Written on the passage of proposition 187 and on the anniversary of Kristalnacht

(On November 8, 1994 voters in California voted to prohibit undocumented immigrants from using public services, schools and health care.  In 938, Herschel Grynszpan killed a German diplomat in reaction to a decision to deport all Polish Jews.  Kristalnacht, (November 9 1938), the night of broken glass, resulted in the death of 99 Jews, the destruction of Jewish property and close to 300 synagogs, and the deportation of as many as 30000 Jews to concentration camps.)

The fog horns went off, sending warning signals through her head.

Genocide alert!

Genocide alert! 

You must now register yourself down at city hall or you do not exist

You must now register yourself down at  city hall

we will decide if you exist

The fog horns went off

The fog horns went off

sending shivers through her skin

down her spine

through her belly

The sirens went off

The sirens went off blasting their warning,

sounding their call

You do not belong here

You are blocking our destiny

You must go back to your bush

your cave

your rock

The fog horns went off

The fog horns went off

As if to purify the night air

As if to settle the dust

that draped itself over the cities

Glass shattered

crashing, as if splattered on the pavement

it could put food in their bellies

hope in their hearts

Heads crack like crystal

Hopes line the pavement

The sirens went off, the search lights sputtered

In search of them

In search of them

They  are relegating you

They are relegating you

The buses are over here

The trains are over here

We give you your one way ticket

We give you your one way ticket

Your new destinations.

You are blocking our destiny

-Single file

-Your own good

-A gentle transition

We are relocating you

We have relocated you

Genocide alert! genocide alert!

Showing at the Annenberg Space for Photography:

March 27 – June 28, 2009. 
Located at 2000 Avenue of the Stars in Century City, Los Angeles.

“It’s the sense of touch. Any real city you walk, you brush past people, people bump into you.  In L.A. nobody touches you, always behind this metal and glass.  I think we miss that touch so much that we crash into each other just so we can feel something. “     -From the film Crash

The Annenberg Space for Photograpy

It’s been said, in L.A. there’s no there, there: no culture, no sense of place.  It speaks to the lack of a central identity,  the isolation of freeway travel, the emphasis on personal image, the distance between intimates, both in time and space, the lack of a sense of community,  each of us in our own cocoon existence.   Its not that Los Angles doesn’t have culture, it just fails to invest in its cultural infrastructure, art museums located to avoid community access, or that put a greater emphasis on which benefactor gets which wall named for them, rather than accumulating great pieces to the collection or providing a center for community and connection.  It’s in the small community galleries, coffeehouses, art centers where L.A.’s cultural wealth and connection can be found, where undiscovered, uncelebrated artists’ works are displayed while under and unpublished literary talents recite poetry to the uncelebrated walls; each community, separate, often in ethnic enclaves, apart, unconnected, disjointed, the parts never mingling as a whole.

In the movie Crash, these separate worlds come together only by the intersection of violence and accident. 

Not so the Annenberg Space for Photography’s inaugural exhibit, L8S ANG3LES-images as diverse as the city for which it’s named.  The 8 and the 3 in the title of the exhibit refers to the 11 photographers featured, covering such diverse themes as celebrity portraiture (Douglas Kirkland, Gary Gorman) photo journalism and war photopgrahy (Carolyn Cole, Kirk McKoy, Lawrence Ho, Genaro Molina)  architectural photography (Tim Street Porter, Julius Shulman), social documentary photography (Catherine Opie, Lauren Greenfield),  and hybrid photography combining with other art media (John Baldesari.)

The images in the exhibit in additon to the diversity of genre, range in size from 3×3 inch images to 4×4 foot images, color, black and white, large,  small and medium formats, digital, film,  the glamour and the detritus, the contemporary, and the historical.

Such different styles, approaches, disciplines, formats and focus could have made for a very scattered and unconnected exhibit, but it is exactly that diversity, that make this exhibit a more cohesive whole and provides a unified image of what and who Los Angeles is;  the parts of a whole, the joining of all those tiny community galleries, combined into a symphony performed by 11 of Los Angeles’  most gifted photographers.

Up the escalator of the building, from the garage, and out onto an above the street, plaza, where steel and glass high rise buildings frame the spectacular natural landscape that surrounds the city,  rests the tiny postmodern structure that houses the Annenberg Space for Photography.  The  small space  unlike a community gallery, but also unlike any other Los Angeles museum, packs a powerful amount of art and expression within its walls.  Parking in the structure costs $1 with museum validation.  The exhibit itself is free.  In a city where a family of four needs to plop down almost $40 to go to the Museum of Tolerance, this most L.A. of spaces is so very un Los Angeles, and as such may very well challenge and transform this city away from its disparate and separate parts into something more cohesively aware of itself, (though the Century City location may limit the range of visitors to the space.) There is no glitzy giftshop, no overpriced museum café (reasonably priced restaurants are within close distance) no walls named after obscure benefactors. The space is remarkably accessible to wheelchairs, (another concern of the Annenberg Foundation, of which this space is but one project,) though the parking could have better signage.  (Drive to the elevator to the left, within the parking structure, following the signs to 2000 Avenue of the Stars.  Don’t follow the signs pointing to handicapped parking.) 

The space, designed to resemble the interior workings of a camera, follows a circular path, with a central area, that contains two large screens.  In the back of the structure is a reading room, with a smaller assembly area, more similar to a classroom with a smaller screen.  For this exhibit there were two films; in the main assembly area, on both screens was a film that gave an overview of the photographers and their work.  A less polished and unedited version provided more in depth discussion by the photographers, of their work, vision and process. 

The two films are not available on line or for sale, though I was told might be at a later date, and except where stated, little information was provided about the formats or techniques used in obtaining or processing the images, which would have been helpful and informative. 

