RAG RADIO / Thorne Dreyer : 'Radio Unnameable' Legend Bob Fass and Filmmaker Paul Lovelace

Late-night radio revolutionary Bob Fass, left, and filmmaker Paul Lovelace.

Rag Radio podcast: 
Free-form radio legend Bob Fass and
'Radio Unnameable' filmmaker Paul Lovelace

“I wanna be a neuron -- I don’t wanna be the brain. We’re all the brain.” -- Bob Fass to his radio audience in the 1960s.

By Thorne Dreyer / The Rag Blog / May 9, 2013

Bob Fass is an American broadcast legend who was a pioneer of free-form radio and who has been on the air at New York's WBAI for almost 50 years. Fass's show, Radio Unnameable, provided an early forum for counterculture figures like Paul Krassner, Bob Dylan, and Abbie Hoffman, and helped spawn the Yippies.

Paul Lovelace is the producer and co-director of Radio Unnameable, a remarkable documentary about Fass and his singular legacy.

Bob Fass and Paul Lovelace were our guests on Rag Radio, Friday, May 3, 2013. Rag Radio is a syndicated radio program produced at the studios of KOOP 91.7-FM, a cooperatively-run all-volunteer community radio station in Austin, Texas.

Listen to or download our interview with Bob Fass and Paul Lovelace here:


Bob Fass's Radio Unnameable -- he appropriated the moniker from Samuel Beckett -- is credited with revolutionizing late-night radio. The show was first broadcast in 1963 on listener-sponsored Pacifica radio station WBAI-FM in New York City.

Pacifica, founded in 1946, pioneered listener-sponsored radio in this country and WBAI became a Pacifica station in 1960. But they signed off at midnight and, Fass told us, "I knew that there was a world of people who would listen to the radio late at night -- for companionship, for education" -- so he coaxed management into letting him do an all-night shift.

From the beginning the show featured regular appearances by counterculture figures such as Paul Krassner, Bob Dylan, Abbie Hoffman, Phil Ochs, Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg, Kinky Friedman, and Wavy Gravy, and broadcast the first performances of Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant” and Jerry Jeff Walker’s “Mr. Bojangles."

Fass’s on-air calls-to-action brought thousands into the streets for countercultural happenings including a Human Fly-In at JFK Airport, a Sweep-In to clean up New York streets, and a Yip-In at Grand Central Station that turned into a police riot. Fass was called a "midwife" to the birth of the '60s counterculture and his show helped to incubate the theatrical New Left activist group, the Yippies.

Fass told the Rag Radio audience that there was "a whole cultural revolution in New York City," and "I had the good fortune to be able to put it on the air." "There was no other place doing what I was doing," he told us. "If something was gonna happen, [Radio Unnameable] was where it was gonna happen."

"We were kind of demystifying radio," he said, "making it somehow less austere and didactic."

Fass also experimented with form; he might play a record backwards or play two records at once or play the same song multiple times. And he would put as many as 10 callers on the air simultaneously. Jay Sand wrote that Fass "had the same supplies as any other broadcaster -- two turntables, a microphone, a stack of records, perhaps a guest in the studio, a friend on the phone... [but] the radio program he created... transcended those common wares."

Fass developed a very special relationship with his listeners, even giving his loyal audience a name: "Cabal." He would open the show with the greeting: "Good morning, Cabal." “I wanna be a neuron," he once told his audience. "I don’t wanna be the brain. We’re all the brain.”

Fass, who was born June 29, 1933, can still be heard every Thursday night from midnight-3 a.m. on WBAI 99.5-FM in New York.

Good morning, Cabal.

Paul Lovelace is a documentary filmmaker who produced and co-directed (with Jessica Wolfson) Radio Unnameable, a feature-length documentary about Fass and his amazing story.

The film, which was screened in December 2012 by the Austin Film Society -- where it was introduced to the audience by songster and former Fass regular Jerry Jeff Walker -- is currently showing around the country and the DVD will be released in September. It will also be available on Netflix, YouTube, and other outlets, Lovelace said. Radio Unnameable has screened to widespread kudos and Rotten Tomatoes gives the movie a 100 percent positive rating among critics.

As Rag Blog editor and Rag Radio host, I was honored to participate in a panel with the filmmakers after the Austin screening. I spent time in New York in the '60s and worked with Houston's Pacifica station, KPFT, in the '70s -- and I can offer personal witness to Bob Fass's incredible contribution to progressive radio in this country.

The film features new interviews with Paul Krassner, Arlo Guthrie, Judy Collins, Wavy Gravy, Jerry Jeff Walker, Ed Sanders, David Amram, and others, as well as the insightful and edifying reflections of Fass himself. And, as John Anderson of Variety points out, Fass's "legacy, and his archives, are as epic as the medium gets," adding that the film includes "extraordinary archival material and some sparkling footage of New York."

Lovelace told the Rag Radio audience that more than 60 people worked on cataloging and organizing the archival material which was in a range of media formats including "5,000 or more reel-to-reel audio tapes, just from 1962-1977." "We immersed ourselves in the material," he said. "It was a treasure trove."

Michael Simmons wrote at The Rag Blog that “Fass and ‘Cabal’ changed history and deserve the credit, and Lovelace and Wolfson have provided the first in-depth cinematic look. It resonates like an epic tale with the hero emerging as a long-shot survivor."

In his review at The New York Times, A. O. Scott wrote that Lovelace and his co-director Jessica Wolfson "pay tribute both to an influential voice in broadcasting and to the times whose ideals and follies he helped articulate," identifying Bob Fass as "a gentle, soulful voice" who "kept [New Yorkers] from loneliness."

Paul Lovelace has previously won film festival acclaim for his short films, Robert Christgau: Rock N’ Roll Animal, about the esteemed Village Voice music journalist, and for the 35mm narrative short, The Sonnets. His first documentary feature was The Holy Modal Rounders: Bound to Lose, a portrait of the psychedelic folk duo. Paul also wrote, produced, and edited the PBS documentary, American Roots Music: Chicago.

Michael Simmons sums it all up beautifully:

Radio Unnameable is a roadmap for rebels, those who believe -- as the saying goes -- that another world is possible. Fass and Lovelace and Wolfson show that political and cultural transformation are often generated in the wee small hours of the morning -- that perfect time when the moon shines, the squares sleep, and dreamers share dreams while wide awake.

Rag Radio is hosted and produced by Rag Blog editor and long-time alternative journalist Thorne Dreyer, a pioneer of the Sixties underground press movement.

The show has aired since September 2009 on KOOP 91.7-FM, an all-volunteer cooperatively-run community radio station in Austin, Texas. Rag Radio is broadcast live every Friday from 2-3 p.m. (CDT) on KOOP and is rebroadcast on Sundays at 10 a.m. (EDT) on WFTE, 90.3-FM in Mt. Cobb, PA, and 105.7-FM in Scranton, PA.

The show is streamed live on the web by both stations and, after broadcast, all Rag Radio shows are posted as podcasts at the Internet Archive.

Rag Radio is produced in association with The Rag Blog, a progressive Internet newsmagazine, and the New Journalism Project, a Texas 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation. Tracey Schulz is the show's engineer and co-producer.

Rag Radio can be contacted at ragradio@koop.org.

Coming up on Rag Radio:
THIS FRIDAY, May 10, 2013: Journalism professor and activist Robert Jensen, author of Arguing for Our Lives: A User's Guide to Constructive Dialog.
Friday, May 17, 2013: Political economist Gar Alperovitz, author of What Then Must We Do?
Friday, May 24, 2013 (RESCHEDULED): Amsterdam-based poet John Sinclair, legendary founder of the White Panther Party and former manager of the MC5.

