On Drawing Death and Dying Part Three.
The invention of the camera in nineteenth century Europe enabled many people to take pictures of the dead. Roger Fenton may have been the first war photographer. He was British and went to photograph the British soldiers in battle against Russian troops in the Crimean war that erupted in the middle of the 19th century.
Then came technical innovations that made it even easier to record the dead and the dying. "Lightweight cameras came along using 35 mmm. film that could be exposed 36 times before the camera needed to be reloaded," writes Susan Sontag. "Pictures could now be taken in the thick of battles, and exhausted begrimed soldiers could be studied up close."
Along came the Spanish Civil War in 1936. This was the first war in which war photography came of age. A war photograph by Robert Capa of a Spanish Republican soldier falling and dying on a hillside became famous. The photo took up a whole full page in a 1937 issue of 'Life' magazine. Capa became famous and lived a charmed life, until he stepped on a land mine in the French Vietnamese War in the early 1950's and died.
If the Spanish Civil War was the first photographer's war, the U.S. war in Vietnam became the first t.v. war. On the t.v. screen in black and white from about 1963 to 1973, pictures of dead and dying U.S. soldiers and Vietnamese were flashed around the world. Yet photographs too played a part in shaping public opinion. In fact, in the 1950's, 60's and 70's photographed images of the dead and the dying were everywhere. "These memorable sites of suffering," writes Susan Sontag, "documented by admired photographers were mostly taken in Asia and Africa."
Art critics like John Berger and Peter Fuller disagreed over whether photos of war swayed public opinion. Berger argued that photos of war casualties had no impact on people's views on war. Fuller didn't agree. He believed that photos of suffering people did turn people against war. Controversies also raged over whether showing pictures of the dead, the dying and even the very old was good. In the 1980's my sister objected to my drawings of my ageing father. "They make him look terrible,"
she said. "Draw something nice."
Susan Sontag wrote one of the most important books on photography rightly called 'On Photography'. Yet as she lay dying, her sometime partner, famed photographer Annie Liebovitz took many pictures of Sontag.. Some people objected to this. In the 1970's prominent fashion photographer Richard Avedon photographed his father who was dying of cancer. Here too, some people thought that Avedon was wrong to do this.
I don't take a stand on this issue . I'm just one of hundreds of thousands of obscure artists who copy other people's styles and my work will never be noticed. In any case, my attempts to draw dying people failed. At this point in what's left of my life I'll stick to drawing people and trees. It's so much easier.
Thursday, 23 January 2020
Wednesday, 22 January 2020
On drawing Death and Dying: Part Two; By Dave Jaffe
On Drawing death And Dying: Part Two.
My first and last try to draw someone dead or dying didn't work out. I took photos from the U.S. Civil War and made them bigger. I thought these photos of dead Union and Confederate soldiers were taken by Mathew Brady. Yet I was wrong.
"The Brady war pictures," writes Susan Sontag, "were mostly taken by Alexander Gardner and Timothy O'Sullivan." The pair were working for Brady, Sontag points out.
In any case I drew two dead men lying on the ground. The men lie in the foreground of my drawing. On the right side of the picture I drew an older woman leaning over one of the dead soldiers. Her arms are outstretched to him showing sympathy.
I often copy people's photos and change them. "All you want to do is copy," one artist told me years ago. She was right. Yet I still think imitating some other people 's work is the fastest way to learn and do a good drawing. In any case, the finished picture bothered me. It clearly didn't fit in in my
sketch book that's filled with drawings of trees and o landscapes. Then, too, I don't want to draw pictures of the dead and the dying. Death's presence now looms too close to me. I want to forget it if I can.
There's another reason to not draw the dead and the dying. For pictures of this sort don't seem to make it into fine art exhibitions these days. They did in the past. Think of the crucifixion of Jesus. This was a very popular subject for visual artists two to three hundred years ago. So were other scenes of the dead and the dying. Yet then along came the Impressionist painters in the last third of the 19th century. "Everybody is prepared to admit that a painting of a fruit can be as important as a painting of a hero dying," writes John Berger. "The Impressionists did as much as anyone to win this previously unheard freedom for the artist."
Only one famous artist did pictures of the dead and that was Andy Warhol. Yet even Warhol didn't exactly paint pictures of dead people. He silkscreened other people's photos of car crashes, electric chairs and other roads to death. Then he or his assistants just churned out copy after copy of the dead and the dying.
Now people still paint pictures of death. You can find their work on the Internet. Just Google 'Pictures of the dead'. I did and came up with many works of art. Still, as said, most people who paint and draw don't paint pictures of dying people or those who are dead. So who does? Well, one group of people do give us such pictures and they're war photographers. ' "The camera is the eye of history," Mathew Brady is supposed to have said. This may be true or not. For now in an age of Photoshop, photos and history can be changed at will. Yet the invention of the camera in the 19th century did bring many unpleasant things closer to us all. And one of those unpleasant things was people death.
My first and last try to draw someone dead or dying didn't work out. I took photos from the U.S. Civil War and made them bigger. I thought these photos of dead Union and Confederate soldiers were taken by Mathew Brady. Yet I was wrong.
"The Brady war pictures," writes Susan Sontag, "were mostly taken by Alexander Gardner and Timothy O'Sullivan." The pair were working for Brady, Sontag points out.
In any case I drew two dead men lying on the ground. The men lie in the foreground of my drawing. On the right side of the picture I drew an older woman leaning over one of the dead soldiers. Her arms are outstretched to him showing sympathy.
I often copy people's photos and change them. "All you want to do is copy," one artist told me years ago. She was right. Yet I still think imitating some other people 's work is the fastest way to learn and do a good drawing. In any case, the finished picture bothered me. It clearly didn't fit in in my
sketch book that's filled with drawings of trees and o landscapes. Then, too, I don't want to draw pictures of the dead and the dying. Death's presence now looms too close to me. I want to forget it if I can.
There's another reason to not draw the dead and the dying. For pictures of this sort don't seem to make it into fine art exhibitions these days. They did in the past. Think of the crucifixion of Jesus. This was a very popular subject for visual artists two to three hundred years ago. So were other scenes of the dead and the dying. Yet then along came the Impressionist painters in the last third of the 19th century. "Everybody is prepared to admit that a painting of a fruit can be as important as a painting of a hero dying," writes John Berger. "The Impressionists did as much as anyone to win this previously unheard freedom for the artist."
Only one famous artist did pictures of the dead and that was Andy Warhol. Yet even Warhol didn't exactly paint pictures of dead people. He silkscreened other people's photos of car crashes, electric chairs and other roads to death. Then he or his assistants just churned out copy after copy of the dead and the dying.
Now people still paint pictures of death. You can find their work on the Internet. Just Google 'Pictures of the dead'. I did and came up with many works of art. Still, as said, most people who paint and draw don't paint pictures of dying people or those who are dead. So who does? Well, one group of people do give us such pictures and they're war photographers. ' "The camera is the eye of history," Mathew Brady is supposed to have said. This may be true or not. For now in an age of Photoshop, photos and history can be changed at will. Yet the invention of the camera in the 19th century did bring many unpleasant things closer to us all. And one of those unpleasant things was people death.
Wednesday, 8 January 2020
Why I Didn't Draw Death and Dying by Dave Jaffe: Part One
Why I Didn't Draw Death and Dying by Dave Jaffe: Part One.
A few days ago my sister phoned me from the United States. "I'm getting a tumour taken out of my breast," she said. Now my sister assured me that the tumour wasn't dangerous. And her husband has e-mailed me that the operation was a success.
Yet me sister's phone call got me thinking about death and dying. For all around me people my age are dying. Some like me are in their late seventies. Others, I note are way younger than I am. Some are quite older. Still, very year about 50,000 Canadians pass away. No matter how optimistic I am I have to face the fact that my death looms on the horizon.
"In the long run we'll all be dead," said the British economist John Maynard Keynes. Keynes died over 70 years ago. Now many of my favourte artists and writers like John Berger, Susan Sontag, Margaret Laurence, Linda Nochlin, Robert Hughes and Andy Warhol have all died. Soon I believe I'll be gone too.
Every other day or so, I draw something or other. When my sister phoned me I was drawing pictures of trees using coloured pencils. After my sister's phone call I thought of drawing something different. Why, I thought, don't I draw or paint pictures of the dead or dying. Yet this was easier thought of than done.
Now one man who's still around - I think - is the Toronto-based artist Michael Snow. I was reading his biography by James King during and after my sister phoned m. Snow is a multitalented artist. He has painted pictures, sculpted, made films and played jazz on the piano. He in his nineties and was very active I'm told..