The first artist featured in the exhibit is Julius Shulman, who claims to need only one shot, one negative for each project he works on.  He works in large format on black and white film. His prints are impeccably developed with attention to light and shadow.   Born in 1910, he is the oldest photographer featured in the exhibit and his work spans several decades.  His architectural photography is sharp, high contrast and utilizes wide depth of field, allowing the viewer to visualize the structure in the context of the greater geography.  One of the more innovative aspects of his work, is his use of actors within the scene, so that the space has people within it, drawing the viewer in, allowing for a deeply personal and human experience of the space.  Over time, the style of clothing, and props used by the actors sets the image in a historical context as well.  It is a very powerful technique that adds significantly to the depth of his work.

Continuing with the focus on the landscape that is home to Los Angeles’ humanity, the next photographer is another landscape photographer, Tim Street-Porter, who photographed many of the same structures that Shulman photographed, but with a very different tone and result.  He also works in film, though uses more color film than Shulman, His work also has a wide depth of field, with an emphasis on detail.  Where Shulman uses people in his scene to provide depth and context,  Street- Porter uses the natural world as stark contrast to the angular twentieth century architecture that he refers to as L.A.’s “legacy.” For example, in his image of the Disney Hall, the hard curved and angular steel walls stand in stark contrast to the herb garden.  This effect is possible with the use of color film, where the green landscape (or the soft desert colors of Palms Springs) stand in brilliant contrast to the controlled design and lines of the architecture.  His colors are deep and saturated, and his use of environmental and reflective light is precise and powerful.  (The image of Disney Hall, taken before the steel was buffed,  shows white and blue steel walls, refecting the colors of the sky.  In his photo. ““Dawnridge” the residence of Tony Duquette, Beverly Hills, 1967 Ornate Interior with Italian Baroque screen”  he utilizes the ambient sunlight coming through the window on the otherwise unlit room.

The next two photographers in the exhibit are portrait photographers who capture images of the glamorous world of celbrity; the image and industry of Los Angeles.  Douglas Kirkland asserts that it is important for a portrait artist to do nothing that  “you would be uncomfortable being done to you.”  Especially interesting was his description of his collaboration with the subject; that “ the photographer an the subject make the picture; the photographer doesn’t make the picture himself.”  His portraits include Morgan Freeman, Bjork, Brigite Bardot Niclole Kidman and others. Most interesting were his photos of Marilyn Monroe and Judy Garland.  Diverging from the glamour of celebrity portraiture, he notes that the images of Monroe, naked with a white silk sheet, were taken only months before her death.  Equally challenging of Hollywood glamour was the image of Judy Garland’s tear filled eyes and tear stained face.  In the film shown in the reading room, Kirkland explains the collaboration that went into both shots.  In the former, the idea of the bed, the sheet and the nudity apparently came from Monroe’s artistic vision.  There were many photos taken of the shoot itself, of Kirkland photographing Monroe.  In stark defiance of the artistic tradition of the objectification of the female form and the essential obliteration of her greater humanity, Kirkland, in describing the power and intensity and his own profound understanding of the collaboration that went into the shoot  challenges so many of those assumptions ever the more significant given that the subject was a woman whose humanity, value and life was obscured by her beauty, her commercial value and the objectification of her sexuality.

Greg Gorman images are close up and intimate and as he explains, reflect the confrontational nature of portrait photography. He states; “For me a photograph is most successful when it doesn’t answer all the questions, and it leaves something to be desired.” While he claims that his work shows a deep humanity, I found his focus to be more formal and less personal than Kirkland’s, and more concerned with image and technique.  I didn’t see his work breaking out of narrow constructs of film celbrity,  and his most famous subjects were little more than props to highlight his technical skill and artistic vison.  His photo of Imman, naked, shows every goosebump on her arm,  though little concern or empathy for her quite apparent discomfort. His inviting image of Leonardo DeCaprio, might beg several questions and assuredly leaves many wanting more, but says little about the person behind this very skilled and polished image.  His thought to detail use of side lighting, dark clothes, close ups and heavy shadows shows impeccable skill, but unlike the other artists in the exhibit do little to actually illuminate our common human experience.  Though within the context of this exhibit  that focuses on all that is Los Angeles,  this nakedly narrow application of immense skill to document celebrity  and image, seems especially appropriate.  

The next two artists in the exhibit are deconstructionist, using photography not only to document our lives but to challenge our core assumptions.

Catherine Opie considers herself a social documentary photographer. Her work explores community, home, gender and relationships.  “We are very fluid with gender and we always have been” she states, in reference to her images of women with mustaches or little boys in tutus.  She captures Los Angeles communities: the local Mercado, the memorial for a slain gang member, friends at home, what it means to be home “what’s behind the closed door.”  She explains.  Her work is in color, including a few Polaroid shots.

Opie’s work is followed by the work of fellow deconstructionist, John Bladessari.  This was perhaps the main incongruity of the exhibit, as I felt her work resonated mostly with Lauren Geenfield’s work,  which was sandwiched between the works of L. A. Times photojournalists. A more fluid transition would have placed Baldessari next to Gorman, followed by Opie and then Greenfield.  Regardless, I found John Baldessari’s work to be least compelling in the entire exhibit.  He combines photographs with paint to make rather trite statements about identity and celebrity, though perhaps in contrast to Gorman’s work, the few prints of his in the exhibit had a contextual value.  There was nothing technically inspiring in his images nor in his print quality.  Obscuring faces with large dots to emphasize our general unimportance, or the false importance we put on image and celebrity, was artistically quick and dirty, showing little innovation, vision or creativity.  If Gorman’s work obliterated the humanity of celebrity though image and glamour, Baldessari obliterated it with condescension and triviality.  His work utilizes mostly vinyl print, snap shot photography, cut outs and paint, in combination.

The rest of the exhibit, with the exception of Lauren Greenfield, focused on the work of L.A. Times photojournalists.  Lawrence Ho, Genaro Molina and  Kirk McKoy photograph L.A. bringing the disparate Los Angeles communities to the whole, every day, in the L.A. Times. These are the artists who capture an entire story, an entire humanity in a single image. In the photograph: Fashion Show, Actors Stuart Townsend, Charlize Theron, Adrian Brody, Kate Capshaw and director, Steven Spielberg  attend a fashion show.  The model stuts past these privileged eyes, who gape at her bikinied body, her head out of the frame.  In the row of  front seat celebrities, one rests her hand on her lap, lined up by the camera so that it also could seem to be grabbing the crotch of the mode;  the model’s anonymity and sexuality on display for the entertainment of privilege and power.  Apparently this event was a fundraiser for the Children’s Action Network.

