LaborFest
LaborFest was established in 1994 to institutionalize the history and culture of working people in an annual labor cultural, film and arts festival.
Thai Hara Factory Workers Struggle
www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJYlTg2AlYA
Dreaming the Impossible Dreams: Reading the Working-Class Ideals in the Hara Factory Workers Struggle (1975)
Rian Thai International Journal of Thai Studies
24 Pages Posted: 9 Nov 2021
Tul Israngura Na Ayudhya
Chulalongkorn University
Apisid Pan-in
Chulalongkorn University
Date Written: November 5, 2021
Abstract
The seizure and occupation of the Hara (Thailand) Factory by its own female workers in October 1975 has been recognized as a unique event in the history of labour disputes in Thailand. Scholars have viewed the factory occupation – later re-opened under the name ‘The United Labourers Factory’ – as a means to an end in order to bargain with the oppressive employer to give them better working conditions. This article studies the workers’ interviews recorded as part of the famous documentary Hara Factory Workers Struggle (1975) directed by Jon Uengphakorn et al. It treats their interviews as ‘text’ and ‘discourse’ in which their political imagination was embodied. Unlike precedent research, this essay argues that the newly established United Labourers Factory run by the workers themselves functioned as a laboratory of socialism, serving as a revolutionary model for a new mode of production. It aimed at rejecting human alienation, restoring human condition, and building labour solidarity with the wider world of the labouring poor. The United Labourers Factory was, arguably, a radical, concrete manifesto of a certain group of workers in modern Thai history.
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MUSIC FOR LIFE: HOW LEFTIST THAI FOLK MUSIC RADICALIZED A GENERATION
newbloommag.net/2020/03/07/music-for-life-thailand/
Avatar photoGABRIEL ERNST03/07/2020ARTS AND CULTUREENGLISHMARCH 2020MUSIC
by Gabriel Ernst
語言:
English
Photo Credit: Historical Photo
DEEP IN THE forested mountains in Thailand’s northeastern Phetchabun province on the edge of the Isaan region, on the corner of a bend, sits a small car park with a few deserted market stalls. Getting out the car we walk for a few minutes through the trees to find a rusted old bulldozer among a small cluster of dilapidated wooden huts.
This encampment is one of the only remnants of the communist insurgency which once raged across these hills. The thirty-year conflict brought both farmers and student intellectuals into the wild to fight together against the Thai state. After somberly wandering around the site we get back in our car. Turning on the ignition, the speakers blare Plerng Chiwit, translated as Music For Life, a genre of Thai leftist folk music written in these hills for the rebellion.
JIT PHUMISAK BY CARAVAN
The soft guitar and haunting vocals ring out: “He died in the outskirts of a jungle. His red blood spilled all over Isaan soil. Its red color will last forever. He died worthless, but his name lives on. People asked about him, craving to know more about Jit Phumisak. A philosopher and author who lit the candle for common people.”
“Feels spooky,” my friend mutters.
His Name Lives On
THE SONG BY the legendary Thai band Caravan recounts the life of Jit Phumisak, an intellectual and communist insurgent who, after writing his seminal history of the Thai state from a Marxist historical materialist perspective, was jailed for 6 years. Shortly after his release, he joined the communist insurgency in 1965 only to be killed a year later. Long after his death, Phumisak’s name lives on alongside his academic work and poetry, much of it written in prison.
In a dusty room at the back of the Thai Labour Museum in Bangkok, Jit’s pin (A lute-like instrument) sits behind glass, next to a portrait of a young Phumisak, immortalizing him as one of the heroes of working people. Opposite from Jit is the guitar belonging to Nga Caravan, the group’s lead singer, peppered with leftist stickers. The ties between Plerng Chiwit and the labor movement run deep.
“When I was young, my father would play Caravan on the way to school in the mornings,” Mean, a 26-year-old medical student tells me in the northern city of Chiang Mai, “I didn’t really understand it, but the music’s message stayed with me: About inequality, the suffering of the poor and collective action. They laid the foundations in my mind.” Mean, who now identifies as a communist, says if there was another insurgency he wouldn’t hesitate to join.
This was the case with almost every young leftist I spoke to researching this article, Caravan repeatedly came up as a radicalizing influence as well as the work of Jit Phumisak. Kay, 25 another leftist told me “We used to have the old Plerng Chiwit cassette tapes at home, I would listen to them when I was a young teenager and they really inspired me.” One eighteen-year-old radical I spoke to even had Caravan as his ringtone.
Four Decades Later
IN 1982, the Thai communist insurgency was over. It was a vicious and bloody war, with two decades of fighting primarily in the mountainous areas of northeastern Thailand. It all began when the rural peasants rose up in the 1960s with support from Vietnamese and Laos communist cadres funded by the Chinese government. In the 1970s, the movement was bolstered by a mass influx of radical middle-class student volunteers fleeing persecution in Bangkok following the 1976 student massacre at Thammasat University. This included the members of the band Caravan, as well as many other musicians, poets, and artists.
Speaking to one local in a remote village in Nan province, another insurgent hotspot, he told me the rebel musicians would be warmly welcomed by the locals when passing through. “Nga Caravan [the frontman of the band] would come through here. Many of the artists did. They used to hold small concerts for us. They would have a guitar and maybe a few other instruments and their voices. It really lifted the spirits of the local people.”
KON GAP KWAI BY CARAVAN
At its height in the late 1970s, the insurgency was considered a serious threat to the kingdom’s sovereignty. However, after the Chinese and Vietnamese governments stopped supporting the campaign, the movement began to fizzle out, and an amnesty deal in 1982 brought the fighters out of the forest and back into civilian life. Since then communism has become a niche ideology in the kingdom, with many of the former cadres giving up on Marxism and settling into the liberal coup-ridden politics of the Thai state.
The history of the insurgency is largely confined to academia, much of it inaccessible or unappealing to the average young person. Nevertheless, the music remains popular, particularly the works of Caravan.
Kon Gap Kwai
ONE SONG, in particular, is considered the anthem to the rebellion, the seminal “Kon Gap Kwai” (Man With Buffalo) by Caravan. The track, featuring traditional North Eastern instruments, artfully tells the tale of the symbiosis between farmer and buffalo—the everyday life of a poor peasant—before a call to arms against the Thai ruling elite.
“Man with man work the fields in the way of man. Man with buffalo work the fields In the way of the buffalo. Man’s work with buffalo is rooted deep in our history. They’ve worked together for an age, it works out alright.
“Come, let’s go now. Carry our plows and guns to the fields. Poverty and weariness endured for too long. Bitter tears held back for too long
“Here is the song of death, the death of our humanity. The rich eat our labor, set one against the other, as we peasants sink deeper in debt. They call us savages, we must destroy this system.”
The lyrics to the song remain well known across Isaan and particularly among farmers. Speaking to Somkhit Singsong, the original writer of Kon Gap Kwai, he told me, “The song and this kind of music remain popular today because ever since I wrote it the conditions for Thai people haven’t changed.”
Somkhit, who also wrote several novels, short stories, and poems, is now an elderly man living on a farm in the northeastern Khon Kaen province. He penned the legendary track for Caravan around 45 years ago while he was a student in Bangkok. At the time, his rural Isaan background made him an exception in the mostly middle-class world of urban university students. “After I wrote Kon Gap Kwai, I traveled home to visit my family. When I came back to Bangkok, the song was everywhere, it spread so fast. Not only with students but everyone was playing the song on protests and on strikes,” he tells me. “I think it was so popular because the content and form of the song is really easy to understand. People can relate to it, it penetrates their hearts.”
Somkhit didn’t stay in Bangkok to graduate, he dropped out of university to head back to his home village in Khon Kaen. There he joined the central committee for the Socialist Party of Thailand, rather than the more popular Communist Party of Thailand. It was in 1976 that Somkhit was finally driven to join the Communist Party insurgents in the forests. There he said he was a representative of the Socialist Party, a distinction he is keen to reinforce to this day. He still maintains he was never really a communist guerrilla but, either way, he spent five years in the forests with the insurgents fighting the Thai state.
Somkhit-Singsong-Credit-Facebook.jpgSOMKHIT SINGSONG. PHOTO CREDIT: SOMKHIT SINGSONG/FACEBOOK
“In the forest, there were so many bands that made up the insurgency, including Caravan. Soldiers and musicians, music was just another one of our weapons to fight against injustice, for the rights of the poor and the underclass,” he said. “You know, when you fight with your fists it hurts the body, when you fight with words it hurts the soul.”
As for the current state of Thai music, Somkhit sees little revolutionary messages in them. “I don’t like any new bands because they never play political songs. Today music is for entertainment only, not solidarity. Maybe in the future, it will happen, I’m optimistic,” he says. “I know my music is still popular because I can search it on Youtube and Facebook. It still connects. I have over 6,000 Facebook followers! But really people still connect to the music because after the revolution failed, everything has stayed the same.”
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Music For Life: How Leftist Thai Folk Music Radicalized a Generation | New Bloom Magazine
How leftist Thai folk music radicalized a generation and continues to inspire…
Park No-hae's 'Dawn of Labor' published in English in US
www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/culture/2024/05/135_373968.html
The original cover of poet Park No-hae's debut poetry collection 'Dawn of Labor' from 1984, alongside the English version released by the University of Hawaii Press. Courtesy of Slow Walk
Brother Anthony undertakes English translation of Park's debut poetry collection
By KTimes
The English version of "Dawn of Labor," the iconic poetry collection by Korean poet Park No-hae, has been published in the United States by the University of Hawaii Press, publisher Slow Walk said.
Originally published in 1984, the collection, written by a 27-year-old anonymous "faceless" factory worker at the time, shook Korean society with its powerful depiction of the working-class struggle. Despite being banned by the authoritarian Chun Doo-hwan regime, the collection sold over a million copies.
The raw and gritty lines, such as "For our hope and unity / We turn and pour / a cold glass of soju over our dawn-worn hearts," captured the rawness of the working-class struggle and became symbolic of labor literature in the 1980s.
The University of Hawaii Press, an Asia-Pacific research publishing house, expressed its desire to publish the poetry collection in English in 2021, according to Slow Walk.
Poet Park No-hae / Courtesy of Slow Walk
In 2001, during a student protest at Harvard University against low wages for campus workers, the poetry collection was read.
Scott Swaner, Harvard University's first doctor of Korean literature, who translated and shared the collection during the protest, said that among the students participating in the protest, "Longing" was the most popular poem from the collection.
The English translation of "Dawn of Labor" was undertaken by Brother Anthony, a professor emeritus at Sogang University.
A graduate of Oxford University, he settled in Korea in 1994 after meeting the late Cardinal Stephen Kim Sou-hwan and has translated literary works by Kim Dong-ri, Seo Jeong-ju and others into English.
In the preface of the English edition, the University of Hawaii Press emphasized that the translation marks a significant moment in world literature and labor movement history.
This article from the Hankook Ilbo, the sister publication of The Korea Times, was translated by generative AI and edited by The Korea Times.
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Park No-hae's 'Dawn of Labor' published in English in US
The English version of ‘Dawn of Labor,’ the iconic poetry collection by Korean poet Park No-hae, has been published in the United States by the University of Hawaii Press, publisher Slow Walk said.
Anne Feeney: Pittsburgh�s Hellraiser, memorial events planned for May 1st
Family & friends of renowned activist singer will host a concert at Mr Smalls Theater and a panel at Heinz History Center on May Day
RSVP for the concert or livestream and donate here:
RSVP + DONATE [] mrsmalls.com/events/anne-feeney/
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Friends and family of legendary Pittsburgh labor singer Anne Feeney have announced the first in-person events celebrating the life and work of �Pittsburgh�s hellraiser,� who passed away following complications from COVID-19 in 2021. The events, planned to coincide with May Day, will include a 12pm panel discussion on women in the Pittsburgh labor movement at Heinz History Center, and a memorial concert and gathering at Mr. Smalls Theater starting at 6pm.