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INTERVIEW / Jonah Raskin : Documentary Filmmakers Doug Hecker and Christopher Oscar Dish on 'Junk Food News'

Documentary filmmakers Christopher Oscar, left, and Doug Hecker.

Doug Hecker and Christopher Oscar:
Documentary filmmakers on media,
civil liberties, and 'Project Censored'

“The corporate rules are simple: tell the news the way you're told to tell the news or ratings will decline and you'll be out of a job.” -- Doug Hecker, Co-Producer, Co-Director, Co-Writer, 'Project Censored: The Movie'

By Jonah Raskin / The Rag Blog / April 18, 2013

Filmmaker, Doug Hecker, 47, was born and raised in San Francisco, California. His pal and cinematic collaborator, Christopher Oscar, 42, hails from Montclair, New Jersey.

Six years ago, they met in the town of Sonoma, California, and ever since then -- with time off for good behavior -- they’ve worked on a documentary about the media watchdog group, Project Censored, founded by Carl Jensen in the wake of Watergate.

Hecker and Oscar are both college grads and they’re both the kinds of grads that teachers will practically die for -- which means they’re committed to critical thinking, life-long learning, and social responsibility.

When they graduated from college -- Oscar from C.W. Post University on Long Island, New York, Hecker from Sonoma State University in California -- their studies just began.

Their new 60-minute documentary, Project Censored: The Movie, Ending the Reign of Junk Food News, informs, entertains, and riles up citizen activists, too, about the loss of civil liberties in the United States today and the rise of what they regard as a police state.

The talking heads who speak in the movie -- historian Howard Zinn, all-around gadfly Noam Chomsky, poet Amiri Baraka, UCLA Professor Nora Barrows-Freeman, and more -- make far more sense than the talking heads on ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox.

“Human consciousness,” Zinn says “is hard to fathom, but every so often it breaks to the surface.” Hecker and Oscar know that the media puts humanity to sleep all day and all night, and that the media can also wake humanity from its slumber.

Mickey Huff, the current director of Project Censored, points out that there’s more information available these days thanks to the Internet, but that, paradoxically, there’s also greater misinformation. Movie producer, director, and cinematographer Haskell Wexler suggests that in our peculiar form of democracy, Americans may not want to known the truth. Hecker and Oscar hope that’s not true.

Their rousing picture about Project Censored and the state of the media in America today is also a wake-up call to viewers sickened by the steady diet of junk food news dished out by corporate media.

The interview with both Hecker and Oscar took place two days after I saw their movie.

 

Jonah Raskin: Can you say something about an exact moment when the proverbial light went on in your head?

Doug Hecker: The light went on for me when I was enrolled in communications classes. As a student in Project Censored, we constantly discussed the spin that corporate media uses when reporting the news.

Christopher Oscar: For me, it was when I was an investigative journalism major and writing a story about the fact that crime was down 30%, but crime coverage increased 70%.

In your own life have you noticed a strong urge to censor?

Hecker: I choose my words wisely, but I tend not to censor myself. I could lose some business as a realtor because of the movie. If a client chooses not to work with me because I believe the press should be free and should present news that lead to social change, I’d rather not work with that person.

As a father with children, what kinds of limits if any do you set for them about TV and the Internet?

Hecker: I prefer to discuss topics on TV and the Internet and to help create awareness and media literacy in my children. However, I do limit violence, foul language, and sexual content.

Oscar: It’s very rare that we find a program that is suitable for my children to watch. My kids don't use the Internet. They are eight and five years old. If and when we find a child-friendly program, we limit viewing.

Your documentary shows that when there's war there's censorship and when there's censorship there's war.

Hecker: Censorship leads to war. War doesn’t benefit anyone except those in power. It’s corrupt and it’s brought about by power, money, greed, religion, politics, ignorance, and stupidity.

Doug, you grew up in a small California town. Did you buy into the official story disseminated by the media?

Hecker: I did for years. I began reading newspapers in high school and believed what I read. However, once I got to college I realized that a majority of U.S. news is designed to control the population, shape public policy, and instill fear into citizens.

Oscar, what about you?

Oscar: What I witnessed was that my parents watched tons of fear. I could never understand why they were so hypnotized by it. As I grew older, I found that I enjoyed investigative news shows like 60 Minutes. It wasn't until college that I became a critic of corporate media.

Looking at the global picture, would you say censorship is better or worse in the U.S. than in say, China, Russia, or Iran?

Hecker: I would say it's not better or worse, but different. U.S. censorship is subtle -- not the dictatorship-style where the consequences are prison or death. However, the attack on journalists and the First Amendment is increasing in the U.S. Under the guise of protecting us against terrorism, we’re losing civil liberties.

Oscar: The majority of people don't even know censorship is there. Next thing you know, America will be back in another illegal war.

In the U.S. if you want to play the corporate media game I guess you have to play by the corporate rules -- or get out.

Hecker: The corporate rules are simple: tell the news the way you're told to tell the news or ratings will decline and you'll be out of a job.

Oscar: Reporters should investigate the owners of their own stations.

Where you live in California, what local stories and truths do you think are hidden from citizens now?

Hecker: GMOs, pesticides, farm animal abuse, the ever-increasing rise of health care, petroleum products, pollution, lobbyists, government corruption, etc.

Fear is a big factor in our society isn't it? Reporters are afraid and citizens are afraid. How do we overcome fear?

Hecker: Fear-based news leads to higher ratings, which leads to increased ad revenue. To change fear-based news you need to start at the grassroots with programs like Project Censored and other alternative media sources that have validated news and fact-based reporting.

Oscar: People glued to the nightly news are bombarded and besieged with violence and destruction. The message you get is that people are out to get you so you better watch out. We need a media system that shines light on the good that people are doing in the world to create a more harmonious planet.

There still are people who are courageous, such as the Australian, Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, who released on the Internet confidential U.S. documents. Did he go too far?

Hecker: We need more people like Assange, Daniel Ellsberg, Bradley Manning who realize that sacrifice may be necessary to expose human rights abuses, corruption, and environmental damage.

Oscar: Hopefully, governments will think twice about their actions now that there is a Julian Assange out there. It's surprising, though, how little attention it's really gotten. You would think more people would be upset about the failure of the news to dig for truth.

What gives you hope for a world in which your kids are grown up?

Hecker: Without hope no future is possible. We made this film to help future generations and to point out that social change is needed and that the people of the world need to put an end to complacency and become active and involved citizens both politically and socially in order to end the human and environmental atrocities that plague our world.

[Jonah Raskin, a regular contributor to The Rag Blog, is  a long-time journalist and author. Read more articles by Jonah Raskin on The Rag Blog.]

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FILM / David McReynolds : 'How to Survive a Plague' Is the Remarkable Story of ACT UP's Battle Against AIDS

How to Survive a Plague:
The remarkable story of ACT UP

Panic spread slowly. Rock Hudson's death gave the disease a public face, but took us no closer to the cause.

By David McReynolds / The Rag Blog / April 10, 2013

[David France's critically-acclaimed and award-winning documentary film, How to Survive a Plague, saw limited release in the United States in 2012.]

Clancy Sigal's advice to me is to keep it short -- a skill he has mastered and I've not. This is a quick review of David France's film (now on DVD), How To Survive a Plague, largely the story of ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) and TAG (Treatment Activist Group), the nonprofit organization that grew out of ACT UP.