Equally powerful is Ho’s image of Gustavo Dudamel,  the Venezuelan conductor  who will begin his tenure as Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic in fall 2009.  In this photo, Dudamel is filmed conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic.  The film is shot at slow speed and narrow depth of field,  so that Dudamel’s hand, wand, hair and jubilant smile seem to move within the still frame, capturing the intense energy he brings to his work.  The light falls just perfectly to illuminate his face and hands.

In Genaro Medina’s  image Maaple Avenue, “A woman and her daughter make their way through the garment district framed by a bubble gum machine along Maple Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles”  The bubble gum machine almost fills the frame. This color print, has wide depth of field, providing a glimpse of  Los Angeles streets and skyline, through the optical distortions of the gum ball machine. 

If there ever was a photo that left me “wanting more” it was Kirk McKoy’s, The Fun Bunch” depicting a group of friends from Inglewood, jumping into a body of water in Marina del Rey.  Printed in black and white, I want to know so much more than what this print reveals: what format was it shot in?  how staged was it?  How many shots were taken?  It is a very different shot, if taken with the non-spontaneous 4×5 or with a digital camera, shooting multiple frames per second. Regardless, the composition and energy of this photograph makes it one of the most memorable of the entire exhibit.  Kirk McKoy is the Senior Features Photo Editor and Deputy for the  Los Angeles Times.

In the exhibit, awkwardly displayed between local Los Angeles Times photographers and L.A. Times war photographer, Carolyn Cole, are the works of anthropological photographer,  Lauren Greenfield whose still and video photography documents youth culture, the impact of media and celebrity on kids from different cultures and how this creates its own homogenized culture.  She addresses the social and emotional lives of girls and “how the body has become the primary expression of identity for girls in contemporary American Culture.”  Her images, in color, contrast consumerism, conformity materialism with the wisp of humanity attempting to escape beyond those limited constructs. Her work exposes “the darker side of stardom and celebrity” and how this impacts youth and their self image. Greenfield provides images of society girls getting ready for the prom, damas on their way to a quinciniera, a young man on his bed looking over designer objects, trying to look rich for the other kids at an exclusive private school, teenagers at the beach, a woman with anerexicia  leaving treatment, a toddler in a dance outfit at an opening of a department store shoe department, a young woman, looking in the mirror, pushing her breast together, talking about her aspirations to be a topless dancer.  Through these incredibly intimate images,  her work delves into “what is public and what is private.”  To do this, she explains, one must gain the trust of the subjects so that they are “okay with having you in their space.”  

While this review has amassed almost 3000 words, there was an ineffable quality to both individual work and the exhibit as a whole.  If this inaugural exhibit is any indication, this new space promises to provide Los Angeles with a meeting ground and a much needed artistic infusion, combining its talents with its diversity, quite possibly breaking the Los Angeles divide of freeway and distance. 

Webography

http://www.annenbergspaceforphotography.org/

http://www.baldessari.org/

http://www.greggormanphotography.com/

http://www.douglaskirkland.com/

http://www.regenprojects.com/artists/catherine-opie/

http://www.timstreet-porter.com/home.html

Filmography

Crash. Paul Haggis. Lionsgate. 2005

.

…that your passion may live through its own daily resurrection, and like the phoenix rise above its own ashes. ~Khalil Gibran

seedlings
take hold to delicate earth
words carve images on empty sheets of verse
the house holds musty
the smell of baking bread
there are three new
poems in the world today
that weren’t here before

I wish
I had more strength
the sap sucked from my limbs
by birds of prey
I lie here before the next attack
and prepare my quiet insurrection

each
breath I take is manifesto
against the huge machine
we have yet to dismantle

I wait
for when we can plan the uprising
the birds picking at my heart
taste the bitterness of my tenacity
if you looked into my eyes
you would see clarity

hope
disguised as tears
to fool the vultures

Alfred M. Loeb, Presente
December 10 1926 – October 25, 2006

In lieu of flowers, the family is asking that donations be made to Sojourner House in Rochester N.Y.

http://www.sojournerhouse.org/contr.html

My father died this morning. He had been on a respirator for several days and decided to be taken off the machine. He and I had a complicated relationship and hadn’t spoken for several years. But grief knows it’s own timeline and even the profoundest of separations are widened by death.

Alfred Morton Loeb, my father; was a civil rights activist, a computer scientist, a skier who was involved in alpine sky rescue and back country ski camping into his seventies, an avid cyclist (until a year and a half ago when, at the age of 78, on a 30 mile bike ride, he hit a car that was going through a stop sign.) He was an amazing photographer, whose work has yet to be catalogued and given its proper due. He could fix anything and everything. He loved classical music but didn’t understand poetry and hated rock and roll.

He is survived by: his wife of 57 years, my mother and biochemist Marilyn Rosenthal Loeb, my sister, Judith Whitaker and her two children: Caleb and Maya, my brother, Andrew Loeb, my son, Leon and me.

Despite the chasm between my father and me: the bridges burned, the broken spirits, the heartbreaks on both sides of the divide; he gave me who I was. So much of what we receive in life is monetary and material. When I was five years old He bestowed upon me the most precious of endowments, the most valuable of inheritances: knowledge of my purpose in life. There are deciding moments in all purpose driven lives. Here is the telling of that moment in mine when my course was determined for me; when I knew what I would do with my time on this rock.

*********************

<>My Father’s Yellow Feet

<>By Emma Rosenthal

<>The year I was conceived, the FBI took out a freshly pressed manila file, put my last name on the file tab, and waited for my birth to fill in the rest of the information.

