Barbara Garson
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Barbara Garson | |
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Born | social activist | July 7, 1941
Known for | MacBird! |
Barbara Garson (born July 7, 1941, in
Education and personal life
This section of a biography of a living person does not include any references or sources. (October 2021) |
Garson attended the University of California, Berkeley, where she earned a B.A. specializing in Classical History in 1964. She was active in the Free Speech Movement, as the editor of The Free Speech Movement Newsletter, which was printed on an offset press that she herself had restored. She was one of 800 arrested on December 2, 1964 at a sit-in at Sproul Hall, Berkeley, following the "Machine Speech" by Mario Savio.
In 1968, Garson had a child, Juliet, and in 1969 she went to work at The Shelter Half, an anti-war GI coffee house near Fort Lewis Army base in Tacoma, Washington. In the early 1970s, she moved to Manhattan, publishing short, humorous essays and theater reviews primarily for The Village Voice as well as plays.
MacBird!
Garson's most famous work,
Other plays
Garson's next full-length play, Going Co-op (1972), was a comedy about residents of an Upper West Side apartment house going co-op and a floundering left wing political collective that comes home to help organize the tenants who cannot afford to change from renters to owners. It was written with Fred Gardner, who is credited with founding the first of the Vietnam-era GI Coffee Houses.
Garson's musical children's play The Dinosaur Door, set on a class trip to the
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A teleplay of The Dinosaur Door was commissioned by producer-director Joyce Chopra in 1982, but no film of the play was made.
A full-length play, The Department (1983), written for and performed by the organizing group Women Office Workers (WOW), is set in a bank's back office that is about to be automated. The Department, though a light farce, sets out many of the problems that Garson expands on in her 1989 book The Electronic Sweatshop.
Non-fiction
In addition to plays, Garson is the author of four non-fiction books:
- All the Livelong Day: The Meaning and Demeaning of Routine Work, Doubleday, New York, 1975.; Expanded edition, Penguin, 1994.
- The Electronic Sweatshop: How Computers Are Transforming the Office of the Future into the Factory of the Past, Simon & Schuster, N.Y., 1988.
- Money Makes the World Go Around: One Investor Tracks Her Cash Through the Global Economy, Viking, N.Y., 2001.
- Down the Up Escalator: How the 99 Percent Live in the Great Recession, Doubleday, N.Y., 2013.
These books address complex phenomena of capitalism through dramatic anecdotes and interviews. Each describes a historical turning point through the voices of a range of people who may or may not fully grasp the changes happening in their own lives.
In Money Makes the World Go Around, Garson explicates the global economy by depositing her book advance in a one branch small town bank, and then following that money's theoretical path around the world. At one point, her money was invested in Suez, the French company that owned Johannesburg's water system. When protesters were arrested for opposing price increases and water shut offs, Garson organized a "shareholders" demonstration on their behalf in front of the South African consulate in New York City.
Garson insists that activism is essential to her writing. But her plays and non-fiction feature layered characters and plot twists that are often irrelevant or even inimical to liberal and socialist tenets. Indeed, Money Makes the World Go Around was largely ignored by the
Her latest book, Down the Up Escalator: How the 99 Percent Live in the Great Recession, is concerned with the effects of the Great Recession "reshaping people's lives and prospects".[7] Kirkus Reviews admires Garson's "brutal clarity" and calls it a "skillful presentation that lifts the veil".[7] George Packer, writing in The New Yorker, says of Garson, "she's written several books of social reportage about work and money, and this steady engagement over many decades has honed an appealing voice: wry, modest, realistic...like a sympathetic but slightly critical friend, ready with a hug and unable not to give advice."
Garson is the author of over 150 articles in publications including
Awards
Garson was awarded an
Later activism
In the 1992 U.S. Presidential election,[8] Garson was the running mate for J. Quinn Brisben on the Socialist Party USA ticket, replacing Bill Edwards, who died during the race. In August 1992, she received a message on her answering machine: "We're sorry to tell you that the Socialist Vice-Presidential candidate, Bill Edwards, has died. We would like your help in writing a press release for the newspapers. And also, would you like to run for Vice President?", which she initially believed to be a joke.[9]
Garson was active in the protest movement against corporate globalization and the protests in advance of the Iraq War.
She was in attendance at Zuccotti Park during the Occupy Wall Street protests in 2011.
References
- ^ a b c Contemporary Authors: New Revision Series, vol.110. Detroit: Gale, 2002.
- ^ New York Review of Books. Dec 1, 1966, p. 12.
- ^ The New York Times. February 24, 1967
- ^ The Village Voice. July 5, 1976.
- ^ Lilly, J. The Wall Street Journal. Feb 20, 2001, p.A20.
- ^ Business Week. Mar 5, 2001, p. 22.
- ^ a b Kirkus Reviews. February 1, 2013.
- ^ 1992_Presidential_Election
- ^ Teltsch, K. "Chronicle". The New York Times. August 28, 1992.