and good morning welcome to librarians on the radio as always hosted here on changes the show on sustainability i am your producer jack undera and yeah i am alone in the studio today emily is out doing story times out in the world and so so she sent me in here alone don't worry you'll still get to hear her dulcet tones coming up in just a little bit so we are just a few just shy of a month away from our federal election in canada i'm not sure where you aware has anybody told you about this well but rather than do welling up on things that exactly how dog whistle a a phrase like old stock canadian might be today on librarians on the radio we are doing librarians on democracy we and we are going to be focusing on some information issues that are at play here in this election so first up now like i said we will be not here today she kindly prerecorded an interview for us and so we are going to play that let us have a listen next month's election brings to the polls many issues that affect the s we spoke with david christopher from the vancouver based nonprofit nonpartisan group open media about the impact and bill he says he won on this election both the fifty one i think is already being  was mentioned an awful lot even in the context of other issues that was coming up so it's something a lot of people are talking about and it's not surprising you know it really is one of the most radical and strewn aces of legislation i think ever to especially the right to keep you know basically to use the internet without a clear being spied on by our own government it's really worrying you know this is i think something every day canadian t country are also being speaking out against this legislation i mean it also undermines a range of other charter rights to which i can i can go into if you like so the charter of rights and freedom to remind our listeners it to declare that everyone has the right to be secure against unreasonable search or seizure and everyone has the right to a reasonable expectation of privacy so how does that expectation and those rights how is bill c fifty one treating online information and online privacy differently from other realms of information and your personal life so your own home for instance i think it does actually an excellent analogy when you bring up the concept of one home because of course for the police to enter your physical home you know they want to search and they certainly do need to get a warrant and they need to give a very good reason to a judge as to why they would want to go into a set of home and search that person's effect and that's not a recent development that's actually a safeguard that goes all the way back to seventeenth century england when you look of the day where it gets really concerning is that we've seen you know the internet is still really quite young you know what twenty years ago i think it was yeah it was twenty years ago almost to the day i think since i first got an e mail though you know it's not it's still fairly young in terms of human history but what really worries me is that we don't seem to be applying that same concept of the sort of the sanctity of one's own the sanctity of you know one's privacy  one's right to privacy within one's home that isn't supplying to our digital homes some of what the canadian security intelligence service is collecting is not just obvious searching records like website addresses but also information when the government collects meditator lets say on telephone calls it's not collecting recordings of what people are saying on the calls but it is collecting the information such as who called who the phone number the time of the call often the location by which the call was made and it stores that into a database with the analogy of the government you were just looking at the outside of the envelope and not actually reading what's in th letter inside but it would burn privacy or any of your analysts have looked at this the problem comes when you're collecting that data on such a massive scale when you're collecting a home like every single phone call that's being made for example in the united states as or having that information collected and centralized in government databases they are slightly changing the system then there but it will still be easily accessible by by the government that again enables when you combine all this information by the cuckold to when to complain to really to show a picture of your life one thing to keep in mind about this ability of ceases to collect your activity in searches is that currently the oversight of their activity is minimal by global standards most g eight countries have an established body responsible for ensuring the intelligence agency isn't violating your rights or overstepping b sure that they comply with the law and to risk all of the complaints that are made about them is that's obviously a huge the important oversight were role that any democracy needs you know to really prioritize but the fact is c has skyrocketed where its funding for their respective oversight agencies has really stayed flat for ages this lack of oversight affects some of the most vulnerable members of society immigrants and refugees could be determined  inadmissible on security grounds based on online behavior and civil and environmental rights activists red flags well i think one of the real concerns about the fifty one is because it gives the government much greater capacity to up to like nothing wrong no no you know total complete be peaceful as i say and the concern is that it's going to be that you know if you're a muslim canadian or if you're in a you know a boner of a minority let's say you you know you're recently arrived migrants from a muslim country that that could potentially make you a target of additional surveillance of by say fifth or by you know other security agencies and that's really where you know the bring the back to the because the so thought of oversized piece of the puzzle is effective missing there's really no independent proper independent oversight of this and because that's missing canadian for two simply unable to tell unable to even like debate what's appropriate when it comes