"Many art starts when the artist is moved by other work," Snow told the art critic John Bentley Mays way back in 1984. Doing art, Snow said, "comes from the desire for originality based on the depth of what was important for you." Snow is an incredibly original artist who's light years ahead of me in artistic ability. I'm just one of thousands of amateur artists who paint or draw as a hobby. Yet I did want to draw or paint as Snow said, what was important to me. My thoughts had become focused on death and dying which in recent years have been etched themselves into my brain.
How would I do this. I didn't know. Still, I soon turned to the internet and googled for black and white photos on death and dying people. At least 17 pictures popped up and I told myself, "I'm in business." For the next or three days I tried to draw from these photos. Yet in the end I gave up doing this. The whole process just depressed me no end. Now I'm drawing pictures of bottles using Michael Snow's abstract paintings as a takeoff point.
Death is still waiting in the wings. I know this. Yet I'm in no rush to hurry it along. I'll stick to drawing bottles for now.
A few days ago my sister phoned me from the United States. "I'm getting a tumour taken out of my breast," she said. Now my sister assured me that the tumour wasn't dangerous. And her husband has e-mailed me that the operation was a success.
Yet me sister's phone call got me thinking about death and dying. For all around me people my age are dying. Some like me are in their late seventies. Others, I note are way younger than I am. Some are quite older. Still, very year about 50,000 Canadians pass away. No matter how optimistic I am I have to face the fact that my death looms on the horizon.
"In the long run we'll all be dead," said the British economist John Maynard Keynes. Keynes died over 70 years ago. Now many of my favourte artists and writers like John Berger, Susan Sontag, Margaret Laurence, Linda Nochlin, Robert Hughes and Andy Warhol have all died. Soon I believe I'll be gone too.
Every other day or so, I draw something or other. When my sister phoned me I was drawing pictures of trees using coloured pencils. After my sister's phone call I thought of drawing something different. Why, I thought, don't I draw or paint pictures of the dead or dying. Yet this was easier thought of than done.
Now one man who's still around - I think - is the Toronto-based artist Michael Snow. I was reading his biography by James King during and after my sister phoned m. Snow is a multitalented artist. He has painted pictures, sculpted, made films and played jazz on the piano. He in his nineties and was very active I'm told..
"Many art starts when the artist is moved by other work," Snow told the art critic John Bentley Mays way back in 1984. Doing art, Snow said, "comes from the desire for originality based on the depth of what was important for you." Snow is an incredibly original artist who's light years ahead of me in artistic ability. I'm just one of thousands of amateur artists who paint or draw as a hobby. Yet I did want to draw or paint as Snow said, what was important to me. My thoughts had become focused on death and dying which in recent years have been etched themselves into my brain.
How would I do this. I didn't know. Still, I soon turned to the internet and googled for black and white photos on death and dying people. At least 17 pictures popped up and I told myself, "I'm in business." For the next or three days I tried to draw from these photos. Yet in the end I gave up doing this. The whole process just depressed me no end. Now I'm drawing pictures of bottles using Michael Snow's abstract paintings as a takeoff point.
Death is still waiting in the wings. I know this. Yet I'm in no rush to hurry it along. I'll stick to drawing bottles for now.
Sunday, 15 December 2019
was George Orwell Wrong: Part Two by Dave Jaffe
Was George Orwell Wrong: Part Two
As George Orwell was putting the finishing touches on his novel 'Nineteen Eighty Four', a communist revolution was about to sweep across China. British troops were clashing with mostly Chinese guerrillas in Malaysia. Communist led Vietnamese were fighting with French troops who wanted to crush the Vietnamese struggle for independence from France. Meanwhile in Indonesia, Dutch armies were trying to suppress the Indonesian fight for freedom from Holland.
So Orwell's dystopian novel wasn't about the future. It was about the present. As Dorian Lynskey wrote in a very fine article on Orwell in 'The Guardian Weekly' in May 2019, "Orwell felt he lived in cursed times." He was right. Now the world has changed again. The Soviet Union has vanished. China has now embraced a type of capitalism. Yet new tyrants and right wing populists like Donald Trump in the United States, Bolsonaro in Brazil, and president Duterte in the Philippines win elections and wield power.
In China President Xi Jinping tightens the lid on his country's people. And in Russia, Vladimir Putin has gobbled up Crimea and parts of the eastern Ukraine. These two men are real tyrants. All over parts of the world, Orwell's prophesies once again seem to be coming true.
"There are alternative facts," said U.S. president's Donald Trump's aide Kelly Anne Conway to justify her boss's lies. What she said is truly Orwellian. So was Orwell right? Is the world doomed to be run by tyrants and/or far right populists? Yet one trend denies Orwell's pessimism. "It is not wrong to rebel," said the brutal Chinese Communist dictator Mao Tse Tung.. A communist very like Orwell's Big Brother, Mao helped kill millions of Chinese. Still Mao's comment is now endorsed by millions of people.
In '1984' Winston Smith and Julia are arrested and tortured. In Room 101. O'Brien, who is Winston's main torturer tells Winston that any hope of rebellion is futile.Winston says that 'the Proles' or working class will rebel. O'Brien denies this and finally Winston accepts O'Brien's verdict. He betrays Julia and ends his life a broken man, believing that any dissent in thought or action is hopeless.
Here I believe Orwell was wrong. People do rebel against tyrants.. In 2015 and later black Americans protested against police who shot and killed unarmed African Americans. In France the yellow vest movement sprang up in 2018 to demonstrate against the crushing taxes that French president Emanuelle Macron slapped on poorer French people. And in 2019 protests against injustice have erupted around the world.
"Iran gave a glimpse into what might have been the biggest anti-government in the 40 year history of the Islamic Republic," said a 'National Post ' story in November 2019. Hundreds of thousands of people in Iran, Iraq, Algeria, Hong Kong, Ecuador, Chile and many other places have taken to the streets to protest unjust rule. Hong Kong, Iraq, Algeria and Iran are basically tyrannies. Yet in these places protesters have frightened the ruling governments. They and others have given the lie to Orwell's pessimism. Here, Orwell, born Eric Blair was wrong.
At this time, most of the governments mentioned above are too entrenched to be overthrown. Still, people do protest injustice and sometimes rebel. Orwell was wrong here. Yet on most other points he was right. This is why 'Nineteen Eighty Four' is still a best seller and will be for many years to come.
As George Orwell was putting the finishing touches on his novel 'Nineteen Eighty Four', a communist revolution was about to sweep across China. British troops were clashing with mostly Chinese guerrillas in Malaysia. Communist led Vietnamese were fighting with French troops who wanted to crush the Vietnamese struggle for independence from France. Meanwhile in Indonesia, Dutch armies were trying to suppress the Indonesian fight for freedom from Holland.
So Orwell's dystopian novel wasn't about the future. It was about the present. As Dorian Lynskey wrote in a very fine article on Orwell in 'The Guardian Weekly' in May 2019, "Orwell felt he lived in cursed times." He was right. Now the world has changed again. The Soviet Union has vanished. China has now embraced a type of capitalism. Yet new tyrants and right wing populists like Donald Trump in the United States, Bolsonaro in Brazil, and president Duterte in the Philippines win elections and wield power.
In China President Xi Jinping tightens the lid on his country's people. And in Russia, Vladimir Putin has gobbled up Crimea and parts of the eastern Ukraine. These two men are real tyrants. All over parts of the world, Orwell's prophesies once again seem to be coming true.
"There are alternative facts," said U.S. president's Donald Trump's aide Kelly Anne Conway to justify her boss's lies. What she said is truly Orwellian. So was Orwell right? Is the world doomed to be run by tyrants and/or far right populists? Yet one trend denies Orwell's pessimism. "It is not wrong to rebel," said the brutal Chinese Communist dictator Mao Tse Tung.. A communist very like Orwell's Big Brother, Mao helped kill millions of Chinese. Still Mao's comment is now endorsed by millions of people.
In '1984' Winston Smith and Julia are arrested and tortured. In Room 101. O'Brien, who is Winston's main torturer tells Winston that any hope of rebellion is futile.Winston says that 'the Proles' or working class will rebel. O'Brien denies this and finally Winston accepts O'Brien's verdict. He betrays Julia and ends his life a broken man, believing that any dissent in thought or action is hopeless.
Here I believe Orwell was wrong. People do rebel against tyrants.. In 2015 and later black Americans protested against police who shot and killed unarmed African Americans. In France the yellow vest movement sprang up in 2018 to demonstrate against the crushing taxes that French president Emanuelle Macron slapped on poorer French people. And in 2019 protests against injustice have erupted around the world.
