Show provides portrait of Black Panther Party

Show provides portrait of Black Panther Party

http://www.jsonline.com/entertainment/arts/101271219.html'

Haggerty Museum hosts collection of candid photos of radical '60s group

Aug. 22, 2010
Mary Louise Schumacher

J. Edgar Hoover called it the country's greatest domestic security
threat. The Black Panther Party emerged in California in 1966 in the
midst of an otherwise largely nonviolent civil rights movement. Their
direct and confrontational methods were polarizing and controversial.

At the height of the movement, photographer Stephen Shames had
unprecedented access to the group, both in its public and private
moments. So, in addition to the street protests, demonstrations and
militant posturing for social change and racial justice, Shames
captured the group's leaders in unscripted circumstances, too, from
intimate parties to jail cell chats.

A collection of Shames' photographs will go on view Wednesday at the
Haggerty Museum of Art at Marquette University. The exhibit "The
Black Panthers: Making Sense of History" is described as a more
nuanced look back at a frequently misunderstood, complex group of
people who helped define the turbulent '60s in America. The show was
organized by Aperture, a nonprofit devoted to photography and visual
art. It will remain on view at the Haggerty, N. 13th and W. Clybourn
streets, through Jan. 2. For more information: (414) 288-1669.

.

Women's leadership and the Black liberation struggle

Women's leadership and the Black liberation struggle

http://www.pslweb.org/site/News2/1135231244?page=NewsArticle&id=14393&news_iv_ctrl=1261

Review of "Want to Start a Revolution?" (NYU Press, 2009)

Monday, August 23, 2010
By: Caneisha Mills

For centuries, history was taught as the history of great, powerful,
elite men. While historical writing has become far more diverse in
recent years­entire fields focus on cultural and social
transformations, as well as the history of women and oppressed
communities­on certain subjects the "Great Man" theory stubbornly
remains. One such arena is the Black Freedom Movement of the 1950s
and 1960s, which in schools across the country is either still
reduced to the tactics of a single individual­Martin Luther King,
Jr.­or at most a few other men.

The durability of this myth is not because of an absence of
literature. In fact, a considerable body of literature exists that
shatters the old myths of women as docile, provincial and
uninterested in politics. Charles Payne's 1995 "I've Got the Light of
Freedom" on the organizing of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating
Committee in the Mississippi Delta region proved just the opposite:
that women were "frequently the dominant force in the movement."
Belinda Robnett's "How Long? How Long? African-American Women in the
Struggle for Civil Rights" developed a theory that women functioned
as the unofficial "bridge leaders" in the southern movement,
providing the vital connection between the community and the official
organizational leadership.

These works helped promote a whole trend­usually led by Black women
scholars­on the experiences of women in the Black liberation,
feminist, and gay liberation movements. In addition, biographies and
autobiographies of key Black women activists have come out in recent
years, revealing a cast of new heroines and causing re-evaluation of
old ones. Anyone paying attention now knows that Rosa Parks was, for
instance, an experienced activist and organizer, not an apolitical
old woman who was just too physically tired to move to the back of the bus.

A recently published essay collection­"Want to Start a Revolution:
Radical Women in the Black Freedom Struggle"­continues this trend,
and expands it in several significant ways. For one, it challenges
the notion that the post-WWII Black liberation struggle can be
separated out into neat phases, which women experienced in completely
distinct ways. This runs counter to Payne and Robnett, who both
identified a certain southern community-based "organizing tradition"
that facilitated women's participation, particularly in SNCC. For
them, the turn towards Black Power­which appeared more masculinist
and hierarchical­took such leadership and organizing opportunities
away from women.

Secondly, "Want to Start a Revolution" argues­through several
examples, including that of Rosa Parks­that women were not always
behind-the-scenes "bridge leaders," but often strategists, mentors,
theoreticians, and formal leaders. While it is critical to discuss
how sexism limited women's possibilities in the movement, the editors
argue that such an emphasis has actually obscured the leading
positions women were able to achieve. While few people today
recognize the names of Esther Cooper Jackson, Gloria Richardson,
Victoria "Vicki" Garvin, Shirley Graham DuBois, Florynce Kennedy,
Yuri Kochiyama, or Johnnie Tillmon, in their day many activists
sought their advice and assistance. They have rarely been mentioned
in the official history books.

Thirdly, the collection challenges the conception of Black feminism
that identifies it strictly with the creation of separate
organizations. While Black feminism is typically associated with the
Third World Women's Alliance and the Combahee River Collective, which
formed largely in reaction to racism and sexism within social justice
movements, "Want to Start a Revolution" highlights the critical roles
Black women played in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s within civil rights,
labor, left-wing and women's organizations­including majority-white
ones. In such history we can also discover the predecessors of what
was later called "Black feminism."

The collection covers 14 separate women leaders­and admittedly leaves
out dozens of others. We offer below three examples of the activists included.

Not just 'Black Politics' (Vicki Garvin)

Contrary to popular belief, it fought against "machismo" and sexism
from within by the promotion of female leadership. Victoria "Vicki"
Ama Garvin destroys traditional views of Black women's participation
in the social justice movement. Garvin refused to be confined to any
particular issue. She participated actively in a range of justice
movements, believing all forms of oppression are integrally linked
and must be fought equally.

Garvin's political career began in the labor movement as a union
organizer. Even during the McCarthy era, she remained strong in her
struggle for equality and opportunity for female and Black workers.
In 1947, she joined the Communist Party and in 1951 became Executive
Secretary of the New York City chapter of the National Negro Labor Council.

As the anti-communist witchhunt gained momentum throughout the United
States in the late 1940s and early 1950s, it took a severe toll on
Garvin politically and personally. The growing anti-colonial
movements across Africa inspired many Black activists in the United
States and many decided to relocate to the continent during the 1950s
and 1960s. In the late 1950s, Garvin traveled through Africa, where
she witnessed first-hand the struggle against neocolonialism.
Settling in Ghana in 1961, Garvin drew upon her activist experience
to provide camaraderie and mentorship to other Black radicals.

With Malcolm X, who Garvin had known from Harlem, she referred to
herself as his "mother hen"­marking her role "as knowledgeable elder
(a role long gendered male) within the [B]lack liberation movement,
mentoring a younger generation just as she had been mentored." (85)

Garvin actively participated in organizations garnering support for
China. During her visits to the country, she like many African
American activists felt a strong sense of solidarity to the
revolution there. Not only had China overthrown centuries of
colonialism and put the oppressed people in power, it explicitly
identified with and supported the Black liberation struggle in the
United States.

Upon her return to the United States in the 1970s, Garvin functioned
as an organizer and mentor for scores of activists in a whole variety
of social justice causes up until her death in 2007. As Dayo F. Gore
comments, "her distinct political legacy rests not in official titles
but in revolutionary experience and solidarity efforts that always
combined local organizing with a global vision." (73)

Black Power and the feminist movement (Florynce Kennedy)

Female Black leadership is often reduced to participation in one of
two struggles: Black liberation or the feminist movement. While both
are expressions of the same desire for equality, they are often
separated as two independent or even opposing struggles. The case of
Florynce Kennedy demonstrates otherwise. Although the most prominent
Black feminist of the 1960s and 1970s­struggling inside the National
Organization of Women and famous for dramatic in-your-face street
theater tactics­Kennedy is virtually unknown today.

Rather than be trapped by the rigid theoretical labels that kept
various social movements divided, Kennedy promoted unity in action
between different groups, often inviting members of one to join the other.

Sherie M. Randolph explains that her gender never interfered with
participation in the Black Power movement. She writes, "Despite her
critiques of Black Power [for the political appeals to Black
masculinity] and her close relationship to the feminist struggle,
Kennedy continued to work inside the Black Power movement as a lawyer
for Black Power leaders H. Rap Brown and Assata Shakur, as a
fund-raiser for numerous Black Panther Party political campaigns, and
as an organizer and delegate of the Black Power Conferences." (225)

Kennedy used her experience within the Black liberation movement to
train and educate female leadership, particularly leaders of NOW. Now
leader Ti-Grace Atkinson, a white woman, reflected, "[Kennedy] had a
profound…influence…on some of us…we were observing and we copied
[Black leadership]" (236). Kennedy also fought tooth-and-nail against
the expressions of racism within the burgeoning feminist movement.
When Kennedy and Atkinson organized a "Black Power and Women" panel
for the New York NOW chapter, they found NOW leaders ignoring, and
even mocking, the statements and contributions by Black women. (239)

Kennedy and Atkinson's open identification with Black Power and their
desire to move NOW in a radical direction led to a split in the New
York Chapter's 1968 election. The proposals of Florynce Kennedy and
Ti-Grace Atkinson to radicalize the organization were overwhelmingly
defeated. Atkinson, who had become the chapter president, resigned
from the organization and was joined by Kennedy.

While Kennedy understood the need to work within varying movements,
she would not tolerate an organization that compromised or minimized
the oppression of Black people. As she explained, "Racism will always
be worse than sexism until we find feminists shot in bed like [Black
Panthers] Mark Clark and Fred Hampton" (229). This does not mean
Kennedy was in the business of weighing oppressions­she actively
fought for gay rights, Black liberation, and women's equality.
Rather, she understood the historic and pivotal role of the Black struggle.

Upon leaving NOW, Kennedy remained an ardent fighter­as she would be
for the rest of her life. She, Atkinson and others formed the October
17th Movement, which "reflected Kennedy's concern that the feminist
movement concentrate on the connections between sexism, imperialism
and racism" (242). She passed away in December 2000.

Asserting women's leadership (Denise Oliver)

The Young Lords Party was an organization formed in the late 1960s by
Puerto Rican youth who modeled their party on the principles and
structure of the Black Panther Party. Like the Panthers, they
advocated the self-defense and empowerment of the cities' most
oppressed urban communities, and put forward revolutionary socialism
as the path to liberation.

Although centered in the Puerto Rican community, the YLP membership
crossed ethnic and cultural lines, including non-Puerto Rican Latinos
and African Americans. Denise Oliver was one such African-American
woman, who joined the YLP after growing up in New York City's Puerto
Rican communities and after already been an activist briefly with SNCC.

