Frank Beacham's Journal

South Carolina's Shame Shines Bright on Black History Month

As a native of South Carolina, it’s always interesting to me how many people mix up the two states of North and South Carolina. On Black History Month in 2010, there’s often praise for how Greensboro, North Carolina turned an old Woolworth’s lunch counter, the home of a black sit-in 50 years ago, into a civil rights museum. It often leads to a conversation of how much the South has changed.

Unfortunately, in the area of civil rights, major differences remain between the two states. North Carolina is far more progressive than South Carolina. The people of North Carolina are better educated and led by far better politicians.

 

In South Carolina, a confederate flag still flies daily in front of the State House on government-owned property. In a 1999 television interview on CBS Sunday Morning, State Sen. Robert Ford reminded flag opponents that they weren’t going to resolve the issue with a barrel over the heads of the “white men” in the state. 

“These white men in South Carolina in 1861 started a civil war that lasted five years without a navy, army, air force or marine, because somebody was trying to tell them what to do... This is not Arizona. This is South Carolina—[home of] the meanest, toughest white men on the planet.” That remains true today.

The governor of South Carolina may be best known for his martial infidelity, but his real shame is the way he has handled the money of the state. The Corridor of Shame still defines the black-white divide of the state’s schools. The state’s unemployment and poor education system still ranks among the highest. Black prisoners still maintain the civil rights memorial at the state house.

Sadly, even with a black president, South Carolina has changed little. Never forget that South Carolina is very different from today’s North Carolina.

Howard Zinn, the People’s Historian, Dies at 87

Many historians are essentially paid hacks who write “history” to favor the rich and powerful. Unfortunately, these magicians with the facts have skewed our nation’s history books and the perceptions of events for millions of Americans.

Then there was Howard Zinn, the author, teacher and political activist whose book—A People’s History of the United States—became a million-selling alternative to mainstream texts. Zinn wrote history from the viewpoint of ordinary people, not the wealthy elite.  

A People's History was published in 1980 with little promotion and a first printing of only 5,000 copies. By 2003, it had sold over a million copies. Adopted by individual teachers against the wishes of the establishment, the book now is taught in high schools and colleges throughout the country.

 Howard Zinn last May at the 92nd St. Y.  Photo by Frank Beacham

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Needless to say that Howard Zinn had enemies among mainstream historians. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. once said: “I know he regards me as a dangerous reactionary. And I don’t take him very seriously. He’s a polemicist, not a historian.” Others had much harsher things to saw.

However, Howard Zinn acknowledged that he was not trying to write objective history, and saw A People's History as a response to traditional works. “There’s no such thing as a whole story; every story is incomplete,” Zinn said. “My idea was the orthodox viewpoint has already been done a thousand times.”

Actors, filmmakers and even Bruce Springsteen, whose Nebraska album was inspired in part by A People’s History, celebrated Zinn. I last saw Howard Zinn on May 13, 2009 at the 92nd Street Y in New York at an actor’s reading from the new young people’s edition of A People’s History.

One of Zinn’s final public writings was a brief essay on President Obama in the Nation. “I’ve been searching hard for a highlight,” Zinn wrote, adding that he wasn’t disappointed because he never expected a lot from the president.

“I think people are dazzled by Obama’s rhetoric, and that people ought to begin to understand that Obama is going to be a mediocre president—which means, in our time, a dangerous president—unless there is some national movement to push him in a better direction.”

As usual, Howard Zinn was dead-on accurate. Men of his caliber are far too few. His alternative views in this culture-for-money will be sorely missed.

Privacy is Lost in the Age of Social Media

As I have tried to reinvent myself in this age of social media, one change I’ve noticed is especially striking. People, both young and old, are giving away their privacy online more than ever before. Sadly, they don’t seem to know or care about it. 

I’m included—but not willingly. If I google myself, it’s horrifying. I find stuff I wrote years ago that I had long forgotten. It’s also disconcerting to read one of your own articles when searching for new information about a subject. Nothing, and I mean nothing, goes unnoticed on the Internet.

Facebook, growing like a virus on a rampage, is especially scary. One gets “friends” on Facebook—lots of friends. I get people who I’ve never heard of requesting to be my friend. I approve them all because I view Facebook as a marketing tool for a writer such as myself. 

Yet, many users of Facebook don’t see it this way. They blurt out anything on any subject, forgetting that they are broadcasting drivel to everyone on their “friends list.” I don’t know whether it’s loneliness, or just a way to be more social. But many folks don’t realize they are leaving permanent digital track marks on the web.

