Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. Exposing Truths: The Stories Affecting America

I went to the LA Times Festival of Books (April 13-14). I'll be posting my notes on the various panel discussions I attended.

The first panel discussion I attended was "Exposing Truths: The Stories Affecting America."

Here are edited panelist biographies via the LA Times website. 

Mona Hanna-Attisha. Author of What the Eyes Don't See, a first-hand account of the Flint water crisis, Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha is an associate professor of pediatrics and human development at Michigan State University.

Eliza Griswold’s latest book, "Amity and Prosperity," was released in June 2018. It recounts the true story of how fracking shattered one Pennsylvania town, how families brought it to light, and how, after years of fighting against the abuses of the oil and gas industry, the people finally prevailed.

Beth Macy is the author of three New York Times-bestselling books. Her latest book, "Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company That Addicted America," is short-listed for the Carnegie Medal and was described as a "masterwork of narrative nonfiction" by The New York Times.

And the following are my notes from the panel discussion:



Mona Hanna-Attisha. Michigan is surrounded by fresh water, but Flint has to drink bottled water. It got so bad that the city was placed under emergency management. This is what happens when you don’t invest in infrastructure. It is also what happens when science isn’t followed. The water wasn’t treated correctly and it corroded the water pipes and caused lead pollution.

The story fell into Hanna-Attisha's lap and she felt an obligation to highlight the crisis. There was nothing for her to do, but to share the story. We tend to close our eyes to what is complicated. GM was born in Flint. This was where the middle class was born. In the 1970s, it had the highest per capita in the US. Yet, GM is also the cause of the lead issues.

People across the divide will respect your position if it is fact based.

Eliza Griswold. She spent 7 years looking at fracking in Pennsylvania. Her book highlights the cost of our need for energy. She followed three families and embedded herself with those families. She actually got interesting in fracking while writing a book about our crumbling bridges. She got invited to a community meeting on fracking. One person discussed how they started looking into how fracking was impacting their environment when their pets were dying.

One thing Griswold had to deal with while writing the book was letting very private individuals know that her book would make them public individuals.

She feels it is important to stick to the facts when doing journalism. Activism is important, but there is also a requirement for those who just stick with the facts.

Beth Macy. Her goal was to create hope in a sad and chaotic story. She went deep into three communities to look into the drug crisis, specifically the opioid crisis. OxyContin was created in 1996. We knew all the way back to the Civil War that opioids were addictive via morphine.

OxyContin led people into heroin in one community. We’re treating people as if they are moral failures. We know what works to cure this addiction, but need to do so in mass for the 2.6 million addicted. There is currently a drug that can turn back the addiction, but doctors don’t want to supply this drug as they don’t want addicts in their waiting rooms.

Macy attempted to be as transparent as possible with the people she interviewed for her book.

The places that can be impacted the most are cities where 1 or 2 industries crowd out all other industries. When those industries decline, the opioid crisis can take root.

What you need is to get people to care about people they don’t know.