"Iran gave a glimpse into what might have been the biggest anti-government in the 40 year history of the Islamic Republic," said a 'National Post ' story in November 2019. Hundreds of thousands of people in Iran, Iraq, Algeria, Hong Kong, Ecuador, Chile and many other places have taken to the streets to protest unjust rule. Hong Kong, Iraq, Algeria and Iran are basically tyrannies. Yet in these places protesters have frightened the ruling governments. They and others have given the lie to Orwell's pessimism. Here, Orwell, born Eric Blair was wrong.
At this time, most of the governments mentioned above are too entrenched to be overthrown. Still, people do protest injustice and sometimes rebel. Orwell was wrong here. Yet on most other points he was right. This is why 'Nineteen Eighty Four' is still a best seller and will be for many years to come.
Saturday, 7 December 2019
Was George Orwell Wrong? Part One by Dave Jaffe
Was George Orwell Wrong? by Dave Jaffe. Part One.
In 1948 George Orwell was dying. The tall cigarette smoking author's body was racked by tuberculosis. Still, he continued to work in the bitter cold of Scotland on his soon to be famous novel called 'Nineteen Eighty Four'.
When it was published a year later Orwell was dead. Yet to-day 70 years after it came out, Orwell's novel has once again climbed into the best seller's list. Its terms like Big Brother doublethink, Room 101, telescreen ,unperson, and memory hole live on long after Orwell's death. And the term 'Orwellian' has been used many times to describe total lies put out by brutal dictatorships and sometimes popular democracies.
Quite a few people dished Orwell's book after it came out and for many years after that. The Marxist author Isaac Deutscher thought Orwell was a complete paranoid. The literary critic Walter Allen saw the book as a pessimistic novel written by an unhappy dying man. Raymond Williams who helped set up modern cultural studies dismissed the book.
Others later on like Allan Bloom and the Czech novelist Milan Kundera thought 1984 was a poor novel. Anarchists like Noam Chomsky and David Barsamian preferred Orwell's memoir of his time in the Spanish Civil War called 'Homage To Catalonia' to 'Nineteen Eighty Four'.
"For every one artist there'll be ten critics" a visual artist said in the Vancouver art studio of 'Basic Inquiry' in the 1980's. Critics continue to put down '1984' and yet it's still popular For Orwell's novel wasn't just about the future. It was close to the truth about the present he was living in.
As he typed away, the world was dividing into two great power blocs, namely the United States on one hand and the Soviet Union on the other. They had been allies in the fight against German Nazism, Italian fascism and Japanese militarism. Yet now they were poised against each other. Both had combined to crush Hitler's German Nazi machine and now Germany lay in ruins though only after Hitler had killed close to 40 million people. Japan too was devastated and was defeated though it too had killed millions of people throughout East Asia.
In The Soviet Union, dictator Josef Stalin was planning another wave of murderous purges in the Soviet Union and thoughout his Eastern European satellites. Meanwhile in the United States, the federal government was setting up the Central Intelligence Agency and other secret organizations that would help overthrow dozens of governments around the world in the next fifty years.
In 1948 George Orwell was dying. The tall cigarette smoking author's body was racked by tuberculosis. Still, he continued to work in the bitter cold of Scotland on his soon to be famous novel called 'Nineteen Eighty Four'.
When it was published a year later Orwell was dead. Yet to-day 70 years after it came out, Orwell's novel has once again climbed into the best seller's list. Its terms like Big Brother doublethink, Room 101, telescreen ,unperson, and memory hole live on long after Orwell's death. And the term 'Orwellian' has been used many times to describe total lies put out by brutal dictatorships and sometimes popular democracies.
Quite a few people dished Orwell's book after it came out and for many years after that. The Marxist author Isaac Deutscher thought Orwell was a complete paranoid. The literary critic Walter Allen saw the book as a pessimistic novel written by an unhappy dying man. Raymond Williams who helped set up modern cultural studies dismissed the book.
Others later on like Allan Bloom and the Czech novelist Milan Kundera thought 1984 was a poor novel. Anarchists like Noam Chomsky and David Barsamian preferred Orwell's memoir of his time in the Spanish Civil War called 'Homage To Catalonia' to 'Nineteen Eighty Four'.
"For every one artist there'll be ten critics" a visual artist said in the Vancouver art studio of 'Basic Inquiry' in the 1980's. Critics continue to put down '1984' and yet it's still popular For Orwell's novel wasn't just about the future. It was close to the truth about the present he was living in.
As he typed away, the world was dividing into two great power blocs, namely the United States on one hand and the Soviet Union on the other. They had been allies in the fight against German Nazism, Italian fascism and Japanese militarism. Yet now they were poised against each other. Both had combined to crush Hitler's German Nazi machine and now Germany lay in ruins though only after Hitler had killed close to 40 million people. Japan too was devastated and was defeated though it too had killed millions of people throughout East Asia.
In The Soviet Union, dictator Josef Stalin was planning another wave of murderous purges in the Soviet Union and thoughout his Eastern European satellites. Meanwhile in the United States, the federal government was setting up the Central Intelligence Agency and other secret organizations that would help overthrow dozens of governments around the world in the next fifty years.
Friday, 29 November 2019
Two Peiople Who Got the 2019 Election Right by Dave Jaffer: Part One
Two People Who Got the Election Right : Part One
Two people, a capitalist and a communist did tell the truth about the just recently finished 2019 federal election.
The capitalist or businessman if you prefer, Kevin O' Leary told the truth after all the ballots were counted. O'Leary who has been a star of a t.v. show and a very successful entrepreneur made the comment that if Conservative leader Andrew Scheer had gone to the various Pride parades around the country, he'd now be the new Prime Minister of Canada. I think O'Leary was right but I'm glad that Scheer didn't attend the various Pride Parades. Had he done so I'm sure he would have won the election.
Of course the Conservatives did win 22 more seats than they'd won in the 2015 election. They also won more votes than the Liberals. Yet that didn't translate into more seats than the Liberals. So Justin Trudeau squeaked back into power and now heads up a minority government.
I still think that Mr. Scheer would have had to explain a little more his stands on abortion and same sex marriage that he personally was against. Yet there's no doubt that his non appearance at Pride Parades cost him a lot of votes - which was good. And this brings me to the communist side of the story.
Liz Rowley heads up the miniscule Communist Party of Canada. I've never voted for the communists and don't plan to do so in the future. Yet Ms. Rowley held a meeting in Vancouver long before the election of 2019 was underway. A friend of mine went to the meeting and came away terrified at the prospect of a Conservative victory.
"She said that if Scheer won he'd take Canada back to 1945," he said. "The Conservatives would make savage cuts to every social program they could." Now I tend to feel that communists can be very alarmist. Yet this time I think M. Rowley was right.
Long before the election started in earnest I wrote Mr. Sheer a letter. "Are you planning to scrap the universality of the Old Age Security Payment?" I asked Mr. Scheer. I also asked him if the would make cuts to the Guaranteed Income Supplement and also raise the age if retirement from 65 to 67. I waited a few weeks and received no reply to my letter. Then I sent Mr. Scheer another letter with the same questions. Again no reply came my way. I then sent another letter to the Conservative leader on this issue and once again he sent me nothing back.
While I waited for a reply to my letters on payments to seniors I did receive a letter from Mr. Scheer which replied to my concerns about the Conservative policies on the environment. All this lack of answers about cuts to payments to seniors confirmed my belief that the Conservatives were planning big cuts to social programs. Yet thankfully the Conservatives didn't win the election.
Right now the Liberals aren't planning any big cuts in social programs. This doesn't mean they won't make any in the future. After all, the Chretien Liberal government tore big holes in Canada's social programs in the 1990's. So who knows what Prime Minster Justin Trudeau will do in the future? Yet right now most of the federal programs won't be cut.
In any case Mr. O'Leary and Ms. Rowley were right. Two people at opposite ends of the political spectrum told the truth. In the end,Andrew Scheer lost the 2019 federal election and I'm so glad he did.
Two people, a capitalist and a communist did tell the truth about the just recently finished 2019 federal election.
The capitalist or businessman if you prefer, Kevin O' Leary told the truth after all the ballots were counted. O'Leary who has been a star of a t.v. show and a very successful entrepreneur made the comment that if Conservative leader Andrew Scheer had gone to the various Pride parades around the country, he'd now be the new Prime Minister of Canada. I think O'Leary was right but I'm glad that Scheer didn't attend the various Pride Parades. Had he done so I'm sure he would have won the election.
Of course the Conservatives did win 22 more seats than they'd won in the 2015 election. They also won more votes than the Liberals. Yet that didn't translate into more seats than the Liberals. So Justin Trudeau squeaked back into power and now heads up a minority government.
I still think that Mr. Scheer would have had to explain a little more his stands on abortion and same sex marriage that he personally was against. Yet there's no doubt that his non appearance at Pride Parades cost him a lot of votes - which was good. And this brings me to the communist side of the story.