From an early age, the importance of a unified revolutionary
movement was instilled in Oliver by her radical parents, who were
part of the Communist Party mileu. "A number of white leftists who
are red babies… had that kind of upbringing," she recalled. "I'm one
of the black red babies. And there were a few of us." (274)

The struggle to integrate New York City public schools in the 1950s
quickened young Oliver's political development. The North was often
categorized as a place of escape the treacherous racism of the
southern United States, but this was not the reality. New York City's
efforts to bus Black and Latino students to predominantly white areas
in Queens, for instance, sparked a massive racist response that
Oliver experienced first-hand. Oliver recalled getting off the bus to
see students fighting in the yard: "you could feel the hostility
immediately." (275)

As a young activist, Oliver sought out organizations that were
directly involved in the struggle against racism and exploitation.
While her parents were around the Communist Party, Oliver yearned for
more direct action. Her search for participatory politics led her to
various organizations, including SNCC and CORE. During an education
program in New York, Oliver joined the Sociedad de Albizu Campos.
This reading circle, named after the father of the Puerto Rican
national independence movement, Don Pedro Albizu Campos, would become
the New York chapter of the Young Lords Party.

Author Johanna Fernandez suggests that African-Americans, Panamanians
and other non-Puerto Rican members were not merely members of the YLP
"but were integral to its lifeblood." (282) Oliver was in fact the
first woman elected to its Central Committee. Her membership and
leadership within the organization reflected the organization's
belief that oppressed people of color in the United States had a
common struggle. While the capitalist class and its media like to
promote divisions between nationalities, groups like the YLP pointed
to common exploitation to advocate solidarity and mutual understanding.

In its beginnings, the YLP advocated "revolutionary machismo" in its
political program and women held no top leadership roles, but over
time the women members were able to challenge these shortcomings.

Oliver herself had not confined to a purely administrative role
within the Young Lords Party. This was in no small part due to her
upbringing. She recalled, "I didn't want to learn how to type because
I didn't want to be typecast." (285). She did not want to become
another secretary. She quickly gained knowledge of the organization
on the national level and learned the skills required for leadership
from other cadre within the Party. These attributes propelled her to
the Central Committee after women demanded representation in the
leading body of their organization.

Oliver's leadership within the Young Lord's Party did not eradicate
the problems of sexism within the organization; instead her role
opened the door for an open debate around female oppression in
society and within the party. Following Oliver's election, a women's
caucus was formed within the party to address these issues directly.

Oliver explained the complex problems of trying to overcome sexism:
"Part of the problem wasn't just that men automatically took the sort
of macho role, but [that] women were used to submissive behavior…and
weren't opening their mouths." (286) This orientation sparked the
publication of "La Luchadora," marked with the task of speaking to
women's issues within the organization and the oppression facing
women in the community as a whole.

Denise Oliver was one example of how the Black liberation movement
directly engaged with and helped nurture the movements of other
oppressed people. As an African American woman worker who helped lead
an organization focused in Puerto Rican communities, she proves what
is a central point of the overall book: that many revolutionary
activists and organizations defy the simple boxes that many
historians try to put them in.

How can we correct the history books?

Clearly, the history of the Black Freedom Struggle can only be
accurately told if it includes the leadership roles played by women.
Want to Start a Revolution joins an ever-growing body of literature
that disproves the "Great Man" descriptions of this era.

But if the information is out there and published, one must ask: Why
do such descriptions­in fact, myths­continue to dominate? At a
certain point, the problem is not principally one of lacking
historical research. The way history is told is in fact a political problem.

Most high school textbooks will flatten the Black liberation struggle
to this or that leader, usually Martin Luther King, Jr. This leader's
more radical ideas will be stripped away and he­for it is always a
"he"­will thus be converted into a safe, memorable icon. Malcolm X is
raised­if he is raised at all­as the yin to Martin's yang, the
embittered and violent radical versus the "turn the other cheek" good
pacifist. This is a false history, and yet it still prevails.

It is the same problem with the history of women in the Black
liberation struggle (and many other struggles). The examples of
strong, leading, revolutionary women­especially Black women­simply do
not conform to society's patriarchal and racist norms. As such, we
must carry out a political struggle today to demand our true history
be taught­and ultimately fight for a new system that puts workers and
oppressed people in control of educational institutions.

Setting the record straight will require something more than writing
history; it will require us to make it.
--

"Want to Start a Revolution: Radical Women in the Black Freedom
Struggle" (NYU Press, 2009) is edited by Dayo F. Gore, Jeanne
Theoharis, and Komozi Woodard.

.

The Weather Underground, In Two Different Voices

The Weather Underground, In Two Different Voices

http://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2010/08/the-weather-underground-in-two-different-voices/61547/

Aug 20 2010
by Alyssa Rosenberg

It's taken me a while, but I finally got around to reading
Underground, Mark Rudd's memoir of his time as a student activist at
Columbia and as a member of and fugitive with the Weather
Underground. I'd wanted to read it because fragments of the book are
the basis for the narration in The Weather Underground, the superb
documentary about the radical left-wing group that carried out a
series of bombings in the late 1960s' and early 1970s'.

Interestingly, Rudd's prose is narrated in a woman's voice, and it
has an elegiac quality in the movie, superimposed over a lot of
grainy footage. I'm not sure what that gender switch led me to expect
from the memoir itself, but it acts as a form of translation,
reinterpretation. That alter-ego, voicing his words, enhances the
role Rudd plays in person in the movie, as an expression of regret,
loss, and ongoing confusion.

The book is, unfortunately, a lot stiffer. Rudd's perspective­when
it's not juxtaposed against voices that are both more ideologically
rigid and more distanced from the events he feels responsible for­is
less valuable as part of an overall portrait of an era. Understanding
Mark Rudd may be important to the man himself, but it's less
important to those of us who are trying to figure out an era.

I don't know that there's a larger, immutable point to be made here.
But the contrast between the excerpted material, spoken in a
different voice, and the material as a whole, in another voice
altogether, is a valuable reminder of the fickle nature of
adaptation, remix, and re-appropriation. Every work contains multiple
possibilities, and the ones it was originally intended for may not be
the best, or most effective. A single paragraph may be more valuable
on its own than in a chapter, a single chorus line may be immortal
removed from its context.

.

The New Black Publicity Party

The New Black Publicity Party

http://inthesetimes.com/article/6321/the_new_black_publicity_party/

By Salim Muwakkil
August 19, 2010

Right-wing media catapulted the New Black Panther Party (NBPP) into
national infamy this summer with an exaggerated emphasis on a 2008
incident in which two members of the group, one with a nightstick,
were videotaped standing by the door of a poll site in a
predominantly black precinct in Philadelphia. The footage has been
viewed 1.5 million times on YouTube.

Attuned to publicity, NBPP chief Malik Zulu Shabazz is exploiting
this visibility to threaten violence at Glenn Beck's August 28 rally,
"Restoring Honor," which takes place at the Lincoln Memorial on the
anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I have A Dream" speech.

Shabazz told the online magazine Mediaite.com that Beck's
demonstration is "going to meet direct opposition from the New Black
Panther Party. … He can bring his Tea Party, and we'll bring our
party, and we'll see Glenn Beck."

Both men are practiced provocateurs, and the stage is set for a
showdown. Many of Beck's supporters are big on Second Amendment
freedoms and are likely to be armed, as are members of the NBPP. Beck
is one of the prime movers of the right-wing narrative that the Obama
administration harbors pro-black biases and is practicing a racial
double standard. Last year Beck proclaimed Obama a racist "with a
deep seated hatred for white people or white culture."

This meme has proliferated in right-wing circles, fueling the
controversy around NBPP's alleged voter intimidation at the
Philadelphia polling place. In early January 2009, the Bush
administration filed a lawsuit accusing Shabazz and others of voter
intimidation. When the Obama administration arrived it dismissed the
suit against all but one of the men, arguing that the evidence did
not support the charges.

Although no voters complained of intimidation, Obama's critics argue
that dropping the charges is proof that he practices a double
standard. This argument has gained traction among right-wing media,
who have exaggerated the NBPP's significance.

The NBPP was founded in 1990 by Aaron Michaels, a community activist
and radio producer in Dallas, Texas, who got his initial inspiration
from former Milwaukee City Alderman Michael McGee. In 1990 McGee
created the "Black Panther Militia," a group comprised of street
gangs and other "street soldiers," to violently confront entrenched power.

(McGee later admitted that his primary motive for forming the group
was to extort aid for the black community from Milwaukee's
recalcitrant white leadership. His sole purpose was to provoke.)

Taking his cue from McGee, Michaels set up a similar group in Dallas,
registering the name New Black Panther Party for Self Defense in
1991. They used the "Black Panther" name because they sought to
hitchhike on the heroic legacy it evokes. But the NBPP never embraced
the ethos of community service advocated by the original Black Panthers.

Instead, Michaels adopted McGee's provocation model, espousing
genetic essentialism (i.e., white people bad, black people good),
racial separatism and armed self-defense, a doctrine more in line
with racialist groups like the Nation of Islam than the post-colonial
nationalism of the first Panther Party. (Surviving leaders of the
original group have repeatedly denounced the NBPP, even suing to
prevent it from using the name "Black Panther." The Southern Poverty
Law Center lists the NBPP as a "hate group.")

That shift in tone was consecrated and codified by the 1996 arrival
of Khalid Abdul Muhammad to the NBPP's leadership ranks. Muhammad had
been national spokesman for Louis Farrakhan until an infamous 1993
appearance at New Jersey's Kean University, where he made remarks so
racially offensive that Farrakhan suspended him from the Nation of Islam.

A charismatic orator, Muhammad became a racial provocateur without
portfolio. He was in big demand as a speaker and his voice has been
sampled on a number of songs by hip-hop artists, including Public
Enemy. Three years after becoming chairman of NBPP in 1998, Muhammad
died. Since then his position has been filled by Shabazz, whose plans
to disrupt Beck's August 28 event are par for the course­and almost
guaranteed to generate more publicity of dubious value.

.

Couple refits bio-diesel bus for cross country trip

Brewster couple refits bio-diesel bus for cross country trip

http://www.wickedlocal.com/orleans/features/x790230670/Brewster-couple-refits-bio-diesel-bus-for-cross-country-trip

By Rich Eldred
Aug 16, 2010

Once you've graduated it's great to leave those big yellow school
buses behind, but Jessica Spier of Brewster can't wait to ride one again.

Of course, she's painted it white, put in wood paneling and will be
burning french fries' oil all across the country. She and her
boyfriend, Zachary Haroth of Saratoga Springs, N.Y., are turning a
used bus into a bio-diesel home on wheels for their own Magical Mystery Tour.

The bus is being refitted at Spier's mother's house in Brewster.

"I think it was really Zach's dream, to go cross country in a bus,"
Spier explained. "My dream was more to figure out how to overcome my
shyness and do the next thing in life. So when we met he had the
dream of a bus and I had the dream of the next place."

