A documentary that chronicles how a generation of artists, thinkers, and activists used their creativity as a response to the reactionary politics that came to define our culture in the 1980s.
Director Antonino D’Ambrosio took seven years interviewing various artists who discuss how their work stems in large part from reactions to the conservative politics of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. They explain how their creative responses to what they felt were dehumanizing social changes allow them to find a way to affect the world. Among the many interviewees are Chuck D, Tom Morello, John Sayles, and Eve Ensler.
Shepard Fairey, Obey Giant Room – The Creek South Beach (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan greet Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Denis Thatcher of the United Kingdom for the State Dinner at the North portico of the White House. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Who are we as a nation, and what ideals do we represent?
I know that our lives are so busy; family issues, job security, day-to-day survival; I recommend that we speak out while we still can. Will we be willing to trade our freedom’s for security from ‘terrorists’?
Dana Villa (Notre Dame), Nicholas Xenos (Massachusetts), Kirstie McClure (UCLA)
and Cornel West (Princeton).
At Princeton, Wolin led a successful faculty effort to pass a resolution urging university trustees
to divest from endowment investment in firms that supported South African apartheid.
Aside from Oberlin, UC Berkeley and Princeton,
Wolin has also taught at UC Santa Cruz, UC Los Angeles, International Christian University (Tokyo, Japan),
Cornell University, and Oxford University.
US President Lyndon Johnson (right) meets with special assistant Bill Moyers in the Oval Office, White House, Washington, DC, 29 November, 1963. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
This blog, FRIEND NATURE, was created to help me expand my practice, the practice of being human. I hoped to assemble from my posts who I am and what I stand for. I began Friend Nature on Word Press in December 2012, inspired by one of my sons who thought that I had something to say, and Word Press was the place to say it.
My plan was to write, and place my best-written work on my web page, www.FriendNature.org.
What I have learned about myself in the past year is that I AM STILL A GIRL, if you listen to Eve Ensler’s Ted Talk video, you will understand. I care about the world, the planet, and the life, as it exists, on a beautiful, fragile place that we call Earth.
The last six months I have been in a teaching credential program to become an art teacher in the grades K – 12th (ages 5 – 18). Friend Nature was developed in the early hours before class, and in the middle of the night, when I could not wait to write and post. I have written several hundred pages in the last six months for the State of California, to qualify as a teacher here, and worked for no pay the last year as a student teacher. As well as taking 16 Education classes for my credential in this past year. I took my CSET test, to demonstrate that I know the subject that I will teach, art, after months of reading and studying.
Recently, I have been reposting because even the early dawn hours were filled by my writings for the State of California. I have just finished my credential, and I have one more week of student teaching to fulfill my program.
What I have been reporting upon were issues that I have found important to me, and should be important to you. Life on Earth. I have posted petitions, and asked you to sign. I have joined, marched, talked, and posted, all the while seeking solutions to the gross imbalances of power and how the powerful create violence against Mother Earth, and her creatures. The more unbalanced we become as a species, the more violence perpetuated.
In this video, we hear Eve Ensler speak about the increased violence to the most venerable, women and girls. My last three posts have been about RAPE IN THE MILITARY. Rape of the women who have chosen to represent the USA, who are trained to fight the enemy, little realizing that the enemy was the recruiter, trainer, or the person fighting next to them.
I believe that to make changes on our Earth it will be necessary to promote the feminine principle, those that girls still possess. My own ‘girlness’ has been beaten, raped, and abused.’ Why has this happened? Because I am a girl. I do not understand how one (male) could look at a beautiful, enthusiastic, caring person and think; wouldn’t it be fun to beat the girl, rape her, and toss her in a field, trash bin, or out of a bus, dead or alive. Or publicly rape her and post it on Facebook. Or choose any woman and drug her, rape her, and kill her. In civilized society, it is one of every four girls that are raped and worse, to be sold as a sex slave, and treated more or less valuable than cattle. Or kidnapped, chained, beaten, and raped for years, as our recent news has reported.
I have lost two beautiful women in the past month, friends of family, both found in a field, raped, mutilated, and dead.
One was a beautiful, caring, professional nurse, a mother of four, a teaching nurse, and a mentor to many. The suspected killer is her husband. She had told her abusive husband that she was divorcing him, and was not seen again until they found her in a field, mutilated beyond physical recognition.
The other, the daughter of my friend, who recently did not return home from work, and was later found in a field, beaten and raped, killed. Such a cruel and senseless loss to family and friends.
This is too much for me to process, but I am trying to share with you what is to be a girl.
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EVE ENSLER
Information from Wikipedia
Please read about her new play, “Emotional Creature.”
Ensler was born in New York City, New York, the daughter of Chris, a housewife, and Arthur Ensler, a food industry executive. Her father was Jewish and her mother was from a Christian background. As recently described in a profile in The Nation, “In her 2007 book, Insecure at Last (a meditation on deadly American illusions about safety in the wake of the attacks of 9/11), she describes being raped and brutally beaten by her father, a food company CEO, from age 5 to 10.” She graduated from Middlebury College in 1975. She married Richard McDermott in 1978, and divorced him 10 years later. She is the adoptive mother of actor Dylan McDermott, whom she adopted when he was 15 and she was 23.
