In 'Tally Mon Come' Harry Belafonte cites Paul Robeson as a major influence in his life. No surprise as Robeson was the best known and most admired Black person in America from the 1920's to the 1950's, the Cold War and McCarthyism. Len Chandler and Ross Altman are wonderful songwriters and singers, perfectly suited to honor him and entertain you. Their annual birthday salute to the great man is Sunday.
Also, do read today's LA Times Calendar's outstanding review of Prison Nation on page E14, titled "There's power in these posters." The exhibit relates to much of what I send you in the unique, powerful way only art can and should not be missed. The Sunday afternoon film series begins this week with films about youth in the system and will be on my weekend calendar tomorrow. I have to comment on the Times disgraceful purging of Boondocks and Aaron McGruder's incomparable art. Their own blacklist hasn't yet fully poisoned the Calendar. Write them if you haven't already done so. Ed From: John Johnson Sent: Thursday, April 06, 2006 1:57 AM Subject: [LAAMN] Crash Showtime, cable channel had a free showing of "Crash" I recorded it and just finished watching it Actually a hell of a movie. It was sort of a compressed, microcosm of LA racial antagonism. With a lot of irony, humor, some nods to "Pulp Fiction", dramatic arches that come back and touch. Obviously not meant as literal, even a couple of magical moments in it. Rings true though. Everyone has been in or seen a lot of the individual scenes. Or been really angry with someone only to have to help them out or vice-versa Starts talking about how we drive around in metal boxes never touching each other so sometimes we have the crash into one another to get some feelings, some connection. So the film shows various people "crashing" into one another. There are nods to politics and institutional racism but that's not the main point. But how we don't get above the instutionalism. How we waste time being irritated and taking it out on others and it works best when the others are different. How we actually need each other and how things might work out better, if we got out of ourselves and looked to the benefit of others, as the last scene of the movie states. If one took individual scenes out of context, viewed them as something like a documentary, not as drama and poetry, then some of the criticisms would hold. Its also a Hollywood movie with its built in entertain value, some points are obvious and a bit cliché and even with the progressive politics of its writer/director Paul Haggis, its still in the mainstream. *** Ugly past echoes in Duke case by Timothy B. Tyson, Special to the News & Observer The Raleigh News & Observer - April 2, 2006 http://www.newsobserver.com/164/story/424299.html My daddy taught me that God has called us to love people and to use things but that we are often tempted to love things and use people. Rape is one of the deepest and most vicious ways that human beings deny their common humanity. Racism is another. These crimes are intertwined deeply in our history, and that history came off its leash once more on Buchanan Boulevard on March 13, as a few Duke students did great harm to our community. The question of whether they also committed rape is one that we must leave to the courts and the police. But regardless of the fog around that question, other matters remain clear. Young white men of privilege deployed their unearned affluence to hire black women to provide live pornography. This is only partly a free market, where people choose to buy and sell themselves. It is also a slave market, where an enduring racial caste system placed those women in a vulnerable position. Most of the people involved were college students. One of the women has small children and is trying to put herself through N.C. Central University. Our society has chosen to withhold support from people who seek to improve their lot. Grants and loans have become much harder to obtain at the same time that the gap between rich and poor yawns wider every day. The Duke students took advantage of the woman's position. In doing so, they stepped into a tragic and painful history that still resonates. White college students a few generations back would sometimes hire a black man to let them tie his hands behind his back, and then the black man would try to fish coins and bills out of a barrel of flour. More recently, white fraternities would don blackface and hold "slave auctions" at parties. Such minstrel humor was very popular but racially degrading, damaging the community and the people involved. This is also the case with rich white boys hiring black "exotic dancers." The spirit of the lynch mob lived in that house on Buchanan Boulevard, regardless of the truth of the most serious charges. The ghastly spectacle takes its place in a history where African- American men were burned at the stake for "reckless eyeballing" -- that is, looking at a white woman -- and white men kept black concubines and mistresses and raped black women at will. It matters, of course, what happened. But the dynamics of race, power and violence that have marred our history remain with us. When the men of one group have most of the power and privilege and see themselves as above the law, that will always be a recipe for abusive relationships with women from other groups, sometimes physically violent, more often spiritually violent. What baffles me is that young men who have had available to them the finest liberal arts education that money can buy have managed not to learn its highest lessons. I am disappointed in them, to be sure, but I am also disappointed in my colleagues and myself. Surely we are better teachers than that. But all that is so much whining. Now we can only reach out in a spirit of healing to the communities that have been hurt. Now we can turn back to our teaching, put aside pedantry and cut to the heart of what education means: understanding that we are all human beings, that we are here to provide illumination and sustenance for each other, and that God and our highest human understandings all call us to better things. [Timothy B. Tyson, author of the book "Blood Done Sign My Name," is a senior research scholar at the Center for Documentary Studies and visiting professor of American Christianity and Southern Culture in the Divinity School of Duke University.] *** Folk Singers Len Chandler and Ross Altman Celebrate Paul Robeson's Birthday At Beyond Baroque Los Angeles-Sunday evening, April 9, folk singers Len Chandler and Ross Altman will celebrate Paul Robeson's birthday with a return engagement at Beyond Baroque, L.A.'s literary arts center. The doors open at 7:00 P.M., admission is $7.00 and reservations are not necessary. Beyond Baroque is located at 681 Venice Blvd. just two blocks west of Lincoln. Their phone number is (310) 822-3006. There is ample free street parking. Len Chandler and Ross Altman are two of L.A.'s best known folk singers and both have a history of social activism that continues in Paul Robeson's spirit of using music to advance and celebrate the themes of peace and social justice. Many of Len Chandler's songs come out of the struggle for civil rights going back to the 1960's, when he was a part of the Greenwich Village folk scene that included Bob Dylan, Tom Paxton and Phil Ochs. Chandler went to Mississippi in the early 60's and participated in the voting rights campaigns organized by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). He wrote the music for one of Bob Dylan's most powerful early protest songs, "The Ballad of Emmett Till," about the young Negro teenager whose murder in 1955 helped spark the civil rights movement that began later that year when Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of the bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Chandler is a treasured living connection to one of the most important chapters in modern American history, and speaks and sings with the authority of someone who was there when it counted. Ross Altman comes out of the confluence of the Old Left and the New Left. His father was an unfriendly witness before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), the same committee Paul Robeson appeared before, who was also blacklisted for refusing to name names. Altman will sing his song, "The Ballad of Paul Robeson," which tells the story of a great artist whose singular contribution to American culture was recognized with a first class US postage stamp last year. Altman also sings some of Robeson's classic songs, including "The House I Live In," "Joe Hill," and "Old Man River." These are benchmark songs, that define the power of folk music to be more than a song, to become a part of social movements, both labor and civil rights, that change history. Ross also carries on Robeson's commitment to peace through music, including a song, "From Wounded Knee to Abu Ghraib," from his CD, Singer-SongFighter. Len Chandler and Ross Altman offer an evening of folk music at its best-troubadours who carry on a tradition going back to Joe Hill, Woody Guthrie and Paul Robeson Doors open at 7:00 P.M., $7.00 adm. - no reservations necessary. Beyond Baroque is at 681 Venice Blvd. 2 blocks west of Lincoln. (310) 822-3006. There is ample free street parking. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digest: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! 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