Liz Rowley heads up the miniscule Communist Party of Canada. I've never voted for the communists and don't plan to do so in the future. Yet Ms. Rowley held a meeting in Vancouver long before the election of 2019 was underway. A friend of mine went to the meeting and came away terrified at the prospect of a Conservative victory.
"She said that if Scheer won he'd take Canada back to 1945," he said. "The Conservatives would make savage cuts to every social program they could." Now I tend to feel that communists can be very alarmist. Yet this time I think M. Rowley was right.
Long before the election started in earnest I wrote Mr. Sheer a letter. "Are you planning to scrap the universality of the Old Age Security Payment?" I asked Mr. Scheer. I also asked him if the would make cuts to the Guaranteed Income Supplement and also raise the age if retirement from 65 to 67. I waited a few weeks and received no reply to my letter. Then I sent Mr. Scheer another letter with the same questions. Again no reply came my way. I then sent another letter to the Conservative leader on this issue and once again he sent me nothing back.
While I waited for a reply to my letters on payments to seniors I did receive a letter from Mr. Scheer which replied to my concerns about the Conservative policies on the environment. All this lack of answers about cuts to payments to seniors confirmed my belief that the Conservatives were planning big cuts to social programs. Yet thankfully the Conservatives didn't win the election.
Right now the Liberals aren't planning any big cuts in social programs. This doesn't mean they won't make any in the future. After all, the Chretien Liberal government tore big holes in Canada's social programs in the 1990's. So who knows what Prime Minster Justin Trudeau will do in the future? Yet right now most of the federal programs won't be cut.
In any case Mr. O'Leary and Ms. Rowley were right. Two people at opposite ends of the political spectrum told the truth. In the end,Andrew Scheer lost the 2019 federal election and I'm so glad he did.
Friday, 22 November 2019
No Space In A Hosing Co-op by Dave Jaffe: Part One
No Space In A Housing Co-op: Part One.
Meetings can drive me up a wall. I hate sitting in them and that's one of the reasons I left political parties. Yet there's one meeting I do enjoy going to and that's the orientation meetings at my co-op. Here, often a dozen or so people show up who want to join and live in our co-op. Yet there's a problem we face as a co-op. We usually have to turn away nearly all the people who show up because we only have one spare apartment in our 42 unit co-op building.
At the orientation meeting I and about seven or so others interview our prospective co-op members. But in the end, after the interviews and maybe another hour of discussion after the prospective applicants have left, we have to e-mail most of the people who showed up. The text message usually says "Sorry but you have been refused. We will keep your application on our waiting list for the next year."
At our last orientation meeting which stretched out over four hours our choices boiled down to two people: a young indigenous male and a an older retired woman. Both candidates were excellent choices to move into our co-op. In the end we chose the senior. Yet all of us felt the indigenous applicant was a good choice too. And there were at least four or five other applicants who could have also fitted into our place .
So who is to blame for this often agonizing situation I and others find ourselves in? I blame the federal government in Ottawa that hasn't developed social housing in decades. Look at the stats. In 2011 which is the last year I could get reliable figures on, there were about 14 million residences or apartments and houses in Canada. Less than 600,000 or about 4 to 5 per cent of that total were social housing units. This is a very small figure compared to other countries like Singapore or Germany.
"Nobody's building any social housing these days," one housing activist told me a few years ago.
This was true. The N.D.P. government of John Horgan's in British Columbia has launched a program to build social housing. Yet this is the only government across Canada that's doing this on any scale. Justin Trudeau's Liberal government has pledged to house the homeless and build social housing and we'll see if the Liberals live up to their campaign promises.
In the just recent 2019 federal election N.D.P. leader Jagmeet Singh vowed that if he were elected Prime Minister of Canada, his government would build 500,000 units of social housing. Yet Singh's New Democratic Party finished in fourth place and at this time has no chance of forming a federal government.
After the last three orientation meetings I've ben to, I write letters to the Prime Minister of Canada and urge him to build more social housing. So far my letters haven't had much of an impact. Still, I'm forever hopeful. Anyway who knows? Maybe one day Canadians will elect a government that will build hundreds of thousands of units of social housing. But I'm not holding my breath waiting for that blessed day.
Meetings can drive me up a wall. I hate sitting in them and that's one of the reasons I left political parties. Yet there's one meeting I do enjoy going to and that's the orientation meetings at my co-op. Here, often a dozen or so people show up who want to join and live in our co-op. Yet there's a problem we face as a co-op. We usually have to turn away nearly all the people who show up because we only have one spare apartment in our 42 unit co-op building.
At the orientation meeting I and about seven or so others interview our prospective co-op members. But in the end, after the interviews and maybe another hour of discussion after the prospective applicants have left, we have to e-mail most of the people who showed up. The text message usually says "Sorry but you have been refused. We will keep your application on our waiting list for the next year."
At our last orientation meeting which stretched out over four hours our choices boiled down to two people: a young indigenous male and a an older retired woman. Both candidates were excellent choices to move into our co-op. In the end we chose the senior. Yet all of us felt the indigenous applicant was a good choice too. And there were at least four or five other applicants who could have also fitted into our place .
So who is to blame for this often agonizing situation I and others find ourselves in? I blame the federal government in Ottawa that hasn't developed social housing in decades. Look at the stats. In 2011 which is the last year I could get reliable figures on, there were about 14 million residences or apartments and houses in Canada. Less than 600,000 or about 4 to 5 per cent of that total were social housing units. This is a very small figure compared to other countries like Singapore or Germany.
"Nobody's building any social housing these days," one housing activist told me a few years ago.
This was true. The N.D.P. government of John Horgan's in British Columbia has launched a program to build social housing. Yet this is the only government across Canada that's doing this on any scale. Justin Trudeau's Liberal government has pledged to house the homeless and build social housing and we'll see if the Liberals live up to their campaign promises.
In the just recent 2019 federal election N.D.P. leader Jagmeet Singh vowed that if he were elected Prime Minister of Canada, his government would build 500,000 units of social housing. Yet Singh's New Democratic Party finished in fourth place and at this time has no chance of forming a federal government.
After the last three orientation meetings I've ben to, I write letters to the Prime Minister of Canada and urge him to build more social housing. So far my letters haven't had much of an impact. Still, I'm forever hopeful. Anyway who knows? Maybe one day Canadians will elect a government that will build hundreds of thousands of units of social housing. But I'm not holding my breath waiting for that blessed day.
Wednesday, 11 September 2019
Let Us Now Praise Martin Luther King Junior: Part Six by Dave Jaffe
Let Us Now Praise Martin Luther King Junior: Part Six
Would Martin Luther King have condemned the movements that sprung up after he died? Some he might have praised. Others he might have shied away from.
Tamara Burke is an Alabaman born social activist She was talking to a 13 year old girl in the 1990's. "My mother's boyfriend is sexually abusing me," this girl said in effect. After this, Burke started a #MeToo movement. It targeted men who sexually harassed women. In October 2017, this movement went viral after one woman alleged she'd been sexually harassed by media mogul Harvey Weinstein Soon scores of women publicly denounced certain men who they claimed had molested them. People like Charlie Rose, Jeffrey Epstein and other powerful men were toppled from power after being accused of sexual molestation.
The #MeToo movement would never have become so powerful if feminism hadn't been reborn in the early 1970's. King probably would have supported this movement. On the other hand, he might have had trouble dealing with the movement of transgendered people.
For the Reverend Martin Luther King Junior in some ways was a very conventional man. He grew up in the 1930's and 1940's, in the very conservative U.S. south. His father and smother ran a very conventional home. And King didn't always get on with assertive women. He clashed with black activist Ella Baker, a brave woman who helped found the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee.
King didn't stand alone on this issue. "Women's position in the civil rights movement is prone," said Stokely Carmichael the charismatic leader of SNCC. Many women, black and white ones, were repelled by the machismo of the civil rights movement and the anti-Vietnam War protestors. That was one reason why women set up feminist women-only groups in the 1970's.
Nearly all the leaders of the civil rights movement were men. Until the 1970's men ruled the roost in left wing, right wing and all movements of whatever political persuasion. Male domination of nearly everything was the order of the day. This only started to change with the emergence of feminism. Even to-day most of the top people in the world are men.
Yet that said, Martin Luther King Junior deserves the praise heaped on him. He was an exceptional man. His tactics probably wouldn't have worked to-day For in the past fifty years, the world has changed dramatically from what it was in say, 1965. "I have a dream," he said in his famous speech in Washington, D.C,. in 1963. His dreams didn't all come true. Yet his struggles on behalf of social and racial justice, peace and equality stand out as an awesome example of activism in this age of conservatism.