The concert features a lineup of activist musicians carrying on Anne�s legacy of using music to �comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable,� including renowned folk duo Emma�s Revolution, the Pittsburgh Labor Choir, Pittsburgh�s own Liz Berlin (of Rusted Root), queer punk singer Evan Greer, local singer/songwriter Mike Stout, and more. The event is free with an RSVP, and there is a suggested donation of $25 or more to help cover costs.
The panel at Heinz History Center will begin at 12pm, and more details will be announced soon.
�People all around the world are still singing my mom�s songs, and there are so many people who loved her who haven�t gotten a chance yet to celebrate her in-person, because of the pandemic,� said Amy Sue Berlin, Anne�s daughter who is organizing the event with Anne�s longtime friend and touring partner Evan Greer. �My mom loved May Day, so we couldn�t think of a better way to honor her than with a big concert here in Pittsburgh, the city she loved.�
More about Anne Feeney and the legacy she leaves behind, from her obituary:
Utah Phillips named Anne Feeney �the best labor singer in North America.� Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine called her �a beacon of hope and solidarity for future generations.� Dar Williams said that Anne was �a true friend and folk sister.�
Starting in 1987 when she was inspired by Faith Petric to quit her job as an attorney and dedicate her life to touring and making music in support of workers Anne played more than 4,000 shows across North America and Europe. She performed for striking workers on countless picket lines, in union halls, and at some of the largest protests of the last century, including the protests that shut down the WTO in Seattle in 1999 and the March for Women�s Lives in 2004. Her performance at the WTO was featured in the documentary This is What Democracy Looks Like. She organized dozens of tours supporting various causes, including the Sing Out for Single Payer Healthcare tour in 2009, and raised tens of thousands of dollars for strike funds and progressive causes.
Anne�s anthem �Have You Been to Jail for Justice� has been sung by activists around the world, and was recorded by Peter, Paul, and Mary. She was a songwriter, but also a song collector who gave life to classic union hymns like Woody Guthrie�s �Union Maid,� and Joe Hill�s �Dump the Bosses off Your Back.� She released 12 albums over the course of her career, and shared stages with iconic artists like Pete Seeger, Loretta Lynn, John Prine, Toshi Reagon, The Mammals, Dan Bern, the Indigo Girls, and Billy Bragg. A lover of Irish music, she committed hundreds of Irish songs to memory, and led yearly singing tours of Ireland. She was a regular at Kerrville Folk Festival, Oregon Country Fair, and other major festivals.
Anne Feeney was born July 1, 1951, in Charleroi, PA, and lived in the Brookline neighborhood of Pittsburgh. She was influenced by her grandfather, William Patrick Feeney, who was a first-generation Irish immigrant, a mineworkers� organizer, and violinist who used music to support working-class organizing.
Anne performed publicly for the first time in 1969, singing a Phil Ochs song at a protest against the Vietnam War. In 1972, she was arrested at the Republican National Convention where she was protesting Richard Nixon�s re-nomination for president. That same year, Anne attended the 2nd Annual Conference on Women and the Law. Inspired by the group that founded �Women Organized Against Rape� in Philadelphia, she began a campaign for a rape crisis center in Pittsburgh. The work begun by her committee evolved into Pittsburgh Action Against Rape, which still provides services to survivors of sexual assault in the Pittsburgh area. She served on the executive board of the Pennsylvania chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW), and as the president of the Pittsburgh Musicians� Union, the first and only woman to ever hold that position.
Link to the facebook event page:
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Celebrating Pittsburgh’s Hellraiser Anne Feeney | Mr Smalls
Street parking is available along Lincoln Ave and on the surrounding streets. Valet parking will be available for select shows in the future. Check back for more info.
2024 Reelworks Festival
Wednesday, April 24, 2024 • 7 PM
Glen Schaller ¡Presente!
SEIU 521 Union Hall, 517 Mission St, Santa Cruz
Hybrid event: Register to join virtually at bit.ly/RW24Apr24
State of the Unions in California
Schaller.jpg
In his classic mild-mannered style—at the same time authoritative and humorous—Glen Schaller speaks at the Penny University. Though the video is dated, Glen maintained his passion for working people’s rights to the recent end of his life, and the issues of class struggle he spoke of in 2012 are current today. He is still teaching us.
Audience sharing of encounters with Glen follows the video.
Stream the full video of Glen Schaller at Penny University on YouTube.
Thursday, April 25, 2024 • 7 PM
Understanding Gaza Series
Resource Center for Nonviolence, 612 Ocean St, Santa Cruz
Hybrid event: Register to join virtually at bit.ly/RW24Apr25
Wrestling Jerusalem
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(Dylan Kussman, 2016, 90 min, USA)
Writer-actor Aaron Davidman conjures a host of different characters while seeking answers to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He takes a multidimensional journey into the heart of the Middle East, and the intersection of politics, identity and spiritual yearning. He embodies and gives voice to 17 different characters on all sides of the existential divide – deftly moving between male and female, Jewish and Muslim, Israeli and Arab – modeling what it takes truly to bear witness through the eyes of the other, challenging long-held beliefs with sharp and unblinking observation.
Music: Mark Levy, singer, songwriter.
Co-sponsors: Resource Center for Nonviolence, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom-Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz for Bernie, Palestine Justice Committee.
Watch the trailer for Wrestling Jerusalem on YouTube.
Friday, April 26, 2024 • 7 PM
418 Project Theater, 155 River St, Santa Cruz
Youth v. Gov
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(Christi Cooper, 2020, 110 min, USA)
A powerful climate documentary, followed by up-to-the-minute info on the current status of the groundbreaking Juliana vs. United States case brought by 20 young people that rests on this question: Do we have a legal right to a safe climate?
Court case update and conversations moderated by Ami Chen Mills.
Sponsored by Citizens’ Climate Lobby
Saturday, April 27, 2024 • 4 PM
Mid-County Senior Center, 829 Bay Ave, Capitola
Being 80
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(Bob Gliner, 2024, 56 min, Santa Cruz County, USA)
This local documentary was shown on PBS in February and showcases a diverse range of vibrant, unique and memorable 80 year olds still finding meaning in their lives through long lived career choices contradicting the stereotype that their minds and bodies are obsolete in a world where only younger generations can make the world work.
Speakers: Bob Gliner, filmmaker; John Brown Childs, professor emeritus; Cathy Cress, gerontologist.
Music by Patti Maxine.
Saturday, April 27, 2024 • 7 PM
Resource Center for Nonviolence, 612 Ocean St, Santa Cruz
Register to join virtually at bit.ly/RW24Apr27
Stripped For Parts: American Journalism on the Brink
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(Rick Goldsmith, 2023, 99 min, USA)
Investigative reporter Julie Reynolds, Denver Post editorialist Chuck Plunkett, and a handful of others, backed by the NewsGuild union, go toe-to-toe with the faceless Alden Global Capital in a battle to save and rebuild local journalism across America. Who will control the future of America's news ecosystem: Wall Street billionaires concerned only with profit, or those who see journalism as an essential public service and the lifeblood of our democracy?
Speakers: Rick Goldsmith, filmmaker and Julie Reynolds, journalist.
Watch the trailer for Stripped For Parts on Vimeo.
Sunday, April 28, 2024 • 7 PM
Workers Memorial Day
Resource Center for Nonviolence, 612 Ocean St, Santa Cruz
Register to join virtually at bit.ly/RW24Apr28
Into The Weeds
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(Jennifer Baichwal, 2022, 97 min, USA)
A powerful story of a former Bay Area school district groundskeeper who was exposed on the job to the cancer-causing herbicide glyphosate. After he got cancer, a group of lawyers join together and successfully sued Monsanto.
Panelists: Mark Weller, Yanely Martinez, Kathleen Kilpatrick, and Woody Rehanek, pesticide safety activists with Californians for Pesticide Reform and Safe Ag, Safe Schools.
Watch the trailer for Into The Weeds on YouTube.
Tuesday, April 30, 2024 • 7 PM
Resource Center for Nonviolence, 612 Ocean St, Santa Cruz
Hybrid Event: Register to join virtually at bit.ly/RW24Apr30
International Shorts
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The Choice: a fable
(Laura Lewis-Barr, 2023, 2 min, USA)
A group of Chickens debate an important choice. Adapted from a socialist fable.
Meeting Human Needs
(Liz Gibson-DeGroote & Paula Krasiun-Winsel, 2022, 19 min, Canada)
Fight to protect pubic services in Saskatchewan. Paean to Tommy Douglas, Premier from 1944-1961.
$20 Gift Card
(Thalia Drori Ramirez, 2023, 8 min, USA)
What is the value of human labor, especially when that labor is performed by Latinos? A $20 Christmas bonus after a year of horrible working conditions?
The City That Works: Portland City Laborers & The Fight For Fair Wages
(Anna Lueck, 2023, 10 min, USA)
City of Portland essential workers who keep Portland clean and functional, including park rangers, wastewater treatment plant operators, and road maintenance crews, go on strike due to lack of compensation for the increasing demands and dangers of their jobs.
Tiburcio Parrott – Faces Of St. Helena
(Alex Lyman, 2024, 3 min, USA)
The person who overturned the Chinese Exclusion Act.
Fruits of Resistance
(Aline Juárez, 2023, 22 min, Spain)
Mostly immigrant agricultural laborers in huge greenhouses in Andauzia, Spain, organize for pay and respect.
Filmmakers Panel: Laura Lewis-Barr, Paula Krasiun-Winsel, Suzanne Gallant, Thalia Drori Ramirez, Anna Lueck, Nancy LaFortune, and Aline Juárez.
Wednesday, May 1, 2024
International Workers Day
DIY Labor Day Parade on Pacific Avenue in Santa Cruz
Thursday, May 2, 2024 • 7 PM
Understanding Gaza Series
Capitola Branch Library, 2005 Wharf Rd, Capitola
Birth of a Conflict, Episode 1
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(Avi Merkado Ettedgui & Yaron Niski, 2022, 55 min, Israel)
This 3-part documentary, informed by newly declassified British diplomatic files, sheds new and surprising light on the British Mandate, the 30 years of British rule in Palestine from 1917 to 1948.
Episode 1: A Conflict Requires a Territory. The British Empire’s arrival in the Middle-East complicated the region by pitting ethnic groups against each other through well-practiced divide-and-conquer colonial management techniques.
Discussion led by UCSC professor Bruce Thompson.
Sponsored by the Santa Cruz Jewish Film Festival.
Friday, May 3, 2024 • 7 PM
Resource Center for Nonviolence, 612 Ocean St, Santa Cruz
Freeway Fighters
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Divided Highways: The Interstates and the Transformation of American Life
(Lawrence Hott & Tom Lewis, 1997, 87 min, USA)
America’s desire for freedom and the open road resulted in the construction of thousands of highways during the Eisenhower administration. Through interviews, archival footage and photography, America’s interstate highway system is revealed to have shaped every aspect of American life and affected the nation’s history for better and for worse.
Speakers: Katherine Beiers and Gary Patton.
Sponsors: Sierra Club, Campaign for Sustainable Transportation.
Watch the trailer for Divided Highways on YouTube.
Saturday, May 4, 2024 • 1:30 PM
Mt Calvary Lutheran Church, 2402 Cabrillo College Dr, Soquel
Labor Song Circle
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Aileen Vance brings her “Rise Up! Community Song Circle” to the festival with “We Do the Work!” a program of labor songs to celebrate International Workers Day. Aileen, along with special guests Julie Olsen Edwards and Bonnie Lockhart will be performing and leading the songs of working people past and present. Together we are mighty; all organizing goes better when we sing together!
Song Leaders: Aileen Vance, Julie Olsen Edwards and Bonnie Lockhart.
Sunday, May 5, 2024 • 7 PM
Understanding Gaza Series
Resource Center for Nonviolence, 612 Ocean St, Santa Cruz
Hybrid event: Register to join virtually at bit.ly/RW24May5
Israelism
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(Erin Axelman & Sam Eilertsen, 2024, 84 min, USA & Israel)
Portrays the heavy socialization of young people in many Zionist households in the US and Israel, as told by a few who later questioned that world view.
Prerecorded Q&A with activist Simone Zimmerman followed by live discussion.
Music by Robby & Friends.
Co-sponsors: Resource Center for Nonviolence, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom-Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz for Bernie, Palestine Justice Committee.