My father was just another Jewish activist so there was little doubt that this child; his first born, who would be raised in red swaddling cloths, on picket lines, boycotts and demonstrations; would need to be monitored. That year, my father, a staunch supporter of gun control, a man who despised gun ownership, placed a loaded shot gun beneath my parents’ bed because of threats on his life, on our lives, because of work he was doing in fair housing. In that bed, over that loaded gun, I gestated for nine months.

I was five when he went to Selma to march to Montgomery with Dr. King. By court order only 200 marchers would be allowed to travel the full distance to be met by a larger rally in Montgomery, if and when they finally arrived. I was unaware of the danger and was only filled in awe. Jewish freedom riders did not always arrive home safely. My daddy was going to march for freedom. Freedom; a word that would echo through my home for many years.

This was the second march. The first one ended in a bloody riot when the police attacked the marchers and they were forced to turn back. My father was gone for the longest time but all I really remember were the calloused deformities he had when he came home. His feet recovered from that journey but he still bears hard yellow reminders of that long march. I remember him resting on his bed after he had returned. I looked at those bruised, yellowed feet and said with all the determination my five year old spirit could muster; “The next freedom march you go on Daddy, I’m going with you.”

The next march I remember was a memorial service in Philadelphia, as with other cities all over the world. Someone had shot Dr. King. I remember standing in the line of humanity, I remember the air on my skin, I remember the green, green lawn of the arboretum, I remember the somber spirit of the crowd, I remember the voices echoing through microphones and speakers. I remember being nine years old, and somebody had shot Dr. King.

A year later my father made plans to take a bus to Washington D.C. to march against the war. These were safer times to march, but the sting of the fifties, the threats against his life, the assassination of the Rosenbergs, the McCarthy witch hunts, Cheney, Shverner and Goodman, four little girls, Malcolm, Evers, King and many others, still were fresh in his mind. He would not take me. It wasn’t safe.

I had to go.

This was freedom and I had promised his calloused yellow feet that I would go on the next march. “If a man does not have something he is willing to die for he is not fit to live” I said as I quoted Dr. King. It was 1969. I was almost eleven years old. I’m not sure how much I understood about rice paddies, napalm and imperialism, but my father was going and I had to go with him.

I had to go.

There was no way I could let him go without me. I argued and polemicized with him for days until he finally conceded that he would take me. My mother packed us reubens for lunch and he made me wear a dress so that we would look respectable, no torn blue jeans for us. It was a green sweater and a matching skirt that just reached my knee. I remember. I remember because it was a cold day in Washington in 1969, November 15. I remember the bus and the old woman who gave me brownies to eat and the edges had been burned in the pan. I remember the rows and rows of yellow busses, I remember the button, long since lost, a white hand forming a peace sign against a black silhouette of the capital building. I remember seeing the marble buildings of the Capital and L’Enfant Plaza, with its large light bulb street lights, the Washington memorial. I remember the pro war protesters telling me to go back to Russia, a place my ancestors had lived in and died in and could never return to. I remember the smell of marijuana, the chanting and the singing, the speakers, the crowds. I really remember the cold, my stockinged legs, the cold air and no protection from it, but most of all I remember not caring that I had to get up at four in the morning, not caring that the air burned my skin, not caring that I was hungry or thirsty. I just cared that I was there, that he brought me and that I would do this again many, many times.

I am sure that my initial FBI file has swollen and perhaps fills many boxes. For years my mail has sporadically arrived opened and the clicks on the phone are reminders that very little is truly private. My name appears on hit lists and blacklists. I receive the occasional death threat. I turn away from cameras at demonstrations unless I know the photographer. And I have photographed them too. (I have my own files.) There may yet be a day of reckoning.

I am tired of police officers in uniform holding video cameras. I am tired of the cops who come right up to me and shoot my picture while I stand under a red banner. Most of all I am tired of the ones out of uniforms; the G-men and women who sit in on meetings and pretend to fight for freedom, who feign that longing in their eyes, all the while taking notes and foaming discontent within the group. I know we have made mistakes, over the years of organizing I have seen movements come and go, groups break and splinter. I only wish I new which mistakes were ours, which discord was truly part of the movement and which was caused by infiltration, government espionage and counterintelligence programming.

I wish I knew.

I march with my small child and keep my eyes on the baton yielding men with helmets on horseback. I am ready to grab up my child with the power of motherhood and run if need arises. I am afraid for him in demonstrations, I am afraid for him as he grows into a man in a society afraid of its youth but I bring him. He never had to ask. “No blood for oil” was one of his first sentences and for years he would point to the Federal building and call it “Peace now.” I carried him on the picket line of the L.A. teachers’ strike and nursed him between picket duty and cluster meetings. I carry my father with me too. He doesn’t march with me any more, not in form, but he is there in spirit and I remember his feet, his calloused feet he brought back form Alabama and the promises I made to them. I will always remember those feet.

The Smokescreen of “Anti-Semitism” and the Destruction of a Community Farm

By Emma Rosenthal

Ralph Horowitz credits alleged anti-Semitic remarks directed at him as his unique reason for refusing to sell the South Central farm to the farmers. It is important to note that there has been considerable support for the farm from members of the Jewish community, including a number of Rabbis, and the web page of the South Central Farmers, in response to these allegations, has an uncompromising condemnation of anti-Semitism. Additionally, none of the statements, or speeches by the leaders and spokespeople for the farm, nor the banners and posters that lined the fence around the farm contained any of the vitriol Horowitz ascribes to the movement as a whole. It would be impossible for the leaders of this movement to control or to be responsible for every statement, letter, email and web page of those who claim to support the farm. Perhaps a few errant individuals may have made such hateful, disparaging and unacceptable statements, but to associate the actions of a few with the farmers themselves or their appointed spokespeople would be to replicate the exact same bigotry such alleged statements embody.

Additionally, to believe Horowitz, that these remarks were what changed his mind, contradicts the intractable position he maintained throughout the entire campaign to save the farm, not withstanding, what he himself claimed was a weak moment when he briefly offered to consider a sale that would have amounted to a multi million dollar profit for him.

