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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!) … See MoreSee Less

The Quality of Mercy in Petaluma: A Case Study

www.counterpunch.org

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

LaborFest

6 days ago

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.

a1ef3961-7b25-4cb1-80b9-da647fe170e6.png
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. … See MoreSee Less

The films of South Korean director Lee Chang-dong in New York City

www.wsws.org

Lee Chang-dong, also a novelist and screenwriter, directed several films in the 1990s and early 2000s that were highly and deservedly praised.

LaborFest

2 weeks ago

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. … See MoreSee Less

SF State showcases Japanese American artists

www.sfexaminer.com

Five artists expand on Asawa’s intention of returning humanity to a community from which it was stripped.

LaborFest

2 weeks ago

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).
Image
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.”
Image
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.
Image
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.” … See MoreSee Less

Trevor Griffiths, Marxist Writer for Stage and Screen, Dies at 88

www.nytimes.com

For him, “art played a particular role in social change,” the director Mehmet Ergen said. “Everything was political.”

LaborFest

2 weeks ago

The Story Of The Yellow Vests In France

en.labournet.tv/story-yellow-vests-us

french with engl. subs |101 min | 2023 |hits: 212

"Welcome to the cinema of the yellow vests. Using images from the internet, we tell the story of the revolutionary movement in order to better understand its paths. A story of revolution and counter-revolution, of a popular uprising against politics. 4,200,000 internet users visit 1,500 Facebook groups. They unite behind the word 'angry'." (from the film)

This anthology documents the day by day of the Yellow Vest movement through images and videos shared on the internet by its participants. An important document, it shows the diversity of participants and also the diversity of their actions. As the film tracks the different phases of the movement, it allows an understanding of how the Yellow Vests ultimately lost momentum. … See MoreSee Less

The Story of the Yellow Vests By Us

en.labournet.tv

Found-footage film about the yellow vests movement in France

LaborFest

3 weeks ago

Opinion: Trump turns his trials into a soapbox. Does he know he’s channeling Hitler?
www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2024-04-08/donald-trump-legal-battles-indictments-adolf-hitler
A black and white photo from the 1930s of men in military uniforms standing with Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler, sixth from left, and the other principal collaborators of the failed Munich Beer Hall uprising pose after their 1924 trial. (Hulton-Deutsch Collection / Corbis via Getty Images)
By Timothy W. Ryback
April 8, 2024 3:05 AM PT

When Adolf Hitler was convicted of treason on April 1, 1924, for leading an armed insurrection against Germany’s democratically elected government, he discovered something remarkable: Courtrooms can make excellent soapboxes for political grandstanding. In real time, 100 years later, we’ve been watching another political leader, former president and current Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, do the same. The echoes are uncanny and disturbing.

During his monthlong trial in March 1924, followed by his conviction, Hitler railed against Germany’s democratic leaders and constitutionally anchored legal system. He chastened his judges. He threatened his prosecutors. He insisted that it was not he who had committed treason against the state but the Weimar Republic’s political establishment who had betrayed the German people.

Voting booths on the last day of early voting at a polling station inside Wayne County Community College Northwest Campus in Detroit, Michigan, US, on Sunday, Feb. 25, 2024. Michigan is home to one of the nation's largest Arab and Muslim populations, and some Democrats have told the president's team they're worried Biden's handling of the Israel-Hamas war is alienating a key voter group in a state that he won narrowly in 2020 and is expected to be close this year as well. Photographer: Emily Elconin/Bloomberg via Getty Images

“You can declare us guilty a thousand times,” Hitler defiantly told the judge after receiving his conviction and a five-year prison sentence, “but the … eternal court of history will tear up the indictment and conviction with a smile and will acquit us.” The trial and conviction proved to be a political boon for Hitler, catapulting him and the National Socialist German Workers Party from the fanatic fringe to the national stage. Hitler emerged as leader and spokesman for aggrieved, right-wing nationalists across the country.

In the decade that followed, Hitler was “dragged into courtrooms” (he told his followers at a rally) more times than he could remember. He invariably emerged politically stronger thanks to the toxic alchemy of his courtroom antics and constitutionally guaranteed freedoms of expression. When Hitler lost the 1932 presidential election by more than 6 million votes, he went to court to have the results annulled amid claims of voter fraud and irregularities by state officials. The presiding judge dismissed the case out of hand, observing that the 6-million-vote margin precluded any possibility that irregularities could have changed the outcome.

