Fenway Punk: How a Boston Indie Label Scored Big on Baseball's Greatest Rivalry by Chris Wrenn

  I bet none of you would have predicted that I’d one day be writing a book review for a book that is, technically, about baseball. Let’s be real, though, what brought me here was the music. Chris Wrenn is the founder of Boston-based record label Bridge Nine, who primarily release and promote hardcore punk music. With B9’s initial claim to fame being the release of American Nightmare’s first EP, they’ve also expanded their reach and offered releases from bands like H2O, Strike Anywhere, Polar Bear Club, Terror, War on Women, and Crime in Stereo (go listen to …Is Dead, that album rules). 

Anyway, Fenway Punk: How a Boston Indie Label Scored Big on Baseball’s Greatest Rivalry is about Wrenn’s entrepreneurial powers to build Bridge Nine from the ground up. The genesis of the label is pretty bizarre: Wrenn recounts how he bankrolled his initiatives by selling novelty t-shirts outside of Fenway Park. He played into the rivalry between the Red Sox and the Yankees, selling “Yankees Suck” shirts and stickers. The fact that he was able to squirrel away some funds and use that to record music for American Nightmare is pretty entrepreneurial and admirable, I will say.

One of the less palatable components of the book is, well, the reflection of a different time. Wrenn talks about fighting in parking lots for money, rolling with crowds that broke into houses to steal booze, and other youthful shenanigans that strike me as the kind of bro-ish machismo that drives so many people away from the hardcore scene.

One of the more interesting aspects of the book is hearing about the politics of being a vendor outside a stadium. Wrenn gives background into how they had to operate under the radar and avoid being busted. Strategies included things like having one guy with a money bag and extra merch while someone sold a few things at a time—if they got caught, there would be less loss because the guy in the backpack could throw on a cap and blend into the crowd. The structure of the market also made it easier to sell, for example, stickers. Selling stickers at Fenway and later Hot Topic funded Wrenn’s musical projects, which is just wild to me. Back to politics, it was also interesting to hear about how the code enforcers built relationships with vendors. It was like reading about the mafia and / or crooked cops making secret deals.

More of the book was about baseball than I would have expected, which is my own naivety. Wrenn seems genuinely invested in recounting the glories and heartbreaks of the Boston-New York rivalry. The highlight of that component of the book was hearing about New York playing in Boston following the September 11th attacks and how the community changed around the time. Mostly, I didn’t really feel much towards the baseball drama.

Honestly, I wanted some more music stories from the book. When I heard about links to Converge or Sick of It All or Crime in Stereo, I perked up and felt invested, but the music faded into the background. With Wrenn’s long career of supporting music and being on tour with bands, I would have thought that there would be far more stories about the dramas and landmarks of the Boston hardcore scene. I wanted to hear those stories. Surely it would be appropriate to have a journalistic approach and share some fun anecdotes about Wrenn’s personal involvement with bands. Why did bands explode? What went wrong with releases? I mean, sure, there’s the time Terror got scooped up, but I feel like there are other layers of chaos that could’ve been addressed.

All in all, it was an enjoyable experience, but I would have preferred to spend more time in the pit than in the stands.

Happy reading!

Freedom Teaching by Matthew Kincaid

  Matthew Kincaid asks teachers a powerful question: “Do we believe that our students deserve to be in anti-racist environments 10% of the time? 20%? 50%? What percentage of racist policy is it okay for a student of colour to have to navigate on a daily basis?”

He follows it up with an even more powerful question: “What percentage of racist / oppressive policies are we comfortable with students existing in on a daily basis? Is the answer still truly zero?”

I find these two question sets highly provocative. For the first set, Kincaid points to the obvious answer: “in an ideal world, [it] would be 0%” while recognizing that “that is not the case.” The second question points to a fundamental disconnect between our ideals and practicality. While our students deserve to be in anti-racist environments 100%, nonetheless there’s a level teachers are able to accept for the sake of the system; it’s not complacency, necessarily, but there are a number of engrained practices that go unchallenged for a number of reasons.

