LaborFest

1 week ago

After forced removal, artists give ‘comfort women’ statue a new home in Berlin

english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_international/1246546.html

Posted on : 2026-02-25 17:47 KST Modified on : 2026-02-25 17:47 KST
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The Center for Art and Urbanistics in Berlin will allow “Ari,” a memorial for victims of Japan’s “comfort women” system of sexual slavery, to be displayed on its grounds for the coming year

Philip Horst, co-founder and director of the ZK/U – Center for Art and Urbanistics in Berlin, speaks to the Hankyoreh. (Jang Ye-ji/Hankyoreh)

Last month, a statue known as “Ari” that serves as a memorial to victims of Japan’s “comfort women” system of sexual slavery was relocated to a corner of the privately owned land in front of the Center for Art and Urbanistics in Berlin, or ZK/U, after having been forcibly removed from its previous location by Berlin’s Mitte borough government last October.
“The presence of ‘Ari,’ the Berlin Statue of Peace, is significant because it contributes to the growth of communal memory and shared culture in Berlin. That is why we decided to help relocate the statue to its current location,” shared Philip Horst, the co-founder and director of ZK/U, on the center’s decision to host the statue on its grounds.
ZK/U is an independent space for artists established in Mitte in 2012. The center provides residencies not only to German artists but also to those from across Europe and Asia, supporting projects that connect urban space, art and politics. Horst supported the installation of “Ari” as part of the center’s international residency program. Within this framework, the statue will stand outside the ZK/U building for one year.
For Horst and the center’s other members, the statue embodies the will of the people resisting dislocation and standing in solidarity to survive in Berlin.
The center readily extended a helping hand upon receiving a request for assistance from the Korea Verband, the civic group in Berlin that had originally installed the statue in 2020. Since ZK/U was only about 240 meters from the statue’s original site, Horst had observed the conflict surrounding the statue for over three years since the memorial was first installed in 2022. However, one early morning last October, the Mitte district office mobilized police officers to remove the statue, which was then left abandoned in an outdoor storage facility for over three months.
“I would see the statue all the time as I cycled or walked past. It was interesting to observe how it changed over time — one day I would see some flowers placed there, then the next day it would look totally different,” Horst said.
“Nevertheless, witnessing the statue’s removal made me realize how vulnerable its position was within the local community,” he added.
Prior to removing the statue, the Mitte borough government cited customary standards, administrative procedures, and relations with Japan to press for its dismantling, arguing that the statue had exceeded its two-year installation period. Korea Verband responded by emphasizing the communal value and artistic freedom the statue represented in Mitte, and argued for it to remain installed on public land. Berlin also had precedents of other historical symbols remaining on public land beyond the two-year installation period.
Throughout this process, various Berlin women’s, immigrant, and refugee rights groups, along with political party representatives, criticized the district office, demanding a political solution and compromise. However, the district’s position remained unchanged.

“Ari,” a memorial to victims of wartime sexual violence, particularly those who suffered under Japan’s “comfort women” system of sexual slavery, sits outside ZK/U in Berlin. (Jang Ye-ji/Hankyoreh)

The issue ultimately became the subject of a legal dispute. After initially permitting the statue to remain until September 2025, a court ultimately issued a removal order. However, as the historical significance of the “comfort women” issue highlighted by the statue and the conflict in Berlin gradually became known within German society, movements to install sister statues emerged in various regions, including Cologne, Kassel and Bonn. Last year, a statue temporarily installed on church grounds in Kassel gained permanent status with the church’s approval.
Horst, observing the events unfolding around the statue in Germany, became fascinated by how it had become a symbol in Berlin that renewed awareness of violence against women. As a German citizen and artist living in Berlin, a city that makes active efforts to remember and reflect on the history of the Jewish Holocaust, Horst found this a natural development. In a city filled with sculptures, paintings, and symbols that remind residents of World War II history, Ari is opening up new discourse, Horst suggested.
“Walking through Berlin, you see various memorials for the Jewish. Some symbols depict specific figures like soldiers or kings, but Ari is a more generalized symbol of the young woman,” he noted. “While the statue initially existed because of the history between Korea and Japan, in Berlin it also functions as a ‘place-making’ for communities of other Asian women, like those from Vietnam.”
Expanding on this observation, Nataly Jung-hwa Han, a second-generation Korean immigrant and the director of Korea Verband, stated, “We must ask anew what constitutes ‘Germany’s memory.’”
“[Mitte borough government] claims the statue [of Ari] has no connection to German history. But what about the lives and memories of immigrants who came and settled in this country?” she countered.
“Immigrants don’t just bring their bodies here; they bring their memories too. We need to change how we approach the matter of including their histories and memories,” she said.
Horst also noted how diverse histories and cultures overlap in today’s Berlin.
“In Nazi Germany, there was a need to distinguish who was German and who was Jewish, but we live in different times. We live in an era where different histories and cultures mix, coexist, and share memories,” he said.
When ZK/U decided to provide a new home for Ari, there were concerns about possible backlash from Japan. However, Horst said the center placed greater value on the significance this statue has gained within Berlin’s local community, beyond the context of Korea-Japan relations. ZK/U is also expected to continue offering various programs related to the history of the statue.
Yet, the statue’s future after the one-year installation period remains uncertain.
“We are continuing to seek out a location where the statue can be recognized for its public significance in a stable environment,” said Han.
By Jang Ye-ji, staff reporter … See MoreSee Less

After forced removal, artists give ‘comfort women’ statue a new home in Berlin

english.hani.co.kr

The Center for Art and Urbanistics in Berlin will allow “Ari,” a memorial for victims of Japan’s “comfort women” system of sexual slavery, to be displayed on its grounds for the coming year

LaborFest

1 week ago

Yeom Hye-ran takes on another devastating Jeju story in 'My Name'
www.koreatimes.co.kr/entertainment/films/20260226/yeom-hye-ran-takes-on-another-devastating-jeju-…
By David Opie
Published Feb 26, 2026 12:00 pm KST
Yeom Hye-ran in a scene from the film 'My Name' _ Courtesy of Berlin International Film Festival.jpeg
Yeom Hye-ran in a scene from the film "My Name" / Courtesy of Berlin International Film Festival
It's 1998 and Jeong-sun (Yeom Hye-ran) is driving down a narrow country road on Jeju Island. Dappled sunlight dances through the trees overhead as a light sea breeze blows in from the coast. Throw in a few tangerines or camellia blooms and you'd be hard-pressed to find a more picturesque vision of what Jeju has to offer.

But then the wind picks up, scattering leaves and petals in a swirl around the car. The sight of it sends Jeong-sun spiraling, triggering long-forgotten memories buried deep by her and others alike from 50 years prior.

"Unbowed" director Chung Ji-young hasn't forgotten, though. The socially minded auteur continues to shine a much-needed spotlight on the darker chapters of Korean history with scenes like this in his latest film, "My Name," which debuted at the Berlin International Film Festival earlier this month.

What starts out as the story of a teenage boy and his mother weaves in generational trauma inextricably bound to the island they both call home. Yeom is no stranger to this thanks to her Baeksang Award-winning turn in last year's "When Life Gives You Tangerines," in which she played a haenyeo (woman diver) struggling to provide for her family on Jeju opposite IU as Ae-sun.

Her characters in both stories might be fictional, but their suffering is not.

While Young-oak (Shin Woo-bin) contends with violence at his all-boys school, Jeong-sun turns inward at the behest of her physician. The usual meds aren't cutting it anymore, so this new doctor from Seoul tries to get to the heart of what might be causing Jeong-sun's panic attacks. Through meditative techniques, Yeom's character comes to realize that her heart is indeed the cause — or at least the heartache that comes with emotional wounds that have never been given a chance to heal.

As a child, Jeong-sun experienced the start of the Jeju Uprising firsthand, a real-life massacre in which an estimated 25,000 to 30,000 people were killed on the island between 1947 and 1954. As depicted in the film via long-suppressed flashbacks, many of the victims dubbed communists by the authorities were in fact innocent people caught up in what remains one of the bloodiest government crackdowns on civilians in Korean history.