to these overseas because people don't have the full picture as to what's going on in its advocacy work open media is trying to add to that picture one of their biggest election time initiatives is an online declaration of support for affordable access free expression and a surveillance free internet along with the pledge to vote this season this can be found at our digital future dot ca we will be publishing detailed report cards that are grading each of the main parties on their stances across privacy issues across you have portable access to the range of free expression issues this while we're doing this because you know we information in front of people making sure people have the information that they need because for many people these issues are fairly talk of their you know bucket list when it comes to deciding who to vote for at fifty one is certainly i really think that issue on the doorsteps will be launching a new tool that actually let people simply enter their postal code and then message all the candidates in their writing to encourage them to stand up on the internet thousand people on there and it's just amazing i mean it's become one of the largest can pains i think in all of canadian political history you know to treat hundred thousand people signing a petition in a country with a population if you'd like to learn more about open media and canadian privacy rights check out their website at open media dot ca there crowd sorts privacy plan is that privacy plan dot ca and bill c fifty one petition is that kills fifty ah information that's one of those big information issues that librarians do really care about david mentioned there about the b c library association being part of the privacy coalition and so i'm not sure if if our listeners you know when you think about librarians it's possible you don't necessarily think of us as you defenders of democracy and and all of that and all of these political kinds of issues going on so i wanted to just i just brought in a little bit i'd like to read to to you a little bit by my arc hudson this is in a book called critical journeys which is in interviews with different librarians markets and is one of the is a kind of important person from the progressive librarians guild and so he i'm just going to read a little bit here about him talking about how librarians and how we deal with politics and do you know democracy and how we can help with that in lives don't worry it's not too too long so the parade progressive librarians guild is committed to the idea that the purpose of libraries is to provide people with the resources they need for self education and free intellectual development we see ourselves as an activist profession with a natural affinity for democracy and social justice movements and we oppose what we consider to be socially regre anti democratic tendencies even in librarianship specifically commodification of information and the notion that libraries are merely neutral mediators in the information marketplace so yeah so that's one of those political issues that yes even within libraries that we're talking about this whole idea of how we deal with publishers how how we buy our e books and things from companies that might not have our have our librarian lee ideals for privacy defense in mind so here's a little bit more from mark hudson librarians are constantly reminded that they are in competition with amazon google and the other information industry heavyweights and that libraries must emulate these companies in every way possible in order to compete successfully and survive and all of this has taken place with remarkably little protest from librarians or the library using public the future of the library as a non commercialized public space is very much up in the air right now so that was mark hudson from the progressive librarians guild and that's one of those things when people come into the library when i've been working the desk recently people of have come in i have had it happen at least once and were so we said ok so who do i need to vote for who who does a librarian vote for and  didn't you know i declined to in i share my proclivities but yeah we we tend to look for things people who are making access to information easier and yet and those kinds of thanks so now with these librarian lee ideals ringing around in our heads let's talk about let's get an interview on it here that is talking about access to information and how important it is to democracy this is going to be this is our interview with vincent go collect today on librarians on the radio we 're talking about librarians and democracy and so on the phone i have vincent go collect he is the executive director of the b c freedom of information and privacy association welcome to librarians on radio vincent the in the early ninety's to essentially to press for a freedom of information and privacy laws here and here in british columbia so we were integral in ok so when we talk about information the rights of people of citizens here what kinds of things are we talking about to aspects really want to protect our personal information and make sure it's not used in ways that we don't want to be used but also to have access to information about government how it operates because that's really the one that one of the one of the pillars of democracy as you know we're in a federal election campaign right now and we as citizens are supposed to be holding our elected officials to account for what they've done  one of one of the basic requirements of that is to know what they've been doing and why so and that's where that's where access to information comes in all right so in this federal election what kinds of issues have been coming to play what kinds of things are you watching in terms of these kinds of issues well part of it is is watching and keeping an eye on what they've been through what the what the parties have been saying but it's also to try and get the parties to say something about both these issues we've had a number of elections since the access to information act came in in one nine hundred eighty nine hundred eighty three and there hasn't been a lot of change since then so