I’ve had so-called friends ask me personal questions on Facebook. I tell them if they want an answer they must send their private e-mail address. I don’t want to send my personal responses to the masses, nor do I trust Facebook to keep it private. 

 

Owners of these social media web sites have discovered a gold mine. It doesn’t take much imagination to see how they can cash in on the marketing and advertising industries with the personal data they accumulate. Forget their “privacy agreements,” they can do anything they want with that data and they probably will.

This abandonment of online privacy extends to many other areas of our society. One dangerous example is iWatch, the brainchild of Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton, who calls his idea a 21st century version of Neighborhood Watch.

The Major Cities Chiefs Association, headed by Bratton and composed of the chiefs of the 63 largest police departments in the United States and Canada, endorsed iWatch at the group’s conference last month. iWatch asks citizens to report “suspicious behavior” of others to the police, using either the web or a toll-free phone number to make reports.

It is remarkable to me how many people, who obviously know little of contemporary history, think this is a good idea. iWatch feeds into the fear-based culture that has been carefully cultivated by government officials since 9/11. It magnifies the prejudices of people.

The privacy problems with iWatch were cited by American Civil Liberties Union policy counsel Mike German, a former FBI agent who once worked on terrorism cases. iWatch, he noted, wants people to report others who engage in relatively common behavior like wearing odd clothes for a season, who ask about building security or who purchase items that could be used to make bombs. 

Most iWatch reports, therefore, will fall back on the personal bias and stereotype of what a “terrorist” might look like to the individual caller. 

“That just plays into the negative elements of society and doesn’t really help the situation,” German told The Associated Press.

 

Though the creators of iWatch insist they are not asking people to spy on their neighbors, that is, exactly what they are doing. It moves the concept of a nosy neighbor up a notch—Internet-style. 

Perhaps even scarier than iWatch are the activities of a new company called Internet Eyes in the U.K. It wants to stream video camera feeds from businesses—or anyone willing to pay Internet Eyes a fee of $30 a month—to video monitors watched by humans around the clock. 

Internet Eyes is signing up average people—anyone off the street—to watch these camera feeds. The “watchers” compete with one another, getting paid up to $1,600 for reporting the most crimes happening on camera.

These citizen watchers—who will monitor four cameras simultaneously—can report a crime in real time using the subscribing company’s Web page. This will send a video frame to the owner of the camera via SMS. The watcher, however, won’t know the location of the cameras, which will change every 10 minutes.

“This isn’t a game—it’s serious,” said Tony Morgan, the managing director of Internet Eyes. 

On that statement, I agree wholeheartedly.

It has long been known that every time a new technology is introduced, there are unexpected, negative side consequences that come with it. It is clear these negative side effects are now revealing themselves with the Internet. 

Social media seemed innocent enough in the beginning. Unfortunately, a new generation—unschooled in the history of privacy violations by the government—doesn’t understand the implications of where we are headed. And we certainly can’t count on the technology companies to educate them.

The ubiquity of Internet video from every mobile phone on the street has the potential to trap and embarrass many people—even when they are doing the most ordinary human things. We, as a society, have never before faced such an intrusion into our personal privacy. It’s certain to turn messy.

The dark side of the Internet culture is being built today—be afraid, very afraid. Life is changing fast and many are clueless as to what is happening. 

"My Dinner With Andre"—Now 30 Years Old—Was a Great Cinematic Experiment that Wasn’t Suppose to Work

Thirty years ago, playwright-actor Wally Shawn sat down for dinner with Andre Gregory, the New York theatre director, and cinematic history was made. It was a “talkie” shot on low-budget 16mm film that no one—except the filmmakers—believed in.

That included most of the family and friends of Shawn and Gregory. But after a tense six weeks of poor box office and scathing reviews by mainstream media outlets, the then new TV critics—Siskel and Ebert—gave My Dinner with Andre a thumbs-up. At that moment, the film’s box office took off.

The two old friends and theatrical colleagues watched their work at the Walter Reade Theatre at Lincoln Center this week for the first time in a decade. It was part of a tribute to the life of the late Louis Malle, who directed the film. After the screening, both men marveled at how much the world had changed in the past 30 years.