Not all judges were as rational. Hitler frequently encountered sympathetic judges, who, as had happened during the Beer Hall Putsch trial, permitted him to use his courtroom appearances to hold extended tirades, which were occasionally greeted by storms of applause. Hitler’s private lawyer, Hans Frank, who was hanged in Nuremberg for his role in Nazi atrocities, once calculated that he represented his star client in more than 140 cases, mostly for defamation. Frank observed: “His opponents always ended up causing more harm to themselves, even though they thought they were damaging this ascending figure with their slander.”

Protesters gather in front of the Capital building on the second day of pro-Trump events

In one case, Hitler sued in court for slander against a claim that, as a young man, he had spit out a consecrated host during Holy Communion. He used the occasion to emphasize his strict Roman Catholic upbringing. The next election saw a bump up in Catholics voting National Socialist.

Unquestionably, Hitler’s most notable courtroom appearance, besides his 1924 treason trial, was in September 1930, when he appeared in court as a witness in the trial of fellow Nazis suspected of being complicit in an alleged plot to seize power in a military coup. Hitler used the occasion to underscore his Legalitätseid, or legality oath, to come to power by legal means. But Hitler did not deny or conceal his intent to destroy democracy, albeit through democratic means.

Hitler reminded the judge that Article 1 of the German Constitution stated that the government was ultimately an expression of the will of the people. “When we are finally in possession of the constitutionally guaranteed rights and powers, we will pour the state into the form that we think best,” Hitler told the judge. It was an astonishingly brazen admission, but no less astonishing than the judge’s response, “So, only by constitutional means?” Hitler’s reply was crisp, “Jawohl.” Within three years, Hitler had made good on his courtroom promise by becoming chancellor and disabling democratic structures and protections.

Trump currently faces four criminal indictments, including state election interference, retention of classified documents, hush money payments and an “extraordinary conspiracy” charge related to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. Trump has called it the greatest “witch hunt in history.” With countless previous and current legal entanglements, he has probably been hauled into court more times than he can count.

Last week, when Trump appeared for a pretrial hearing in the hush money case, he railed against the judge, the judge’s family and the courtroom staff in remarks the judge called “threatening” and “inflammatory,” resulting in an expanded gag order. Trump has repeatedly attacked New York state prosecutor Letitia James, who had threatened to seize Trump’s assets to pay for the nearly half-billion-dollar judgment in his civil fraud conviction, which can be done only after appeal now that the former president posted bond.

A Republican pollster, Frank Luntz, appearing to echo the ideas of Hitler’s lawyer, cautioned against the consequences of prosecuting Trump. “If the New York attorney general starts to take his homes away, starts to seize his assets, it’s all going to be on camera,” Luntz told CNN. “You’re going to create the greatest victimhood of 2024, and you’re going to elect Donald Trump.”

History does not repeat itself, as the saying goes, but historical events can rhyme. The alarm-clanging couplet of Hitler’s and Trump’s courtroom appearances, two demagogues — separated by a century — exploiting their constitutionally guaranteed rights to free speech and due process in an effort to undermine democratic processes and structures, should serve as a sobering warning as we approach an election to determine who will be running the next government of the United States.

Timothy W. Ryback is the co-founder and director of the Institute for Historical Justice and Reconciliation in The Hague. His most recent book is “Takeover: Hitler’s Final Rise to Power.” … See MoreSee Less

Opinion: Trump turns his trials into a soapbox. Does he know he’s channeling Hitler?

www.latimes.com

The former president’s grandstanding in the courts is uncannily similar to Adolf Hitler’s during his efforts to bring Nazis to power.

LaborFest

3 weeks ago

‘Larry the Musical’ puts unsung Filipino American labor rights leader Larry Itliong in the spotlight
www.sfchronicle.com/entertainment/article/larry-itliong-larry-the-musical-18672594.php
By Zara Irshad
March 23, 2024
“Larry the Musical: An American Journey” runs through April 14 at Brava Theater.
“Larry the Musical: An American Journey” runs through April 14 at Brava Theater.
Courtesy of Billy Bustamante
Just blocks from Cesar Chavez Street in the Mission District, a group of creatives have been working for weeks to finally shine a spotlight on a labor rights leader who, unlike Chavez, has been overlooked by American educators for decades.
Larry Itliong was a Filipino American labor rights leader who fought for equal pay and better living conditions for farm and cannery workers along the West Coast and in Alaska, after immigrating to the U.S. from the Pangasinan province of the Philippines. He worked alongside Chavez, in the late 1960s, but was left out of the history books and overshadowed by the Mexican American activist who gained recognition for co-founding the United Farm Workers union with Dolores Huerta.
More Information