This is where Matthew Kincaid’s Freedom Teaching comes in. In the book, Kincaid elucidates a liberatory philosophy that strives to make the educational world a more equitable place. I found the book to be thoughtful and empowering and Kincaid addresses a number of concerns that I am still grappling with, offering a framework within which to work. The book offers a balance between offering principles of freedom teaching while recognizing that the individual context of particular schools will have an impact on how the principles are executed.

Kincaid offers the following five tenets of freedom teaching and the book explores how to achieve these different ambitions:

1. Maintain hope that is radical.

2. It isn’t rigorous if it isn’t relevant.

3. Free minds, free kids.

4. Trouble doesn’t teach.

5. Cultivate a classroom that values cultural wealth.

I think that #1 can be a particular challenge, given the current context in which we exist. The government is underfunding public schools out of existence. Artificial Intelligence systems are eroding our relationship to truth and imposing a hegemonic perspective of so-called reality. Politicians are engaging in corruption with impunity. Social media is sapping the uniqueness of kids. There is a lot to find troubling, so having the first tenant be to maintain hope is both a necessary precondition and the kind of thing that can only be achieved through a leap of faith.

The second tenet, “It isn’t rigorous if it isn’t relevant” hits like a suckerpunch to the gut. I think about all of the so-called rigour I was subjected to as a student, and while I don’t regret it, I do wonder why reading six books instead of four and writing three essays instead of two is seen as “rigour.” The deeper point that Kincaid is making here, to me, is that being “rigorous” (i.e. challenging) for the sake of adding challenge is not the same as being rigorous by delving deeply into content that is truly meaningful to students. Kincaid adds to the discussion with more detail. He sees rigour and investment as working hand in hand: “Students are less likely to engage in rigorous tasks that they are not invested in, and tasks that are rigorous, that don’t promote investment, probably aren’t meaningful tasks.” As much as I hate having to justify the value of English as a discipline, it is worth considering how to get students invested in developing their writing skills. Whether that’s the content or the end-goal, there needs to be some reason for students to get invested. 

In terms of #3 and #4, I think we are in a particularly reactionary climate wherein the response to children misbehaving is to resort to more policing. By freeing students’ minds to explore and question, we enable their ongoing success in navigating and challenging societal structures. All of this also leads towards cultivating a classroom that values cultural wealth, where a teacher’s role is not to impose a particular view of how to best navigate our lives, but instead to co-create with the communities in which we operate. A noble goal, indeed.

Ultimately, these tenets have the goal to “create educational environments that liberate students and in turn enhance their ability to make choices that give them control over critical elements in their lives.” I think it would be uncontroversial to accept this as a worthwhile pursuit. If our education isn’t assisting students towards being agents of change in their own lives, what is our purpose, exactly?

As I mentioned, Kincaid makes the case that “freedom teaching requires investment in both theory and practice.” Indeed, it is “about finding the intersection between theory and practice.” The author gives a caution for the book: “Using this text to provide a theoretical framework without engaging in the practice of employing the techniques likely won’t yield the results you want. Engaging solely in the practices without internalizing the theory also will yield incomplete results.” I think this is one that gets challenging for people in the teaching world. We are all so busy, so exhausted. We want to be told “do this” and we’ll do it and fix the world. But, the work is complex and requires examining how our particular practices need to be thoughtfully adjusted in response to the context. As Kincaid points out, “One of the reasons why anti-racism initiatives in schools fail to gain continued momentum is because people find themselves so deep in the theory that they don’t know how to apply it in a practical setting. On the other hand, there are people who [adopt a] three-step guide on how to achieve equity without fully understanding the deep and nuanced theory that provides the foundation for those practices.” I’d like to think I’m somewhere in the middle, but if I truly reflect, I’m more on the theoretical side and still need practice actually acting.

