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Arizona Daily Star, June 4, 2005. http://www. azstarnet. com/sn/ taxpayerwatch/ 91778
(accessed October 14, 2008).
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? A Place for the Dissident Press in a Rhetorical Education
"Sending up a signal flare in the darkness"
Diana George and Paula Mathieu
A rhetorical education enables people to engage in and change American society--but not always. 1
Resistance is sending up a signal flare in the darkness. 2
In 2007 the Council of Writing Program Administrators sponsored a Modern Language Association (MLA) session asking, essentially, "Should academic or public writing constitute the focus of a first-year composition course today? "3 It is an important question, one that might easily send composition scholars and teachers back to an observation Jim Berlin and others made many years ago, that any rhetoric arises out of a time, a place, and a social context. In that way, a rhetoric is always situated, "always related to larger social and political developments," and so a composition course needs to acknowledge that situ- atedness, by recognizing that no language, no rhetoric, is ever innocent, ever free of the politics and culture from which it emerges. 4 That question--public or academic--suggests, however, there might be a clear-cut choice: we either teach students to understand and use the language of the academy, or we turn to a different kind of rhetorical education entirely. To a large extent, that concern over what to teach has been the dilemma of first-year composition all along, though at times the proposed opposition has been academic pre- paredness versus private expression. For our purposes here, then, the question is not so much academic versus public writing but, instead, why is public writing often considered, if not out of bounds, at least not quite worthy of the college classroom? Moreover, if we choose to teach public writing--as many of us do--just what public writing do we teach? Do we teach the rhetoric of electoral politics, the language of corporate structures, the appeal of nonprof- its? What about the rhetoric that students are warned against--the bare out- rage of radical politics? What is the rhetoric our students need for this time, in this place?
248 Diana George and Paula Mathieu
To put all of this in a more direct light: as the two of us write this piece, we are living in a country at war--a war argued for and made possible by pub- lic debates and shoddy news reporting. (Witness, for example, the New York Times's 2004 apology for not carefully investigating the Bush administra- tion's claims of weapons of mass destruction inside Iraq. )5 We are in a coun- try where, according to the National Coalition for the Homeless, requests for emergency shelter have increased in some cities by as much as 24 percent in the just this past year (2007), while a number of those same cities (Atlanta and Orlando are two examples) have passed legislation to restrict the distri- bution of food to people who are homeless. These ordinances were voted on and approved, we presume, after public arguments made to legislatures and their constituents about homelessness, the nature of homeless persons, and the need to do something. The National Coalition for the Homeless tells us:
The motivations behind city food sharing restrictions vary as greatly as the tactics themselves. For instance, some cities view the restrictions as a way to channel charitable activities through designated organiza- tions and institutions that provide services. Other food sharing restric- tions seem geared toward moving homeless persons out of downtown areas and away from tourist and business locations. Finally, some cities' restrictions demonstrate an open hostility to the presence of homeless persons anywhere in the city limits. 6
We are in a country at a time when the general population does not trust its leaders or its traditional sources of news and information. According to the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism, the number of regular viewers of television news and readers of newspapers who actually trust these outlets to give them reliable news has dropped by 10 percentage points in the past decade. The number of readers who have turned to Internet blogs as their pri- mary source of news has risen almost as sharply. The same report found that even the journalists writing the stories are skeptical of the media's reliability. 7
Admittedly there is little new in a claim that writing courses, in particular, have typically responded to the pull of contemporary politics, changing class- room demographics, economic down- and upturns, and more. The semantics movement of the 1940s and 1950s, for example, has often been credited to the propaganda-soaked conclusion of World War II, the beginnings of the Korean War, the paranoia of the McCarthy era, and the sudden entrance of television into homes across the country. Later, in the shadow of the Vietnam War, cam- pus protests, and, eventually, the disillusionment of Watergate, it is no surprise that writing classrooms turned to the importance of the individual and indi- vidual expression as one primary lesson in this course. 8 As well, a number of scholars have observed that composition took what has often been called a "social turn" in the 1980s. 9 Most recently, perhaps as a logical extension of that social turn, we have begun to hear increased calls for attention to public
The Dissident Press in a Rhetorical Education 249
rhetoric or public writing--calls that might easily be read as a rhetorical turn, or, to put it more accurately, a rhetorical return--a turn back to questions and lessons that locate writing instruction at the heart of at least one rhetorical tradition: preparing students for participation in civic life. The question that arises in that rhetorical re-turn, if we might call it that, is how a rhetorical edu- cation might embrace not only the social or political structure at hand but also the rhetoric of those outside that structure arguing for change. Is there a place, even or especially in calls for public or civic rhetoric, for a rhetoric of dissent?
We opened this article with a brief passage from Glenn, Lyday, and Sharer's Rhetorical Education in America. In that collection of essays, Glenn reminds us that traditionally, a rhetorical education was meant to enable citizens "to en- gage and change American society--but not always. "10 Glenn's "not always" is a useful caveat in her discussion because she follows it by tracing the his- torical trajectory of a rhetorical education in the United States geared to enable those already in power--white, privileged, and (for a very long time) male. This was a rhetorical education generally inaccessible to anyone outside the halls of power and privilege. It was also a rhetorical education that would not have drawn upon the kinds of public writing or civic rhetoric that have, for decades, moved the public to action: the dissident press.
When, for example, African American abolitionists Samuel Cornish and John Russwurm wrote, in the 1827 inaugural issue of Freedom's Journal, the first African American-owned and -operated paper in this country, "We wish to plead our own cause," they were addressing those very rhetors who (even with good intentions) had for too many years been speaking for and about them. 11 That belief in the power of language to do something--change minds, form coalitions, uncover lies--is at the center of dissident movements through- out history. It is also at the heart of any rhetorical education, and especially one that seeks to engage in public writing or public rhetoric.
It is in this context that we explore the role of what Glenn calls "nontra- ditional rhetors"--in this case, the dissident press--in a rhetorical education. 12 In what follows, we offer an examination of just what the dissident press is, what constitutes a rhetoric of dissent, and what role the dissident press has played in social and political movements of all sorts. In particular, we focus on "Hobo" News (1915-1929 in its initial iteration) as the sort of small, special interest dissident paper that can, as Tony Kushner writes, send up "a signal flare in the darkness," the kind of paper (and rhetoric) often ignored, even reviled in the writing course. 13
What Is the Dissident Press?
Ordinarily, one particular rhetoric is dominant--the rhetoric embody- ing the ideology of a powerful group or class--but the exclusion of all other rhetorics is never completely achieved, not even in a totalitarian state where the effort to do so is common. . . . A democracy, however,
250 Diana George and Paula Mathieu
ordinarily provides political and social supports for open discussion, allowing for the free play of possibilities in the rhetorics that appear-- although these possibilities are obviously never unlimited. 14
According to journalism scholar Lauren Kessler, the mainstream press in the United States has never represented an open marketplace of ideas, where a diversity of opinion is tolerated and circulated. 15 Kessler argues that his- torical studies overwhelmingly show that the U. S. mainstream press has con- sistently spoken for the "homogenous middle" and thus has been a closed marketplace of ideas, with access routinely denied to those holding aberrant or unpopular beliefs. 16 This denial of access--especially to blacks, abolition- ists, working-class radicals, labor organizers, feminists, utopians, pacifists, gay and lesbian groups, and homeless advocates, among others--results from such groups being excluded entirely in the press or by the press selectively covering their disruptive events (such as demonstrations or strikes) but not their goals or ideals. Such coverage often even ridicules and stereotypes the philosophies and positions of such groups. Mainstream news media tend to focus on events ("if it bleeds, it leads"), not issues, further marginalizing groups seeking to cir- culate new ideas to a broader public.
Denied access to the established media, a vast and varied assortment of fringe groups initiate publications of their own. Such publications often begin because of the financial support of one or a few people working on a shoestring budget, and many continue to struggle with financial problems throughout their runs. Some writers and editors have faced government harassment or have been ostracized by others in their communities. Many publications have started and stopped suddenly, as funds run out, public pressures change, or the issues begin to receive broader, more balanced coverage in the popular press. Kessler importantly notes that the fringe publications she studied--papers linked to social movements like the New Harmony Community's New Har- mony Gazette or the agrarian revolt-inspired National Economist--were typically as closed to ideas at odds with their own group's beliefs as was the main- stream press. 17
The difference, it seems, is that dissident publications have embraced their situatedness, never claiming to be broad-based or inclusive. In fact, according to Kessler's study, many dissident press writers were--and are--simultaneously those who lead a movement and who write about it. The dissident press, then, does not pretend objectivity. It does not seek to cover a wide array of issues, nor does it prize disinterest or balanced reporting. In other words, dissident publications are and have always been nakedly rhetorical, with the real and concrete aim of having their words and ideas do something, to make changes in the broader world.