As films go, this feels almost like a "rough draft" of a documentary, but how could it be otherwise? The technical limitations of this short documentary are overwhelmed by a remarkable story, one that makes the film worth watching by anyone concerned with social change. The producers had to hunt for bits and pieces of film over a period of years -- this was not a film which had been assigned a staff photographer to follow events.

I've said to friends that if I were 10 years younger I'd have been dead long ago -- but when AIDS was given a name, in 1982, I was already 53. It wasn't just a "gay disease" -- it was almost entirely a disease of the youth. It's first name was GRID -- Gay-Related Immune Deficiency -- and even when it was given a name a year later, no one had any idea what caused it. Panic spread slowly. Rock Hudson's death gave the disease a public face, but took us no closer to the cause.

My local bar -- once probably the best gay bar in New York, right on my corner, at Fourth Street and Second Avenue -- slowly emptied out. Bob, the sweet young bartender, fell ill, and then fell dead. Bar traffic slowed, as if perhaps breathing the same air would transmit the disease.

By 1987 ACT UP was formed. It had the enormous energy of youth. Watching this film reminded me, again, of why the young are almost always the cutting edge of social change. They are not always right -- ACT UP made more than its share of errors, suffered the almost inevitable splits -- but to watch this film is to see young men and women, frightened by the death which was marching straight towards them, organize and act. And to act with imagination and love -- in things such as the moving "quilt" project.

They provided the people-power for major political demonstrations, but they did much more than that -- they studied the disease, they examined alternative treatments, and methods for running trials that would speed up the information on what might work. In the end they cooperated with the scientists in finding the answer.

And that answer was not easy to find. The AIDS virus is remarkably tricky and defeating it has been an incredibly complex task. It was, for the men and women in ACT UP, a race against time.

Watching the film I felt a sense of guilt that I had not been more involved. AIDS, even though we didn't know its cause, was around me. A neighbor who lived a floor above me came down with it, and while I was able to visit him at first, simply walking into his room (he had Kaposi's Syndrome), when he was taken to the hospital his room was guarded as if a particle of the disease might escape. One had to put on gloves, mask, a gown before going in, and they were taken off and destroyed when you left his room.

All of us have sins of omission; I won't belabor mine. I write this brief review because the beautiful young men and women in this film, so vital, so very young, so fierce in their struggle, and most of them now dead, succeeded in pushing until the labs delivered the drugs which have made it possible to defeat AIDS.

It isn't, of course, defeated, not here (where unsafe sex is sometimes seen as exciting), much less in Africa. But because of ACT UP we have the means. The film, made in 2012, is one hour and 49 minutes. You can get it from Netflix.

[David McReynolds was for nearly 40 years a member of the staff of the War Resisters League, and was twice the Socialist Party's candidate for president. He and the late Barbara Deming are the subjects of a dual biography, A Saving Remnant, by historian Martin Duberman. David retired in 1999, and lives on the Lower East Side of Manhattan with his two cats. He posts at Edge Left.org and can be reached at davidmcreynolds7@gmail.com. Read more articles by David McReynolds on The Rag Blog.]

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RAG RADIO / Thorne Dreyer : Anne Lewis' Documentary About Anne Braden Is 'Gem of a Film'

Filmmaker Anne Lewis on Rag Radio in the studios of KOOP-FM in Austin, Texas, Friday, February 22, 2012. Photo by William Michael Hanks / The Rag Blog.

Rag Radio Podcast:
Documentary filmmaker Anne Lewis,
co-director of Anne Braden: Southern Patriot

By Rag Radio / The Rag Blog / February 27, 2013

Documentary filmmaker and University of Texas senior lecturer Anne Lewis, whose most recent work, Anne Braden: Southern Patriot, was called a "gem of a film" by folksinger and civil rights activist Joan Baez, was Thorne Dreyer's guest on Rag Radio, Friday, February 22, 2013.

On the show, Lewis discussed her impressive body of work as an independent filmmaker and, in particular, her acclaimed film about the remarkable Southern civil rights fighter Anne Braden.

She also addressed recent developments at the University of Texas at Austin, where university president Bill Powers has made radical proposals to "increase efficiency" at the the school, in part by privatizing much of the university staff. Powers' plans have drawn reaction from faculty, students, and union activists on the UT-Austin campus, and Lewis wrote about the issue in The Rag Blog.

Rag Radio is a syndicated radio program produced at the studios of KOOP 91.7-FM in Austin, Texas. This episode was produced during KOOP's Spring 2013 Membership Drive and includes fundraising pitches for the cooperatively-run all volunteer public radio station.

Listen to or download our interview with Anne Lewis, here:


Anne Lewis is an independent filmmaker, a senior lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin's School of Radio-Television-Film, and an active member of the Texas State Employees Union (TSEU-CWA Local 6186) and NABET-CWA. She has been making documentary films since 1970. Most of her filmmaking depicts working class people -- often women -- fighting for social change. She is associated with Appalshop, an arts and education center located in the heart of Appalachia.

Anne Lewis was associate director of Harlan County, U.S.A, and the producer/director of Fast Food Women, To Save the Land and People, Morristown: in the air and sun, and a number of other social issue and cultural documentaries. She was associate director/assistant camera for Harlan County, USA, the Academy Award-winning documentary, which focused on the Brookside, Kentucky, strike of 1975. After the strike, Lewis moved to the coalfields where she lived for 25 years.

Lewis was co-director with Mimi Pickering of the 2012 film, Anne Braden: Southern Patriot, a first-person documentary about the extraordinary life of the American civil rights leader. The film was first screened by the Austin Film Society on July 18, 2012.

Filmmaker Anne Lewis.

Writing at The Rag Blog, William Michael Hanks called the film "a wellspring of intellectual reason, a blueprint for action [that] includes some of the most iconic footage from the civil-rights movement ever seen." The Rag Blog's Hanks, himself a former documentary filmmaker, joined us in the interview, discussing with Lewis her unique use of first person narrative in constructing the film.

According to The Texas Observer's Susan Smith Richardson, Anne Braden, a middle-class white woman from Alabama who "rejected her racial privilege in the Jim Crow South and devoted her life to fighting racism," was considered a "traitor to her race" by many who opposed her. Braden and her husband Carl, who together published the crusading Southern Patriot newspaper, were targets of Sen. Joseph McCarthy's anti-Communist witch hunts. Braden, who was an inspirational figure among movement activists, was called "eloquent and prophetic" by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Joan Baez called Anne Braden: Southern Patriot, "a gem of a film, accented with freedom fighters who speak firsthand about carving a path through a traumatized, violent, racist South, to make way for one of the largest and most effective nonviolent movements for social change the world has ever seen."

To learn more about Anne Lewis' work, visit her website, AnneLewis.org.

Rag Radio has aired since September 2009 on KOOP 91.7-FM, an all-volunteer cooperatively-run community radio station in Austin, Texas. Hosted and produced by Rag Blog editor and long-time alternative journalist Thorne Dreyer, a pioneer of the Sixties underground press movement, Rag Radio is broadcast every Friday from 2-3 p.m. (CST) on KOOP, and is rebroadcast on Sundays at 10 a.m. (EST) on WFTE, 90.3-FM in Mt. Cobb, PA, and 105.7-FM in Scranton, PA.

The show is streamed live on the web by both stations and, after broadcast, all Rag Radio shows are posted as podcasts at the Internet Archive.

Rag Radio is produced in association with The Rag Blog, a progressive internet newsmagazine, and the New Journalism Project, a Texas 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation. Tracey Schulz is the show's engineer and co-producer.