Here’s the other major piece that I think Kincaid has identified in a particularly poignant way. One of the things I’ve seen is people enacting performative change and taking credit for how much they’ve made a difference—but maybe unjustly so. Kincaid writes that in his work with schools, “one of the most difficult barriers to dismantle is the barrier of performative change.” He makes the case that a school might eliminate a racist policy without replacing it with an anti-racist one. He gives a great example here where “a teacher changes the names on their word problems to be culturally affirming, but doesn’t shift their pedagogical approach in the classroom.” I’ve witnessed this kind of thing first hand. As we work to select books that are culturally affirming (i.e. change the content), we make no adjustments to what we do with those texts: we still impose, generally, a prescriptive structure of how to write, what to write, what to write about—all under the pretense of being “academic” and “objective” without valuing individual student voice. Changing the content without changing the form still serves to replicate the structures that are leading to undeserving students. Kincaid elaborates that “a school district undergoes anti-racism training, but does little to shift the policies that incubate racism.” When this happens, the change is superficial—”the very changes that we are championing can actually just reaffirm the status quo.” I couldn’t begin to list the number of so-called changes that have had this effect. The solution, Kincaid writes, is that “if we are going to invest the time, energy, and resources to freedom teach, we have to be committed to doing it all the way. If we are going to be committed to doing it all the way, we first have to train ourselves to believe in, and hope radically for, change.”

In trying to accomplish a truly revolutionary approach to education, there are a number of limiting beliefs that Kincaid addresses. One thing that I hear from teachers—and society at large—is that students need to be ready for “the real world” (by which, in my view, always seems to mean ‘the workforce’). In this conception of education, the purpose remains to reinforce the structures of capitalism. (Why is it that companies don’t pay to train their own employees, again? Why is it that public funds are being used to train employees for private companies? I digress.) Kincaid reinforces my view about the foolishness of the ‘real world’ as a standard for our practices through a slightly different angle: “I have witnessed the justification of several unjust systems because ‘students have to get ready for the real world.’ What this basically amounts to is exposing young people to traumatic experiences in the name of preparing them to navigate the brokenness in our society.” I think about things like holding students to strict deadlines and then deducting 50% of their mark, for example, if they hand something in a day late. I think about things like forcing students to answer questions in front of the class without time to prepare because ‘that’s how the real world works.’ Underlying these practices is the idea that somehow school is not “the real world,” despite students spending most of their time in our buildings. Schools are “real world” and when we defer to some monolithic conception of the real world in the great beyond after graduation, it automatically renders schools second-class to whatever idea we have of post-school. The other objection is one Kincaid takes up: “Freedom teaching instead views the world as malleable and teaches students that they have a say in the real world that they will both shape and inherit.” Teachers and students shape the world, so we have the freedom to shape the world we want while the students are in school to prepare them for the world they’ll want to create. In Kincaid’s words, “Freedom teaching is about creating schools that reflect the society that we want our students to live in rather than reflecting the society that currently exists. For this reason, this book will speak directly about replacing oppressive systems with liberatory ones and expanding the definition of what we consider to be success to include a culturally sustaining education for all children.” I think this, too, is spot on to how I want to approach teaching as I move forward in my career.

The challenges to Kincaid’s philosophy come in the form of limiting beliefs. He enumerates a range of perspectives that shy away from radical hope and instead instill a pessimism towards liberatory practice:

“This isn’t the real world. We need to prepare students for the real world. Culturally responsive teaching practices aren’t going to raise my test scores. Restorative approaches let students off the hook when they misbehave. All of this work that I am doing to make change isn’t going to amount to anything. I do not have enough power. If only I were the principal or a district administrator. I want to engage parents, but I know what is best for their children.

I think about my other recent read, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad. In that book, he talks about how youth movements and minor protests are never taken seriously at the time of their enactment, but then lead to the kind of long-term change they seek and we revise our historical memory. I think the same is true here; we could counter these limiting beliefs by taking small actions and moving forward incrementally, even when it seems like it isn’t making a difference.