In order to make changes, dissident publications have sought both to speak passionately to an audience of their believers and to educate and persuade a
The Dissident Press in a Rhetorical Education 251
broader public about their issues and alternative ways of understanding those issues. Achieving these goals of a more focused and a broader readership at once has been difficult, practically as well as rhetorically. In practical terms, reaching a broad audience with limited resources and distribution networks is extraordinarily difficult; rhetorically, writing both for those deeply commit- ted and those indifferent or unaware of a cause represents a tricky challenge. As a result, sometimes the writing in dissident press papers is uneven or incon- sistent; some pieces are quite heated and polemical while others seek to intro- duce issues or provide evidence to argue for a cause.
Despite the ongoing material and ideological problems of circulating un- popular views in what might be called undiplomatic language, the dissident press in the United States has often managed to successfully circulate and eventually normalize issues that once might have seemed radical or out of bounds. Until dissident publications began championing them, for example, causes like the abolition of slavery, women's rights, or education about AIDS received little to no mention in mainstream publications. Because of these and other examples, journalism scholar Rodger Streitmatter argues that the dissident press has "been instrumental in shaping the history of this nation. " He goes as far as to assert that "a strong argument can be made that the dis- sident press has played a more vital role in shaping American history than has the mainstream press. "18 If this is true, then it would follow that studying the rhetorical strategies and force of a dissident press, both contemporary and historical, would and should occupy a central place in a classroom devoted to rhetorical education. What might such study entail?
A Rhetoric of Dissent
Political theorist Iris Marion Young writes that rhetoric--"the way claims and reasons are stated"--occurs in all sorts of public address, including, Young writes, "the affective dimensions of communication, its figurative aspects, and the diverse media of communication--placards and street theatre instead of tabloids or reports. Rhetoric has the important function of situating those seeking to persuade others in relation to their audience. "19 Young thus reminds us that rhetoric is inherently situational. That is, in responding to a particular need/argument/event and aiming to persuade a particular audience, rhetoric must be grounded in the situation at hand.
While it might seem common sense, then, that anyone trying to persuade an audience to support an unpopular cause or radical social change would want to write with a measure of caution, an ear to a broad audience in need of con- vincing, the rhetoric of dissent is anything but cautious. What, for example, might we make of a newspaper or magazine that introduces itself in this way:
This Magazine is Owned and Published Co-operatively by its Editors. It has no Dividends to Pay, and nobody is trying to make Money out of it.
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A Revolutionary and not a Reform Magazine; a Magazine with a Sense of Humor and no Respect for the Respectable; Frank; Arrogant; Imperti- nent; Searching for the True Cause; a Magazine Directed against Rigidity and Dogma wherever it is found; Printing what is too Naked or True
for a Money-Making Press; a Magazine whose final Policy is to do as
it Pleases and Conciliate Nobody, not even its Readers--A Free Magazine. 20
With this masthead boast, the Masses, an early-twentieth-century socialist magazine, declared itself beholden to no one, a magazine "searching for the true cause," a "revolutionary" magazine presumably uninterested in "reform," a magazine free from the constraints of capitalism. That declaration, if we take it on face value, defies every lesson on audience at least as it is tradition- ally taught in rhetoric handbooks. The writer violates, for example, several of the rules that Sharon Crowley and Deborah Hawhee have outlined in Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students for creating a successful ethos: the claims lack specific evidence, which violates a demand for showing that one has done one's homework; the arrogant tone arguably fails to create goodwill with the reader; and the third-person discourse fails to create a personal relationship between writer and reader. 21 If evaluated on the basis of classical rhetorical appeals within the text, the Masses--and many dissident press concerns-- might be deemed rhetorical failures. Perhaps this is why, in classrooms where we purport to study the power of language to make change in the world, we pay scant attention to the universe of dissident texts. Ignored or dismissed as "bad rhetoric," dissident texts offer the opportunity to study rhetorical exam- ples that have consistently sought to make changes in the world, and occa- sionally have succeeded.
Looked at in this way it seems that rather than violating rules of discourse, this passage from the Masses seeks to change the rules of the game. In declar- ing itself free, true, revolutionary, nonconciliatory, arrogant, "against rigidity and dogma," the editors challenge readers to imagine themselves as somehow aligned with a publication that aligns itself with no one and with nothing in particular, save the freedom to print what it wishes as it wishes. The audience that made this magazine so popular in the first decade of the twentieth cen- tury was looking, we might assume, for something new, something bold.
The rhetorical importance, then, of examining the workings of the dissi- dent press is to explore how, within such spaces, writers make different assump- tions about discourse protocols. Dissident press articles can exemplify how the rules we teach our students--about, for example, constructing a positive ethos--are not universal rules of good writing but rules for writing that oper- ates within certain accepted rhetorical situations. When one seeks to create change, or make something different happen in discourse, the rules might seem to fly out the window.
The Dissident Press in a Rhetorical Education 253
In examining the rhetorical workings of the dissident press, however, it would be incomplete to look only at the rhetorical appeals made within the texts or to equate its rhetorical force with the composed text itself. How these texts managed or failed to find readers and to circulate both materially and ideologically significantly determines the rhetorical power of any text to cre- ate a public appeal. 22 Thus in order to study the rhetoric of dissent, one must also look more closely at the relationship between textual circulation and the creation of a readership, or public. To do this, we turn to the work of Michael Warner on the creation of publics and counterpublics.
Dissident press publications work to create counterpublic spaces, which Warner argues are "defined by their tension with the larger public. . . . Dis- cussion within such a public is understood to contravene the roles obtaining in the world at large, being structured by alternative discourse positions or protocols, making different assumptions about what can be said or what goes without saying . . .
it maintains at some level, conscious or not, an awareness of its subordinate status. "23 In other words, counterpublics engage in alterna- tive rhetorical strategies while seeking to effect change in a more-dominant public sphere.
Warner's work, then, allows for an alternative way to evaluate dissident rhetoric: one that goes beyond close inspection at the textual level. Rather than examining internal textual criteria, Warner shows us that a public appeal is successful when people pay attention. He argues that if and when public appeals are successful, they hail a public into being by their discourse. Once readers recognize themselves as the type of person being hailed by a message, and once they pay attention to it, a public is constituted. So the arrogance or lack of evidence in the appeal of the Masses is irrelevant if readers feel them- selves to be addressed by such words and pay attention to them. The act of readers' paying attention importantly begins the creation of a public.
Warner continues by arguing that a public cannot be constituted by a sin- gle text, no matter how compelling or provocative. He describes a public as "an ongoing space of encounters" defined by the "concatenation of texts over time. "24 Thus conversation and circulation are key. A publication can create a counterpublic space only if readers pay attention and if they seek to respond, speak back, or write letters to the editor: in other words, when the discourse reflexively circulates. In that sense, Warner argues, a text must be circulated, not just emitted in one direction. This challenge is key for dissident press concerns, for while it is one thing to give the appearance of people paying attention, creating responsive readers and writers is another matter entirely.
Take a contemporary example: the International Network of Street Papers (INSP) has a goal of creating a global space for circulating underreported news about poverty and homelessness. To this end, they have created the Global Street News Service. 25 At this point, nearly 100 independent antipoverty mem- ber newspapers around the world have successfully managed to share content
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among themselves, so that, for example, a newspaper in Seattle can publish a story about child labor in Argentina reported locally by journalists there. This news service has helped each paper locally engage its readers, to broaden the discussion of poverty, via letters to the editor or local meetings of inter- ested volunteers, to include a global scope. As of yet, however, the News Ser- vice itself has not created a public of its own. The Web site is not a large draw for readers; it is more an internal resource for the papers themselves. When readers do happen upon stories there, there is no clear feedback mechanism, so the articles do not readily invite response or the creation of new texts. Going forward, the INSP can decide whether its News Service should remain an internal resource or whether it should seek to create an online counter- public space for uniting readers around the world interested in antipoverty issues. That would require directing readers to the site, but also making it a site that invites response and textual circulation.
With dissident press publications, response and circulation are always meant as means to change the world in some way, whether it is to change how peo- ple think about poverty, for example, or take action on a specific campaign. Warner argues that a public is always created with an aim of "poetic world making. "26
Public discourse says not only 'let a public exist' but 'Let it have this char- acter, speak this way, see the world in this way. ' It then goes in search of con- firmation that such a public exists, with greater or lesser success--success being further attempts to cite, circulate, and realize the world understanding it artic- ulates. Run it up the flagpole and see who salutes. Put on a show and see who shows up. 27
To judge the rhetorical success of a dissident press publication, ultimately, is to examine the situation in which it appears, to consider how it creates an image of the world as well as explore who shows up to salute this image. In the case of the INSP, it is too soon to judge whether it or another antipoverty network can help build global solidarity against poverty and create an alter- native image of globalization that will draw significant numbers of people. Still, it is a useful question to ponder and to examine as things unfold.