Rag Radio can be contacted at ragradio@koop.org.

Coming up on Rag Radio:
THIS FRIDAY, March 1, 2013: Louis Black, co-founder and editor of the Austin Chronicle and co-founder of the South by Southwest Music, Interactive, and Film Festival (SXSW).
Friday, March 8: Novelist David McCabe, author of Without Sin, based on a true story of a sex trafficking ring exploiting young, undocumented women.
Friday, March 15: Legendary producer Chris Strachwitz of Arhoolie Records, and filmmakers Maureen Gosling & Chris Simon, This Ain't No Mouse Music!

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FILM / Jonah Raskin : 'Searching for Sugar Man'

Searching for Sugar Man:
The Sixties surface, again

Rodriquez is himself a Sixties survivor. His songs capture the mood of the late 1960s and the early 1970s. They reflect the anger, the aspirations, and the despair of the era.

By Jonah Raskin / The Rag Blog / December 6, 2012

When the musician known simply as Rodriguez appeared on the David Letterman Show in August 2012, dressed in a black hat, black shirt, and dark glasses, he sang just one of his poignant songs, “Crucify Your Mind.” The only words he spoke were, “Thank you.”

Viewers might well have wondered who he was, though Letterman explained that Rodriguez was the subject of a film by Malik Bendjelloul, Searching for Sugar Man, the sleeper documentary of the year distributed by Sony Pictures.

Increasingly, audiences around the world know who he is, especially if they’ve seen the movie about him and have listened to his CD that offers 14 songs he originally recorded more than 40 years ago and that never reached the bottom let alone the top of any music chart.

Sixto Rodriguez is one of the strangest singer/songwriters in the annals of twentieth-century American music, as the film about him makes abundantly clear.

He even talks in the movie and says more than “thank you,” though the images of him, such as one in which he walks alone through the snow, say as much about him as any words he utters. His story is unique; indeed, there’s no one remotely like him. At the same time, his story, which touches on the fickleness of fame, success, and failure, appeals to a wide audience and not only to survivors of the Sixties, a time when Rodriguez first appeared out of nowhere on the music scene.

Rodriquez himself is a Sixties survivor. His songs capture the mood of the late 1960s and the early 1970s. They reflect the anger, the aspirations, and the despair of the era. To listen to the soundtrack (Searching for Sugar Man 2012, the original motion picture soundtrack with songs by Rodriguez, published on the Sony Legacy label), is to be transported back to that time and place, especially on songs such as “Inner City Blues,” and “This is Not a Song, It’s an Outburst: Or, the Establishment Blues.”

Part bluesman, part rock ‘n’ roller, and part folk musician, Rodriguez recorded two albums in 1970 and 1971 when he was 28 and 29 years old and living in Detroit. While the albums went nowhere in the States, they became big hits among anti-apartheid whites in South Africa and it’s easy to understand why. The lyrics are clear and concise; they’re anti-establishment -- any and every establishment -- and they’re also playful and even humorous. Moreover, the music, which has a lyrical beat, is an open invitation to get up and dance.

Still, the lyrics alone would not make Rodriguez a memorable artist worth knowing about 40 years after the beginning and nearly simultaneous end of his own abortive career. It’s the story of his life that matters: how he never became bitter or resentful and just kept on keeping on.

Rodriquez would never have appeared on the Letterman Show and he’d be as unknown today as ever if it were not for Craig Bartholomew-Strydom, a South African rock journalist turned detective, who tracked him down, in part by using the lyrics to his songs.

Sixties survivor Rodriguez.

The movie, Searching for Sugar Man, tells the fascinating story of Bartholomew-Strydom’s relentless search that led him from Johannesburg to Detroit where he found Rodriguez and his two daughters -- who explain that they were raised without wealth and material goods, but with a rich appreciation for culture.

Rodriguez comes across as a good father, a humble workingman, and a countercultural icon. His CD is a time capsule of hippie culture circa 1970. Looking for sad love songs? They’re here. Want visionary and prophetic lyrics? You’ll find them here. Eager to hear political invective? It’s also here.

Rodriquez is a very sharp observer of human fakery, foibles, and flaws. Perhaps to satirize fakery, as Rodriguez does, you have to understand it from the inside out and even indulge in it. There’s a fine line between the real and the parody and Rodriquez adheres to it. He’s all heart and sentiment and at the same time he can be ironical and a kind of put-on artist.

On the first track, “Sugar Man,” he longs for the arrival of the “Silver majik ships” that carry “Jumpers, coke, sweet Mary Jane.” On the second, “Crucify Your Mind,” he tells an unnamed other, “I've seen your self-pity showing/And the tears rolled down your cheeks.” On the third track, “Cause,” he’s full of self-pity and then on the fourth track, “I Wonder,” he’s sassy, irreverent, and timeless. “I wonder how many times you had sex,” he sings. “I wonder do you know who’ll be next.”

“Can’t Get Away” -- number seven -- is about the longing to escape and the impossibility of really escaping. “Inner City Blues” takes on the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “King died/ Drinking from a Judas cup,” Rodriguez sings. The same song addresses the gap between the generations. “Papa don't allow no new ideas here,” he wails.

n the ironical “Sandrevan Lullaby,” he addresses the nation itself:  “America gains another pound/ Only time will bring some people around.” The third song from the end, “I’ll Slip Away,” is perhaps the most personal. “You can keep your symbols of success,” he sings. “I'll pursue my own happiness/
And you can keep your clocks and routines.”


Rodriquez did exactly what he said he’d do. By the early 1970s, he was done with the world and perhaps sick of the world. “For too long I just put you on,” he sings in “I’ll Slip Away.” He adds, “Now I'm tired of lying and I'm sick of trying.”

But the world was not done with him or sick of him. In the movie and on the CD Searching for Sugar Man, he’s back bigger than ever before, and the Sixties are back, too, with poetry and with whimsy.

[Jonah Raskin is the author of American Scream: Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and the Making of the Beat Generation, and For The Hell of It: The Life and Times of Abbie Hoffman. A regular contributor to The Rag Blo, he’s a professor emeritus at Sonoma State University. Read more articles by Jonah Raskin on The Rag Blog.]

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FILM / William Michael Hanks : 'Anne Braden: Southern Patriot'

Anne Braden: Southern Patriot:
A film by Anne Lewis and Mimi Pickering

By William Michael Hanks / The Rag Blog / July 14, 2012

"The meaning of life is in that struggle which human beings have always been able to do -- to envision something better... that's what makes human beings divine." -- Anne Braden

If you find yourself in Austin Wednesday, July 18, be sure to see the screening of Anne Braden: Southern Patriot. This significant new documentary -- directed by Anne Lewis and Mimi Pickering and released by Appalshop Films -- is being  presented by the Austin Film Society and The Texas Observer at the Alamo Drafthouse South, 1120 South Lamar in Austin, at 7 p.m.

Anne Lewis, who is a senior lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin and a contributor to The Rag Blog, will be at the screening to discuss the film. There have also been recent screenings of Anne Braden: Southern Patriot in San Jose and San Francisco, California.


Who is a “patriot”? The Minute Men, the Continental Army in Valley Forge, Jefferson and Adams debating on the floor of Congress, or maybe the volunteer who serves her country in time of war?

Perhaps, but the one thing that all patriots share is a love of their country and the courage to fight for what they believe in -- to fight for their personal vision of a better America. That is, and will always be, the definition of true American patriotism.

