People Before Profit blog

Unique and inspiring: “Al Helm: Martin Luther King in Palestine”

Thu, 06 Feb 2014 17:08:00 +0000

Parallels abound in the latest film dealing with the Palestinian crisis. "Al helm," which means "the dream" in Arabic, and Martin Luther King Jr.'s well known "dream" come together in a unique and profound manner in Al Helm: Martin Luther King in Palestine. It follows an African American gospel group led by Stanford professor and King scholar Clayborne Carson who travel to Palestine in March 2011 to perform an original play about King written by Carson. While there, the small choir of political neophytes quickly discover the repressive conditions Palestinians endure daily under the Israeli occupation, and empathy develops between peoples who have a shared history of oppression.

But soon upon arrival, there are signs of cultural shock. The Americans pull out their cameras and offend some of the locals, who prefer to get to know people as humans before their pictures are taken. The language barrier alienates some of the choir members, and Dr. Carson soon discovers that the Palestinian director Kamel El Basha has not only re-written some lines, but changed the order of some scenes without permission. In a seemingly futile attempt to negotiate against failure, the newest young member of the choir, just previously homeless, innocently comes up with a brilliant solution to propel the production forward and help resolve differences.

It isn't long before the Americans befriend their fellow Palestinian actors, visiting their homes and meeting their families, and discovering their harsh living conditions under occupation. As the Arab actors read King's lines about the U.S. civil rights movement, and African Americans experience oppressed people in a new country, there is a transformation in their appreciation and awareness of each other's history of struggle.

Director and producer Connie Field is no newcomer to the area of political documentaries. Her 1985 award-winning classic The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter has become a benchmark in progressive film circles.

Field's 1994 film Freedom on My Mind, an Academy Award nominee, covers the civil rights movement in Mississippi, and Field's seven-part series on apartheid, Have You Heard From Johannesburg, certainly helped lay the groundwork for an appreciation of the parallels between South Africa and Palestine.

Her films focus on activism, and in Al Helm she aims the camera at a group of Palestinians, led by a student of Martin Luther King's nonviolent approach, Fadi Quran, as activists board a segregated "settlers only" bus, reminiscent of the Freedom Riders.

The film follows the troupe as it travels to several cities to perform their Martin Luther King play with a message the Palestinians know only too well. When they arrive in the northern town of Jenin, they are met by one of the country's legendary actors, Juliano Mer Khamis, who is known worldwide for his work with the Jenin Freedom Theater. His film, Arna's Children, a tribute to his Jewish mother and the school she founded for Palestinian youth, is one of the most heartrending films in all of cinema. When she dies of cancer, he is determined to keep the school going, while appearing on TV and making movies such as Wedding in Galilee, Salt of This Sea and Miral.

While visiting the Freedom Theater, the troupe is enraptured by his charisma and skill at involving youth in theater. Discovering freedom in theater (and life), the local kids, who've only ever known stress, line up outside the theater just to be part of this great experiment. But his daring reputation for challenging the authorities and the status quo eventually meets resistance. While predicting his own fate, Juliano Mer Khamis, at the age of 52, was gunned down in his car by an unknown assailant in front of his beloved school - on the morning of April 4, 2011. The same date King was assassinated in 1968. And the same day the King play was being performed in Palestine.

It was the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions campaign that pounded the final nail in the coffin of South African apartheid. The U.S. government that long supported apartheid and helped jail Nelson Mandela, was eventually forced to come around. As the African American community shares its experiences in civil rights struggles and joins the struggle to end the occupation of Palestine, it will be only a matter of time before the U.S. government (and Israel) will be forced to face the realities of an illegal and cruel oppression of the Palestinian people, too reminiscent of the treatment of Blacks leading up to our own civil rights movement days.

This emotionally inspiring film joins the ranks of powerful documentaries about the Palestinian struggle that express the power and beauty of art to foster social change - Juliano's own gem, Arna's Children, and Daniel Barenboim 2005 masterpiece, Knowledge is the Beginning. How true.

You can find out more about Al Helm and Connie Field's other films at clarityfilms org.

Photo: Clarityfilms.org

Not all “peace and love”: Bill, Joan and the Beat Generation

Thu, 06 Feb 2014 16:56:00 +0000

LOS ANGELES - A bevy of Beat Generation feature films and documentaries have recently been released, some featuring high level talents. Just to rattle off a few titles (Google them for more details): Ferlinghetti: A Rebirth of Wonder, Howl, On the Road, The Beat Hotel, Kill Your Darlings, and Big Sur. In 2012 the University of Kentucky Press published the erudite The Philosophy of the Beats.

The latest addition to the Beatnik canon is on the stage. Bill & Joan, world premiering at the Sacred Fools Theater in Los Angeles, is about William S. Burroughs (Curt Bonnem) and his common-law wife Joan Vollmer (Betsy Moore). The two-acter written by Jon Bastian focuses on the tumultuous pairing of the gay/bi Burroughs and Vollmer, "soulmates" born on the same day of the year whose relationship went way off the tracks.

Much of the action - involving much substance abuse and debauchery, plus a little bit of writing - is set south of the border when Bill and Joan were expatriates. In particular, the play tries to unravel what really happened that night in Mexico in 1951 when, as cognoscenti of Beat history know, Bill shot Joan in the forehead while they were playing what they fondly called their "William Tell game," and something went terribly wrong.

Bill & Joan is a deeply dark, disturbing play with lots of sex (mainly gay), male nudity in the dark, explicit language, drug (take your pick) use, and violence. No peacey-lovey counterculture, these Beatniks! Bonnem's Burroughs is a bit of a dandy, the well-dressed scion of the Burroughs business machine fortune. Moore's Vollmer is adventurous, desperate, and frantic. Bill's peccadilloes with Mexican rough trade and others seem, among other things, to drive her to substance abuse - just as her infidelity and hijinks getting high further propel Bill's heroin addiction.

A number of the dramatis personae played by the nine-member cast seem to be characters from Burroughs' novels and give form to his roiling unconscious. Among them Lauren Campedelli is a standout as the sultry Lilly Lee who entices the conflicted would-be writer with her allure. Donnelle Fuller is creepy as the Dickens-esque Willy Lee, who seems to incarnate Bill's addictions. This drama, as well as the murder mystery at the heart of Kill Your Darlings, sheds a whole new and not very flattering light on the Beatniks.

The play is extremely expressionistic, although there is also something of a linear narrative. The set consists largely of 72 lights composed of large bulbs mounted onto the wall; the lighting designers Matt Richter and Christina Robinson attain evocative effects. The abundance of lights evokes an interrogation effect: During much of the action Burroughs is in custody at the Mexican hoosegow, where he is being held on suspicion of shooting Joan and under interrogation by two Mexican detectives (Alexander Matute and Richard Azuria).

Director Diana Wyenn, who is also the production designer, does bravura work in pulling everything together - some of the nine actors play multiple roles - in this complicated mosaic that explores the surreal psyche of the author who wrote books entitled Queer, Junkie, and 1959's Naked Lunch.

This scorching drama is not for the faint of heart, but for those who prefer their live theater edgy, imaginative, and adventurous - a Sacred Fools house specialty. Bill & Joan tries to explain what Burroughs meant when he confessed that "I am forced to the appalling conclusion that I would never have become a writer but for Joan's death, and to a realization of the extent to which this event has motivated and formulated my writing." One thing's for sure: William S. Burroughs was to the Beat novel what Edgar Rice Burroughs was to adventure fiction - Bill's life and work no less adventurous than Tarzan's as he explored the jungles of the unconscious.

Why all this attention focused on the Beat Generation now? Well, 2014 is the Burroughs centennial, and anniversaries resonate with the public. But however we interpret this phenomenon, I'm glad that Sacred Fools and the silver screen are remembering these early proto-countercultural rebels.

Bill & Joan is being performed through March 1 on Fridays and Saturdays, and Thursdays Feb. 6 and 13 at 8:00 pm at the Sacred Fools Theater, 660 N. Heliotrope Dr., Los Angeles. For more info: (310)281-8337; www.sacredfools.org/.

Photo: A scene from Bill & Joan. Jessica Sherman/Sacred Fools Publicity.

Poem: “Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie at Riverfest, St. Paul, Minnesota"

Wed, 05 Feb 2014 14:11:00 +0000

Down by the riverside, all are invited

into the music, and these sweating strangers,

elbow to elbow in the hot July night,

are a crowd that knows the words and have come to taste

the old songs on their lips again.

Some drunk college boys in the front row

can't settle down, throw popcorn at the stage, bellow,

wanting to get rowdy.

But they are shamed by the gathering

and after awhile, they too enter the communal rhythms,

clasp their hands, sing along.

Only the earthen banks of the Mississippi find praise here.

And if I had a hammer, this old city of Robber Barons

rising in a high arrogance of corporate concrete,

would hear the smashing of chains, the ringing of bells

announcing the first morning of the New World

and dancing in the streets.