In that context, looking historically at publications like the Masses or "Hobo" News can help students of rhetoric see when and how publics form and dissipate, how discourse constitutes a public, whose attention gives life to a public, and how the dissident press creates images of the world that often are utopian but that sometimes have performative force. In the section that follows, we provide a background sketch of "Hobo" News as an example of how historical dissident press rhetoric might be used in today's rhetoric classroom.
"Hobo" News and a Rhetoric of Dissent
[James Eads] How's newspaper bridge connected America's migratory workers to one another and to the larger labor movement; today it
The Dissident Press in a Rhetorical Education 255 lies virtually forgotten, in a remote corner of the St. Louis Public
Library. 28
We propose to show you in plain unvarnished language the great truths of things as they are, by the men who are on the bottom of this social system. 29
By the 1870s most people in the United States were becoming increasingly aware of a growing stream of migratory laborers that later became known and feared as a "Great Army of Tramps. " Historian Todd De Pastino, in his book Citizen Hobo, attributes the cause of this mass homelessness to economic issues: the post-Civil War shift to a wage-based economy that left many peo- ple unemployed, a stock market crash, years of bankruptcies, and an inter- national depression. 30 Even though economic changes primarily caused an unprecedented stream of homeless workers, the mainstream press, academ- ics, and politicians failed to attribute economic causes to the change: "One might have expected the most learned commentators on the tramp crisis to have recognized its roots in the problem of unemployment. Such, however, was not the case. "31 Mainstream journalists, charity workers, and politicians responded in ways that were "not generous. Rather than offer charity, they called for mass arrests, workhouses and chain gangs. "32 Tramps on the road were dismissed as "lazy" and "shiftless. "33
In the ensuing years, journalists and academics became preoccupied with writing about the individual moral failings of tramps and hobos. De Pastino writes that certain members of the tramp army tried to engage the mainstream press through letters, like William Aspinwall, who sought to establish himself as a credible rhetor and to focus the critique of tramping on problems of social class and unemployment. All the while, his interlocutor, John James McCook, a minister and language professor at Trinity College, steered the questions back toward personal habits and morals. On his own, even a gifted rhetor like Aspinwell could not create a counterpublic force to counter the tide of antihobo sentiment circulating in the United States. But this tide of negative public sentiment did establish the rhetorical exigency for one man to help create a press outlet for hoboes to publicly express their views.
Today, off through a maze of hallways and closed doors, tucked into a tidy corner of the St. Louis Public Library Special Collections, is the fragile, yellowed archive of the 1915-1929 paper "Hobo" News, founded and funded by the eccentric, self-effacing James Eads How. How's grandfather (James Buchanan Eads, distant cousin to President Buchanan) had built the first road and rail bridge across the Mississippi--the Eads Bridge in St. Louis. His father (James Flintham How) served as vice president and general manager of the Wabash Railroad. His paternal grandfather ( John How) was three times elected mayor of St. Louis. How himself was Harvard and Oxford educated, trained in
256 Diana George and Paula Mathieu
theology and medicine, and a member one of the most prominent families in St. Louis.
What makes How's life significant for our purposes is a promise he made to use what fortune he had to "publish a newspaper for the benefit of his organization of the unemployed. "34 How did more than that, of course, but his paper, "Hobo" News, served as a voice of dissent, written by and about the very men How wanted to help. How's life often was that of the hobo. He rode the rails and frequently lived with hoboes sleeping in makeshift lean-tos along the Mississippi and following the crops as migrant labor. His life was dedicated to serving the poor and unemployed and especially the ever-increas- ing numbers of men living the hobo life. For them, he began the Interna- tional Brotherhood Welfare Association (IBWA), established and funded hobo colleges across the country, and was their "guiding spirit and 'angel,'" as an editorial in the first issue of "Hobo" News declared. By 1933, at age fifty-six, How was dead, stricken by pneumonia exacerbated, physicians said, by years of starvation and what one Time magazine article called the life he had cho- sen as a "vagrant. "35 His was not a life that went unnoticed. A 1911 New York Times feature story called him "The Millionaire Hobo," a "scientific anarchist," and a tireless campaigner for the rights of the unemployed. How called him- self a "voluntary anarchist," and told the reporter he probably was not a good socialist. 36
As with many dissident papers, "Hobo" News took its cue from this impas- sioned leader. The paper began as the official voice of the IBWA and early on broadcast the aims of this new organization: "We are forming brotherhoods of the unskilled and unorganized workers commonly called 'tramps' by news- papers and officials, but who, in reality are usually honest workingmen com- pelled to shift about like hungry animals in search of work. "37 "Hobo" News was established, in part then, as a response to a mainstream press that saw nothing of worth in the ever-growing numbers of people who were homeless and unemployed.
Founded in an era of radical labor movements like that of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and of outspoken anarchists and socialists like Emma Goldman, Ben Reitman, and Eugene Debs, "Hobo" News early on estab- lished its dissenting voice, often publishing articles and extracts by Debs, Up- ton Sinclair, and other powerful socialist and leftist leaders. This paper spoke directly to the people about and for whom it was written.
One scholar characterizes the rhetoric of this paper as functioning "pri- marily as a published version of a more oral format--meaning the campfire tale-telling and political discussion of the 'hobo jungle. '"38 To some extent, that is the case. The paper did feature stories, poems, and commentary that had the tenor of local talk. Yet "Hobo" News went far beyond that campfire tale-telling mode. More than simple folksy talk, "Hobo" News was a serious
The Dissident Press in a Rhetorical Education 257
advocate for unorganized laborers and, especially, for the unemployed. As the official publication of the IBWA, the paper published convention notes and organization news. Its greatest contribution, however, had to be the fact that it put a face on America's tramps, hoboes, and those who were homeless, out of work, and impoverished. As the editorial for the first issue states, "The writer admits that he doesn't like the word 'hobo,' but philosophically con- cludes: 'We have got it and we are going to make it respectable. '"39
In a number of issues, the paper challenged the mainstream press, accus- ing it of not doing the job of a free press. In 1920, for example, one writer quotes Upton Sinclair's account of journalist John Swinton's remarks on "The Independent Press": "There is no such thing in America as an independent press, unless it is in the country towns. You know it, and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write his honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. . . . The business of the New York journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vil- ify, to fawn at the feet of mammon and to sell his race and his country for his daily bread. . . . We are intellectual prostitutes. "40
In that way, "Hobo" News separated itself from the mainstream press and claimed, by association if in no other way, that it was a paper willing to write "honest opinions," independent of the "rich men behind the scenes" that Swinton called the puppeteers of New York journalists. How likened his paper to the socialist papers the Call and Appeal to Reason: "We must have our printed word--our 'Appeal,' 'Call,' our daily press in every town. How else can the masses of the people learn? The hour has struck--the psychological moment is here. It calls for economic education and for intelligent action. "41
In an attempt to reach a broader audience, as Lynne Adrian notes, "Hobo" News did try, at times, to address a double audience: both those it was writ- ten for and about and those who were closer to centers of power who might be swayed to use that power to effect change. In 1917, for example, one writer directly addresses that second audience with a challenge: "We care not whether you be an aristocrat or a plebeian, a priest or millionaire, a professional man or worker--it is necessary for your welfare and all your fellow-citizens, that you should be in touch with the evils of the hobo life. "42 In light of the 1917 Espionage Act, the editors might have felt a strong need to address even mil- lionaires as "fellow-citizens" in language that was certainly softened from ear- lier issues. Like other radical papers, "Hobo" News had been affected by that legislation, which threatened, and in many cases closed down, socialist and radical papers throughout the country. The Masses stopped publication dur- ing this period, for example, as seven of their editors, artists, and writers (John Reed, Max Eastman, Floyd Dell, Art Young, Merrill Rodgers, Josephine Bell, and H. J. Glintkerkamp) were tried for seditious actions under the Espi- onage Act. 43 Founded in 1897, the socialist paper Appeal to Reason, which had
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published writers like Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, William Morris, and John Ruskin, had by 1922 closed its operations also under pressure from the Espi- onage Act. Though never actually shut down, "Hobo" News found its second- class mailing status suddenly gone, a real blow to a paper already running on shaky finances. It was also during this time that hoboes selling the paper were harassed, arrested, and beaten by police--their papers confiscated and, in at least one case, destroyed as the prisoner looked on. Under these circum- stances, it is not surprising that the paper tempered its rhetorical appeal in what seems an attempt to broaden its base of support and even forestall poten- tial charges of sedition.