 

The project was proposed by Shawn, who wanted to tell the story in a TV film of Andre’s fantastical journey of enlightenment to Poland at the invitation of Jerzy Grotowski. The pair met for weeks—talking into a tape recorder—as Gregory told the tale and Shawn reacted. They then took the transcripts and edited a narrative, which they later performed in segments before live audiences and on videotape.

“We would never had embarked on this movie if we had known what we learned five to ten years later,” Shawn recalled. “If someone brought me something like this today and asked my advice, I would say it is impossible. If I had known anything, I would have thought it was impossible then. But neither of us knew much about movies. So we had a kind of confidence that was absurd!”

 

French director Louis Malle signed on and the film was made in an old abandoned hotel in Richmond, Virginia. It was in the dead of winter and to turn on the heat would have required heating the entire hotel. That was too expensive. So the two men filmed the entire movie in the hotel’s restaurant wrapped in electric blankets.

They knew their parts so well, the film was shot angle by angle, rather than in sequence. “We knew the script so well we were like trained monkeys,” Shawn recalled.

 

Gregory said playing himself was difficult. “It was confusing almost to the point of my going nuts,” he recalled. “In the rehearsal, I came up with the idea of using four voices. There was Andre with a Peter Brooks voice, there was Andre ‘the spiritual used car salesmen,’ there was Andre the ‘off-the-wall’ rich kid and there was the truthful Andre.”

Malle gave Gregory only only one significant direction in the film—speak faster. “It was the same direction given by director John Huston to his father, Walter Huston, in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, which won Walter an Oscar. You see Walter Huston, like myself, was a theatre actor. This was a crucial direction. When I spoke faster, I created this character who was a maniacal, egotistical, narcissistic son of a bitch. I didn’t have time to act. Louis realized that the camera is so close that you see what is in the eyes. You don’t have to do so much.”

 

What did the two performers think had changed in the culture since making the movie? “In the film, we don’t talk directly about American politics,” noted Shawn. “We almost would have had to when Ronald Reagan became president.  We both saw television come in. When we were boys there was no television. I missed television until I was about eight years old. The whole idea of people living in a trance and a fantasy world is far less discussed by younger people today than by us.”

Gregory, who at 75 is older than Shawn, grew up on radio drama. “You could say in certain ways that My Dinner with Andre is a radio drama,” he said. “In one place, the Andre character talks about ‘preserving the culture.’ Of course, that’s a passive culture that tells you what to think, what to feel and what to look at. If you go to see a movie like Titanic, it doesn’t leave anything open to your imagination. As audience members, you don’t need to do any work. 

“This film, like certain radio dramas, actually encourages you to think and to feel,” he continued. “It’s a bit like Lawrence of Arabia because the audience has to feel the forest. If you go see Atlantic City, which is the film Malle made just before this, it’s tragic to see the culture crumbling. Old buildings collapsing—an old world film. I was staggered tonight by the people mentioned in the film. We remembered in the 1970s when there would be lines around the block to get into a new Fellini movie or Antonioni movie. An active culture was more alive back then.”

 

Gregory recalled that when his father was 83 they had a discussion about fascism. “My father said if he was younger he would leave America. I asked why? He said because both political parties have become so corrupt that it can only lead to fascism. So, from my point of view, fascism was an ongoing concern. Wally’s play, The Designated Mourner, predicted Bush 10 years before he stole the presidency.”

Shawn recalled being surprised to see in the film that he wasn’t as complacent back then as he had remembered. “I suppose I have become a committed leftist who is much, much more upset about the way things are than I was at that time. I am more a believer in political activism and more aware of the role that bourgeoisie Americans play in torturing and oppressing the poor people who want the world to change. In the film, there’s a dim sense of somebody awakening to that.”

 

Gregory added: “The Andre character said something about ‘global totalitarian Capitalism.’ I used to not mind Capitalism so much. I grew up in the upper middle class and was privileged to have a comfortable life. I think Capitalism—starting with Reagan, who I think was a radical revolutionary—has become absolutely obscene. I have much darker feelings about this country. On the other hand, I’m a much happier person. I adore my wife, Cindy, a very fine filmmaker. I wouldn’t walk further than the local cigar store I’m having such a good time at home. So I sort have become the Wally character.”

A Real New Years Resolution

If you’re anything like me, you are fed up with our government’s response to Big Banks and Wall Street during the past year’s financial crisis. President Obama made promises to get tough with these institutions, but they haven’t been kept. It is clear to me that members of Congress from both political parties are corrupt to the core. Nothing will be done by the federal government when it comes to reigning in big business.