This floodplain is claimed in one voice by the People,

if only for tonight. A summer sound of joy

goes down to the dark currents of Big Muddy singing,

and we feel what is possible:

the good American heart of its men and women

open to the world, all the labor in the fields of justice

bearing beautiful fruit at last,

all highways open, and the rivers running untainted

into the future, mixing the black earth of the Heartland

with the cold salts of the sea ...

From beyond the twirling lights of carnival rides,

the pizza stands and clanging targets of arcades,

come families holding balloons and ice cream cones

to see what all this singing is about, joining in

until the last encore.

We sway to and fro,

while moths and bats flutter past our ears,

the children sing louder now

than their parents by the ancient,

always young water -

this land is your land, this land is my land...

From "The Death of Communism" (Partisan Press) and reprinted with permission.

Photo: In this Daily Worker archive photo, Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie sing in a more informal setting. (via Tamiment Library/Permission needed to reprint this photo. Contact: editors@peoplesworld.org)

“Empire’s Ally: Canada and the War in Afghanistan”

Thu, 30 Jan 2014 15:24:00 +0000

Americans tend to think of Canadians as politer and more sensible than their southern neighbors, thus the joke: "Why does the Canadian chicken cross the road? To get to the middle." Oh, yes, bit of a muddle there in Afghanistan, but like Dudley Do Right, the Canadians were only trying to develop and tidy up the place.

Not in the opinion of Jerome Klassen and a formidable stable of academics, researchers, journalists, and peace activists who see Canada's role in Central Asia less as a series of policy blunders than a coldly calculated strategy of international capital. "Simply put," writes Klassen, "the war in Afghanistan was always linked to the aspirations of empire on a much broader scale."

"Empire's Ally: Canada and the War in Afghanistan," by Klassen and Greg Albo, asks the question, "Why did the Canadian government go to war in Afghanistan in 2001?" and then carefully dissects the popular rationales: fighting terrorism; coming to the aid of the United States; helping the Afghans to develop their country. Oh, and to free women. What the book's autopsy of those arguments reveals is disturbing.

Calling Canada's Afghan adventure a "revolution," Klassen argues, "the new direction of Canadian foreign policy cannot be explained simply by policy mistakes, U.S. demands, military adventurism, security threats, or abstract notions of liberal idealism. More accurately, it is best explained by structural tendencies in the Canadian political economy - in particular, by the internationalization of Canadian capital and the realignment of the state as a secondary power in the U.S.-led system of empire."

In short, the war in Afghanistan is not about people failing to read Kipling, but is rather part of a worldwide economic and political offensive by the U.S. and its allies to dominate sources of energy and weaken any upstart competitors like China, and India. Nor is that "broader scale" limited to any particular region.

Indeed, the U.S. and its allies have transformed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) from a European alliance to contain the Soviet Union, to an international military force with a global agenda. Afghanistan was the alliance's coming out party, its first deployment outside of Europe. The new "goals" are, as one planner put it, to try to "re-establish the West at the centre of global security," to guarantee access to cheap energy, to police the world's sea lanes, to "project stability beyond its borders," and even concern itself with "Chinese military modernization."

If this all sounds very 19th century - as if someone should strike up a chorus of "Britannia Rules the Waves" - the authors would agree, but point out that global capital is far more powerful and all embracing than the likes of Charles "Chinese" Gordon and Lord Herbert Kitchener ever envisioned. One of the book's strong points is its updating of capitalism, so to speak, and its careful analysis of what has changed since the end of the Cold War.

Klassen is a postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Center for International Studies, and Greg Albo is an associate professor of political science at York University in Toronto. The two authors gather together 13 other academics, journalists, researchers and peace activists to produce a detailed analysis of Canada's role in the Afghan war.

The book is divided into four major parts dealing with the history of the involvement, its political and economic underpinnings, and the actual Canadian experiences in Afghanistan, which had more to with condoning war crimes like torture than digging wells, educating people, and improving their health. Indeed, Canada's Senate Standing Committee on National Security concluded that, in Ottawa's major area of concentration in Afghanistan, Kandahar, "Life is clearly more perilous because we are there."

After almost $1 trillion poured into Afghanistan - Canada's contribution runs to about $18 billion - some 70 percent of the Afghan population lives in poverty, and malnutrition has recently increased. Over 30,000 Afghan children die each year from hunger and disease. And as for liberating women, according to a study by TrustLaw Women, the "conflict, NATO airstrikes and cultural practices combined" make Afghanistan the "most dangerous country for women" in the world.

The last section of the book deals with Canada's anti-war movement.

While the focus of "Empire's Ally" is Canada, the book is really a sort of historical materialist blueprint for analyzing how and why capitalist countries involve themselves in foreign wars. Readers will certainly learn a lot about Canada, but they will also discover how political economics works and what the goals of the new imperialism are for Washington, London, Paris, and Berlin.

Klassen argues that Canadians have not only paid in blood and gold for their Afghanistan adventure, they have created a multi-headed monster, a "network of corporate, state, military, intellectual, and civil social actors who profit from or direct Canada's new international policies."

This meticulously researched book should be on the shelf of anyone interested in the how's and why's of western foreign policy. "Empire's Ally" is a model of how to do an in-depth analysis of 21st century international capital and a handy guide on how to cut through the various narratives about "democracy," "freedom," and "security" to see the naked violence and greed that lays at the heart of the Afghan War.

The authors do more than reveal, however, they propose a roadmap for peace in Afghanistan. It is the kind of thinking that could easily be applied to other "hot spots" on the globe.

For this book is a warning about the future, when the battlegrounds may shift from the Hindu Kush to the East China Sea, Central Africa, or Kashmir, where, under the guise of fighting "terrorism," establishing "stability," or "showing resolve," the U.S. and its allies will unleash their armies of the night.

Book information:
"Empire's Ally: Canada and the War in Afghanistan"
Edited by Jerome Klassen and Greg Albo
2013, University of Toronto Press

This originally appeared in Hallinan's blog, Dispatches From the Edge.

Pete Seeger, we honor you

Tue, 28 Jan 2014 16:54:00 +0000

Here are just a few stories about the impact made by Pete Seeger on a single one of the millions of people who were influenced by him during his long, creative, inspiring and productive life. Pete died on Monday at age 94.

One: in 1968 or 1969 I was a young radical in Seattle. Pete Seeger was coming to town to perform at the Moore Theater, a benefit for the American Friends Service Committee, if my memory serves. I couldn't afford a ticket, but the AFSC was looking for volunteer ushers in return for free admission. I signed up.

While the crowd was beginning to gather, before I had to be on duty, I stood outside the theater selling copies of the old People's World, at that time the Communist Party's West Coast newspaper. I sold a few, and then saw Pete Seeger walking up the block, carrying his banjo case. He stopped, told me it was good to see young people doing what I was doing, and gave me a few bucks for a copy of the paper. Later I went in, ushered a bit, then sat down on some steps next to other patrons, and sang along with every single song he played, since I had grown up in the '50s and '60s listening to all his records, including relatively obscure ones like "American Industrial Ballads."

Two: My mother, Virginia Brodine, was the main mover in creating the first Environmental Commission of the Communist Party. She drafted the first edition of our environmental program, "People and Nature Before Profits." She wrote to Pete, asking for a comment that could be used on the back cover, and he sent one. Later, however, he must have gotten some heat from friends who didn't approve of the party, and he wrote Mother a snippy note saying he hadn't understood his words would be used on the pamphlet. Mother was a bit hurt, but being an organized person, she kept all her correspondence, and was able to find the original letter she had sent Pete, specifically asking for a quote that could be used to promote the program. She sent Pete a copy, and he sent back a gracious note apologizing for his faulty memory.

Three: My first wife took a photo of our first child at about three years old, "reading" a copy of the People's World. My former mother-in-law, BJ Mangaoang, was a leader of the Communist Party in Washington State for many decades., and got her hands on a copy of the photo. She took it with her to a meeting in New York, and while there attended the massive Nuclear Freeze demonstration at the United Nations, in I believe 1980. She ran into Pete.

They had some history. When BJ was a young radical, in the early 1940s, she had been asked to drive Pete and Woody Guthrie around the Seattle area to various union meetings so they could perform. She ended up singing with them a bit, so whenever she ran into Pete, they shared warm memories from that trip. So when she ran into him at the big demonstration, she pulled out a copy of the photo to show him her grandchild, and Pete gave her an autograph on the back. We still have that photo. That's three degrees of connection - Pete to BJ Mangaoang to my daughter to me.

I also had a hundreds-of-thousands of degrees experience, when on the night before Obama's first inauguration, Pete got called up to the stage of the pre-inaugural public concert by Bruce Springsteen, and they sang Woody's "This Land is Your Land" including the "forgotten" verse about private property. I wasn't there with the hundreds of thousands assembled before the Lincoln Memorial; I just saw it on television. But that moment was symbolic, for me personally and for the nation as well.

So Pete Seeger was a mentor, even though I only met him in person for a minute or two one time. His songs provided the soundtrack for my childhood, his music helped inspire me to learn guitar and folk songs from cultures different from the one I grew up in. His activism and passionate opposition to the Vietnam War connected me emotionally to the struggles I was going through at that time, first as a conscientious objector to the draft and then as a peace activist in the People's Coalition for Peace and Justice.