Early on, however, the "Hobo" News rhetoric was anything but conciliatory. In the April 1915 issue, for example, How freely uses the language of leftist and radical politics. In what he called "The First Letter" to the paper, How addresses the editor as "Dear Comrade. " What follows is melodramatic but direct, and reads much like the earlier writings of Jacob Riis and Jack London44:
Dear Comrade:
Here's welcoming the "Hobo News" and its Editor. What a field you should have, O, paper!
What good you should accomplish!
What a multitude of sad and lonely lives you should
strengthen!
What a world of economic darkness and gloom you
should dispel!
Oh, Paper of the Masses of the proletariat. May you ever be true to the
highest and the best; generous to the adversary and fearless in the championship of the weak and oppressed. 45
Jack London had written this on watching street people in the city of London picking scraps off the sidewalk to eat: "And, this, between six and seven o'clock in the evening of August 20, year of Our Lord, 1902, in the heart of the great- est, wealthiest, most powerful empire the world has ever seen. "46 Or, from Riis's introduction to How the Other Half Lives: "Long ago it was said that 'one half of the world does not know how the other half lives. ' That was true then. It did not know because it did not care. The half that was on top cared little for the struggles, and less for the fate of those who were underneath, so long as it was able to hold them there and keep its own seat. "47
The language in "Hobo" News was drawn from these earlier authors, meant to touch the heart and to confront: "What are you going to do about it? " Riis asked in 1890. 48 "What a world of economic darkness and gloom you should dispel! " How writes in 1915. 49 The ample use of pathos, exclamation, and direct address is not a strategy a mainstream press would rely upon in telling the story of poverty. It is, however, a primary tool in dissident press publica- tions as they function in advocacy roles.
The Dissident Press in a Rhetorical Education 259
In The Design of Dissent, Tony Kushner posits four characteristics of success- ful dissent: "It is shocking, it is clever--even funny in a grim sort of way--and its meaning is instantly intelligible. . . . It is, or at least it seems to be, samizs- dat, dangerous, forbidden. " "Resistance," Kushner writes, "is sending up a sig- nal flare in the darkness. "50 A paper like "Hobo" News does precisely that: it aims to shock and surprise, to make readers reassess their own roles and, in the end, consider the extent to which they are complicit in the trouble at hand.
In a rhetoric classroom, one might ask students to read from the "Hobo" News archives alongside De Pastino's work or other historical accounts of the time period, the rhetorical situation for which "Hobo" News journalists wrote. Understanding the historical situation is complex and would make useful ground for discussion: What effect did an organized group of homeless men have on later government policies that offered some safeguards to workers, policies such as unemployment compensation, the acquiescence to the form- ing of unions, and later, the GI Bill? In what ways did a publication like "Hobo" News create a counterpublic space for offering alternative causal explanations of the widespread poverty that Americans were witnessing and undergoing? To what extent did the specter of an organized, politicized, publishing hobo army help change the public discourse on hobo culture--which later became romanticized in popular culture as the last bastion of true American man- hood? While there are no definitive answers to questions like these, in a rhet- oric classroom they would serve to shift the focus away from an exclusive study of invention, to consider the entire rhetorical situation, including the historical situation and questions of circulation and performativity, questions we believe are generative and exciting to pose with students.
These questions are additionally useful in helping students seek a public for their own work. In this way, students are reading as writers the journalists in the dissident press to consider if and how their strategies and appeals for creating an audience could be useful. One of us, for example, has twice taught a course called Writing for Social Change, in which students create their own advocacy writing projects. When first taught, students read a range of essays from mainstream new journalists, like Ted Conover, Adrian Nicole Leblanc, and William Finnegan. While useful in many ways, this work seemed an un- realistic model for students, since these journalists were publishing in venues like the New Yorker and the New York Times, and, for them, finding responsive readers was never in question. The second time this course was offered, stu- dents additionally discussed dissident press writings, from contemporary local writers as well as from historical positions, to help writers think through how to lend their voices to the creation of a public, rather than being a one-off cry in the wild. In such a sense that students are trying to write their way into the publics they seek to join--whether they be academic, political, social, and so forth--reading the work of outsiders seeking to create a responsive public can provide the bases for useful conversations.
260 Diana George and Paula Mathieu
But Are We Teaching Bad Rhetoric?
Even though rhetoricians are interested in the social function of texts and how language makes changes in the world, in what ways might we still be governed by questions of aesthetics instead of performativity? In other words, are we reticent to teach dissident press publications because we think it is just "bad writing"? In a recent discussion on the WPA Listserv, for example, one writer sought help finding examples of "good political writing" and prefaced his request with the caveat that he did not want examples of texts that he thought were "too moralistic or partisan" to engage students. Rather than questioning the writer's assumption that good political writing must not be too partisan or must not moralize, some responders to this thread offered examples of texts that defined "political" as bipartisan writing that took no clear political position: "[the writer] is not running for anything, has no hid- den agenda . . . for . . . people . . . on both sides of the aisle. " Alternatively, others suggested texts that took no political positions but rather analyzed political rhetoric to help students see that we "get 'fooled' by our culture into seeing every issue as having only two sides. " Such analyses of rhetoric are valuable in any class, but we would argue that analysis is not a substitute for strong rhetorical claims that passionately seek to persuade their readers of the justness of a cause. Analysis of political rhetoric is not a substitute for politi- cal, or politicized, rhetoric, and we believe a rhetoric classroom can and should be a place to examine and explore rhetoric that can be highly partisan, can be moralizing, can have clear agendas, and not be written for both, or either, side of the aisle.
What, then, might be the reluctance in recommending baldly political texts? One fear, expressed by the original writer of the question, is that stu- dents of an opposing political position would be turned off by the strong argument. But if we are trying to show that counterpublic discourses appeal to some readers while not appealing to most readers, would not such a response be an important part of the discussion in understanding how dissident rhet- oric works? If an argument were immediately appealing and accepted by all, it would not be dissident, and it might well not be an argument at all. Dissi- dent rhetoric works by appealing to some while turning off many others.
Take, for example, Grant Allen's editorial in the March 1920 issue of "Hobo" News. In it, he sets up a worldview of clear Manichaean opposites of good and evil:
If you are on the side of the Spoilers, then you are a Bad Man.
If you are on the side of Social Justice, then you are a Good Man. There is no effective test of High Morality at the present day save this. Critics of the Middle Class type often explain, of reasoning like this,
"What on earth makes him say it? What has he to gain by talking in that way? What does he expect to get by it? So bound up are they in
The Dissident Press in a Rhetorical Education 261
the idea of selfinterest [sic] as the one motive of action, that they never even seem to conceive of honest conviction as a ground for speaking out the truth that is in one.
To such critics, I would answer, "The reason why I write all this is because I profoundly believe it.
I believe the poor are being kept out of their own. I believe the rich are, for the most part, selfish and despicable. I believe wealth has been piled up by cruel and unworthy means.
I believe it is wrong in us to acquiesce in the wicked inequalities of
our existing Social State, instead of trying our utmost to bring about another, where Right would be done to all, where Poverty would be impossible. I believe such a system is perfectly practicable, and that nothing stands in its way save the selfish fears and prejudices of indi- viduals. And I believe even those craven fears and narrow prejudices are wholly mistaken: that everybody, even the rich themselves, would be infinitely happier in a world where no Poverty existed, where no hateful sights and sound met the eye at every turn, where all slums were swept away, and where everybody had their just and even share of pleasure and refinements in a free and equal community.
Arguably, this polemical statement might easily be dismissed by many stu- dents, because it conflicts with their beliefs or identity or seems too utopian. 51 But as an example of dissident rhetoric, it would not be expected to be em- braced by most readers. What would be interesting, when discussing a text like this, is to consider to whom such an argument might appeal. What aspects, if any, of Allen's worldview seem appealing to any students? To whom is he writing if he describes the rich as "for the most part, selfish and despicable"? It would also be important to discuss the ethics and responsibility of such writing: is it ever acceptable to characterize a person or a group as "despica- ble," "cruel," and "unjust"? Are issues of the relative power and prestige of the writer versus his or her subject germane to the discussion?
Beyond student resistance, we might hesitate to teach dissident writing in a rhetoric class based on aesthetic grounds: despite all its good intentions, dis- sident publications may not represent very good writing as we typically imag- ine it. Certainly Allen's article lacks subtlety or nuance. English-department aesthetics generally favor ambiguity over polemics, complexity over clarity. 52 Perhaps we fear we might infect students with "bad taste" if we take up lan- guage that aims more to do things than to mean, reverberate, and echo. Per- haps we additionally fear that we already live in a world saturated by "bad rhetoric": blogs, talk radio, and chat rooms that seek more to malign individ- uals than to argue for ideas or positions. Bringing in rhetoric like Allen's might only add to the cheapening of public discourse. Why give students examples of "bad rhetoric" if we all swim in a sea of it daily?
