People Before Profit blog

Artsy liberals deal with nuclear annihilation and their daughter

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 14:13:00 +0000

There aren't enough accolades to describe Elle Fanning as Ginger in this lovely movie. She has a close-up view in almost every scene, because the movie isn't really about the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, nor about family life among the artsy set of England in that period.

It isn't about the pitiful mother (played with excruciating pain by Christina Hendricks), who laments giving up her career as a painter to have her daughter and to serve her willful husband. It isn't about the self-serving megalomaniac father (Allessandro Nivola) who has found a 1960s excuse (existentialism) to do anything he wants without regard for anyone. It isn't about the wonderful and caring extended family of godparents and genuinely concerned people. It isn't about the lost and lovelorn Rosa (Alice Englert) either.

It's about Ginger and what everybody else does to her. It's about expressing her fear of nuclear annihilation and hiding all the more immediate fears. It's about being very young in 1962, or any time. Every move made by others in the film, whether it's President Kennedy, Nikita Kruschev, Ginger's girlfriend or other meaningful adults, amplifies through the trembling face of young Elle Fanning and directly into us.

"Ginger and Rosa"

Directed by Sally Potter

90 minutes

Photo: Official site

Movies you might have missed: “On the Bowery”

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 14:10:00 +0000

Today if one were to traverse the Bowery in New York's lower Manhattan you might come away impressed by the gleaming bank buildings, luxury condos, and boutique grocers. In dark corners, however, you may still find a few burned out neon signs dating from another era and lingering as evidence of the Bowery's faded and none too glamorous past.

On the Bowery, a unique film from 1956 uses a creative technique to get the viewer behind the scenes of what was then a notorious skid row in America's largest city. A rotting, filthy slum festering away as America showcased its suburbs to the rest of the world as evidence of a capitalist boom time.

The film opens with simple documentary shots of the homeless, drunk, and befuddled drifters who squeeze into doorways for shelter. These battered residents of the Bowery make for a harrowing introduction into the lives of capitalism's castaways.

A young worker named Ray becomes our tour guide, wandering into a Bowery bar with a cardboard suitcase and a few dollars he earned laboring on the railroad. The film employs no professional actors, and only clearly scripts or stages a few scenes. Mostly the residents are followed around or loosely organized into a scene, which is then ad-libbed and improvised.

Often near Ray's side is Gorman, an older and savvier resident of the Bowery. Although occasionally glimpsing at the camera or purposefully playing to it, the participants often simply get lost in their own conversation and this is when a few details are revealed. Gorman was once a promising medical student, and his demeanor and remarks occasional betray something of a higher education in his background, but how and when he came to the Bowery remains a mystery. When conversations stall Gorman often asks in all sincerity and hopefulness, "wanna get a drink?" He thus gives voice to the fact that the pursuit of the price of a glass of cheap fortified wine is an all consuming past time for many who dwell here.

Ray at one point mentions that like his brother, he joined the Army, thus causing the audience to wonder if a case of PTSD is likely responsible for his seeking solace in liquor and the solitary life of a drifter. Ray is hardly a 'bum', he actively seeks out a days work but the meager wages he earns leaves little hope for advancing beyond the borders of the Bowery. With nowhere to go and little to do the barroom soon calls and Ray is right back where he started.

The bars themselves become a maddening melee of joyful shouts, angry threats and watery promises to pay back past debts. As the night wears on the booze takes hold and the scene looks more like something out of the day room of a primitive mental institution.

The closet thing to a social worker we witness in the film is a drop in mission where, if you are willing to sit through a sermon, you can earn yourself a bowl of hot soup and a place to spend the night. Determined to break the cycle of a days wages wasted on a nights drinking Ray gives it a try. He is ushered along by helpful veterans of the mission experience but is dully informed that there are only so many beds and his place will be on the floor with the rest of the overflow. Yesterday's newspaper does triple duty as sheet, blanket and pillow.

The motion picture was the product of the late renegade filmmaker Lionel Rogosin who in 1997 wrote that he was considering a project that would document, "The FBI, CIA, Nixon, Kissinger subversion of the U.S. Constitution". In an interesting footnote, after the film was nominated for an Academy Award, Ray, the movies protagonist, was the recipient of studio film contract offers. This comes as little surprise. When you view the film it would be easy to imagine the strong chin of Ray, who resembled more than a few of the rugged actors of the era, under a steel helmet in a war movie or beneath a dusty cowboy hat in a western. Ray's response was to say that he just wanted, "to be left alone."

The Bowery as it once was may be no more, but the problem of homelessness and chronic unemployment remain, often times affecting whole families. This valuable picture is a vivid testimony of the problems that nag a system founded on exploitation.