Well, a bus will get you to the next place, even if it runs on
vegetable oil. But it will be a roundabout route as they plan to
crisscross the country several times.

The two met when she was majoring in English and Spanish at Skidmore
College in Saratoga Springs. Spier hopes to work with children at a
nonprofit. "I was working at the Saratoga Springs Children's Museum," she said.

But first why not take a page from "Easy Rider" or Ken Kesey's "Merry
Pranksters" and see America? They bought their bus last October after
Spier graduated from Skidmore (she's a Nauset alum from 2005).

"We pulled it out of a salvage yard in New Jersey. We've done a lot
of research on school buses," Spier explained. "They have to retire
them every 10 years for safety. We found a lot that specialized in
school buses so we drove to New Jersey and found our bus."

The big conversion was from conventional to vegetable oil fueled
transportation.

"You need a diesel vehicle for that," Spier noted. "Zach's family has
run vehicles on vegetable oil. It is gaining in popularity."

They'll have two tanks on board, one for vegetable oil, one for diesel fuel.

The idea is to contact fast food restaurants along the way and use
their old frying oil. Spier and Haroth should get 15 mpg, provided
restaurants are friendly; the cost works out to 10 cents a mile.

"It's a little daunting at first but this is Zach's second vehicle
using vegetable oil," Spier said. "I'm trying to learn fast. It seems
pretty doable. It has to be filtered twice, and it's filtered through
the tank. You have to be careful about what's running through there."

The system was purchased from Golden Fuel Systems.

That's only part of the work, which is ongoing as the October
departure date looms.

"So far we've gutted the entire school bus. We've put down flooring
and getting the inside set for furniture construction. I can't wait
to begin that," Spier said.

They'll have wood paneled walls, a bed, tables, chairs, an industrial
sink, a small cook stove and save space for "a whole lot of oil."
Spier works at a local inn, serving breakfast and cleaning rooms.
Haroth works nights at a restaurant.

"We both work almost 40 hours a week and probably spend two days
working on the bus," Spier said.

.

Hugh Hefner documentary

Hugh Hefner documentary hops beyond Bunnies to a rebel playboy

http://www.straight.com/article-339986/vancouver/doc-hops-beyond-bunnies-rebel-playboy

By Mike Usinger
August 26, 2010

Ask Hugh Hefner if he learned anything about himself from the
Brigitte Berman documentary Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel,
and he doesn't miss a beat.

"No," the American icon says with a laugh, on the line from the most
famous mansion in Los Angeles. "I pretty much knew me pretty well."

The 84-year-old founder of Playboy might have walked away from
Berman's film without a single surprise, but audiences learn plenty
about the world's most celebrated octogenarian. Over the course of an
often-fascinating, endlessly revealing two hours, the documentary
spotlights a side of Hefner that has nothing to do with naked
Bunnies, monogrammed silk pajamas, or epic parties at the Playboy Mansion.

As bizarre as it might sound on paper, Hefner is revealed to be one
of the most important social reformers of the 20th century. Playboy,
Activist and Rebel, which opens in Vancouver on Friday (August 27),
is a genuine revelation, with the film's subject more than living up
to his billing. A hard-core libertarian, Hefner not only smashed
sexual taboos but also waged cleverly subversive wars on American
racism, McCarthyism, and the religious right. Revenue from the
magazine also funded court cases that would eventually lead to the
landmark abortion case Roe v. Wade. Little of this has surfaced over
the years, mostly because it's not, well, nearly as sexy as the
pursuits America's foremost playboy is famous for.

The Oscar-winning Berman first met Hefner when he contacted her to
express his admiration for Bix: "Ain't None of Them Play Like Him
Yet", a 1981 film she'd done on jazz cult figure Bix Beiderbecke.
That led to a friendship being formed, which included her being
invited to Friday movie nights at the mansion and, later, to his 80th
birthday party.

"The birthday party was unbelievable: lights, food, girls­naked
girls," Berman recounts by phone from Los Angeles. "It was
extraordinary. Sumptuous. But I was kind of watching with a bit of a
detached eye, being kind of an observer. I thought, 'This is all well
and good; here he is as the playboy, and that's what I'm seeing
here.' But I knew there was so much more that he had done."

Returning to her home in Toronto, the director came up with a
proposal for a documentary, the idea being to reveal the other side
of Hefner. After spending two months in research, she sent a
treatment to the mansion, receiving a fax a day later asking when she
wanted to start shooting.

When asked what intrigued him about the project, Hefner responds
with: "I said a very long time ago that my life is, by its nature,
like a Rorschach test, an inkblot test. People project their own
particular dreams, fantasies, and prejudices on my life. What a
person thinks about me is often a reflection of who they are. What
was a revelation for me in Berman's film was that she managed to dig
so deeply."

Helping Berman was how Hefner opened up his life to her. In a
tradition that he picked up from his mother, he's kept detailed
scrapbooks of his life dating right back to his teens, and the
director was given full access.

"He gave me complete editorial freedom" she says. "As a filmmaker,
you can imagine how important that is, because you don't want to end
up making a valentine. That's no fun. You want to be able to make
something that looks at all sides and a film where the person who you
are making it about isn't looking over your shoulder at every turn.
You want someone to leave you alone, and that's what he did."

Through a mix of archival footage and interviews with everyone from
Gene Simmons and Pat Boone to Jesse Jackson and George Lucas, Berman
exposes Hefner as a man who made a career out of bucking the system.
During the McCarthy trials, he encouraged blacklisted writers to
write for Playboy. He dispatched lawyers to work on cases tied into
draconian sex laws, including helping to free an American disc jockey
who was jailed in the American South for receiving a blow job.

At a time when racial segregation was still very much a part of life
in America, he booked black comics into his Playboy clubs and black
musicians on his syndicated 1969-70 television show, Playboy After
Dark. "My folks were tradition-bound but very good people," Hefner
explains. "There was no prejudice in my home. You have to be taught
to be prejudiced."

What's fascinating about the amount of groundbreaking that Hefner did
was that he was a late bloomer. As the film makes clear, it wasn't
until he was in his late 20s that he decided to fully embrace his
inner maverick and start a men's magazine that would ultimately aim
to be something more. "None of my peers­none of the people who I
identified with­were marching to a different drummer," Hefner says.

And if he has one wish for Playboy, Activist and Rebel, it's that the
world realizes that the beat that he's marched to over the years is
considerably more complex than people might believe.

"She [Berman] knew that there had been other documentaries on me, but
she was very interested in doing one that took a different approach,"
Hefner says. "She wanted to do a documentary on the part of my life
that most people didn't know about. Even with people who know me
well, they will find that there are revelations within the film."

.

James Baldwin, 'Lifting The Veil'

American Lives:
James Baldwin, 'Lifting The Veil'

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129281259

August 19, 2010

The writer James Baldwin once made a scathing comment about his
fellow Americans: "It is astonishing that in a country so devoted to
the individual, so many people should be afraid to speak."

As an openly gay, African-American writer living through the battle
for civil rights, Baldwin had reason to be afraid ­ and yet, he
wasn't. A television interviewer once asked Baldwin to describe the
challenges he faced starting his career as "a black, impoverished
homosexual," to which Baldwin laughed and replied: "I thought I'd hit
the jackpot."

Several of Baldwin's essays, speeches and articles are collected in a
new book called The Cross of Redemption. Randall Kenan, who edited
the collection, talks to NPR's Steve Inskeep about Baldwin's
complicated identity ­ and how his work challenged black and white
readers alike.

'His Charisma, His Rhetoric'

Baldwin wasn't afraid to speak out, but that didn't stop critics from
trying to silence him. Kenan says Baldwin was "mysteriously" removed
from the list of speakers for the March on Washington in August 1963.

His sexuality often came up when he dealt with conservative religious
organizations, Kenan says. And when he tried to help the Black
Panther Party in the 1970s, his sexual orientation was "thrown up at
him in very hurtful ways."

Baldwin was quite open about his sexual orientation, and Kenan says
there was something almost "magical" about Baldwin's frankness on the
issue. At a time when major publishers wouldn't consider taking on a
book about homosexuality, Baldwin wrote his second novel, Giovanni's
Room, about a love affair between two white men.

"Right out of the box, Baldwin was going to blaze his own path,"
Kenan says. "And he got away with it. It's hard to imagine how he did
­ part of it was his charisma, his rhetoric ... A lot of people would
have had the door slammed in their face."

Underneath The Veil

The collection includes a dramatic profile of the boxer Sonny Liston
on the night of his historic 1962 showdown with Floyd Patterson.
Though publicly Liston was known for being a criminal connected to
the mob, Baldwin found him to be a "gentle teddy bear."

Kenan believes Baldwin's own background allowed him to see through
the spin to get to know the man himself. He found Liston to be a
"very complicated, very dedicated, and very spiritual" person.

Baldwin wrote that Liston reminded him of "big black men I have known
who acquired the reputation of being tough in order to conceal the
fact that they weren't hard."

For Kenan, the quote sums up the way Baldwin was so well-equipped to
explore the complexity of black identity in America.

"There is a dichotomy between the way the world views a person and
the way your folk see you," he says. "I think that what we see in
this piece is underneath that veil."

'An Insight Into Black America'

"You give me this advantage," Baldwin once wrote to his white
audience. "Whereas you never had to look at me ­ because you've
sealed me away along with sin and hell and death ­ my life was in
your hands and I had to look at you. I know more about you than you
know about me."

Kenan says that as members of the minority, African-Americans are
observers of the majority culture ­ through television, newspapers
and pop culture, blacks "are privy to so much about white folks'
lives" ­ but not vice versa.

Kenan points to Baldwin's 1963 New Yorker profile of Nation of Islam
leader Elijah Muhammad. "The Fire Next Time" turned into a "long
peroration, a sermon about race," Kenan says. "And it became a huge
rallying point for black folk and white folk."

During a tense time in America when blacks and whites didn't have
opportunities to communicate, Kenan says Baldwin's writing gave them
something to talk about. His descriptions of growing up poor and
black and discriminated against helped open a window through which
the majority could begin to truly see the minority.

"He lifts the veil," Kenan says. "White people felt that they had an
insight into black America that they didn't have before."
--

See URL for Excerpt: 'The Cross Of Redemption'

.

Black Panther documentary screened in Harlem

UA-produced Black Panther documentary screened in Harlem

http://www.cw.ua.edu/2010/08/22/announcements-for-8232010/

The documentary film "Lowndes County Freedom Party", produced by the
Center for Public Television and Radio at the University of Alabama,
was screened Saturday at the Maysles Cinema in Harlem. Directed by
CPT&R documentary television program director Dwight Cammeron, the
film details the efforts of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating
Committee to mobilize the African American vote of "Bloody Lowndes"
by forming a political party, tracing the roots of the Black Panther
Party's philosophy of determination and self-defense to Lowndes
County, Alabama.