governments come in and they tend to ignore this because the antiquated act with its many loopholes and black holes works well for control of information and governments don't like having to explain why they did something if there's reported let's say there's a report saying whatever you do don't do that don't put that plant in that location and they go ahead and do it right then they have to explain why now why they did that and that's always uncomfortable that most governments rather not do that so the next best information act that doesn't work well or at all is something that the a lot of governments find very convenient now this is one of those things i do remember that because i kind of keep up on kind of open access and those those information things that i use the word open in them those are like catnip for a librarian there and so that's one of the things there's been a lot about open data especially in government and stuff and i feel like this federal government there was a thing that they were marketing something about an the government is signed it is signed up with something called the open government partnership which is a collection of all of a growing number of countries around the world and what it what it's supposed to do is improve the availability of information to citizens and that's that's you know it's a laudable it's good that we're getting progress at the international level center in terms of this what  this government has done is concentrate on what's called open data putting information that they are ok with putting it up on the web but that's to our mind  really the push model we're in favor that it gets good with the government putting more information up on the web and all governments are more than happy to embrace open data because it means they control what goes up you know where information rights come in is when justin is looking at the what's available on the government website and says you know i've looked at what you have but it doesn't quite meet my exotic information requirements in this case can you please send me anything you have on this and this might not be something that they want to have out and that's where access to information kept them that's where we have the right to ask for and receive information about government operations and those are through things like freedom of information requests yeah yeah so the a good open data system is  something that is very is very useful it can also save government money in terms of putting up information that you're going to be able to get through access to information anyway without government officials and requesters having to go through all way effort of going through filing an foia request them having to assemble these things if they just put up say ministers travel expenses every month and up there  you never have to file an foia requests because there they are so so this is this is one of the one of the issues that comes up is all governments are attracted to open data because it means they retain control of what goes out now this kind of connect a little bit there to some of the things we've been talking a little bit about bill c fifty one one of the provisions that's going in that in that bill is they talk about information sharing on the government side now that isn't quite what we're talking about here is when we're talking about open data freedom of information here you know this is this is government to citizens right so this is this is or  anybody because it's going up on the web so theoretically anybody could look at it so it's putting out information about government and about government activities that will presumably via views to the citizen you know the information they put out this information that is very useful somewhat useful especially huge for but it's going up and something that i find very useful you might find completely useless so a lot of things go up and that's a good thing but we're an organization that is concerned about maintaining and improving people's right to information so we're most concerned about measures that will limit people's ability to have an enforceable right to get information from government when they get a request and they identify information visit because there's a number of exceptions to the act you're entitled to get everything you request and alas the government can say oh this relates to national security so you can't go off on the request can i have the you know the communications blueprints for the f thirty five got four years right that would be there's a society has an interest in making sure those are not readily available through an access to information quest so you know we have things like that and there are gangsters putting in requests with the r c m p for names of undercover agents right you know makes sense they don't get absolutely everything but the government has to show that there's a good reason why they can't hand it over in the case of cabinet documents only if they do if it's a cabinet document that's the end of it  happens our commissioner gets to look at the records and say well yeah that one is but those two over there are no they're not so please give just in his records those are not  documents at the federal level there's no review the commissioner can't even look at them and neither can federal court which is just amazing so b c has a province is t provinces they have commissioners who look at cabinet documents all the time in the world doesn't come to an end but this isn't quite the like really snazzy kind of election issue that makes for a good campaign planks i suppose well i don't know government government has the ability to shut down all access to information just by saying fellow and nobody gets to call them on it well there we go there you go and there we are that was vincent go collect from the a b c freedom of information privacy association you can find their website at f p n b c dot ca that was a shorter version of the interview you can listen to a longer version up on the library a website that is at v i r l dot b c dot ca you can also hear a longer version of emily's chat with with david christopher from earlier in the program that one i think