He played a similar role in the lives of literally millions of people around the world, through endless touring, through record albums, through his fight to get his antiwar song "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy" played on network TV, through his early environmental activism to save the Hudson River, and so much more. We honor his life, and acknowledge his influence, in our lives and also in the political and cultural life of our country.

Photo: A young Pete Seeger sings at the racially integrated Valentine's Day opening of the Washington labor canteen, sponsored by the United Federal Workers of America, Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), in then-segregated Washington, D.C., Feb. 13, 1944. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, center, was the honored guest. Joseph A. Horne/Office of War Information/Library of Congress

A song for Pete Seeger

Tue, 28 Jan 2014 15:44:00 +0000

Editor's note: Mike Glick is a singer song writer and friend of Pete Seeger who said "he was one of the best song writer's going."

Ah Pete, I somehow thought you were like the Sequoia

And that your roots would just get deeper and stronger and keep on growing

You sheltered us and your many branches nurtured us, making us a home and a growing community

You stood - and still stand (always) for every decent, kind and caring impulse of the American people

The desire for fair play, a chance for a better life for all, a celebration of our differences and similarities

Quintessentially American, your message still carried to all parts of the world

Even as I once brought your words and their message of peace and friendship in a small cassette to friends at a festival of song in Calcutta

They carried such meaning to people half way around the globe, these "children" of Satyajit Ray - as we are all your "children"

You were, and are our Mandela - our shining light to point the way

And your roots will continue to grow and spread farther and deeper

With More love, More peace, More freedom, More justice

And as the journey deepens and grows

"Precious friend, you will be there" Siempre y Presente!

Photo: Pete Seeger, center, Bruce Springsteen, right, and Seeger's grandson Tao Seeger, perform during the " We Are One: Opening Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial" in Washington, Jan. 18, 2009. Carolyn Kaster/AP

“Day Trader”: wickedly clever play critiques capitalism

Mon, 27 Jan 2014 13:12:00 +0000

LOS ANGELES - Day Trader is sort of Sunset Blvd. meets Body Heat meets Wall Street, a modern morality play that will keep audiences on the edges of their seats as they try to figure out what's going on and what will happen next. Broadway actor Danton Stone heads this stellar four-actor cast as 49-year-old father Ron Barlow. Brighid Fleming plays his daughter, 15-year-old Juliana Barlow. Although never seen onstage, their forbidding wife/mother, Brenda, the so-called "Iron Lady of Hancock Park," looms over the action like the gigantic, scowling wife who grows out of a house in a famous James Thurber cartoon.

Brenda is a millionaire, but as Barlow confides to his neighbor Phil (Tim Meinelschmidt) - like Ron also a failed Hollywood scriptwriter - Ron is extremely unhappily married. He schemes to escape from the marriage with his "share" of Brenda's bread, scheming to use a loophole in their almost airtight pre-nuptial agreement to score big time.

Enter into this combustible situation the femme fatale Bridget (leggy Murielle Zuker), an acting student and waitress at a bar Phil takes Ron to. All hell breaks loose, as playwright Eric Rudnick explores how low people will sink out of their lust for money, status, and - well - lust.

Rudnick's script is nearly perfectly constructed. The stage action and dialogue are full of clues that will tip off the astute listener as to what is really going to occur in this taut drama, which - like the human condition itself - also has its share of laughs. Rudnick also has keen psychological insights.

For instance, in one pivotal scene Ron tells Juliana how (so he says) her mother truly feels let down by her. But this dramatic moment is a quintessential example of projection on par with Newt Gingrich's claiming of the moral high ground during a 2012 presidential debate in defense of his marital infidelity. Ron, of course, is actually revealing how the grim Brenda feels about him, not their daughter.

Day Trader is skillfully directed (Steven Williford) and superbly acted. Fourteen-year-old Brighid Fleming is a rising star whom ticket buyers and casting directors should keep their eyes on. She has been seen in local theater, and is currently on the big screen in Jason Reitman's Labor Day with Kate Winslet, Josh Brolin, and Tobey Maguire.

Although Stone has previously acted in movies and television shows shot in L.A., with Day Trader the recently relocated New York theater veteran makes an auspicious L.A. stage début. As Ron Barlow, Stone delivers a letter-perfect performance as an increasingly desperate out-of-work screenwriter who has turned to the titular day trading as a possible way to make money independently of the overbearing Brenda, a character many in Tinseltown may recognize.

Within the Wall Street world, a day trader is a speculator or investor who buys and sells financial instruments on the foreign exchange and stock markets within the same trading day. Throughout the play Ron listens to a 25-session self-help tape that explains how to conduct this form of profit-seeking, which is done largely in solitude via phone, iPad, computer, tablet, etc. With his play's get-rich-quick scheme within a scam, Rudnick's Day Trader can be interpreted as a parable and critique of capitalism.

The drama's title can also have multiple meanings, as "trader" sounds like "traitor." Ron's betrayal of Juliana reminded this writer of one of literature's most heartrending acts of treachery. At the end of George Orwell's dystopian masterpiece 1984, after his failed rebellion against the omniscient totalitarian state, the imprisoned Winston Smith is taken to "Room 101" to be tortured. There, threatened with hungry rats eager to eat his face, Winston literally rats out his co-conspirator and lover. Desperate and terrified, the broken Winston shouts: "Do it to Julia!"

Except in Rudnick's alternately hair-raising and hilarious roller coaster ride Day Trader, instead of Big Brother watching him, Ron Barlow had better watch out for Brighid Fleming's "Little Daughter!"

Day Trader plays at 7:00 p.m. on Thursdays-Saturdays and 2:00 p.m. on Sundays through Feb. 16 at the Bootleg Theater, 2220 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles. Tickets are $25. For more information: (213) 389-3856 or www.bootlegtheater.org.

Photo: BootlegTheater.org

Hollywood doesn't recognize complexity of black life

Fri, 24 Jan 2014 15:36:00 +0000

This should have been the year that black directors dominated the Oscars. In 2013, several black filmmakers produced and directed well-crafted films that examine black life. Of that group, three in particular-Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave), Ryan Coogler (Fruitvale Station) and Lee Daniels (The Butler)-created films of historic significance, each of which explores a different and important period in American history.

These films generated great interest from audiences, with high box office numbers. Each film also generated great interest from critics, with overwhelmingly positive reviews. Each director achieved the caliber of cinematic art worthy of being nominated for an Oscar, but only one, British-born McQueen, has gotten the critical nod of approval from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences that can shift careers into the highest echelons of the Hollywood hierarchy.

Clearly the problem of race persists in the film industry, and this problem inhibits mainstream celebration of black achievement in moviemaking. This problem has created a binary language of what black life is about and what is worthy of praise. So in the recent past, either the academy is praising the Bad Negro-whom Denzel Washington played in Training Day and Forest Whitaker played in The Last King of Scotland-or it is praising the Good Negro, portrayed by Will Smith in The Pursuit of Happyness.

By snubbing Fruitvale and Michael B. Jordan's stellar performance as Oscar Grant this year, Hollywood has signaled that it is not ready for the contemporary image of a complex black male, one who is both family man and felon.

Likewise, in The Butler, Oprah Winfrey delivered a compelling portrait of a wife who is both devoted and an adultress, a mother who is both loving and a lush. Certainly her fine performance, her deft handling of that complexity, deserves at least a nomination, if not a win.

Lee Daniels' The Butler, 12 Years a Slave and Fruitvale Station all express the rich fullness of our humanity. There aren't any flat, stereotypical characterizations of black life in these films. Instead of celebrating this diversity of black life, Hollywood's narrow focus on only 12 Years leads to a schism. Why can't the African American talent that worked on all three films share in the wonder and glow of those golden statues?

Although Kevin Turan of the Los Angeles Times sees a monumental shift in the academy's attitudes, replacing the old generation (Tom Hanks, Robert Redford) with the new generation (Leonardo DiCaprio, Christian Bale, Chiwetel Ejiofor), I just see more of the same.

Turin asks his readers to "imagine a world where movie stars of the pedigree of Robert Redford and Tom Hanks give two of the best performances of their careers but don't get Oscar nominations. Or where Spike Jonze, director of the subversive Her, can't get a nomination either."

I ask you to imagine a world where 12 Years a Slave, Fruitvale Station and Mother of George compete for the Oscar for best picture. Imagine a world where Lee Daniels, Steve McQueen and Ryan Coogler are battling it out for best director. I want to see Michael B. Jordan, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Idris Elba contending for best actor, and Oprah Winfrey and Lupita Nyong'o in a sisterly struggle for best supporting actress.

These creatives are the best, belong with the best, deserve the best in praise and prizes. Why can't all of us who delivered so much to this industry be recognized by it for doing so?

Ralph Richardson is a Brooklyn, N.Y.-based filmmaker. Follow him on Twitter. This was reprinted from The Root with the author's permission.

