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Eric Lotke
189 Plays5 years ago
Eric Lotke has worked for, with and against labor unions. Early in his career he did advocacy in the criminal legal system, researching problems and proposing solutions that all reached the same conclusion – we lock up too many people (especially people of color) and don’t do enough to keep people safe. His work includes the book, The Real War on Crime, and the studies such as Hobbling a Generation, The Tipping Point and Prisoners of the Census. An attorney, Lotke sued private prison companies and departments of corrections over the excessive price of prison phone calls and other conditions of confinement. During this time, police and corrections unions were usually on the opposing side.
Lotke spent the next several years as research director of a think tank, the Campaign for America’s Future in Washington DC, researching and writing about kitchen table economics – including health care, manufacturing and clean energy. Now he often found himself on the union side – the folks who brought us the weekend. Eventually he decided to join the union team. He worked first for the Service Employees International Union (SEIU, “Justice for Janitors”) and most recently the National Education Association. He spends most of his time fighting against the privatization of public education and in favor of higher pay for educators everywhere.
Lotke is the author of three novels, Union Made (about the criminal legal system), Making Manna (about labor unions) and 2044: The Problem isn’t Big Brother, it’s Big Brother, Inc. (sequel to Orwell’s 1984). Before any of that, as readers of Making Manna may guess, Lotke earned his living as a chef.
https://ericlotke.com/
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Something Rather Than Nothing'
00:00:01
Speaker
You are listening to Something Rather Than Nothing. Creator and host Ken Valente. Editor and producer Peter Bauer.
Eric Lottke's Books and Organizing Efforts
00:00:17
Speaker
We're here with Eric Lottke on the Something Rather Than Nothing podcast and I recently had the opportunity to meet Eric and learn about
00:00:28
Speaker
Uh, his books, his writing, uh, his organizing, uh, before talking more about you, Eric, Eric Lottke, um, wanted to welcome you to something rather than nothing. Thank you for having me. Absolutely. And, uh, Eric, we just started, uh, chatting and I said, we, we got to hit record and get, get started now. Let's, let's start with your, your book. There's more we'll talk about.
00:00:52
Speaker
And I'm talking about your recent book, Union Made. And one of the things I expressed to you was that it's, you know, this labor, this human story, this labor story, connection amongst people, organizing. And it's a heck of a book. You just put it on the book stands. So tell us about it and tell us why you decided to write Union
Unions and Public Perception
00:01:21
Speaker
Made.
00:01:21
Speaker
Sorry. So Union Made, on the one hand, Union Made, it's a romance. It's a traditional romance. It's a boy meets girl. It's heteronormative. We've got two people. And he is lonely and pining and looking for love. And she is a super fabulous union organizer and way too busy for romance and hardly even cares if he's alive or not. So these are our main characters.
00:01:48
Speaker
She is a union organizer and she is looking to organize a big retail store. Think Walmart kind of thing. It's called Pack Shop. It's a big, big retail chain. She's looking to organize it. And he is an accountant who works for the owner of Pack Shop.
00:02:08
Speaker
So they are naturally adverse, but more importantly, he, like I used to be, and like many, many, many modern Americans, especially professional modern Americans, he's skeptical about labor unions. They're not part of his life. He doesn't really care about them. He sees a union protest on TV and he says, yeah, the factor will probably move to Mexico serves you right.
00:02:36
Speaker
And that's that's how a lot of people feel about unions. They're old. They're obsolete. They're probably inefficient. Maybe they're corrupt. Who needs unions? What are they for? Yesterday's news. Forget the union. So this is who they are and where they're coming from. And that's the one of one of the pieces about that is the the kind of conception of unions right now. And both of you connected to labor and labor organizing. But
00:03:06
Speaker
One of the pieces that you mentioned is how unions are viewed. And we're talking about things like how many people belong to unions. Does your uncle belong to the Teamsters? Did he talk to you about the Teamsters when he was five? Did your aunt work at the bakery and belong to UFCW and the grocery workers union? And then when we have less people belonging to unions, you see the rise of these popular stereotypes.
00:03:35
Speaker
Your character is holding on to those and you said you think this is a bit more of a character kind of based on the general kind of knee jerk reaction to labor, American labor?
