Business by the things you do. We have had to have an experience with back and forth, open, close come up and down. Its happened across the country because we take a little step forward but then we have to back up a little bit. And i think that is the mode of the day as they would say. So when we shut down we went right away to online sales. It took a little while for that to happen, so we quickly moved ourselves to online sales and began to settle through the online website. In addition to that, weve also added the phone calls, emails, instagram and facebook which was a big surprise for us. Alyson has managed all of the online sales which means that we are sending out books from the store directly to people. Then we kind of move towards having people pick up at the door because the governor did move some of our restrictions and allowed for curbside, we call it door pickup because our curb is full of bicycles and cars and people, so we dont want anybody out on the curb. And so, we call it a door pickup. With that we are able to take people by way of credit card or if they wish to pick up from online sales, we do that. So its caused a different kind of complication in the way we do business and it is exciting because we are learning something every day. So that is kind of what is happening. Host and that is your daughter, the coowner, Alyson Jones Turner who has now joined us. Whats been your experience since we talked to you last . Guest we have been very grateful that the publishers have offered us a few Virtual Events and also participation being booksellers for these Virtual Events so that has helped our sales. The Booksellers Association and the Regional Association has had regular meetings or activities where all of us talk to each other even though it may vary from store to store and place to place and that has been very helpful and encouraging. Through the work that we do and the ideas that we have for the customers that we share and im so grateful to. Host have you been able to open up your doors yet . Guest we did and then we didnt. We have many people coming up from the south during this time of year because of climate and family over the years people have often come to detroit for family reunions and all that so i felt comfortable about being too open. Now we are finding upticks encases in michigan as well back to the degree in the south so i thought we would have to have short pickup hours on the weekend and they did keep the doors closed. We do welcome them to browse around and they are good about that we have the mask and sanitation station right at the door so we are learning as they go and taking baby steps and looking to see how the store response and customers respond. Host we talked to you may 5 and that was prior to the killing of george floyd in minneapolis. How did that as a black owned business how did that affect you . Guest in two ways. We have a little compassion for the family to and so when the marchers came by the store we cheered them on and offered information to those that are interested in the prison abolition and just all of those issues. We also were able to benefit from the fact we are primarily a Nonfiction Book store and we have had copies of the books that got very popular all of a sudden and so we were able to solve quite a few books to people and people call us to see if we had some o they had some s that we are taking on after that happened. We had contact with other booksellers so our hearts were going out so that kind of community sensitivity across the country. Host have you worried that you might have to close down at all . Guest i dont even want to go there. When it first happened i knew instinctively that they wouldnt close and it told me you will have to work hard to be open so i didnt want to do that. We were positioned well in the community as well as business side and they are also part of the Neighborhood Organization and they helped us find the funds to study up again because it was a shock initially. Guest did you mean close because of fear of the building . Host know, because of the covid pandemic. Guest when i was at its worst here all were closed so we didnt have a choice. We had some reopening for the doors but we had to close with everyone else and now i think whats happened is that our online sales and phone calls that we get all the time from our wonderful customers and people that we dont know that here about us in one way or another, i have to say this in quite an uptick in the books by black authors were about the whole issue of race and the country by Isabel Wilkerson this idea is coming into fruition for people wanting to know i didnt notice. The pandemic has caused us to pause, wait a minute and think so they didnt consider closing in that way that we have changed a great deal in terms of how the Business Needs to be done during this time. Host did you accept anything from the Small Business administration . Guest i never could get my arms around the use. It finally came to me. In the meantime so i kind of backed away from it and we didnt go forward. I started a couple of applications but they got jumbled up so i took it as a sign maybe this is some funny right now. What did happen is our local organization was offering some money in those early days which was wonderful and helped us get to study for a minute. So that helped to get us study. We did get some money from the organization and i was able to give back because i know weve been able to move along pretty well now and i dont know how long we will last. I dont know if this online sales