262 Diana George and Paula Mathieu
We would argue that dissident press rhetoric may, indeed, engage in some of the same rhetorical moves of character-assassinating blogs, discussion boards, and so forth, but the aim of bringing this rhetoric into the classroom is not imitation so much as it is a lesson in understanding rhetorical strategy.
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? A Place for the Dissident Press in a Rhetorical Education
"Sending up a signal flare in the darkness"
Diana George and Paula Mathieu
A rhetorical education enables people to engage in and change American society--but not always. 1
Resistance is sending up a signal flare in the darkness. 2
In 2007 the Council of Writing Program Administrators sponsored a Modern Language Association (MLA) session asking, essentially, "Should academic or public writing constitute the focus of a first-year composition course today? "3 It is an important question, one that might easily send composition scholars and teachers back to an observation Jim Berlin and others made many years ago, that any rhetoric arises out of a time, a place, and a social context. In that way, a rhetoric is always situated, "always related to larger social and political developments," and so a composition course needs to acknowledge that situ- atedness, by recognizing that no language, no rhetoric, is ever innocent, ever free of the politics and culture from which it emerges. 4 That question--public or academic--suggests, however, there might be a clear-cut choice: we either teach students to understand and use the language of the academy, or we turn to a different kind of rhetorical education entirely. To a large extent, that concern over what to teach has been the dilemma of first-year composition all along, though at times the proposed opposition has been academic pre- paredness versus private expression. For our purposes here, then, the question is not so much academic versus public writing but, instead, why is public writing often considered, if not out of bounds, at least not quite worthy of the college classroom? Moreover, if we choose to teach public writing--as many of us do--just what public writing do we teach? Do we teach the rhetoric of electoral politics, the language of corporate structures, the appeal of nonprof- its? What about the rhetoric that students are warned against--the bare out- rage of radical politics? What is the rhetoric our students need for this time, in this place?
248 Diana George and Paula Mathieu
To put all of this in a more direct light: as the two of us write this piece, we are living in a country at war--a war argued for and made possible by pub- lic debates and shoddy news reporting. (Witness, for example, the New York Times's 2004 apology for not carefully investigating the Bush administra- tion's claims of weapons of mass destruction inside Iraq. )5 We are in a coun- try where, according to the National Coalition for the Homeless, requests for emergency shelter have increased in some cities by as much as 24 percent in the just this past year (2007), while a number of those same cities (Atlanta and Orlando are two examples) have passed legislation to restrict the distri- bution of food to people who are homeless. These ordinances were voted on and approved, we presume, after public arguments made to legislatures and their constituents about homelessness, the nature of homeless persons, and the need to do something. The National Coalition for the Homeless tells us:
The motivations behind city food sharing restrictions vary as greatly as the tactics themselves. For instance, some cities view the restrictions as a way to channel charitable activities through designated organiza- tions and institutions that provide services. Other food sharing restric- tions seem geared toward moving homeless persons out of downtown areas and away from tourist and business locations. Finally, some cities' restrictions demonstrate an open hostility to the presence of homeless persons anywhere in the city limits. 6
We are in a country at a time when the general population does not trust its leaders or its traditional sources of news and information. According to the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism, the number of regular viewers of television news and readers of newspapers who actually trust these outlets to give them reliable news has dropped by 10 percentage points in the past decade. The number of readers who have turned to Internet blogs as their pri- mary source of news has risen almost as sharply. The same report found that even the journalists writing the stories are skeptical of the media's reliability. 7
Admittedly there is little new in a claim that writing courses, in particular, have typically responded to the pull of contemporary politics, changing class- room demographics, economic down- and upturns, and more. The semantics movement of the 1940s and 1950s, for example, has often been credited to the propaganda-soaked conclusion of World War II, the beginnings of the Korean War, the paranoia of the McCarthy era, and the sudden entrance of television into homes across the country. Later, in the shadow of the Vietnam War, cam- pus protests, and, eventually, the disillusionment of Watergate, it is no surprise that writing classrooms turned to the importance of the individual and indi- vidual expression as one primary lesson in this course. 8 As well, a number of scholars have observed that composition took what has often been called a "social turn" in the 1980s. 9 Most recently, perhaps as a logical extension of that social turn, we have begun to hear increased calls for attention to public
The Dissident Press in a Rhetorical Education 249
rhetoric or public writing--calls that might easily be read as a rhetorical turn, or, to put it more accurately, a rhetorical return--a turn back to questions and lessons that locate writing instruction at the heart of at least one rhetorical tradition: preparing students for participation in civic life. The question that arises in that rhetorical re-turn, if we might call it that, is how a rhetorical edu- cation might embrace not only the social or political structure at hand but also the rhetoric of those outside that structure arguing for change. Is there a place, even or especially in calls for public or civic rhetoric, for a rhetoric of dissent?
We opened this article with a brief passage from Glenn, Lyday, and Sharer's Rhetorical Education in America. In that collection of essays, Glenn reminds us that traditionally, a rhetorical education was meant to enable citizens "to en- gage and change American society--but not always. "10 Glenn's "not always" is a useful caveat in her discussion because she follows it by tracing the his- torical trajectory of a rhetorical education in the United States geared to enable those already in power--white, privileged, and (for a very long time) male. This was a rhetorical education generally inaccessible to anyone outside the halls of power and privilege. It was also a rhetorical education that would not have drawn upon the kinds of public writing or civic rhetoric that have, for decades, moved the public to action: the dissident press.
When, for example, African American abolitionists Samuel Cornish and John Russwurm wrote, in the 1827 inaugural issue of Freedom's Journal, the first African American-owned and -operated paper in this country, "We wish to plead our own cause," they were addressing those very rhetors who (even with good intentions) had for too many years been speaking for and about them. 11 That belief in the power of language to do something--change minds, form coalitions, uncover lies--is at the center of dissident movements through- out history. It is also at the heart of any rhetorical education, and especially one that seeks to engage in public writing or public rhetoric.
It is in this context that we explore the role of what Glenn calls "nontra- ditional rhetors"--in this case, the dissident press--in a rhetorical education. 12 In what follows, we offer an examination of just what the dissident press is, what constitutes a rhetoric of dissent, and what role the dissident press has played in social and political movements of all sorts. In particular, we focus on "Hobo" News (1915-1929 in its initial iteration) as the sort of small, special interest dissident paper that can, as Tony Kushner writes, send up "a signal flare in the darkness," the kind of paper (and rhetoric) often ignored, even reviled in the writing course. 13
What Is the Dissident Press?
Ordinarily, one particular rhetoric is dominant--the rhetoric embody- ing the ideology of a powerful group or class--but the exclusion of all other rhetorics is never completely achieved, not even in a totalitarian state where the effort to do so is common. . . . A democracy, however,
250 Diana George and Paula Mathieu
ordinarily provides political and social supports for open discussion, allowing for the free play of possibilities in the rhetorics that appear-- although these possibilities are obviously never unlimited. 14
According to journalism scholar Lauren Kessler, the mainstream press in the United States has never represented an open marketplace of ideas, where a diversity of opinion is tolerated and circulated. 15 Kessler argues that his- torical studies overwhelmingly show that the U. S. mainstream press has con- sistently spoken for the "homogenous middle" and thus has been a closed marketplace of ideas, with access routinely denied to those holding aberrant or unpopular beliefs. 16 This denial of access--especially to blacks, abolition- ists, working-class radicals, labor organizers, feminists, utopians, pacifists, gay and lesbian groups, and homeless advocates, among others--results from such groups being excluded entirely in the press or by the press selectively covering their disruptive events (such as demonstrations or strikes) but not their goals or ideals. Such coverage often even ridicules and stereotypes the philosophies and positions of such groups. Mainstream news media tend to focus on events ("if it bleeds, it leads"), not issues, further marginalizing groups seeking to cir- culate new ideas to a broader public.
Denied access to the established media, a vast and varied assortment of fringe groups initiate publications of their own. Such publications often begin because of the financial support of one or a few people working on a shoestring budget, and many continue to struggle with financial problems throughout their runs. Some writers and editors have faced government harassment or have been ostracized by others in their communities. Many publications have started and stopped suddenly, as funds run out, public pressures change, or the issues begin to receive broader, more balanced coverage in the popular press. Kessler importantly notes that the fringe publications she studied--papers linked to social movements like the New Harmony Community's New Har- mony Gazette or the agrarian revolt-inspired National Economist--were typically as closed to ideas at odds with their own group's beliefs as was the main- stream press. 17
The difference, it seems, is that dissident publications have embraced their situatedness, never claiming to be broad-based or inclusive. In fact, according to Kessler's study, many dissident press writers were--and are--simultaneously those who lead a movement and who write about it. The dissident press, then, does not pretend objectivity. It does not seek to cover a wide array of issues, nor does it prize disinterest or balanced reporting. In other words, dissident publications are and have always been nakedly rhetorical, with the real and concrete aim of having their words and ideas do something, to make changes in the broader world.