“Larry the Musical: An American Journey”: Written by Gayle Romasanta. Directed and choreographed by Billy Bustamante. Opens Saturday, March 23. Through April 14. $55-$150, subject to change. Brava Theater, 2781 24th St., S.F. 415-641-7657. www.brava.org

In 2021, Gov. Gavin Newsom declared Oct. 25 Larry Itliong Day statewide to posthumously recognize his accomplishments, but many historians and artists believe Itliong deserves more than a day of remembrance.

Enter “Larry the Musical: An American Journey,” which made its world premiere at Brava Theater on Saturday, March 23 — a fitting venue as the Bay Area’s Filipino American community amounts to more than 500,000, according to 2020 census data.
Review: In new musical, Filipinos fight to make labor leader Larry Itliong a household name
Timeline: The life and legacy of Filipino American labor rights leader Larry Itliong

Larry Itliong was part of the leadership of the United Farm Workers Movement.
Larry Itliong was part of the leadership of the United Farm Workers Movement.
Jon Lewis/Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
“Looking out at the audience and seeing a sea of brown faces is something that I will never take for granted,” said Washington, D.C., actor Eymard Meneses Cabling, who plays older Larry in the show. “The rallying Filipino community here in Northern California is so different from the audiences that I am used to seeing.”
The production follows Itliong’s journey, from his teenage years (played by Joshua Carandang) working as a farm laborer in Alaska to his activism that paved the path for the development of multiracial labor rights coalitions. It’s the brainchild of San Francisco State University graduate Gayle Romasanta, who grew up in Stockton, the city Itliong settled in and recruited new members for the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee.