will become the way that people do this for a long time, but for the moment, we were able to give back, so i felt good about that because i know there are other stores that are struggling in their own way. Host Alyson Jones Turner, what have you learned about Online Retail and have you been shipping across the u. S. . Guest we have been blessed with orders from all over the country and having to learn about shipping and handling and the also are very close to canada. Guest ive learned a lot and depend on alyson because shes quick with this and understands the system very well. Im working at it and getting a little bit better, but it really has made a big difference in terms of how we do business with people. Someone said to me the opportunity to have several radio and Television Interviews and one of the reports said janet likes to talk to people at the store and now on the phone. I answered the phone so im in [inaudible] i do try to be as considerate of people on the phone. Sometimes they are rushing and feeling prideful and afraid so this gives me the chance to calm them down and say lets see what this book can do and we will call you back. So weve done a lot of Community Work by telephone. Host ive met you a few times and ive never known you to be shy. If people are interested in contacting you, what is the best way . Guest on sourcebooksellers. Com you can communicate with email or online. Our social media we are source booksellers and on twitter. Host weve opened up sourcebooksellers. Com and let people go from there. When did you open your store . Guest we began in november, 1988 i count the year 1989. Weve been in business for 30 plus years now and have different ways of doing business. This one has made a fourth way of doing business. Vendors are going and then we are in the collective and came here to the brick and mortar and now we are in the Online Business as well so its fun to make these changes but challenging to grow in new and different ways. Host mother and daughter owners of sports booksellers, Janet Webster and Alyson Jones Turner. We appreciate the update and weve talked to you in a few months. Guest thank you so much. Larry diamond talked about the impact of covid19 on democracy around the world. Here is a portion. What is the pandemic doing to this constant struggle between democracy and authoritative regime around the world back . Guest it is deepening in some alarming ways. First you have the authoritarian regimes seizing on the public emergency of the crisis to become even more comprehensively and consistently authoritarian. You solve that Vladimir Putin that was to be expected he was going to do this but he used the crisis to eliminate term limits that he could sta they could str into his 80s and beyond. Hungary have already crossed the line to the authoritarianism and passed the measure in the parliament that gave the minister decree power and suspended parliament and the Prime Minister can now rule by decree banning newspapers, arresting critics. Even india has been using the emergency to prosecute critical journalists and intellectuals including the brother of one of our esteemed fellows and his brother that edits the indian online newspaper being prosecuted for reporting the truth and critical fashion so you have the regimes seizing on the crisis to narrow freedom. Then theres another thing we can talk about. Its something we all need to ponder which is the challenge to human freedom that comes from even liberal democracies like korea and israel implementing tracking and surveillance on mobile phone is and what happens if those dont go away after the crisis. To remind everybody we are listening to the senior fellow at the for institution. We are talking about the effects of covid19 on the authoritarian regimes. A big part of this strategy in a lot of countries are using is what many of us might consider to be invasive surveillance and they in possession o impositione restrictions placed upon the gathering of data. It seems on the one hand it makes a lot of sense to try to combat that challenge but it does create problems and i know youve thought a lot about the problems and way to mitigate the problems. Can you talk about that . Guest im glad that these are defining the free society of for institution, and this is a pretty important problem from the standpoint of human liberty. The problem in part is that these methods work. They have helped states identify where the virus is cropping up, then you can ove alert people tt have been in contact. It doesnt automatically speed up the contact tracing. On the other hand, governments can use them to monitor people for other reasons and what happens when we surrender our privacy, surrender our freedom from state surveillance and then we did dont get that freedom back after the crisis. So you know, we cant trust government, even. Liberal governments, to surrender these tools after the crisis is over. First of all, i think we should have a debate about what extent people want to surrender their freedom even now. But in particular, after the crisis and, and while it is going on, i think we need independent review boards with respect to Civil Society leaders, religious and ethical leaders who can monitor with the government is getting into the claims the government is making and get authoritative information from the mobile phone companies about how they are using these applications so that we can have a full and frank discussion within the society about how much freedom we want to surrender and when that surrender should be returned to the people