In order to make changes, dissident publications have sought both to speak passionately to an audience of their believers and to educate and persuade a
The Dissident Press in a Rhetorical Education 251
broader public about their issues and alternative ways of understanding those issues. Achieving these goals of a more focused and a broader readership at once has been difficult, practically as well as rhetorically. In practical terms, reaching a broad audience with limited resources and distribution networks is extraordinarily difficult; rhetorically, writing both for those deeply commit- ted and those indifferent or unaware of a cause represents a tricky challenge. As a result, sometimes the writing in dissident press papers is uneven or incon- sistent; some pieces are quite heated and polemical while others seek to intro- duce issues or provide evidence to argue for a cause.
Despite the ongoing material and ideological problems of circulating un- popular views in what might be called undiplomatic language, the dissident press in the United States has often managed to successfully circulate and eventually normalize issues that once might have seemed radical or out of bounds. Until dissident publications began championing them, for example, causes like the abolition of slavery, women's rights, or education about AIDS received little to no mention in mainstream publications. Because of these and other examples, journalism scholar Rodger Streitmatter argues that the dissident press has "been instrumental in shaping the history of this nation. " He goes as far as to assert that "a strong argument can be made that the dis- sident press has played a more vital role in shaping American history than has the mainstream press. "18 If this is true, then it would follow that studying the rhetorical strategies and force of a dissident press, both contemporary and historical, would and should occupy a central place in a classroom devoted to rhetorical education. What might such study entail?
A Rhetoric of Dissent
Political theorist Iris Marion Young writes that rhetoric--"the way claims and reasons are stated"--occurs in all sorts of public address, including, Young writes, "the affective dimensions of communication, its figurative aspects, and the diverse media of communication--placards and street theatre instead of tabloids or reports. Rhetoric has the important function of situating those seeking to persuade others in relation to their audience. "19 Young thus reminds us that rhetoric is inherently situational. That is, in responding to a particular need/argument/event and aiming to persuade a particular audience, rhetoric must be grounded in the situation at hand.
While it might seem common sense, then, that anyone trying to persuade an audience to support an unpopular cause or radical social change would want to write with a measure of caution, an ear to a broad audience in need of con- vincing, the rhetoric of dissent is anything but cautious. What, for example, might we make of a newspaper or magazine that introduces itself in this way:
This Magazine is Owned and Published Co-operatively by its Editors. It has no Dividends to Pay, and nobody is trying to make Money out of it.
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A Revolutionary and not a Reform Magazine; a Magazine with a Sense of Humor and no Respect for the Respectable; Frank; Arrogant; Imperti- nent; Searching for the True Cause; a Magazine Directed against Rigidity and Dogma wherever it is found; Printing what is too Naked or True
for a Money-Making Press; a Magazine whose final Policy is to do as
it Pleases and Conciliate Nobody, not even its Readers--A Free Magazine. 20
With this masthead boast, the Masses, an early-twentieth-century socialist magazine, declared itself beholden to no one, a magazine "searching for the true cause," a "revolutionary" magazine presumably uninterested in "reform," a magazine free from the constraints of capitalism. That declaration, if we take it on face value, defies every lesson on audience at least as it is tradition- ally taught in rhetoric handbooks. The writer violates, for example, several of the rules that Sharon Crowley and Deborah Hawhee have outlined in Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students for creating a successful ethos: the claims lack specific evidence, which violates a demand for showing that one has done one's homework; the arrogant tone arguably fails to create goodwill with the reader; and the third-person discourse fails to create a personal relationship between writer and reader. 21 If evaluated on the basis of classical rhetorical appeals within the text, the Masses--and many dissident press concerns-- might be deemed rhetorical failures. Perhaps this is why, in classrooms where we purport to study the power of language to make change in the world, we pay scant attention to the universe of dissident texts. Ignored or dismissed as "bad rhetoric," dissident texts offer the opportunity to study rhetorical exam- ples that have consistently sought to make changes in the world, and occa- sionally have succeeded.
Looked at in this way it seems that rather than violating rules of discourse, this passage from the Masses seeks to change the rules of the game. In declar- ing itself free, true, revolutionary, nonconciliatory, arrogant, "against rigidity and dogma," the editors challenge readers to imagine themselves as somehow aligned with a publication that aligns itself with no one and with nothing in particular, save the freedom to print what it wishes as it wishes. The audience that made this magazine so popular in the first decade of the twentieth cen- tury was looking, we might assume, for something new, something bold.
The rhetorical importance, then, of examining the workings of the dissi- dent press is to explore how, within such spaces, writers make different assump- tions about discourse protocols. Dissident press articles can exemplify how the rules we teach our students--about, for example, constructing a positive ethos--are not universal rules of good writing but rules for writing that oper- ates within certain accepted rhetorical situations. When one seeks to create change, or make something different happen in discourse, the rules might seem to fly out the window.
The Dissident Press in a Rhetorical Education 253
In examining the rhetorical workings of the dissident press, however, it would be incomplete to look only at the rhetorical appeals made within the texts or to equate its rhetorical force with the composed text itself. How these texts managed or failed to find readers and to circulate both materially and ideologically significantly determines the rhetorical power of any text to cre- ate a public appeal. 22 Thus in order to study the rhetoric of dissent, one must also look more closely at the relationship between textual circulation and the creation of a readership, or public. To do this, we turn to the work of Michael Warner on the creation of publics and counterpublics.
Dissident press publications work to create counterpublic spaces, which Warner argues are "defined by their tension with the larger public. . . . Dis- cussion within such a public is understood to contravene the roles obtaining in the world at large, being structured by alternative discourse positions or protocols, making different assumptions about what can be said or what goes without saying . . .
it maintains at some level, conscious or not, an awareness of its subordinate status. "23 In other words, counterpublics engage in alterna- tive rhetorical strategies while seeking to effect change in a more-dominant public sphere.
Warner's work, then, allows for an alternative way to evaluate dissident rhetoric: one that goes beyond close inspection at the textual level. Rather than examining internal textual criteria, Warner shows us that a public appeal is successful when people pay attention. He argues that if and when public appeals are successful, they hail a public into being by their discourse. Once readers recognize themselves as the type of person being hailed by a message, and once they pay attention to it, a public is constituted. So the arrogance or lack of evidence in the appeal of the Masses is irrelevant if readers feel them- selves to be addressed by such words and pay attention to them. The act of readers' paying attention importantly begins the creation of a public.
Warner continues by arguing that a public cannot be constituted by a sin- gle text, no matter how compelling or provocative. He describes a public as "an ongoing space of encounters" defined by the "concatenation of texts over time. "24 Thus conversation and circulation are key. A publication can create a counterpublic space only if readers pay attention and if they seek to respond, speak back, or write letters to the editor: in other words, when the discourse reflexively circulates. In that sense, Warner argues, a text must be circulated, not just emitted in one direction. This challenge is key for dissident press concerns, for while it is one thing to give the appearance of people paying attention, creating responsive readers and writers is another matter entirely.
Take a contemporary example: the International Network of Street Papers (INSP) has a goal of creating a global space for circulating underreported news about poverty and homelessness. To this end, they have created the Global Street News Service. 25 At this point, nearly 100 independent antipoverty mem- ber newspapers around the world have successfully managed to share content
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among themselves, so that, for example, a newspaper in Seattle can publish a story about child labor in Argentina reported locally by journalists there. This news service has helped each paper locally engage its readers, to broaden the discussion of poverty, via letters to the editor or local meetings of inter- ested volunteers, to include a global scope. As of yet, however, the News Ser- vice itself has not created a public of its own. The Web site is not a large draw for readers; it is more an internal resource for the papers themselves. When readers do happen upon stories there, there is no clear feedback mechanism, so the articles do not readily invite response or the creation of new texts. Going forward, the INSP can decide whether its News Service should remain an internal resource or whether it should seek to create an online counter- public space for uniting readers around the world interested in antipoverty issues. That would require directing readers to the site, but also making it a site that invites response and textual circulation.
With dissident press publications, response and circulation are always meant as means to change the world in some way, whether it is to change how peo- ple think about poverty, for example, or take action on a specific campaign. Warner argues that a public is always created with an aim of "poetic world making. "26
Public discourse says not only 'let a public exist' but 'Let it have this char- acter, speak this way, see the world in this way. ' It then goes in search of con- firmation that such a public exists, with greater or lesser success--success being further attempts to cite, circulate, and realize the world understanding it artic- ulates. Run it up the flagpole and see who salutes. Put on a show and see who shows up. 27
To judge the rhetorical success of a dissident press publication, ultimately, is to examine the situation in which it appears, to consider how it creates an image of the world as well as explore who shows up to salute this image. In the case of the INSP, it is too soon to judge whether it or another antipoverty network can help build global solidarity against poverty and create an alter- native image of globalization that will draw significant numbers of people. Still, it is a useful question to ponder and to examine as things unfold.