that one is like a twenty six minute long chat and it's it gets in yeah gets into more examples and stuff like we get into the nitty gritty of what goes cabinet documents could be one thing that he did say that i thought was in this version of the interview is how these kinds of things talking to talking to the people who come to your door in this election season about hey so what does your candidate have to say about these cabinet documents about keeping things secret or just because a because it's more convenient for government those are totally the kinds of things that yeah they might like we said at the end there they might not be quite so razzle dazzle as you know gaffes at a debate but they are totally totally the way the government functions and the kinds of things that we can totally be be talking about and it's great to get our politicians and you know our elected representatives to be to be talking about them putting themselves on the line so yes we are about halfway through the program today you are listening to librarians on the radio this is c h o donations were looking for your support from all of our listeners that's what keeps us going here and yet no it's super important i know you'll be hearing a lot more about it on changes shows and on all sorts of c h l why is shows in the next couple of weeks also coming up is the c h l why anniversary that's on monday oct fifth the day before fund drive starts so so yeah let's let's celebrate the community radio stuff and going on as we go there yes striding ever onward into the future that sounds like a good political kind of phrase to use there are right now we have a we have another we are just chock full of information people people who are kind of adjacent to libraries but who have interesting things to say about information issues and how it relates to democracy so we're next guest is a lawyer and a policy director for the b c civil liberties association  name is michael vaughan she was awarded the twenty fifteen keith sec raya library champion award for support guidance and assistance given to the b c library community is she is pretty awesome i'm really happy to have gotten to chat with her and it to be able to play this interview for you here so here we go today on librarians on the radio i'm talking to michael vaughan who is the policy director at the b c civil liberties association and welcome to the show michael oh nice to be here thank you i must say i don't really wanted to talk to you today because it's our show about librarians on democracy and and i know that the b c civil liberties association is all about democracy about about citizens that are using their their freedoms that we have here would you be able to just kind of give us a bit of a like an overview of what the b c civil liberties association does sure we're at the oldest and probably the most active civil liberties organization in canada we are over fifty years old and we say when people ask what our civil liberties are aware of what human rights our civil rights but what are civil liberties we say that they are the rights that are fundamental fundamental rights we sometimes say and people will then ask fundamental to what motivated them ocracy the rights that are fundamental to democracy so at the center of that although not exclusive of course will be issues of access to information voting rights it's private see all of those kinds of things that allow citizens to be solvent and so citizens are software and when they rule themselves and so that means we're supposed to have access to the information we're supposed to know what government is doing and they are supposed to be transparent to us now what's happened in the national security state is of course this is been turned on its head the new notion is somehow that governments require secrecy in order to operate functionally and citizen should be transparent the government says it massive threat to the you know the the most basic notion of what we have about citizens being software and how a robust democracy is supposed to operate so these are issues of information are absolutely central to the civil liberties mandate so kind of the connections between that now when you're talking about individual citizens sovereignty and stuff can you draw a bit more of a connection between how that works with privacy i know that's a big issue for the b c c l a yes so again this notion of you know who is transparent to the government is supposed to respond to us we're not supposed to respond to the government unless there's an awfully good justification and what we're seeing right now i think is that the the runaway success of the business model of using big data has really infused the government even beyond its sort of national security justifications to say hey data is just this massive public good and we should be able to collect your data and then say that we're going to do something good with it as opposed to we need really great justification and you specificity and the kinds of limitations that are part of data protection laws privacy laws of the world over those kinds of limitations we're really hearing right now sort of that lovely darling but but really this is kind of you know bonnet nekron limb kind of stuff we're in a new era we keep hearing we're in the big data era so why don't you just give us everything we're going to surveil you we're going to collect your information and we promise we're going to take really good care of it because this is the new way of the world we're hearing this and every possible direction and it absolutely must be resisted because what citizens know intelligibly even if they don't have the language to articulate it is knowledge is power and the way that this works in terms of how you can be manipulated if other people have access to your information or how you can be chilled and constrained if other people have access to your information i think hardly a better example of who has access to what and what this means for democracy exists then the recent circuit hearings where a number of environmentalists were complainants saying that c c s had been doing on lawful surveillance of them and what the evidence