There’s been discussion in the last few years around the relative merits of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workforce. Under it, there’s an implicit racist assumption that Black people just aren’t as good as white people at being, say, a pilot (cf. I think an old Charlie Kirk clip, I think?). There’s the suggestion that DEI leads to a lowering of standards, but as Kincaid points out, “The absolute worst thing we can do in the name of anti-racism is to stop challenging our students.” Kincaid recognizes that the United States are far from being a meritocracy, but still points to the ongoing value of hard work, focus, and determination—esepcially for people of colour who want to have “a full array of choices for what they do with their lives.” This is why rigour is still encouraged (as long as it’s relevant). Kincaid notes that “we push our students to engage in rigorous tasks because we believe that they can do them. Consistently lowering rigour just reinforces external messages of inferiority.” Returning to a previous point, though, rigour without purpose—“rigour for rigour’s sake”—”can have the same detrimental effect.” He notes that having students repeatedly do hard things over and over without allowing them to experience success is a recipe for disaster. 

Implicit throughout Freedom Teaching is an asset-based mindset towards students. On the topic of whether students can do hard things (i.e. persevere throughout rigorous tasks), Kincaid notes that

“Our kids do hard things all the time. For some of them, just getting to school on a daily basis is hard. Caring for your younger siblings while your parents work is hard. Navigating the devastating effects of institutional oppression is hard. I don’t know if I ever taught a kid who couldn’t do hard things. In fact, many of my students had done more hard things by the time they were 13 sitting at one of my desks than I did in my entire lifetime.”

I think that’s a really positive note to consider. We are always pushing students for success; it would just be great to have a broader conception of what counts as success as we try to help everyone rise to their potential.

Overall, Freedom Teaching is a great outline of some principles that can help us to guide our teaching practice towards something more liberatory. I hope that we’re at the stage where we can incorporate this work and make significant change. I’d like to guarantee that we’re all that stage, but I know there’s still more work to be done. But we’ll do it. We’ll make it.

Stay optimistic and happy reading!

One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad

When reading nonfiction, I don’t necessarily have an expectation of stylistic flair. I think of data, of facts, of figures. I think of research that makes the case for how things are and how things need to be done differently. Every once in a while, though, I’m astounded by the power of words as people tell real stories about the world. Such is the case for One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad.

Born in Cairo, El Akkad then grew up in Qatar before moving to Canada. One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This is an account of his personal experiences, his work as a journalist and author, and it all runs parallel to his outrage about the ongoing genocide in Gaza. I love the balance of the personal and broad focus of the book. Discussing his own history, his concerns for his daughter, and his own personally quandaries with navigating the literary institution, is beautifully rendered. The context for the book, the destruction of Palestine, is rendered with unflinching courage.

Incidentally, there was a quote from the book that really resonated with me. He discussed the images of the starved and dead that are readily available for Palestinians. He gives an account for the images in grim detail and offers a justification for forcing people to look: when we close our eyes, it flexes the muscle to close our eyes and ignore what is happening; when we keep our eyes open, that flexes another muscle—the one that compels us towards action. Apologies that I don’t have the exact quotation (I forgot to take notes, I was so engrossed and read the book in about two sittings). That quotation, if nothing else, is something I will continue forward with in my life. I want to be the kind of person that flexes the muscles that keep my eyes open. That takes action in small ways until it becomes reflex.

I appreciate the candor of Omar El Akkad’s feelings of hopelessness. I think it’s a pervasive feeling right now. We keep advocating, and progress, at the best of times, does not seem to be forthcoming—and, at the worst of times, we seem to be backsliding. El Akkad wrestles with the question: why bother writing? What’s the point. Nothing matters. El Akkad points out, though, how everything seems futile until we can look back and see that it made a difference. Sit-ins during the American Civil Rights movement weren’t seen as being useful in the moment, but long after the fact we look back as though they were an integral stage in the movement. So, the small things we do now are something. I hope.