On the Bowery

Produced and directed by Lionel Rogosin

Starring Gorman Hendricks, Frank Matthews, Ray Silver

1956 65 minutes

Photo: Press still.

Achebe inspired generations of Nigerian writers

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 14:51:00 +0000

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) - Nigerian author Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani was just 10 years old when she first read Chinua Achebe's groundbreaking novel "Things Fall Apart."

She devoured the rich use of Igbo proverbs in his book, which forever changed Africa's portrayal in literature.

That inspiration carried over into the creation of a pivotal character in her debut work, "I Do Not Come to You by Chance," which pulls readers into the dark and greedy world of Nigerian Internet scam artists.

"Like many contemporary Nigerian writers, I grew up on a literary diet that comprised a huge dose of Achebe's works," she said. "My parents were so proud of his accomplishments, and quoted the Igbo proverbs in his books almost as frequently as they quoted Shakespeare."

Achebe's death at the age of 82 was announced today, March 22, by his publisher. His works inspired countless writers around the world, though the literary style of "Things Fall Apart," first published in 1958, particularly transformed the way novelists wrote about Africa.

In breaking with the Eurocentric lens of viewing the continent through the eyes of outsiders, Achebe took readers to a place full of complex characters who told their stories in their own words and style.

Achebe once wrote that a major goal "was to challenge stereotypes, myths, and the image of ourselves and our continent."

He resisted the idea that he was the father of modern African literature, recalling a rich and ancient tradition of storytelling on the continent. Still, his influence on younger writers of the late 20th and early 21st century, particularly those from his homeland, was undeniable.

"Achebe's influence has been completely seminal and inspirational, and there are writers that have been called the School of Achebe who have imitated his style," said Chukwuma Azuonye, professor of African and African Diaspora Literatures at the University of Massachusetts in Boston.

A newer crop of successful novelists with ties to Nigeria has broken away from Achebe's mode, Azuonye said, developing their own modernist style of writing that focuses on clashes of cultures and other issues facing Nigerians abroad.

"Again they are working under the influence of Achebe in the sense that Achebe is the role model for what they are doing," he added.

Nigerian novelist Lola Shoneyin, whose works include "The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives," says Achebe's fiction gives her something new each time she reads his work.

"In the last five decades, just about every post-colonial African author, one way or another, has been engaged in a creative call-and-response with Chinua Achebe," she said.

Igoni Barrett, the author of a collection of stories called "From Caves of Rotten Teeth," said Achebe had achieved a "saintly status among Nigerian writers" through his pioneering involvement in the African Writers Series.

"Chinua Achebe was an inspiration to me not only for his singular talent and his dedication to truth in art and life, but also because he had the fortitude to overcome the countless disappointments of the Nigerian state," he said.

One of Senegal's best-known novelists, 66-year-old Boubacar Boris Diop, was in high school when he read "Things Fall Apart." He says that in it, he found "the real Africa."

"I systematically advise young authors to read Chinua Achebe. I've often bought copies of 'Things Fall Apart' and offered them to young writers. It's well written - in the sense that it's not written at all. In it, you won't find any great lyrical phrases. That's the great force of this book. It's written in simple language," said Diop. "He wrote about a continent that is far from perfect, but which at the same time has things within it that fill you with wonder."

Larson reported from Dakar Senegal. Associated Press writer Rukmini Callimachi also contributed to this report.

Photo: AP

Of fire and ghazals, Agha Shahid Ali, poet of the week

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 12:28:00 +0000

The life of exile has few pluses. But one is that it opens the door to a truly internationalist consciousness, and culture. Agha Shahid Ali was born February 4, 1949 in New Delhi, India, and grew up in Kashmir. In India he attended the University of Kashmir and the University of Delhi. In 1975 he emigrated to the United States, earning a PhD in English from Pennsylvania State University in 1984 and an M.F.A. from the University of Arizona in 1985. . He spoke Kashmiri, Urdu, and English, and was a translator and editor as well as a poet.

He has said, "I'm not an exile technically, because I haven't been kicked out of any place, but temperamentally I would say I'm an exile, because it has an emotional resonance, the term exile does. The ability to inhabit several circumstances and several historical and national backgrounds simultaneously makes up the exilic temperament a lot."

The ghazal is a poetic form that can be traced to seventh century Arabia. In its Persian (Farsi) form, it is composed of autonomous or semi-autonomous couplets that are united by a strict scheme of rhyme, refrain, and line length. The opening couplet sets up the scheme by having it in both lines, and then the scheme occurs only in the second line of every succeeding couplet.