At the close of World War II, America needed patriots. The poor and people of color were on the bottom rung of the ladder with no hope of advancement -- America was an apartheid state. True American patriots who would see a better way and risk their blood and treasure to move us towards a better world were needed more than ever.

America's pastime, baseball, was integrated in 1946 when Branch Rickey signed Jackie Robinson to play for the Brooklyn Dodgers. But racism in America was far from over. Two years later, Anne McCarty married Carl Braden and they began a lifetime of activism together. Through the lens of Anne Braden's life we see the challenges and victories of the civil rights movement.

(Along with her husband Carl, Anne Braden, who died in 2006, edited the iconic Southern Patriot newspaper, published by the Southern Conference Educational Fund.)

In 1954 Anne and Carl bought a house for a black family in a white neighborhood. That set in motion an unimaginable sequence of events that swept Anne into the spotlight, accused of being a communist, and sent her husband, Carl, to prison for sedition against the state. In time it was held that sedition was a federal crime, not prosecutable by the state, and Carl was set free. But, by then, Anne Braden had a glimpse of a better America and worked tirelessly throughout her life to see it became a reality.

There are several remarkable things about this documentary. The technique of the first person narrative is used throughout the film and it flows seamlessly from one person to another as the story of the civil rights struggle throughout the South unfolds. Iconic footage of civil rights demonstrations is intercut with reflections by Anne Braden and other civil rights workers, former co-workers, and scholars -- including Cornel West and Angela Davis -- descriptions of how they were vilified and branded “communists” for trying to realize a better vision of America.

The first-person technique requires rigorous discipline in editing to keep the narrative flowing through the voices of different persons. Anne Braden: Southern Patriot is an outstanding example of that challenging form. Anne Lewis and Mimi Pickering are both award-winning filmmakers and this film is a landmark work in both content and style.

Who was Anne Braden? In the 1950's she was a young woman with a determination to follow her conscience. She was born in Louisville, Kentucky, and moved with her family to Alabama where she enjoyed the privileged life of a child of the middle class. As a young girl, she began to notice the disparities in race relations and she began to develop an active social conscience. A conscience that would not let her stand by and look the other way. Her life is an example of right action -- pursuing the vision of a better world.

Anne Braden:

The meaning of life is in that struggle which human beings have always been able to do -- to envision something better... that's what makes human beings divine.

Anne Braden's life touched others and inspired them to action. Bob Zellner describes his first experience as an organizer in the South:

My first job at SNCC was to head a campus traveling program. The first staff meeting I went to was in McComb, Mississippi, where a freedom march was being planned. I joined the march and was beaten, arrested, and almost lynched that first meeting. They kept calling me a god-damned, nigger-lovin', son of a bitch Jew from New York. And I said well, nine out of 10 is not bad but I'm not from New York!

Anne had taught us you could be for an open political discussion... you can be for integration... and you could still be a good person... a normal person. If it was Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King who convinced me to join the struggle, it was Anne Braden who showed me how to do it.

Anne Braden:

The real danger comes from people in high places, from the halls of Congress to the boardrooms of our big corporations, who tell white people that if their paychecks are eaten up by taxes it’s not because of our bloated military budget but because of government programs that benefit black people. If young whites are unemployed, it’s because blacks are getting all the jobs. Our problem is the people in power who are creating a scapegoat mentality. That’s what is creating the danger of a fascist movement in America.

Anne Braden sensed that what she faced in Alabama was the same fascism that the Allies had just announced a victory over in WWII. In an eerie echo of the recent past, the words of Herman Goering, Hitler's Third Reich Marshall at the Nuremberg trials offer a key to understanding the dynamics in Alabama. He speaks of “war” but substitute any government policy and the formula still works:

Naturally, the common people don't want war, but after all it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy. And, it is always a simple matter to drag people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.

This simple, age-old, and effective strategy has been used by our leaders, particularly since WWII and the “Communist threat," to suppress dissent and silence voices of righteous anger. But, it did not silence Anne Braden.

Faced with an intractable segregationist power structure in Alabama, Anne and Carl Braden set about doing what they could for social justice in spite of it. Nothing seemed to stop her. She was inspired by a glimpse of something better -- a better life for blacks and whites -- and she saw no reason why it should not be.

When she heard Martin Luther King portrayed as a “dreamer," Anne insisted that "Martin Luther King was not a dreamer, he was a revolutionary.” and she would quote MLK's Riverside Church speech: “True compassion is more than flinging coins to a beggar... true compassion realizes that a society that produces beggars needs to be entirely restructured."

Anne Braden: Southern Patriot is a wellspring of intellectual reason, a blueprint for action, and it includes some of the most iconic footage from the civil-rights movement ever seen. Here Anne Braden describes her discovery of a simple but effective strategy:

If you use every attack as a platform, they can't win and you can't lose. If they leave you alone you keep on organizing, if they attack you, you have a platform to reach a lot more people, so you really can't lose.

In 1965 President Lyndon Johnson signed the most sweeping civil rights legislation in U.S. history and Dr. Martin Luther King won the Nobel Peace Prize. But civil rights workers were murdered in Mississippi, and beaten in Birmingham and Selma. The struggle goes on. Each generation must shoulder the responsibility of providing oversight to their government. And if we don't, the inexorable concentration and abuse of power will continue.

Anne Braden and Cornel West.
Jackie Robinson retired after the 1956 season, before the Dodgers left Brooklyn for Los Angeles. Twenty five years after his historic debut, Jackie Robinson, the grandson of a slave, agreed to throw out the first ball of the 1972 World Series. He was dissatisfied with the progress of race relations. “As I write this 20 years later, and sing the anthem, I cannot salute the flag. I know that I am a black man in a white world. In 1972, in 1947, at my birth in 1917, I knew that I never had it made.”

So, what do we do if our founders do not rise from the grave to set our country right? We do what they intended us to do -- rise from our slumber and act -- if we have the conscience and the fortitude -- if we have the guts.

The ills that are imbedded in the darker angels of human nature, are in turn reflected in society. We may trace the disease of social oppression through history. And, as certainly as a physical disease diminishes the body, so do societal ills diminish the body politic.

It's not surprising that most of our so-called leaders are afflicted with pride, avarice, and self interest; that is to be expected -- power corrupts. But it is for that very reason that the conscience of the people must call on the brighter angels of our nature.

We are at a crossroads in America -- a crises of conscience. Fortunately, there is a simple, effective cure. Really, all we have to do is follow the example of Anne Braden.


Anne Braden: Southern Patriot, a documentary by Anne Lewis and Mimi Pickering, will screen at the Alamo Drafthouse South, 1120 S. Lamar, Austin, Texas at 7 p.m., Wednesday, July 18. Don't miss it.

For ticket information: The Austin Film Society.

[William Michael Hanks has written, produced, and directed film and television productions for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the U. S. Information Agency, and for Public Broadcasting. His documentary film, The Apollo File, won a Gold Medal at the Festival of the Americas. Mike, who worked with the original Rag in Sixties Austin, lives in Nacagdoches, Texas. Read more articles by Mike Hanks on The Rag Blog.]

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FILM / Ron Jacobs : Scott Noble's 'The Power Principle'

Scott Noble's 'The Power Principle'
(American Empire: The Feature Film)

A remarkably detailed, clearheaded, and engrossing study of how the United States power elites created the mess we find ourselves in.

By Ron Jacobs / The Rag Blog / June 13, 2012

Discussing the nature of the U.S. Empire and how it got to where it is today with most U.S.  residents is always a challenge. Recommending books explaining it is equally so. This is especially true when one considers that most people who live in the United States have little or no concept of what an empire is and, when it is explained to them, are reluctant to believe that their nation is such a thing.