Equally preposterous is the claim that he was personally insulted or victimized by these alleged accusations and insults. Nothing in Horowitz’ behavior during this entire episode indicates that he was at all concerned with what anyone thought of him: not as a businessman, community member nor as a member of any particular ethnic group. It is also improbable that these racist insults offended Mr. Horowitz’ sense of moral outrage, as it would appear from his behavior that he has little concern for social justice or human rights. As for being a victim; Mr. Horowitz saw to profit considerably from the sale of the farm. (Through back room deals in 2003 the city sold the farm to Horowitz for the same 5 million dollars it cost them to purchase it under eminent domain in the late 1980’s.) His original request for 16.3 million dollars from poor subsistence farmers was an obscenity. His refusal to sell it after weeks of fundraising displayed a flagrant lack of good faith.

The cry of “anti-Semitism” from someone so wealthy and powerful as Mr. Horowitz is nothing more than one more political strategy, one sly attempt to save face, the false play of the race card, the distortion of the real body politic and in the end, a desensitization to real acts of racism and bigotry against Jews, especially those Jews not protected by wealth and power. While crying about social and personal responsibility; disregarding the hard work, sweat and financial equity put into the farm by the farmers: the profound relationship of farmer to soil, the infrastructure of trees and perennials, the value of the crops in time and sustenance; Mr. Horowitz seems to take no responsibility for his own behavior. For while Mr. Horowitz is entitled to all the greed and selfishness of his wealthy Anglo-Saxon counterparts; free from racist attacks on his character, or his ethnic group, it seems ironic that while he has embodied many negative Jewish stereotypes, it doesn’t occur to him that it is not he who is a victim of these generalizations, as the stereotypes so clearly do apply to him individually. Racists and bigots are uniquely responsible for their bigotry and as such, Mr. Horowitz is not responsible for the bigotry of these alleged messengers. But his misuse of this most grievous accusation within this specific social construct does little to discourage such conclusions and only serves as a meager justification for Horowitz’ lust for power and money. If anyone is to be offended by anti-Jewish comments directed at Mr. Horowitz, it is the world’s 14 million Jews who have cause to feel slighted by association with Mr. Horowitz and his un-neighborly behavior, in the unfortunate event that his individual traits of greed and wealth be applied to us all.

<>©2006 Emma Rosenthal All Rights Reserve

These are the poems I read at the recent fundraiser for Bob’s campaign

____________________________________________
Daily resurrections

…that your passion may live through its own daily resurrection, and like the phoenix rise above its own ashes. ~Khalil Gibran

seedlings
take hold to delicate earth
words carve images on empty sheets of verse
the house holds musty
the smell of baking bread
there are three new
poems in the world today
that weren’t here before

I wish
I had more strength
the sap sucked from my limbs
by birds of prey
I lie here before the next attack
and prepare my quiet insurrection

each
breath I take is manifesto
against the huge machine
we have yet to dismantle

I wait
for when we can plan the uprising
the birds picking at my heart
taste the bitterness of my tenacity
if you looked into my eyes
you would see clarity

hope
disguised as tears
to fool the vultures
____________________________________________
twenty-five steps to a stronger portfolio

1. learn to steal
2. disguise debt and theft behind legislation
3. invest in war
4. ignore the greater good
5. deify wealth
6. appreciate the poor you are eating their dinner
7. mismanage the earth and patent nature
8. patently lie
9. call theft industriousness
10. praise greed- name it success – call it spirituality
11. write a book about getting rich and wait for fool to buy it
12. affirm the laws apply to everyone
13. go for short term gains
14. follow in daddy’s footsteps
15. pretend everyone has the same opportunity
16. maintain strict double standards
17. exalt and defend privilege
18. convince the working class to aspire to be you
19. persuade the working class they are responsible for their own situation
20. hide your greed behind the flag – get poor boys to fight for oil -offshore investments – runaway shops – maquiladora labor
21. believe in your own entitlement
22. assume the divinity of privilege
23. call lack of wealth – lack of spirituality
24. invest in disparate opportunity
25. pray for the poor and kick them in the head

__________________________________________
an artists insurrection against impending armageddon

we have reached the end of days
if we listen to the generals
the strange interpretation of biblical text
we are approaching armageddon
there is no room for artist in heaven

along with jews and other infidels
we will all burn in a sea of fire
as the generals and soldiers
these crusaders in a war for oil and empire
march through the gates of heaven

how do they envision paradise?
is there any room for imagination
beyond the brilliant justification for world destruction
these ends of days are like a funeral durge
slow measured frightened and beautiful

we march behind the soldiers
in contrast to their naked brutality
we sell flowers on street corners
chant durges on the steps of city hall
paint our forms in chalk on corporate pavement

there is more for us in paradise
than these hollow promises
we cannot march to the drummers of the death knell
i dance to the sounds of the birds and the wind
the crickets whisper to me the direction to take in battle

we fight with paint brushes brooms and sewing needles
reconstruct from the ashes of their bitterness
a sea of transformation splendor majesty
hope against the fear of sky scrapers
and the destruction of the city commons

where can i meet you
will i see you at the library or the marketplace
we have no space in common anymore
each leaf and blade of grass is patented by monsanto
even my own garden isn’t mine

in defiance i sow forbidden seeds
hide fugitive artists in my garage
stash implements of self expression behind the tomato plants
hide remedy in soup bowls
sneak books of poetry across the border of forbidden thoughts

let us gather our plows and printing presses
march out our army of artisans, poets philosophers
mothers children the disabled
we shall gather in front of the monuments to corporate monopoly
creative, we shall do more than merely redistribute wealth

let us paint a mural against the bitterness of capital
let us dance with fingerprints upon the freshly polished glass
let us reconstruct deconstruct the corporate structure
let us build a monument to hope from the finest marble
gather our finest sculptors to chisel away the corporate greed

let us create a world of wealth not measured in numbers on digital screens
abundance in the depth of paintings sprawled on canvas in children’s art classes
in the prolific dances in newly reclaimed public gardens
in the flowers that bloom organic to meet the paint brushes
in the heart that meets the hands that bridge divides of freeway and distance

the dismantled impositions of capitol and greed
they cannot take you away from me
let us storm the bastille and free those trapped behind stolen opportunities
lost dreams, misplaced hope, false divisions, broken promises
gather the dispossessed and storm the factories of death and theft

let me meet you in the public square after we have dismantled corporate tyranny
taken back our territory granting it to our children in collective perpetuity
we will reclaim this paradise with our hammers and chisels paint brushes keyboards
paint and build and dance and sing through the gates of paradise
an artists insurrection against impending Armageddon

________________________

Comments

bravo these are achingly beautiful
Posted by rheim on 05/19/2006 03:23:54 PM

My grandmother’s quilt, circa 1920. Each circle is identical to the tip of an umbrella. My grandmother worked in a sweatshop from the ages of 9-13 making unbrellas. Photo by Emma Rosenthal.