The first line (same length) of every succeeding couplet sets up a suspense, and the second line (same length but with the rhyme and refrain-the rhyme immediately preceding the refrain) delivers on that suspense by amplifying, dramatizing, imploding, exploding.

Get your favorite refreshment. Relax your mind. Take your time reading out loud this ghazal, whose refrain is "Of Fire". Feel the explosions.

In a mansion once of love I lit a chandelier of fire...

I stood on a stair of water; I stood on a stair of fire.

When, to a new ghost, I recited, "Is That What You Are,"

at the windows in the knives he combed his hair of fire.

You have remained with me even in the missing of you.

Could a financier then ask me for a new share of fire?

I keep losing this letter to the gods of abandon.

Won't you tell me how you found it --- in what hemisphere of fire?

Someone stirs, after decades, in a glass mountain's ruins.

Is Death a cry from an age that was a frozen year of fire?

I have brought my life here where it must have been once,

my wings, still hope and grief, but singed by a courtier of fire.

When the Husband of Water touched his Concubine of Snow,

he hardened to melt in their private affair of fire.

Don't lose me in the crowds of this world's cities,

or the Enemy may steal from me what gods revere of fire.

The way we move into a dream we won't ever remember,

statues will now move into wars for a career of fire.

What lights up the buildings? My being turned away! O, the injustice

as I step through a hoop of tears, all I can bare of fire.

Soldier: "The enemy can see you and that's how you die."

On the world's roof, breathless, he defends a glacier of fire.

I have come down to my boat to wish myself Bon Voyage.

If that's the true sound of brevity, what will reappear of fire?

A designer of horizons, I've come knocking at your door.

By my sunsets, please, for the Pacific's interior of fire.

I could not improve my skill to get ahead of storms though

I too enrolled in Doomsday to be a courier of fire.

"On the last day of one September" "one William was born"

Native of Water, Shahid's brought the Kashmir of fire.

"Shahid", the poet's name, means "beloved" in Farsi, and "witness" in Arabic. It often appears in the last line of a ghazal.

Movies you might have missed: "The Village Teacher"

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 12:28:00 +0000

It seems that screenwriters, perhaps prodded by their own life experiences, have long found the teacher in the classroom to be a compelling stage to tell a story. American audiences are familiar with titles as diverse as Blackboard Jungle (1955) and Mr. Holland's Opus (1995). There is one production that predates all of these, however, and it is the 1947 film, "The Village Teacher," a product of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

The film is directed by Mark Donskoy, a protégé of Sergei Eisenstein, which becomes quite apparent when the viewer is caught off guard by unique camera angles and creative photography. Also very impressive throughout the production is the remarkable ability of the actors to appear at different stages in their life, realistically and with flawless make-up. One almost gets the feeling they are watching a documentary that took decades to make.

As the film opens we are placed at an elegant ball in imperial St. Petersburg where Vera, an exuberant youth excitedly tells her dance partner, a dashing young cadet named Sergei, that she will soon fulfill her dream of becoming a teacher. Her life's goal will not be carried out in the comfort of the city; however, she will be traveling miles away to a remote Siberian village. We soon learn there is more to Sergei than meets the eye when the Tsar's police suspect him of revolutionary activity and arrest him that very evening.

Vera's teaching career gets off to an inauspicious beginning as the locals mock her city naïveté, demonstrated by her failure to bring along a proper pair of felt boots to guard against the notoriously harsh winters. These attitudes towards the newcomer change however when they witness her courageously interrupting an episode of domestic violence involving a village bully of whom even the rough and tumble male residents are afraid.

Gradually the locals see the value of the teacher's contributions to their children who in turn begin instructing their younger chums on their own, even fashioning a globe out of twigs and holding impromptu lessons in the fields.

Fundamental problems of life in capitalist Russia remain, however, and Vera is soon confronted with the cruel realities of class antagonisms. Her most gifted pupil is denied entry to high school because the examiners will not hear of a peasant boy sitting elbow to elbow with the sons of privilege.

In addition to Vera and Sergei, there are also many minor characters that help round out the scenery and are also quite memorable. This includes the school custodian, loyal and sympathetic to Vera in her noble pursuits. She is very strict in her rule that he not interrupts a class when it is in session, and so is quite surprised one morning when he bursts into the room ringing a bell. She sternly reminds him that the bell should only be rung at break times and to this he replies, "It's a break for everybody! The tsar has been thrown down! A break!"