From left, Yeom Hye-ran, Chung Ji-young and Shin Woo-bin pose prior to the opening ceremony of the 76th Berlin International Film Festival, in Berlin, Feb. 12. Chung's film 'My Name,' starring Yeom and Shin, was invited to the Berlinale's Forum section. EPA-Yonhap.jpeg
From left, Yeom Hye-ran, Chung Ji-young and Shin Woo-bin pose prior to the opening ceremony of the 76th Berlin International Film Festival, in Berlin, Feb. 12. Chung's film "My Name," starring Yeom and Shin, was invited to the Berlinale's Forum section. EPA-Yonhap
Massacre Korea was told to forget

The Jeju April 3 Uprising, as it has since come to be known, decimated the island's population, yet local government forces pressured people to stay silent about what happened for decades after. Those who did speak up faced discrimination and even punishment according to the Special Investigation Committee of Anti-National Activities, which was quickly established by the Korean National Assembly in 1948 to investigate Koreans who had collaborated with Japan during colonial rule.

It's no wonder that a character like Jeong-sun would bury the memories of that awful day so deep. Not only did she experience unspeakable violence at a painfully young age, society itself actively encouraged her to forget.

Along with a dual timeline that shifts between her life in 1998 and 50 years prior, "My Name" also contends with these systemic measures in Young-oak's arc, where students like him question why the uprising is glossed over in textbooks. Their teacher pushes back, keen to move past the topic entirely, despite a growing awareness of this tragedy in his classroom and beyond that too in real life as well.

For decades, the Jeju Uprising was misrepresented or absent in school textbooks entirely. It's only as recently as 2024 that efforts have been made to fully integrate the historical facts as they actually transpired.

Full acknowledgement of the Jeju April 3 Uprising by official government bodies began in the 1990s after civil rule was reinstated. In 2003, then-President Roh Moo-hyun apologized to the population of Jeju for what transpired: "Due to wrongful decisions of the government, many innocent people of Jeju suffered many casualties and destruction of their homes."

Skeletons can only be buried for so long before they resurface and begin to shape the present, be it through individual trauma or collective outcry against something larger. Just as Jeong-sun comes to reckon with what happened to her on that fateful day, so too has Korean society at large.

Just last year, archives chronicling the Jeju April 3 Uprising were added to the UNESCO Memory of the World Register, serving as a powerful example of how healing and reconciliation can begin once past traumas are fully recognized and confronted for what they were. This is vital work at a time when victims are still being identified now in 2026, with remains returned to their families 77 years after the uprising occurred.

Films fighting to keep memory alive

Long before official recognition took place, filmmakers similar to Chung were doing their part to investigate the truth and honor the thousands of Jeju citizens who lost their lives or someone close to them that day.

A 1997 documentary by Cho Sung-bong named "Red-Hunt" was one of the first. Many more have followed since, including "Jeju Prayer / Binyeom" (2013) by Im Heung-soon and "Soup and Ideology" (2021) by Yang Yong-hi, just to name a few.

But fewer directors have revisited this tragedy through a fictional lens like the one used in "My Name."

A notable exception, of course, is "Jiseul," a black-and-white drama by Jeju-born director O Muel that won Sundance's World Cinema Grand Jury Prize in 2013. The film follows a group of villagers who hid in a cave for two months to hide from the military once the violence broke out. This humanist approach was echoed again in "Hallan," Ha Myung-mi's film from last year that followed a mother (Kim Hyang-gi) trying to protect her daughter after her husband joins the revolt.

Rather than focus on the political struggle at hand, humanist dramas such as these and "My Name" foreground the victims of the Jeju Uprising and those who survived to tell the story of what really happened.

When Jeong-sun finally remembers what happened to her as a child in "My Name," she does so in the same barley field where the atrocities occurred 50 years earlier. Camellia flowers are often used to symbolize Jeju and the story of its people — both during and after the uprising — but barley is more grounded, anchored by soil. And crucially, it's far more resilient, a crop known for thriving in places where others might die.

Like the barley, Jeong-sun is resilient too. She keeps pushing on, just like Ae-sun's mother Gwang-rye also did in "When Life Gives You Tangerines."

In both stories, the two Jeju-born women played by Yeom carry great strength in the face of trauma. Their pain reflects the struggle of an entire nation in turmoil, hurting but unable to express that hurt until decades later. But this strength is not just their own. It also belongs to the women who came before them, the real-life residents of Jeju whose suffering is just as heartbreaking as it is defiant.

Thanks to filmmakers like Chung and the countless others who fight for recognition — including activists, lawmakers, historians and more — Korean society is finally reckoning with this chapter in full, mourning but also learning from the tragedy that unfolded during the spring of 1948 in an otherwise picturesque, almost perfect setting.

David Opie is an entertainment journalist from the United Kingdom who writes across a range of publications including IndieWire, Empire, Radio Times and more. He also founded the LGBTQ+ newsletter Cruising Cinema. Find him at @DavidOpie on X. … See MoreSee Less

Yeom Hye-ran takes on another devastating Jeju story in 'My Name' – The Korea Times

www.koreatimes.co.kr

It’s 1998 and Jeong-sun (Yeom Hye-ran) is driving down a narrow country road on Jeju Island. Dappled sunlight dances through the trees overhead as…

LaborFest

2 weeks ago

Phil Ochs’ Sharp, Satirical Protest Songs Still Resonate Today

www.currentaffairs.org/news/the-long-echo-of-phil-ochs

Phil Ochs’ Sharp, Satirical Protest Songs Still Resonate Today
Fifty years after his death, the protest singer’s music is more relevant than ever.

David Detmer
filed 02 February 2026 in
In 1966 a young man from El Paso, Texas sat down with his guitar and imagined a world without him in it: Won’t be asked to do my share when I’m gone […] / Can’t sing louder than the guns when I’m gone […] / Can’t add my name into the fight while I’m gone / So I guess I’ll have to do it while I’m here. For Phil Ochs—the great American folksinger, songwriter, and political activist—the most daunting part of no longer walking the earth was that he could no longer fight to improve it. He would die ten years later, at the age of 35.
2026 marks half a century since Ochs’ death, yet his lyrics are more relevant now than perhaps even he could have imagined. Ochs’ career achievements, by any reasonable measure, were substantial—he wrote hundreds of songs, recorded seven albums for two major record labels, consistently sold out Carnegie Hall and other medium-sized concert venues, successfully organized several large-scale rallies, and always provoked an enthusiastic response from crowds at the countless political events at which he performed.
And yet several factors conspired to limit his ability to reach a wider audience, to communicate his ideas to more people, to exert a greater influence on his nation’s political and musical culture, and to receive greater recognition for and appreciation of his contributions.
Perhaps the biggest of these factors is simply that he was a leftist, a fiery (and early) opponent of the Vietnam War, and an equally fierce supporter of the American Civil Rights Movement. Accordingly, many of his songs were “protest songs” on these and other political issues of his time. But leftist radicalism, along with protest art of any kind, tends to be disfavored by the ruling classes, and, more specifically, stands in conflict with the interests of the corporations that control the broadcast media of radio and television. So Ochs’ music was rarely played on the radio (upon the release of his song “I Ain’t Marching Anymore,” which would go on to become an anti-war anthem, Ochs remarked, “The fact that you won’t be hearing it over the radio is more than enough justification for the writing of it”), and he performed on network television only one time, very late in his life.
With these obstacles now largely removed (we no longer need radio and television in order to sample unfamiliar music), and with the current oppressive political climate in the U.S., the time would appear to be ripe for the rediscovery and reappraisal of Ochs’ work. Were such rediscovery to occur, it might help to inspire the creation of new music devoted to current issues, featuring some of the characteristics that made Ochs’ topical work of the 1960s and ’70s so distinctive.



This is not to say, however, that Ochs’ songs—often written in response to very specific events from his time—are now dated, for the broader issues that they address (racism, poverty, class warfare, etc.) are eternally relevant. These works also inspire us by providing an example of past bravery, and showing us that we too can fight back.
As a case in point, consider “The Ballad of William Worthy,” one of Ochs’ earliest songs, appearing on his first album in 1964. Worthy was a reporter who traveled to Cuba and was arrested upon re-entering the United States, as it was illegal at that time for U.S. citizens to travel to the communist island. The chorus contains these lines:

Somehow it is strange to hear the State Department say:
“You are living in the free world / In the free world you must stay.”


Notice that even if one leaves aside the specific issue of the Cuba travel ban, lines like these give insight into the hypocrisy of typical patriotic rhetoric, and invite critical reflection about (and further investigation of) a number of other issues related to U.S. foreign policy, freedom of the press, and freedom of travel.
One of the song’s verses also makes a point about how the United States treats its radical critics:

So, come all you good travelers and fellow travelers, too.
Yes, and travel all around the world, see every country through.
I'd surely like to come along and see what may be new,
But my passport's disappearing as I sing these words to you.