The book hits home in particular because of my interest in literature. El Akkad is an author, of course, and there are several parts of the book that address his writing career. For instance, he gives an account of his book American War (written before Trump’s first election, published after) being optioned for a film and then being dropped because the actual political landscape shifted. El Akkad also talks about the way the literary institution routinely ignores the plight of Palestine. One example that caught my attention is the brief reference to Minor Detail by Adania Shibli, which is a novelization of the true story of a gang rape and murder of a young Arab girl by Israeli soldiers. Shibli won for the Literaturpreis award but the organizers chose to “postpone” the award ceremony, citing it as a “joint decision” with the author in response to the “war between Israel and Hamas” (El Akkad points out that it wasn’t and that the “postponement” turned into a cancellation). The literary world saw the book and flinched. Closer to home, El Akkad talks about the protest at the Giller Prize dinner where protestors interrupted because of Scotiabank’s stake in Israeli arms manufacturing. El Akkad talks about the invite to attend the dinner; he talks about not going at the last minute; he talks about the lack of reaction, the lack of voices added to the protest, and he wonders how he would have participated. I appreciate how El Akkad is so honest about the challenges of the writing world—everyone is barely scraping by, and the allure of a major award can be truly life changing, but at what cost?

He emphasizes that in order to protest the ongoing genocide, there are several options. One that seems to gain favour is ‘negative’ participation. That is, withdrawing from the game entirely. This means things like arts institutions refusing to accept money from people invested in the Israeli war machine. Corporations and politicians want their names on awards to give themselves legitimacy and a representative response is to just not let them be involved. It seems inconsequential, but, as El Akkad points out again and again—all these minor youth movements seemed inconsequential until their results were achieved.

The way El Akkad uses language is so powerful; I really ought to have taken notes. I can’t speak highly enough of the prose. What made the book even more engaging for me are the familiar historical and cultural touchstones peppered throughout the book. At the personal level, El Akkad talks about being a student at Queen’s, my alma mater, and living in Kingston. He talks about Guantánamo Bay, which was a watershed moment in my political awakening. As an extension, he draws on the story of Omar Khadr, whom I was very lucky to learn about through my grade 12 politics teacher. Reading One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This provided additional context to my formative years and the way anti-Arab and Islamophobic perceptions infiltrated the Canadian mainstream—incidentally, El Akkad brings together issues intersectionality, discussing the plight of Canada’s Indigenous people as a parallel to the Palestinian experience.

The central conceit of the book is that Western liberalism is ineffectual in standing up to injustice because the privileged will not forgo their own self-interest. No one wants to be vulnerable. No one wants to be accountable. No one wants to risk their own position. While horrible things are happening, Western liberals pay lip service to the idea with sympathetic nods but will fail to take a stand. It’s only when it’s too late to do anything that we will revere those who protested. El Akkad writes that “While the terrible thing is happening—while the land is still being stolen and the natives still being killed—any form of opposition is terroristic and must be crushed for the sake of civilization. But decades, centuries later, when enough of the land has been stolen and enough of the natives killed, it is safe enough to venerate resistance in hindsight.” The political cache to be gained by looking back and decrying that which we did nothing to prevent is cynical and embarrassing. Denouncing events like the genocide in Gaza become a matter of expedience, we “say the right thing” long after we have any chance to do anything about it.

In a weird way, I find this book inspiring. It calls me out and I think it’s important to acknowledge how little I’m really doing to make an impact on world issues. I also don’t put my own livelihood on the line to take a stand. (There’s a silencing effect, even in education.) It does inspire me to do better and continue to build community around people who will not wait until Palestine has been totally erased from the map and then say, “Yes, that was too bad. I always knew that was bad.”

I really recommend this one. My review doesn’t do it justice and for that I apologize.

Happy reading and resisting.