.

Green living thrives in communes, eco-villages

Green living thrives in communes, eco-villages

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/greenhouse/post/2010/08/green-living-takes-root-in-communes-co-housing-eco-villages/1

Aug 23, 2010

Shared eco-friendly living is becoming increasingly popular in places
that range from communes to co-housing, eco-villages or intentional
communities.

These are not the hippy, free-love communes of the 1960s, but living
arrangements that focus on organic farming, green building, communal
spaces and other aspects of sustainability.

"The future of housing, in general, is sustainable communities,"
Laura Mamo, a sociology professor at the University of Maryland and
co-author of Living Green, tells Green House. She argues that
single-family homes on large suburban lots have failed society,
because they've created social isolation, dependence on personal cars
and intolerably hefty mortgages for homeowners.

Mamo cites Takoma Village, the first co-housing community in the
Washington area. Located in Takoma Park, Md., it has 43 apartments
and townhouses that open to a central courtyard and a common building
where residents eat together.

Compact, walkable and energy-efficient neighborhoods are the goal of
a program launched nationally in April by the U.S. Green Building
Council, known as the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental
Design) for Neighborhood Development.

"From Ithaca to Japan and Oregon to Sweden, green utopias are
sprouting around the world," writes The Huffington Post, citing
examples from Ithaca, N.Y., to Detroit, Ore. It elaborates on seven
of these modern-day eco-living alternatives:

EcoVillage (Ithaca, N.Y.) Ithaca, New York's answer to a modern day
commune is EcoVillage, a green utopia that houses 160 residents. Its
60 houses are split into two housing groups, FROG and SONG, and are
all low-impact and energy-efficient. The third housing group, TREE,
is currently being constructed and will house 30 more homes.
EcoVillage has a CSA vegetable farm and a U-Pick berry farm along
with a root cellar and community gardens. 80 percent of the commune's
175 acres will remain as green space, 55 acres of which are already
under protection through a conservation easement from the Finger
Lakes Land Trust. Residents volunteer 2 to 3 hours a week by building
furniture, farming or assisting with other necessary maintenance.
Future endeavors for EcoVillage include creating organic orchards,
greywater recycling, and biodiesel and vegetable oil fuel production.

Dancing Rabbit (Rutledge, Mo.) Missouri's Dancing Rabbit is an
intentional community and eco-village that houses 50 residents. The
goal of the intentional community is to maintain the rural prairie by
restoring the land to its pre-residential state. With 10,000 trees
planted already, Dancing Rabbit is on its way to achieving this goal.
All power stems from renewable sources, including solar and wind
power, and the homes are built from natural materials: straw veils,
cob, and reclaimed lumber. The water supply comes from rainwater.

Toyosato, a Yamagishi village (Mie Prefecture, Japan) A main
component of the Yamagishi movement, Toyosato, a sustainable farming
cooperative, is home to 550 residents. Started by ten families in
1969, Toyosato is now one of the main farming corporations in Japan.
Toyosato also attempts to make the neighboring area more sustainable.
The cooperative donates compost to neighboring farms and also uses
factory byproducts from soy sauce and tofu production as livestock
feed. Since 1960, the Yamagishi movement has created 30 villages.

Breitenbush Hot Springs (Detroit, Ore.) Breitenbush Hot Springs is a
cooperative that runs an on-site hot springs retreat and conference
center. Each year, the commune hosts 25,000 guests. Located east of
Salem, Oregon in the Cascades, Breitenbush houses 50 full-time
residents with 30 summer time employees. The commune uses geothermal
power and hydropower as off-the-grid energy sources. To join the
commune, members must work for the cooperative for one year and
purchase a member share for $500.

Twin Oaks Commune (Louisa, Va.) With 85 adults and 15 children, Twin
Oaks commune in Louisa, Virginia is a communal living destination.
Started in 1967, the residents at Twin Oaks share their incomes and
work 42 hours per week in the communal sectors by making tofu,
creating furniture and hammocks, farming, milking cows and aiding
with childcare.

Kolonilott and Understenhodgen (Stockholm, Sweden) Kolonilott are
Swedish communes ranging from gardening specific communes to summer
only communes. In the 1900s, Sweden's government devoted land to be
used for gardening as part of an act to provide land to the lower
classes. Although developed in Denmark, cohousing communes are
sprouting throughout Sweden. Located in Stockholm's wooded "green
fingers" area, Understenhodgen composes 44 cohousing homes. This
eco-friendly lodging is a car-free location that offers district
heating, waste recycling and a kindergarten program.

Nubanusit Neighborhood And Farm (Peterborough, N.H.) Nubanusit
Neighborhood And Farm is a cohousing community that boasts an organic
farm, communal office space and residences ranging from single family
to four-unit dwellings. Located adjacent to Nubanusit Brook,
residents reside in their own homes yet share seventy acres of farm
land, woodlands, pond and fields. The residents all participate in a
CSA and rely on on-site cows and chickens for dairy and milk. Each
residence in the commune is LEED Platinum certified.
--

Also, see:

7 Modern Day Green Communes From Around the World
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/20/photos-7-modern-day-green_n_687530.html#s128567

.

Anticommunism and the African American Freedom Movement

Peace, Freedom and McCarthyism

http://www.solidarity-us.org/current/node/2942

Mark Solomon
ATC 147, July-August 2010

Anticommunism and the African American Freedom Movement:
"Another Side of the Story"
Edited by Robbie Lieberman and Clarence Lang
Palgrave Macmillan, 251 pages, $85, cloth.

THE TITLE OF this volume is a bit misleading. It has hardly anything
to do with the ideological substance of U.S. anticommunism in its
encounter with the African-American freedom movement.

Rather, this collection of essays, ably edited by Robbie Lieberman
and Clarence Lang, does something more important for progressive
readers and activists: it explores the historic impact of
anticommunism, fostered by government and often abetted by
non-governmental organizations, upon the content, direction and fate
of movements for African-American freedom.

The high Cold War years and the heyday of McCarthyism are the crucial
points of departure for this collection. Some historians have argued
that the Cold War was a boon to civil rights, with Washington
spurring positive change under the impetus of the ideological battle
for Third World hearts and minds. Some have marked the start of the
freedom movement from Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 and the
mass Montgomery bus boycott sparked by Rosa Parks in 1955. Some have
contended that it was "good politics" for Black leaders in the '50s
to resist labeling by redbaiting agencies.

However, largely among younger historians there is another trend that
insists that the red scare seriously wounded the civil rights battle,
undermining its broad social vision and depriving the movement of
some of its most committed activists. Those historians perceive a
"long civil rights movement" whose roots were planted decades earlier
and whose ideology and activism were nourished by pioneer
African-American and white radicals, particularly Communists.

Within that framework, there is division over whether that neglected
historical current was ruptured by the Cold War, or whether there was
continuity that contributed to the civil rights upsurge in the
mid-'50s through the '60s. The history of a long civil rights
movement with a crucial radical component carries powerful
implications for ongoing battles for liberation that require a
transforming vision of democracy and a holistic program of struggle
for political, social, economic and cultural equality. This volume
makes a valuable contribution to that understanding.

In the midst of Cold War hysteria, a cluster of African-American
intellectuals insisted that there was an indivisible connection
between peace and freedom. Robbie Lieberman points out that under
repressive conditions they held fast to anti-colonialism and
internationalism ­ demanding peace as the essential element of battle
against empire and calling for an alliance of anti-war and civil rights forces.

Lieberman reminds us of courageous (and disparate) figures like
writer Julian Mayfield, naval captain Hugh Mulzac, playwright
Lorraine Hansberry and others who saw colonialism and neo-colonialism
as breeders of war and racism. The fight for peace then was
objectively directed against anti-democratic and militaristic forces.
With that outlook, Hansberry was echoing her mentor Paul Robeson, who
had maintained that the African-American struggle for freedom and
social justice "represents the decisive front of struggle for
democracy in our country" and is crucial to "the cause of peace and
liberation throughout the world."

Progressive Linkages Under Fire

That linkage of anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism with peace
faded under the impact of McCarthyism. But it did not die. A new
generation of left intellectuals and activists rekindled interest in
African liberation and in combating the negative impact of militarism
upon the domestic well-being of national minorities.

That linkage survived demands from centers of power and influence
that peace be severed from freedom to inoculate the civil rights
movement against charges of "subverting" U.S. foreign policy. Martin
Luther King's courageous opposition to the Vietnam War echoed the
small group of '50s intellectuals as he withstood pressures within
his own organization and from the upper echelons of government to
jettison his opposition to the war.

In the midst of McCarthyite hysteria a nearly forgotten group of
Black and white women on the left worked though the American Labor
Party, the New York adjunct of the Progressive Party to forge
progressive alliances. According to Jacqueline Castledine, Ada B.
Jackson, Thelma Dale, Shirley Graham, Annette Rubenstein and others
fervently believed that peace must include justice; that Jim Crow,
institutional racism and imperialism were all spawned from the same seed.

Ada B. Jackson was a force in Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn,
building broad coalitions, fighting for economic justice and Black
representation. Thelma Dale defied a hostile political climate
through uncompromising efforts to merge civil rights and peace
advocacy. Shirley Graham (who later married W.E.B. Du Bois) used pen
and voice to declare: "Peace like freedom is indivisible."

Yet the Cold War and the repressive climate took its toll. The
Congress of American Women, the National Negro Congress, the Council
on African Affairs, the American Labor Party and the Progressive
Party all disbanded.

Without those groups to provide support for the convergence of peace
and civil rights, the reemerging anti-nuclear weapons movement in the
late '50s, notably Women's Strike for Peace, sundered that
connection, undermining the relevance of the anti-nuclear movement
for Black women, leaving Grace Lee Boggs to observe: "Blacks saw the
bomb as a 'white issue.'"

Esther Cooper Jackson, the subject of a probing essay by Erik
McDuffie, was from a generation of African-American women who rose to
prominence on the left during the influential Popular Front years of
the late '30s and '40s. Becoming a leader of the Southern Negro Youth
Congress (where she met her husband, James Jackson), Esther Cooper
exemplified the major role taken by women in an organization that
fostered a climate of mutual support and cooperation between men and women.

After the war, Cooper Jackson traveled to world peace congresses,
broadening her horizons and deepening her commitment to world peace
and anti-colonialism. McDuffie points out that African-American women
radicals of the Popular Front movements of the '40s constructed their
own meanings of freedom, grounded in awareness that struggles against
Jim Crow, colonialism and Black women's oppression were all connected.