On the crest of the impending wave about to strike every city and town this Monday, I offer the following musings: The first is a letter to the editor, I sent to the L.A. Times, Los Angeles Jewish Journal and the Pasadena Star News. The second; My Grandmother’s Knitting Needles, was first published in LoudMouth Magazine, Cal State L.A.’s Feminist Newspaper in Issue 4: Winter 2004. It is the story of my own grandmother and a reminder that if we did deep enough, most of us will find that at least one member of our family is an immigrant with dubious entry documents, or no documents at all. While current immigrants hail mostly from Mexico, Central America and Asia, immigration discrimination has been a national plague dating back to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and since then, reflected in one piece of repressive legislation after another; directed mostly against peoples of Asia, the global South and Eastern and Southern Europe. Poor working conditions, exploited labor, insufficient educational programs have long plagued wave after wave of immigrants. The exploitation of undocumented workers has been a keystone of U.S. capital. The pejorative anti- Italian term WOP, simply means, “without papers”, used to refer to undocumented immigrants, by greedy employers. The term was used universally, it simply stuck on the Italians.

So, I hope to make my way down to the demonstrations on Monday, but should my health limit my participation, I offer these quiet insurrections.

Peace with justice, from occupied Atzlan,

Emma Rosenthal
________________________________

Dear Editor:
Only workers in the United States and Great Britain have to declare a boycott on May first, not to go to work on that day. In all the other countries in the world, May Day is a holiday: International Workers’ Day, which grew out of the Haymarket Riots in Chicago, Ill. in 1886 when eleven people were killed during a demonstration, when a bomb went off in the crowd, and police fired on strikers fighting for the eight hour work day. Five activists, four (German) immigrants -anarchists, were accused of throwing the bomb, and despite witness testimony to the contrary, were hung, executed by the state. May Day grew into an international holiday, but in the U.S. due to red baiting and reactionary labor and governmental policies, an alternate Labor Day became the official holiday. Cleverly timed for the first Monday in September, before the school year begins, working class contributions and consciousness are little recognized even for one day, in our nation’s schools.

Few workers in the U.S. know the words to Solidarity Forever, leave alone the words to the Internationale, few know about the Haymarket strike or the Uprising of the twenty thousand. Few know who Samuel Gompers or Eugene Debs are. We are a people from many lands, torn up by the roots, wandering aimlessly, unaware of our own past as immigrants or as workers.

But this Monday brings a new breeze to the U.S. and labor landscape, because we are about to witness, and many of us are about to participate in the largest strike, perhaps the largest mass mobilization, in U.S. history. It is no accident that we are brought back to our own history, our own May Day by immigrant workers, reminding us of the international holiday that actually began on U.S. soil. Oh the many contributions of immigrants to our wide, deep and varied cultural mosaic.

These are exciting times indeed.

Emma Rosenthal
818-404-5784

__________________________________
My Grandmother’s Knitting Needles
By Emma Rosenthal

“What the woman who labors wants is to live, not simply exist–the right to life as the rich woman has it, the right to life, and the sun, and music, and art. You have nothing that the humblest worker has not a right to have also. The worker must have bread, but she must have roses too.” -Garment worker Rose Schneiderman, August 1912

Her hands moved like mercury. The click clack of the needles, back and forth, the yarn spinning from the ball on the floor into the moving swarm of hands and needles, emerging as form, as hats, gloves, scarves, sweaters. “Watch and learn,” she would tell me, and I tried but all I saw was the miraculous transformation of a ball of yarn into cloth. She had grandmother hands, bumpy where the veins stood out, loose soft skin.

“Before a girl could get married in my village she had to prove that she was patient enough for the task,” she told me. “They would give her a bundle of tangled yarn,” she would say, as we would struggle to untangle wool, or rope or extension cords. She told the story as she wound yarn into balls for knitting. “If she could not untangle the yarn, she could not get married.” I remember that story every time I have something to untangle. I would never settle for a village marriage, but patience is a skill applied to any task worthy of completion.

By the time she was five she had lost her entire immediate family. It is not clear if they died of illness and starvation, or were killed in pogroms, massacres committed by Polish or Russian authorities against the Jewish peasants throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Either way, it was governmental policies towards the Jews that killed them, living in the region that was Poland one day, Russia the next, bombarded by Cossacks, government sanctioned thugs that rode in on horseback killing and destroying everything in their sight, slashing open the bellies of pregnant women, raping children, killing the livestock, burning homes. She remembered being thrown into a root cellar by her aunt when she was only six to hide from the Cossacks, hidden among the carrots and parsnips, potatoes and rutabagas while death, destruction, ravaged in the streets above her. At six, she landed on Ellis Island in New York Harbor, with her aunt and nephews, on the false passport of her dead cousin. They came to join her uncle in New York, in America, where there is such abundance that they shovel gold in the streets. What she found was the tenements of New York’s Lower East Side. Delancy Street, Hester Street. A three room, cold water walk up flat on the fourth floor. There was no bath, the toilet was in the hallway, shared by all the families on the floor. She slept in the kitchen.
She decided to go to work. At age nine she went to the factory by day and school at night. Now she had three different identities, as common to the immigrant experience as cheap labor and cloth dust. She was of course, herself – Anna Kaufman – daughter of Aaron Moses Kaufman and Choma Reingold. Her passport gave her the identity of her dead cousin. And now she had a third set of documents, for work, identifying her as a thirteen year old. She found employment in an umbrella factory, making the tips of umbrellas.
She worked there for three years. By the time she was 12, she was able to make every part of the umbrella and was now a shop forelady. It was that year, 1909 that a strike broke out in the garment industry. The strike, led mostly by Jewish and Italian immigrant teenagers, was named the Uprising of the 20,000. Not a machine whirred, not a wheel turned. The strike that began on November 22, 1909, lasted almost four months, through the winter and ended on March 8, 1910. She wasn’t a leader in the strike, but she left her lofted position of middle management and walked out with the other workers in one of American history’s biggest strikes. “I didn’t want to be a scab,” she told me.
Such a different world, where a 12 year old girl knows the sanctity of a picket line and the importance of righteous bread.
“Watch and learn,” she would tell me, her hands moving like silver as yarn became cloth. “Watch and learn.” She would tell me.