00:03:50
Speaker
Yes, except for the word knee-jerk. I would say it's long held reaction to labor. Some people grew up in union families, as you were saying, and some people didn't. And many people who read the news every day from, forgive me, the corporate media,
00:04:06
Speaker
And if a union does something bad, it's all over the headlines, and if the unions are raising wages, you don't see that or hear about that. What you do see or hear is one person complaining about paying their dues, or the new right-wing think tanks calling it a violation of their liberty that they have to join a union. And so you have the anti-union sentiment is real, it's widespread, it's driven by an entire political party.
00:04:34
Speaker
And the pro-union sentiment, it's not that it's not out there, it just isn't out there with the same volume and the same frequency, and it's easy to not hear and see. So people have a skepticism, and it's an earned, I'll call it an earned skepticism, not a knee-jerk skepticism. I would agree with what you just said there, and thank you for saying that, I agree.
00:05:04
Speaker
Let's go back. We were chatting there about Union Made, your new book, but let's go back to when you were born. You're a chef, you practice arts, you write books, you practice organizing.
Art, Journalism, and Emotional Impact
00:05:21
Speaker
Were you an artist when you were born?
00:05:27
Speaker
Can I answer that twice? You'll see if we hang out. I answer a lot of things multiply. I do the same thing. Good. So no, I don't think I was an artist. But the second part is, what's an artist? What is art? That's this part that I can't quite know. But I don't think I was an artist when I was born. I'm not sure that I am an artist now. And this goes into the, well, what is it to be an artist?
00:05:51
Speaker
And I guess in some ways I'm thinking about, let's say you're a war correspondent, and you send photographs back from the war, or you send stories back from the, you know, articles back from the war, reporting from the war. And let's say there's two of you. And one of you sends stories, sends photographs that make people want to cry, or what makes them want to call it go to action, and sends articles that makes people want to cry or go to action.
00:06:19
Speaker
And the other person, other journalists, is sending articles and photos that are boring and not very interesting, and you turn the page. So both of them are just reporting. And somehow that first one feels more like art. But they didn't create it. All they did was take pictures of things. All they did was report on what's happening. So it's not quite sitting at a blank canvas and creating something.
00:06:46
Speaker
It's more that they did it better. They did more than was needed.
00:06:52
Speaker
So that's the, and so I am more like, I think of myself as a war correspondent who makes people want to cry, makes people want to leap to action, makes people feel something from what they see. That's the kind of war correspondent that I want to be and that I think of myself as, but I don't think of myself as somebody who sits down at a blank canvas or sits down at an empty page and creates, oh my God, I sound like you, something from nothing.
00:07:22
Speaker
I like your comments. I think whenever I talk art on this show and I talk with folks who create, just fundamentally saying folks who create, the question of intention comes up around the definition of art. Where is the intention? What is the artist?
00:07:41
Speaker
doing. I like your reference to taking photos or documenting. There's a whole great debate around photography as a popular art and how much of the author's hand, how much of the photographer's hand is in that. Intention remains huge.
00:08:04
Speaker
On the something rather than nothing question, we'll get to it later. But I mean, I think it has to do with whether an artist feels that there was nothing there to begin with and they did it or they told it. So, for example, with your book, it's fun to talk about it, right? Because I start out and I think, hey, Eric, hey, about your labor book and this and that. And you're like, nah, it's a romance. And you see, of course it is. Now,
00:08:30
Speaker
You crafted that you've had some experiences around that you've been around that but is in the crafting of a book. there's a lot more of that artists hand so let's move away from photographs in and go to that for you, you as an author, do you feel yourself in creating this book.
00:08:50
Speaker
are more of an author in creating this story, or you're taking a snapshot? I guess I'll take credit here. So here, I'll tell you what was my artistic
Crafting Compelling Labor Stories
00:08:59
Speaker
moment. This was the eureka, the breakthrough. Again, I grew up relatively skeptical, so it's easy for me to sympathize with that side. But at some point, I turned around to labor, and I write novels. I've written fiction before, and I like writing fiction, and people like the fiction that I write.
00:09:20
Speaker
And I wanted to write a fiction about unions and organizing. And I was involved in all of these great campaigns, shareholder campaigns, fast food campaigns, janitor campaigns, doing all of this really cool stuff with all of these very clever, interesting organizing techniques.