The film is not only outstanding family entertainment, it is also a pretty good capsule course in modern Russian history. In a touching scene, Sergei, fresh from exile and brimming with news of the tsar's downfall, explains to Vera the nature of the struggle ahead to transform society. Vera replies that for her there is only her teaching and all she wants to know is if this new epoch, upon which they are about to enter, will finally allow her gifted student to be admitted to a school of higher learning. Sergei assures her that from now on her students will be free to pursue any path in life they choose.

After the civil war however, Vera's worldview and understanding of socialism matures. She proves her bravery and conviction when a small gang of counter-revolutionary locals plots to oppose collectivization by murdering her and putting the school to the torch. She informs the reactionaries that it is too late, and if they wish to reverse the course of history that they will have to kill not only her, but all the children she has already taught.

When a class reunion is interrupted by the news of the Nazi invasion, Vera assists in the mobilization for defense, illustrated in a heart-wrenching scene so stirring that even the most cynical viewer would find a lump in their throat.

At a time when in our own country public school teachers are demonized by right-wing proselytizers and budget cutting politicians scheming to increase tax breaks for the ultra rich, it would do well for American audiences to sit down and watch an illustration of how a teacher can help provide the next generation with the tools to construct a brighter and more just future.

"The Village Teacher"

Directed by Mark Donskoy

1947, 100 min.

Photo: Actress Vera Petrovna Maretskaya plays Vera in "The Village Teacher." (CC)

“The Big Fix” exposes BP oil disaster lies

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 12:56:00 +0000

In 2010, one of British Petroleum's (BP) oil drilling platforms in the Gulf of Mexico ignored a dangerous gas build up in a well from which it had been extracting oil, and the oil rig erupted in flames, killing 11 workers. Millions of barrels of oil gushed into the Gulf. After BP capped the oil spill a few months later, the U.S. government and BP reassured the world that the oil was being cleaned up or was decomposing naturally and the pristine Gulf waters and beaches were recovering. The TV crews packed their gear and went home and the story faded from the news.

Director Josh Tickell in "The Big Fix" challenges the official version that all is well in the Gulf of Mexico after the spill. The story begins when Tickell, wife Rebecca, actor Peter Fonda (also one of the executive producers) and a camera crew take a road trip to the Gulf to survey the oil spill disaster. They discover that state police have sealed access to the beaches and they are turned away. When they finally get an official guided tour, they suspect that they are being lied to. When Hurricane Alex approaches, police disappear and Tickell and crew return to the beaches. Instead of removing the oil, they find that BP is using machines to cover it with sand. Police also blocked access to sites where clean up workers reside and work so it is impossible to interview clean-up workers.

Tickell challenges the version presented by BP and the U.S. government that the spilled oil has been removed or has decomposed naturally. The Obama administration allowed BP to use the toxic oil dispersant Corexist that is banned by the British government because it is toxic to humans. Oil by itself will rise to the surface on any body of water where it can be collected. Corexist breaks oil into small particles which then fall to the bottom of the ocean.

Corexist mixed with oil is even more poisonous, according to scientists. This toxic brew attaches itself to plants, animals and humans and is absorbed by the skin. Tickell visits coastal dwellers, who show big rashes and sores on their stomachs, arms and legs that have eaten through the flesh and who complain of burning throats and chests and respiratory problems. Tickell's wife Rebecca begins to suffer similar medical complications and a local doctor tells them that Corexist is responsible.

Tickell visits local fisherman who claim that their livelihood has been devastated by the oil spill because there is less seafood to catch. When Tickell and his wife visit the open sea with one fisherman they are overpowered by the stench of oil and Corexist and must use gas masks.

What is more disturbing is that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) allowed the fisheries to be opened after the oil spill. The seafood industry is a major employer in the Gulf region. Louisiana environmental lawyer Stuart Smith demonstrates how the EPA and state officials lowered testing standards to allow the harvesting and sale of contaminated seafood.

Obama did not punish BP for the oil spill, but instead agreed that the company should set up a claims fund for victims, out of which few people have been compensated. Then in 2011, the White House issued more permits for offshore oil drilling. Tickell explores how big corporations and the oil industry influence Washington through massive lobbying and campaign donations to the Republican and Democratic Parties.

After the well was capped, the Coustea family and several university research teams and foundations sent underwater cameras, dive teams and submarines into the Gulf to discover "nightmarish plumes of heavy oil as big as islands roaming the Gulf". "When we are told by the media and government the oil is gone, we are being lied to," stated marine explorer Jean-Michel Cousteau. The oil has pooled on the sea floor, killing all life.

The nightmare has still not ended. According to witnesses and film footage, Corexist is still being dumped into the Gulf, even though the White House and BP claim otherwise. New oil spills continue to occur from the supposedly capped well. According to scientists, the Gulf of Mexico, the sixth largest water body in the world, is facing ecological collapse.