And indeed, Ochs’ activities, including travel, were so closely monitored, and in some cases restricted, by the U.S. government that he called himself a “folk singer for the FBI.” (The FBI’s file on him has now been published. It runs to over 400 pages.)
Returning to the song’s primary issue, the name “William Worthy” is the only one of its elements that is confined to a particular historical era. Travel from the U.S. to Cuba continues to be tightly controlled, and travel for the purpose of tourism remains illegal. In fact, on June 30, 2025, President Trump issued a National Security Presidential Memorandum strengthening restrictions on travel to the island.
This pattern—specific details from his time conjoined with deeper issues that are still with us in ours—applies to almost all of Ochs’ topical songs. So most of them readily lend themselves to being updated. No more is needed in making them current than to change names, dates, and a few other minor details. A good example is “Love Me, I’m a Liberal,” a song from 1966 in which Ochs humorously (despite the seriousness of his criticism) mocks the “safe logic” of those “liberals” who take positions that are “ten degrees to the left of center in good times,” but “ten degrees to the right of center if it affects them personally.” Here’s a sample verse:

I read New Republic and Nation.
I've learned to take every view.
You know, I’ve memorized Lerner and Golden.
I feel like I'm almost a Jew.
But when it comes to times like Korea
There’s no one more red, white and blue.
So love me, love me, love me, I’m a liberal.


Well, that’s pretty dated. Most people won’t recognize the names “Lerner” (Max) and “Golden” (Harry), and many won’t know much about the Korean War. But at a 1971 concert in Houston, Ochs updated that verse as follows:

I read underground papers and Newsweek.
I’ve learned to take every view.
Ah, the War in Vietnam is atrocious.
I wish to God that the fighting was through.
But when it comes to the arming of Israel
There’s no one more red, white and blue.
So love me, love me, love me, I’m a liberal.


(Note: A search for “Love Me, I’m a Liberal, updated” on YouTube turns up many versions by current artists addressing contemporary events.)
Perhaps the most common criticism of topical songs is that, because of their highly specific subject matter, they quickly become dated, and thus cannot hope to attain lasting value as works of art. The folksinger Dave Van Ronk is one of many who have offered this criticism, writing in his posthumous 2005 memoir The Mayor of MacDougal Street:

There is a built-in flaw to topical songs, which is that if you live by the newspaper, you die by the newspaper. You may expend your greatest efforts and do some of your best writing about an incident that will be forgotten in six weeks. I mean, Phil Ochs was one of my best friends and I love a good many of his songs, but it always struck me as a tragedy that so much of Phil’s material became dated so quickly. I remember when I heard him sing his song about William Worthy, I thought, “…two years down the line he won’t be able to sing it anymore.” And sure enough, he couldn’t, because nobody remembered who William Worthy was.


But there is value in knowing history, and a good song can inform the listener about interesting and important events of the past in an entertaining way—especially when written by a witness to the event, who is reacting to it in real time. Further, artists often focus on events that somehow fail to appear in many history books. The Worthy case is exactly the kind of story that people won’t hear about in the 21st century unless they listen to a Phil Ochs song.
Ochs’ song about Worthy is clever and amusing, and thus fully capable of arousing listeners’ interest, perhaps even inspiring them to do further research so as to learn more about Worthy’s case. A successful song—one with a catchy tune and witty, rhyming lyrics—can help people remember what they might otherwise forget. Some of the world’s most powerful works of art (for example, Goya’s The Third of May 1808 and Picasso’s Guernica) are based on specific moments in history that may otherwise have slipped from popular memory.
Aside from the charge that they are dated, the other common criticism of political songs is that they are useless since, allegedly, they fail to persuade. Bob Dylan is one who issued this complaint in 1965: “The protest thing is old. And how valid is it anyway? Is it going to stop anything? Is anybody going to listen? People think this helps […] But songs aren’t going to save the world.” Van Ronk was another: “My feeling was that nobody has ever been convinced that they were wrong about anything by listening to a song, so when you are writing a political song, you are preaching to the choir.”
But even if we suppose that Van Ronk’s premise, the one about nobody being convinced by a song, is true, there are still other ways in which political music might influence people’s thinking. Some may have never heard about a particular issue before becoming informed about it through lyrics. The historian Howard Zinn, who earned a PhD in history from Columbia University, reports that he learned about the Ludlow massacre of striking coal miners from a Woody Guthrie song—it never having been mentioned in the texts he had been assigned, or in the many writings of professional historians that he had read. And while some may indeed have heard of an issue, they may never have been moved to think about it before being stimulated to do so by a compelling work of art.
Another possibility is that Van Ronk’s premise is simply wrong. Some persons may have formed an opinion on an issue rather passively and casually—perhaps by uncritically accepting the position of their parents, or peers, or mainstream society—without caring enough to have formed a deep commitment to this opinion. Exposure to a song arguing against that position might lead some such persons to take a more serious look at the issue, and to change their mind about it. (Note that Van Ronk provided no evidence in support of the claim that none of these things ever happen.)
In any case, even when a political song fails to change minds, it may still have value for other reasons. To his credit, Van Ronk mentions one of these. Responding to his own “preaching to the choir” charge, he then concedes:

Of course, the choir needs songs, and when a group sings together, that builds solidarity. When the cops were coming down on them with the dogs, the clubs, and the cattle prods, the civil rights workers would be standing there singing “We are not afraid”—and you better believe they were afraid, but the singing helped. It had a real function, and in that situation it was very important.


Many criticisms made of Ochs are based on a failure to notice two ways in which his protest songs, in particular, differ from those of other songwriters working in that genre. One critique is that his songs allegedly make obvious points—that war and racism are bad, that people should be free, that presidents often lie, and so forth. But Ochs was a voracious reader and energetic student of politics. His songs are unique, or at least unusual, precisely in their attention to detail and inclusion of specific information that is not widely known or understood.
His many anti-war songs illustrate this point. Many other Vietnam-era anti-war songs either focused on costs to Americans (the war is bad because American soldiers are dying—no mention of the suffering of the Vietnamese, America’s victims), or else made the general point that war is terrible (with no discussion of the specifics pertaining to this war in particular). These limitations minimize the persuasive effect of their art, since many people who agree that war is awful nonetheless think that some wars are justified—perhaps because they are waged against some even more horrendous evil, to be replaced by some great good, such as democracy.
By contrast, notice the specific details in Ochs’ “Talkin’ Vietnam Blues”:

Well I walked through the jungle and around the bend,
Who should I meet but the ghost of President Diem.
He said, “You're fighting to keep Vietnam free
For good old de-em-moc-ra-cy.” [Diem-ocracy]
That means rule by one family
And 15,000 American troops….


These lyrics suggest that the American war effort in Vietnam was aimed at defending not democracy, but rather the government of an autocratic puppet who served himself, his family, and his American masters, at the expense of the interests of those he was governing. The song also implies that South Vietnamese President Ngô Đình Diệm enjoyed no popular support, and offers reasons why. For example:

He said, “I was a fine old Christian man
Ruling this backward Buddhist land.”


Listeners following up these leads would quickly learn details about the corrupt and authoritarian nature of Diem’s government, and would also encounter the famous photograph of a Buddhist Monk, Thích Quảng Đức, publicly immolating himself in Saigon on June 11, 1963 in protest of the persecution of Buddhists under the rule of Diệm, a staunch Catholic.