Watch the trailer for Israelism on YouTube.
Monday, May 6, 2024 • 6:30 PM
Resource Center for Nonviolence, 612 Ocean St, Santa Cruz
6:30 PM Santa Cruz Peace Chorale
7:00 PM Film
The 9 Lives of Barbara Dane
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(Maureen Gosling, Jed Riff & Nina Menéndez, 2023, 108 min, USA)
An underground history of a singer-agitator previously overlooked by many storytellers of American history. Dane’s unbending principles guide her through notoriety, obscurity, and finally, music legend.
Speakers: Maureen Gosling & Jed Riffe, filmmakers.
Music; Santa Cruz Peace Chorale.
Watch the trailer for The 9 Lives of Barbara Dane on YouTube.
Wednesday, May 8, 2024 • 7 PM
Understanding Gaza Series
SEIU 521 Union Hall, 517 Mission St, Santa Cruz
Hybrid event: Register to join virtually at bit.ly/RW24May8
Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza
(Caryl Churchill, 2009, 10 min, UK)
Local actors who are members of Santa Cruz Jews for a Free Palestine offer a dramatic reading of this short play spanning seven decades of Jewish/Israeli history, written by British playwright Caryl Churchill, known for addressing the abuse of power in her plays. Written in 2009 in response to Israel’s 2008/9 assault on the Gaza Strip, the play was blasted by critics and press and labeled anti-Semitic, yet opened to full houses at the Royal Court in London.
Several versions of the play are posted on YouTube.
5 Broken Cameras
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(Guy Davidi & Emad Burnat, 2011, 94 min, Palestine)
A Palestinian farmer’s chronicle of his village of Bil’in in the West Bank including their nonviolent resistance to the building of a separation barrier cutting of their lands for a settlement and the repressive actions of the Israeli army.
Audience discussion follows the film.
Co-sponsors: Resource Center for Nonviolence, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom-Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz for Bernie, Palestine Justice Committee.
Watch the trailer for 5 Broken Cameras on YouTube.
Thursday, May 9, 2024 • 7 PM
Understanding Gaza Series
Capitola Branch Library, 2005 Wharf Rd, Capitola
Birth of a Conflict, Episode 2
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(Avi Merkado Ettedgui & Yaron Niski, 2022, 55 min, Israel)
Episode 2: The story of how the Jewish-Arab conflict turned from a territorial quarrel between two national movements into a religious conflict. During this period, the Great Arab Revolt against British rule was crushed with brutal collective punishment including indiscriminate bombing and house destruction.
Discussion led by UCSC professor Bruce Thompson.
Sponsored by the Santa Cruz Jewish Film Festival.
Friday, May 10, 2024 • 7 PM
Workers of the World
Virtual event: Register at bit.ly/RW24May10
Drifting
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(Somnur Vardar, 2023, 67 min, Turkey)
While watching the dramatic changes in urban texture, we meet two young Kurdish cousins working in construction, just like their fathers and grandfathers did for decades. They both dream of becoming teachers, wanting to break the vicious cycle of construction work. From dormitories to May Day street protests, we get glimpses of their life, hearing their stories of struggle, resistance, families, their hopes and dreams.
Speaker: Somnur Vardar, filmmaker.
Watch the trailer for Drifting on Vimeo.
Saturday, May 11, 2024 • 2 PM
Felton Branch Library, 6121 Gushee St, Felton
Being 80
Being80.jpeg
(Bob Gliner, 2024, 56 min, Santa Cruz County, USA)
This local documentary was shown on PBS in February and showcases a diverse range of vibrant, unique and memorable 80 year olds still finding meaning in their lives through long lived career choices contradicting the stereotype that their minds and bodies are obsolete in a world where only younger generations can make the world work.
Speakers: Bob Gliner, filmmaker; Cathy Cress, gerontologist.
Music by Patti Maxine.
Saturday, May 11, 2024 • 7 PM
Resource Center for Nonviolence, 612 Ocean St, Santa Cruz
UNION
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(Stephen Maing & Brett Story, 2023, 104 min, USA)
A group of current and former Amazon workers at a warehouse in New York City’s Staten Island challenges one of the world’s largest corporations in a successful unionization drive.
Speakers:
Watch the trailer for UNION on Mubi.
Thursday, May 16, 2024 • 7 PM
Understanding Gaza Series
Capitola Branch Library, 2005 Wharf Rd, Capitola
Birth of a Conflict, Episode 3
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(Avi Merkado Ettedgui & Yaron Niski, 2022, 55 min, Israel)
Episode 3: The Fall of Empires. The downfall of the Arab national movement was concurrent with the rise of the Zionist movement as it made its journey towards creating a Jewish state, all in a decade marked by World War II and the collapse of the British Empire.
Discussion led by UCSC professor Bruce Thompson.
Sponsored by the Santa Cruz Jewish Film Festival.
Saturday, May 18, 2024 • 7 PM
Resource Center for Nonviolence, 612 Ocean St, Santa Cruz
Hybrid event: Register to join virtually at bit.ly/RW24May18
A Thousand Pines
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(Sebastián Díaz, 2023, 77 min, Mexico & USA)
In this tale of labor and family that shines a light on the precarity of temporary work visas, Raymundo Morales leads a crew of workers who have to make the challenging decision to leave their families in rural Mexico to plant commercial pine forests in the United States.
Speakers: Sebastián Díaz, filmmaker, and Angeles Moreno, graphic designer.
Watch the trailer for A Thousand Pines on YouTube.
Sunday, May 19, 2024 • 2 PM
Urban Arts Collaborative, 21 Soledad St Suite C, Salinas
A Thousand Pines
(Sebastián Díaz, 2023, 77 min, Mexico & USA)
(See film description for previous event.).
Speakers: Sebastián Díaz, filmmaker
Watch the trailer for A Thousand Pines on YouTube.
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San Francisco artists maintain a creative haven for 40 years—at a radioactive site
sfstandard.com/2024/04/27/san-francisco-hunters-point-shipyard-artists/
Artist Malik Seneferu in his studio at the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard. | Source: Jason Henry for The Standard
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By Julie Zigoris
Published Apr. 27, 2024 • 6:00am
Broken windows. Radioactive waste. No heat or running water. These don’t sound like the ingredients for a creative haven, yet they are exactly what hundreds of artists have endured at the Hunters Point Shipyard for the past four decades.
“It’s quiet, and it’s spacious, and it’s cheap,” said Robin Denevan of the post-industrial spread perched on San Francisco’s southeastern waterfront. Inspired by waves, Denevan works with caustic and enamel to make durable artworks of shoreline and horizon.
With more than 200 artists working in nearly every medium—from painting to plasterwork, garment making to photography—the almost 500-acre shipyard constitutes one of the country’s largest creative communities.
A man stands in a boutique with racks of clothing, jeans above, and shirts in neutral tones.
Roman Guillen, who runs Fine Art Streetwear at the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, makes customized, wearable art garments to make fine art enjoyable and accessible. | Source: Jason Henry for The Standard
A cluttered array of used paint tubes, palettes, and brushes, caked with colorful dried paint.
Paints are piled in the studio of artist Randy Beckelheimer at the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard. | Source: Jason Henry for The Standard
“It’s an island of artists in San Francisco,” said Barbara Ockel, the president and CEO of the Shipyard Trust for the Arts. “It really feels like a community, and they feel privileged to be here.”
To celebrate the last 40 years of their unlikely existence, participating artists inhabiting these oversized warehouses will throw open their doors this weekend to the public with tours, two food courts, a beer garden and live jazz. (Admission is free and includes free parking with RSVP.)
Attendees will have the opportunity to snake their way through dozens of open studios, meet artists and participate in activities like pulling their own prints with Marti McKee, who makes posters for marches and demonstrations.
The artists have taken up shop in a too-often forgotten southeast corner of the city, one with a thriving Black community and a storied—and troubling—past. The U.S. Navy, who bought the shipyard in 1941 and assembled the atomic bomb it dropped on Hiroshima there, left the site littered with radioactive waste.
“No one knew the consequences of it,” Ockel said.
A person stands in a green field with industrial buildings in the background, under an overcast sky.
Barbara Ockel, president of Shipyard Trust of the Arts, stands in the Hunters Point Shipyard. | Source: Jason Henry for The Standard
An artist in a paint-splattered coat stands in a studio surrounded by vibrant paintings and art supplies.
Charles Unger is a current artist in residence at the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, continuing the legacy that Malik Seneferu began in 1995 when he became the first participant in the program. | Source: Jason Henry for The Standard
Soil samples are still being tested today, and air monitors were installed just a few months ago. Yet Ockel said none of the recent radiation detected has been in harmful quantities since the decontamination process, which has been ongoing for decades.
“Artists have walked around with Geiger counters,” Ockel said. “But they’ve found nothing.”
A hulking crane—taller than the Statue of Liberty and as heavy as the Eiffel Tower—remains a permanent reminder of that era, as the gantry crane was constructed in 1947 to switch out gun turrets on battleships at some of the largest dry docks in the world.
The artists assembled in the shipyard use the landscape as both inspiration and subject matter. Artist Randy Beckelheimer, who has been working in his studio overlooking the bay for three decades, nearly exclusively paints images of the shipyard and surrounding neighborhood.
An artist stands in a studio with a large abstract red painting and a realistic car painting. He wears splattered clothes.
Artist Randy Beckelheimer, who uses the shipyard as an inspirational landscape, stands in his studio at the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard on Tuesday. | Source: Jason Henry for The Standard
A dilapidated yellow building with graffiti, surrounded by overgrown grass and palm trees, under a cloudy sky.
Many of the buildings are too dilapidated to be inhabited at the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, and others are in the process of being torn down. | Source: Jason Henry for The Standard
“If I’d kept my old studio, I’d still be painting red squares,” he said, referring to the abstract style of works he made in his previous space on nearby Yosemite Avenue.
Artist Stacey Carter paints the shipyard and uses large-scale archival photographs to create custom art pieces. She’s also become an informal historian of the site, offering walking tours and sharing photographs with family members whose relatives worked at the military outpost but never knew about—or understood—their parents’ jobs.
“Either they weren’t allowed to talk about it or they just didn’t know,” Carter said.
The artist community first took root in the 1970s, when a commercial shipyard leased the site and began subletting space. Sculptor Jacques Terzian rented a studio in the 1980s and began recruiting other artists to join him.
Some of those original artists are still there, like Lorna Kollmeyer, who runs the last plaster shop in San Francisco. “The only reason we’re still here is because of the shipyard,” she said.
A woman holding two dogs stands in a workshop surrounded by plaster sculptures and molding tools.
Lorna Kollmeyer inside her studio at Lorna Kollmeyer Ornamental Plaster at the Hunters Point Shipyard. Her shop, which creates authentic plaster designs for the city's many historic homes, is the last of its kind in San Francisco. | Source: Jason Henry for The Standard
A vintage green car parked in front of a building with colorful banners and a sign "OPEN STUDIOS".
Building 104 houses artists' studios at the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard. | Source: Jason Henry for The Standard
Realizing they had created a white community of artists within a Black neighborhood (“It didn’t feel right,” Ockel said), the Shipyard Trust for the Arts began its artist-in-residence program in 1995 to draw in creators from the surrounding community.
The first participant in the program, Malik Seneferu, had never heard of the concept of an artist in residence. “I thought I was going to live there,” he said. Seneferu—who calls himself a renaissance artist, proficient in every genre—has since made 10,000 pieces of art at the shipyard, continuing to rent a studio after his residency was complete. Growing up in Hunters Point, nicknamed “The Hill,” he has a deep connection to the topography, which he uses in his series “From the Hill and Beyond.”
As a teenager, Seneferu would watch the sunrise from his bedroom and dream of what could be beyond the hills. “I’ve always loved imaginative landscapes,” he said.
Person holds a sign with a dog and text "VOTE HIM OUT – DUMP PUTIN'S POODLE" among other political posters.
Artist Marti McKee started making prints for protests and marches during the Trump era, saying "there's no shortage of material." She holds the first poster she made, which she said had a wonderful reception—except that people were concerned it might offend poodles. | Source: Jason Henry for The Standard
Aged green wooden door with cracked paint, metal knob, and keyhole.