"The Big Fix" is a well made, hard hitting, unsettling investigative documentary that had me on the edge of my seat. With BP in court these days in New Orleans for spilling 172 million gallons of oil into the Gulf, the "Big Fix" reminds us not only of BP's culpability but the serious aftermath that will linger for many years to come.

"The Big Fix"

Directed by Josh Tickell

2012, 90 min.

Photo: Josh and Rebecca Tickell, overwhelmed by fumes, don gas masks in "The Big Fix." (The Big Fix Movie)

Upper meets lower

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 15:45:00 +0000

Which is actually stronger, a monopolistic-world-dominating corporation, young love, or gravity? The Hollywood answer is obvious, but this film isn't from California. It's French-Canadian.

Science fiction posits two planets in close proximity. All material on each planet is affected only by its own gravity. Material from one planet can only last an hour or so on the other before it bursts into flames. A boy from the abysmally poor lower world, or course, falls for a girl in the affluent upper world.

It's a bit more of an obstacle than Romeo had when he climbed the trellis to get to Juliet.

The crazy thing is that actor Jim Sturgess and actress Kirsten Dunst actually make the romantic story work. "Upside-Down" has great special effects, but it's much more than a film lover's film. The audience, like the young lovers, has to make great credibility leaps before we can settle in to the charming love story, but it's worth it.

Politics are clear in the two-planet world dominated by a single corporation. The corporation basically transfers oil from the poor world to the rich one; then sells refined products back to the poor. "Corporatism" is what Benito Mussolini called fascism, and its clearly so in this film.

But for all its careful work in setting the background, this is still a film about young love, and young love is still the best vehicle the movies ever had.

"Upside-Down"

Directed by Juan Solanas

2012, 100 mins., PG-13

Photo: "Upside Down" official site

Semiotic Weapons: Advertising is the focus of two recent films.

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 16:47:00 +0000

Two very different foreign films focus on the advertising industry. Though they are utterly different in tone and effectiveness, they intersect at the idea that advertising feeds upon our innate desire for happiness.

The Chilean film No is an effective docudrama set in the twilight years of the Pinochet regime. For those unaware: Chile democratically elected a Marxist, Salvador Allende, to the presidency in 1970. He was toppled by a CIA-backed coup and strongman Augusto Pinochet put a military junta in place. The film picks up events as international pressure has brought about an impending referendum that will either extend Pinochet's rule or allow for democratic elections to return. A "Yes" for Pinochet or "No" for democracy. Each campaign will get 15 minute advertising spots on television each night.

The film departs slightly from history to inject fictional characters into the unfolding drama. Young René (Gael Garcia Bernal) is a hot-shot advertising executive (and former exile) who is approached by the opposition parties to lend his skills to the "No" campaign. Upon accepting the assignment he begins to clash with his clients: they see their 15 minutes as a vital opportunity to expose Pinochet's atrocities and address the past 15 years of abuse. In René's view he's selling Chile a future and understands that the ad medium is best when reduced to a vehicle for compact aspiration. His bright, upbeat ideas remind the party officials of "Coca-Cola" ads! The challenge is not just for René to push his approach forward, but whether his uplifting message is up to the monumental challenge of countering a violent, menacing apparatus. Can a dictator be toppled with a jingle?

No is modestly made and wonderfully subtle in execution. The drama is neither orchestrated nor underplayed, it's simply allowed to unfold. It will remind many of European and American films of the 1970s. It seems palpably correct to its period. Though it fabricates details it comes off serving the truth with apparent veracity. Of course, there's a story beneath what unfolds in the film: free-market economists seized upon Chile as a laboratory for Milton Friedman's ideas. During Pinochet's reign the ideas that soon transformed the globe were employed. Chile was the petri dish for the ideas that have now spread throughout the globe and brought about such monumental difficulties. This is what makes No relevant to an American audience. One scene in Pinochet's campaign headquarters is particularly haunting: an advisor enthuses about their winning formula- that it isn't that everyone can become successful so much as that anyone can... the key is for a populace to dream about being that anyone. Sound familiar?

Branded is a completely different slice of cinema. An American-Russian co-production, it's a surreal satire that is effective in many parts but is weak in the connective tissue required to make the film go down well. It's as if David Cronenberg and Terry Gilliam collaborated on a film but never took each other's calls. Like No, the protagonist is a young ad executive. Misha (Ed Stoppard) is a cynical fellow who has an interesting theory about the origin of modern marketing: "Lenin invented it," he tells Abby (Leelee Sobieski), the attractive niece of his American boss (Jeffery Tambor). Guiding her through an exhibit of Soviet propaganda he makes the case that Lenin's use of persuasive language and visuals "sold the people on the possibility of happiness..." providing the template for all sophisticated pitches to follow.