He was truly a great American.
Would Martin Luther King have condemned the movements that sprung up after he died? Some he might have praised. Others he might have shied away from.
Tamara Burke is an Alabaman born social activist She was talking to a 13 year old girl in the 1990's. "My mother's boyfriend is sexually abusing me," this girl said in effect. After this, Burke started a #MeToo movement. It targeted men who sexually harassed women. In October 2017, this movement went viral after one woman alleged she'd been sexually harassed by media mogul Harvey Weinstein Soon scores of women publicly denounced certain men who they claimed had molested them. People like Charlie Rose, Jeffrey Epstein and other powerful men were toppled from power after being accused of sexual molestation.
The #MeToo movement would never have become so powerful if feminism hadn't been reborn in the early 1970's. King probably would have supported this movement. On the other hand, he might have had trouble dealing with the movement of transgendered people.
For the Reverend Martin Luther King Junior in some ways was a very conventional man. He grew up in the 1930's and 1940's, in the very conservative U.S. south. His father and smother ran a very conventional home. And King didn't always get on with assertive women. He clashed with black activist Ella Baker, a brave woman who helped found the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee.
King didn't stand alone on this issue. "Women's position in the civil rights movement is prone," said Stokely Carmichael the charismatic leader of SNCC. Many women, black and white ones, were repelled by the machismo of the civil rights movement and the anti-Vietnam War protestors. That was one reason why women set up feminist women-only groups in the 1970's.
Nearly all the leaders of the civil rights movement were men. Until the 1970's men ruled the roost in left wing, right wing and all movements of whatever political persuasion. Male domination of nearly everything was the order of the day. This only started to change with the emergence of feminism. Even to-day most of the top people in the world are men.
Yet that said, Martin Luther King Junior deserves the praise heaped on him. He was an exceptional man. His tactics probably wouldn't have worked to-day For in the past fifty years, the world has changed dramatically from what it was in say, 1965. "I have a dream," he said in his famous speech in Washington, D.C,. in 1963. His dreams didn't all come true. Yet his struggles on behalf of social and racial justice, peace and equality stand out as an awesome example of activism in this age of conservatism.
He was truly a great American.
Wednesday, 4 September 2019
Let Us Now Praise Martin Luther King Junior: Part Five by Dave Jaffe
Let Us Now Praise Martin Luther King Junior: Part Five.
It's hard to know whether Martin Luther king Junior would have agreed with some of the groups that sprung up after the civil rights movement appeared.
Even in his lifetime some African-Americans had no time for his non-violent approach to social change. "Violence is as American as apple pie," said H."Rap" Brown, a leader of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee or "Snick" as it was called. Snick in the mid-sixties swerved away from the path of peaceful change and embraced black nationalism. King never denounced Snick. Rap Brown was later imprisoned and is still in prison to-day.
The black revolutionary Malcolm X. jeered at the 1963 March on Washington , D.C. He dubbed it "The farce in Washington". In 1966 Huey Newton and young other African Americans paraded in some African American areas armed with guns and confronted police. At one time, Newton who grew up in the Oakland Bay area went along with some of his friends to California's state capitol of Sacramento to confront the state government. On that day most of the Panthers openly carried guns.
Police clashed with the Panthers in several cities and killed some Black Panthers. Under these police attacks, the Panthers faded away or then supported moderate African American politicians. At the start of their movement, the Panthers set out ten basic points to lift African Americans out of poverty and free them from white racism. I don't think King denounced the Panthers. Yet I doubt he would have embraced the Panthers who had no time for King's non-violent approach.
Native Americans were the poorest of all U.S. citizens in the 1960's. I forgot to mention them in the previous parts of this entry. In the late 1960's many of them looked at the civil rights movement and were spurred into protesting their status. Some of them joined with King in 1968 in his proposed march on poverty in Washington. Others occupied the former prison and island fortress of Alcatraz in the San Francisco Bay. Others picked up guns and had shootouts with agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The Lakota Sioux native Leonard Pelletier fled the U.S. for Vancouver, Canada in the mid-1970's. Pelletier was charged with killing two F.B.I. agents in a clash on an Indian reservation at Wounded Knee. He was later deported back to the U.S. where he was tried and then imprisoned. He's still in prison to-day.
Other people from the white New Left like the Weathermen and some maybe who were African Americans planted bombs at draft boards, companies that made war products, police stations
and U.S. government offices. In 1971 alone, over 2,000 bombs went off in the U.S. many of them aimed at political targets. "America was born out of a genocidal impulse," said U.S. activist Tom Hayden.in effect. True or not, many left wing Americans condemned the U.S. war in Indochina, drawing parallels between the U.S. past wars on native Americans and the prevailing war in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.
U.S. prisons were also the scene of many uprisings in the late 1960's and early 1970's. Many of these protests were led by African American prisoners. George Jackson was a black man and prisoner who wrote a best selling book called 'Soledad Brother'. He was killed in a shootout with prison guards. His brother Jonathan also died in a hostage taking incident in Bay area courthouse. The last great rebellion in the U.S. occurred in the Attica prison in upstate New York in 1971. "You're doing a great job," New York state governor Nelson Rockefeller told journalist Tom Wicker who was invited by hostage holding prisoners to the prison.
Later Rockefeller sent in police and others to crush this rebellion. Close to three dozen people were killed in the shootout that ensued. Among this group were some prison guards.
The yippie Jerry Rubin went even further in his verbal assault of American institutions. "Kill your parents," he told some of his audiences in the late 19760's. Rubin later modified this statement
It's unlikely that Martin Luther King would have agreed with Rubin or many other revolutionary groups that surfaced in the late 1960's or early 1970's. He wouldn't have endorsed their open embrace of violence. He was a Christian minister, a believing Baptist and was close to his well-known minister father. King embraced non-violent protest and had no time for bloodshed.
It's hard to know whether Martin Luther king Junior would have agreed with some of the groups that sprung up after the civil rights movement appeared.
Even in his lifetime some African-Americans had no time for his non-violent approach to social change. "Violence is as American as apple pie," said H."Rap" Brown, a leader of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee or "Snick" as it was called. Snick in the mid-sixties swerved away from the path of peaceful change and embraced black nationalism. King never denounced Snick. Rap Brown was later imprisoned and is still in prison to-day.
The black revolutionary Malcolm X. jeered at the 1963 March on Washington , D.C. He dubbed it "The farce in Washington". In 1966 Huey Newton and young other African Americans paraded in some African American areas armed with guns and confronted police. At one time, Newton who grew up in the Oakland Bay area went along with some of his friends to California's state capitol of Sacramento to confront the state government. On that day most of the Panthers openly carried guns.
Police clashed with the Panthers in several cities and killed some Black Panthers. Under these police attacks, the Panthers faded away or then supported moderate African American politicians. At the start of their movement, the Panthers set out ten basic points to lift African Americans out of poverty and free them from white racism. I don't think King denounced the Panthers. Yet I doubt he would have embraced the Panthers who had no time for King's non-violent approach.
Native Americans were the poorest of all U.S. citizens in the 1960's. I forgot to mention them in the previous parts of this entry. In the late 1960's many of them looked at the civil rights movement and were spurred into protesting their status. Some of them joined with King in 1968 in his proposed march on poverty in Washington. Others occupied the former prison and island fortress of Alcatraz in the San Francisco Bay. Others picked up guns and had shootouts with agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The Lakota Sioux native Leonard Pelletier fled the U.S. for Vancouver, Canada in the mid-1970's. Pelletier was charged with killing two F.B.I. agents in a clash on an Indian reservation at Wounded Knee. He was later deported back to the U.S. where he was tried and then imprisoned. He's still in prison to-day.
Other people from the white New Left like the Weathermen and some maybe who were African Americans planted bombs at draft boards, companies that made war products, police stations
and U.S. government offices. In 1971 alone, over 2,000 bombs went off in the U.S. many of them aimed at political targets. "America was born out of a genocidal impulse," said U.S. activist Tom Hayden.in effect. True or not, many left wing Americans condemned the U.S. war in Indochina, drawing parallels between the U.S. past wars on native Americans and the prevailing war in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.
U.S. prisons were also the scene of many uprisings in the late 1960's and early 1970's. Many of these protests were led by African American prisoners. George Jackson was a black man and prisoner who wrote a best selling book called 'Soledad Brother'. He was killed in a shootout with prison guards. His brother Jonathan also died in a hostage taking incident in Bay area courthouse. The last great rebellion in the U.S. occurred in the Attica prison in upstate New York in 1971. "You're doing a great job," New York state governor Nelson Rockefeller told journalist Tom Wicker who was invited by hostage holding prisoners to the prison.