00:09:38
Speaker
I could write a novel like this. I could write a story like this. And every time, no, it won't work, I find it really interesting. I'm going to do justice for janitors for one moment here, is that you're organizing the janitors against the cleaning companies. And the cleaning companies say, well, I don't really have money to pay them more. And actually, they're right. They don't have much money to pay them more. It's the building owners who are behind it.
00:10:05
Speaker
And not only the building owners, but is the investors behind the building owners. And so you climb up the ladder from the janitors to the cleaning company, to the building owners, to the investors, and then you start doing shareholder campaigns. And to me, that's really interesting, and that's a great campaign, but that doesn't make a story. That's just work. Nobody's going to cry about that. Nobody's going to not be able to put the book down.
00:10:30
Speaker
So I was struggling with how do I tell a labor story that's interesting and the breakthrough moment, the aha moment, was the love story, the romance, the what I said a minute ago. Let's have a union organizer on one side and let's have a union skeptic on the other side and how can they come together and how can they learn from each other and so the unionizing is in a certain sense a dialogue between the two of them but what's fundamentally going on is
00:10:59
Speaker
will this pair get together? And so we have the the the dramatic the traditional dramatic tension of romance will they get together which is different from will they get it will they get a 25 cent pay raise and somehow and I feel like you can make people that people are more inclined to care about a love story than
00:11:21
Speaker
They the way they will care about will the baby die will the plane crash? There are things that people inherently care about and they can care about a love story more than they can care about the 25-cent race well, isn't the isn't the labor movement based, you know on on some of that Kind of like
Themes of Hope and Personal Experience
00:11:43
Speaker
aspirational hope, romantic hope. Is there a romantic hope in labor? I don't think it's that foreign. Okay. I guess I don't want to deny that. There are good labor books that I like to read and biographies of union people that I like to read.
00:12:04
Speaker
But when I was trying to think about, again, the campaigns that I was contriving or working in or consulting on, and I was like, I'm not sure that this would be a book. So I made a romance. And you're telling me, and thank you, because otherwise I don't know, you're telling me that it worked as a romance, that you cared about the people and you wanted to read it. Yeah, and it's about the people. One more bit on the book.
00:12:34
Speaker
point out, when I write, I like to write a dialogue and have a penchant for it. For me, it tends to be at the expense of sensory details of where the humans are. One of the pieces I really liked about your book with some of your background was kind of some sensory details around food, dining, and preparation, which sounds
00:12:55
Speaker
might sound like mundane just describing it, but it was a really nice piece and brought in kind of a sensory element that I don't see that often. And number two, I struggle with the creating. So kudos on that as well. Thank you for that. People spend a lot of time cooking and eating. And we are used to restaurant scenes.
00:13:21
Speaker
Right? How many movies and books happen in restaurants? But how often do you eat in a restaurant compared to when you're cooking at home?
00:13:31
Speaker
and you know and actually and this book starts with he's he's cooking tv and arguing with the television and well this is something that people do i'm sorry cook cooking his food he's cooking his dinner and he's arguing with the television he's watching tv while he cooks yeah and this this is something that people do um
00:13:55
Speaker
One of the things I wanted to ask you is, as far as you as a human in your experiences, what or who made you who you are?
00:14:14
Speaker
I'm sticking with, I don't know, on that one. Because it's interesting. I'm thinking now of the acknowledgments of my first novel, 2044. And I say, I don't have anybody to acknowledge. I wrote this book by myself. It was long. It was lonely. It was all by myself. I'm late at night. I'm up early. It's a labor of love. It's all by myself is my opening. And then I say, what? Are you kidding me?
00:14:42
Speaker
This book is an amalgamation of everything that formed you. There's teachers you had in high school. There's bumper stickers of people who you never meet. There's lectures that you attended. There's movies that you saw. Everything fingerprints and makes you into this book.
00:14:58
Speaker
And so you need to go thank all of them for what is forming you. And I think that's really how I feel. I spend a lot of time traveling. I spend a lot of time climbing mountains when I was younger. I spend time cooking when I was just a way of making money when I'm in school and so forth. And also, I cook a nice dinner when I'm at home for not a lot of money I might add.