I have often thought that someone should make a film that might accomplish this educational goal. After all, film is simultaneously informative and entertaining, especially when it is well made. That is the case with radical documentarian Scott Noble's (Rise Like Lions, Psywar, Lifting the Veil) latest effort, The Power Principle: Corporate Empire and the National Security State.

Made in three parts, with each one totaling about an hour and 15 minutes, The Power Principle is a history of the United States and the building of its empire. The emphasis is on the last 70 years of that history. It includes original footage from film and television news broadcasts, lectures and commentary from champions of the empire and its critics, and a pastiche of other images culled from cultural, technical, and propaganda efforts representative of the time and subject covered.

The result is a remarkably detailed, clearheaded, and engrossing study of how the United States power elites created the mess we find ourselves in. Furthermore, this film makes it clear that in the eyes of the elites, everyday citizens are little more than pawns to be manipulated in the elites' drive to control the world.

There is a lot of history to be covered when discussing a topic as broad as the growth of the U.S. Empire. Even a film almost four hours long can only begin to explore that history. To his credit, Noble does a great job picking important moments of U.S. history to describe and analyze.

As a result, those historical moments bring forth more than the moments themselves; they exhume their motivations and effects, thereby creating a historical timeline that provides the viewer with a clear sense of how history is shaped by humans and how humans shape history. Noble's highlighting of particular documents and individuals furthers that understanding.

Key to the hypothesis presented in The Power Principle is the relationship between the U.S. war industry, Wall Street, the U.S. military, and the government in Washington. The interlocking relationships between corporations like Lockheed and presidential appointees like Warren Christopher point to the connections between war and Wall Street in a very personal way. So do more personal relationships such as the marriage of Dwight Eisenhower's personal secretary to an executive of the United Fruit Company.

Other graphic reminders of how few families and corporations run the United States are also discussed: Kermit Roosevelt's role in overthrowing the popular Mohammed Mossadegh of Iran; the friendly relations between U.S. bankers like Prescott Bush and the German Nazi regime; the hiring of certain Nazis after World War II by the United States; the reinstallation of fascists into government in Italy after the war to prevent the rise of the communists; and so on.

The middle segment of the film is titled Propaganda. It is an interesting and unnerving look at how everyday people are manipulated by the powers that be. One of the key statements in this section is from Senator Arthur Vandenberg, a Republican from Michigan whose career prior to politics was in journalism. It was his resolution of June 1948 that is considered the foundation of NATO.

Vandenberg always understood that NATO's purpose was to maintain and expand the growing U.S. empire. He also understood that the people of the United States were reluctant to become the world's policeman, especially so soon after the carnage of World War II. With this in mind, he told colleagues that the only way to convince U.S. citizens to expand their military and become an imperial nation was "to scare the hell" out of them. That has been the essence of Washington's line to its own citizens ever since.

The third segment provides a discussion of the U.S. Empire in the post-Soviet age. Key to this discussion are two things: nothing changed as far as the military-industrial complex was concerned and the agreement between the two political parties over empire is stronger than ever before. In other words, there is no difference in the way U.S. foreign policy is conducted no matter which major party's candidate wins the White House.

Additionally, the presence of the U.S. military in civilian life has never been greater. A brief interview with Left editor and thinker Michael Albert concludes the film. He presents the possibility of a different world where the Empire is dissolved and the military-industrial complex is transformed into building things that benefit mankind. Unfortunately, the overriding conclusion of The Power Principle is that such a scenario is both necessary if we are to survive as a species and unlikely unless the current system is removed.

If I were a high school or postsecondary teacher hoping to get my students to consider U.S. history in a different light, I would show this film. Not only does it rearrange the common understanding of Washington's role in the world, it also forces the viewers to reconsider how their understanding of that role is manipulated and misused.

Certain to provoke reactions both positive and negative, Scott Noble's most recent film is meant to disturb the general complacency of the body politic. Help spread the word.

[Rag Blog contributor Ron Jacobs is the author of The Way The Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground. He recently released a collection of essays and musings titled Tripping Through the American Night. His latest novel, The Co-Conspirator's Tale, is published by Fomite. His first novel, Short Order Frame Up, is published by Mainstay Press. Ron Jacobs can be reached at ronj1955@gmail.com. Find more articles by Ron Jacobs on The Rag Blog.]

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Lamar W. Hankins : Documenting Flawed Forensics and the Willingham Execution

Scene from Joe Bailey Jr. and Steve Mims's Incendiary: The Willingham Case. Image from Truly Indie.
Rick Perry and the Texas
death penalty smokescreen

Incendiary: The Willingham Case, a documentary film. It is both riveting and sickening to watch how, in Texas, we execute people on false evidence.

By Lamar W. Hankins / The Rag Blog / October 12, 2011

The new documentary Incendiary: The Willingham Case works at two levels. It focuses on what happens when supposedly expert witnesses in a criminal case get the forensic science wrong, and what happens when politicians pretend that the criminal justice system works well. If you are interested in either topic, it is a worthwhile film to see. It is both riveting and sickening at the same time to watch how, in Texas, we execute people on false evidence.

Those who follow the news will recognize the name of Cameron Todd Willingham. He was accused in 1991 of killing his three young children in a fire he deliberately set at their home in Corsicana, Texas. Willingham was convicted and executed for the deaths in 2004. While no one knows how the fire that killed the three young Willingham children started, what seems certain is that Cameron Todd Willingham was convicted and executed based on evidence that does not meet the standard of reliable science. To state this another way: There was and is no reliable scientific evidence to show that Willingham started the fire that killed his three children.

Once the fire investigators began focusing on Willingham as an arsonist, they ceased looking for other explanations for the fire's origin. While we don't know how it started, some evidence suggests that it could have started from poor electrical wiring or from a gas heater. These causes were not properly investigated and we will never know the fire’s origin because the investigators allowed the evidence to be compromised or destroyed. No court ever considered the sufficiency of the arson evidence. They focused on whether the trial judge made a mistake in his trial rulings, not the quality of the evidence offered against Willingham.

Missing from the film are interviews with the original fire investigators, the DA, and the defense expert, and an interview with Governor Rick Perry made just for the film. But there are comments from Perry that reveal the closest thing to callous indifference that can be imagined as he was questioned about the case at occasional press conferences and during interviews on a range of topics.

Not once has Rick Perry ever shown any interest in looking at the forensic evidence that was used to convict Willingham, comparing it with the conclusions of fire investigators with unquestioned scientific credentials, and drawing from that comparison a reasoned conclusion about whether the testimony used to convict Willingham was worthy of belief. Had he done so, Perry would have realized that the death penalty system in Texas has serious, fatal flaws.

While my disdain for Rick Perry knows few bounds, I reserve my harshest criticism for the criminal defense attorney who represented Cameron Todd Willingham at his trial -- Robert Dunn. Criminal defense lawyers owe their clients, at a minimum, what one of my law school professors called “warm zeal.” Renowned defense attorney Clarence Darrow, as described by writer Joelle Farrell, “defended both the righteous and the despised with the same vigor.” Willingham’s defense attorney lacked both warm zeal and vigor. To this day, he harbors nothing but contempt and loathing, if not hatred, for his now dead client.

I reserve special contempt for Dunn because I have been in his position representing a despised defendant charged with capital murder in a small East Texas town. I doubt that my skills as a trial lawyer were any better than Dunn’s, but what I lacked in experience I tried to make up for with hard work, research, and investigation. There is little evidence that Dunn tried to represent Willingham diligently.