Indicted in the early '50s under the notorious Smith Act that accused
Communists of "conspiring to advocate and teach" the overthrow of the
government, James Jackson went underground for more than five years.
With a phalanx of FBI agents shadowing and harassing her and her two
small children, Esther Jackson, according to McDuffie, seized upon
conservative "familialism" to fight back ­ tossing the charge of
destroying vaunted family values at the government and jettisoning
international concerns to concentrate on defending her husband.

McDuffie argues shrewdly that by resorting to conservative means to
counter government attacks, Communists fostered a discontinuity in
their own tradition ­ isolating homosexuals and cutting off
discussion of sexuality that might have helped to destabilize Cold
War culture. While it is likely that in the environment of the '50s
the Communists were more concerned with potential blackmail of
homosexuals within their ranks than in cultural issues, the narrowing
effect of "familialism" left many in the Communist orbit ill-equipped
to relate to the cultural upsurge of the '60s.

"Correspondence" and Communists

Radicals in Detroit in the '50s occasionally heard about a nearly
invisible left formation simply called "Correspondence" that met in a
decrepit hall on the East Side of the city.

Rachel Peterson's essay on "Correspondence" illuminates (somewhat at
odds with the rest of the book) virulent leftist opposition to the Communists.

The group under consideration was an offshoot of the "Johnson-Forest
Tendency," pseudonyms for C.L.R. James and Raya Dunayevskaya who had
split from the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party to form
"Correspondence," which was the name of the group's newspaper and the
sole material expression of its existence.

Shunning traditional engagement in political struggle, Correspondence
scorned organization as organically repressive (especially Communist
organization), opting for "amanuensis," the verbatim recording of
letters from readers, to spark working-class and African-American rebellion.

Like the old joke about a bystander being hauled off to a paddy wagon
exclaiming that he's an anticommunist, only to have the cop respond:
"I don't care what kind of communist you are," Correspondence
believed that its fervent anticommunism (which it perceived as
anti-Stalinism) would give it cover from government attack. It did
not. Its focus upon working-class and African-American issues and its
roots in the Johnson-Forest Tendency were enough for the government
to deport C.L.R. James and for the Postmaster General to seek
revocation of its mailing rights.

What Peterson sees as Correspondence's objective complicity with
McCarthyism led to inner strains and contributed, along with
government harassment, to its dissolution. Ultimately, its
anticommunist dogma bordered on ironic humor. Responding to a reader
who wondered if the publication was "communist," the editors replied:
"Communists have so fouled up everything that an American worker
cannot say a word about speed-ups without being called a Communist."

Peterson's informative article also underscores an unappetizing side
of C.L.R. James. While he is justly celebrated for his magisterial
studies of Black rebellion, James's inveterate anticommunism could
reach ludicrous levels.

While awaiting deportation at Ellis Island, James was tossed into a
cell with five Communists who were so concerned with his health that
they threatened a hunger strike if he was not given proper food and
medical treatment. While James conceded that the leader among the
Communists was a "man of principle" and among "the best" that the
country could offer, he was nevertheless an "Ahab" who would impose
tyrannical rule if he ascended to power. As for the Communists'
effort to defend his health, James described it as a plot to "win him over."

Despite its curious abnegation of political engagement, Peterson
points to a continuity of influence by some of Correspondence's key
writers. James' influence pervaded African-American radical ranks in
the '60s; James Boggs became a "father figure" to a new generation of
Black working-class militants; Grace Lee Boggs continues to play a
major role in Detroit's present struggle for survival.

Finally, Peterson notes that "…Correspondence recorded voices that
might otherwise have gone unheard, creating a dialogue in the midst
of a repressive atmosphere…" from Los Angeles housewives to Virginian
coal miners to New York academics.

The Black Labor Scene

The National Negro Labor Council came into existence in 1951, largely
under the leadership of African Americans in the Communist orbit.
Inspired by a growing postwar need to confront reversals of gains
made by Black labor in wartime, NNLC organized on the "axes of race
and class." It attracted thousands of working people across a wide
political spectrum in the midst of intense McCarthyite repression.

Clarence Lang notes that NNLC launched successful campaigns to open
clerical jobs for Blacks at Sears; it fought to break the color line
in hotel, railroad and airline industries; it advocated for strong
fair employment practices legislation, garnering crucial support from
left-led unions; it battled with Westinghouse in Louisville for jobs,
especially for Black women.

With a broad agenda reflective of a social movement, NNLC vigorously
pursued women's rights (women constituted one-third of its
membership), opposed colonialism, spoke out against the Korean War,
called for anti-lynch legislation, ending the poll tax, stopping
segregated housing and demanding that mainstream labor adopt fair
employment practices clauses.

Lang places NNLC outside the framework of the Popular Front,
repeating the well-known litany of charges that Popular Front
politics mandated a turn towards "moderate and conservative policies"
at the cost of militancy ­ in this case militant support for Black liberation.

But the Popular Front cannot be defined solely on secondary tactical
grounds. NNLC was deeply reflective of the principal character of the
Popular Front: a political commitment to substantively advance the
struggle for democracy primarily on the "axes of race and class,"
singling out racism as the central barrier to social change and
prioritizing broad-based networking of individuals and groups working
to qualitatively extend democracy in all major spheres. That
perception of the Popular Front pervades most of this volume; Lang's
analysis departs from that viewpoint.

NNLC suffered the same fate as other left organizations smothered by
McCarthyite repression. A combination of government harassment and
the AFL-CIO's remorseless hostility chipped away at its membership
and support, signaling its eventual dissolution.

With the base of NNLC narrowing, the Communist Party eventually
abandoned what was left of the organization. However, Lang
convincingly demonstrates both the rupture in progressive labor
struggles and the continuity of the Black radical impulse in the
labor movement as reflected in the story of NNLC.

The rupture appeared to be complete with NNLC's demise.. But some of
its key activists continued to be politically engaged in a variety of
ways. Some gravitated towards sectarian parties and from those
platforms influenced reemerging Black radical labor in the '60s;
others helped form A. Philip Randolph's Negro American Labor Council
(NALC) with ties to the labor establishment; others joined in
founding the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists; others, notably
Coleman Young who was mayor of Detroit for 20 years, joined
mainstream politics.

Lang concludes: "While this continuity is certainly striking, it is
worth considering what might have been achieved had the schisms
created by Cold War anticommunism not constantly forced labor
activists to recreate the wheel."

Latino Left Decimated

There was once a powerful postwar left in the country's Chicano
communities. With searing relevance for the present, Zaragosa Vargas
tells the story of how that left was wiped out.

Throughout the Southwest, the left-wing Union of Mine Mill and
Smelter Workers was a bastion of support for Mexican families and
mine workers. The legendary film "Salt of the Earth" portrayed the
union's support for Mexican families in the infamous Empire Mining
strike in Bayard, New Mexico and the leading role of women in that struggle.

In the larger community, Communist organizers built the National
Association of Mexican Americans (ANMA). That organization attributed
the evils of racism that afflicted the Mexican community to
capitalism; it denounced militarism and the Korean War and fought for
Fair Employment Practices codes. At its peak it had 4000 male and
female members.

Supported by the organizational strength of the Mine-Mill and
Furniture Workers' Unions, ANMA forged alliances with the Progressive
Citizens of America (forerunner to the Progressive Party), the Civil
Rights Congress and similar groups in the left orbit.

But the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act undermined progressive unionism as a
civil rights vehicle, wounding the fight for fair employment clauses.
Also, ANMA's stand on racism, peace, labor and deportations caught
the attention of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. A
steady pattern of government attack unfolded.

The McCarran-Walter Act brought widespread threats of
denaturalization, stripping the Mexican rights movement of some of
its most capable activists through deportation. The Smith Act
targeted Mexican American Communists in Denver, singling out Chicana
leader Anna Correa-Bary. The red scare drove scores of Mexican
Americans out of left organizations.

The most devastating blow was "Operation Wetback" and subsequent
"Operation Terror," which foisted collective punishment on Mexican
families and drove more than one million undocumented Mexicans out of
the country. Anticommunism and "foreign subversion" became essential
ideological weapons in the deportation frenzy.

While ANMA was shattered, elements of continuity were manifested in
the emerging establishment-oriented Community Service Organization
(CSO) that engaged in legal battles against segregated schools and
deportations. One element that survived the destruction of the left
was efforts by Mexican organizations to ally with African Americans
to fight school segregation and other forms of discrimination.

As the '60s dawned, there was only faint awareness of the efforts of
Communists that give birth to the ANMA. Yet, Vargas insists, the
virtually forgotten chapter demonstrates the potential for building
progressive workers' power among Mexican Americans: "Indeed, the far
reaching revolution launched by Mexican Americans was built upon the
foundation established by the class conscious activists of the
postwar years and their brave stand for meaningful social and economic change."

Anticommunism and the African American Movement is a valuable source
for scholars, activists and all who work for a just world. It is
deeply instructive to learn of past efforts to forge democratic
change, to learn the price of rupture of those efforts and to grasp
the elements of continuity that enrich activism today.

The book is a foundation for additional study of how a besieged left
continued to fight racial injustice during the Cold War years by
demanding justice for African Americans trapped in a racist legal
system ­ Willie McGee, the "Martinsville (Virginia) Seven," the
"Trenton (New Jersey) Six," and others. One ends with the hope that
the publisher will produce a paperback edition of this outrageously
priced book so that its vital content will be available to a much
larger public.

.

Civil Rights' Most Misunderstood Moment: The Freedom Rides

[2 articles]

Civil Rights' Most Misunderstood Moment:
The Freedom Rides

http://www.theroot.com/views/civil-rights-most-misunderstood-moment-freedom-rides

Stanley Nelson's new documentary, Freedom Riders, illuminates true
profiles in courage. There was strength in pacifism.

By: Stanley Crouch
August 17, 2010

Every great once in a while, something like Stanley Nelson's
wonderful documentary Freedom Riders appears and is so good that it
exhausts all common versions of praise. In it, Nelson and his crew
take on a period of history usually misunderstood: a particularly
dramatic series of events in 1961, known as the Freedom Rides, when
young student activists put their lives at great risk, riding public
transportation throughout the South.

Nelson (A Place of Our Own) and his crew found the truth of a time in
which nobility, courage and unbending optimism were stronger than the
crude, superstitious and murderously violent obstacles that held
Southern segregation in place. The film, the first full-length
documentary recounting the Freedom Rides, is available in New York
and Los Angeles theaters for only a few days and will be shown to the
nation on PBS next year when the 50th anniversary of the Freedom
Rides is celebrated.