Reading the Pentagon Papers, a classified history of the Vietnam War written by the Pentagon’s own historians for secret internal use, they would discover the following sentence: “South Viet Nam was essentially the creation of the United States.” They would also learn that the United States had agreed at a 1954 conference in Geneva to call for free elections in Vietnam in order to unify the governments of the South (created and supported by the U.S.) and the North (headed by Hồ Chí Minh and opposed by the U.S), but then reneged on this commitment once they learned that their side would lose. An April 1955 Department of Defense report concluded that if a free and fair election were to be held in Vietnam under international supervision, “there is no reason to doubt” that Hồ Chí Minh “would win easily.” Dwight Eisenhower, in his memoirs, estimated that Hồ would have received about 80 percent of the vote, and adds that he knows of no person knowledgeable about the issue who would disagree with that assessment.
As the reader might guess from Ochs’ discussion of Diệm, and his reference to (only) “15,000 American troops,” this is an early song, released on a 1964 album, pre-dating the Gulf of Tonkin incident and subsequent massive escalation of the war. (His first Vietnam War song was published in 1962.) Ochs did not have access to the Pentagon Papers, nor other documents that emerged later, and yet he clearly read the available evidence correctly and understood the situation accurately—more so than many other anti-war songwriters who addressed the subject later, and with much less specificity.
But it is not enough to point out that Ochs’ songs are studded with highly specific information. Perhaps more important is the fact that this information is typically not widely known—it alerts his audience to important matters, of which many of them had previously been unaware.
In “Here’s to the State of Richard Nixon,” a song from the early 1970s, Ochs sings: “The wars are fought in secret, Pearl Harbor every day.” Here he is talking about two relentless, covert, illegal, large-scale U.S. bombing campaigns, one in Laos (Operation Barrel Roll), the other in Cambodia (Operation Menu). According to journalist Joshua Kurlantzick, the attack on Laos, in particular, became, for U.S. presidents and the CIA, “a template for a new type of large, secret war for decades to come.” The reference to Pearl Harbor in Ochs’ song is also noteworthy in that it frames the issue of secret bombing in a way that would never be found in mainstream media sources.
Some of Ochs’ critics make the mistaken assumption that his art is simply that of a singing journalist—a chronicler of, and commentator on, the major political events of his time—whose works are therefore to be evaluated by journalistic standards. (Bob Dylan, in a moment of anger toward his friend, famously sneered, “You’re not a folksinger, you’re a journalist!”) But such an approach overlooks the other major distinctive feature of Ochs’ music: its astonishing intensity of emotional expression. Ochs cared passionately about politics, empathized with the victims of injustice, was enraged by the actions of the victimizers, and found humor in the absurdity of the justifications they offered in defense of their cruelly selfish policies. Thus, his songs, including even those that are most explicitly addressed to specific political events or issues, also stand as eloquent artistic expressions of basic human emotions—especially anger, humor, and sadness.
Consider, for example, the critical reaction to Ochs’ “Here’s to the State of Mississippi.” The flavor of the song can be gleaned from a sample verse and the chorus:

Here’s to the judges of Mississippi
Who wear the robe of honor as they crawl into the court
And they’re guarding all the bastions of their phony legal fort
Oh, justice is a stranger when the prisoners report
When the Black man stands accused the trial is always short

Oh, here’s to the land you’ve torn out the heart of
Mississippi, find yourself another country to be part of.

Ochs called this one of his “most criticized” songs. Three objections were frequently issued: that it was unfair to condemn an entire state, since Mississippi also contained courageous civil rights activists and other fine citizens; that it was unfair to single out Mississippi, since other states, including northern ones, also were plagued by racism, stupidity, and injustice; and, most of all, that Ochs’ criticism of the state was “over the top,” extreme, disproportionate.
The songwriter responded to these objections at least twice. In his liner notes to I Ain’t Marching Anymore, the album on which “Here’s to the State of Mississippi” appears, he notes, “I was down there last summer [1964] and must admit that I met some nice people and that the state isn’t as bad as my song implies, unless you are a Negro who has forgotten his place, or unless your last name was Chaney, Goodman, or Schwerner.”
Some context: Ochs had travelled to Mississippi as part of the Mississippi Caravan of Music, which worked in conjunction with Freedom Summer, a campaign aimed to register Black voters. Three Civil Rights activists working with the campaign (James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner) were kidnapped and murdered by corrupt police working with the Klu Klux Klan. When Ochs sings of Mississippi, “If you drag her muddy rivers, nameless bodies you will find,” he’s referring to the fact that while searching for their bodies in the river, FBI agents found the bodies of two more men who had been kidnapped by the KKK, and additional bodies of Black people who were never identified.
Ochs’ longer and more detailed defense of his song is in his article for Sing Out magazine, “Topical Songs and Folksinging, 1965”:

On the surface [the song] goes against the basic policies of all the civil rights groups and the established rational voices of the Left […] Now, normally you might say that the important thing is to encourage moderate business elements of the power structure of the state, bring about the vote, and get Mississippi back into the Union. I agree with that on a rational political level.

But artistically and emotionally, I wrote that song the day 19 suspects [in the 1964 murder of the three civil rights workers] were allowed to go free. It’s a song of passion, a song of raw emotional honesty, a song that records a sense of outrage. Even though reason later softens that rage, it is essential that rage is recorded, for how else can future generations understand the revulsion that swept the country?


I think it is clear that Ochs’ self-analysis is accurate: his song sounds nothing like an attempt at calm, cool, balanced objectivity. Rather, one hears it as a full-throated scream of outrage, a work belonging to the expressionist tradition in the arts, as exemplified by such painters as Vincent Van Gogh and Edvard Munch. To criticize Ochs for some distortion in his depiction of Mississippi (but only some distortion—he’s clearly responding to something real) misses the point in the same way that criticizing Van Gogh’s The Starry Night for distorting the moon, stars, and sky, or Munch’s The Scream for distorting the human figure, would.
At other times Ochs (temporarily) brackets his outrage at injustice to focus instead on its idiotic absurdity. When performing at the Newport folk festival in 1963 he introduced his “Talking Birmingham Jam” with the observation that “whenever there is a deep tragedy, there’s also present something of the ridiculous.” A sample verse from the song:

Well, I’ve seen travel in many ways.
I’ve traveled in cars and old subways.
But in Birmingham some people chose
To fly down the street from a fire hose,
Doin’ some hard travelin’
From hydrants of plenty.


Now, Ochs’ listeners knew just as well as he did that no one in Birmingham “chose” to be attacked with high-pressure hoses. But they understood his satirical purpose, and laughed heartily. And the folk music aficionados in the audience also appreciated the nod to Woody Guthrie, as two of his most famous songs are “Hard Travelin’” and “Pastures of Plenty.”
Toward the late 1960s the laughs in Ochs’ songs became less frequent, and the anger in them began to be replaced by sadness. There seem to be two, perhaps related, reasons for this. One is that his personality combined two strong characteristics that are rarely found together: naïve, wide-eyed optimism on the one hand, and on the other, what George Orwell called “the power of facing unpleasant facts.” This unfortunate combination led to repeated soul-crushing disappointments. Ochs seems to have had a natural, instinctive patriotism, which led him to expect his country to do the right thing. But then, time and time again, it didn’t, and he knew it. He lacked the great ability that many “patriots” have to rationalize their country’s misdeeds, or, better yet, to remain completely unaware of them.
The other factor leading to his increasing sadness was medical. Ochs suffered from what was then called manic depression (now called bipolar disorder). His symptoms worsened in the 1970s, and reached the status of a full-blown psychosis in the summer of 1975 (he began to call himself “John Butler Train,” to engage in bizarre, erratic conduct, and to claim, repeatedly, that he had “murdered” Phil Ochs). After a few months this “manic” phase of his illness subsided and gave way to a depressive phase, during which he regained his sanity, but at the cost of sinking into a deeper, more unrelenting depression than he had ever previously experienced. In April 1976, in the depths of this depression, he committed suicide.
While it is unclear as to exactly when Ochs began to experience bipolar symptoms, one suspects that they were present (in milder form) from the beginning of his career. The manic aspect might partially explain his ability to have accomplished so much work in so little time (he was a tireless political activist and organizer in addition to being a prolific songwriter, concert performer, and recording artist; Bob Dylan once remarked, in connection with Ochs’ songwriting, “I just can’t keep up with Phil.”) The depressive aspect might explain the unusual intensity of his emotional reaction to political events.



Think of it this way. Because of politics, every passing day brings more examples of people being unjustly maimed, starved, tortured, and/or killed. So wide and deep is this horror that to take it in fully, from an emotional standpoint, would make most persons unable to function, so debilitating would be the sorrow and despair. So even the most caring and committed persons tend to learn that, in order to cope, they must think of politics somewhat abstractly, and to focus positively on what can be done to make things better, as opposed to taking the full emotional measure of the world’s horrors. I conjecture that Ochs, for the reasons mentioned, became over time less and less able to shield himself in this way.
For a time he was able to transform his disappointments, and his sadness, into sublime art. An example is his darkly beautiful album of 1969, Rehearsals for Retirement, written and recorded largely to express his feelings after protesting the Vietnam War in the streets and parks of Chicago as the Democrats were holding their 1968 presidential convention in that city. (In 1998, The Wire, a British music magazine, pronounced this album “the single most eloquent collection of protest songs in the English language.”) Ochs had campaigned for the anti-war candidates, Eugene McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy. But then he was dealt four devastating blows: the assassination of RFK; the violent attacks on peace protestors by the Chicago police; the Democrats’ selection, at their national convention, of the pro-war candidate, Hubert Humphrey, in spite of the fact that the anti-war candidates had won far more votes during the primaries, and the subsequent election of the loathsome Richard Nixon in the general election.
The sorrowful tone of the album that Ochs made in response to all of this is well illustrated by “The Scorpion Departs But Never Returns,” the minor-key melody of which is both hauntingly beautiful and highly emotive. While the song is ostensibly about sailors aboard the USS Scorpion, which imploded and sank on May 22, 1968, in the context of the album one hears it as being about America, and also about Ochs himself. The final two verses:

The radio is begging them to come back to the shore.
All will be forgiven, it’ll be just like before
All you’ve ever wanted will be waiting by your door.
We will forgive you, we will forgive you.
Tell me we will forgive you.