I still can’t knit. I never have crossed a picket line.

Hurricane Katrina and Refugee Status
By Emma Rosenthal

My grandmother was a refugee. By the time she was six years old, she had lost her entire family to genocide. I don’t know if my great-grandparents and their children were murdered in the brutality of daily pogroms or if they simply died of starvation and poverty imposed by a racist regime on a marginalized population. Either way, my grandmother was part of a wave of Jewish refugees fleeing persecution and genocide in Russia and Poland at the turn of the previous century.

Legally, my grandmother was not a refugee. That is, she was not conferred refugee status. But by all current definitions of a refugee, my grandmother most certainly should have qualified as one. She came on the false passport of her dead cousin, traveling with her only living relative, her mother’s sister. Her Uncle was already living in New York City and through him, the family was able to immigrate to the United States.

When the media referred to the victims of Katrina as refugees, there was great protestation within the African American community at the use of the word, that it was racist, the victims of the hurricane were “Americans”, not foreigners, not refugees, that it implied that the victims of the hurricane and government policy were being dehumanized as less “American.” For some critics, it perhaps triggered memory of wave of immigrant and refugee group that displaced African American populations in jobs and housing, and then moved on, and in some cases, up.

For the most part, he media, to their credit, responded in uncharacteristic haste and stopped using the offending term, replacing it with the term, “evacuees”. Self-definition is a basic aspect of self-determination, so if someone doesn’t want to be called a refugee, then no one should impose the title. But I must raise a concern for the humanity of the huddled masses of the world In the battle for social justice, none can afford to wage a competition between the have nots and the have nots, the divide and conquer that allows the ruling class to use its manufactured divisions and its granting of spoonfuls of privilege to one group at the expense of both, what Audre Lorde refers to as horizontal hostility. Ours must be a battle of universal humanity, the determination that all life is equally of value. Many of the world’s refugees are the victims of the same hubris and greed, the same elite, the same multinationals, the same policies as the evacuees of New Orleans.

In dialogue with friends of mine from many ethnic groups, who have for years referred to themselves or their families as refugees, I heard “What’s wrong with being a refugee?” Some were markedly offended at the rejection of the term. I wasn’t as offended as I was disturbed by the divide birthed in the denunciation of this word. When I first heard “refugee” in reference to the displaced people of New Orleans, while I understand the offense taken, it did not strike me as a disparaging remark, but it did jolt me. Every year there are hurricanes. Every year people are displaced, but this disaster has a political and human magnitude that is unsurpassed in recent U.S. history. It marks, at the very least, the largest migration of U.S. citizens in more than a century. The thought of a refugee problem, as desperate as any calamity world wide, originating in the United States shocked me. I think it was the use of this word that first helped me understand the magnitude of the situation, the displacement of more than half a million people, the racism and classism of government policies and neglect. I can’t speak for the media establishment, or members of the ruling class. I am not part of either estate. But I would imagine that for many Americans, not least of all, those of Jewish, Irish, Armenian, Haitian, Central American, Arab (especially Palestinians) descent, the term may have also been a wake up call, an indication of the severity of the situation. It may very well have heightened our solidarity. I know it had that impact on me.

Perhaps this is a clash of narrative, for while many ethnic groups have been marginalized and massacred by U.S. governmental foreign and domestic policy, having faced injustice here, even while seeking refuge, African Americans, brought by force, are the only group whose human status has been specifically and legally diminished as 3/5 human, written in ink that has stained the fabric of the U.S. Constitution at its inception. The racism against African Americans has a unique grasp on American history, the American Psyche and the American narrative.

To many of us, who either arrived here as refugees or whose families did, the term offers no disparagement. We see refugees when we look in the mirror, when we pray, when we revisit family photo albums, when we tell our children our family narratives. For Jews it is the story of wanderings, expulsions. For the Irish, it is the potato famine, caused, not by natural disaster, but by colonization, poverty, poor land management, lack of indigenous rights, monocultural agricultural methods and greed. For Haitians it is boats unseaworthy, the cover of darkness and, if caught, return to brutality, tourture, death. For Central Americans it is the trauma of secret wars, torture, executions, death squads, the fight for labor and indigenous rights. For Armenians it is the struggle for recognition as the first major genocide of the twentieth century, For Cambodians, the killing fields. For Rwandans it is the million killed in 100 days, slashed to death with machetes, torn apart by the remnants of conflict sewn by retreating colonialism, replaced with neo-liberalism and neo colonialism, while the world turned its back. For Palestinians it is uprooted olive trees, checkpoints, exile, nakba, the key to a door to the house in the village that no longer exists, despair, mixed with the hope, that under international law of the implementation, eventually, of the right of return. And while many Palestinians live in desperate conditions in refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon and the territories occupied by Israel since 1967, many Palestinians, who also refer to themselves as refugees, and also hope to return to their homes and villages, live and work and were born here in the United States. Many, living in first world comfort, are doctors, lawyers, teachers, businessmen and women, but they are, nonetheless refugees, deprived by both Israeli and U.S. policy of the right of return, of their most basic indigenous rights. For most of these peoples it is the story of genocide, displacement, eviction, policies meted out to rid the land of the people. Refugees are not just the tired poor huddled masses of foreign lands, they are a significant part of the narrative that built this country.