Gayle Romasanta, executive director of “Larry the Musical: An American Journey,” gives notes to the the cast during rehearsal in the cabaret space of the Brava Theater in February.
Gayle Romasanta, executive director of “Larry the Musical: An American Journey,” gives notes to the the cast during rehearsal in the cabaret space of the Brava Theater in February.
Camille Cohen/Special to the Chronicle
Romasanta co-authored the children’s picture book “Journey for Justice: The Life of Larry Itliong” with historian and fellow Stockton native Dawn Bohulano Mabalon, the first book ever published solely about the prominent activist. The San Francisco State professor died in 2018, hours after approving the final version of the book, which inspired the musical written by Romasanta with lyrics contributed by San Francisco native and comedian Kevin Camia.
For the past five years, Romasanta has been working with Filipino American composer Bryan Pangilinan, also a San Francisco State alum; award-winning San Francisco music director and Broadway by the Bay’s resident music director Sean Kana (“In the Heights,” “Miss Saigon,” “Les Misérables”); and New York-based director Billy Bustamante to adapt the work for the stage. She then began enlisting an array of Bay Area talent, sorting through more 200 submissions after putting out a call for actors.
Director Billy Bustamante leads the cast of “Larry the Musical: An American Journey” in rehearsal in the cabaret space of the Brava Theater in February.
Director Billy Bustamante leads the cast of “Larry the Musical: An American Journey” in rehearsal in the cabaret space of the Brava Theater in February.
Camille Cohen/Special to the Chronicle
The all-Filipino American cast has been showing up energized to nearly-nightly rehearsals since the end of January, fueled by their passion to share the story of one of their forefathers. When Brava Theater is occupied, the cast take their practice next door to the venue’s lofted cabaret space. The tighter quarters have Kana tucked in a corner behind a piano and Romasanta and Pangilinan observing from seats to the side of the room. At the center is Bustamante teaching choreography, patiently working with each actor as they workshop movements and with tears in their eyes belt out the show’s songs.
And yet, amid the emotional intensity of the musical, there is immense joy flowing through the cast.
The cast and crew of “Larry the Musical: An American Journey” serve humbà, a Filipino dish, in the cabaret space of the Brava Theater, during their rehearsal break on Feb. 2, 2024.
The cast and crew of “Larry the Musical: An American Journey” serve humbà, a Filipino dish, in the cabaret space of the Brava Theater, during their rehearsal break on Feb. 2, 2024.
Camille Cohen/Special to the Chronicle
During a rehearsal last month, the cast and crew gathered for a family meal over a pot of slow cooked humbà, a braised pork dish that originated in Visayas, Philippines. A labor of love made by the show’s music assistant Jonny Incipido, the dish was devoured by the cast, whose laughter — between bites — echoed through the space.
“This will never happen again in another production,” Romasanta said, acknowledging the unique opportunity to create a musical made for and by Filipino Americans.
“Larry the Musical: An American Journey” runs through April 14 at Brava Theater.
“Larry the Musical: An American Journey” runs through April 14 at Brava Theater.
Courtesy of Billy Bustamante
Among the cast is Kylie Abucay, who plays the headstrong and independent Yzzy, a character inspired by Angelina Bantillo, a Filipina American who lived in Stockton and would participate in Rizal Day pageants wearing black, unfashionable dresses in protest. The Daly City native graduated from nursing school at San Francisco State in December, and has put her plans to practice nursing on hold to give the production her undivided attention.
“Before this project came about, I had not heard about Larry Itliong,” she admitted, despite having taken ethnic studies and Asian American studies courses in college. “It honestly makes me feel really sad to know that many people in our community likely know nothing about Larry Itliong and his importance in the labor movement.”
Similar to Abucay, many of the actors involved with the production are learning about Itliong and confronting the history of violence inflicted upon Filipino Americans during their fight for equality in the 1960s.
Actress Kylie Abucay, a Bay Area native, rehearses with the cast of “Larry the Musical: An American Journey” in the cabaret space of the Brava Theater in February.
Actress Kylie Abucay, a Bay Area native, rehearses with the cast of “Larry the Musical: An American Journey” in the cabaret space of the Brava Theater in February.
Camille Cohen/Special to the Chronicle
Recognizing the value in this education, Romasanta and Pangilinan each took out personal loans to help fund the production’s four-week run, which Romasanta said cost upward of $400,000.
“Being able to share this kind of story with people is all I’ve ever wanted to do with my career,” said Carandang, the teenage Itliong.
Carandang, who relocated from New York to be part of the show, noted that the musical uplifts the Filipino American community by highlighting Itliong’s importance in American history. Carandang’s counterpart Cabling agrees, emphasizing that the musical “shows the resilience of the Filipino community and how they respond to adversity and struggle.” Cabling believes that honoring Itliong’s legacy in this way validates his ancestors’ sacrifices and all they endured.
Eymard Meneses Cabling, front, and Joshua Carandang in “Larry the Musical: An American Journey.”
Eymard Meneses Cabling, front, and Joshua Carandang in “Larry the Musical: An American Journey.”
Courtesy of Billy Bustamante
While the musical showcases the victories that Itliong experienced during his career, such as helping organize the Delano grape strike (a five-year protest that began on Sept. 8, 1965), it doesn’t shy away from addressing the injustices he and his community faced along the way. From anti-Filipino rhetoric and inhumane working conditions to the Watsonville riots of 1930, during which a mob of white people violently ran Filipinos out of town, the show exposes the mistreatment that the community endured just six decades ago.
“There’s lots of joy that’s happening in the musical, but then there’s a deep lens into the policies and the racism that the Filipino community had to really survive and endure for decades,” Romasanta said.