Later Rockefeller sent in police and others to crush this rebellion. Close to three dozen people were killed in the shootout that ensued. Among this group were some prison guards.
The yippie Jerry Rubin went even further in his verbal assault of American institutions. "Kill your parents," he told some of his audiences in the late 19760's. Rubin later modified this statement
It's unlikely that Martin Luther King would have agreed with Rubin or many other revolutionary groups that surfaced in the late 1960's or early 1970's. He wouldn't have endorsed their open embrace of violence. He was a Christian minister, a believing Baptist and was close to his well-known minister father. King embraced non-violent protest and had no time for bloodshed.
Friday, 23 August 2019
Let Us Now Praise Martin Luther King Junior by Dave Jaffe: Part Four.
Let Us Now Praise Martin Luther King Junior: Part Four
"I have a dream," Martin Luther King said, in his speech at the great March in Washington, D.C in the summer of 1963. Yet his dream of racial equality and racial justice is still a long way away. This is true not only in the United States but also in Europe, Canada and other parts of the world.
In the U.S. at this time, a right wing president Donald Trump slashes one social program after another. The Republican Party, that Trump belongs to, applauds these actions while remaining firmly anti-abortion, anti-gun control, anti-same sex marriage and anti-trade unions. It also has little sympathy for African-Americans even while about 10 per cent of black people who vote, do vote Republican. Meanwhile millions of African Americans live in dire poverty while Hispanic refugees from Central America are parked in camps that are prisons. Many of these people are separated from their children.
The U.S. remains a country where one in five of its people have no medical coverage or inadequate medical care plans. Many of these people are African Americans and other people of colour. "If all the discriminatory laws in the U.S.," wrote Michael Harrington in the early 1960's, "were immediately repealed, race would still remain one of the most pressing political and moral problems in the United States." Harrington was right. Despite all the anti-racist laws that were passed in the last 50 years and despite the fact that an African American Barack Obama has been president, the U.S. is still more unequal today than it was when Dr. King was alive.
The U.S. hardly stands alone here. In Europe, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the events of 9/11 and the great economic recession of 2007 and 2008, have turned many European countries into very unequal places. In Germany, Italy, France and other places millions of voters have turned away from political parties of the centre right and centre left. Instead they vote for racist and anti-immigrant parties. The social democratic parties survive in some Scandinavian countries. Elsewhere they survive on borrowed time or have vanished.
In eastern Europe, that was freed from the heavy hand of communism, openly anti-Semitic and anti Moslem governments have taken power in Hungary and Poland.
Of course this is not the whole story. 1968, the year that Reverend King was shot dead, saw massive rebellions across the world. Yet they nearly all failed. In France, Czechoslavakia, Mexico and other countries the old conservative governments remained in power. In Vietnam the terrible war dragged on, despite the massive Tet Offensive launched in early 1968. Yet in the wake of these failed rebellions, new groups suddenly appeared to claim equality. Feminists, gays, lesbians, environmentalists, Black Power advocates, Quebec sovereigntists and a massive anti-Vietnam War movement emerged from the shadows.
In the next twenty years women won the right to abortion, ran for political office and often won. Women became lawyers, doctors, business people, and filled many other professions and jobs. Openly gay people ran for office and sometimes won .In Canada for instance, in 1970 there was only one women Member of Parliament, namely Grace McInnis, whose father James S. Woodsworth. had been a famous socialist. Yet nearly fifty years later in 2015 there were 90 women Members of Parliament out of a total of 238 M.P.s This was still not true equality. Yet it was a tremendous step forward.
The rise of the civil rights movement that King was part of, transmitted the elixir of dissent and protest across vast swaths of people in the U.S. and then to other parts of the world. "Let freedom ring," King proclaimed at the 1963 March in Washington. His message was heard not just by African Americans but by many other people in his country and elsewhere. As King's friend and comrade the Reverend Jesse Jackson told the 1984 Democratic convention,the civil rights movement paved the way for many other movements for justice and equality. And the fact that Reverend Jackson was running for the Democratic nomination for president showed how far African Americans had come.
"I have a dream," Martin Luther King said, in his speech at the great March in Washington, D.C in the summer of 1963. Yet his dream of racial equality and racial justice is still a long way away. This is true not only in the United States but also in Europe, Canada and other parts of the world.
In the U.S. at this time, a right wing president Donald Trump slashes one social program after another. The Republican Party, that Trump belongs to, applauds these actions while remaining firmly anti-abortion, anti-gun control, anti-same sex marriage and anti-trade unions. It also has little sympathy for African-Americans even while about 10 per cent of black people who vote, do vote Republican. Meanwhile millions of African Americans live in dire poverty while Hispanic refugees from Central America are parked in camps that are prisons. Many of these people are separated from their children.
The U.S. remains a country where one in five of its people have no medical coverage or inadequate medical care plans. Many of these people are African Americans and other people of colour. "If all the discriminatory laws in the U.S.," wrote Michael Harrington in the early 1960's, "were immediately repealed, race would still remain one of the most pressing political and moral problems in the United States." Harrington was right. Despite all the anti-racist laws that were passed in the last 50 years and despite the fact that an African American Barack Obama has been president, the U.S. is still more unequal today than it was when Dr. King was alive.
The U.S. hardly stands alone here. In Europe, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the events of 9/11 and the great economic recession of 2007 and 2008, have turned many European countries into very unequal places. In Germany, Italy, France and other places millions of voters have turned away from political parties of the centre right and centre left. Instead they vote for racist and anti-immigrant parties. The social democratic parties survive in some Scandinavian countries. Elsewhere they survive on borrowed time or have vanished.
In eastern Europe, that was freed from the heavy hand of communism, openly anti-Semitic and anti Moslem governments have taken power in Hungary and Poland.
Of course this is not the whole story. 1968, the year that Reverend King was shot dead, saw massive rebellions across the world. Yet they nearly all failed. In France, Czechoslavakia, Mexico and other countries the old conservative governments remained in power. In Vietnam the terrible war dragged on, despite the massive Tet Offensive launched in early 1968. Yet in the wake of these failed rebellions, new groups suddenly appeared to claim equality. Feminists, gays, lesbians, environmentalists, Black Power advocates, Quebec sovereigntists and a massive anti-Vietnam War movement emerged from the shadows.
In the next twenty years women won the right to abortion, ran for political office and often won. Women became lawyers, doctors, business people, and filled many other professions and jobs. Openly gay people ran for office and sometimes won .In Canada for instance, in 1970 there was only one women Member of Parliament, namely Grace McInnis, whose father James S. Woodsworth. had been a famous socialist. Yet nearly fifty years later in 2015 there were 90 women Members of Parliament out of a total of 238 M.P.s This was still not true equality. Yet it was a tremendous step forward.
The rise of the civil rights movement that King was part of, transmitted the elixir of dissent and protest across vast swaths of people in the U.S. and then to other parts of the world. "Let freedom ring," King proclaimed at the 1963 March in Washington. His message was heard not just by African Americans but by many other people in his country and elsewhere. As King's friend and comrade the Reverend Jesse Jackson told the 1984 Democratic convention,the civil rights movement paved the way for many other movements for justice and equality. And the fact that Reverend Jackson was running for the Democratic nomination for president showed how far African Americans had come.
Tuesday, 20 August 2019
Let Us Now Praise Martin Luther King Junior by Dave Jaffe: Part Three
Let Us Now Praise Martin Luther King Junior: Part Three..
Martin Luther King Junior was an apostle of non-violence. All his campaigns were based on the ethic of never meeting violence with violence. In his lifetime King was imprisoned. handcuffed, tear gassed and assaulted. He and other members of his organization the Southern Christian Leadership Conference were committed to never lifting their fists to reply to violence, King himself was nearly killed twice before he was shot dead.
African Americans paid a terrible price for their campaign against racial injustice. Medgar Evers was one of the American south's promoters of racial justice. He was shot dead in his house in the summer of 1963. A few months later a bomb went off in a church mostly attended by black people and killed four African American children. Arsonists burned down many churches in Mississippi where black people came together and planned to tear down white racism. Police frequently sprayed protestors with tear gas, hosed them with water cannons, unleashed attack dogs on anti-racist marchers and clubbed many of them to the ground.
"I don't believe in this non-violence," one black man told me tin the summer of 1963. To this man it only meant that "we black people get hurt. Nobody else does." Three people were killed in the Mississipp Summer of 1964, two of whom were white and one who was black. Two people were killed in the middle of the 1965 demonstrations in Selma. And when King was assasinated, major rebellions broke out across the United States and involved mostly African Americans
When the fires of this revolt were crushed, close to 170 people nearly of whom were black, had been killed mostly by police or national guard troops. King was a believer in non-violence. His faith in this tactic was grounded in his religious faith and his study of the life of Mahatma Gandhi, the leader of the Indian struggle for independence. "I haven't been elected as the King's first minister," said British Prime Minister Winston Churchill "to negotiate independence" with what Churchill called "a half naked fakir". This was Churchill 's name for Gandhi. Yet in the end Gandhi's non-violent campaign did win India its independence. King thought he could use Gandhi's tactics to win equality for African-Americans.