Dunn failed to get the best expert witness available to help him analyze the fire investigation conclusions that were key to Willingham’s conviction. My impression is that Dunn was a hack attorney, cozy with the judges in Corsicana, and unwilling to make waves to provide the best representation possible.

At the time of Dunn’s representation of Willingham there were valuable resources available to him from a Texas death penalty project. I had those resources 12 years earlier. They were enormously helpful in the legal work I did on behalf of my client. They would have saved Willingham's life had his attorney used them.

The key to Willingham's case is the inadequate and fictitious fire investigation done by two investigators who had learned on the job. What they learned was not science but folk lore. Their testimony bore all the hallmarks of witchcraft, a point suggested by the comments of renowned fire expert Gerald Hurst, a former chief scientist for explosives companies with a doctorate in chemistry from Cambridge University, who has studied fire science for 40 years.

Hurst filed a report of his findings just before Willingham was executed. Rick Perry received a copy of the report, but there is no evidence that anyone on Rick Perry's staff bothered to read it. The governor could not be bothered to even glance at it.

More than a half dozen nationally acknowledged experts in fire investigation have confirmed Hurst's findings in the Willingham case, but Rick Perry was unwilling to delay the execution by 30 days so that the matter could be thoroughly vetted. Perry preferred to dismiss such findings as interference in the Texas capital punishment system by "latter-day supposed experts." Science doesn't matter to Perry. He cares about the political implications of what he does.

The two fire investigators in Willingham's case cited 20 indications that the fire was arson, yet not one of those indications stood up to the fire science known at the time they did their investigation. The investigators were not scientists, but amateur sleuths who saw their work as more art than science. They reached conclusions based on hunches, guesswork, and speculation, which they characterized as faultless conclusions drawn from years of experience.

While the investigation of the Willingham fire was irredeemably flawed, Perry himself, as governor, is one of the greatest flaws in the Texas death penalty scheme. He exercises no independent thought about death penalty matters that come before him, nor does he seem to want to do so. In reviewing the extensive files of the Innocence Project about the Willingham case -- perhaps the most complete publicly accessible record of any capital murder case -- there is no evidence that either Perry or his staff even looked at the report of Hurst.

Perry referred to Willingham as a monster more than once -- a statement intended to close off rational consideration of the facts in the case. After Willingham’s execution, Perry continued to thwart attempts by the Texas Forensic Science Commission to determine the validity of the fire evidence. This is not a man that reasonable people would want to have caring for their dog while they are on vacation. He has not demonstrated the capacity to make rational, intelligent, and wise decisions about mundane matters, let alone matters of life and death.

Incendiary: The Willingham Case documents the deadly folly of the Texas death penalty scheme. It is a system in which no one likes to admit mistakes. This is especially true of politicians -- governors, district attorneys, judges, investigators. For those who accept science, the Willingham case is conclusive proof that Texas has executed a legally innocent man. But for Perry, for the district attorney, and even for Willingham’s defense attorney, the execution of Cameron Todd Willingham was the politically expedient thing to do

[Lamar W. Hankins, a former San Marcos, Texas, city attorney, is also a columnist for the San Marcos Mercury. This article © Freethought San Marcos, Lamar W. Hankins. Read more articles by Lamar W. Hankins on The Rag Blog.]

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FILM / William Michael Hanks : Turk Pipkin's 'Building Hope'

Turk Pipkin's Building Hope:
A story of how little it takes
to make a big difference

By William Michael Hanks / The Rag Blog / June 1, 2011

Building Hope is the third of a trilogy of films by Austin-based filmmaker Turk Pipkin exploring the challenges facing the youth of the world today.

The first film, Nobelity, gathered together the ideas of a number of Nobel Laureates. The second, One Peace at a Time -- subtitled "a film about a messed up world... and how we could fix it" -- visited projects around the world that were making a difference for children's rights, and featured Muhammad Yunus, Steve Chu, Desmond Tutu, and Willie Nelson.

Pipkin's latest, Building Hope, is the most compelling of all. By following one single project through from concept to completion, the film illuminates the lives of the participants around the light of the event itself.

Beauty is the first emotion that the film evokes. Set in the mountains of Kenya, among some of the most dramatic scenery on Earth, the film reveals the land, the wildlife, and the people as the spectacular photography unfolds. Through good composition and editing, the viewer enters a place of wonder and brighter vision. The photography by Turk, his wife Christy, and his daughters, Katie and Lilly, reveals the love both given to and returned by this rural community.

The project began when Turk met Wangari Maathai while working on One Peace at a Time. She started the Green Belt movement in Africa and Turk went there to plant trees. But what he really wanted to do was plant trees at a school. That's how he met Joseph Mutongu and visited the Mahiga Primary School. It had mud floors and slat walls. Nevertheless the school's motto was -- and is -- "Hard Work Pays."

After planting his tree at the school, Turk returned home and, through the Nobelity Project -- Turk and Christy's Austin-based nonprofit -- raised some money to build a water system for the primary school. The kids and parents did the work.

Two years later Turk returned to Kenya and the Mahiga Primary School to see the finished water system. The electricity needed for the water purification also made it possible to have a computer lab. So he helped put that in place as well. He saw that there was no place for the students to go after they finished primary school so, with a call back home to Christy, they decided to help build a high school for the kids at Mahiga.

The financial requirements were daunting. Turk decided to combine the release of One Peace at a Time, a film about securing children's rights, with building the high school. He wanted it to be known as "the movie that built a high school." So he did fundraising for the school at showings of One Peace at a Time. He knew that a bigger school would require more clean water so he decided to build a basketball court to catch rainwater and purify it using solar power.

He recruited his friend, Willie Nelson, to help. Willie's response was: "That's a choir I want to sing in." The court would cost $100,000 so he called on the Nike Gamechangers Award who, together with Cameron Sinclair of Architecture for Humanity, began to design and build the school and basketball court, The whole Mahiga community enthusiastically participated with ideas and labor.

Greg Elsner, was selected to be the on-site architect. He would live in the community and see the project through. As Greg said, when he first came to Mahiga he didn't know anyone and the future location of the school was an open field. When he left he was part of the community and a two-story stone school house and full rainwater basketball court stood where the field had been.

The project was not without it's setbacks. Cost overruns, poor roads, and an AWOL contractor all had to be overcome. With the project a month behind schedule, Turk took the only sensible course -- a road trip. He wanted to see some of the partnership programs in other parts of Kenya.

One was Comfort the Children which works with special needs kids -- some of them going out in the community for the first time. In the Mukuru slum, Nairobi, Kenya, the SIDAREC Community Center will be a model for kids achieving freedom from poverty. And, while he was there, Turk visited with President Obama's sister, Youth Counselor Auma Obama. She works with the "Sport for Social Change and Youth Empowerment Initiative," concentrating on building community infrastructure.

On returning, Turk, who is six-foot-seven himself, undertook to teach the kids basketball -- a sport they had never played before. Fortunately, the first adult mentor at the school was Ester Diaga, who had toured Africa playing for the Kenyan women's basketball team. She had the moves, and with the kid's enthusiasm, Mahiga was well on it's way to being a serious contender.

One of the students, George Abrahams, was given a journalism scholarship. While Turk was away, Abrahams shot the sequences of raising the rainwater basketball court with a pocket-sized Flip video camera. They built a giant 30-foot-high scaffold from eucalyptus poles to winch the steel trusses in place for the rainwater court. After dropping a truss, a storm came through and shut the operation down. It was a good time to have a safety meeting. George's scenes cut well with the rest of the film and really show what can be done with very low-cost equipment and a hopeful attitude.