I read in the Huffington Post a great idea that ordinary people can do to really hurt the Big Banks. As a New Year’s resolution, people would simply move their money from any checking, savings or other kinds of accounts at the Big Banks to smaller community banks. It’s an idea elegant in its simplicity that, if it catches on, could cause some serious pain to these “too big to fail” banks that long ago quit serving the people.

 

If everyone did something as simple as switch their bank accounts away from these major banks it would be an act that no amount of lobbying or government intervention could stop. Congress and the administration would be left scratching their collective heads.

The “Move Your Money” folks did a wonderfully simple video below. And they even give you a way to find an alternative community bank near year you (Click here).  

The small banks are your choice. Just take your money out of the Big Four banks: JP Morgan/Chase, Citibank, Bank of America and Wells Fargo—all of which took billions in taxpayer money and have cut lending to businesses by $100 billion.

And spread the word about the “Move Your Money” campaign. It’s one very fine idea that could make a real difference!

Folk Music and Political Figures Celebrate the Life of Mary Travers

Sen. John Kerry, the former Democratic presidential nominee from Massachusetts, said the gathering was a like a class reunion of the Nixon enemies list. An earlier Democratic presidential nominee, George McGovern, said Mary Travers was the voice of the people in a troubled time in our country—a voice against bigotry and racism.

The four-hour memorial for Mary Travers, of Peter, Paul and Mary fame, was held on Nov. 9 on what have would been the singer-activist’s 73rd birthday. She died on September 16. The celebration was led by her partners in the group—Peter Yarrow and Noel “Paul” Stookey and held at New York City’s historic Riverside Church.

The memorial opened with Peter and Paul asking the audience to sing Mary’s part on Leaving on Jet Plane, the hit song written in 1966 by John Denver. The pair noted it was the first time in 50 years they had sung without Mary at their side.

 

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Mary was noted for her mesmerizing beauty, fierce activism and an opinion that was laser sharp. “Never ask Mary how she feels about something if you don’t want to know the truth,” said an old friend.  

Whoppee Goldberg, who got a big laugh when she said she once wanted hair like Mary’s, noted that when Mary sang this land is your land there was something deeper to the meaning. “If you don’t like it, get up and move and move, move, move,” Goldberg said. “When Mary spoke, people were with her.”

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George McGovern said he knew many people who died with huge amounts of money. “In my mind, that’s not a test of greatness,” he said. “Greatness is when people can listen to and be moved by songs for 100 years into the future.”

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Former Georgia Sen. Max Cleland, a disabled veteran of the Vietnam War, told of growing up with Peter, Paul and Mary, seeing them first in 1962. He held up his original album cover, which he has kept to this day. He later befriended, Mary, sending her onions from Georgia when he learned she was an accomplished cook. Cleland quipped “Without Mary, Peter and Paul would have sounded like two men drunk in a bar.”

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Judy Collins talked of the old days in Greenwich Village when Peter, Paul and Mary were all young. She said Mary had “that thing” possessed by great performers that make the audience want to join her. Collins sang Amazing Grace.

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John Kerry said he always liked Peter, Paul and Mary but “really, really liked Mary” when he first saw her perform while a student at Yale in 1964. She single handily put an end to the 1950’s beehive hair style, he noted. 

In 1971, when Kerry first met Mary in person, it was at a Vietnam rally in Washington, D.C. in front of a million people. He said Mary walked up to him, hugged him and gave him a big kiss. “That was it,” he said, “in front of a million people. That was the beginning of a special friendship.” The group sang at the Democratic National Convention in 2004 when Kerry was nominated for president.

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Peter, Paul and Mary shared Bob Dylan’s manager, Albert Grossman. Because of that, they made hits of several Dylan songs, including Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right and Blowin’ in the Wind.

Blowin in the Wind —one of the final songs of the night—was a favorite that left Mary fascinated throughout her life. She noted, even in her final days, that the questions raised in the song remain unanswered to this day.  

Pete Seeger and his grandson, Tao Rodriguez-Seeger, rehearse before going on.

Later, on stage.

Tom Paxton sings The Last Thing on My Mind, a song he wrote in the early 1960s

The group, with the addition of Tom Chapin and Theodore Bikel, closes the concert with Dylan's Blowin in the Wind.

Mary Travers looked down from the video screen.

Looking Back: Ted Kennedy Had a Profound Impact on My Life

What a year we’re living in!  It seems that as our lives are being challenged on multiple fronts, death is taking many of the best and brightest among us. Now, it’s Ted Kennedy.