Paint chips away on doors entering building 115 at the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard. | Source: Jason Henry for The Standard
The site has long been fruitful for imagination. The late sculptor Richard Serra’s father worked as pipe fitter in the shipyard, and he took his 4-year-old son to work to watch the launch of a ship. A young Serra, who would later become renowned for his hulking metal scupltures, watched the ship's weight transform from massive on land to buoyant at sea. Looking back, he said that “all the raw material I needed is contained in the reserve of this memory.”
In a city as expensive as San Francisco, where artists seem to be squeezed out of every nook and cranny, the shipyard remains a singular place for creators to be marooned.
“We’ve been very fortunate to have our own little torpedo training center,” Kollmeyer said.
Shipyard Open Studios
Address
451 Galvez Ave.
Date and time
April 27 and 28, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Website
Link to RSVP
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Get marooned on this creative island—a last haven for artists in San Francisco
They fought radiation, eviction and deterioration to maintain what is likely the largest artist community in the country.
The Quality of Mercy in Petaluma: A Case Study
www.counterpunch.org/2024/04/26/the-quality-of-mercy-in-petaluma-a-case-study/
APRIL 26, 2024
BY PETER BYRNEFacebookTwitterRedditEmailatoa-print-icon.png
Police guard singing ceasefire supporters outside City Hall. Photo by Peter Byrne.
How a Jewish-supported civic resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza was killed
The quality of mercy is not strained;
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
–William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, 1596
Since October, the legislative bodies of Chicago, Seattle, Detroit, Minneapolis, Eugene, Long Beach, Saint Louis, Atlanta, Akron, Albany, and Wilmington have passed resolutions calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. These cities were joined in Northern California by Richmond, Oakland, San Francisco, Cotati, Sacramento, and Davis. But, the city councils of Berkeley, Sebastopol, and Petaluma rejected even considering proposed ceasefire resolutions, as did boards of supervisors in Sonoma and Marin counties.
Why have some local governments in Northern California passed ceasefire in Gaza resolutions, while others have not? Demographics? Community resistance? Lobbying?
In Petaluma, such a proposed civic resolution was killed after the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Bay Area, the New York City-based The Lawfare Project, the B’Nai Israel Jewish Center of Petaluma, and a Jewish city councilor cowed city officials by conflating petitioning for a ceasefire in Gaza with antisemitism and terrorism.
The case of Petaluma offers an example of how national and local organizations supporting Israel’s destruction of Gaza are able to squash a Jewish- and Palestinian-supported ceasefire resolution. Public records and interviews with players on all sides during a period of six months reveal how a popular call for humanitarianism and mercy was constrained in Petaluma, and how that could happen in your town, too.
Composed of a highly educated, affluent population of 60,000, Petaluma votes majority Democrat. The city has legislated a minimum wage of $17.45, and the mostly white homeowners tend to pay more than that amount to mostly Spanish-speaking house cleaners and landscapers. In 2017, the city council passed a resolution refusing to implement draconian federal immigration laws. There is no statute, rule, or custom prohibiting the council from weighing in on any matter whatsoever, including football and Little League awards, global climate change, wars, revolutions, genocides, or the tortured croons of Taylor Swift.
As the war on Gaza ineluctably worsened in October and November, scores of Jewish and Palestinian Petalumans organized peace vigils and rallies calling for a city council resolution in support of a multilateral ceasefire. Petaluma Mayor Kevin McDonnell declined to use his prerogative to put a ceasefire resolution on the agenda for a vote. But, since two council members can together create an agenda item, Dennis Pocekay, a medical doctor, and John Shribbs, a retired high school science teacher, offered to propose a resolution calling for cessation of hostilities by all sides, repatriation of hostages and prisoners, and allowing humanitarian aid to freely flow into Gaza.
The two councilors met with Jewish and Palestinian ceasefire activists and, at McDonnell’s insistence, with Rabbi Shalom Bochner of the B’Nai Israel synagogue to negotiate the wording of a resolution. Meanwhile, Vice Mayor Janice Cader Thompson, a retired dental hygienist, privately lobbied her colleagues on the council against supporting such a resolve—apparently in violation of California’s Brown Act which prohibits non-public discussion of such matters by councilors.
But first, some history.
Gold, chickens, shtetl socialism!
In 1849, tens of thousands of gold-seekers flooded into California, displacing and murdering Indigenous people and ruining ecological systems. From the destruction of the Land rose an entrepreneurial class. Merchants sold mining equipment, Levi’s, tinned beans, and cheap whiskey to the itinerant miners, most of whom, finding no riches for their grubby toil, gravitated into industrial and agricultural work.
The urbanizing populations of the San Francisco Bay Area were fed by cattle and dairy ranches in Marin and Sonoma counties. Serviced by a muddy, tidal slough draining into the Bay, Petaluma merchants transported untold tons of butter and eggs from surrounding ranches to San Francisco and beyond. Mansions were built.
In the early years of the 20th century, Petaluma lit up as a beacon for socialist-minded Jews fleeing pogroms in the Ukraine and counter-revolutionary violence in Russia. Yiddish speaking immigrants established poultry farms in the fertile valleys of Sonoma County. They organized themselves as political “progressives,” centering at the Jewish Community Center on Western Avenue, (a few hundred feet from Hermann Sons Hall, the club for German immigrants, which was to be a locus of Nazi bund activities in the 1930s).
Beginning in 1974, Kenneth L. Khan recorded 200 interviews with first and second generations of the politically energized immigrants in Petaluma, published in 1993 as Comrades and Chicken Ranchers: The Story of a Jewish Community.
* Fran Rubenstein Ginsburg recalled, “There were maybe 100 families of Yiddish-speaking people on little chicken ranches. [Our parents] talked about Zionism and communism and socialism and Yiddish culture as if we were in New York. Petaluma had a national and international reputation in those days. ‘We were on the map,’ my father would say, ‘because we are an organized Jewish farming community.’”
* Yossele Garner said, “The bug hit me my first year in America, I became a proletarian socialist. […] Zionism at that time meant a kibbutz. […] I believed that the salvation for the Jewish people is to have our own socialist country. […] I never made it to a kibbutz. Instead, I found a shtetl in California.”
In August 1935, as Depression gripped America, migrant apple pickers in Sebastopol struck for better wages. The strike was openly supported by many Jewish chicken ranchers, including Ben Hochman, who was known to quote Karl Marx and Torah in the same sentence. The Chamber of Commerce and American Legion organized a violent response to the strike—workers and supporters were terrorized by vigilante apple farm-owners and deputy sheriffs. One night, Hochman’s farmhouse near Petaluma was surrounded by a gun-toting lynch mob; law enforcers were summoned by phone, in vain, since deputies were already there. The masked vigilantes shot a tear gas bomb into Hochman’s house, seized him when he ran out to escape the gas, and, rope in hand, ordered him to kiss the American flag. When Hochman bravely refused, his neighbors stripped him naked, cut off his hair, poured hot tar on his body, doused him with chicken feathers.
Hochman survived to testify in a criminal trial against some of his assailants. They were all acquitted, Hochman told Kahn, because “the defense lawyers turned it into a case against communism.”
Was the tar and feathering antisemitic? According to Yossele Garner, “It was an attack on Jewish social consciousness [and] people in the Jewish community took it as a warning.”
Children of pioneer Jewish chicken ranchers were sometimes called “Christ-killer” in school, especially those who opposed America’s war on Vietnam. Antisemitism was always a real and present danger in Sonoma County. But, as the descendants of the chicken farming families began moving away, and urbanized Jews moved into Petaluma, the Jewish Community Center lost its political energy. According to the official history of B’nai Israel Jewish Center, “In the 1950s the Center evolved into more of a synagogue than a place for different groups to meet.”
In Kahn’s history, Basha Singerman elaborated, “There were reactionaries in the Jewish community who couldn’t stand the progressive movement during the time of McCarthy and the Cold War. They threw us out [of the Jewish Community Center]. Some of them were fascists. Actually, some of them were afraid the government will persecute all the Jewish people if the progressives met at the Jewish center. It’s a terrible thing that a small Jewish community and a small town should be divided. “
Seventy years later, those divisions persist.
Sorrow and safety
On October 13, B’Nai Israel’s Rabbi Bochner and city officials organized a multi-faith “peace vigil” in Walnut Park with police protection. A press release advertised “A gathering to pray for peace, and mourn the death of so many Israeli and Palestinian children and civilians, and an opportunity for everyone, including local faith and civic leaders, to stand with their Jewish neighbors and share a positive message of peace.”
For the record, there are more than a few Palestinian families in Petaluma, and several Palestinian owned businesses, but from the outset city officials looked toward Bochner for crafting permissible civic responses.
The Petaluma City Council meeting of October 16, 2023 began with McDonnell, a civil engineering consultant, ordering the crowd to stand and face the American flag and recite the Pledge of Allegiance to One Nation Under God. The mayor dedicated the meeting to “the victims of atrocities in Israel and Gaza.” The main topic of the meeting was planting trees, however. The record does not reveal any public comments on Israel or Gaza. But, because at the previous council meeting, white supremacist and anti-Jewish trolls had Zoom-bombed, McDonnell prohibited Zoom attendees from making public comments. Mike Healey, a lawyer serving his 26th year on the council, objected to the censorship of all online public comment. Zoom bombers can be specifically disconnected.
Two days later, Cader Thomson reprimanded Healey by email. “Mike, I was alarmed with your aggressive behavior to open Zoom audience participation. You are a privileged white Christian male: You are not on the target list. As an outed Jewish elected official, I am alarmed at your lack of knowledge, understanding and compassion for those of us who’ve personally experienced antisemitism. Jewish elected officials throughout Northern California continue to be targets from white supremacist groups; and they are not going away. Our safety should be a priority. Demanding Zoom audience participation shows a lack of understanding of how dangerous these people are. This is not the time to play politics.” This said a politician elected to the council in 2022.
Petaluma is not a Mississippi Goddamn, but it does have racial issues. In early November, a Palestinian owned deli in downtown Petaluma was vandalized with racist graffiti. Racist postcards were reportedly mailed to city council members. In years prior, flurries of antisemitic fliers were distributed around town by a local white supremacist, John Eugene Minadeo, who has relocated to a presumably more ideologically convivial Florida.
According to FBI statistics through 2022, assault and battery, vandalism, and intimidation, including by cyber methods, are the most common types of hate crimes, defined “as committed on the basis of the victim’s perceived or actual race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or disability.” By far, most hate crimes in the FBI database are directed against African Americans by whites. In recent years, the reporting of crimes targeting Asians, Jews, Muslims, trans people and lesbians is on the rise. In Sonoma County, however, law enforcement is the worst hate crime offender with a history of vigilantism and lynchings and a track record of harassing and killing Blacks and Latinos because of the color of their skin.
Coalitions emerge
On November 8, Bochner and four rabbis and 14 officers of local Jewish organizations coalescing as Sonoma County Jewish Community Leadership issued a statement “Regarding the War in Israel and Gaza.” They called upon Hamas to return hostages and for the “US administration to work with the Israeli government to minimize civilian casualties in Gaza […] and for continued humanitarian aid.”
Also on November 8, Sonoma County for Palestine demonstrated at the Petaluma office of congressperson Jared Huffman, who strongly opposed a ceasefire. Two days before the demonstration, Huffman had issued an apologyto “my friends in the Jewish Community” for voting against a bill proposed by Burgess Owens, a Trump supporting Republican representative from Utah that had condemned Students for Justice in Palestine and professors at major universities as Hamas supporters.
The Owens resolution subsequently supported by Huffman falsely accused universities of “the glorification of violence and usage of antisemitic rhetoric [which] creates a hostile learning and working environment for Jewish students, faculty, and staff.” Huffman explained in the local press that he now regretted not voting for the MAGA bill because it “was seen by many in the Jewish Community as a test of where members of Congress stand on growing scourge of college antisemitism.” They needn’t have worried. Huffman consistently supports arming Israel. His largest two campaign funders are Honeywell, a weapons manufacturer, and J Street, an Israeli-centric lobby that opposes calls for a Gaza ceasefire that do not echo conditions set by the theocratic government of Israel.