The cast of "Larry the Musical: An American Journey" during rehearsals at Brava Theater.
To offset the weight of such gruesome aspects of the story, the cast has been engaging in ethnic studies workshops and sharing their own family histories amongst the group. Romasanta said they’ve also partnered with the Filipino Mental Health Initiative of San Francisco to provide a resource to Filipino Americans in the audience, given the intergenerational trauma, violence, discrimination, grief and loss addressed in the musical.
For many of the actors involved, this is the first time they have played a Filipino character. Abucay said she’s using it as a chance to learn more about her own family history to inform her role.
“I find a lot of my grandma in (Yzzy) because her roots are in Manila, and, my grandmas — both of them — grew up in Manila and they were super poor. Coming to America was a huge thing for them and it meant a lot to their family,” she said.
She recalls feeling close to the Latin immigrant stories told in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s 2008 musical “In the Heights,” a production she participated in as a student at Daly City’s Westmoor High School.
The cast of “Larry the Musical: An American Journey,” rehearses in the cabaret space of the Brava Theater in February.
The cast of “Larry the Musical: An American Journey,” rehearses in the cabaret space of the Brava Theater in February.
Camille Cohen/Special to the Chronicle
Kana, who has worked as Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s music contractor and director since 2017, also recognizes the poignance of the Washington Heights-set musical.
“ ‘In the Heights’ was sort of like Lin-Manuel’s love letter to the Latin American community. To me, ‘Larry the Musical’ is a love letter to the Filipino American community,” said Kana, who did the music direction for Broadway by the Bay’s 2014 production of “In the Heights” that won him a Theatre Bay Area award.
An integral part of that love letter is the production’s soundtrack that encapsulates a range of musical styles. Kana describes the soundtrack as a “mixtape” of pop to traditional Filipino music that incorporates folk instruments such as the octavina (a small stringed instrument), the gangsa and agung (both of which are similar to gongs).
Sean Kana, Bay Area native and music director for “Larry the Musical: An American Journey,” leads the cast through their score in the cabaret space of the Brava Theater, where the cast rehearses in February.
Sean Kana, Bay Area native and music director for “Larry the Musical: An American Journey,” leads the cast through their score in the cabaret space of the Brava Theater, where the cast rehearses in February.
Camille Cohen/Special to the Chronicle
Unapologetically Filipino, the production incorporates a number of meaningful details throughout, such as the mention of dishes like adobo — the national dish of the Philippines — and tinola to desserts like bibingka and suman. The female roles also incorporate María Clara, evoking not only the iconic Filipina heroine but the traditional dresses of the same name, into the costuming.
This attention to detail means the world to Abucay, who describes this moment as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
“We’re telling this story about people coming to America with different backgrounds while still being Filipino,” Abucay said. “They built a family together in the community, and I feel like that’s exactly what we’re doing.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled a name of a Filipina American activist. Her name was Angelina Bantillo.
Reach Zara Irshad: Zara.Irshad@sfchronicle.com … See MoreSee Less

‘Larry the Musical’ puts unsung Filipino American labor rights leader Larry Itliong in the spotlight

www.sfchronicle.com

The new musical, inspired by a book about the Filipino activist, aims to bring healing, justice and joy to the stage at San Francisco’s Brava Theater.

LaborFest

3 weeks ago

Review: The profound life and scintillating music of Betty Reid Soskin shine in ‘Sign My Name to Freedom’
datebook.sfchronicle.com/theater/sign-name-freedom-review-18671949

David John Chávez March 30, 2024Updated: April 2, 2024, 10:22 am
Left to right: Tierra Allen as Little Betty and Cathleen Riddley as Betty Reid Soskin in “Sign My Name to Freedom.”

Photo: Alexa “LexMex” Treviño
There have been moments in Betty Reid Soskin’s life that served as reminders of how society believed Black women could not thrive without a man, could not successfully run businesses and should not speak out against racism’s horrific past and crippling present.

Fortunately, she was entirely too busy changing the world to let any of that drag her down.

San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Company’s debut of “Sign My Name to Freedom,” which the Chronicle saw on Friday, March 29, built from Soskin’s trove of music compositions and deftly illustrates her life’s ups and downs through four other Bettys who represent multiple generations. It is a challenging work, with so much necessary weaving to squeeze everything into a narrative worthy of Soskin’s first 100 years of life — which included surviving a flood, two marriages and a career change in her mid-80s (this latter chapter of her life portrayed through a brilliant soliloquy about historical whitewashing).

Behind the scenes: ‘Sign My Name to Freedom’ celebrates the unheard songs of 102-year-old Betty Reid Soskin
Left to right: Lucca Troutman as Revolutionary Betty, Cathleen Riddley as Betty Reid Soskin, Tierra Allen as Little Betty, and Aidaa Peerzada as Married Betty in “Sign My Name to Freedom.”

Photo: Alexa “LexMex” Treviño
The musical’s style is established within seconds, when the 95-year-old version of Soskin (Cathleen Riddley), who became a park ranger with the U.S. National Park Service at 85, is attacked by an intruder in her East Bay apartment, a region she’d lived in since she moved to the Bay Area from New Orleans at 5 years old. After she shares the incident with fellow ranger and young friend Renee (Jasmine Milan Williams), the story she tells brings forth more Bettys she must reckon with: the vivacious Little Betty (Tierra Allen), the more conservative Married Betty (Aidaa Peerzada) and the aptly named Revolutionary Betty (Lucca Troutman).