In that context, looking historically at publications like the Masses or "Hobo" News can help students of rhetoric see when and how publics form and dissipate, how discourse constitutes a public, whose attention gives life to a public, and how the dissident press creates images of the world that often are utopian but that sometimes have performative force. In the section that follows, we provide a background sketch of "Hobo" News as an example of how historical dissident press rhetoric might be used in today's rhetoric classroom.
"Hobo" News and a Rhetoric of Dissent
[James Eads] How's newspaper bridge connected America's migratory workers to one another and to the larger labor movement; today it
The Dissident Press in a Rhetorical Education 255 lies virtually forgotten, in a remote corner of the St. Louis Public
Library. 28
We propose to show you in plain unvarnished language the great truths of things as they are, by the men who are on the bottom of this social system. 29
By the 1870s most people in the United States were becoming increasingly aware of a growing stream of migratory laborers that later became known and feared as a "Great Army of Tramps. " Historian Todd De Pastino, in his book Citizen Hobo, attributes the cause of this mass homelessness to economic issues: the post-Civil War shift to a wage-based economy that left many peo- ple unemployed, a stock market crash, years of bankruptcies, and an inter- national depression. 30 Even though economic changes primarily caused an unprecedented stream of homeless workers, the mainstream press, academ- ics, and politicians failed to attribute economic causes to the change: "One might have expected the most learned commentators on the tramp crisis to have recognized its roots in the problem of unemployment. Such, however, was not the case. "31 Mainstream journalists, charity workers, and politicians responded in ways that were "not generous. Rather than offer charity, they called for mass arrests, workhouses and chain gangs. "32 Tramps on the road were dismissed as "lazy" and "shiftless. "33
In the ensuing years, journalists and academics became preoccupied with writing about the individual moral failings of tramps and hobos. De Pastino writes that certain members of the tramp army tried to engage the mainstream press through letters, like William Aspinwall, who sought to establish himself as a credible rhetor and to focus the critique of tramping on problems of social class and unemployment. All the while, his interlocutor, John James McCook, a minister and language professor at Trinity College, steered the questions back toward personal habits and morals. On his own, even a gifted rhetor like Aspinwell could not create a counterpublic force to counter the tide of antihobo sentiment circulating in the United States. But this tide of negative public sentiment did establish the rhetorical exigency for one man to help create a press outlet for hoboes to publicly express their views.
Today, off through a maze of hallways and closed doors, tucked into a tidy corner of the St. Louis Public Library Special Collections, is the fragile, yellowed archive of the 1915-1929 paper "Hobo" News, founded and funded by the eccentric, self-effacing James Eads How. How's grandfather (James Buchanan Eads, distant cousin to President Buchanan) had built the first road and rail bridge across the Mississippi--the Eads Bridge in St. Louis. His father (James Flintham How) served as vice president and general manager of the Wabash Railroad. His paternal grandfather ( John How) was three times elected mayor of St. Louis. How himself was Harvard and Oxford educated, trained in
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theology and medicine, and a member one of the most prominent families in St. Louis.
What makes How's life significant for our purposes is a promise he made to use what fortune he had to "publish a newspaper for the benefit of his organization of the unemployed. "34 How did more than that, of course, but his paper, "Hobo" News, served as a voice of dissent, written by and about the very men How wanted to help. How's life often was that of the hobo. He rode the rails and frequently lived with hoboes sleeping in makeshift lean-tos along the Mississippi and following the crops as migrant labor. His life was dedicated to serving the poor and unemployed and especially the ever-increas- ing numbers of men living the hobo life. For them, he began the Interna- tional Brotherhood Welfare Association (IBWA), established and funded hobo colleges across the country, and was their "guiding spirit and 'angel,'" as an editorial in the first issue of "Hobo" News declared. By 1933, at age fifty-six, How was dead, stricken by pneumonia exacerbated, physicians said, by years of starvation and what one Time magazine article called the life he had cho- sen as a "vagrant. "35 His was not a life that went unnoticed. A 1911 New York Times feature story called him "The Millionaire Hobo," a "scientific anarchist," and a tireless campaigner for the rights of the unemployed. How called him- self a "voluntary anarchist," and told the reporter he probably was not a good socialist. 36
As with many dissident papers, "Hobo" News took its cue from this impas- sioned leader. The paper began as the official voice of the IBWA and early on broadcast the aims of this new organization: "We are forming brotherhoods of the unskilled and unorganized workers commonly called 'tramps' by news- papers and officials, but who, in reality are usually honest workingmen com- pelled to shift about like hungry animals in search of work. "37 "Hobo" News was established, in part then, as a response to a mainstream press that saw nothing of worth in the ever-growing numbers of people who were homeless and unemployed.
Founded in an era of radical labor movements like that of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and of outspoken anarchists and socialists like Emma Goldman, Ben Reitman, and Eugene Debs, "Hobo" News early on estab- lished its dissenting voice, often publishing articles and extracts by Debs, Up- ton Sinclair, and other powerful socialist and leftist leaders. This paper spoke directly to the people about and for whom it was written.
One scholar characterizes the rhetoric of this paper as functioning "pri- marily as a published version of a more oral format--meaning the campfire tale-telling and political discussion of the 'hobo jungle. '"38 To some extent, that is the case. The paper did feature stories, poems, and commentary that had the tenor of local talk. Yet "Hobo" News went far beyond that campfire tale-telling mode. More than simple folksy talk, "Hobo" News was a serious
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advocate for unorganized laborers and, especially, for the unemployed. As the official publication of the IBWA, the paper published convention notes and organization news. Its greatest contribution, however, had to be the fact that it put a face on America's tramps, hoboes, and those who were homeless, out of work, and impoverished. As the editorial for the first issue states, "The writer admits that he doesn't like the word 'hobo,' but philosophically con- cludes: 'We have got it and we are going to make it respectable. '"39
In a number of issues, the paper challenged the mainstream press, accus- ing it of not doing the job of a free press. In 1920, for example, one writer quotes Upton Sinclair's account of journalist John Swinton's remarks on "The Independent Press": "There is no such thing in America as an independent press, unless it is in the country towns. You know it, and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write his honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. . . . The business of the New York journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vil- ify, to fawn at the feet of mammon and to sell his race and his country for his daily bread. . . . We are intellectual prostitutes. "40
In that way, "Hobo" News separated itself from the mainstream press and claimed, by association if in no other way, that it was a paper willing to write "honest opinions," independent of the "rich men behind the scenes" that Swinton called the puppeteers of New York journalists. How likened his paper to the socialist papers the Call and Appeal to Reason: "We must have our printed word--our 'Appeal,' 'Call,' our daily press in every town. How else can the masses of the people learn? The hour has struck--the psychological moment is here. It calls for economic education and for intelligent action. "41
In an attempt to reach a broader audience, as Lynne Adrian notes, "Hobo" News did try, at times, to address a double audience: both those it was writ- ten for and about and those who were closer to centers of power who might be swayed to use that power to effect change. In 1917, for example, one writer directly addresses that second audience with a challenge: "We care not whether you be an aristocrat or a plebeian, a priest or millionaire, a professional man or worker--it is necessary for your welfare and all your fellow-citizens, that you should be in touch with the evils of the hobo life. "42 In light of the 1917 Espionage Act, the editors might have felt a strong need to address even mil- lionaires as "fellow-citizens" in language that was certainly softened from ear- lier issues. Like other radical papers, "Hobo" News had been affected by that legislation, which threatened, and in many cases closed down, socialist and radical papers throughout the country. The Masses stopped publication dur- ing this period, for example, as seven of their editors, artists, and writers (John Reed, Max Eastman, Floyd Dell, Art Young, Merrill Rodgers, Josephine Bell, and H. J. Glintkerkamp) were tried for seditious actions under the Espi- onage Act. 43 Founded in 1897, the socialist paper Appeal to Reason, which had
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published writers like Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, William Morris, and John Ruskin, had by 1922 closed its operations also under pressure from the Espi- onage Act. Though never actually shut down, "Hobo" News found its second- class mailing status suddenly gone, a real blow to a paper already running on shaky finances. It was also during this time that hoboes selling the paper were harassed, arrested, and beaten by police--their papers confiscated and, in at least one case, destroyed as the prisoner looked on. Under these circum- stances, it is not surprising that the paper tempered its rhetorical appeal in what seems an attempt to broaden its base of support and even forestall poten- tial charges of sedition.
Early on, however, the "Hobo" News rhetoric was anything but conciliatory. In the April 1915 issue, for example, How freely uses the language of leftist and radical politics. In what he called "The First Letter" to the paper, How addresses the editor as "Dear Comrade. " What follows is melodramatic but direct, and reads much like the earlier writings of Jacob Riis and Jack London44:
Dear Comrade:
Here's welcoming the "Hobo News" and its Editor. What a field you should have, O, paper!