But no one gives an answer, not even one goodbye.
Oh, the silence of their sinking is all that they reply.
Some have chosen to decay and others chose to die
But I’m not dying, no I'm not dying.
Tell me I’m not dying.


One can still find inspiration from Phil Ochs. His recordings are widely available, serving as both a time capsule into the past and a mirror to the many still-relevant problems of today. But there is also a great need for new songs about new events and new issues—songs that are detailed, well-informed and informative, melodic, witty, poetic, and passionately expressive. Phil Ochs can still inspire those as well. … See MoreSee Less

Phil Ochs’ Sharp, Satirical Protest Songs Still Resonate Today

www.currentaffairs.org

Fifty years after his death, the protest singer’s music is more relevant than ever.

LaborFest

2 weeks ago

He Studied Cognitive Science at Stanford. Then He Wrote a Startling Play About A.I. Authoritarianism.
www.nytimes.com/2026/02/16/opinion/play-ai-authoritarianism.html?searchResultPosition=1
Feb. 16, 2026

By Michelle Goldberg
Opinion Columnist
When I saw “Data,” a zippy Off Broadway play about the ethical crises of employees at a Palantir-like A.I. company, last month, I was struck by its prescience. It’s about a brilliant, conflicted computer programmer pulled into a secret project — stop reading here if you want to avoid spoilers — to win a Department of Homeland Security contract for a database tracking immigrants. A brisk theatrical thriller, the play perfectly captures the slick, grandiose language with which tech titans justify their potentially totalitarian projects to the public and perhaps to themselves.

“Data is the language of our time,” says a data analytics manager named Alex, sounding a lot like the Palantir chief Alex Karp. “And like all languages, its narratives will be written by the victors. So if those fluent in the language don’t help democracy flourish, we hurt it. And if we don’t win this contract, someone else less fluent will.”

I’m always on the lookout for art that tries to make sense of our careening, crises-ridden political moment, and found the play invigorating. But over the last two weeks, as events in the real world have come to echo some of the plot points in “Data,” it’s started to seem almost prophetic.

Its protagonist, Maneesh, has created an algorithm with frighteningly accurate predictive powers. When I saw the play, I had no idea whether such technology was really on the horizon. But this week, The Atlantic reported on Mantic, a start-up whose A.I. engine outperforms many of the best human forecasters across domains from politics to sports to entertainment.

I also wondered how many of the people unleashing A.I. tools on us really share the angst of Maneesh and his co-worker, Riley, who laments, “I come here every day and I make the world a worse place.” That’s what I think most people who work on A.I. are doing, but it was hard to imagine that many of them think that, immersed as they are in a culture that lauds them as heroic explorers on the cusp of awe-inspiring breakthroughs in human — or maybe post-human — possibility. As a New York magazine review of “Data” put it, “Who gets so far at work without thinking through — and long since justifying — the consequences?”

But last week, Mrinank Sharma, a safety researcher at Anthropic, quit with the sort of open letter that would have seemed wildly overwrought in a theatrical script. “The world is in peril,” he wrote, describing constant pressure at work “to set aside what matters most.” Henceforth, said Sharma, he would devote himself to “community building” and poetry. Two days later Zoë Hitzig, a researcher at OpenAI, announced her resignation in The New York Times, describing the way the tool could use people’s intimate data to target them with ads.

I reached out to the writer of “Data,” Matthew Libby, because I was curious about how he got so much so right, and learned that before he worked in theater, he studied cognitive science at Stanford. More specifically, he has a degree in symbolic systems, an interdisciplinary program that combines subjects including computer science, philosophy and psychology. He always intended to be a writer, he said, but wanted to make sure he had something to write about.

Not surprisingly, Libby, who graduated in 2017, felt the pull of Silicon Valley, at one point interviewing for an internship at Palantir. He was heartbroken when he didn’t get it. But when he came across a 2017 Intercept story headlined “Palantir Provides the Engine for Donald Trump’s Deportation Machine,” he wondered what he would have done if he’d worked there, which is how “Data” was born.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about “Data” isn’t its insight into those who leave companies making dangerous A.I., but into the majority who stay, and the stories they tell themselves about what they’re building. “My experience of the tech industry is just that there’s always this air of inevitability,” said Libby. “You know, ‘We can’t pause any of this because it’s coming no matter what, and don’t you want to be the person doing it?’”

Among technologies, A.I. is unique in that those who are creating it — and profiting off it — will from time to time warn that it could destroy humanity. As Sam Altman said in 2015, shortly before helping found OpenAI, “I think that A.I. will probably, most likely, sort of lead to the end of the world. But in the meantime, there will be great companies created with serious machine learning.” A slightly truncated version of that quote appears as an epigraph in Libby’s script.

Just last month Dario Amodei, who leads Anthropic, the most seemingly responsible of the A.I. giants, published an essay titled “The Adolescence of Technology,” about potential A.I. apocalypses. A.I. systems, he wrote, could turn against humankind or help to create biological weapons. They could be used to build a digital panopticon more comprehensive than anything existing today, or develop propaganda so precisely tailored to its users that it would amount to brainwashing.

But as Amodei sees it, these hellish possibilities are less reasons to slow A.I. development, or to keep it out of the hands of the surveillance state, than to make sure that the United States stays ahead of China. “It makes sense to use A.I. to empower democracies to resist autocracies,” he wrote. “This is the reason Anthropic considers it important to provide A.I. to the intelligence and defense communities in the U.S. and its democratic allies.” His argument would be sounder if the United States were still, in any meaningful sense, part of a coalition of democracies, rather than a nation ruled by an aspiring autocrat who is propped up in no small part by the tech industry.

In “Data,” Alex makes a similar argument for bidding on the Department of Homeland Security contract. “We’re the fighters protecting democracy,” he says. “China already has an automated social credit system they’re exporting to developing nations. Russia has the most targeted disinformation infrastructure known to man. That’s what they’re innovating towards. If we stop innovating? We lose our lead.” The threat of authoritarianism abroad becomes a rationale for building the tools of digital authoritarianism at home. Too bad it’s not just fiction. … See MoreSee Less

Opinion | He Studied Cognitive Science at Stanford. Then He Wrote a Startling Play About A.I. Authoritarianism.

www.nytimes.com

A brisk theatrical thriller, “Data” perfectly captures the slick, grandiose language with which tech titans justify their potentially totalitarian projects.

LaborFest

2 weeks ago

Jump Cut special section
Film and Photo League
Radical cinema in the 30s

www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC14folder/FilmPhotoIntro.html

Introduction

by Russell Campbell

from Jump Cut, no. 14, 1977, pp. 23-25
copyright Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media, 1977, 2004

The Workers Film and Photo League in the United States (known as the Film and Photo League after 1933) was part of an extensive cultural movement sponsored by the Communist International and its affiliated national parties in the interwar period. Specifically, it was a section of the Comintern-control led Internationale Arbeiterhilfe or Workers International Relief (WIR), founded at Lenin’s Instigation in Berlin in 1921.

The WIR’s initial function was famine relief in the Soviet Union. After the crisis had passed, the organization—with branches established in most countries of the world—became an international support force for strikers and their families. In the U.S., for example, it provided food, clothing and shelter during the Communist-led textile and cotton workers’ strikes at Passaic, New Bedford, and Gastonia in 1926-29, and the miners’ strikes of 1931-32.