Unfortunately many white people in the United States reacted to King's nonviolent campaigns with terrible brutality. They were anything but apostles of non-violence. Even before King was killed police and others killed black people. The great riot in the Watts district of Los Angeles in 1965 was triggered by police violence. The great Detroit riot in 1967 was met by police and National Guard force. Over two dozen African Americans were killed in this rebellion.
The Reverend King's hopes that he could win his campaigns for racial justice didn't always get respect from American forces of law and order.
Martin Luther King Junior was an apostle of non-violence. All his campaigns were based on the ethic of never meeting violence with violence. In his lifetime King was imprisoned. handcuffed, tear gassed and assaulted. He and other members of his organization the Southern Christian Leadership Conference were committed to never lifting their fists to reply to violence, King himself was nearly killed twice before he was shot dead.
African Americans paid a terrible price for their campaign against racial injustice. Medgar Evers was one of the American south's promoters of racial justice. He was shot dead in his house in the summer of 1963. A few months later a bomb went off in a church mostly attended by black people and killed four African American children. Arsonists burned down many churches in Mississippi where black people came together and planned to tear down white racism. Police frequently sprayed protestors with tear gas, hosed them with water cannons, unleashed attack dogs on anti-racist marchers and clubbed many of them to the ground.
"I don't believe in this non-violence," one black man told me tin the summer of 1963. To this man it only meant that "we black people get hurt. Nobody else does." Three people were killed in the Mississipp Summer of 1964, two of whom were white and one who was black. Two people were killed in the middle of the 1965 demonstrations in Selma. And when King was assasinated, major rebellions broke out across the United States and involved mostly African Americans
When the fires of this revolt were crushed, close to 170 people nearly of whom were black, had been killed mostly by police or national guard troops. King was a believer in non-violence. His faith in this tactic was grounded in his religious faith and his study of the life of Mahatma Gandhi, the leader of the Indian struggle for independence. "I haven't been elected as the King's first minister," said British Prime Minister Winston Churchill "to negotiate independence" with what Churchill called "a half naked fakir". This was Churchill 's name for Gandhi. Yet in the end Gandhi's non-violent campaign did win India its independence. King thought he could use Gandhi's tactics to win equality for African-Americans.
Unfortunately many white people in the United States reacted to King's nonviolent campaigns with terrible brutality. They were anything but apostles of non-violence. Even before King was killed police and others killed black people. The great riot in the Watts district of Los Angeles in 1965 was triggered by police violence. The great Detroit riot in 1967 was met by police and National Guard force. Over two dozen African Americans were killed in this rebellion.
The Reverend King's hopes that he could win his campaigns for racial justice didn't always get respect from American forces of law and order.
Monday, 19 August 2019
Let Us Now Praise Martin Luther King Junior by Dave Jaffe: Part Two.
Let Us Now Praise Martin Luther King Junior : Part Two.
The officially approved story of Martin Luther King Junior's life usually ends in 1965. By the middle of this year King had won the Nobel Peace prize, played a major role in the desegregation of the American South and had created tremendous pressure on then president Lyndon Johnson to pass a Voting Rights Act. This act for the first time in a hundred years enabled many African Americans, especially those in the south to vote in elections.
After this, King's later acts aren't mentioned. Then under the very conservative presidency of Ronald Reagan, King's birthday on January 15th was proclaimed a national holiday. "King's elevation to national sainthood during the 1980's and 1990's," writes historian Tom Adam Davies, "was freighted with political purpose."
Davies is a lecturer in American History at the University of Sussex in England. He notes that the struggle for black equality in the U.S.A., from about 1954 to 1965 is celebrated by many Americans. "These moments of U.S. history," Davies writes, "are woven into a story of racial enlightenment." It's a soothing morality tale, he points out "in which King's noble civil rights movement opened white America's eyes to racial injustice."
After 1965 and the passage of the Voting Rights Act, everything just great. There's no need for any more marches or the militancy of the Black Panthers or the Black Power movements of the late 1960's. The U.S. is once again a perfect equal society that Reverend King and hundreds of thousands of black male and female protestors, and some white allies had created. Or so goes the officially approved version of King's life.
Of course people should remember that Martin Luther King Junior didn't create the civil rights movement. Let's recap some of the highlights of this great tide of protest that flowed across the U.S. after World war Two. The 1954 Supreme Court's decision in 1954 in Brown Versus Board of Education struck a big blow in favour of equal education for black and white students. Rosa Parks refused to sit at the back of the bus where black people were forced to sit in Montgomery and other southern cities that had public transportation. Parks helped trigger the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955 that propelled Reverend King into a leadership role in the civil rights movement.
Black and then some white youth sat in at white only restaurant counters in the American south in 1960. The protestors refused to move even when white assaulted and beat them. Young African Americans and some whites rode on buses into the segregated south in 1961. White mobs beat these protestors viciously. Then the Freedom Riders as they were then known as,were thrown into prisons where they were treated terribly. Black people helped create the Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964 where white and black people tried to register African Americans in the most racist state in the union.
Reverend King was only part of this great movement for racial equality. Yet all movements need a leader and he became the most important leader in this struggle. His assassination in 1968 was a major blow to the African American struggle for justice.
The officially approved story of Martin Luther King Junior's life usually ends in 1965. By the middle of this year King had won the Nobel Peace prize, played a major role in the desegregation of the American South and had created tremendous pressure on then president Lyndon Johnson to pass a Voting Rights Act. This act for the first time in a hundred years enabled many African Americans, especially those in the south to vote in elections.
After this, King's later acts aren't mentioned. Then under the very conservative presidency of Ronald Reagan, King's birthday on January 15th was proclaimed a national holiday. "King's elevation to national sainthood during the 1980's and 1990's," writes historian Tom Adam Davies, "was freighted with political purpose."
Davies is a lecturer in American History at the University of Sussex in England. He notes that the struggle for black equality in the U.S.A., from about 1954 to 1965 is celebrated by many Americans. "These moments of U.S. history," Davies writes, "are woven into a story of racial enlightenment." It's a soothing morality tale, he points out "in which King's noble civil rights movement opened white America's eyes to racial injustice."
After 1965 and the passage of the Voting Rights Act, everything just great. There's no need for any more marches or the militancy of the Black Panthers or the Black Power movements of the late 1960's. The U.S. is once again a perfect equal society that Reverend King and hundreds of thousands of black male and female protestors, and some white allies had created. Or so goes the officially approved version of King's life.
Of course people should remember that Martin Luther King Junior didn't create the civil rights movement. Let's recap some of the highlights of this great tide of protest that flowed across the U.S. after World war Two. The 1954 Supreme Court's decision in 1954 in Brown Versus Board of Education struck a big blow in favour of equal education for black and white students. Rosa Parks refused to sit at the back of the bus where black people were forced to sit in Montgomery and other southern cities that had public transportation. Parks helped trigger the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955 that propelled Reverend King into a leadership role in the civil rights movement.
Black and then some white youth sat in at white only restaurant counters in the American south in 1960. The protestors refused to move even when white assaulted and beat them. Young African Americans and some whites rode on buses into the segregated south in 1961. White mobs beat these protestors viciously. Then the Freedom Riders as they were then known as,were thrown into prisons where they were treated terribly. Black people helped create the Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964 where white and black people tried to register African Americans in the most racist state in the union.
Reverend King was only part of this great movement for racial equality. Yet all movements need a leader and he became the most important leader in this struggle. His assassination in 1968 was a major blow to the African American struggle for justice.
Saturday, 17 August 2019
Let Us Now Praise Martin Luther King Juniosr by Dave Jaffe. Part One
Let Us Now Praise Martin Luther King Junior by Dave Jaffe.
Come. Let us now praise Martin Luther King Junior a very exceptional American.. So many people in the United States have done so. This short dark skinned minister shook America to its foundations between 1955 and 1968. His struggle for justice for African Americans and later for others ended when he was shot dead while still only in his late 30's.
In fact whatever your politics are you can praise King. Hard core conservatives like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and other right wingers have done so. So do American liberals. Yet there's a crucial difference that looms between the two political camps in America. The left wingers and liberals point out that their county is still a very unequal place and that white racism still thrives.
Limbaugh, Beck and others say no. America, they argue is a post racial country which people like Martin Luther King helped create.