The Jewish lobby reaches out
On November 28, on behalf of the city council, Cader Thomson presented a proclamation at Sonoma State University honoring the 40th anniversary of the Holocaust and Genocide Lecture Series. “The City of Petaluma joins communities across our nation in raising awareness about the importance of Holocaust and Genocide education,” it proclaimed. Of note, that organization studies genocidal violence in Rwanda, Cambodia, and Bosnia, but not Palestine. Also of note, as the existence of the proclamation reveals, the council weighs in on moral and international issues outside its legislative authority.
On November 30, the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Bay Area (JCRC Bay Area) emailed an “Action Alert” to Cader Thompson (“Dear Janice,” it began), which she forwarded to Pocekay. According to the paranoic Alert, “On Monday, over 30 million people witnessed the unprecedented chaos that took place as the Oakland City Council considered a resolution about the Israel Hamas War. The meeting featured over five hours of public comment plagued by antisemitic jeering, the perpetuation of conspiracies, and a general lack of decorum. And now, San Francisco’s Supervisor Dean Preston is working with the same antisemitic groups to introduce a similar resolution of the Board of Supervisors meeting next Tuesday.”
The Action Alert advised Cader Thompson that governmental bodies considering the ceasefire issue must, “Condemn the October 7th massacre, call for the immediate release of all hostages in Gaza, acknowledged that Hamas is an impediment to any sustained ceasefire, and support on-the-ground efforts to bring Israelis and Palestinians closer to a shared future of coexistence and prosperity.” The Alert did not specify how such a rosy future might emerge from a pulverized Gaza and the illegal Israeli settlements of the Occupied Territory of the West Bank.
According to its website, “JCRC Bay Area is the largest collective voice of the Jewish community across San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin, Sonoma, Napa, Alameda and Contra Costa Counties.” Operations of the Jewish Community Relations Council are largely funded by several family run foundations, including Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, and the Jewish CommunityFederation of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin & Sonoma.
JCRC Bay Area claims that according to a poll of its membership, “The Bay Area has become increasingly hostile toward Jews following the October 7 attack by Hamas and the subsequent Israel-Hamas war.” However, the non-randomized poll is anecdotal and statistically invalid. It collected self-analyses of emotional states and perceptions of supposed antisemitic intentions of others from its self-selecting membership. For what it is worth, 61 percent of those surveyed feel “less safe” and are “wary of revealing Jewish identity since October 7, 2023. … 40 percent of respondents experienced hatred or discrimination related to Israel. Whether or not particular anti-Israel words or actions rise to the level of being considered antisemitic, a sizable number of Bay Area Jews have experienced some form of hostility based on events in, or even the mere existence of, Israel.”
JRCR Bay Area warned civic leaders to avoid listening to certain types of Jews: “It is important to note that the data demonstrates that ‘anti-Zionist’ Jews […] do not represent the Bay Area Jewish community, and civic leaders should be advised against their counsel on matters of Israel. Anti-Zionism doesn’t just criticize Israel’s policies or actions—it criticizes its existence. That is antithetical to the values of the vast majority of Bay Area Jews.” JCRC Bay Area presented no proof of that sentiment, however.
In fact, throughout the Bay Area Jewish people are proudly taking the lead in organizing calls for an end to the daily slaughter of Gazan families, the torture, the mass graves, and the blockading of food and medicines in obvious violation of international laws. The JCRC Bay Area’s obfuscatory public relations tactic of equating objections to Israeli massacres of Palestinians to racism and antisemitism is a logical fallacy which has been effectively weaponized as a propaganda trope even though abundant evidence reveals the opposite: It is the apartheid practices of Israeli state implemented Zionism that are racist. And certainly not “a vast majority” of Jewish people are Zionists, as JCRC Bay Area speciously claims. The reality is quite the contrary, as is testified to by the presence of the many thousands of Jewish people who regularly show up for ceasefire protests across America, horrified by the US-sanctioned atrocities performed in our names.
Forging Jewish-Palestinian unity in Petaluma
At the December 4 city council meeting, a score of speakers, many identifying as Jewish, urged the council to put a ceasefire resolution on the agenda. Speakers were often cut off in mid-sentence as McDonell imposed an arbitrary 60 second rule. Hunan Huneidi, a Palestinian resident of Petaluma, testified, “There is no justification for the murder of innocent people,” before being silenced by a dead mic.
McDonnell then disallowed a Jewish advocate for a ceasefire, Sam Tuttleman, to yield his time to Huneidi. Tuttleman used his minute to speak on “the elephant in the room: criticism of Israel is not antisemitic. Many of my relatives were killed in the Holocaust, but Israel does not deserve its free pass since 1948 to humiliate and oppress Palestinians—” McDonnell cut off his mic.
Up next was Beverly Voloshin, a member of the B’nai Israel synagogue in Petaluma who was collaborating with Huneidi and many local Jews and Palestinians to draft a ceasefire resolution for council consideration. Voloshin is a Fulbright scholar who was working in the West Bank Occupied Palestinian Territory on October 7 teaching an English literature class at Al-Quds Bard College University when the explosions began.
Voloshin is outspoken for a ceasefire even though she was doxed by the anonymously staffed Canary Mission which maintains a list of “Individuals and organizations that promote hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews on North American college campuses and beyond,” according to its website.
A December 2023 investigation in The Nation by James Bamford, revealed that Canary Mission is funded by the Jewish Community Federations of San Francisco and Los Angeles. Its staff works with Israeli security organs in striving to actively damage the reputation of academics who criticize Zionism and the displacement and murder of Palestinians by settlers and the Israeli Defense Forces.
Being doxed by Canary Mission is no joke as the Israeli state regularly assassinates those who it perceives as ideological enemies; it can also be viewed as a badge of courage.
For his part, Bochner rose to speak against considering any form of ceasefire resolution, “A city council resolution will not end the conflict in the Middle East, but it will almost certainly cause more conflict and lack of peaceful coexistence here in Petaluma.”
The rabbi was followed by Irene Hodes, an executive at the JCRC Bay Area, who reiterated her organization’s talking points. “I urge you to reject outside attempts to adopt divisive resolutions about the Israel Hamas war [creating] a forum for hate, as the whole country witnessed in Oakland and Richmond. The mere consideration of these divisive resolutions resulted in hours of public comment plagued by anti-Semitic jeering and hateful conspiracy theories, as well as general confusion and lack of decorum.” (These endlessly regurgitated JCRC Bay Area talking points are nonsensical and provably false, but that is another story.)
McDonnell then allowed a speaker to support violence as they urged that Hamas (Gazans) be destroyed.
The president of B’nai Israel, Jamie Bloom, hypothesized that considering a ceasefire resolution would “tear the community apart.”
Bloom was followed by a stream of speakers echoing JRCR Bay Area propaganda:
* that a ceasefire resolution is outside the council’s remit
* that a ceasefire resolution will empower Hamas terrorists
* that a ceasefire resolution will render Petaluma Jews less safe
* that the council should instead pass a resolution condemning antisemitism and Islamophobia, as that action was (presumably) within its remit.
Leading up to the next council meeting, at McDonnell’s urging, Huneidi, Voloshin, Tuttleman consulted with Bochner on the wording of a resolution acceptable to him. The result was, “Resolution calling for respectful discourse in the Petaluma community about current violence in the Palestinian territory and Israel.” The text condemned “racist and xenophobic and sentiments in our community” and advocated for “dignity and safety” and “peace diplomacy” between Palestinians and Israelis,” and it did not speak to the issue of a ceasefire. According to Voloshin, “The rabbi wanted the ceasefire clause taken out. Given the circumstances, we thought that this might be the best we could get.” “We had hoped it was a step in the right direction,” Tuttleman recalled. Rather, it was a step in the direction of JCRC Bay Area’s agenda.
The no ceasefire resolution fails
The next meeting was Monday, December 18. Huneidi led public comment, saying she had met variously with McDonnell, Bochner, and Shribbs. A Petaluma resolution is needed, Huneidi commented, because local congressmen, Jared Huffman and Mike Thompson, strongly oppose asking for a ceasefire at the federal level.
Huneidi told the council, “I met with Rabbi Shalom. We had a very beautiful conversation, a very difficult conversation, and we have put together a part one of what we hope to be a multiple part resolution. The first part is addressing [a need for] the ending of violence. “This a very difficult conversation to have with people from different backgrounds and extremely different lenses. The hope, the promise is that there will be continued conversations. We do intend to return with another ask, council people, because we are committed to freedom and justice and safety for all human beings.”
Voloshin spoke the text of the proposed resolution into the record.
Almost all of the nine speakers advocating for the resolution identified as Palestinian or Jewish, including Abbey Levine, a board officer of B’nai Israel.
Not all of the speakers were pleased with the draft.
Ellen Obstler complained “that the Mayor wants a local rabbis’ okay before the council will even considering placing a ceasefire resolution. As a Jewish person, I cannot tell you how disappointed I am.”
A high schooler, Sena Mughannam, announced, “We have Black Lives Matter and LGBQT flags painted on our streets, so why do I have to stand here to ask the adults running this city for you to see Palestinians as human beings? Shame on all who sit idly by as my people are being massacred by the thousands. Releaseall hostages and end this genocide.”
Luigi Petrov-Dove, an ethnic Palestinian who organizes weekly vigils for a Gaza Ceasefire in downtown Petaluma, remarked, “Cities are the lifeblood, the cells of the organism of national identity. When the federal government does not respond, as during the war on Vietnam, this is how we reclaim democracy, with town halls.”
After public comment, Shribbs remarked, “I’d like to see a lot stronger language than just calling for a ceasefire […] supporting our anti hate message that should be worldwide.”
Pocekay urged that the wording directly call for a ceasefire.
Healey reiterated his position that the ceasefire was not council business, and that in any event he did not want to have to listen to hours of hate speech by non-Petalumans.
Further action was put off until the next meeting.
The second resolution
In January, a letter requesting a resolution supporting a permanent Ceasefire was signed by 144 local Jewish persons and delivered to the city councils of Petaluma, Cotati, and Santa Rosa.
During Christmas break, the Petaluma resolution was rewritten by a consortium of Jewish and Palestinian activists to ask for a ceasefire. Bochner withdrew his support.
On January 7, Cader Thompson emailed Bochner, copying Petaluma City Manager Peggy Flynn, “Rabbi, I just received this document and it is very disturbing.”
The document was a letter written by the Chair of the Sonoma County Human Rights Commission, Katrina Phillips. It called for “an immediate Ceasefire in Gaza, recognizing that we do NOT support the terrorist attacks on October 8, 2023 [sic] .”
Phillips equated the deaths of 22,400 Gazans “to murdering every resident in Sebastopol, Guerneville, Forestville and Healdsburg.” The letter included an unreferenced quotation: “‘Holocaust’ means a burnt offering-literally a sacrifice. What are they going to call this one? As I think we are running out of other words for genocide.” The commission did not officially pass the ceasefire resolution until late February. Phillips did not respond to queries about the source of the “Holocaust” reference.
On January 8, a quiet, peaceful, youngish crowd congregated outside City Hall around tables with art supplies, making homemade signs, variations on “Ceasefire Now,” “Free Palestine,” “Stop the Genocide.” The expectation was Shribbs and Pocekay would move to put the ceasefire resolution on the agenda.
City hall overflowed with ceasefire supporters on January 8, 2024. Photo by Peter Byrne.
During public comment, 11 of 13 speakers, mostly self-identified as Jewish or Palestinian, spoke in favor of a ceasefire. But now, two members of B’nai Israel spoke against it, including board president, Jamie Bloom, who said that the majority of his congregation opposed a ceasefire, and that congregants are “overwhelmingly anxious and fearful of being targeted.”
Ma’ayan Pe-er countered, identifying as an Israeli Jew and a Petaluman who was in Tel Aviv on October 7. “I do not fear an increase in Jewish hate after adopting a ceasefire resolution that shows a commitment to all human life and the return of all Palestinian and Israeli hostages. I am mad that the mayor gave Rabbi Shalom the power to represent all of Petaluma’s Jewish residents.”