that they were planning to bring to the hearings involved was among other things saying we have difficulty getting people to sign petitions to participate in the democratic process because they are now afraid of being surveyed and kind of scooped into the national security apparatus that's about as far as a kind of cut to the chase as it gets the notion that we need to exercise our freedom and our sovereignty depends on us not having the inhibition of having our data collected and used in ways that we can't control and know that case that even predated the bill c fifty one correct absolutely so one of the things that we've said along with the the massive and un precedented information sharing so called provisions of bill c fifty one creates an entirely new act for information sharing for quote unquote national security purposes even before that we had seen the canadian government be hugely interested in saying that virtually every demonstration that occurred in the country was something that should be monitored for the purposes of intelligence and again hugely chilling and we saw we see it in action in british columbia very starkly especially around environmental and aboriginal issues that plays into there was the thing i believe in august the middle of august the secret hearings that happened in vancouver now i'm not sure if you were a witness or something there because i hear that once people went into those hearings they weren't allowed to talk about what went on within them yes happily i am allowed to talk about the complaints that were brought not a witness at the hearing so i have not been given a directive regarding what i'm allowed to say or not i have no information as to what happened inside the hearing but i do know because we were we were the body that brought the complaint on behalf of the complainants i do know what our allegation was and what we had set out in our complaint and one of the interesting things about how this really came to be there were various pieces of evidence that we cited in our complaint but one of them had to do with access to information requests the vancouver observer was one of the media outlets that had reported on documents that were obtained from the national energy board that cited the surveillance that she says was doing on the environmentalists and so you know that was one of the things that our complaint pointed to to say you know here's here's why we say this is happening because it was documented and we managed to get access to those documents through a t a i again a very stark example of the importance of these fundamental statutes relating to information rights in terms of our democratic rights right that kind of thing that was something that i wanted to ask about oh one of the other things that i wanted to ask about i know i get my b c c l a e mails and stuff so when you kind of started this talking about the sovereignty of citizens and i know that another thing that been going on is the c twenty four bill about changing how citizens get their rights and could you explain just a little bit about what's going on with that sure we just launched a lawsuit in collaboration with the canadian association of refugee lawyers alleging that c twenty four this bill on citizenship is unconstitutional and what c twenty four does in essence or the parts that we are challenging is to create a kind of a two tiered citizenship so if you have no access to dual citizenship or no ability to apply for dual citizenship you get one class of canadian citizenship if however you are a dual citizen or could apply to be such and any one of a list of things were to happen to you you were charged and convicted of certain serious crimes then the government of canada under this statute can revoke your citizenship and what this is really saying is the door ability to be secure in your citizenship is always imperilled if you are this class of person and we say for all kinds of reasons this is not democratically cell not constitutionally sound and even aside from all of the legal arguments because of course this is a legal case of course citizens have responded to just say it's down right on canadian and discriminatory  now these kinds of things are so we've talked a little bit about the fifty one z twenty four or is this something that government just kind of do in this day and age you were talking about the big data thing before is there any hope for  government that doesn't do this kind of thing like do we have any new alternatives or not even i'm not even talking about like in the election or the like what can citizens like us do to get in to work on these kinds of issues well i think one of the one of the very very heartening fame's is that wherever i go government is so often giving some version of citizens don't really care about access fill in the blanks and are proven wrong time and time again when we talk about things like the constant refrain that you'll hear very often in the media if anybody cares about privacy it certainly isn't young people were in this new era people don't care about these things and it's simply untrue it's simply untrue whenever we see a huge concerted push back on these things it is so often from exactly the demographic that people say are are lost to the issue young people if you will that demographic know that what privacy is about is not about hiding privacy is about communicating we don't have a version of privacy that says you know she that is most sheltered she that is most inside a fortress is exercising her rights no we want privacy because we want to be able to communicate in whatever means we choose probably at this juncture of electronic with the audience that we say is secure if i'm talking to my best friend i'm talking to my best friend i'm not talking to c c s i'm not talking to the government and my ability to to communicate in a robust and free and safe fashion is all predicated on my privacy rights so this sense of knowing who your audience is is central to communication and people and central to free expression so privacy and free expression actually go hand in hand and when we hear that canadians are you know a little lax about these things maybe as