Following a chain of contrived misfortune Misha retreats from the urban landscape that's oversaturated with the ads he helped create. He becomes a simple cattleman until Abby tracks him down and reveals that he is a father. Before returning he attempts to cleanse himself with an ancient sacrificial ritual of a cow (cows are important in this film: not just literally but as a subtext for the subplot that involves a conspiracy to make heaviness fashionable, and it's narrated by a celestial space cow!). As a side effect Misha attains visionary capacities that reveal that the "brands" are actually malignant entities feeding off people. The whole affair becomes a lunatic landscape of grotesque apparitions that reduce Misha to a trembling witness to the horrors.

One is left wondering if the filmmakers were attempting serious commentary or if they are just having callous fun. There's certainly an ambitious scale to the undertaking, but the reach often exceeds the grasp. The send-ups of familiar ad icons are a hoot, the malevolent manifestations are interesting but the effects are uneven. Misha towards the end uses both his knowledge of marketing and his visionary capacity to launch a grand battle to cleanse the world of all this nasty consumerism. It's intensely entertaining nonsense that evolves into some psychedelic cross between Transformers and Pokemon. Ultimately it's the manic absurdity that rescues the film from its many flaws. But it's also shallow. It suffers from what the many ads it lampoons do: the inability to deliver as much satisfaction as it promises.

David Rovics' songs of social significance

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 17:39:00 +0000

David Rovics, indie musical activist, makes his living writing and performing what he calls "songs of social significance" - a line that's truthful and alliterative, but in no way encapsulates the insight, rage, and occasional whimsy of the artist's corpus. Rovics produces some of the best music available today, but as he notes in a song, ”Why Don’t They Play You On the Radio?" "maybe I'm too red or maybe I'm too green" to make it to the mainstream radio.

His songs have an honest, folky sound, and his lyrics are far from meek. In some cases, he plays it up - the contrast between his harsh words and his calm voice highlights the difference between the world as it is and the world as it should be. Concern for the welfare of people and anger at their oppressors come through loud and clear in most of his songs. "I think inevitably and naturally this kind of rage is naturally inextricably intertwined with love," he said.

Rovics comes from a family of classical musicians, but was drawn to populist themes early on. Today his material reflects rampant social and economic injustice. He tours the world and lends his voice to many movements on the left, recently including Occupy and the Greek resistance to austerity policies.

"I would say that the underlying root cause of pretty much most of the things that I write about can be boiled down to in a real broad way to the conflict between the haves and the have-nots," he said recently.

Rovics has an unusually keen sense of history and the struggles of working people. His songs "The Last Lincoln Veteran", ”Sugihara",and ”St. Patrick’s Battalion", are some examples - in all of these songs, he tells the stories of heroic people who chose to do the right thing in spite of the demands made by their governments. Unfortunately, most today are unaware of these histories. "I think people need to tell about this history and need to be inspired by this history. Oftentimes the most inspiring stories and episodes in history are the ones that people don't really know about," said Rovics.

According to him, that's not a coincidence. Even if Clear Channel doesn't recognize his genius, some very big names in the music industry do. Tom Morello, guitarist for Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave, independently known as The Nightwatchman, has quoted one of Rovics' songs, "Halliburton Boardroom Massacre." The two artists recently collaborated on a track for one of Rovics' newest albums. The song is London is Burning", about police violence and systemic racial injustice.

In Rovics' opinion, we can expect great things from Morello's new band, Street Sweeper Social Club. He believes their great sound and Tom Morello's name will give them the rare opportunity to successfully work as leftists in the corporate music environment.

Rovics does a fantastic job of portraying much of what's wrong with our world. But if injustice is the disease, what's the remedy? "What we need is well organized militant mass movements," he said. And after the revolution? Apparently he’s planning to learn to play the accordion.

A full length interview with David Rovics will appear in Political Affairs on 3/13/13. He will be performing live on 3/15/13 at the LLC Performance Hall, 1475 East 15th Avenue, Eugene, Oregon, at 6:00 PM in a benefit for The Peoples World.

Photo: David Rovics

Exhibit exposes coal's impact on communities

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 16:03:00 +0000

CHICAGO - The "Climate of Uncertainty" exhibit, which explores the negative impact humans are having on the environment, continued here at the DePaul Art Museum on Feb. 27 with an event called "Coal Country and Beyond." Chicago photographer Daniel Shea spoke about his work capturing the influence of the coal industry, and those in attendance were able to see firsthand the industry's effects on small towns in the short film, "Beyond Coal." The damage done to these towns, viewers saw, was devastating.