After the public had its say, Pocekay remarked, “Not using the word ceasefire could be increasing anti-Semitism locally. If we don’t join the calls for peace, we’re implicitly advocating for continued war and death.” Shribbs concurred, “I’m now fully in support of this new resolution and would like to see the council vote on it. Unfortunately, I’m going to be absent the next [meeting], but I sure hope that it does move forward.”
With two council members sponsoring it, McDonnell was obligated to add the resolution to the agenda for the next meeting. Sidestepping, he chose to talk about the antisemitic postcards previously mailed to council members. “The City stands united with our Jewish community and all marginalized groups against hate and all forms of hate speech. We have reached out to local Jewish groups and we will continue to work with Jewish partners to understand and confront antisemitism. Our police department actively investigates these kind of incidents.”
With that, the room exploded—figuratively.
Chanting “Ceasefire Now,” a hundred or so Petalumans rose from their seats, many linking hands in front of the dais. Twenty unsmiling police officers materialized from a backroom. The mayor recessed the meeting and walked away; the crowd moved outside, semi-blocking the entrance. For the next hour, people kneeled in prayer, sang sad peace songs, and chanted for a ceasefire. The council gingerly reconvened behind a platoon of police and made zoning changes as singing echoed throughout the building.
The Press Democrat covered the “disruption,” quoting protestors and anti-Ceasefire activists. A lawyer member of B’Nai Israel, David Saul, said, “I fear that a ceasefire resolution, no matter how benign, will stoke antisemitism in our community and will attract greater pro-Hamas activism in our city.” Rabbi Irwin Keller of Ner Shalom congregation in Cotati disagreed, “There’s an expectation that American Jews should not criticize Israel and should not object to whatever policies or actions it takes. That doesn’t have to be the case.”
The next day, January 9, with the support of Rabbi Keller, the Cotati city council passed a ceasefire resolution, “joining other cities in calling for our Congressional Members to demand an immediate and permanent ceasefire; release of all hostages; the unrestricted entry of humanitarian assistance into Gaza; the restoration of food, water, electricity, and medical supplies to Gaza; and respect for international law.”
And in March, the Sacramento City Council was to pass a Ceasefire in Gaza, a tour de force of diplomacy which incorporated multiple viewpoints. It was championed by Mayor Darrell Steinberg, who is Jewish, and who had previously opposed such a resolution.
Why was the Petaluma city council so recalcitrant?
Internal lobbying
California’s Brown Act prohibits a quorum of legislators from discussing city business outside a duly noticed public meeting. That means that four or more Petaluma city councilors are not allowed to serially email or in any way communicate about ongoing or possible agenda items. Public records show that Cader Thompson repeatedly emailed all of the council members individually and collectively (creating a quorum) on matters relevant to the ceasefire resolution, which she strongly opposed.
On January 19, Cader Thompson emailed the entire council a link to a column by The New York Times’ Bret Stephens, headlined “The Genocide Charge Against Israel is a Moral Obscenity.” The headline adequately describes Stephen’s Islamophobic stance.
On January 23, Cader Thompson emailed another Bret Stephens column to council members. In it, Stephens stated, “If Hamas builds the entrances to those tunnels inside private homes, schools or hospitals, those places all become military targets. … Hamas bears the blame for every death in this war.”
During January, Cader Thompson continued to email a quorum of council members about the ceasefire resolution. The texts included,
-Theorizing that ceasefire proponents have a hidden agenda: “Defunding Israel? I always said first they want resolution, second defund Israel. Would may seem innocent, may not be [sic].”
-A link to a January 31 Bret Stephens column calling to, “Abolish the U.N.’s Palestinian Refugee Agency,” in which he falsely states that the United Nations Relief and Works Agency is “infested with terrorists.”
-A link to a January 30 podcast by a notorious Islamophobe, Sam Harris, “5 Myths about Israel and the War on Gaza.” Cader Thompson wrote, “I’m asking the Council to please listen to the attached podcast. It gives a clear understanding of the complexity of the Middle East and Jihadist worldwide. For the city council to spend more time on a resolution on a very complex is irresponsible and dangerous [sic].”
The Harris podcast advocates for waging total war on the people of Gaza, “However horrific, even unthinkable, sometimes war is necessary … But there is no way of waging it without a massive loss of innocent life … But there are certain groups of people that have kicked themselves loose of the Earth—and they can’t be reasoned with or incentivized. And this is where the use of force becomes necessary. … There is simply no good way to fight an enemy of this kind. When you are fighting jihadists, your own scruples—the shame and horror you feel at killing noncombatants—become another weapon in their hands. Jihadists are very clever.”
According to an email exchange with Cader Thompson in late January, city councilor Karen Nau “warned” Petaluma police chief Brian Miller that ceasefire activists were planning to stage a protest at a local pro-gun control forum which congresspersons Huffman and Thomson were schedule to attend. “This group says they will be peaceful, but that might not include others who show up and want to be part of a loud protest,” Nau told Cader Thompson, who transmitted a separate warning about the event to Miller. Huffman and Thompson cancelled; the peace protest was, well, peaceful.
In an interview with this reporter on April 22, Shribbs said he had asked City Attorney Eric Danley if Cader Thompson’s serial emails about ceasefire issues were violating the Brown Act, as appeared to be the case to him. “Danley wouldn’t tell me if it was a direct violation or not,” Shribbs said. Danley subsequently told Counter Punch that he had found “no evidence of a prohibited serial meeting” in the Cader Thompson emails and replies because “the communications give no indication of a collective […] discussion by a quorum.” By way of clarification, the Brown Act prohibits a quorum to even “hear” about an actionable item from one of its members outside a public meeting. The Cader Thompson emails and replies by council members clearly document a serial platforming or hearing of her position on the ceasefire resolution to the full council.
Cader Thompson declined comment.
A meeting with the rabbi
On February 3, Petrigh-Dove announced the continuation of the Saturday Vigil and Rally for a Ceasefire in downtown Petaluma, and the continuation of lobbying the city council. He acknowledged “the wounds of unhealed Jewish intergenerational trauma, the generations of oppression of the Jewish people which has gone unhealed and which makes it so that the events of one day has Israelis running on fear, and many of them able to justify any amount of killing in their name.”
At the Petaluma City Council meeting of February 5, Bloom and another member of the B’Nai Israel congregation again asked the council not to consider a ceasefire measure. Others spoke in favor of that possibility.
On February 7, this reporter met at B’Nai Israel with Bochner, who said,
-“I strongly encourage you to talk with folks from the Jewish Community Relations Council. Jewish Voice for Peace does not have support from any mainstream organization. I question the Jewishness of their voice. … People involved in it may be ethnically Jewish, but they represent […] a perspective that potentially calls for the dismantling of the one Jewish majority, democratic nation in the world. So I don’t know that I would personally think of them as a Jewish group, despite the word Jewish in their name. And I don’t think of them as a peace activist group.”
– “The Jewish community is represented by congregations such as this one [and] fundraising groups like the Jewish Community Federations.”
(It turns out that the $1.3 billion Bay Area Jewish Community Federation funds not only the Jewish Community Relations Council, but also Bochner’s synagogue. Tax records show that from 2014 to 2022, the federation gave B’Nai Israel $132,959. Rabbi Keller’s synagogue in Cotati, which supported a ceasefire resolution, did not received a penny from the Federation during those years.)
-“I don’t think that Israel is engaged in in killing, as in a deliberate act. […] And if I fault Israel for anything, it’s walking into the trap that Hamas has laid for them in producing the number of casualties that Hamas wanted.”
-“I do not believe it is the purview of a city council in Sonoma or any county for that matter, to be passing resolutions that will have no impact on the actual conflict.”
I asked Bochner why he thought McDonnell had so consistently deferred to him? He replied, “That’s a highly problematic statement. The Jewish community does not control strings of government, we’re not going to go down an antisemitic rabbit hole of Jews control the government and the media. Sorry, that’s grotesque.”
Moving backwards
In late February, the newly formed Petaluma Jewish Community Collective held a rally demanding an urgent and permanent ceasefire. The group stated, “A local synagogue, B’nai Israel, has falsely asserted that most Jewish people oppose the ceasefire resolution in their opposition to the resolution. However, Jewish people in Sonoma County and around the world […] support an urgent ceasefire.”
Returning from an ocean cruise vacation, Shribbs was back on the dais for the council meeting of February 26. He was widely expected to deliver on his promise to support a ceasefire resolution. The room was packed with about 25 ceasefire proponents, and a half dozen naysayers, including Bloom, who re-articulated B’nai Israel’s anti-ceasefire position.
Shocking the crowd, Shribbs said he now opposed advocating for a ceasefire in Gaza, preferring to advocate for “ceasing conflict worldwide.”
In the April interview, Shribbs acknowledged that he had changed his mind after council members received 300 similarly formatted anti-ceasefire emails in February from what appeared to be persons organized to blast out emails by The Lawfare Project, a powerful coalition of 350 international lawyers which equates critiques of Israel’s military incursions with antisemitism. The Lawfare Project regularly sues municipalities, universities, and non-profits that it adjudges to be “anti-Zionist” and antisemitic. It is feared.
A March 1 letter to Petaluma city councilors asked them to “Please vote NO for a ceasefire resolution in relation to the Israel-Hamas war. … Your ceasefire vote would normalize hate. … If you are voting on this resolution than you really need to start voting on every international affair including the ongoing Syrian war, the Yemen Civil War, Rohingya Crisis, South Sudanese Civil War and many others. It’s interesting how the world is all of a sudden interested in global politics when it involves Jews. … Feel free to contact Gerard Filitti at gerard@thelawfareproject.org with any steps taken.” Filitti is Senior Council with The Lawfare Project. Neither Filitti nor The Lawfare Project’s public relations consultant, Rubenstein Public Relations Inc., replied to requests for comment.
That same day, Cader Thompson emailed McDonnell about a survey of local elected official’s position on supporting peace in Gaza by Ceasefire Now Marin. She asked the mayor, “Is Sonoma County next? This is scary when the criteria of running for office is weighting in on a single international issue, as we ignore, Darfur, Sudan, Yemen, China, Ukraine, etc. Why? Jews are an easy target to hate. This is a historical fact. Janice.”
In early March, ceasefire advocates met again with Shribbs, asking him not to be intimidated by outside agitators such as The Lawfare Project. Shribbs was not moved to follow through on his previous promise to put the resolution on the agenda.
In the April interview, Shribbs explained that although he agrees with South Africa’s brief to the International Court of Justice that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, he is intimidated by the Israeli lobby. “[The Lawfare Project] sues people. Basically, there was a threat—they’re going to come after us.” Fearing litigation, or worse, he recanted.
The ceasefire resolution is dead in Petaluma.
Coda
After April 15, ceasefire proponents across America engaged in multiple acts of civil disobedience. Freeways and the Golden Gate Bridge were shut down in the Bay Area. In Sonoma County, youthful activists targeted the Healdsburg office of weapons corporation General Dynamics. Jewish and Palestinian students are a national movement for a ceasefire in Gaza. And, if they were still with us, the Jewish chicken ranchers who were kicked out of the B’Nai Israel Jewish Center for their social activism would be demonstrating in Petaluma—shouting out in Yiddish: זאל פאלעסטינע זיין פריי! (May Palestine be free!)
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The Quality of Mercy in Petaluma: A Case Study
How a Jewish-supported civic resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza was killed The quality of mercy is not strained; It droppeth as the gentle rain
The films of South Korean director Lee Chang-dong in New York City
www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/04/22/utkg-a22.html
David Walsh
South Korean filmmaker Lee Chang-dong, also a novelist and screenwriter, directed several films in the 1990s and early 2000s that were highly and deservedly praised. A number of those films, along with a few later works, are currently being screened at the Metrograph theater in New York City.
The WSWS previously spoke to Lee twice, in San Francisco in 1998 and in Buenos Aires in 2001. We commented favorably on Green Fish (1997), Peppermint Candy (1999) and Oasis (2002). The latter was the South Korean submission for best foreign language film at the 75th Academy Awards.