More offensive, in my opinion, was the priority placed on animal rescue, the chartering of private air conditioned busses and airplanes for the airlifting of dogs and cats, some traveling in first class accommodations while people, mostly poor and Black, remained in sub-human, life threatening conditions in the toxic soup that filled the streets of New Orleans.

For many of us, being a refugee doesn’t make you less of us, less “American.” it makes you one of us. It helps us to understand your story, the current situation. It is our language of suffering.
And yet, without a doubt, by international definition, the displaced people from New Orleans are not refugees. Under international and national law, refugees are people displaced by political turmoil due to their political affiliation or group membership that have crossed an international border.

Left to die in the flood waters, deprived of food or water or medicine for days, locked into a flooded region without supplies, then, days later, forced at gun point to leave their homes and their city, shot at for foraging for food and water, divided from family members, the victims of a class and race war that has been waged against the people of the United States, by the government of the United States, and multinational corporations, not having crossed an international border, the People of New Orleans, are not refugees. (Unless they took refuge in Mexico or Canada) they are Displaced Persons. Refugees (when recognized as such) have rights and status under both national and international law. They have the right of safe passage and the right of return. The displaced persons do not. They are at the whim of the government, their only hope, being the will of the people to find justice in a most unjust and deliberate storm.

Not that George Bush and Company caused the hurricane, but they saw it coming, literally, in the days leading up to the storm, and intellectually, in the years preceding it. While corporate spin masters reconstructed the English language to change the more declaratory term, “global warming”, to the more sanitized, “climate change”, scientists had been warning about the impending rise of sea level, the risk of harsher weather conditions. More specifically, it was clear that in the event of a massive hurricane, New Orleans was doomed. While government agencies blocked aid and waited to attend to the sick, stranded and dying, the port and offshore oilrigs were secured and private no bid contracts were awarded to Halliburton. Like the stolen elections of 2000 and 2004, these events don’t happen on their own, they are part of back room policy and planning. That the current administration has little concern for the opinions and lives of common folk is evidenced by the rush to war for oil and empire and the dismantling of the social and industrial infrastructure here at home, without our consent. This brazen grasp for power without even the pretext of popular consent is what is unprecedented, the hubris of a ruling class whose only mistake was not having a hand on the pulse of the nation. The dialogue on race has changed and they didn’t see that coming. While government abandoned the people of New Orleans, the people of the nation and the world set up lemonade stands, car washes, food and clothing drives, concerts, collections for the people of New Orleans. Many opened their homes and took in strangers. We were outraged at the brutality of the government. The overt racism and classism of government policies in the days after the hurricane, brought the issue of race and class to the fore of American dialogue. It is this dialogue that is the only hope, not only of the people of New Orleans, but for the rest of us as well. For while the levees broke in Louisiana, the poverty that locked the residents into the city so they could not evacuate before the storm, the lack of government planning and willingness (contrasted to the efforts when disaster has hit more affluent areas,) to assist and finance that evacuation, the forced evacuation after the storm, the disempowerment that threatens to keep them from returning to their homes is also a yoke around the necks of the rest of us as well. Decades of government policy, of both political parties has resulted in lower paying jobs without health care, the break down of our health care emergency system, our education system, our safety net, the build up of private industry and the sacking of public funds for private use including the newest form of slavery; the prison industry (whereby private businesses run prisons in which prisoners work as slave laborers for the profits of these enterprises.) Every mother who has had to fight for life saving health care, struggled with diminished educational, youth and public health programs, including mental health programs that allow our children to thrive, every family that struggles to put food on the table, to send children to college, to have options beyond prison, the military and Walmart, lives under the wheel of this machine. Both nationally and internationally, the impact of U.S. empire strangles the poor through overt military action or the discretion of neo-liberal policies and neglected infrastructure, where the poor drown and starve behind broken levees while the rich rush in to sweep up the profits and grab up the land.

U.S. immigration law provides right of entry and legal status to those it grants refugee status. Many would be refugees, (for example, Central Americans and Haitians running from death squads, Jews fleeing Nazi Germany,) have died because of a racist unwillingness to confer status on those fleeing persecution. Who receives refugee status also reflects the racist and political priorities of the ruling regime. During the cold war era, the Cuban upper class and Soviet dancers easily received refugee status. Mayan peasants fleeing death squads often did not and were returned, against all international law, to their country of origin to face certain death. Currently, U.S. Immigration prisons are full of men, women and children (yes, children) who cling to the (hated) word, “refugee” for dear life, hoping to be endowed with its status, people, whose only crime is a desire to flee persecution and take refuge in the United States. Refugee status is a lifesaver. It offers membership, privilege and status. Privilege that I fear the people of New Orleans won’t have. Once the water recedes, and the rebuilding begins, will the how and the why and the use of the billions Bush and the Congress promise be determined by the returning multitudes, or will the efforts of the government to refuse aid, so that people would leave, and not return, pay off for big business? Will the poor be gone, and high rise condos and the ports and oil fields be in the hands of the wealthy and powerful? Will the New Orleans French quarter be rebuilt like a Vegas version of Egypt, Paris or New York, or will power be endowed to the people? Seized by the people? Will the market determine the price of housing in the new New Orleans, or will we all insist that affordable, safe housing be built for the poor and working class who resided in the region before the deluge? Can the sons and daughters of former slaves and the sons and daughters of former refugees band together to insist that the rights of return and the right of safe passage, apply to displaced persons regardless of borders crossed or uncrossed? Can we insist that public funds, fund public jobs, build public infrastructure, in New Orleans, in the United States and abroad, that our resources, our labor, not go into the hands of multinational corporations in bids for power, profit, oil and empire, but build bridges and levees here at home and in solidarity around the world?