As the film's narrator explained, the pro-profit, anti-worker coal industry "has left a horrific toll on the communities in the Appalachian mountains. But activists are working to put a stop to the pollution and devastation. The industry is holding back economic development and killing jobs - not providing them," as it so claims. "A lot of machines are used" with increasing frequency "in industry practices like mountaintop removal, and not many workers." And it's mountaintop removal, in particular, that is ravaging once-pristine areas and sucking once-prosperous towns dry.

Mountaintop removal involves mining a mountain's summit for coal by detonating the rock in order to access the coal beneath it. Those controlled explosions pollute the air and are a constant noise disturbance for those who live nearby. The crumbled layers of rock (overburden, as they're called) are then tossed into the rivers and streams below, poisoning the water.

The film's featured town - Sylvester, West Virginia - is one of the state's poorest and dirtiest areas, a direct result of mountaintop removal. Retired coal miner and local resident Chuck Nelson lamented the current state of things, noting that life is hard in Sylvester, in part due to the coal industry's influence. Coal mining companies, he said, often lie to their workers and use them as lackeys in order to stop environmental movements and protests. "Some people have to sit outside their homes with rifles because coal workers who are being duped by the industry to make threats on their lives. And the industry has a massive PR campaign that tries to persuade the public that there's such a thing as clean coal." There's a lot of misinformation going around, he said, and that ends up pitting people against one another.

Nelson, on the verge of tears, gestured toward boarded up or unoccupied homes, which people were either unable to afford to keep, or whose former occupants died of illnesses related to coal pollution. "This one died of cancer," said an elderly female resident, pointing at each empty house in turn as she walked by. "This one died too; this one couldn't afford to keep his home..." And so on and so forth. Nelson himself is just barely hanging on. "My home," he said, pointing to the place that he built with his own hands for his family back in the 80's, "is only worth about $12,000 now."

There is a movement, the film narrated, to get more Sylvester residents to stand up and fight the industry, which continues to detonate mountains in the area, blacken rivers, taint drinking water, and pump out pollutants from its local plants. But this is difficult to achieve when the industry dialogue says that anti-coal activists are essentially a group of unstable, dangerous individuals who hate Appalachian traditions and "American values." Many workers buy into Big Coal's lie, and therein lies the problem.

"Communities are split on the issue," said Nelson. "Miners are worried about their jobs and their culture, and the industry plays on that."

After the film, Daniel Shea spoke about taking photos in towns across the U.S. where coal influence is heavy. "I started in 2007 to focus on the industry's grip on West Virginia, and coal burning in southeast Ohio. I got embedded into local communities, and my interest in these issues grew. I use photography to give viewers a sense of landscape that foregrounds these issues," and also to put a spotlight on mountaintop removal.

"Mountaintop removal is very underreported," he continued. "If you don't go to the neighborhoods and see the people who are affected, you don't really know about it. It doesn't provide many jobs, and at the same time, it destroys the environment. And the miners who do work in this field are manipulated by the industry against their own interests.

"Coal is a crutch that we have to learn to walk without," he concluded. "As other technologies gain cost-competitive characteristics, they should be adopted in place of fossil fuels."

This exhibit showed what immediate threat coal mining poses, with the damage it has already done standing as indisputable proof. Above all, it revealed that Sylvester - like the mountains that were decimated for coal extraction - is slowly being reduced to a pile of rubble, and for that, Big Coal and its merciless profiteering are certainly to blame.

Photo: A coal-fired power plant in Racine, Ohio. Daniel Shea

Phillip Bonosky, 1916-2013, chronicled life and politics from Pittsburgh to Phnom Penh

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 13:41:00 +0000

Author Phillip Bonosky, a member of the Communist Party since 1938, died Saturday, March 2, in Brooklyn, N.Y. He was 96. Known for his labor novels "Burning Valley" and "The Magic Fern," Bonosky distinguished himself as one of the first U.S. journalists to visit socialist China and one of the few to interview Vietnamese revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh. He also was one of a handful to witness the removal of the notorious Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and the destabilization of Afghanistan prior to the rise of the Taliban. (Article continues after slideshow.)

Bonosky epitomized the labor and Communist activists from the 1930s. He also exemplified a certain type of writer of that period, one with roots in labor and union struggles. In his writing style, Bonosky assimilated several dimensions. Raised in the Catholic Church in Western Pennsylvania as the son of devout immigrants, he grasped the religious traditions helping to influence and shape the contours of labor movements. He honestly portrayed negative and positive influences therein. Knowledge of corporate domination of peoples' lives in small industrial towns, and familiarity with how workers actually produced, energized his insights in print.