Photo: Michael B. Jordan stars as Oscar Grant in Fruitvale Station with Ariana Neal who plays Grant's daughter Tatiana. (FruitvaleFilm.com)

"Reds At The Blackboard": More positive view of today's Communist teachers

Wed, 22 Jan 2014 15:01:00 +0000

Nearly 25 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, more and more historians are beginning to paint a more objective, balanced and - in many cases - positive picture of the role of communists and the Communist Party, USA in the U.S. labor movement.

Clarence Taylor's Reds At The Blackboard: Communism, Civil Rights and the New York City Teachers Union is a welcome addition to U.S. labor and communist history.

Taylor begins Reds At The Blackboard by highlighting the work of a small group of CPUSA members to democratically win leadership of the Teachers' Union as early as 1923. Through their Rank and File Caucus, by 1937, Party members had won fifteen of twenty-four seats on the union's executive board, and headed up many of the union's leadership committees - including, Academic Freedom, Anti-War/Anti-Fascist, Educational Policies, Legal Aid and Grievance, Membership and the editorship of the New York Teacher News, the TU's newspaper.

Though they faced internal and external opposition, the TU, under Party leadership, fought for and built a unique form of democratic "social unionism" that lead to a dramatic increase in union membership - from about 1,500 members in 1935 to a peak membership of about 6,200 in 1938, "making it the largest teachers union in the city and proving that the union's work was attracting teachers."

Like many other communist-led unions, the TU championed civil rights and "diligently supported the black freedom struggle." This is probably one of the most important contributions Taylor makes to the historiography of the communist-led TU and its role as a broad-based civil rights union fighting for full equality long before the emergence of the 1960's era civil rights movement.

By challenging Board of Education-approved racist textbooks the union "promoted black history and culture" and "highlight[ed] the role played by people of African origin in making America a great country." Additionally, the union brought black and white teachers, substitute and full-time, together and "argued that the fight against racism was important because racial discrimination not only hurt blacks but was also harmful to whites..."

That the TU "established a counseling service for black prospective teachers," "support[ed] black applicants attempting to secure teaching licenses" and "help[ed] black applicants prepare for the written [teaching license] tests," while "assist[ing] them in appealing unfavorable ratings" and helping to "place them in [teaching] vacancies" illustrates a commitment to affirmative action long before it became a mass rallying cry and highlights the vanguard role of CPUSA members in challenging institutional racism.

Throughout World War II, the TU's fight against racism intensified as it equated racism to Nazism and argued that "racism was un-American." In fact, the "union positioned the struggle for racial equality in a broad context, making fighting fascism, anti-Semitism, and other forms of discrimination synonymous with patriotism. Consequently, for the TU, antiracism became integrally linked to America's war effort."

After the war, the TU continued to fight for racial equality for teachers. Starting in 1949 "...the union's Committee Against Discrimination" conducted surveys "on the racial makeup of school faculties...," which were "the first systematic attempt to gain insight into hiring patterns" in New York City schools. The 1949 survey, along with another more detailed 1951 survey, "charged" the board of education with a "consistent pattern of discrimination" and argued that "the absence of Negro teachers on the faculty undermines the concept of democracy and equality that our schools should offer the children..."

By 1955, the union released another survey on Black employment in the schools; it found that of the 16,000 teachers included in the survey, there were only 312 "regularly appointed" and 232 "substitute black teachers." Obviously, the board of education had done very little to remedy its institutional racism, which lead the union to assert, the "present teacher employment situation...constitutes an injustice not only to Negroes but also to the white children of the city..."

Taylor's Reds At The Blackboard also focuses on the board of education's purging of communists and progressives by claiming that the TU was Moscow-controlled. "By depicting the union as a group working on behalf of Moscow, the board and the union's enemies launched a campaign to strip the TU of its right to represent teachers before management," while unconstitutionally taking away the right of teachers to elect representatives of their own choosing, effectively decertifying the union. In fact, by May 1955, "two hundred thirty-nine teachers and other board personnel had been forced out of the [school] system," due to the purges. One teacher even committed suicide.

A lot more could be written about the board of education's purging of communists, as well as, the blatant anti-Semitism surrounding the purge than can fit into a short review. Suffice it to say, Taylor writes on these subjects in detail.

In all, Reds At The Blackboard is an important and welcome contribution to U.S. labor and communist history; the emphasis on the TU's work against racism and for full equality is especially illuminating. Reds At The Blackboard is highly recommended.

"Reds At The Blackboard: Communism, Civil Rights, and the New York City Teachers Union"

Clarence Taylor

Columbia University Press, 2011, 372 pages

"We3": Pro-animal comic book turns 10

Tue, 21 Jan 2014 10:39:00 +0000

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the publication of We3, a masterful comic book miniseries that considers human exploitation of animals, specifically in war and scientific testing. Written with a haunting minimalism by Grant Morrison and illustrated in a beautiful, yet unflinching style by Frank Quitely, the title deserves to be more widely read.

Following three companion animals on the run, We3 could be viewed as a dystopic reimagining of Sheila Burnford's novel, The Incredible Journey, which was most recently adapted into the 1993 film, Homeward Bound.

The story centers on a dog, cat and rabbit who have been kidnapped from their human families by the American military and transformed into monstrous, animal-machine hybrids capable of unleashing lethal destruction at the order of a Uncle Sam. When the secret project is decommissioned and the animals ordered to be killed, their sympathetic human handler sets them free. The trio make adesperate escape into the nearby wilderness as the military uses every means at its disposal to track and destroy them.

While we later learn the animals' original names were Bandit, Tinker, and Pirate, the military refers to them simply by numbers. This small aspect of the plot demonstrates one way in which humans attempt to erase animal individuality or personhood to justify their exploitation. Similarly, when the trio's handler appears distraught after being commanded to exterminate the animals, a colleague counsels her, saying, "You know it's best not to get attached to things." Again, it's clear that in order rationalize their abuse of the trio, these human characters, as we do in real life, must think of animals
as closer to objects than sentient beings.

Because Bandit, Tinker and Pirate are constructed through testing and intended to be employed in armed conflict, the use of animals in experimentation and warfare is central to the plot. As one scientist states, the trio "are surgically engineered, bio-modified organisms." And the wiring attached to their heads is undoubtedly meant to visually evoke the electrodes implanted in animals during real-life testing. The trio's intended military function is even more explicit, with a scientist, for instance, proclaiming, "Our wars of tomorrow will be fought by remote controlled animals, like these." Given that the story is told primarily from the animals' perspective, with the trio as protagonists and the military as antagonists, it's portrayal of the use of animals in warfare and experimentation is inherently negative. Morrison's editorializing occasionally even slips into the language of the military and scientists, with one official, for instance, referring to engineered animals like Bandit, Tinker, and Pirate as "slaves."

The most obvious weakness of We3 as progressive art is in the form of animal exploitation and non-human victims it chooses to focus on. For instance, correctly or not, humans generally don't feel a significant stake in the issue of animal testing, as whatever benefits it might accrue are out of sight. Further, cats and dogs especially are species that humans are already socialized to sympathize with to a certain degree. The title would be much more challenging to our mores
were it to center on animal agriculture, a wider-spread form of abuse to which we are more intimately connected on a daily basis through our food. Or it would be better if, staying with the testing focus, its central characters were rats, or another species humans traditionally view as having little value as individuals.

Despite its limitations, We3 helps sensitize us to our exploitive relationship toward other animals. Its illustrations are exquisitely drawn, though at times horrifically violent. It's a quick read and on its 10th anniversary I really recommend you give it a try. You don't have to be a comic connoisseur to love it.

Photo: Wikipedia (CC)

Families react to tragedy in "August: Osage County" and "Nebraska"

Tue, 21 Jan 2014 10:25:00 +0000

What do you do when a parent dies? Make a movie, of course! In Hollywood, you assemble all the family members to inter the dead deceased and exhume all the dirty family secrets you can find. We've all seen this a number of times, but possibly not so well done as with the amazing cast of August: Osage County.

I could rave on about the performance of Benedict Cumberbatch. You've seen him as the mighty Khan, taking over the Star Trek universe. You've seen him as the erudite Sherlock Holmes. You've seen him win the hand of the maiden, you've seen him knife his friends in the back. But have you seen him as a wimpy looser crybaby? I could rave on about the performance of Cumberbatch, but I won't because his is the smallest role in August: Osage County. The juiciest roles are the wife and three daughters of the dearly deceased, and they surely make the best of them.

It's a talky movie and some of the talk is outright racist. It's meant to be ugly. Meryl Streep can do ugly. By now, we should be convinced that Meryl Streep can do anything, but we've never seen her do ugly like this!

Misty Upham, as the Cheyenne woman hired as housemaid to an Oklahoma family, is the only reserved character in the performance. Everyone else swirls about her in a whirlpool of craziness.

When it comes to the failures and nastiness in our genes, we're all victims, the movie says. But is it possible to overcome our foul family inheritance?

