: organic gardening is political, as is sustainable agriculture, renewable energy, green building, real food, etc.  Low and behold, it worked!

Their national best-seller on progressive political strategy, Don't Think of an Elephant by George Lakoff, has put the company in a position to do profit-sharing with it's employees ("because," Baldwin wrote, "we have a profit").

Chelsea Green's vision statement reflects the remarkable reorientation of its editorial mission in 2003:

   With the destruction of the natural world ramped up to epidemic proportions, one wonders what “sustainable” really means.  Indeed, one begins to wonder what “living” really means or will come to mean in the opening decade of the twenty-first century.  Can anything be deemed sustainable when life itself–in all its myriad forms–is threatened at so many levels?  Is it enough to focus on the how-to of “green living” in the face of such overwhelming force, the “shock and awe” of forest and ecosystem destruction, the rampant plundering of the world’s oceans, the terror of GMO-contaminated food, and the unintended consequences of biotechnology?

    A new worldwide grassroots movement is taking shape. In India, Africa, and South America, in countries left “behind” and stripped of their resources and cultures, people increasingly feel that they have no choice: In order to continue living, they must reclaim, must lay claim to, their ecosystems, their food and water, their land and housing, their sufficiencies. It’s a new kind of politics, what Arundhati Roy calls, “Not the politics of governance, but the politics of resistance. The politics of opposition. The politics of forcing accountability. The politics of slowing things down. The politics of joining hands across the world and preventing certain destruction1.” It is the new, vibrant politics of sustainable living.

    We wish to move the company forward boldly and with a new sense of urgency. While continuing our commitment to remain at the forefront of information about green building, organic growing, and renewable energy--the practical aspects of sustainability–we will also publish for a new politics of sustainability, for the cultural resistance that living demands of us now.

As co-author Ellen Ray wrote in her interviewer's preface, Baldwin didn't just ask that the book be written, she also pushed for the hard-hitting interview format.  Baldwin explained the advantages of an interview style:

Short, simple to understand, leads the reader through a set of questions and tells the story that way.  Think of all the radio interviews we hear.  They work very well.  Why not do that more in writing?  People are used to getting information that way.  Seems like a more immediate and simpler way of getting certain kinds of information out there.  These short, activist books need to come out fast and the interview format allows that.  Also, in this case, Michael was so incredibly busy with the legal work that we would never have been able to take the time to sit down and write a book about Guantanamo.  Ellen was able to do a series of interviews with him and then go back through the transcripts and do the heavy lifting to make it into a book. It was a lot of work and she really did a great job.

Despite the timeliness of its publication, coinciding with a historic Supreme Court victory, Baldwin said the book has received little press.

Basically the mainstream media have totally ignored it.  No reviews, nothing.  We even hired 2 different publicity firms.  The issue has gotten a lot of coverage and even Michael has gotten a lot of coverage but not the book.  Also, I think there is resistance from the public — people just don’t really want to know about this.  It’s too depressing or something. Hard to get people to buy a book about torture and illegal detentions; they just don’t want to know.

Guantánamo will be the first Chelsea Green book published serially on-line, and Baldwin is glad of the opportunity to collaborate with Narco News: "I just want our books out there in the world where they'll get used!"

Anything more we can do to spread awareness about Guantanamo and illegal detentions in general will be good.  Also, immediately if more people oppose Gonzales it’s just possible that we could derail his nomination. A long shot, I know, but worth a try.  He’s really bad and one of the architects of all this totalitarian legal work.  He needs to be opposed big time and if our book can help, great.

MoveOn.org calls for people to sign the Statement against Torture asking Senators not to confirm Gonzales unless he accepts the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Baldwin is also donating copies of Guantánamo to bloggers who join a DailyKos petition against Gonzales.

The information to contact U.S. senators can be found at senate.gov and, including fax numbers, here: http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/.

Margo Baldwin and Chelsea Green Publishing, in addition to letting Narco News publish the book on-line, donated books so the proceeds go to the Fund for Authentic Journalism.  "Just seems like the right thing to do," Baldwin wrote.