The Petition: I support AB 1301 which places a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing (fracking) in California. Fracking to extract dirty, heavy, high-sulfur crude oil that requires enormous amounts of energy to refine will create more greenhouse gases at a time when they MUST be greatly reduced. Fracking will exacerbate the state’s water shortages and contaminate groundwater and the air we breathe. Fracking can increase the risk of earthquakes. Fracking will not bring economic prosperity or energy security to our state. I want California to move forward to clean, renewable energy, not frack for dirty heavy crude oil. I call on the governor and state legislators to enact AB 1301.
Let California legislators know that you want them to pass Assembly Bill 1301,
which places an immediate moratorium on fracking in California.
I wanted to let you know that you just did something amazing.
It may not have felt like much, but by taking action with Food & Water Watch and joining our email list, you took the first step in fighting against the multinational corporations bent on profiting from the food and water that we all rely on. That was a huge step, but now I want to ask you to take the next step:sign our pledge to continue fighting for clean water and safe food.
I founded Food & Water Watch seven years ago, because I believed that bringing people together to challenge the corporate control of our food and water was critical to preserving our essential resources for future generations. Today we have a diverse and vibrant community of over half a million engaged citizens both online and in communities around the world.
By signing the pledge, you’ll show your commitment to fighting for public control of our common resources. You will be showing your commitment to doing your part, large or small, to fight against the corporate interests bent on commodifying our air, water and food. In exchange, we promise to always provide you with the best tools possible to help spread this message. We also promise to never ask you for more than you can give, and to listen to your input and feedback. So, what do you say? Will you sign the pledge saying you’ll stand up for our essential resources today?
This pledge may not feel like much, but it means a lot to us as an organization to know that there are people all over the world committed to standing up around our issues, especially because we take no support from corporations or the government. That means that literally everything we’ve been able to accomplish to date, and anything we accomplish moving forward, will be because of the support of dedicated people like you.
Wenonah Hauter
Executive Director
Food & Water Watch
act(at)fwwatch(dot)org
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Food & Water Watch is a consumer advocacy nonprofit that challenges the corporate control of our food and water. We empower people to take action and transform the public consciousness about what we eat and drink.
Biologist, mother and activist Sandra Steingraber joins Bill to explain why she was willing to go to jail — and did — for blocking access to the construction of a storage and transportation facility involved in the controversial process of fracking. Steingraber has become internationally known for building awareness about toxins she says are threatening our children’s health by contaminating our air, water and food, and talks to Bill about how we must take action stop these “toxic trespassers.”
With government captured by the very industries it’s supposed to regulate, Steingraber has lost patience with politicians and corporations, and says we need to work together now to prevent destruction to the environment.
Also on the show, Bill presents the short documentary “Dance of the Honey Bee.” Narrated by Bill McKibben, the film takes a look at the determined, beautiful, and vital role honey bees play in preserving life, as well as the threats bees face from a rapidly changing landscape.
THE DUST BOWL chronicles the worst man-made ecological disaster in American history, in which the frenzied wheat boom of the “Great Plow-Up,” followed by a decade-long drought during the 1930s nearly swept away the breadbasket of the nation. Vivid interviews with twenty-six survivors of those hard times, combined with dramatic photographs and seldom seen movie footage, bring to life stories of incredible human suffering and equally incredible human perseverance. It is also a morality tale about our relationship to the land that sustains us—a lesson we ignore at our peril.
On November 15, join Ken Burns along with Paula Zahn in a live YouTube event and national dialogue regarding the Dust Bowl‘s legacy on both the environment and the culture of the United States. Panelists will discuss current drought conditions along with the importance of environmental awareness and the effects humans have on the natural world. Join the conversation at youtube.com/pbs. Submit questions at youtube.com/pbs or tweet using hashtag #DustBowlPB
Ken Burns, Documentary filmmaker (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
English: Buried machinery in barn lot in Dallas, South Dakota, United States during the Dust Bowl, an agricultural, ecological, and economic disaster in the Great Plains region of North America in 1936 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Trans Canada Keystone Oil Pipeline (Photo credit: shannonpatrick17)
For the next ten days our friends across the movement are coordinating a ‘Comment Sprint’ to submit hundreds of thousands of comments against the pipeline — hopefully hitting 1 million in total.
If you’ve already submitted a comment, keep reading: you’re able to submit more than one, and in fact, you should. We want to show that people are opposed to the pipeline for many reasons, all of them grounded in hard facts, so every day for ten days, we’ll focus on a new reason to oppose the pipeline and submit new comments.
The State Department’s review has been heavy on politics and light on science, so the more we focus on the facts, the stronger our case to the President and the public will be to stop the pipeline.
The first day of the comment sprint is today. The first issue we’re focusing on is how the pipeline undermines energy security. We need to clear about one thing: TransCanada wants this pipeline so they can get tar sands oil to export.
President Obama’s job is to decide whether the pipeline is in the US national interest. TransCanada has shown that it’s not. In filings to the State Department and contracts with refiners, they’ve spelled out their plans to pad their profits by exporting it to the international market where it will fetch a higher price — putting more money in the pockets of big oil and accelerating tar sands development in Canada.
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Friend Nature: Artist D.A. Hartley 