But the WIR’s activities extended also into the mass media and many cultural fields. In Germany, under the leadership of the remarkable Communist entrepreneur and propagandist Willi Muenzenberg, the WIR built up a flourishing publishing empire encompassing daily and weekly newspapers, illustrated periodicals, and books, all with a leftwing perspective. Elsewhere, with the exception of the Soviet Union, the WIR concentrated on ventures requiring little or no capitalization. Thus in the United States the WIR organized, during the early thirties, revolutionary drama groups (the Workers Laboratory Theatre), dance groups (the Red Dancers), symphony and mandolin orchestras, bands, choirs, art workshops, etc.

Muenzenberg was especially interested in film. In a 1925 article he decried the fact that “in the main the labor organizations and even Communist Parties and groups have left this most effective means of propaganda and agitation in the hands of their enemy,” and called for “the conquest of this supremely important propaganda weapon, until now the monopoly of the ruling class.” “We must wrest it from them,” he concluded, “and turn it against them.”(1)

The WIR’s first motion picture activity was in Russia, where in 1922 it began distributing German films. In 1924 it formed the production company Mezhrabpom-Russ (later Mezhrabpomfilm, “Mezhrabpom” being the abbreviation for the Russian name of the WIR). This company was to be responsible for many of the more significant Soviet features of the period, including Pudovkin’s MOTHER, END OF ST. PETERSBURG, STORM OVER ASIA and DESERTER, Vertov’s THREE SONGS ABOUT LENIN, and the first Soviet sound film, Ekk’s ROAD TO LIFE. Muenzenberg was to claim credit for the WIR for the international perspective of many of Mezhrabpom’s productions, such as STORM OVER ASIA, which he termed “the first film to thrust deeply into the chaos of imperialist politics.”(2)

In Germany the WIR entered production via the Prometheus company, acquired in 1925. Prometheus produced a number of films with a working class point of view, the best known of which are Jutzi’s MOTHER KRAUSE'S JOURNEY TO HAPPINESS (1929) and Dudow’s KUHLE WAMPE (1932). It also pioneered in the distribution of Soviet films in Europe, scoring a notable success with POTEMKIN in 1926. In 1928 Muenzenberg founded Weltfilm to handle nontheatrical distribution of workers’ and Soviet films: this firm first popularized the use of 16mm for such screenings.

The WIR’s next move was clearly to stimulate indigenous production in the other countries in which it operated. Since capital was not available for studio production, emphasis inevitably came to be placed on low cost documentary and especially newsreel forms. There were also good political reasons for this choice. To undertake such production the WIR had an instrument ready at hand. Workers’ photo leagues had already been widely established to provide visual coverage of working class subjects for the leftwing press. Where feasible, existing leagues were charged with movie production, and others were formed. By 1930 or a little later film and photo sections of the WIR were operative in Germany, England, France, Holland, Switzerland, Austria, Japan and the United States.

In the U.S. the WIR affiliate, at first known as the Friends of Soviet Russia, had been involved with film distribution since its founding in 1922. Throughout the decade it arranged nationwide release of documentaries about the Soviet Union designed to counteract the hostile propaganda emanating from Hollywood. Beginning in 1926 it also handled nontheatrical distribution (and, effectively, exhibition) of Soviet features. This distribution arm of the WIR was to become closely allied with the Workers Film and Photo League.

In 1930 the breakthrough into production was made. On March 6 of that year a Communist-led demonstration of the unemployed had resulted in probably the largest such crowds in U.S. history jamming into New York’s Union Square. However, the capitalist press had minimized the event, and commercial newsreels of the demonstration had been suppressed at the behest of New York police chief Grover Whalen—no doubt partly because they exposed the brutality of his officers in action. As the economic situation worsened, protest marches, rallies and manifestations became more frequent and the bourgeois media continued to ignore or distort them. It was clear that there was an urgent need for workers’ newsreels.

In May, Daily Worker film critic Samuel Brody wrote

“I want once more to emphasize the newsfilm is the important thing; that the capitalist class knows that there are certain things that it cannot afford to have shown. It is afraid of some pictures ….”

“Films are being used against the workers like police clubs, only more subtly-like the reactionary press. If the capitalist class fears pictures and prevents us from seeing records of events like the March 6 unemployment demonstration and the Sacco-Vanzetti trial we will equip our own cameramen and make our own films.”(3)

Less than two weeks later, again in the Daily Worker, the call for workers’ movie production was reiterated. Radical poet and film critic Harry Alan Potamkin argued:

“The German workers have started well. There is no need to begin big. Documentaries of workers life. Breadlines and picketlines, demonstrations and police-attacks. Outdoor films first. Then interiors, And eventually dramatic films of revolutionary content. Workers’ organizations should support a group to be pioneers on this important front.”(4)

Even as the call was being made, the WIR was mobilizing its cinematic forces. The same month it was able to announce,

“Movies of the unforgettable May Day parade and demonstration in New York City will be one of the features of the mass celebration of the Five Year Plan, to be held at Ulmer Park. Brooklyn, this Saturday, May 31, Defend the Soviet Union Day.”(5)

The film may have been obtained from an independent source, or it may possibly have constituted the first output of a fledgling Workers Film and Photo League, whose exact founding date I have been unable to pin down. In any case, it is fair to assume that within a few months the League was in operation, filming workers’ events and exhibiting the results at workers’ gatherings in precisely the fashion of these 1930 May Day movies.

The key New York WFPL participants at the beginning were, as Leo Seltzer indicates, Sam Brody (practicing what he preached), Lester Balog, Robert Del Duca, and a little later Seltzer himself. Of the group members Del Duca had the most practical experience, having worked as a newsreel cameraman and laboratory technician. Brody was clearly the theoretician and political overseer. Handling the WIR’s film department, and thus intimately involved with arranging distribution and exhibition of, and often finance for, the League’s productions, was Tom Brandon. In Chicago, key FPL members were Maurice Bailen, John Freitag, Gordon Koster, William Kruck, John Masek, C.O. Nelson, and Dr. J. Twig.

This core group was augmented in subsequent years by a larger membership, outstanding among whom we're the writers and critics Potamkin, Lewis Jacobs, Leo T. Hurwitz, David Platt, Jay Leyda (for a short period prior to his departure for the Soviet Union), and Irving Lerner, and the still photographer and experimental filmmaker Ralph Steiner. For the most part these men were less involved with the League’s production work than with its other activities. Such activities included publications (program notes, contributions to New Theatre, the Daily Worker, and Filmfront) lectures and discussions; film series screenings; photographic exhibitions; anti-censorship agitation; boycott campaigns; film school and photo courses. By 1934 Balog was in California—where, as a member of the San Francisco FPL, he was jailed for showing ROAD TO LIFE and COTTONPICKERS’ STRIKE to agricultural workers. In the fall of that year, Hurwitz, Lerner and Steiner broke away to form Nykino. Soon after, Seltzer secured work as a filmmaker with the WPA. Most of the League’s production in the last year or two of its existence seems to have been handled by Del Duca, Julian Roffman (who, like Brody, Brandon, Hurwitz, Platt and Lamer wrote on film topics for the Daily Worker) and Vic Kandel. Nancy Naumburg and James Guy did pioneering work, with the League’s assistance, on the dramatized political documentary in 16mm.

The nature of the League’s output may be gauged by reference to the filmography. But “output” is perhaps a misleading term. As Seltzer insists, the group was not challenging Hollywood on it own terms, manufacturing motion pictures as merchandise. Rather than individual “films,” it is more correct to speak, for the bulk of (W)FPL production (which is probably much greater than that indicated here) of “footage.” By footage, I mean news film which was processed and printed rapidly and then roughly edited for the quickest possible screening and maximum impact. Once the topical moment had passed, of course, the footage became available for recutting into later compilation documentaries. It is to this class that most of the League’s major productions—NATIONAL HUNGER MARCH, BONUS MARCH, HUNGER 1932—belong.

Though the newsreels did sometimes receive theatrical screenings (particularly during 1932 at New York’s Cameo Theatre), they were mostly exhibited by the (W)FPL members themselves, often along with a Soviet film, in a specifically political context. Taking films to the workers became a potent organizing device, as the following quotation from a Communist Party unit organizer indicates:

“Our shop unit in the Caterpillar plant is only about six months old. And while we are getting new contacts on the job (the plant has been working a few days a week and now closed down indefinitely), we found that shop-gate meetings are a great help in approaching workers on their problems.”

“On March 1st a Party speaker held a meeting at the shop during noon hour. After the meeting the workers discussed a great deal amongst themselves on how to solve the conditions in favor of the workers. During the same time the Workers International Relief was showing a Russian movie to which the workers were invited. And for the next few days the workers in the plant were discussing the lack of unemployment in Russia and the millions of unemployed here. These discussions among the workers gave (the Party members) the opportunity to comment and help them along and thereby find out who is who in the shop.”