00:15:26
Speaker
And so it all and so it's and somewhere along the line I started I came around to being pro-labor and And then I started working for labor unions and I started learning from union organizers
00:15:39
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, and it's actually no I want to go back to one more piece of biography that I missed I should I should I should do I should do my bio Um, my my my professional bio looks looks more like this I started out doing advocacy in the criminal legal system There's too many people locked up, especially people of color And what can we do about that? And I did research I did political organizing I I published factoids that by now we all know but back then they were new
00:16:05
Speaker
You know, like one in three young black men is in the justice system. And you get a day's press for that. And I brought some lawsuits and I represented people. And I was doing advocacy in the criminal legal system. And during a lot of that time, unions were not on my side. They were the corrections officers union who are not against having people in prison.
00:16:29
Speaker
And there's the police officer's union, which was often against reform. So I was not on the same side as unions for many of those years. And then I spent five years as the research director of a think tank. And during this time, I really came to appreciate unions as the folk who brought you the weekend. And one worker alone is powerless, and all the workers together can close the factory and demand their fair share of
00:16:58
Speaker
of the wealth that they create. And so during my researcher years or think tank years is when I learned the importance of unions. And so then I left my nice window office job as a research director of a think tank to become a staff researcher at SEIU, Justice for Janitors. And that was when I moved into organized labor. I really,
00:17:28
Speaker
I really enjoy your description of your journey. I also really enjoy the comments that you make about labor and labor's role. I think one of the issues in labor tends to be that unions are good or unions are bad. There's this kind of polarized dual thinking.
00:17:49
Speaker
And you bring up important issues that unions represent different type of workers and different geographies with different views and different beliefs. And there's complications in that. And I like how you mentioned those complications. One of the things I also wanted to ask you, you had mentioned some of your thoughts about art. And we talked a bit about intention.
00:18:19
Speaker
I really want to know from you, Eric, your thoughts about the role of art.
Art's Societal Impact and Philosophical Insights
00:18:25
Speaker
What is the role of art?
00:18:28
Speaker
Wow, there's a famous quote. It's David Hume, the philosopher from 200 years ago, more than that. Love Hume. And the quote goes something like, the victory is not won by the men at arms, but by the pipers, drummers, and singers of the army, or something like that, musicians of the army. Do you know the quote that I'm getting at? Yeah. And I think that's true enough.
00:18:57
Speaker
And forgive me, the movie, I'm not sure it's probably both, give us, how does it go, bread and roses, right? Bread and roses. And the famous line is give us bread and give us roses. And roses are the art. Yeah.
00:19:18
Speaker
Oh, by the way, I use I use that line in my book, I quote that late in the book, Nate, the accountant, the person who starts out using skeptical, but he's, you know, and he's by now he's getting along well enough with Catherine, the labor organizer.
00:19:34
Speaker
and Nate looks up and he sees the moon and it's a beautiful orange moon you know early in this evening was catching some sun sunset and it's orange and it's big and it's swollen on the horizon pretty moon you can picture that kind of moon that that we see sometimes right
00:19:49
Speaker
and he texts and it's a beautiful moon and he wants to look at it but he's nobody to share it with because he's alone and he texts Catherine and he says are you busy look to the east look at the moon and he sends it and an instant later he feels like a jerk because that's a that's just an embarrassment for him to have sent she on the other hand of course she's busy and she doesn't have time to be looking at the moon
00:20:14
Speaker
So she, on the other hand, receives that text. And as she's walking down the hall, are you busy? Of course I'm busy. But she's walking down the hall, there's a window, and there's blinds are down, but she knows which way is east. She just peeks through the blinds, and there's this beautiful moon. And she stops, and she looks out at the moon, pulls up the blind, and of course, this catches the attention of people around her. And for a moment there,
00:20:38
Speaker
The entire office stops, people walked up to her, and they're all looking out the window and looking at the moon. And somebody behind her in the little crowd says, give us bread and give us roses. And they have that little moment together. She puts down the blinds. OK, everybody get back to work. And she texts back to Nate, and she says, thanks. That's my little mart. There's what I can do with art.
00:21:07
Speaker
Absolutely. Amen to that. I also on some of the other research bits, I appreciate your work and the things you've done about the prison system is a topic I've written about from philosophical, ethical standpoint on private prisons and
00:21:33
Speaker
I think there's a fertile conversation still around this massive industry. I just want to appreciate your work in that and your research in that area. We're talking about the different pieces you create. I wondered, Eric, just so make sure we don't miss it.