What good you should accomplish!
What a multitude of sad and lonely lives you should
strengthen!
What a world of economic darkness and gloom you
should dispel!
Oh, Paper of the Masses of the proletariat. May you ever be true to the
highest and the best; generous to the adversary and fearless in the championship of the weak and oppressed. 45
Jack London had written this on watching street people in the city of London picking scraps off the sidewalk to eat: "And, this, between six and seven o'clock in the evening of August 20, year of Our Lord, 1902, in the heart of the great- est, wealthiest, most powerful empire the world has ever seen. "46 Or, from Riis's introduction to How the Other Half Lives: "Long ago it was said that 'one half of the world does not know how the other half lives. ' That was true then. It did not know because it did not care. The half that was on top cared little for the struggles, and less for the fate of those who were underneath, so long as it was able to hold them there and keep its own seat. "47
The language in "Hobo" News was drawn from these earlier authors, meant to touch the heart and to confront: "What are you going to do about it? " Riis asked in 1890. 48 "What a world of economic darkness and gloom you should dispel! " How writes in 1915. 49 The ample use of pathos, exclamation, and direct address is not a strategy a mainstream press would rely upon in telling the story of poverty. It is, however, a primary tool in dissident press publica- tions as they function in advocacy roles.
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In The Design of Dissent, Tony Kushner posits four characteristics of success- ful dissent: "It is shocking, it is clever--even funny in a grim sort of way--and its meaning is instantly intelligible. . . . It is, or at least it seems to be, samizs- dat, dangerous, forbidden. " "Resistance," Kushner writes, "is sending up a sig- nal flare in the darkness. "50 A paper like "Hobo" News does precisely that: it aims to shock and surprise, to make readers reassess their own roles and, in the end, consider the extent to which they are complicit in the trouble at hand.
In a rhetoric classroom, one might ask students to read from the "Hobo" News archives alongside De Pastino's work or other historical accounts of the time period, the rhetorical situation for which "Hobo" News journalists wrote. Understanding the historical situation is complex and would make useful ground for discussion: What effect did an organized group of homeless men have on later government policies that offered some safeguards to workers, policies such as unemployment compensation, the acquiescence to the form- ing of unions, and later, the GI Bill? In what ways did a publication like "Hobo" News create a counterpublic space for offering alternative causal explanations of the widespread poverty that Americans were witnessing and undergoing? To what extent did the specter of an organized, politicized, publishing hobo army help change the public discourse on hobo culture--which later became romanticized in popular culture as the last bastion of true American man- hood? While there are no definitive answers to questions like these, in a rhet- oric classroom they would serve to shift the focus away from an exclusive study of invention, to consider the entire rhetorical situation, including the historical situation and questions of circulation and performativity, questions we believe are generative and exciting to pose with students.
These questions are additionally useful in helping students seek a public for their own work. In this way, students are reading as writers the journalists in the dissident press to consider if and how their strategies and appeals for creating an audience could be useful. One of us, for example, has twice taught a course called Writing for Social Change, in which students create their own advocacy writing projects. When first taught, students read a range of essays from mainstream new journalists, like Ted Conover, Adrian Nicole Leblanc, and William Finnegan. While useful in many ways, this work seemed an un- realistic model for students, since these journalists were publishing in venues like the New Yorker and the New York Times, and, for them, finding responsive readers was never in question. The second time this course was offered, stu- dents additionally discussed dissident press writings, from contemporary local writers as well as from historical positions, to help writers think through how to lend their voices to the creation of a public, rather than being a one-off cry in the wild. In such a sense that students are trying to write their way into the publics they seek to join--whether they be academic, political, social, and so forth--reading the work of outsiders seeking to create a responsive public can provide the bases for useful conversations.
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But Are We Teaching Bad Rhetoric?
Even though rhetoricians are interested in the social function of texts and how language makes changes in the world, in what ways might we still be governed by questions of aesthetics instead of performativity? In other words, are we reticent to teach dissident press publications because we think it is just "bad writing"? In a recent discussion on the WPA Listserv, for example, one writer sought help finding examples of "good political writing" and prefaced his request with the caveat that he did not want examples of texts that he thought were "too moralistic or partisan" to engage students. Rather than questioning the writer's assumption that good political writing must not be too partisan or must not moralize, some responders to this thread offered examples of texts that defined "political" as bipartisan writing that took no clear political position: "[the writer] is not running for anything, has no hid- den agenda . . . for . . . people . . . on both sides of the aisle. " Alternatively, others suggested texts that took no political positions but rather analyzed political rhetoric to help students see that we "get 'fooled' by our culture into seeing every issue as having only two sides. " Such analyses of rhetoric are valuable in any class, but we would argue that analysis is not a substitute for strong rhetorical claims that passionately seek to persuade their readers of the justness of a cause. Analysis of political rhetoric is not a substitute for politi- cal, or politicized, rhetoric, and we believe a rhetoric classroom can and should be a place to examine and explore rhetoric that can be highly partisan, can be moralizing, can have clear agendas, and not be written for both, or either, side of the aisle.
What, then, might be the reluctance in recommending baldly political texts? One fear, expressed by the original writer of the question, is that stu- dents of an opposing political position would be turned off by the strong argument. But if we are trying to show that counterpublic discourses appeal to some readers while not appealing to most readers, would not such a response be an important part of the discussion in understanding how dissident rhet- oric works? If an argument were immediately appealing and accepted by all, it would not be dissident, and it might well not be an argument at all. Dissi- dent rhetoric works by appealing to some while turning off many others.
Take, for example, Grant Allen's editorial in the March 1920 issue of "Hobo" News. In it, he sets up a worldview of clear Manichaean opposites of good and evil:
If you are on the side of the Spoilers, then you are a Bad Man.
If you are on the side of Social Justice, then you are a Good Man. There is no effective test of High Morality at the present day save this. Critics of the Middle Class type often explain, of reasoning like this,
"What on earth makes him say it? What has he to gain by talking in that way? What does he expect to get by it? So bound up are they in
The Dissident Press in a Rhetorical Education 261
the idea of selfinterest [sic] as the one motive of action, that they never even seem to conceive of honest conviction as a ground for speaking out the truth that is in one.
To such critics, I would answer, "The reason why I write all this is because I profoundly believe it.
I believe the poor are being kept out of their own. I believe the rich are, for the most part, selfish and despicable. I believe wealth has been piled up by cruel and unworthy means.
I believe it is wrong in us to acquiesce in the wicked inequalities of
our existing Social State, instead of trying our utmost to bring about another, where Right would be done to all, where Poverty would be impossible. I believe such a system is perfectly practicable, and that nothing stands in its way save the selfish fears and prejudices of indi- viduals. And I believe even those craven fears and narrow prejudices are wholly mistaken: that everybody, even the rich themselves, would be infinitely happier in a world where no Poverty existed, where no hateful sights and sound met the eye at every turn, where all slums were swept away, and where everybody had their just and even share of pleasure and refinements in a free and equal community.
Arguably, this polemical statement might easily be dismissed by many stu- dents, because it conflicts with their beliefs or identity or seems too utopian. 51 But as an example of dissident rhetoric, it would not be expected to be em- braced by most readers. What would be interesting, when discussing a text like this, is to consider to whom such an argument might appeal. What aspects, if any, of Allen's worldview seem appealing to any students? To whom is he writing if he describes the rich as "for the most part, selfish and despicable"? It would also be important to discuss the ethics and responsibility of such writing: is it ever acceptable to characterize a person or a group as "despica- ble," "cruel," and "unjust"? Are issues of the relative power and prestige of the writer versus his or her subject germane to the discussion?
Beyond student resistance, we might hesitate to teach dissident writing in a rhetoric class based on aesthetic grounds: despite all its good intentions, dis- sident publications may not represent very good writing as we typically imag- ine it. Certainly Allen's article lacks subtlety or nuance. English-department aesthetics generally favor ambiguity over polemics, complexity over clarity. 52 Perhaps we fear we might infect students with "bad taste" if we take up lan- guage that aims more to do things than to mean, reverberate, and echo. Per- haps we additionally fear that we already live in a world saturated by "bad rhetoric": blogs, talk radio, and chat rooms that seek more to malign individ- uals than to argue for ideas or positions. Bringing in rhetoric like Allen's might only add to the cheapening of public discourse. Why give students examples of "bad rhetoric" if we all swim in a sea of it daily?
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We would argue that dissident press rhetoric may, indeed, engage in some of the same rhetorical moves of character-assassinating blogs, discussion boards, and so forth, but the aim of bringing this rhetoric into the classroom is not imitation so much as it is a lesson in understanding rhetorical strategy.