Ask most people today what the Freedom Rides were, and they can't
tell you. Or they misunderstand its significance, painting the
Freedom Riders as lightweight pacifists who just lay down and allowed
themselves to be beaten. That couldn't be further from the truth.
Those who, like me, were alive during that time have since seen
pictures of John Lewis being beaten up, but I'd forgotten that white
Southerners had actually set a bus on fire. It was a remarkable
moment. They were literally holding the door closed. The bus was a
crematorium on wheels. Thankfully, the Freedom Riders managed to escape.

In our time of cartoon ethnic "authenticity," commercialized falsity
and hollow glamour, the film seems out of step, but not because
people were so different in 1961. At the time, television was
discovering its political power; the rightness of the civil rights
movement became abundantly clear just by having microphones and
cameras placed close enough to those opposing the activists. Everyone
was forced to see things the way they actually were. Negroes suddenly
ceased to exist almost exclusively for entertainment and comic
relief, their traditional roles on what would become the boob tube.
What was happening in the South was neither entertaining nor funny.

With the grace and precision of superb editing, Freedom Riders shows
the various ways that Americans and the rest of the world had
long-held views of the U.S. -- held since the end of World War II --
upended. The South had lost the Civil War, but it had won the policy
war by instituting the racist laws of segregation. Those
unconstitutional laws remained in place for close to a century.
Negroes were held as far from basic social equality as possible.

But the Freedom Riders, an interracial posse of students that
included John Lewis, Stokely Carmichael and Diane Nash, forced the
issue. (Others in midde age and beyond joined them.) Many of them
were from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and
the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). En masse, they bought tickets
on Greyhound buses bound for the Deep South. They started out in
Washington, D.C., on May 4, 1961, with the intention of arriving in
New Orleans on May 17. The Supreme Court had outlawed racial
segregation, but Jim Crow still ruled. For their efforts, they were
beaten, arrested and nearly burned to death.

If you were watching TV during that time, the televised action made
certain truths unavoidable. The madness of that era, on one level at
least, was embodied by rednecks in street clothes or sheets, in or
out of political office, local or federal (Bull Connor being one
shameful example). As dangerous as it very soon became for the
reporters and the cameramen covering the story, the footage shows
that aggressive irrationality had yet to contaminate both sides of
the racial divide. Race baiting was not an equal-opportunity
profession, and impotent saber rattling was neither seen nor
interpreted as a form of ethnic bravery. Fundamental constitutional
rights and access to opportunity were ideas radical enough to shake
the temple built to segregation until it fell upon the heads of those
too stubborn to move.

The violence itself also brought surprises. The flowers of Southern
womanhood could drop their genteel drawls to scream and shout along
with the men in the raging mobs. Then again, there was the
12-year-old white girl who could not remain inside her Negro-hating
father's store and watch as Freedom Riders were almost burned to
death inside a bus and nearly beaten to death when escaping it. She
ran out to help. Her humanity overcame her racist upbringing. In
certain ways, the victory of the civil rights movement was
foreshadowed by the empathy that surely swelled inside that girl at
that moment.

With stories like these, Freedom Riders sweeps through the drama, the
heartbreak and the affirmative humanity that made an imposingly
difficult victory possible. Part of the film's strength is that
historical figures are not looked upon in a conventionally
sentimental way, and some, like Martin Luther King Jr., are taken
down a step closer to earth.

Through Freedom Riders, we see the internal debates about tactics
within the searing context of events. The civil rights workers --
young and old, black and white -- lost their naive ideas about the
struggle as they faced the shortcomings among themselves amid great
violence. The documentary, which relies on interviews rather than a
voice-over narration, builds in suspense; this makes for numerous
surprises, high and low.

No amount of cheap, Hollywood thrills is as stunning as the real-life
pain experienced and the blood shed by actual human beings. That
combination of sacrificial suffering was what transformed the moment
and the nation itself beyond the comfortably coy stereotypes of the time.

Freedom Riders has an epic quality, given that it deals with
larger-than-life issues such as moral consciousness. But the sense of
humor of the civil rights workers lets some of the bad air out of the
racist balloon. As with all masterworks of history, levity does not
reduce the significance of things as they were; it eases the
narrative and gives the listener a chance to laugh, like jokes told
between inevitably terrible battles.

Whatever makes this nation great can be seen in Freedom Riders and
heard in the voices of the participants. It keeps its eye on the
actual prize of humanity, and it steps above all that has pulled us
into various bogs since those bloody and inspirational days of 1961.
--

Stanley Crouch is an essayist and columnist based in New York. He has
been awarded a MacArthur and a Fletcher and was recently inducted
into the Academy of Arts and Sciences. The first volume of his
Charlie Parker biography will appear within a year.

--------

Documentary has new footage of 1961 Freedom Riders bus burning in Anniston

http://annistonstar.com/bookmark/9253256-Documentary-has-new-footage-of-1961-Freedom-Riders-bus-burning-in-Anniston

by Jason Bacaj
Aug 24, 2010

A film documenting the 1961 Freedom Riders movement contains
never-before-seen footage of a bus burning outside Anniston after it
was attacked by a local mob.

The footage of the bus burning, recorded by a local boy and
confiscated by the FBI, was unearthed by director Stanley Nelson and
included in his new documentary.

The two-hour film, "Freedom Riders," will air on PBS in May 2011, the
50th anniversary of the ride to desegregate public transportation in
the South. Producers of the movie hope to screen it in cities across
the region that intertwined with the historic ride.

The 8mm film was recorded by a local boy with a camera he got for his
birthday, Nelson said. The FBI confiscated the camera in the course
of an investigation and it drifted out of public consciousness until
Nelson and his film crew reviewed court transcripts that told of the
tape's existence.

It took eight months for the FBI to track down the roughly three
minutes of footage.

"Nobody had ever asked for it," Nelson said. "It's the only footage,
I think, that exists of the actual bus burning and then the bus being
towed away."

The Freedom Rides were organized by civil rights activists protesting
the de facto segregation of passengers on interstate bus lines in the
Jim-Crow-era South. Violence also greeted the riders in Birmingham
and Montgomery.

"Freedom Riders" is part of the award-winning PBS series and was
directed, produced and written by Nelson.

Anniston residents may get a chance to see the documentary ­ and the
FBI film ­ before it shows nationally. There are no set plans for
where or when it will be shown yet, as the city is in preliminary
talks with the filmmakers.

"We would love to have a chance to screen the film in Anniston," Nelson said.

"Freedom Riders" debuted to a warm reception at the Sundance Film
Festival in January of this year. It was also shown at film festivals
in New York and Los Angeles to qualify the movie for the upcoming
Academy Awards. Films must be shown by September for Academy Award
consideration.

Anniston City Councilman Ben Little is set to ask the council today
to support a free showing of the documentary. Little said he didn't
have any details about the showing because he learned of the film
just a few weeks ago at the National Black Caucus of Local Elected
Officials in Memphis.

A possible venue hasn't been discussed yet but Little believes the
Anniston High School auditorium is the best place to host the crowd
he anticipates.

The documentary will probably be shown in early May before a busload
of college students retracing the Freedom Ride route passes through
Anniston, said Betsy Bean, executive director of Spirit of Anniston,
an economic development organization.

A formal selection process for students wanting to go on the ride
hasn't been set, Bean said. It was originally open to high school and
college students, but was limited to collegians after a considering a
number of issues such as planning, curriculum and recruitment, said
Lauren Prestileo, project manager.

"We really, really would love to get a student from Anniston," Bean
said. "I don't think that would be hard to find."

The building where the Freedom Riders were attacked in downtown
Anniston still stands, though it is no longer a bus station. Bean
hopes publicity from the documentary and the retracing of the Freedom
Ride route will help the Spirit of Anniston secure a plaque and sign
commemorating that fateful day.

"We're just one of the stops along the way and hope to take advantage
of the public relations opportunity and the education opportunity and
the economic development opportunity that this thing affords," Bean said.

.

Civil rights activists recall summer of change

Civil rights activists recall summer of change

http://www.clarionledger.com/article/20100819/NEWS/100819028/Civil+rights+activists+recall+summer+of+change

By DEBORAH BARFIELD BERRY
August 19, 2010

WASHINGTON ­ For many young civil rights workers in 1964, there was
no better place than Mississippi to challenge a system that kept
blacks voiceless and disenfranchised.

The state had one of the largest black populations in the South. Yet,
less than 5 percent of blacks were registered to vote, according to
the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. In some
counties, not a single black person was registered.

"Mississippi was the last bastion of apartheid," recalled Marion
Barry, the former mayor of Washington, D.C., who was the first
chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
"Mississippi was famous for the exploitation and the destruction of
black people.

"If you wanted to change the face of the nation, you started where
the problems were the worst," said Barry, 74, now a councilman in
Washington. "You crack that - you can crack anything. That was our
philosophy. We were fearless. We were the revolutionary storm troopers."

Forty six years later, civil rights workers recall how they spent
"Freedom Summer," taking shelter with Mississippians in small towns
and rural counties while helping blacks register to vote.

It was a dangerous mission. In a state vehemently opposed to change,
murder, lynchings and beatings were used to intimidate blacks and
keep in place segregation in schools and other public places. Student
activists, led by SNCC, the NAACP and the Congress of Racial
Equality, were determined to challenge registration requirements ­
such as poll taxes or literacy tests ­ intended to prevent blacks from voting.

"It's a moment in history where all these people came from all across
the country, lawyers, doctors, teachers, students, activists,
historians," said Robert Moses, 74, who headed SNCC's Mississippi
operation and now runs The Algebra Project, a nonprofit education
program in Massachusetts. "They just converge for a brief moment in
time and make something happen that nobody thought could happen."

Creating a national scene

This summer marked the 45th anniversary of the signing of the 1965
Voting Rights Act, which political experts say happened in part
because of Freedom Summer.

"It was a major national event and it had an impact on shaping public
opinion on civil rights nationally," said David Bositis, a senior
analyst for the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.
"Freedom Summer was important because it brought to the North what
was going on in Mississippi."

SNCC workers went north mostly to universities and big cities to
recruit volunteers.

Soon an army of volunteers, many of them white college students,
headed to Oxford, Ohio, for training in nonviolent protest.

Barry, then a student at Fisk University, said organizers hoped the
involvement of white volunteers would attract national media and
pressure the establishment to change. "There were all kinds of
atrocities going on," said Barry, who was born in Itta Bena, Miss.
"The media wasn't covering it that much."