'Making Mana' and the Criminal Legal System
00:21:54
Speaker
And I know you have another book called Mana, I believe. And I was wondering if you can mention a little bit about that.
00:21:58
Speaker
Oh, thanks. I appreciate that. It's called Making Mana. And in the Bible, mana comes from heaven. And in the real world, you have to make your own. So that's where the title comes from. And Making Mana, Making Mana is really, it's a nonfiction commentary on the criminal legal system, dressed up as a charming, uplifting story.
00:22:23
Speaker
So that's what making manna is. And what I do with making manna, the thing that I think is interesting there, again, like my insight on union made as the romance, and my insight on making manna is the story is told from a victim's point of view. And we have a victim of a really serious crime.
00:22:42
Speaker
And the criminal legal system has failed her. It failed her because if it were really working, she wouldn't have been hurt at all. And then it continues to fail her because she's been hurt and it's not doing anything to help her. There's things that she needs right now and it's not giving her those things. And why is the criminal legal system not doing those things? Because it's so busy locking up young black men for no good reason.
00:23:07
Speaker
And so we get to this critical commentary on the criminal legal system. But fundamentally, this is a victim story. And what does she need from the criminal legal system? And she's not getting it. So this is a book called Making Mana. And there's an origin story on that that has to do with a death penalty case. Come back to that only if you want to go there. But my previous novel before that was a tragedy.
00:23:33
Speaker
And I wanted to write a book with a happy ending. And so it's like, I got to write a book with a happy ending and this was the original scenario came out of the death penalty case and I said, Okay, I'm going to take that scenario and give those people a happy ending. And that's the book making mana came and mana.
00:23:50
Speaker
And if you look at the cover art on making mana, that's a loaf of bread. And the happy ending is about the bakery and the baking of the bread. And there's a lot of time in the kitchen there in making mana. As much that it makes sense, tell us about the death penalty case you're referring to.
00:24:10
Speaker
So trigger warning spoiler alert, or not, I guess I already gave you the spoiler, but this is yucky. And it's a little dangerous to talk about. But so there's a death penalty case. Actually, I wasn't working on it. Friends were working on it. Good smart lawyers. And they said, hey, Eric,
00:24:28
Speaker
You're a good lawyer. You're a good writer. Can you read our briefs? Can you review or edit our briefs for us this weekend? The answer to that is yes, sure. They're on the defense side. So they're trying to save a life. The victim's already dead. We're very, I didn't say that well, but we're very sorry about that. But that's done. And now it's it'll be life without parole or somehow or other causing the person not to be killed.
00:24:54
Speaker
And it's the social history brief, the part in which you say, come on, poor guy, cut him some slack. And I read the social history brief, and it was a good brief, comma here, comma there, but fundamentally a good brief. And there was this line buried in the middle of the brief. And it said, Jimmy Jones, or whatever the defendant's name is, whatever his name was, Jimmy Jones was the product of an incestuous rape.
00:25:24
Speaker
And I circled that line, and I said, that's the opening line. You've buried your lead. That's product of an incestuous rape. This kid isn't even born yet, and things are already bad. You can talk about the drinking later. You can talk about what his parents do, and how he's unwanted, and all the rest of it. This kid isn't even born yet, and he's already pretty bad. And so the case came, and the case went. And that line stuck with me, product of.
00:25:54
Speaker
And I said, all right, I want a happy ending. What's the worst beginning I can possibly imagine? And I just said it product of now take that kid and give him a happy ending. And once I got real about it, mom has to get a happy ending, too. In fact, my in fact, my first my first draft, I didn't do right enough by by the mom.
00:26:19
Speaker
And so both the mother and the child deserve a happy ending. And that was my mission, and how do I get them there? And so that was the story of making mana. Take a kid who's born like that. It's an intra-family crime. A lot of these things are always intra-family.
00:26:36
Speaker
and the child is born and the world see and the kid and mom runs away never again and she runs away with her newborn baby and the world sees a teenage mom with a newborn baby and the world's not very sympathetic to her. It's like whap whap what are you doing having a baby and we the reader know that what she needs is help and a hug.
00:27:03
Speaker
So that's the story of making manna, which came out a few years ago, and I still like it. And again, my time in the criminal legal system really informed making manna.