Bonosky came from the steel-producing town of Duquesne, Pa. An altar boy, he grew up hearing stories from the survivors of the famous 1892 strike in nearby Homestead, where his family attended church, and the labor walkout of 1919, a valiant attempt to organize steelworkers industry-wide, which was headed by future Communist Party Chairman William Z. Foster, to whom Bonosky would draw close. Like his father and brothers, Bonosky worked in Duquesne and Pittsburgh mills. Before being blacklisted from employment due to his Communist Party affiliation, he belonged to Local 1256 of the United Steelworkers.

At his best in fiction writing, his work covered the social and class ramifications of family life, high school basketball, homelessness, chronic illness, and communities. He could write with grace, but took all his subject matter personally. He wrote to enlighten, provoke, and inflame. In fiction and non-fiction, there was no secret as to where he stood. He counseled new and young writers to directly confront the challenges of writing: to work hard at it; to write regularly, if not daily; to get to the point; to avoid jargon; to acknowledge the pitfalls of "writer's block," but at least to get out a paragraph before surrendering to it.

He developed a love for writing at an early age. He was among the most frequent visitors to the Duquesne Public Library as a teenager. He was likely one of the most disciplined and prolific diarists who ever lived; he documented his life nearly everyday for 75 years, a legacy that fills two large file cabinets in his daughter's attic.

Bonosky came to New York in the late 40s, convinced that he could make his most important contributions to the causes he espoused through writing. His first short stories appeared in noted magazines of the 1940s, such as Collier's and Story Magazine. He produced his first books in 1953: the steel town novel "Burning Valley" (reissued by University of Illinois in 1997) and "Brother Bill McKie," a United Auto Workers leader.

He held writing workshops at the Communist Party's Jefferson School and a Harlem workshop. In the 1950s, he contributed to the literary journal Masses & Mainstream, along with screenwriter John Howard Lawson, novelist Meridel LeSueur, singer-activist Paul Robeson, and historian Herbert Aptheker. His long friendship with left-wing painter Alice Neel is detailed in Phoebe Hoban's "Alice Neel: The Art of Not Sitting Pretty" and in Andrew Neel's acclaimed documentary of the artist.

His second novel, "The Magic Fern," appeared in 1960, followed by "Dragon Pink on Old White," about Chinese culture. "The Magic Fern" provided readers with a close-up portrait of Communists in the labor movement at the end of the Cold War. The blacklisted Bonosky was well familiar with anti-Communism as a labor organizer and FBI target (demonstrated in a host of newly released documents), and as the brother of Toni Nuss, stigmatized in the sensationalist press as the "Red Queen of Pittsburgh."

In the Great Depression, Bonosky "rode the rails" looking for work and eventually landed in Washington, D.C., living in a warehouse for the homeless under the auspices of the Transient Bureau, where his social worker was Ann Terry White. White's husband was Treasury Department official Harry Dexter White, later hounded to death by anti-Communists during the Cold War. Through assistance from the Whites, odd jobs, and a monthly payment of $20 from the National Youth Administration, Bonosky took some courses at Wilson Teachers College. He was hired by the Works Progress Administration's (WPA) Federal Writer's Project help write the Guide to Washington D.C.

In his WPA years, Bonosky served as president of the D.C. section of the Workers Alliance, chief advocate for the government to meet the needs of the unemployed in finding jobs, and acquiring housing, food, and health care. He led a delegation to meet with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt in 1940, widely reported in the local press. A well-known activist in the city, he spoke at demonstrations and testified before Congress.

During World War II, Bonosky became a fulltime organizer for the Communist Party in the Pittsburgh area, including in the steel town of McKeesport. He was part of the party leadership in the Western Pennsylvania district.

Bonosky belonged to the editorial board of the journal Political Affairs and was an editor at People's World predecessors Daily Worker and Daily World. Until his death, he continued to apply his words and mind to the solution of profound human dilemmas, from exploitation to war to inequality, even after he lost his eyesight from macular degeneration.

His wife, Faith, and son, Daniel, predeceased him. He is survived by his daughter, Nora Bonosky, and her husband, Daniel Rosenberg; three grandchildren Celina Rosenberg, Gabriel Rosenberg, and Alex Bonosky; great-grandson Sebastian Bonosky. A memorial will be held later this spring.

Examples of his work may be found at www.phillipbonosky.com

Photo: Bonosky interviews Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh in Hanoi, 1960. Ho is looking at a photo of Bonosky's daughter. (Courtesy of Bonosky family)