Heather Booth was a freshman at the University of Chicago when a
recruiter visited campus.

"I thought how wonderful it was to be involved in the civil rights
movement when you're fighting for things we believe in and alongside
others," recalled Booth, 65, who raised money for her trip by
knocking on doors on campus and back home in New York.

Volunteers relied on the generosity of Mississippians to house and
feed them. Often those locals helped at great risk of losing their
jobs and in some cases their lives.

"So many of them opened their arms to us," remembered Wallace
Roberts, 69, who left behind a family in Massachusetts to volunteer.
Roberts helped start a "Freedom School" in Shaw, Miss., one of about
40 such schools around the state where blacks were taught math,
reading and black history and encouraged to be active citizens.

Intimidation and strategy

Roberts and Booth stayed briefly with civil rights legend Fannie Lou
Hamer, who played a key role not only in organizing Freedom Summer,
but also in leading the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, which
fought for representation at the 1964 Democratic National Convention
in Atlantic City, N.J.

Six weeks after Roberts arrived in Mississippi, he and other
protesters, including students, went to the courthouse in Cleveland,
Miss., to hand out leaflets and urge residents to register to vote.
Roberts remembers white men in khaki pants and white helmets
surrounding the building.

"They just watched. They were there to intimidate us," recalled
Roberts, now a freelance writer. "It was a way to instill fear."

Protesters were jailed and questioned by FBI agents. As he and other
volunteers were trained to do, Roberts said he called his wife, who
then called his local congressman who called county officials in
Mississippi. Soon he was released.

"That was the strategy that made a lot of difference," Roberts said.

Despite attempts at nonviolent protests, Freedom Summer was marked by
violence, including the deaths of civil rights workers James Chaney,
Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner. Although there had been other
murders, the deaths of the two white men and one black in June 1964
drew national media attention.

Booth said she was "horrified" by the news, but was even more
determined to go to Mississippi.

"It reinforced how people are living with such terror and brutality
every day," said Booth, who now heads Americans for Financial Reform,
a group pressing for changes in the financial sector. "If my going
meant that I could help support a real freedom struggle ... then I
wanted to go."

In McComb, Miss., where SNCC began its efforts, Moses said Webb
Owens, then a treasurer for the local NAACP, would take him to black
churches and businesses to ask for money to support the project. "It
was people like that who provided the foundation, the soil in which a
movement could grow," Moses said.

A difference seen today

While activists say not as many blacks as they wanted registered that
summer, the movement made a difference.

Today, Mississippi has more black elected officials than any other
state. In 1970, the state had 95 black elected officials, according
to the Joint Center. In 2004, there were 950.

By 1968, voter registration among blacks had jumped to 60 percent up
from 5.8 percent in 1960, the Joint Center said. In 2008, nearly 82
percent of blacks in Mississippi were registered to vote.

Euvester Simpson, then a senior high school student from Itta Bena,
had watched her parents and others in her community endure enough
segregation and racism.

"It was like this was what I was waiting for all my life," said
Simpson, 64, now a board member for the Veterans of the Mississippi
Civil Rights Movement. "I knew I wasn't going to live the way my parents did."

Simpson's most memorable moment came in 1965 when her parents
registered to vote for the first time. "They were so proud and so
thankful for the movement," she said.

.

40 years later, FBI still hunts alleged bomber

[2 articles]

40 years later, FBI still hunts alleged bomber

http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/08/24/wisconsin.40.year.manhunt/?hpt=Sbin

By Lateef Mungin
August 24, 2010

Do you know where Leo Burt is? If you do, you could earn $150,000,
the FBI says.

Burt, a 22-year-old aspiring journalist at the time, was part of a
group that bombed the University of Wisconsin to protest the Vietnam
War, the FBI says.

The attack happened 40 years ago Tuesday and was classified as the
largest act of domestic terror until the Oklahoma City bombing in April 1995.

The explosion killed a physics researcher, severely damaged a
building at the university and damaged 26 others.

Burt's three accomplices were arrested and served prison sentences
for the crime, but the hunt for Burt continues.

"Even after four decades, we cover every credible lead that comes
in," said Special Agent Kevin Cassidy, who has been in charge of the
investigation for the past three years. "Despite the passage of time,
agents in the field are happy to help."

Agents have been all over the world following tips about Burt's whereabouts.

The elusive suspect was reportedly homeless in Denver, according to
one tipster.

Another tipster told the FBI that Burt was working at a resort in Costa Rica.

Burt has eluded the massive manhunt, leading some to believe he is
dead, but Kent Miller, a retired special agent who led the hunt for
Burt for years, says he believes the suspect may still be alive.

"If so, I don't think he's living in the United States. And if he is
alive, he's got to be worried every day that he's going to slip up
and get caught. That's no way to live," Miller said.

Burt was part of a radical anti-war group called the New Year's Gang,
the FBI said. Angry over the Vietnam War, the group targeted the Army
Math Research Center in Sterling Hall at the University of Wisconsin
on August 24, 1970.

The chaos after the explosion is captured in scratchy police dispatch
audio tapes from that day.

"There's been a tremendous explosion over here. It looks like it's on
South Park Street," one officer says.

"Yeah, I heard it," another says.

Police and dispatchers are captured on the tape trying to get a
handle of the situation and inform scared citizens who have called in
about the explosion. Then, it became apparent that someone had been killed.

"They're requesting the coroner down at the Army Math Center," one man said.

"No kidding?" another man answered.

"Yeah, it's one hell of an explosion," the first man said.

"Kill anybody?"

"Yeah, I believe it did," the second man answered.

The victim in the bombing was identified as Robert Fassnacht, a
33-year-old father of three children who was working late on campus
to finish a research project.

Now, the FBI is offering $150,000 to someone who has information that
leads to the arrest of Burt.

"We need your help to locate Leo Burt. If you have any information,
please contact your local FBI office or the nearest U.S. Embassy or
Consulate," the FBI says in a statement.

Burt could be going by the name Eugene Donald Fieldston, the FBI says.

He could be wearing a mustache or a beard. He has sometimes worn his
hair long and his locks may have gone gray.

Just like some of the FBI agents who have chased him all these years.

--------

FBI Hunts for Suspected Wisconsin Campus Bomber 40 Years Later

http://www.aolnews.com/crime/article/fbi-hunts-for-wisconsin-campus-bomb-suspect-leo-burt-40-years-later/19605108

by Allan Lengel
8/23/10

Forty years ago Tuesday, a van loaded with explosives rocked the
University of Wisconsin-Madison campus, killing one person and
wounding three others -- all part of a protest against the war in
Vietnam. It was also the biggest domestic terrorism attack until the
Oklahoma City bombing 25 years later.

Three of four of the anti-war culprits were captured and served time
in prison. But 40 years later, the hunt for the fourth suspect -- Leo
Burt, a student and aspiring journalist at the time -- continues.

"We're still pursuing leads like he's still alive," Bruce Carroll, a
campus police detective assigned to the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task
Force, told AOL News. "I've expressed my doubts in the past that he's
still alive. It would be very hard to live totally undercover for 40
years. That being said, stranger things have happened.

"But we've had a bunch of leads and we still have leads that are
active," he said.

On Monday, the FBI upped the profile of the case, prominently
displaying a story on its website that began: "Where is Leo Burt? You
can earn up to $150,000 by helping us find him."

The bombing occurred on Aug. 24, 1970. The country was in turmoil.
Richard Nixon was president. The rock 'n' roll landscape was flush
with giants like the Rolling Stones and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.
And campuses like the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the
University of Michigan in Ann Arbor were bubbling with the anti-war,
anti-establishment sentiments that were polarizing the nation.

According to published reports, the protesters parked a van loaded
with 2,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil outside the East
Wing of Sterling Hall, which housed the Army Math Research Center
that conducted research for the military. The building also housed
the physics department.

The potent bomb went off at 3:42 a.m. The bombers said the explosives
were never intended to hurt anyone. But the blast killed physics
researcher Robert Fassnacht, a father of three, who was reportedly
finishing up some work before heading off on a family vacation. It
also wounded three others and caused an estimated $2.1 million in
damage to the the university. As an aside, The New York Times
reported that Fassnacht's family said he was against the Vietnam War.

After the bombing, the hunt for the attackers was on. Karleton
Armstrong was captured in Toronto in 1972 and sentenced to 23 years,
but served only about seven. His brother Dwight Armstrong, who just
died this year, was caught in Toronto in 1977 and served three years.
And David Fine was captured in California in 1976 and served about three years.

Retired FBI agent Kent Miller, a deputy coroner in Wisconsin, was
assigned to the case in the late 1990s. He said he "goes back and
forth" as to whether fugitive Burt is still alive.

"I think there's a good chance he's still alive," he told AOL News.
"If he's alive, he's living quietly somewhere, most likely outside
the country."

Over the years, he said, the bureau followed up on hundreds of tips
-- including ones that Burt was homeless in Denver and working at a
Costa Rican resort.

Forty years later, the incident is still not easy for some to talk
about. In 1971, Paul Quin, a physics researcher at the the university
who was injured in the blast, told the Wisconsin State Journal:
"Sometimes I still think about [the bombing]. It sends a shiver up my
spine when I'm working late on Sundays."

But on Monday, Quin, who is listed as a physics professor emeritus,
declined an interview with AOL News.

"I do not discuss this event," he responded by e-mail.

As time passes, some of the links are vanishing. In June, Dwight
Armstrong died at age 58 in Madison, Wis., The New York Times
reported. After getting out prison, he served additional time for
involvement in a methamphetamine ring. He then drove a cab, the Times reported.

His level of remorse was left in question.

He once told the The Capital Times in Madison: "We did what we had to
do; we did what we felt a lot of other people should have done," he
said. "I don't care what public opinion is; we did what was right."

.