compared to americans in terms of their free expression rights or eccentrics cetera these are the kinds of things people take to the streets about so when we saw the big protests that were happening across the country and relation to see fifty one many of those protests were actually very much centered in terms of their catchment people that were coming out on expression and privacy issues it was about our ability to demonstrate without being surveyed and so again very very fundamental and still one of the things that gets people out into the streets in the tens of thousands  that's one of those things i know that like i do technology help with people in the library here and it's always there when i talk about not even just on government kinds of things but like on google and data harvesting and all of that big data stuff ye people when they when they hear about it but yeah but definitely turns a light on from from my perspective at the information desk i can totally see why people you know take to the streets and legacy and it's very heartening and i'm glad you have that experience too you know like i say there are all kinds of really dangerous and egregious examples that you can point to if you're trying to get people to understand the dangers and they include things like you know what happens when your information flows into a black box for data analysis and you're going to be prejudiced in a thousand ways that you have no control over and you can't even actually dispute in terms of a decision making process right what happens when your credit  assessed on the basis of your facebook friends you know the kinds of things that again there's huge commercial push to developing these things but it seems so fundamental when we say you know there's hardly a charter right that isn't impacted on the basis of information ethics and information laws when we think about due process which is again is as but an unsexy a term for constitutional right as you can imagine right doesn't get you out there punching like freedom emerging ring due process rights like proportionality doesn't sound very sexy but it's hugely important and we have the sense of you know when we people say i want my day in court or i want to tell my side of the story or whatever the sense that of fundamental fairness that is so rock bottom for us right fairness and when we're talking about algorithmic decision making our understanding of fairness really flies out the window right how are we go tell our side of the story how are we going to understand what factors had gone into the decision making process right as these become increasingly mechanized and distant and not something an average person can participate him were so alienated from again the sense of the process that we called if not due process again this kind of lingo should mean go but fundamental fairness again people understand this you don't have to explain it to them it's actually just part of our canadian d n a this is something we have a right to people know that and when they sense that it is being pulled out from under them with whatever whatever kind of gloss be it a technological gloss or a political gloss or a justification of some kind as soon as they understand what the ramifications are for ordinary people they're motivated when you came to our conference in may of twenty fifteen you were talking about intellectual freedom issues here are kind of everyday issues especially for librarians you know the thing about libraries is not that the you know intellectual freedom is something that that needs to be considered kind of like will add a layer on  that it flows all through the organization to raise one day at the everything of libraries is about information ethics right what else could it be about access to information is about information ethics when the  was shooting happened there was an r c m p officer who said oh it's so hard to figure out what's going on because these people they use the public the public library for their internet and so who knows they're that hotbed of radicalism and i know i kind of took some pride in that well you know as well you should in terms of librarians history of standing up for the rights of the public and patrons there's a very very happy history of librarians in north america post nine eleven but certainly just in the in the history of librarianship coming to the fore on these issues and arguing for again these fundamental information access and freedom matters librarians are sometimes it just whether they know it or not at the front lines of civil liberties well that sounds like kind of a great place to end this chat thank you so much for talking to us today i really enjoyed it and that was michael vaughan from the b b c civil liberties association you can find a slightly longer version of that interview on our website and we talk a little bit more about librarians and some challenges to intellectual freedom and stuff and some of the things that we do there you know it was a little bit inside baseball but if you are really interested a go to our web site vi r l dot b c dot ca all right so now what we are coming up to so lastly on the are our user i am very well very well very well indeed it's been democracy it's been a great today on the show good good great great talker yeah yeah that's what i thought and so like we warned last time today our book fight is all about politics very relevant right now very relevant and now let's see ok so patrick patrick how about you just tell us what book you are going to be defending in our book fight today well today justin i'm going to be defending the monkey wrench gang by edward abbey ok it was real and you are and i am going to be defending the dispossessed by ursula  read it years ago and it was interesting to read again it starts and it's staged with the walt whitman quote resist much obey little it's really gets it off to a strong start it's an interesting book because you know it's about anarchists sure and the environmental activist movement yeah you know very kind of serious heavy topics but it's also very entertaining you know it's a fun book to read the characters are served it's like action you know and then