Another fine actors' movie, Nebraska, asks the same question. In this one, the father isn't dead. Isn't exactly dead. Not death but dementia is claiming this father, a little at a time. The great Bruce Dern is the father slipping off the edge of reason. His wife makes it clear early on that she's had all she can take. His son grudgingly decides to make one more effort, but it's a whale of an effort. A movielong effort.

Nebraska is also a road trip. Father and son (Bob Odenkirk) travel from Omaha to faraway Nebraska in quest of an unreachable fixation. Along the way, they encounter the father's youthful friends and family. Most of them are pretty sorry, so the son's burden, it seems, will increase with every painful black and white frame of the movie.

We get really involved, though we don't know when to laugh and when to cry. There are titters from time to time in the audience, but there's no general agreement on responses.

No matter what the audience may bring to the situation, and no matter how they would like the story to proceed, it's all up to the beleaguered son. The father doesn't seem to care, and neither do the rest of the characters. Only the son. And us.

Nebraska is an uplifting movie, and some would say that August: Osage County is, too. Believe it or not, both are comedies, but not the easy funny kind. I don't think anybody could get through either film without asking hard questions about our own families and ourselves.

They both have union logos at the end.

"August: Osage County"

Directed by John Wells

130 mins.

Starring Julia Roberts, Meryl Streep, Benedict Cumberbatch, Ewan McGregor

"Nebraska"

Directed by Alexander Payne

110 mins.

Starring Bruce Dern, Bob Odenkirk, Will Forte, Stacy Keach, Devin Ratray

Photo: "August: Osage County." Internet Movie Database.

“Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit”: propaganda dressed as entertainment

Fri, 17 Jan 2014 13:49:00 +0000

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of Ruskies? The Shadow Recruit knows!

Reactionary espionage novelist Tom Clancy may have died last year, but his heroic CIA agent, Jack Ryan, lives on, as does the right-wing pro-CIA Military-Industrial-Intelligence-Entertainment Complex's agitprop. To be sure, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, Paramount's reboot of the Clancy-derived, highly lucrative Ryan film franchise, is a slickly made, entertaining piece of movie-making full of the usual suspects found in spy movies: motorcycle and car chases galore, assassins, gunfire, dastardly villains hell bent on world domination, a little romance and all those other endless spy movie clichés. Shadow Recruit is also a sophisticated cinematic piece of propaganda masquerading under the guise of mass entertainment.

In this latest installment of the Ryan franchise (jump cut: definition of a Hollywood franchise - beating a dead horse into the ground until viewers wise up and quit buying tickets to see these sequels and remakes) Jumping Jack Smash is tepidly played by 33-year-old Chris Pine, who previously played Captain Kirk in another profitable motion picture franchise, Star Trek. In the 2014 chapter of the spy series Jack is an Afghan War veteran - never mind that Alec Baldwin played Ryan in 1990's The Hunt for Red October and Harrison Ford started portraying Ryan in 1992's Patriot Games, when Pine was a mere wisp of a lad presumably pining after superstardom in empty-headed action flicks.

The actor may be new but the premise is tired and old, reviving Cold War tensions between Washington and Moscow, as America's enemy is the same in Shadow Recruit as it was almost a quarter century ago in The Hunt for Red October. There may be much that's objectionable in Vladimir Putin's Russia, from the repression of gays, Ukrainians, Pussy Riot, Greenpeace and so on, but none of that is alluded to in this simpleminded yarn with a convoluted plot harkening back to the deepest, darkest days of the Cold War between the USA and USSR.

In a bit of clever central casting, real-life Soviet defector/ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov plays a Kremlin killer in a cameo. Kenneth Branagh (who also directed) portrays dastardly oligarch Viktor Cherevin, a stereotypical Ruskie out to stage terrorist attacks on the good ol' USA and to topple our economy. It doesn't matter that the Ruskies have traded communism in for corporatist ideology - they're STILL the bad guys in this hackneyed plot extolling the virtues of the CIA, as latter day Cold Warriors battle it out from Moscow to Manhattan. It doesn't matter that as America's ally during World War II, 20 million Soviets died, and then their approximation of socialism failed and the Russians "embraced" the private enterprise system: They remain our implacable enemy. I mean, who does a Ruskie have to screw to catch a break from America?!

Speaking of which, the extremely gifted Keira Knightley squanders her talents playing Cathy Muller, Jack's nurse-cum-live-in-lover-cum-damsel-in-distress. She was far superior in the 2011 Freud-versus-Jung film A Dangerous Method, but I suppose there's a method to her career madness. The cast includes Kevin Costner as the CIA covert ops agent Thomas Harper. (By the way, the characters' globetrotting from Manhattan to Moscow and beyond via commercial airliners in what seems to be mere hours - putting the Concorde to shame - is inherently incredible, as is the fact that these jet-setters never get jet lag.)

In between munching popcorn audiences should be aware of Shadow Recruit's real shadowy message: The CIA are heroic good guys who are also technical whiz kids - their supposed high-tech prowess is intended to impress and intimidate opponents - saving the world from the baddies. Shadow Recruit is the latest recruit in what I called the intelligence community's "Operation Image Control" in my May 2013 cover story for CounterPunch Magazine called "Hollywood's Year of Living Clandestinely." Jack Ryan has enlisted to fight to make the world safe for U.S. imperialism, along with: the ABC mini-series The Assets, about real-life CIA double agent/traitor Aldrich Ames; the just launched Intelligence TV series about a bionic agent; plus Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Blacklist series that premiered on network TV in the fall. On the big screen the FBI prominently features in American Hustle, about the 1970s Abscam scandal.

Make no mistake about it: With the possible exception of American Hustle, which is critical of the FBI, these big and small screen productions appear to be intended to project positive images of the CIA, NSA, etc., as part of the Military-Industrial-Intelligence-Entertainment Complex's never ending campaign to win hearts, minds and viewers. This propaganda barrage aims to hoodwink taxpayers and, in particular, is a counter-offensive aimed against the revelations of the super-surveillance state by whistle-blowers.

In particular, The Assets may be intended as an attack on Edward Snowden, who is rather stupidly (or perhaps, I should say, quite cleverly) likened to Ames by feckless pundits/dopes/dupes, although Ames traded CIA secrets for rubles, while Snowden does not appear to have cashed in on his revelations about the Orwellian NSA hyper-surveillance state that he is, rather patriotically and at great risk to himself, warning us all about. Snowden, of course, is ensconced in icy exile in Mother Russia - and isn't it hilarious how the imperialists and their media lackeys use this against Snowden, while conveniently forgetting that Washington revoked his passport and even forced Bolivian President Evo Morales' jet down in an effort to prevent Snowden from possibly leaving Russia.

The Central Intelligence Agency definitely does have an entertainment liaison officer and actively seeks to influence movie and TV productions for propagandistic purposes. I asked Paramount if the CIA was involved in any way with Shadow Recruit but, as to be expected when dealing with the shadowy world of cloak and dagger, got no response. While they want to know everything about you, they don't want you to know anything about them and how they operate behind the scenes.

But consider what former CIA officer Bob Baer (George Clooney played Baer in 2005's Syriana, which was based on Baer's exploits) said in my CounterPunch expose about an earlier Jack Ryan iteration: "I'm pretty sure Ben Affleck was able to get meetings with those in the CIA ... He was in [2002's] The Sum of All Fears, a heavily assisted text by the CIA. They were involved in everything from set design to script review to meeting with the actors, director, writers ... to shape their image of that Agency. [Tom Clancy's] Jack Ryan series has always been more positive in terms of its depiction of the CIA than other film franchises, but ... Sum of All Fears of all Jack Ryan films is the most positive in its depiction." Affleck, of course, went on to star in and direct 2012's pro-CIA Argo, which - for the first time in Academy Award history - had its Best Picture Oscar winner announced by a sitting First Lady, Michelle Obama, live at the White House, surrounded by military personnel.

The fact that Kenneth Branagh, once regarded as the heir to Laurence Olivier's throne as the interpreter of the Bard's classics, has now stooped so low to make craven pro-CIA propaganda is truly, well, a Shakespearean tragedy.

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit opens Jan. 17. Viewer beware!

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit

Directed by Kenneth Branagh
Starring Chris Pine, Kevin Costner, Keira Knightley
2014, PG-13, 105 min.

The new book co-authored by L.A.-based reviewer Ed Rampell is "The Hawaii Movie and Television Book." See: http://hawaiimtvbook.weebly.com/.

Photo: Internet Movie Database

“Preoccupied”: A poem

Fri, 17 Jan 2014 11:31:00 +0000

"Preoccupied"

I got my head chopped off in the '82 dive

Though I was just one of the one out of five

We stood in line forever out on the street

We burnt lips on coffee and shuffled our feet

We were bent on trying to keep our bodies warm

We bundled up our dignity away from the scorn.

That's why we been preoccupied

Democracy filleted is democracy denied

Them that's cut - them that's not - that's the great divide

That's why we been preoccupied.

But there came a rotten day when they started hirin' scabs

Though I never met a worker whose back that I would stab

I hear a pencil-necked woman who waddles snorts and scoffs

"You think you're too good to work - they should just cut you off

I sure hope they stop your check if you nix this job"

So I gave her a wink and misbehaved a big yank - on my thingamabob.