Lee was also involved earlier—as co-writer, assistant director or producer—with the making of two important South Korean films, To the Starry Island (1993) and A Single Spark (1995), directed by Park Kwang-su, about the period during which a bloody dictatorship ruled the country. The CIA- and Pentagon-backed “white terror” regime in South Korea was responsible for the execution alone of at least 100,000 people suspected of “supporting communism,” and the arrest and abuse of countless others.
Peppermint Candy, one of the first films that Lee directed himself, was concerned with official repression and brutality. It treats in reverse the life of a policeman and eventual businessman.
Peppermint Candy (1999)
A wave of sensitive and humane films emerged from South Korea, Taiwan, Iran and China in the 1990s and early 2000s. Not informed by a strong historical or social perspectives, the filmmakers ended up for the most part in a blind alley. Expressing in an especially sharp form some of the difficulties, Lee accepted the post of Minister of Culture and Tourism in the “reform” government of President Roh Moo-hyun in 2003, a government that implemented harsh labor laws, set riot police against striking workers and agreed to send South Korean troops to assist the US-led occupation of Iraq. Lee served as a government minister for two years.
His later films revealed a growing complacency and social vagueness. Writing of Secret Sunshine in 2007, the WSWS noted that “Everything … is reduced to the level of personal dilemmas and choices, which are separated from their driving forces in social life.”
Notwithstanding his subsequent development, Lee’s early films are worth viewing.
We include some of our comments on his films, and portions of our interviews with the South Korean writer-director.
* * * * *
1998: Dirt in the soul: Green Fish, written and directed by Lee Chang-Dong
One of the most accomplished fiction films presented at this year’s San Francisco film festival was the South Korean work, Green Fish, directed by Lee Chang-dong. Lee is a novelist and wrote the screenplays for two films directed by Park Kwang-su, To the Starry Island (1993) and A Single Spark (1996).
The story of Green Fish is not enormously original, one might even say that it is a little cliched, but it is told with conviction, honesty and a discerning eye. A young man, Makdong, fresh out of the army, finds his family broken up and his old neighborhood the victim of economic progress. A new town has grown up on the site virtually overnight. Unable to find suitable employment, he falls in with a group of Seoul gangsters. Unfortunately for him, he becomes infatuated with the chief thug’s masochistic girl-friend, Miae.
At one point Makdong and Miae take off by train for another town. It looks as though they might actually be happy together. The boss, Bae, who calls himself ‘Big Brother,’ contacts Makdong on his beeper. The latter obediently phones in. He returns to Miae and tells her, “He says to come back immediately.” “Are we going back or not?” she asks. “If Big Brother says so,” he replies. She spits the phrase back at him scornfully. But, as a matter of fact, she’s no rebel either. They return together and this act of cowardice or conformism more or less seals Makdong’s fate.
When Bae’s gang becomes embroiled in a bloody conflict with a rival outfit, Makdong takes upon himself a murderous assignment. In a final phone-call to his family, he recalls in tears certain moments from his childhood. “Don’t hang up! Don’t hang up!” he insists. He remembers a red bridge and angling for green fish, losing his slipper and his sister getting stung by some insect. But it is too late for such innocent pleasures.
Lee presents a critical picture of Korean society. His theme crops up again and again in East Asian cinema: the old way of life, whatever its value, has been destroyed and replaced by a soulless, materialistic one. The new culture is a non-culture: Coca-Cola, freeways and cellular phones.
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And in this brave new world people would much rather beat each other’s brains in than talk things out. The small fry who congregate in Seoul’s night clubs and gangster hangouts have obviously been watching too many second-rate American movies. They are handy with their fists and feet, and with clubs and pipes, but nothing is going to stop them from being used—and later disposed of—by crime bosses, politicians, real estate developers and the like. That same milieu exists everywhere and those who inhabit it are never very bright or perceptive.
Makdong is naïve and unprepared, but not an innocent. He has no capacity or apparent desire to reflect on his own social dilemma; he simply resorts to violence. This makes him susceptible to the gangsters’ appeal. He wants to be indispensable to Miae and Bae, two destroyed human beings, and that effectively destroys him. His conscientiousness and lack of guile make him the perfect patsy.
Green Fish stands out because of the care and thought that have obviously gone into its creation. One remembers distinct images and dramatic moments—the look and feel of a garish Seoul night-club, a gangster’s humiliation at the hands of a rival, a woman’s despair, a pointless killing in a men’s room. It is nearly a beautiful film.
The films of both Lee Chang-Dong and his countryman, Park Kwang-su, owe a considerable debt to film-maker Hou Hsiao-hsien and the Taiwanese cinema in general. There is the same attempt to establish a milieu, often a criminal or marginal one, with great accuracy. The same attempt at a multi-textured, sensuous grasp of reality. The same attempt to capture the universal in the banal particular. The same relatively unmoving and “objective” camera, corresponding to much the same non-judgmental and unsentimental view of human foibles, although the Korean version is perhaps a little cruder, even, at times, a little heavy-handed.
Green Fish has its share of cliches. The relationship between Bae and Miae is somewhat familiar. In general, Lee perhaps leaves too little to the spectator’s imagination. It would be very difficult not to get his point at certain moment—in the final shot, for example, in which the camera takes in Makdong’s family scurrying subserviently about their little restaurant against a backdrop of imposing and impersonal high-rise apartment buildings. But Green Fish has intelligence, concreteness and an air of urgency. Lee, unlike so many others who are in a position to do so, has a reason for making films.
Green Fish (1997)
In a conversation, I asked Lee Chang-Dong, through an interpreter, what had been his artistic background. He explained that he planned to be a writer from a very early age. Since his brother was involved in the theater, however, he grew up within that culture. He began to write prose in 1983. For the next ten years or so, he said, “what it meant to live and work as a writer in Korea was to be an activist. That was the cultural situation.”
The end of the CIA-backed dictatorship apparently produced an intellectual crisis. “I felt like I had lost my direction as a writer,” he remarked. “It was at that point that I felt I should turn to making films. I’ve never been to film school or studied film on a formal basis. But I didn’t find film strange or unusual as a type of work. Because from an early age I’d been involved in a theater culture. I had worked as a director and also had done some acting. I felt that making films was the same as writing a novel, in terms of conveying a story through people.”
I asked him what had been the starting-point for this film—an image, an incident, something autobiographical?
Lee replied, “The background to this film is Il-San, which is a new development city. A city that grew up overnight. Which is where I live right now. Watching the movie you may have picked up on this, but Il-San was originally agricultural land, farm land close to Seoul. Now it’s become a big city where 300,000 people live, or more. I feel that it really is typical of Korean society right now, typical of the sorts of spaces people inhabit.”
He continued: “After moving to Il-San I wondered—where have all the people gone who used to live here before? What traces are there of the people who used to live here? I started thinking about those people, and then about the people who remain, like the family of the main character. These people who lived there before the area became built up are now running a restaurant for the new people who have moved in. The original people are now servicing the people who have taken away the land. I felt that was ironic. That symbolizes something essential about Korean society.”
I asked Lee about the source of the film’s violence, which begins in the very first scene and never lets up.
He explained that he had two points to make about violence. “In the first place,” he began, “the theme of the film is the nature of violence. We have had about thirty years of economic development in Korea. A unique value system has formed around modernization. The whole ideology is to get results at any cost. Of course there is a diversity of violence, from political violence to gangster violence. But I think violence is violence, regardless of who is committing it. I wanted to show the nature of that violence to my audience.”
Second, and very important, Lee explained, he had not wanted to aestheticize (beautify) violence, in the way it has been in many different genres of films, gangster films, Hong Kong films. He wanted to take away the glamour of violence. “I wanted to show the horror of violence,” he said. “Instead of the glamour of the gangster culture, I wanted to show the ordinariness, the banal quality of violence. And I wanted to show the universality of violence.”
“Is the gangster ‘family’ a legitimate symbol of Korean institutions in general?” I asked.
“Yes, the gangsters form a family, and it is not just the gangsters that are a family,” he observed. “In Korea the multinational corporations also have a family structure. They call themselves families. Korea as a whole, as a society, is like a big family. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a military ‘family’ or structure, or a corporate family, or a gangster family. Whatever the structure, the basis is violence.” …
What is the current atmosphere? I asked.
Lee replied: “Everybody is very insecure and very nervous right now. There’s a lot of fear about the future.”
Green Fish is very pleasing to the eye, I commented. “So many films today, even some with interesting ideas, are dull or carelessly made. What is the significance of aesthetic value?”
He stated that he was not specifically looking to create beauty. “There are film-makers,” he went on, “who make films for the sake of a beauty that exceeds the beauty of reality. You can say reality is boring and ugly and dirty. However, if you can find beauty within that ugliness and dullness then that is good. What is called film is something with which you can represent reality as it is, like a photograph. Or film can be something with which you take reality and transform it into something more beautiful. I don’t want to make a film in which you defraud reality or betray reality through an illusion.”
I asked Lee what he felt was the responsibility of the artist to society.
He paused before answering. “That is a very difficult question,” he began. “I don’t think an artist can fully estimate the changes in society, or change society, in that sense. But what an artist can do, if his art is good, is cleanse a person’s spirit, a person’s heart. He can also bring out a person’s true heart. Or even if it is not possible to get to that level, at least you can affect a person’s heart or feelings.” …
2001: Buenos Aires 3rd International Festival of Independent Cinema—Part 2: Intuition and consciousness in filmmaking
South Korean filmmaker Lee Chang-Dong’s Peppermint Candy tells its story in reverse. During a party in 1999 reuniting a group of old friends, a man in a business suit, Yongho, climbs up on a railway bridge and lets a train hit him. The next scene takes place three days earlier. Yongho buys a gun. “Which one to pick? Which one should I shoot?” he asks himself, going through the list of those, mostly in business, who have helped destroy him. A stranger appears. He’s the husband of Yongho’s first love, Sunim, now gravely ill. He goes to see her in the hospital. “It’s too late.”
Yongho’s history now rewinds five years, to 1994. He’s on his car phone a great deal. It seems he’s hired a detective to spy on his wife, who’s having an affair. We learn he’s an ex-policeman, now in business. Another seven years in reverse: 1987. Yongho, the policeman, tortures a young man suspected of being involved with student protests. After the latter’s confession, Yongho asks him: “Do you really think life is beautiful?” At night, in the rain, he goes in search of his first love, finding a prostitute instead.
In 1984 Yongho is a rookie cop. The other cops learn that he once worked in a factory. “In the union?” they ask. “You want to try this one?” He tortures his first prisoner, a worker. His victim defecates on Yongho’s hands. Then he goes to have lunch with Sunim, his girlfriend at the time. She praises his sensitive hands. He’s sickened by himself, by everything. He crudely breaks up with her.
Four years earlier Yongho, a scared kid, is in the army. Sunim comes to visit him. The soldiers are treated like dogs. Mindless discipline and brutality. Each pledges to give “my life to the nation.” Major protests have broken out. The soldiers, including Yongho, are called on to put down the demonstrations. By accident, Yongho shoots and kills a girl student, someone not involved in the protest. A year earlier, at the picnic in 1979 whose twentieth anniversary is being celebrated in the film’s opening scene, Yongho and Sunim talk and flirt. She works in a candy factory. He has dreams. “I hope your dream is a good one.” He wanders off, a train roars by.
The film is quite powerful. The transformation of a human being into a monster, thanks to the social order and its requirements. A film that takes history and an historical approach seriously. In some ways it is a little too neatly done, everything in Yongho’s psyche and subsequent conduct thoroughly explained and accounted for. But, all in all, this is a devastating work.
2002: Toronto International Film Festival 2002: Even in success, problems
Oasis, from South Korean filmmaker Lee Chang-dong, treats people who have been excluded in a different fashion: a woman with cerebral palsy, essentially abandoned by her family, and an ex-convict, a psychically wounded individual who finds it almost impossible to act “acceptably.” Both have dreadful families, whose prime concerns are money and appearance. These two wounded souls conduct a strange, exhilarating, pitiful love affair, with a tragic outcome.