you know so you've got those two two elements plus there's like this naturalism you know abbie you know clearly love the deserts the colorado river and the area that you know his characters are trying to protect through sabotaging heavy machinery  about aliens so mind there are these two planets and norris and you're us and one is the moon of the other there's on the moon it's like a erith desert the kind of place but the society that that's there the utopian well sort of utopian anarchist movement up there they live by you know communal arrangements and things they don't really have an idea of property and the main planet there is kind of set in sort of like a cold war analog are a few nations like the capitalists and the thing of the nation of through which is kind of like the soviet union analog and they're at war in there with their ideals and both of them kind of use the moon the if this anarchist moon as a sort of a mining colony the story is about who is like a physicist who is from the anarchists to the moon and he comes to he comes to the planet comes to the capitalist world there are two kind of yeah it's well to get involved in science and all of that kind of stuff down there it's like all of these things are talking about this your world is so weird in my world you know we don't use words like ma and things it is the world  it is the world i tread on and stuff like that hence the name kind of just exactly and the thing is is that that that title also works in well because he's also in exile he's as we go through the book the structure of the book is really cool because you start off with him coming to the this coming to the capitalist world there but then the next chapter is about him as a young boy and so it's like it alternates chapters between the capitalist world and the anarchist world and there well my tagline is comic extravaganza and it is you know really reads like a comic sometimes the characters like i mention are absurd it's it but it's very the writing is very visual and it's you know abby's description of the desert is so lovingly details at the heart we have four characters you know we have a doctor who in his spare time likes to burn billboards we have x vietnam vet who is a bit of an alcoholic and just this plan to hate the development that's going on in the colorado river all the dams and lakes and bridges so they decide to do something about it and in true anarchist fashion there's no real leader you know they kind of conspire i am leaving  doctor's partner probably the weakest character you know if this book has any weakness it's there is a little bit of sexism you know written in the seventy's and i mean she's a very strong character but she just has to deal with a lot of grief from all the kind losers around her well actually talking about gender issues and stuff in the dispossessed it's really interesting because on the capitalist world shaq is in shock as a male and he's like where all of your women and they're like oh the women you know they're at home or they're all around and stuff and he's like all of your women scientists and people are like walt so when there's a scientist and yes so you get and so it's that's probably one of the more utopian  kind of things there is yet is yeah it really makes you you know really make me at least really root for the anarchist planet there it does it's they're very poor they well yeah they live in a desert and they have to you know do all this stuff they don't have a lot of things there are constant earthquakes they don't really have trees and stuff but they're all working together in solidarity and stuff and yeah yeah the miners you know it's like when i think anarchists i think like a serious anarchist so you nontraditional parenting and stuff but yeah it's it all is very you know still very loving and things that go on and then it's all the capitalists who start you know the wars in the rebellions and stuff you know of course well that you know it happened and so i think that's one of the big differences here is that in your book you're anarchists are the ones who are trying to who are doing the whole smash the state kind of thing where is whereas in mind it's like the state is going to smash itself let us anarchists you know live on our moon in peace and if you want to send us some plants that would be great you know that that's quite a nice sentiment you know and yeah you know i'm not really sure what else to say you know i really enjoyed reading this i would recommend it although i may take that back next time i try to cross the border and get detained because i did a couple web searches about this because apparently it can get you on the radar i have yeah no that is i don't think the dispossessed is quite on the same sort of watch list there yes so now because emily is not here today and so in true whatever nonhierarchical fashion i think we have to decide which of us which of us was so bound to the idea of possession that we wanted to win this this book by the most usually i get really ticked off when people people cop out of judging these things but for today in the in this election season in a season where we're surrounded by horse races all the time old stock or not  yeah i think i think we can we can let that go i think that sounds like a pretty good plan and if there's any message one could take away from i think either of these it's to you know be active and to get out there and vote right justin exactly open media has a pledge to vote thing there if you care about the internet if you care about hating the internet you should still be getting out there to vote in just less than a month excellent excellent ok well thank you very much for talking to us today patrick thank you listeners for listening this has been librarians on the radio on changes the show on sustainability you can get to hooked into our podcast at c h l y dot ca keep an eye ear open a for the c h l y fund drive that will be starting october sixth if you want to hear the extended interviews from today's show totally go to v i r l dot b c dot ca we've got them up there and yeah i have a good one and i will be seeing you in a couple of weeks i think thank you very much