The climax of the film comes with the ribbon-cutting for the school and the first game is played on the new rainwater court. It hadn't rained in two months and as the game neared the finish it began to pour and the water tanks began to fill. It was like a cosmic alignment of community, time, and place.

Mahiga Hope High School, with capacity for 320 students, is now part of the Kieni West Education District. It will provide a healthy learning environment and pure water for the children of Mahiga for generations to come. Leave the world a little better place? I'll say. The music and photography alone make the film worth seeing. But seeing the miracle of positive change and feeling in some way a part of it is even better.

Building Hope opens Friday, June 3, 7 p.m., at the Violet Crown Cinema, located at 434 W. 2nd Street in Austin, and is scheduled to run through June 9. The Violet Crown is a lovely new downtown art house theater that features independent films. There are several showings a night, but it would be wise to get tickets early. This is one to see. It will restore your faith in people and in cinema, all for the price of a ticket -- not a bad deal all the way around.

Also on The Rag Blog:

• "A Simple Truth... or Two" by Turk Pipkin / Nov. 30, 2009
• "FILM / Turk Pipkin's Remarkable 'One Peace at a Time'" by William Michael Hanks / June 2, 2009
• "FILM / Turk Pipkin, and a Brief History of the Documentary Form" by William Michael Hanks / June 2, 2009

Links:

• Building Hope trailer
• Nobelity Project
• Turk's blog
• Willie Nelson Peace Research Institute

[William Michael Hanks has written, produced and directed film and television productions for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, The U. S. Information Agency, and for Public Broadcasting. His documentary film,The Apollo File, won a Gold Medal at the Festival of the Americas. Mike, who worked with the original Rag in Sixties Austin, lives in Nacagdoches, Texas. Read more articles by Mike Hanks on The Rag Blog.]

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FILM / William Michael Hanks : Jamie Johnson's 'The One Percent'

Documentary film:
Jamie Johnson's The One Percent is a
revealing statement about wealth in America

By William Michael Hanks / The Rag Blog / April 28, 2011

Jamie Johnson has a conscience if he can keep it. He is heir to one of the largest fortunes in America: Johnson & Johnson. In The One Percent, his second documentary after Born Rich, he combines his interest in economic inequality in America with a skill and talent for filmmaking.

The film is worth seeing. It is a fresh and honest statement about the disparity of wealth in America. The exclusive access the filmmaker's family name gives him to the very wealthy made some of the surprisingly revealing interviews possible.

Jamie points out that:

Today in America the disparity between the haves and have-nots is greater than it's ever been. Now the top one percent of Americans like my family and me own 40 percent of all the country’s wealth and we share an aggregate net worth that is greater than the bottom 90 percent of individuals combined.

His family, as do most very wealthy families, has a wealth counselor who meets with the whole family regularly. You have to see this guy. He comes off like a mean-spirited hired gun -- like the Jack Palance character in Shane. The deference which Jamie's father shows this bully is pathetic. But then, every year the story is always the same -- the wealth of the family continues to grow and who can argue with success?

Jamie uses his family name to enroll in one of the most exclusive wealth conferences in America -- The Lido. Jamie remarks to the conference director: "There are people that are looking for funding for their projects who would absolutely kill to get into this meeting." The Director, Gregg Kushner, responds "That's right, absolutely, and we make sure they don't get to get in."

It is this "circle the wagons" -- the "us and them" mentality -- that pervades the attitudes of the very rich. There is a universal refusal to even broach the subject of disparity of wealth. The candid sequences with the very rich in the film reveal this in ways that media coverage and mere commentary cannot.

The mantra of the rich as given by Gregg Kushner, the Lido Conference director, is as follows

There is much greater good done by the people with the wealth in creating jobs, creating business opportunities, and in philanthropy than otherwise, and I would say it makes more sense to me to encourage business ownership, to encourage the wealthy to generate that wealth so that wealth can then be shared rather than take it from individuals to then redistribute it through social policy and transfer policies of medicare and social security or whatever. I hope that didn't come out sounding crass.

Well, Gregg, it did.

Of course the fallacies -- some would say lies -- are that the facts belie the myth that wealth is shared. How much sharing is being done if one percent owns 40 percent of the wealth? And how is having a person over the barrel, so he has to accept slave wages, not taking it from individuals? How does charging 600 percent interest on a pay day loan not taking it from individuals?

Apparently taking from some individuals is OK -- just not from the wealthy. As Dickens said, "The poor have no right to their good fortune." The other lie is that rather than being "redistribution" or "transfer" policies, social security and medicare are self-funded programs that are supported by those who participate.

But it is this hedge of false mythology that is the personal cover of most of those who are represented at the conference. The justifications are so weak that most of those who are among the privileged few react very nearly with violence when these questions are even raised.

Jamie runs into these attitudes repeatedly in his interviews. The interview with Milton Friedman is something to see. The duplicity and bullying are astounding. I would like to know who paid for this man's Nobel Prize. It could not have come from an original contribution to economics; the previous author Attila the Hun should have gotten the prize. He reveals himself to be merely a thug who works as economic muscle for the wealthy and their minions.

These reactions are typical in most of Jamie's interviews with the very wealthy, but there are some who seem not to be able to silence their conscience so easily. His interviews with Warren Buffet's granddaughter led Buffet to disown her and his interview with the the Oscar Mayer heir revealed his struggle with economic equity which culminated with giving away his money.

It's not even that huge profits are a result of hard work and innovation anymore, or real service to the market; more and more, huge profits are the result of favorable laws, regulations, and subsidies. Laws bought and paid for with campaign contributions.

In one interview, Kevin Philips, a former Nixon aide and author, said "It's been the case for the last 25 years in the United States that the amount of money flowing into the system for political contributions has been a major shaper of who gets what within the economy." The film shows specific examples of how corporate and individual contributions lead directly to multi-million dollar subsidies for donors.

The most revealing moments of the film are the times when the very wealthy are being interviewed and show a complete lack of self reflection -- their mythology, tired and aging as it may be, seems the touchstone of justification for their control of such vast assets. It was always the same song: vast wealth generated all good in society and any form of taxation is socialism.

Most of those interviewed just shut up and refused to comment when the subject of the film was revealed. The fear of addressing the obvious was palpable.

The saddest thing about the film is the portrait of Jamie's father. When he was Jamie's age, he had made a film about poverty and apartheid in South Africa. He was so criticized by his family that it appears he never quite got over it. He, one of the wealthiest men in America, was reduced to being a fearful, ineffectual, and indecisive man with faith no more in anything but the bloodless approval of his financial adviser, his croquet games with rich friends at the country club, and an ice cold martini, or two.

But the unseen tragedy that the film holds like a secret box within a box is that Jamie himself will end up like his father. The wolves encircling him -- biting, punishing, threatening to alienate him from all he has known in his life. Reminding him of the ultimate price -- exclusion, poverty, and isolation. Surely he will come to his senses, surely he will come back into the fold, a chastened member of the club.

But then again, Jamie has a conscience, if he can keep it.

[William Michael Hanks lived at the infamous Austin Ghetto and worked with the original Rag gang in the Sixties. He has written, produced, and directed film and television productions for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, The U. S. Information Agency, and for Public Broadcasting. His documentary film The Apollo File won a Gold Medal at the Festival of the Americas. Mike lives in Nacagdoches, Texas. Read more articles by Mike Hanks on The Rag Blog.]

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