With this film, following upon Green Fish (1997) and Peppermint Candy (2000), Lee confirms his position as one of the most intelligent and humane directors currently working. He has gone to great lengths in Oasis to portray realistically and painfully the relations between his two principal characters. None of that effort goes to waste, but at times the film concentrates so precisely and intensely on the physical difficulties of the woman, for instance, that the larger picture, of a society geared only to financial success and brutally indifferent to its victims, is somewhat lost sight of.
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The films of South Korean director Lee Chang-dong in New York City
Lee Chang-dong, also a novelist and screenwriter, directed several films in the 1990s and early 2000s that were highly and deservedly praised.
Japanese American artists reflect on Ruth Asawa at SF State
www.sfexaminer.com/culture/museums-and-galleries/japanese-american-artists-reflect-on-ruth-asawa-…
By Max Blue | Special to The Examiner Apr 3, 2024 Updated Apr 4, 2024
“Reflecting on Ruth Asawa and the Garden of Remembrance” installation view, San Francisco State University.
Photo credit: Claire S Burke
Following the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the United States’ Japanese population to be sent to internment camps for the duration of the country’s involvement in the Second World War.
Over 125,000 people — many U.S. citizens — were incarcerated at “War Relocation Centers” from 1942 to 1945. This resulted in over $400 million in property loss for internees and an intergenerational memory of unjust treatment that rarely gets addressed in popular discourse.
In 2001, legendary San Francisco artist Ruth Asawa (1926-2013), who was herself an internee, created “The Garden of Remembrance” at San Francisco State University, a memorial garden honoring internees.
The university’s Fine Arts Gallery’s latest exhibition, “Reflecting on Ruth Asawa and the Garden of Remembrance,” features five contemporary Japanese American artists who honor Asawa’s work and continue the artistic examination of the intergenerational legacy of Japanese internment.
They aren’t the first artists to make work on the matter. Bay Area documentary photographer Dorothea Lange was hired by the War Relocation Authority, alongside Ansel Adams, to photograph the Japanese internment process.
In “Garden of Remembrance,” photographer Paul Kitagaki, whose grandparents were photographed by Lange, has paired several portraits with his own, more recent portraits of the same individuals. The diptychs are accompanied by text narrating the subjects’ memories of internment and reflecting on its long-term effects.
Kitagaki also includes landscape photographs shot at Topaz Incarceration Center in Delta, Utah — now a national park — and a wooden chair his grandfather crafted from scrap lumber used in building the camp. The empty landscapes and sculptures evoke the absence and overbearing presence of incarceration in national history.
Garden of Remembrance2.jpg
“Reflecting on Ruth Asawa and the Garden of Remembrance” installation view, San Francisco State University.
Photo credit: Claire S Burke.
Mark Baugh-Sasaki, whose family members were farmers in the Sierra foothills prior to being interred at Tule Lake, presents a sculptural video installation that further explores the relationship between Japanese internment and the American landscape.
The wooden structure supports various ephemeral objects from his family archive, with video footage shot on his family farmland projected from above. Koi fish swim on top of an open ledger, family photographs blend with grass, and stacks of books are adorned with persimmons and oranges. The layering effect evokes memory and forgetfulness.
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SF State showcases Japanese American artists
Five artists expand on Asawa’s intention of returning humanity to a community from which it was stripped.
Trevor Griffiths, Marxist Writer for Stage and Screen, Dies at 88
For him, “art played a particular role in social change,” the director Mehmet Ergen said. “Everything was political.”
www.nytimes.com/2024/04/09/theater/trevor-griffiths-dead.html
A black and white photo of Trevor Griffiths with long hair and a jacket standing against the side of a house with his arms crossed while looking at the camera.
Trevor Griffiths in 1973. A self-appointed playwright-provocateur, he once said he was keen “to teach through entertainment.”Credit…Evening Standard, via Hulton Archive/Getty Images
By Matt Wolf
Matt Wolf reported from London, where he writes about theater for The New York Times.
Published April 9, 2024
Updated April 11, 2024
Trevor Griffiths, a prolific and avowedly Marxist writer for stage and screen most widely known for his play “Comedians,” which was staged in London and on Broadway, died on March 29 at his home in Yorkshire, England. He was 88.
His agent, Nicki Stoddart, said the cause was heart failure.
An important figure on the English left, Mr. Griffiths conjoined the political with the personal and expressed that affinity across a wide range of topics, whether connected to British party politics or comparable upheavals abroad.
He was at his most visible during the decade or so from 1975 onward. That period encompassed the premiere of “Comedians” in Nottingham, England, in 1975, as well as its New York premiere in 1976 — it was his only Broadway play — and his lone foray into Hollywood, as a collaborator with Warren Beatty on his screenplay for the much-admired movie “Reds” (1981).
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A black and white photo of two men sitting on a sofa in front of a coffee table. The man on the right is wearing a suit and gesturing with his right hand while he talks to the other man who is more casually dressed with long hair.
Laurence Olivier, right, with Gawn Grainger in a scene from Mr. Griffith’s play “The Party” (1973) at the Old Vic Theater in London. It was Olivier’s last stage role.Credit…via Everett Collection
His plays granted Laurence Olivier his last stage role, in the National Theater premiere of “The Party” (1973) — an anatomy of the British left set against the backdrop of the 1968 political tumult in Paris — and offered opportunities for budding talents. Among them were Jonathan Pryce, who won a Tony for “Comedians,” and Kevin Spacey and Gary Oldman, who starred in the American and British premieres of the Griffiths play “Real Dreams” in the 1980s.
“Comedians,” set in Manchester among the hopefuls in a night comedy class, has had notable revivals over the years, including a 2003 Off Broadway production, with Raúl Esparza inheriting Mr. Pryce’s career-defining role, and one at London’s Lyric Hammersmith in 2009, with David Dawson playing the same role.
Mr. Pryce’s performance as the angry, class-conscious Gethin Price, who has shorn his hair in a symbolic gesture, caused a sensation first in Nottingham and London and then in New York, where Mr. Pryce, at 29, took the town playing Mr. Griffiths’s bilious skinhead, who also happens to be an amateur comic. (Mr. Pryce’s performance lives on in a 1979 version filmed for the BBC.)
A man wearing a white tank top, suspenders and red pants with his head shaven stands, with his back turned, looking over his left shoulder, between two large papier-mâché people, one depicting a woman wearing a pink dress and the other a man in a black suit with a white scarf.
Raúl Esparza in the 2003 revival of Mr. Griffiths’s “Comedians” at the Samuel Beckett Theater in Manhattan.Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York Times
“There were a few hiccups along the way trying to relate a shaven-headed Manchester United supporter to a New York audience,” Mr. Pryce said in a phone interview.
But the play, he said, “established me in America; getting the Tony” — in 1977 — “and having a foothold there meant I could go backwards and forwards, which I have done all my life.”
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Mr. Pryce’s memories of that time include looking on as Mr. Griffiths was “wooed and seduced,” he said, by Mr. Beatty, who had alighted upon Mr. Griffiths to write the screenplay for “Reds,” Mr. Beatty’s historical film epic about the Harvard-educated socialist activist and author John Reed.
“Politically, they were like-minded,” Mr. Pryce said of Mr. Beatty and Mr. Griffiths. “I think Trevor saw the film as a way of getting a bigger audience for his beliefs and thoughts, though I don’t think he came out of it happily, shall we say.”
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Warren Beatty wearing a suit and tie and gesturing with his right hand while standing in a wood paneled room with a sign that reads "Socialist." Another man is seated behind him to the left.
Warren Beatty in a scene from “Reds,” his 1981 movie about the socialist activist and author John Reed. Mr. Griffiths collaborated with Mr. Beatty on the screenplay, but the two men ultimately had a falling-out.Credit…Paramount Pictures, via Everett Collection
That was very much confirmed in a 2007 Vanity Fair article about the making of “Reds.”
“The atmosphere around us was poisonous, terrible,” Mr. Griffiths told Peter Biskind, the author of the article. “It was messy, it was vile and it was foulmouthed on both sides.” As a result, Mr. Griffiths departed the very film for which he went on to share a 1982 Oscar nomination for original screenplay with Mr. Beatty — whose own Academy Award acceptance speech that year, when he won for best director, made no mention of his onetime colleague.
Trevor Griffiths was born on April 4, 1935, into a working-class family in Manchester. His father, Ernest, cleaned vats in an acid-making factory, and his mother, Annie, was a bus conductor. Britain’s Education Act of 1944 broadened access to good schools, which in an instant changed his horizons. He studied English at the University of Manchester, graduating in 1955, and then worked as a teacher and an education officer for the BBC.
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A portrait of Mr. Griffiths wearing a blue shirt and glasses. His left elbow is propped up on a wooden shelf and his hand rests on his head.
Mr. Griffiths in 2009. “An army of principle will penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot,” he once said. “It will march on the horizon of the world, and it will conquer.”Credit…Chris McAndrew/Camera Press, via Redux
From the 1970s onward, Mr. Griffiths coupled writing for the theater with larger-scale work for television. An early play, “Occupations,” had several runs before it was staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company, with a young Patrick Stewart and Ben Kingsley in the cast. Its focus on the Italian Marxist writer and theorist Antonio Gramsci was characteristic of Mr. Griffiths’s interest in revolutions of all stripes — a self-appointed playwright-provocateur, he once said he was keen “to teach through entertainment.” (The play was seen briefly Off Broadway in 1982.)
In “The Party,” Laurence Olivier played John Tagg, a Glaswegian Trotskyist who finds himself at an upscale London dinner party discussing the other meaning of that word — party politics. “It was a fantastic thing to see him hold the stage with a Marxist lecture for 20 minutes,” the Tony Award-winning playwright David Edgar, who saw the performance, said in an interview.
Mr. Griffiths’s original work for TV included “Through the Night” (1975), prompted by his wife Janice’s experience with breast cancer, and “Bill Brand” (1976), an 11-part series covering a year in the life of a Labour Party member of Parliament. “Country” (1981) was a family drama influenced by Mr. Griffiths’s previous adaptation of Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard” and was screened as part of “Play for Today,” the influential BBC series devoted to socially engaged new writing.
A poster for the film "Fatherland" with the title underlined in white against a red background that shows a portrait of a bearded man looking solemnly away from the camera.
Mr. Griffiths wrote the 1986 Ken Loach film “Fatherland,” about a German singer-songwriter.Credit…Andrea Leone Films
He wrote the 1986 Ken Loach film “Fatherland,” about a German singer-songwriter, and had long hoped to get a film made with Richard Attenborough about the American revolutionary Thomas Paine; that material instead ended up in a 2009 play, “A New World,” at Shakespeare’s Globe, in which John Light played the passionate pamphleteer.
Mr. Griffiths’s adaptations included “Sons and Lovers” (1981), a six-part version for the BBC of the D.H. Lawrence novel, and “Piano,” a 1990 play for the National Theater adapted from a 1977 Russian film that itself takes as its source the early Chekhov play “Platonov.”
The London-based Turkish director Mehmet Ergen directed the Turkish premiere of “Piano” in Istanbul in 2010, as well as the London stage premiere of Mr. Griffiths’s “Cherry Orchard,” which had until then been seen only regionally and on TV.
That Chekhov revival ran at Mr. Ergen’s own Arcola Theater in East London in 2017 and turned out to be the last major staging during Mr. Griffiths’s lifetime of one of his plays in London.
He married Janice Stansfield in 1960; she died in a plane crash in 1977. He is survived by their three children, Sian, Emma and Joss, and by his second wife, Gill (Cliff) Griffiths, whom he married in 1992.
In an interview, Mr. Ergen spoke affectionately of Mr. Griffiths. In his later years, he said, Mr. Griffiths was “still thinking that art played a particular role in social change: Everything was political for him.”
Or, as Mr. Griffiths himself put it in a 2008 talk at the University of Manchester, his alma mater, with regard to the impetus for societal awareness and improvement that was always present within him: “An army of principle will penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot. It will march on the horizon of the world, and it will conquer.”
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Trevor Griffiths, Marxist Writer for Stage and Screen, Dies at 88
For him, “art played a particular role in social change,” the director Mehmet Ergen said. “Everything was political.”