“As a result of the shop-gate meetings outside and our work inside we have now a functioning group of the Metal Trades Industrial League and have recruited seven new members to the Party unit (we started the shop unit with three members).”(6)

As might be expected, the content of (W)FPL newsreels and longer films was conditioned by the particular campaigns being undertaken by the CP. Here it is essential to recall that the period 1929-34 was one of militant class struggle for the world Communist movement. Party strategy in the U.S. (as elsewhere) was to build the strength of the movement by stimulating recruitment into (a) the “revolutionary” unions—those affiliated to the Trade Union Unity League (TUUL), (b) the Party’s “mass organizations”—of which the WIR was one, and (c) the Party itself.

Thus the footage devoted to the miners’ strikes of 1931 and 1932 played its part in assisting the drive to organize the coalminers of Western Pennsylvania, eastern Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee—then destitute and disillusioned with John L. Lewis’s leadership of the United Mine Workers—into the TUUL-affiliated National Miners Union (NMU). On the West Coast there was an energetic campaign to build the Cannery and Agricultural Workers Industrial Union, reflected in several of the Los Angeles WFPL productions.

Organization of the unemployed was undertaken via the Unemployed Councils around the demands for immediate relief and a comprehensive program of social insurance. These demands were dramatized by numerous local and two national hunger marches. The national marches, held in December 1931 and December 1932, became occasions for coordinated newsreel coverage by WFPL cameramen around the country—the WIR arranging the filmed record along with food, shelter and medical care for the marchers. A hunger march in Detroit on March 7, 1932, filmed by members of the local League, became a massacre when police opened fire and killed four demonstrators. The film survives.

The Bonus March of 1932 was not Communist-led, but the Party did try to extend its influence among the out-of-work veterans through the participation of its “mass organization,” the Workers Ex-Servicemen’s League (WESL), whose banners are prominent in the powerful League film devoted to the march, camp, and eviction.

The Scottsboro Case was used by the Party to focus attention on lynch law in the South and the oppression of blacks generally. The CP conducted a militant defense through its International Labor Defense organization and held many rallies demanding the release of the accused men. This activity was reinforced by several newsreels and a short film made for the ILD, with assistance from the League, by Leo T. Hurwitz

Other films, as their titles and descriptions indicate, focused on further pressure points in the class struggle and helped fulfill the League’s reported purpose of

“the taking of newsreels of demonstrations, meetings, Party activities and other affairs of immediate, daily concern to the American working-class.”(7)

Cinema-verité has dulled our appreciation of participant camerawork, but in the Thirties the handheld, close range cinematography of street actions which the League footage offered must have struck spectators with great novelty and force. Leo Seltzer stresses the importance of his physical involvement in the events he was shooting in conveying excitement. Writing of his participation in the filming of HUNGER 1932, Brody makes a similar point. Brody, however, lays emphasis—as Seltzer does not—on the political commitment of the filmmakers:

“I was a member of a group of four cameramen sent by the New York section of the Workers Film and Foto League to cover the activities of Column B of the National Hunger March on its way to Washington from New York City.”

“Soon there will be shown to the workers of New York the evidence gathered by the keen eyes of our cameras. This evidence is totally unlike anything shown in newsreels taken by capitalist concerns. Our cameramen were class-conscious workers who understood the historical significance of this epic: March for bread and the right to live. As a matter of fact, we ‘shot’ the March not as ‘disinterested’ news-gatherers but as actual participants in the March itself. Therein lies the importance of our finished film. It is the view point of the marchers themselves.”

“Whereas the capitalist cameramen who followed the marchers all the way down to Washington were constantly on the lookout for sensational material which would distort the character of the March in the eyes of the masses, our worker cameramen, working with small hand-cameras that permit unrestricted mobility, succeeded in recording incidents that show the fiendish brutality of the police towards the marchers…”(8)

It was in camerawork, and not in editing, that the newsreels were distinguished, but in the longer compilation films there are some striking sequences of montage in the Soviet manner. BONUS MARCH, for example, edited by Leo Seltzer and Lester Balog, opens with a prologue which sketches the background to the contemporary situation. This sequence is a model of savage political comment in film. Without detailing the complete editing of the prologue, it is possible to give an indication of the sequence’s content, and its power, by listing the shots and groups of following shots, which appear basically in the order given here. Some of these shots appear several times at key points, adding considerably to the drama and commentary of the prologue.

A title: “1917…”
Swinging sign: Go Places with the U.S. Army”
Sign: Adventure Over the World” and doughboy
Mass parade of troops
Battlefield: tanks and troops advance
Cannons fire
Shell explodes, blows up building
Shell explodes on battlefield
Tanks, soldiers in battle
Battleships (various shots)
Interior, ship’s gun barrel
Ship’s gun fire
Turret rotates
Explosion, smoking warship
Warplane
Soldiers advance
Explosion in the trenches
Dead on battlefield
Injured, maimed vets (one stretcher patient, one legless man) line up to be greeted at a garden party
U.S. flag
Churches
Down-and-out unemployed worker on bench
Priest
Heroic statuary
“Catholic Charities” sign
U.S. Eagle sign on Bank of the United States building
Unemployed man, close-up; and others
Salvation Army signs
A waterside Hooverville—shacks, one of the inhabitants
Breadline (various shots, coning closer to the men).
Following documentation of WESL agitation, the march to Washington and the encampment, the film begins it sequence of the eviction with a quick reprise of the opening statement. We see a title “1917…” and shots of marching troops, tanks on the battlefield, an explosion, the wounded given a garden party reception—then “1932…”, and the U.S. infantry attacks down Pennsylvania Avenue, backed up by the cavalry, and the armored division.

The montage of Franklin D. Roosevelt in the AMERICA TODAY sequence referred to in the interview by Seltzer offers another example of creative montage used to make a political point forcefully and economically. The CP line at the time was that Roosevelt was preparing for aggressive war and that the New Deal represented incipient fascism. The sequence is cut as follows: troops parade through streets/Mussolini salutes/troops march, give fascist salutes/fascist salute, PAN to reveal arm is Hitler’s/U.S. battleship, TILT UP to following ship/FDR signing document, reaches for blotter, lays it down, makes a fist to blot/ cannons fired on navy cruiser/front view, guns are raised/interior, gun barrel/cannons fired/ FOR looks up and smiles/dark cloud, DISSOLVE to NRA Eagle sign and inscription: “We Do Our Part.”

Seltzer was quite content working strictly within a newsreel/documentary mode. By 1934, however, some dissatisfaction was being felt among other League members with this approach. It was in recognition of this and anticipation of arguments to come that Brody wrote the article, “The Revolutionary Film: Problem of Form,” reproduced in this issue. The riposte came in New Theatre three months later, when Hurwitz described the work being done by an experimental group at the League’s Harry Alan Potamkin Film School, and stated:

”…the plan is to develop this experimental group into a production group within the Film and Photo League for the purpose of making documentary-dramatic revolutionary films—short propaganda films that will serve as flaming film-slogans, satiric films and films exposing the brutalities of capitalist society.”(9)

The plan encountered rough going, and the issue remains a controversial one among former FPL members. There is not space here to develop the ramifications of the dispute, which centered on financial priorities rather than either/or aesthetic commitments. The upshot was that the FPL did not approve Hurwitz’s proposal for a “shock-troupe of full time film workers.” In the fall of 1934 he, Steiner, and Lerner broke away to form the nucleus of a radical filmmaking collective known as “Nykino.” Theoretical statements issued by Steiner and Hurwitz at this time are listed in the bibliography.

Meanwhile, in September, the FPL rededicated itself to the business of unvarnished newsreel production at a National Conference held in Chicago. Reference has so far been made primarily to the New York section of the League, but in fact branches existed in many cities of the country. Detroit, Chicago, and Los Angeles were the most active in terms of production, but there were strong groups also in Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C. and San Francisco. Local FPL organizations were reported at one time or another in Pittsburgh; Hollywood; New Haven, Connecticut; Perth Amboy, N.J.; Laredo, Texas; and the University of Wisconsin.

The Conference resolved,

“The tremendous growth of the working class movement coupled with the increase of strikes and class warfare makes it imperative for the Film and Photo League to concentrate its best film and photo forces on the field of battle, adequately to record the vital events of our time.”