That's why we been preoccupied

Democracy filleted is democracy denied

Them that's cut - them that's not - that's the great divide

That's why we been preoccupied.

Bedraggled by unwanted ads - somehow the family made it

It's our blue cross to bear the baby - unless we prepaid it

We haggled with the kaiser for maternal bennies

Thanksgiving from the bighearted boss - we juggled every penny

They say "Just tell us again - what the day was she conceived"

That got me wearin' and laissez faire-in' my colors on my sleeves.

That's why we been preoccupied

Democracy filleted is democracy denied

Them that's cut - them that's not - that's the great divide

That's why we been preoccupied.

It's a rich man's diversion of cheatin' and stealin'

It's up to us ninety-niners to commence with the healin'

We'll get together - set up our own shops

We'll honor the weather and divvy up the crops

We won't get fixed in his emergency room

'cause the whole damned system's en route to the tomb.

That's why we been preoccupied

Democracy filleted is democracy denied

Them that's cut - them that's not - that's the great divide

That's why we been preoccupied.

2013

I was laid off for about one year during the '80's recession. Unemployment in the northern state line region of Illinois was about twenty percent.

Photo: via tx.cpusa.org

"The Wolf of Wall Street": "Mean Streets" director does "Ugly Street"

Fri, 17 Jan 2014 11:07:00 +0000

"The Wolf of Wall Street" is an ugly, unforgivable movie of shameful practices and sociopathic tendencies. How else, of course, would you make a movie about Wall Street finance?

Jordan Belfort, according to the movie taken from his book, didn't only disrespect and take advantage of trusting investors. He literally hated them. He curses and derides them all the way through the film. He steals their money and uses it for prostitutes and drugs. He teaches other people to do the same things for the same reasons. Even after he goes to federal prison, depicted as a Club Fed resort, he continues bragging that he's rich and he's in a place where money can buy anything.

Jordan's nastiness is graphically depicted for three hours on the screen. Leonardo DiCaprio, portraying Jordan, explains every sordid detail in voice-over. There's lots of sex, scads of drugs, tons of cruelty, and legions of stealing. Calling it "over the top" is a major understatement. The New York Daily News says that some countries won't let Jordan's movie be shown there. In others it's being censored. The same newspaper also says that the federal government made some gestures toward taking his fee for the movie rights, but they gave up. Wikipedia says he received $1,000,000 for his story, so he didn't just profit from his activities, he's still profiting!

Is the movie well done? Of course it's well done! It's Martin Scorsese! There are a lot of laughs and some very tantalizing sex scenes. One hardly realizes the extra length of the film as each scene vies with the last one for biggest impression.

So one could, if they wanted to, relate to this real Wall Street financial predator, Jordan Belfort, as the hero of a very entertaining saturnalia of a movie. But it's hard to avoid a gnawing feeling that the ticket stub in one's pocket is proof positive that we're not Jordan. We're some of the suckers he hustled!

"The Wolf of Wall Street"

Directed by Martin Scorsese

Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill, Matthew McConaughey

Photo: Official site/Paramount Pictures

Black-themed films lead Progie nominations

Thu, 16 Jan 2014 13:15:00 +0000

Riding a wave of black-themed films, movies about the struggles against slavery, apartheid and police repression dominate this year's Progie Award nominations for 2013's best progressive films and filmmakers.

The nominees include biopics about Nelson Mandela, Jackie Robinson, Oscar Grant, and Muhammad Ali, as well as a documentary about the 1985 aerial bombing of the Philadelphia Black nationalist group MOVE.

The legendary Greco-French director Costa-Gavras of Z and Missing is in contention for a lifetime achievement award. German director Margarethe von Trotta's biopic about the anti-fascist philosopher, Hannah Arendt, who dubbed Nazi Adolf Eichmann "the mediocrity of evil," was nominated for two Progies, as was Jeremy Scahill's scathing expose about U.S. covert ops, Dirty Wars. It is competing in the Best Progressive Documentary category with Blackfish, about marine life in captivity, among other docs. Due to a tie, six films are nominated in the Best Pro-Gay-Rights category, including a feature about poet Allen Ginsberg. A nonfiction film featuring Gore Vidal is also nominatdd.

The James Agee Cinema Circle, an international group of left-leaning film critics, historians and scholars, voted for the 7th Annual Progie Award Nominations. The Progies highlight features and documentaries and the artists who made and appear in them, primarily based on their progressive political, social, cultural, ethnic, economic, gender, ecological, immigrant, pro-human rights, pro-LGBTQ rights, pro-labor, etc., content and form. The nominations and awards are given in a variety of categories named after great lefty filmmakers and films of conscience, consciousness and creativity. The Progressive Magazine began publishing the Progie winners in 2007, when the awards premiered.

Up to five nominees can be selected per category - except in case of a tie, when more than five nominees can be entered in a category. Also, any motion picture nominated for the Langlois (the Progie for best progressive picture deserving theatrical release in the U.S.) is listed in order to shine a light on these deserving films, which is the purpose of the JACC and the Progies.

2013 Progie Nominations for Best Progressive Films and Artists:

1. The Trumbo: The Progie Award for Best Progressive Picture is named after Oscar-winning screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, a member of the Hollywood Ten, who was imprisoned for his beliefs and refusing to inform. Trumbo helped break the Blacklist when he received screen credit for "Spartacus" and "Exodus" in 1960.

12 Years a Slave
Fruitvale Station
Philomena
Elysium
42
Angel's Share
Blackfish
Dallas Buyers Club
The Act of Killing

2. The Garfield: The Progie Award for Best Actor in a progressive picture is named after John Garfield, who rose from the proletarian theatre to star in progressive pictures such as "Gentleman's Agreement" and "Force of Evil," only to run afoul of the Hollywood Blacklist.

Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave)
Matthew McConaughey (Dalla Buyers Club)
Michael B. Jordan (Fruitvale Station)
Idris Elba (Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom)
Shannon Harper (Welcome to Pine Hill)

3. The Karen Morley: The Progie Award for Best Actress in a film portraying women in a progressive picture is named for Karen Morley, co-star of 1932's "Scarface" and 1934's "Our Daily Bread." Morley was driven out of Hollywood in the 1930s for her leftist views, but maintained her militant political activism for the rest of her life, running for New York's Lieutenant Governor on the American Labor Party ticket in 1954. She passed away in 2003, unrepentant to the end, at the age of 93.

Barbara Sukowa (Hannah Arendt)
Cate Blanchett (Blue Jasmine)
Lupita Nyong'o (12 Years a Slave)
Octavia Spencer (Fruitvale Station)
Judi Dench (Philomena)
Danai Gurira (Mother of George)

4. The Renoir: The Progie Award for Best Anti-War Film is named after the great French filmmaker Jean Renoir, who directed the 1937 anti-militarism masterpiece "Grand Illusion."

Dirty Wars
The Act of Killing

5. The Gillo: The Progie Award for Best Progressive Foreign Film is named after the Italian director Gillo Pontecorvo, who lensed the 1960s classics "The Battle of Algiers" and "Burn!"

A Touch of Sin
Blue is the Warmest Color
The Great Beauty
Class Enemy
Wadjda

6. The Dziga: The Progie Award for Best Progressive Documentary is named after the Soviet filmmaker Dziga Vertov, who directed 1920s nonfiction films such as the "Kino Pravda" ("Film Truth") series and "The Man With the Movie Camera."

The Act of Killing
Dirty Wars
Blackfish
Stories We Tell
Let the Fire Burn
The Trials of Muhammad Ali
The Square
Wikileaks: We Steal Secrets

7. Our Daily Bread Award: The Progie Award for the Most Positive and Inspiring Working Class Screen Image.

This is Martin Bonner
Nebraska
Welcome to Pine Hill
Angel's Share

8. The Robeson: The Progie Award for the Best Portrayal of People of Color that shatters cinema stereotypes, in light of their historically demeaning depictions onscreen. It is named after courageous performing legend Paul Robeson, who starred in 1936's "Song of Freedom" and 1940's "The Proud Valley," and narrated 1942's "Native Land."

Fruitvale Station
12 Years a Slave
Let the Fire Burn
The Trials of Muhammad Ali
42

9. The Sergei: The Progie Award for Lifetime Progressive Achievement On- or Offscreen is named after Sergei Eisenstein, the Soviet director of masterpieces such as "Potemkin" and "10 Days That Shook the World."

Costa-Gavras
Robert Guediguian
Alex Gibney
John Sayles
Robert Redford
Gael Garcia-Bernal
Olivier Assayas

10. The Bunuel: The Progie Award for the Most Slyly Subversive Satirical Cinematic Film in terms of form, style and content is named after Luis Bunuel, the Spanish surrealist who directed 1929's "The Andalusian Dog," 1967's "Belle de Jour" and 1972's "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie."