Since I was a kid—watching the assassination of his brother, the president—and later, as a college student, watching the shooting of his other brother, the presidential candidate, Ted Kennedy has always been an integral part of my life.

When I graduated from college in 1970, I wanted to work for Sen. Kennedy. I drove to Washington, D.C. and arrived at the Senate Office Building on a Friday afternoon. There was no security then. I just walked into the senator’s office and asked for a job.

Yes, I could work for Kennedy, an aide told me. But I wouldn’t be paid for it. It seems a lot of other kids of my era had the same idea, and Kennedy's office devised an “intern” system. Sorry, I said, but I can't afford to work for free. As I was leaving, another Kennedy aide called me aside and whispered that if I wanted a paying job, he’d heard that Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia was looking for a press aide.

I walked directly to Byrd’s office and asked about the job. I was asked if I could write a press release. I said ‘yes’ and offered to write one on the spot. I did—and to make a short story even shorter—I was hired at that moment. I had to start on Monday, Byrd’s aide told me firmly. Over that weekend, I drove to South Carolina, loaded my worldly possessions in my car, and drove back to Washington, where I began work less than 48 hours after being hired.

Many Senate aides, I learned, never got to see their boss. Somehow, I saw mine often—usually several times a day. In fact, Robert Byrd taught me to be a real writer. A man who could quote most of Shakespeare along with the Senate rules off the top of his head, he was a stickler for good grammar. There was never a moment too important for him not to lecture me on the sentence construction of one of the speeches I wrote for him!

Byrd was quite close to Ted Kennedy in later years, but back in the early 1970s, they were serious rivals. Byrd challenged Kennedy for the Democratic “Whip” position in the Senate leadership and I worked on his campaign to beat Kennedy. While Kennedy vacationed in the Virgin Islands, Byrd pulled off the victory and made national headlines in doing it. 

I met Kennedy a few times, mostly on elevators or in the cloakroom of the Senate. As time went on, I grew to admire him more and more. So did Byrd, who at one time thought Kennedy was lazy.  He changed his mind over time.

I always liked Kennedy. I think part of it was to rebel against the people in the South, who couldn’t stand Kennedy or his ideas. But Kennedy was clearly one of the best senators in U.S. history. I’m only sorry that he didn’t live to see genuine health care legislation for all made into law. Perhaps none of us will.

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Noam Chomsky Fills Riverside Church in New York

The Riverside Church in New York City has a rich political legacy. It was from its pulpit that the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. preached his famous anti-Vietnam War sermon; Nelson Mandela addressed the nation during an interfaith celebration welcoming him to America; and Marian Wright-Edelman of the Children’s Defense Fund spoke about the need to provide quality healthcare to all children.

On June 12, the 40th anniversary of the publishing of his classic "American Power & the New Mandarins," Noam Chomsky came to the historic sanctuary to speak to a packed house of 2,100 people. Chomsky addressed a wide range of issues including the global economic crisis, U.S. military intervention in the Middle East and South Asia, left electoral and social movement upsurges in places like El-Salvador, Bolivia and Venezuela, and the election of Barack Obama.

Chomsky is well known in the academic and scientific community as one of the fathers of modern linguistics. However, since the 1960s, he has become known more widely as a political dissident, an anarchist and a libertarian socialist intellectual.

Beginning with his opposition to the Vietnam War, Chomsky established himself as a prominent critic of U.S. foreign and domestic policy. He is a self-declared adherent of libertarian socialism which he regards as "the proper and natural extension of classical liberalism into the era of advanced industrial society."

Chomsky told the assembled New Yorkers that large scale intervention by the state into the economy is nothing new. “The public takes the risks and the profits are always privatized by the corporations,” he said.

Millions face starvation at home and throughout the world. Yet, the U.S. always focuses on short term fixes without addressing long term problems. “True crisis results from a Western lack of concern,” he told the audience.

Chomsky is a long time critic of political power. Unless justified, he says, it is inherently illegitimate. The burden of proof is on those in authority to demonstrate why their elevated position is justified. If this burden can't be met, the authority in question should be dismantled. Authority for its own sake is inherently unjustified. 

As the author of over 100 books and one of the nation’s top intellectual thinkers, Chomsky should be known to all Americans. Yet he is rarely quoted by the mainstream American media. We should all keep asking why?  He is an important part of today's political debate.

Noam Chomsky at Riverside Church in New York