Port Huron Resurrection

Port Huron Resurrection

http://www.eastbayexpress.com/artsculture/port_huron_resurrection/Content?oid=799091

Mark Tribe helps revivify Oakland's Panther history.

By Rachel Swan
July 30, 2008

New York artist and curator Mark Tribe got the idea shortly after he
arrived at Brown University three years ago. It was two years into
the war in Iraq, Bush's approval ratings were finally starting to
decline, The New Yorker was running edgier articles that criticized
the invasion. But Brown's campus remained eerily quiet. "I was really
surprised by how little activism there was," said 41-year-old Tribe,
noting that he'd seen a lot more student-led protests when he was in
college twenty years prior, and that twenty years before that, the
antiwar movement would have probably dwarfed any other campus
activity. "The question in my mind was what is it about these times
that makes us feel that resistance is futile?" Tribe recalled. "And
what would it feel like to believe you were part of a movement that
could change history? What would it feel like to believe you had the
power to join together with your peers and change the political
future of your country?"

With these questions in mind, Tribe came up with a project that was
would draw parallels between Vietnam and the current occupation of
Iraq, while showing the power of oratory as a form of political
protest. Named for the Port Huron Statement ­ a 1962 book-length
manifesto by Tom Hayden (then field secretary of Students for a
Democratic Society) that became one of the founding documents of the
New Left ­ the Port Huron Project comprised six reenactments of
protest speeches from the '60s and '70s, made by such movement
leaders as César Chávez, Stokely Carmichael, Paul Potter, Howard
Zinn, Coretta Scott King, and, in Saturday, August 2's installment at
DeFremery Park (1651 Adeline St., Oakland), Angela Davis. Tribe chose
these speeches because of their staying power and their way of
linking domestic movements (i.e., labor and civil rights) to foreign policy.

If all goes as planned, Saturday's Angela Davis reenactment ­ of the
trenchant 1969 speech "The Liberation of Our People" ­ should be a
haunting performance. DeFremery Park, after all, is pregnant with
Black Panther history. It's an iconic site where Bobby Seale and Huey
Newton organized rallies four decades ago. Actress Aleta Hayes ­ an
instructor in Stanford University's dance department ­ will play the
part of Davis at Saturday's event. She will stand on the porch of the
old park building, the same place where Davis stood in 1969, when she
was just 25 years old. Said Tribe, "If this project goes forward, I'm
struck by how powerful the experience is of standing in a park in the
same place where a speech was given forty years ago and hearing how
relevant it is." He added that if you just changed the proper nouns,
it could have been made yesterday. 6 p.m., free. MySpace.com/porthuronproject

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