The Wolf of Wall Street
Spring Breakers
Her

11. The Pasolini: The Progie Award for Best Pro-Gay Rights film is named after Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini, who directed 1964's "The Gospel According to St. Matthew" and "The Decameron" and "The Canterbury Tales" in the 1970s.

Behind the Candelabra
Blue is the Warmest Color
Reaching for the Moon
Kill Your Darlings
Concussion
Sal

12. The Lawson: The Progie Award for Best Anti-Fascist Film is named after John Howard Lawson, screenwriter of 1938's anti-Franco "Blockade" and the 1940s anti-Nazi films "Four Sons," "Action in the North Atlantic," "Sahara" and "Counter-Attack," and one of the Hollywood Ten.

Elysium
The Act of Killing
No
Hannah Arendt

13. The Langlois: For Best Progressive Picture Deserving Theatrical Release in the U.S.,and distribution in other countries and platforms is named after film archivist Henri Langlois, co-founder of Paris' Cinémathèque.

Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia
Story of Film: An Odyssey
Happy
Stranger by the Lake
A Field in England
It Felt Like Love
Swim Little Fish Swim
Lily
Forty Years From Yesterday
Bluebird
Meeting Leila
When I Saw You
The Liberator: Simon Bolivar
Valentino's Ghost
Jodorowsky's Dune
Me and You
Machsom
Drones
Winter in the Blood
The Untold History of the United States

The James Agee Cinema Circle's participants will select the award winners from the nominees around mid-February, and the results will be announced shortly before the Academy Awards ceremony on March 2. Until then, we'll see you in the Left Aisle at the movies!

Ed Rampell is facilitator of the James Agee Cinema Circle.

Photo: "12 Years A Slave." Francois Duhamel/Fox Searchlight & AP

"American Hustle" is not a masterpiece, it's just a lot of fun

Thu, 16 Jan 2014 11:41:00 +0000

Christian Bale is ostensibly the main star of "American Hustle," and he does a wonderful performance, but the really amazing job is done by the director, David O Russell. Small wonder that he's being talked about in the "Best Director" Oscar category.

If you liked his romantic comedy, "Silver Linings Playbook," you're likely to love "American Hustle." The movie's storytelling style, cutting in and out, using voice-over narrative, then real-time pacing, then flashback or flash-forward, being first personal to the point of intimacy then almost documentary-style remote, and coaching some of the best acting his stable of stars ever had a chance to do, is almost breathtaking. There's a union bug at the end, too.

On the way home afterward, when we talked the movie over, we realized that Russell had created all this magic from a story that wasn't, by itself, all that fascinating.

It was loosely based on the Abscam FBI sting of the late 1970s. Federal agents dressed up a phony sheik and used him to tempt several politicians into bribery charges.

But in Russell's version, it was all about the personal greed and ambition of a young agent who sucks a reasonably competent man/woman con artist team into his grand design. The very hyper Bradley Cooper plays the agent. The normally sophisticated Christian Bale, with a big paunch and a comic combover, is the small-time crook forced into unsafe and deep waters. Amy Adams, as we've never seen her before, a cold blooded femme fatale, is the second crook. Just those three would be enough talent to take almost any movie into the big time, but "wait, there's more..."

Jennifer Lawrence's role sounds almost insignificant. She's the con artist's unsuspecting wife. She's beautiful as Venus and dumb as a post. Moviegoers have seen women play this part as long as movies have been made, but Lawrence practically steals the movie with it. Given that she was known primarily for shooting arrows in the "Hunger Games" series, and that she was the stoic backwoods kid in "Winter's Bone," her transformation is completely amazing. Everybody else is good, too, right down to the short cameo performance of the bad mobster character, played by - you guessed it - Robert DeNiro!

"American Hustle" isn't an art experience in which the viewer is changed while interacting with it. It isn't a universal story and it won't change your life or your attitude. It's only what movies are made to be: fun. But if storytelling technique holds any sway with the Academy of Motion Pictures, it's sure to get attention at the Oscars.

"American Hustle"

Directed by David O Russell

Bradley Cooper, Amy Adams, Jennifer Lawrence, Christian Bale

129 minutes

“Poetry that Gives Birth to Revolution”

Wed, 15 Jan 2014 13:39:00 +0000

Ancestor Amiri Baraka's poem "Black Art" inspired this poem. Baraka was an inspiration to me, and taught me a lot about being a revolutionary poet.

Poetry that Gives Birth to Revolution

We need powerful empowering poetry

Poetry that promotes positivity

Poetry that encourages people to progress

Poetry that gives birth to revolution

We need poetry

that puts on black berets,

black dashikis, black pants, and black boots

Poetry that rises and raises its fist

to run after the oppressor to oppose

its rendering racism

Poetry that challenges the boys in blue

Poetry that kicks but while we sit back

and say, "Get 'em poetry!!"

Poetry that gives birth to revolution

Black folk need poetry

that gangsters the grime in the ghetto

Poetry that gathers graceless women,

gutless men, and guiltless children

to guide them back to greatness

Poetry that disintegrates crack

and evaporates alcohol so that we don't

continue to fall into destruction

Poetry that gives birth to revolution

This world needs poetry

that puts an end to poverty

to starvation

to homelessness

to A.I.D.S.

to dehumanization

to government regulation

to population control

to depletion of Earth's natural resources

to war

to worry

to suffering

to pain

to the Bush and Tony Blair regime

Poetry that gives birth to revolution!

Words for Universal Action

Poet, Activist, and Performer

http://www.about.me/ChristopherDSims

Photo: Logo from Revolution Poetry Facebook page, a Sweden-based poetry group.

“Negro Comrades of the Crown” should be required reading

Wed, 15 Jan 2014 11:47:00 +0000

Traditional U.S. histories emphasize the revolutionary, progressive nature of the birth of our nation in its struggle against the British crown. Consequently, 1776 is seen by most as a watershed moment for freedom and democracy. However, Gerald Horne's Negro Comrades of the Crown: African Americans and the British Empire Fight the U.S. Before Emancipation turns this historical narrative on its head.

Instead, Horne focuses on the reactionary nature of U.S. slavery and racism, and demonstrates - quite conclusively - the vanguard role of African Americans in the struggle for freedom, human rights and the expansion of democracy, as well as the British Empire's aid in the struggle to defeat slavery.

Just a few years after the Revolutionary War and the consolidation of power by the "slaveholders' republic," Horne writes, the new government continued to fear "[t]he awesome combination of the armed forces of what might have been the most militarily sophisticated nation on the planet [the British Empire] and a highly motivated internal insurgency by enslaved Africans."

In fact, former slaves in British red coats often took up arms against their former masters. "The very sight of them [former slaves in British uniform] seemed to augur the dreaded reckoning, payback for well-nigh centuries of brutalization," Horne writes.

Yet, as was increasingly the case, "local authorities were handicapped" in confronting the British and African American advances "due to the need to guard against a revolt of the [still] enslaved." For example, Virginia - "perceived widely as the power behind the throne of the slaveholders' republic" - "had to contend with the difficult decision of determining if it should respond more forcefully against Africans, the internal foe, or redcoats, the external one."

That a "redcoat invasion ... coupled with an assisted revolt of the enslaved" would undoubtedly lead to a "depleted militia," an "unarmed militia," a "fleeing militia" and ultimately a "militia with low morale" was widely understood among slaveholders - if widely forgotten, or ignored, by most historians today - should come as no surprise given the brutality of the slave system.

"By one estimate, of the 12,000 British troops [that invaded] New Orleans [during the war of 1812], 1,400 were African," writes Horne, and many of those were former slaves who acted as "the tip of the spear of the occupying forces" in what was considered "part of their [Britain's] shock and awe strategy."

The prospect of an internal revolt of the enslaved bolstered the British Empire's designs on their former colony, the "slaveholders' republic." Likewise, the projection of British abolitionism - and the reality of free blacks leading their own governments in lands considered British territory - also bolstered African Americans' plans for revolt.

As the British Empire's direct military confrontations with the "slaveholders' republic" diminished, it found other, more inventive ways to aid slaves who struck out for freedom. For example, when "scores of slaves" aboard the vessel Creole revolted and demanded that they be taken to the Bahamas - a British territory - a "severe crisis" erupted, Horne writes. The "slave South was in an uproar," as once the formerly enslaved made their way to British territory they would be freed, sending a clear message to all slaves en route to captivity. A large contingent "led by the U.S. consul had appeared [in the Bahamas] with the idea of boarding the Creole with arms, [to] rescue the remaining 'property.'" However, a "company of 24 men stood on deck with loaded muskets in hand and violent engagement in mind," which sent the consul and his "angry entourage" packing.

Frederick Douglass, probably the most well-known abolitionist in U.S. history, called the Creole incident "a bombshell." "In the event of a British army landing in the [United] States, and offering liberty to the slaves," Douglass said, the slaves "would rally around the British at the first tap of the drum," a reality arousing much fear among slaveholders.