While San Francisco playwright Michael Gene Sullivan’s script can veer too heavily into exposition, bogging down the arc’s urgency and tightness, “Sign My Name to Freedom” is a terrific production brimming with insightful wisdom. The entire piece is woven with much of Soskin’s own sagacity, built from her words and music, and stewarded sharply by Elizabeth Carter’s unified and fluid direction that moves through space with wicked dexterity. A captivatingly talented ensemble of dancers and aerialists offer texture through expressive gesticulations.

Anchoring the account is the performance of Riddley, whose veteran presence and abilities allow her to build truth from the outside in. Her Betty’s experiences bring a sobering presence to the younger versions. The smart transitioning within Sullivan’s script and Carter’s tableaus, with exquisite choreography from Laura Elaine Ellis, allows each Betty to take on consequential characters with smooth-as-glass precision.

Left to right: Dancer Jeremy Brooks, dancer Marc Cunanan Chappelle (hidden), aerialist/dancer Veronica Blair (hidden), aerialist/dancer Nina Sawant, dance captain Ahja Henry, dancer Markaila Dyson in “Sign My Name to Freedom.”

Photo: Alexa “LexMex” Treviño
Soskin’s outspoken views on issues of race and her evolution as a renaissance woman have made her a celebrated icon, but “Sign My Name to Freedom” paints a much different picture of this brave activist, exposing her vulnerabilities and loneliness. Yet, it still shows how rather than retreating further into solitude, Soskin fought back. She challenged a Walnut Creek school fundraiser in an incredibly haunting scene; refused to let Reid’s Records, the Berkeley store she owned with her first husband that specialized in selling “race” music unobtainable in white record stores, become a storefront for drug paraphernalia; and reminded people that the romanticism of women’s contributions during World War II was less heroism and more pragmatism for the purpose of eating and living. This is where the narrative’s greatest effectiveness shines, proving that ordinary actions can result in extraordinary movements.

The show’s achievements, whether dramatic or humorous, are impossible without standout performances, and there are plenty. Troutman explodes onto the scene at the end of Act 1, delivering one of the most commanding lines about revolutions. Allen’s Little Betty provides inquisition and levity, a critical character whose curiosity drives the story’s dialogue. And Peerzada’s initial reluctance to challenge the system makes a puissant push as she stares down the barrel of racism, reminding a room full of white people that her skin color is up against their dangerous privilege.

Left to right: Dancer Jeremy Brooks, dance captain Ahja Henry, aerialist/dancer Veronica Blair, Aidaa Peerzada as Married Betty, dancer Marc Cunanan Chappelle, Tierra Allen as Little Betty, aerialist/dancer William Brewton Fowler Jr., aerialist/dancer Nina Sawant, Cathleen Riddley as Betty Reid Soskin and Lucca Troutman as Revolutionary Betty in “Sign My Name to Freedom.”

Photo: Alexa “LexMex” Treviño
The musical’s multiple Bettys are reflections of the racial weathering and harm Soskin was forced to endure, with what she believed was little recourse to fight back. But in “Wind Song,” one of Soskin’s many celestial compositions featured in the production, Peerzada’s Married Betty sings: “See the clouds lift/ sand surround me/ now, sun, now! / break through!”

Left to right: Lucca Troutman as Revolutionary Betty and Tierra Allen as Little Betty in “Sign My Name to Freedom.”

Photo: Alexa “LexMex” Treviño
Indeed, once she firmly leaned into her unapologetic truth, Betty Reid Soskin — who still lives in Richmond at 102 — finally began to bask in the warm rays of her success. It’s finally time for her, and every iteration of Betty, to fully embrace what the music in her life always possessed: harmony.

David John Chávez is a freelance writer.

More Information
3 stars.jpeg
“Sign My Name to Freedom”: Written by Michael Gene Sullivan. Directed by Elizabeth Carter. Two hours, 30 minutes. Through April 13. $15-$65. Z Space, 450 Florida St., S.F. www.sfbatco.org … See MoreSee Less

Review: The profound life and scintillating music of Betty Reid Soskin shine in ‘Sign My Name to Freedom’

datebook.sfchronicle.com

The many lives of Soskin’s 102 years is the premise of San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Company’s world premiere musical at Z Space in San Francisco.