16mm was adopted as the basic stock for local use, 35mm being retained for original photography at the national level. A National Film Exchange was set up, and a National Executive Committee elected—with David Platt as National Secretary and Tom Brandon a member.(10)

Work continued. In 1934-35 Leo Seltzer produced, with Ed Kern, his much-praised MARINE, and Nancy Naumburg, with James Guy, directed two longish political films (with acted sequences): SHERIFFED and TAXI, the latter of which became an official FPL production. All these films are lost, and reviews provide only frustrating hints as to their content and technique.

It was evident that there were weaknesses in the movement. In November 1934 novelist and Daily Worker columnist Michael Gold expressed his disappointment:

“Our Film and Photo League has been in existence for some years, but outside of a few good newsreels, hasn't done much to bring this great cultural weapon to the working class. As yet, they haven't produced a single reel of comedy, agitation, satire or working-class drama.”

And invoking THREE SONGS ABOUT LENIN, he concluded:

“I hope somebody in the Film and Photo League learns how to do a film as tenth as good for proletarian America.”(11)

In response, Platt could only admit that the charge was

“very true—no one knows better how true it is than the Film and Photo League itself, which has been struggling for years to produce films on a budget and with forces that would have wrecked a similar bourgeois organization.”

He promised to do better in the future.(12)

The League members no doubt continued to struggle, but history was against them. The WIR, reeling under the annihilation of its German operations in the Third Reich, suffered a second grievous blow in 1935, when the CPSU abolished its Russian section. Muenzenberg, now devoting himself to antifascist propaganda from Paris, was no longer with the organization. It managed to survive in several European countries (amalgamated with the International Red Aid), but in the U.S. its activities seem to have come to a standstill by mid-decade. The League might have kept going as an independent entity—it did continue into 1936. But without the organizational backing, financial support, or political directions its parent body was able to provide, there must have seemed little point in keeping it alive. After editing a feature- length documentary on the Chinese Revolution from commercial newsreel footage as a noble last gesture to the League, filmmakers Julian Roffman, Vic Kandel and veteran Robert Del Duca formed themselves into an independent production company, and an era in U.S. radical cinema was at an end.

Notes

I would like to thank Leo Seltzer, Tom Brandon, and David Platt for assistance with my research into the League.

1. Willi Muenzenberg, “Capture the Film!” Daily Worker, July 23, 1925, p. 3.

2. Willi Muenzenberg, Solidarität: Zehn Jahre Internationale Arbeiterhilfe 1921-1931 (Berlin: Neuer Deutscher Verlag, 1931), p. 513.

3. S(amuel) B(rody), “The Movies as a Weapon Against the Working Class,” Daily Worker, May 20, 1930, p. 4.

4. Harry A. Potamkin, ‘Workers Films,” Daily Worker, May 31, 1930,åp. 3.

5. Daily Worker, May 28, 1930, p. 16. Party Organizer, 5, No. 8 (August 1932), 27.

7. S(eymour) S(tern). “A Working-Class Cinema for America,” The Left1, No. 1 (Spring 1931). 71

8. Samuel Brody, “The Hunger March Film,” Daily Worker, December 29, 1932, p. 4.

9. Leo T. Hurwitz, “The Revolutionary Film—Next Step”, New Theatre3, No. 6 (May 1934), 15.

10. David Platt, “The Movie Front: National Film Conference,” New Theatre 1, No. 10 (November 1934), 30.

11. Michael Gold, “Change the World,” Daily Worker, November 5, 1934. p. 7.

12. David Platt, “World of the Movies: A Reply to Michael Gold,” Daily Worker, November 16, 1934, p. 5. … See MoreSee Less

Film and Photo League by Russell Campbell

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LaborFest

2 weeks ago

How ICE insulted 28 Mexican immigrants who died in a 1948 plane crash
www.latimes.com/california/newsletter/2026-02-17/ice-deportee-woody-guthrie
Before Monday's Mass, the grave marker for the Mexican nationals killed in a 1948 plane crash did not include their names.
A grave marker at Holy Cross Cemetery in Fresno for 28 Mexican nationals killed in a 1948 plane crash outside Coalinga. (Michael Robinson Chavez / Los Angeles Times)
Your morning catch-up: ICE dredges up an old tragedy, Raman’s ‘Shakespearean’ betrayal, and more big stories

EL SEGUNDO CA DECEMBER 12, 2019 — Gustavo Arellano, reporter for the Los Angeles Times.
By Gustavo Arellano
Columnist

Feb. 17, 2026 6:30 AM PT

It’s one of the saddest hit songs to grace American music: “Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos).”

The 1948 Woody Guthrie composition documented a plane crash that killed all 32 people on board in Los Gatos Canyon near the Central Valley town of Coalinga on Jan. 28 of that year. Twenty-eight of the victims were Mexicans being forced back home — some entered the country without papers, some were guest workers whose stints were over — accompanied by the immigration agent charged with making sure they got there, much like the deportation flights of today.

The Associated Press reported that newspapers published across the country the following day — including The Times — listed the names of the Southern California crew on board and the migra man, Frank E. Chaffin of Berkeley.

The Mexicans? The story deemed them “deportees.” They were buried in a mass grave at Holy Cross Cemetery in Fresno under a bronze marker that read: “28 Mexican citizens who died in an airplane accident.” The American government never even bothered to tell their family members. Many wondered what happened to their loved ones for decades.

Guthrie heard the AP report over the radio and was so angered by how the press and government dismissed the deceased that he penned “Deportee.” With mournful chords and vivid lyrics, the working class troubadour attacked an American society that that simultaneously let crops rot “in their creosote dumps” and treated the migrants who picked them “like rustlers, like outlaws, like thieves.”

It’s been covered by some of this country’s greatest musicians — I’m talking Dolly Parton, Bruce Springsteen, Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson (my favorite version is by folk-rock heroes The Byrds).

Even with “Deportee,” this story had fallen out of public consciousness over the decades. Until January, when ICE dredged it up to once again insult the memory of the lost Mexican immigrants.

ICE’s inexplicable recap

On Jan. 28, the social media accounts of Immigration and Customs Enforcement commemorated Chaffin’s death and only his. The caption alongside a grainy black and white photo of him read: “The plane he was on to deport 28 illegal Mexican aliens caught fire and crashed killing all onboard.”

ICE’s unnecessarily inflammatory language not only was ahistorical, but also it didn’t even match up with its own official account. The agency’s Wall of Honor, which commemorates the lives of employees who died in the line of duty, described the migrants who died alongside Chaffin as “Mexican nationals.”

Such warping of the past isn’t accidental but rather part of a long con by the Trump administration to justify its agenda. In an administration that knows no lows, dismissing the Mexican victims of the Los Gatos Canyon disaster as “illegal Mexican aliens” was particularly egregious.

‘It’s disrespectful, it’s dehumanizing, it’s ICE’

I called up Mike Rodriguez, an ethnic studies teacher in Santa Ana who found out in 2015 that his paternal aunt, María Rodríguez Santana, was on that doomed plane.

“First thing I thought was, ‘Well that’s the United States,’” Rodriguez said of ICE’s social media post. “They’re doing the same thing that the government tried to do in 1948 by erasing them.”

He added that la migra didn’t even bother to list the names of the American crew that died, either. “It’s disrespectful, it’s dehumanizing, it’s ICE,” he said.

But Rodriguez takes solace in knowing he and others are doing their part to make sure people know the full story. He regularly speaks about the tragedy and visited both the site of the crash and Holy Cross Cemetery, where a plaque with all of the victims’ names was erected in 2013.

Tim Z. Hernandez, a University of Texas El Paso professor who has spent much of his career trying to track down descendants, interviewed Rodriguez and his uncle for a forthcoming documentary and also featured their story in the 2024 book”They Call You Back: A Lost History, A Search, A Memoir.” The two appeared at an event last year at the Untold Story bookstore in Anaheim, where Rodriguez sung “Deportee”while his son played guitar. He added extra lyrics to honor his Tía María and Hernandez.

“Thankfully, we have truth tellers like Woody Guthrie and Tim,” Rodriguez said. “And I remember what Woody sang — ‘All you fascists bound to lose.’ And that’s the way this is administration is, trying to strip away our constitutional rights. But their day will come.” … See MoreSee Less

How ICE insulted 28 Mexican immigrants who died in a 1948 plane crash

www.latimes.com

Your morning catch-up: ICE dredges up an old tragedy, Raman’s ‘Shakespearean’ betrayal, and more big stories