As the "irrepressible conflict" between the North and South grew, ultimately leading to the Civil War, and as abolitionism grew in the U.S., the sentiment among enslaved and free African Americans towards the British Empire changed very little. As one African American put it at an abolitionist convention just years before the Civil War: "I would hail the advent of a foreign army upon our shores, if that army provided liberty to me and my people in bondage." It was "evident that the army he had in mind" was the British Empire's, Horne writes.

Negro Comrades of the Crown is a much welcomed addition to our understanding of U.S. history. As it makes abundantly evident, U.S. blacks - free and slave - were in the vanguard in the struggle for freedom, human rights and expansion of democracy. That the British Empire played a significant role in this process adds a more nuanced dimension to our understanding of U.S. history, complicating the usual one-dimensional view of our revolution, which is normally seen as an affront to reaction rather than in some ways an affront to freedom.

Negro Comrades of the Crown should be required reading.

Book information:

"Negro Comrades of the Crown: African Americans and the British Empire Fight the U.S. Before Emancipation"
By Gerald Horne
New York University Press, 2013, paperback, 365 pages

In "Her" boy meets computer, falls in love

Tue, 14 Jan 2014 16:13:00 +0000

My movie buddy drifted off to sleep during the talky new sci-fi film "Her." My own mind wandered a bit and I started remembering the day, in the 1970s, when I dropped acid with a girl named Sally and we were talking about relationships.

The good news about Spike Jonze's unusual film is the terrific acting by Joaquin Phoenix, as Theodore Twombly, a cuddly nebbish who falls in love with a computer program, and by Amy Adams, whose acting abilities are displayed as a warm and extremely vulnerable friend - wonderfully contrasted with the hard-hearted con artist she plays in "American Hustle," which is still drawing bigger crowds at the same theater - and very nice cameos by Rooney Mara as the estranged wife and Olivia Wilde as a potential human girlfriend. Scarlett Johannson's voice, as the computer program, is also excellent. Nobody could fault the directing and editing. They create a dreamlike, flashback and real-time, maybe possible, maybe not possible, euphoria that is shared between the movie and the audience.

Another terrific thing about "Her" is the settings. It's in the future, but only slightly, supposedly in Los Angeles. Everything seems reasonably contemporary but still foreign, unusual, and futuristic. At the end of the film, we noticed that a lot of it was shot in Shanghai, not Los Angeles. Also at the end, we saw two American union logos, IATSE and SAG-AFTRA.

Jonze uses the unusual man/computer love story to investigate aspects of heterosexual relationships between educated and affluent white people - pretty much what most U.S. movies investigate, but you'll have to admit it's a peculiar approach. As the computer program, "Samantha," has no corporeal form, a lot of the variables present in usual love stories are left out. The intellectual side, Jonze probably figured, was thus easier to explore.

There is some growing tension in the plot. Samantha has artificial intelligence, which is already here in experimental stages. From the beginning, it's clear that Samantha, like all our computer programs, has certain advantages over humans. Will her learning ability soon cause her to surpass all intellectual abilities of the devoted Theodore? If so, will she do what most machines do in "Terminator" and most sci-fi - decide to murder the human race? Or will she, like the superior computers in the Star Trek franchise, just get better and better at serving the values of humanity? Will Samantha and Theodore journey together to nirvana, or is she more likely to take up with someone intellectually advanced and more suitable? Would the 1970s-type obsession with Eastern mysticism, apparently an interest of director Jonze, point Samantha and/or Theodore toward an ultimate solution? Trying to figure out a good ending is a good way to get through this long film.

But it's pretty much all talky-talky, and people are never going to solve their problems by finding some one special person that will magically put their lives straight, no matter how hard they try and how many movies they make about it.

Trying to find a way to express my impression of the film, I thought about the long ago day that I talked for several long minutes about relationships to the equally stoned Sally. When I finally wound down and waited eagerly for a response, she changed the subject. "Wait a minute," I interrupted. "Didn't you hear what I just said?"

"Yes, I heard everything you said," Sally said with a sweet wide smile. "It just wasn't very profound."

Movie information:
"Her"
Directed by Spike Jonze
Starring Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Adams, Scarlett Johansson
2013, rated R, 126 min.

“Opposing Jim Crow”: How African Americans helped shape Soviet antiracism

Tue, 07 Jan 2014 12:45:00 +0000

Not so long ago in our nation's history Jim Crow was the law of the land, especially in the South. As a system of federal, state and local laws designed to enforce segregation, Jim Crow was the main embodiment of U.S. institutional racism for nearly a century - from the defeat of post-Civil War Reconstruction until the mid-1960s with the victories of the civil rights movement.

Meredith L. Roman's Opposing Jim Crow: African Americans and the Soviet Indictment of U.S. Racism, 1928-1937 critically investigates what she calls "Soviet antiracism," as a "field in which [antiracist] themes, images, and manifestations were glorified, redefined, and contested by various individuals and organizations" with a common objective: to represent the Soviet Union "as a society where racism was absent."

The book is a nuanced analysis of a specific time in Soviet history, as well as a specific ideological projection. Opposing Jim Crow looks at Soviet antiracism, which "juxtapose[ed] blacks' inclusion in the Soviet body politic with their exclusion from U.S. society," as a "morally superior antithesis" to American Jim Crow racism.

Roman focuses her study on the years 1928 through 1937, as the interwar, post-World War I and pre-Wold War II, decade. While the Soviet government and its leaders never gave up on the struggle for full equality for African Americans - or the projection of Soviet antiracism - Roman argues that priorities shifted due to changes in the national and international political landscape. For example, pre-1928 was a period of internal civil war and the eventual consolidation of power, while post-1937 was a period where anti-fascism became the focus due to the growing Nazi war machine.

Chapter 1 focuses on Robert Robinson, an African American employed by the Stalingrad Tractor Factory who was attacked by two white workers, the trial and expulsion from the Soviet Union of the white workers, and the response of Soviet authorities, trade unions and press to the attack.

As a result of the attack Soviet authorities "launched a campaign to institute international [anti-capitalist, antiracist] education among foreign laborers in factories around the country," and ultimately deported "seventeen additional American workers who they deemed the most 'fascist' and 'reactionary.'" Additionally, trade union committees across the Soviet Union passed resolutions expressing their indignation about racism, wrote letters of support to Robinson, and rallied to recommit themselves to antiracism.

At times, Roman paints the Soviet response to Robinson's attack as cynical and self-serving. She writes that, although Soviet authorities turned Robinson into a "heroic black worker," they also "omitted" personal information, "nearly eliminate[ing] Robinson as an individual." Furthermore, the press "never provided [readers] with the complete description of the altercation," as it did not fit into the narrative of Robinson as "a victim of racial injustice ... who needed Soviet workers to defend him."

In short, while Roman highlights the very real distinctions between institutional Soviet antiracism and institutional U.S. racism, she also argues that Soviet antiracism was paternalistic at times, presenting Robinson as a figure that "symbolized all black workers, whose rights the Soviet Union defended." However, Robinson himself saw Soviet antiracism as sincerely "intolerant of racial animosity," and he also contrasted Soviet antiracism to American racism and "refused to acquiesce to the designs of the American racists."

Roman's Opposing Jim Crow also has chapters on "Representations of American Racial Apartheid and Soviet Racelessness," "The Scottsboro Campaign," and "African American Architects of Soviet Antiracism," which included African American Communist leaders like Harry Haywood and James Ford. However, the last chapter is probably the most interesting - at least for me. It focuses on "The Promises of Soviet Antiracism and the Integration of Moscow's International Lenin School."

Roman writes that in September 1931, 12 African Americans began what would become "a different sort of antiracist experiment" by enrolling in the International Lenin School and "embarking on a unique experiment in American racial integration on Soviet soil."

Many historians have documented the Communist Party USA's vanguard role as a model of racial integration that organized interracial social events, registered African Americans to vote, and fought the then lilly-white trade union policies of the AFL, among many other examples. According to Roman, "the white and black Americans enrolled in the Lenin School in the fall of 1931 faced a far greater challenge; they were required to coexist as equals in classrooms, dormitories, and cafeterias for an entire year."

Roman writes that while some "white American [communist] colleagues committed racist offenses" at the Lenin School, African American communists "consistently invoked Soviet antiracism" and demanded "the freedom from racism it promised them." "In the process," Roman continues, they helped define "what antiracism and freedom from racism looked like," thereby shaping the Soviet Union's and the Communist International's perspective on racism. That is completely at odds with the idea in mainstream, Cold War, anticommunist historiography that the CPUSA was nothing more than an appendage of the Soviet Union and the Comintern.

Opposing Jim Crow is an interesting read. It highlights a unique, if largely ignored, aspect of Soviet history. While Roman's analysis at times belittles and dismisses the Soviet commitment to antiracism as mere propaganda in a larger world of international power politics, Opposing Jim Crow sheds light on the very real impact of institutionalized Soviet antiracism, which makes this book a welcome addition to the history of the Soviet Union.

Book information:
"Opposing Jim Crow: African Americans and the Soviet Indictment of U.S. Racism, 1928-1937"
By Meredith L. Roman
2012, University of Nebraska Press, 301 pages

Photo: University of Nebraska Press