Marilyn Buck memorial gatherings

BUCK, Marilyn

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/08/22/MNBUCKMARI6.DTL

Sunday, August 22, 2010

Marilyn Buck On Tuesday, August 3, 2010, long-time U.S. political
prisoner and acclaimed poet Marilyn Buck, 62, passed peacefully at
her home in Brooklyn. On July 15th, several weeks before the date
originally set for her release, Marilyn had been released from the
federal Bureau of Prisons medical facility in Carswell, Texas and
paroled to New York. Marilyn served 25 years of an 80-year prison
sentence for politically motivated actions undertaken in support of
self-determination and national liberation and in opposition to
racial injustice and U.S. imperialism. Throughout her years in
prison, Marilyn remained a steadfast supporter of fellow political
prisoners and an advocate for the women with whom she was imprisoned.
Marilyn became involved in the civil rights and anti-war movements
and joined the Students for a Democratic Society during her college
years and became an active supporter of the Puerto Rican, Native
American and Black liberation struggles in this country. She was a
consistent and outspoken advocate for the liberation of women and gay
liberation. Marilyn was incarcerated in Dublin, California for 15
years, during which time she earned a Bachelor of Arts in psychology
and Master of Arts in poetics. Her poetry and essays have been
printed in a wide variety of journals and books. A new collection of
her poetry will be published next year under the title "Inside
Shadows." In 2009, Marilyn was diagnosed with an aggressive form of
cancer; treatment came too late to save her life. Marilyn is survived
by three brothers, three sisters-in-law; cousins, nieces and nephews;
her friend and attorney Soffiyah Elijah, and other loving friends
worldwide. A memorial gathering will be held on November 7th from 4-7
at the First Unitarian Church, 685 14th St., Oakland. Additional ones
will be held in Texas, New York City, and Puerto Rico; details will
be posted on www.marilynbuck.com.

.

From Hanoi Jane to Imam Obama

From Hanoi Jane to Imam Obama

http://spectator.org/archives/2010/08/24/from-hanoi-jane-to-imam-obama

By Jeffrey Lord
8.24.10

It was the picture worth a thousand words.

The emblematic political ancestor of the connection between the
Ground Zero Mosque and the economy that is now wreaking havoc in the
2010 campaign.

In the middle of the 1972 presidential campaign that featured
President Richard Nixon versus the Democrats' Senator George
McGovern, all of a sudden Americans were talking about something else.

A photograph.

Actress Jane Fonda, already well on her way to transforming her image
from glamorous movie star to left-wing radical activist, was visiting
Hanoi that July, only days after the very liberal, anti-war McGovern
claimed the Democratic presidential nomination. That would be Hanoi,
North Vietnam. The enemy capital. In wartime. When hundreds of
thousands of American kids were fighting for their lives in the
larger cause of freedom.

Befitting an actress, she had her picture taken. Sitting at a North
Vietnamese anti-aircraft battery. Smiling, wearing a military helmet,
Fonda happily posed as her Communist hosts grinned and laughed along
with her at the image of the famous American leftist film star
clapping with joy as if she were poised to shoot down their enemy --
American pilots. Later, Fonda took to Radio Hanoi to broadcast her
views to the world. She accused the President of the United States of
being a "war criminal" and insisted that returning American POW's who
said the North Vietnamese had tortured them were "hypocrites and liars."

In a flash, Fonda won the nickname "Hanoi Jane." It was not meant
with affection.

Her anti-war virulence poured forth as the summer progressed. She
showed up in Miami Beach to protest at the Republican National
Convention, sharing the platform with Black Panther activist Bobby
Seale. A documentary film called F.T.A. was released, with Fonda and
actor Donald Sutherland starring in real-life as the center of what
the New York Times called a "political vaudeville troupe." The film
featured Fonda's tour of the war zone (over official opposition) as a
sort of anti-Bob Hope USO guerrilla theater. In a glowing review, the
Times rhapsodized that the "pageant" that was "anti-American
guerrilla theater…momentarily turns revolutionary passion into a
romantic gesture of extraordinary beauty." It also was charmed by
"the deep happiness in [the] eyes of Ms. Fonda."

Fonda's trip to Hanoi was her own, as was the film. They had nothing
to do with the McGovern campaign. Yet it was so broadly cast as such
a prominent part of the "anti-war" movement of which McGovern was in
fact a decided leader that Fonda's actions became emblematic of all
things "anti-war" and "liberal" or "left-wing" -- McGovern's campaign included.

Her antics were a cultural explosion in the middle of the American
campaign season.

At a stroke the photograph personified what was at the time a
startlingly new thought: that the American left had so separated
itself from the reality that was mainstream America it was
essentially in the process of politically self-destructing in an orgy
of spectacularly bad judgment. The party of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry
Truman and John F. Kennedy had been captured by activist far-left
elitists who saw nothing in the least wrong in cavorting with an
enemy who was literally sending American sons and daughters home in
body bags. And laughing about it in front of cameras in the bargain.
The sheer contempt for average Americans expressed in the Fonda photo
could not have been more plainly expressed.

That fall, Richard Nixon --- who had lost the presidency to JFK in
1960 by 100,000 votes and defeated Hubert Humphrey in 1968 with a
bare 43% of the vote -- carried 49 states.

The unraveling of the American left had begun.

Campaigning in 1976 as a hard line Annapolis graduate, an ex-Navy
officer and successful businessman, post-Watergate Jimmy Carter
barely salvaged victory over the lackluster Nixon-appointed vice
president-turned-president Gerald Ford. Within six months of his
inauguration, Carter was lecturing Americans from the podium of a
Notre Dame commencement that they had an "inordinate fear" of
Communism. By 1979 blindfolded American hostages in Iran became the
next emblem to succeed the image of "Hanoi Jane" -- hopelessly
portraying Carter as weak, indecisive and naïve. The Reagan
presidency followed.

In 1988 the emblem of left-wing elitism became the Pledge of Allegiance.

Governor Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts, riding a double-digit lead
over then Vice President George H.W. Bush as the summer began, was
found to have vetoed a bill that would require the state's teachers
to lead their students in the Pledge of Allegiance. Tellingly,
Democrats thought it no big deal. Competence, Dukakis insisted, was
the real issue. A New York Times columnist dismissed the Pledge issue
as one of "imbecility."

The columnist (Russell Baker) wasn't simply wrong. He was clueless as
to the impact on ordinary outside-Manhattan voters. The Pledge veto
became an emblem of Hanoi Jane-style liberal elitism circa 1988, and
Bush began touring flag-making companies to emphasize the point.
"What is it about the Pledge of Allegiance that upsets him so much?"
Bush demanded of Dukakis at a campaign rally with outgoing President
Ronald Reagan. The crowd roared .The rally was, by the way, not in
Red State Alabama. It was in Bluing California. Los Angeles. And Bush
-- not the liberal Dukakis -- would carry the state.

Why is this ancient political history important to understand?

The Ground Zero Mosque has now become the values issue of the 2010
campaign. The party of Hanoi Jane has been updated -- but,
importantly, not replaced -- with the party of (as Rush Limbaugh
chortles) Imam Obama.

And there's more to this than just the values issue of the Mosque. Much more.

What made the image of Hanoi Jane or the blindfolded American
hostages in Iran or the Dukakis veto of the Pledge of Allegiance so
powerful with voters was not simply the "values issues" each came to personify.

Each was tied directly to the economy and the economic issues of the day.

Why? Because each image communicated to voters bad judgment.

When Dukakis whined during a 1988 debate that Bush was questioning
his patriotism, Bush swung back instantly, saying that it wasn't his
opponent's patriotism he was calling into question but his judgment.
And judgment extended to far more than the issue of the Pledge of
Allegiance. Judgment went to the very heart of the issue Americans
care most about all of the time: the economy. Their jobs. Their
economic security.

In 1972 Nixon tied McGovern's bad judgment to the Democrat's much
ridiculed plan to give a "rebate" of $1,000 to every American, the
idea quickly being targeted as the "thousand-dollar giveaway."
Reagan, proposing the tax and budget cuts that became the signature
of 1980s economic prosperity, ridiculed Carter's economic views as
"Carternomics." A recession, Reagan would joke with his cheering 1980
audiences, was when "your neighbor loses his job. A depression is
when you lose your job. And a recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses
his." In 1984, Reagan lampooned Walter Mondale's promise to raise
taxes as the return of Carternomics and more bad judgment. In between
hammering Dukakis on the Pledge -- and the furlough of convicted
murderer Willie Horton, another emblem -- the 1988 Bush campaign tied
Dukakis's judgment and his liberal economic program to Carter with
commercials that showed long unemployment lines as the song "I
Remember You" was crooned in the background. In 2004 the image of a
young John Kerry testifying against his comrades from Vietnam that
they "cut off ears" of the enemy, questions of whether he had tossed
his war medals away at a protest, and more morphed into the so-called
"Swift Boat" issue -- which like all its emblematic predecessors
beginning with Hanoi Jane -- became the bad judgment issue that sank
Kerry's presidential campaign.

This is not a presidential year -- but the values issue, a seeming
no-show at first -- has now jumped to center stage with the Ground
Zero Mosque. A Time magazine poll not only shows 61% of Americans --
not just New Yorkers -- opposing the Mosque, a full 70% have cited
the construction as "insult to the victims of the attacks on the
World Trade Center." Which is to say, an issue not of religious
freedom as its liberal proponents claim but -- yes -- bad judgment.

This gives opponents ample room to make the case that Mosque
supporters are showing not just bad judgment in terms of the feelings
of 9/11 families. But bad judgment in terms of national security. Bad
judgment in terms of financing connections between the Mosque and the
terrorists of Hamas and Iran.

And yes, most spectacularly, bad judgment as expressed by the support
of the President for the Mosque as delivered at a White House Ramadan
dinner. Bad judgment as expressed in his spectacularly unsuccessful
efforts to "reach out" to radical Islamicists with the likes of video
greetings to Iran, a timid response to freedom marchers in Tehran,
his inability or unwillingness to do one effective thing about the
building of an Iranian nuclear bomb, his insulting behavior towards
Israel's prime minister. And so on, and on. To the point that the
Time poll also says a full one-third of Americans polled believe
Muslims should be barred from the presidency -- with an astonishing
24% refusing to answer the question of whether they think President
Obama himself is Muslim, or confessing they were unsure.

Most importantly for Republicans, all of this bad judgment over the
Mosque issue easily translates into a connection with the bad
judgment that has sent the American economy into a tailspin. Near
double-digit unemployment and potentially nation-crippling national
debt -- not to mention mess that is ObamaCare -- are nothing but
poster children for bad economic judgment.

Don't think for a moment that the new emblem of this year's campaign
-- the Ground Zero Mosque and Obama's support for it -- will be used
as anything other than an illustration of colossal bad judgment
across the board. Bad judgment that will have a considerable negative
impact on an election that was already sending Democrats reaching for
the political smelling salts. Races for House, Senate and
gubernatorial seats from New York to Nevada are going to be affected
by this -- as Harry Reid's rush to separate from the Obama stance on
the Mosque issue so vividly demonstrates.

"There's somethin' happenin' here", as the old Buffalo Springfield
song used to have it.

What it is, is exactly clear. There's a man with a Mosque over there.

Hanoi Jane has morphed into Imam Obama.

Look out.

.