00:27:16
Speaker
Including my time working with victims. My time working with victims, including of sex crimes, time working with victims, and time working with people on the wrong side of the wall, and families trying to stay together.
Philosophical Musings on Existence
00:27:31
Speaker
There's a whole little storyline in making mana.
00:27:34
Speaker
about how the daughter wants to stay in touch with her mom. This is different characters, not the main ones I was just talking about. But the mom is arrested, and the mom's in prison, and the daughter wants to stay in touch with her. And the phone charges her so much. It's more than a dollar a minute to stay in touch with her mom. And so you have everything that you would want, a family trying to get together. And these parents will eventually come out, and the system is not helping them. In fact, it's billing them even just to try to be good.
00:28:06
Speaker
Yeah, I you know and uh The in in creating that I was I was Tuning into your process and talking about you know with your drafts and you you trying to create this and um, I get a Pretty significant background in in literature and one of the things I wanted to let you know is kind of i'm around my responses Initially is but you as an artist and creating that I have a deep um
00:28:33
Speaker
a deep appreciation for writers. And I like writing. I'm a good writer. I don't write that often because it's difficult. And so when folks deal with difficult things and put into their craft, that's the piece I like to pull out, the stories. So on Union Made and the new book, I think Union,
00:29:01
Speaker
Union unions and should get copies for them for their members and connect to the stories of why unions are around and and the statistics are daunting
00:29:13
Speaker
The statistics aren't encouraging, the labor movement sometimes is frustrating, but the story of people coming together, I would have stopped doing this a while ago if we didn't have that. I really think it can be important for union members, but Eric, I got the
00:29:33
Speaker
big question for you is why is there something rather than nothing? This is a little existential, but forgive me, it's a paradoxical question really to me because if there were nothing, then we wouldn't be here talking about it. And so if we're asking the question, then surely there is something. And so we're sort of stuck with that. We've got to have something in order to be asking the question.
00:30:02
Speaker
Is that a cop out or an answer? No, no, it's not a cop out. This is philosophy cop outs or whatever. No, no, it isn't. It's a fundamental.
00:30:12
Speaker
It's a fundamental answer to the question as it's posed. And I think it's quite legitimate. We are making sound blips. I'm looking at the screen right now as we're talking on the podcast. Sounds are being uttered. Things are occurring. There are things. No. And I think that's one of the pieces of it. I was interviewed once on the program. And what's strange about it in philosophy is like,
00:30:41
Speaker
when you mention multiple answers for the same type of thing, sometimes answering this question is, what mood are you in? And that's why I think it's a fun question. Eric Lottke, tell the listeners where they can find your work. I have read your union made on Kindle.
00:31:02
Speaker
And just like I said, a great book and even the format was really good as far as me going through it, flipping through it electronically, but tell folks where to go.
00:31:12
Speaker
Thank you. It's available in all the places that you can buy a book, which means buy it from Amazon only as your last choice, but you can get it there if you have to. Best is buy it from the publisher, Hardball Press, direct from Hardball Press, or buy it. Your local bookstore will likely not have it on the shelf, but they'll get it to you in a couple of days. So buy it from your local bookstore again. It's called Union Made, and my name is Eric Lottke, and there's a link on my webpage, ericlottke.com.
00:31:42
Speaker
And right now, it's kindled, you can e-book it, you can read, it's only paperback, didn't bother with hardback. So hard copy. Sadly, because the world isn't perfect, there will be an audio version, but the audio version won't be out for another month. So we will have audio for you in, I'll call it next month, I mean that in some rough way.
00:32:09
Speaker
That's that's lovely to hear. As a matter of fact, I mentioned the book to a couple folks and that was the first question they asked because audiobooks have definitely become a lot more popular. So actually, it's great in current news. We'll certainly be looking for that on audiobook. It's a format I enjoy very much while walking. So, you know, listening to art and walking.
00:32:32
Speaker
I want to tell you, Eric, we met recently. It's been an honor and pleasure to express some appreciation for the work that you do and that we work in similar areas, stories of organizing, of labor, and what you do within the movement because it's a harsh movement.
00:32:54
Speaker
And I want to let you know that myself and many others appreciate the work. And I want to thank you for coming on the show. Well, thank you for having me. Thanks, Eric. And we'll talk soon in solidarity. Have a lovely day. This is something rather than nothing.