Yet why do right wing pundits and politicians praise King? For the reverend King in the closing years of his very life leveled many tough words at the U.S. of A. In a famous speech at a New York church in 1967 he denounced America's war in Vietnam. He even went further than this. My country, he told the congregation, "is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world."
The year before in 1966 he led an unsuccessful campaign to desegregate the northern city of Chicago. "Chicago," he said in effect at the time," has few lessons to learn about racism from Mississippi." The state he was talking about was back then the most racist region of America. Yet in Chicago King faced bitter and sometimes violent resistance from white people.
And when he was shot dead in March 1968 in Memphis Tennessee he was in the middle of supporting a civic workers' strike of mostly black people. This supportive role was part and parcel of his anti-poverty campaign to wipe out poverty in America. In fact, Martin Luther King in 1968 was planning to lead a poor people's march on Washington, D.C. King vowed that his non-violent army of the poor would not end their sit in until poverty was abolished in America.
So how could such a left leaning courageous man be praised by white conservatives? It's quite simple. This great man is dead and his earlier deeds are praised. The later King's actions are forgotten or smoothed over. Then after he was killed, his birthday was made into a national holiday.
Let's just recap some of King's great deeds. His great campaign in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963 and the March on Washington in the same year, led directly to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This act abolished parts of the terrible white segregation regime in the southern United States. Then this father of four led a march through Selma and the state of Alabama in 1965 that gave the U.S. the Voting Rights Act. This act finally allowed many black people and other people of colour the right to vote. Today many black people and others sit in the halls of power which they were kept out of for many years. These were two awesome changes in the United States.
In the middle of his campaign in Alabama King won the Nobel Peace Prize and his face and his struggle achieved world wide coverage. As people might have said back then, if the internet had been around "King and his struggle for racial justice went viral."
Come. Let us now praise Martin Luther King Junior a very exceptional American.. So many people in the United States have done so. This short dark skinned minister shook America to its foundations between 1955 and 1968. His struggle for justice for African Americans and later for others ended when he was shot dead while still only in his late 30's.
In fact whatever your politics are you can praise King. Hard core conservatives like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and other right wingers have done so. So do American liberals. Yet there's a crucial difference that looms between the two political camps in America. The left wingers and liberals point out that their county is still a very unequal place and that white racism still thrives.
Limbaugh, Beck and others say no. America, they argue is a post racial country which people like Martin Luther King helped create.
Yet why do right wing pundits and politicians praise King? For the reverend King in the closing years of his very life leveled many tough words at the U.S. of A. In a famous speech at a New York church in 1967 he denounced America's war in Vietnam. He even went further than this. My country, he told the congregation, "is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world."
The year before in 1966 he led an unsuccessful campaign to desegregate the northern city of Chicago. "Chicago," he said in effect at the time," has few lessons to learn about racism from Mississippi." The state he was talking about was back then the most racist region of America. Yet in Chicago King faced bitter and sometimes violent resistance from white people.
And when he was shot dead in March 1968 in Memphis Tennessee he was in the middle of supporting a civic workers' strike of mostly black people. This supportive role was part and parcel of his anti-poverty campaign to wipe out poverty in America. In fact, Martin Luther King in 1968 was planning to lead a poor people's march on Washington, D.C. King vowed that his non-violent army of the poor would not end their sit in until poverty was abolished in America.
So how could such a left leaning courageous man be praised by white conservatives? It's quite simple. This great man is dead and his earlier deeds are praised. The later King's actions are forgotten or smoothed over. Then after he was killed, his birthday was made into a national holiday.
Let's just recap some of King's great deeds. His great campaign in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963 and the March on Washington in the same year, led directly to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This act abolished parts of the terrible white segregation regime in the southern United States. Then this father of four led a march through Selma and the state of Alabama in 1965 that gave the U.S. the Voting Rights Act. This act finally allowed many black people and other people of colour the right to vote. Today many black people and others sit in the halls of power which they were kept out of for many years. These were two awesome changes in the United States.
In the middle of his campaign in Alabama King won the Nobel Peace Prize and his face and his struggle achieved world wide coverage. As people might have said back then, if the internet had been around "King and his struggle for racial justice went viral."
Wednesday, 7 August 2019
Andy Warhol Kept Me Drawing: Part Three by Dave Jaffe.
Andy Warhol Kept Me Drawing: Part Three.
The more I read about Andy Warhol in his biography by Victor Bockris the less I liked him. And even when he passed away in 1987 I was sorry but hardly overwhelmed by grief..
Yet a few weeks ago I was on the point of giving up all drawing and painting. Then I came across
a book on Warhol by Trewin Copplestsone and I was impressed. I have now taken up some of Warhol's art style and I realize how important he was.
His style is easy to copy. I simply find a photo, change the photo a bit and then draw the changed photo on paper three times or more. Then I lightly draw an abstract painting over the photos. As Andy Warhol might say about my finished work, "Wow" or "It's great." Or more likely he might exclaim, "I can do a lot better than that."
For Warhol was a brilliant artist. I have only a tiny fraction of his talent. My art work is competent but no more than that. Even so, his work has inspired me and kept me drawing. So I'm grateful to Andy Warhol no matter what he was like as a person.
The more I read about Andy Warhol in his biography by Victor Bockris the less I liked him. And even when he passed away in 1987 I was sorry but hardly overwhelmed by grief..
Yet a few weeks ago I was on the point of giving up all drawing and painting. Then I came across
a book on Warhol by Trewin Copplestsone and I was impressed. I have now taken up some of Warhol's art style and I realize how important he was.
His style is easy to copy. I simply find a photo, change the photo a bit and then draw the changed photo on paper three times or more. Then I lightly draw an abstract painting over the photos. As Andy Warhol might say about my finished work, "Wow" or "It's great." Or more likely he might exclaim, "I can do a lot better than that."
For Warhol was a brilliant artist. I have only a tiny fraction of his talent. My art work is competent but no more than that. Even so, his work has inspired me and kept me drawing. So I'm grateful to Andy Warhol no matter what he was like as a person.
Tuesday, 6 August 2019
Andy warhol Kept Me Drawing: Part Two by Dave Jaffe
Andy Warhol Kept Me Drawing: Part Two
Andy Warhol told people in effect in the mid-1960's, "I'm retiring from painting." In fact Warhol never did stop painting. Yet soon he was making films that often bored people. Then he sponsored a rock band called 'The Velvet Underground' and started to write books. He set up a work space in New York City called 'The Factory' where he painted, wrote and filmed movies. The Factory was soon overrun with disturbed speed freaks and heroin addicts. Even so, Warhol had by now become one of the most famous visual artists in the United States.
Warhol showed himself indifferent to the deaths and/or suicides of some of the unhinged people around him. Then in 1968 Warhol himself nearly died. On June 3,1968, a disturbed feminist named Valerie Solanas shot Warhol twice in the stomach as well as one other man in The Factory. "He had too much control over my life," Solanas said after surrendering to police.
Warhol survived but he went around in great pain for the rest of his life. Warhol then went on to discard most of the disturbed people that had cluttered up his life. In the 1970's, he moved into the circle of celebrities. As a child Warhol had adored the film stars of Hollywood like Judy Garland and used to send them fan letters. Now in the 1970's, he hung out with celebrities like Judy Garland's daughter Liza Minelli, Elizabeth Taylor, Bianca Jagger, the wife of rock star Mick Jagger and Lee Radziwill. He danced at Studio 54, an exclusive dance hall where only celebrities were allowed in.
"It's hard to get in to Studio 54," Warhol wrote. "But once you're in you could end up dancing with Liza Minelli. At 54 the stars are nobody because everybody is a star."
Warhol also befriended families of loathsome dictators like the Shah of Iran and Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines. He got to know the Shah's sister and also Imelda Marcos, the wife of Ferdinand Marcos. Imelda Marcos, the wife of Ferdinand later became infamous because of her massive shoe collection. While tens of millions of Filipinos eked out a bare existence the Marcos family lived high off the hog. Later the Shah and Marcos were overthrown by revolutions.
Warhol also painted many portraits of Mao Tse Tung, another brutal dictator who ruled China with an iron fist from 1949 to 1976. Warhol never met Mao. He just used an official photo as a guide to his portraits. By now, Warhol was raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars a year by doing portraits of the rich and famous.
In 1981, Warhol attended the inauguration of Ronald Reagan as U.S. president. He also taped an interview with First Lady Nancy Reagan for his now flourishing magazine quite rightly called 'Interview'. Left wing critics like Alexander Cockburn raked Warhol over the coals for breathlessly listening to Nancy Reagan and never once criticizing her or her husband for the uncaring lives they were living. As U.S. president Ronald Reagan cut social programs to the bone making millions of poor Americans even poorer. Meanwhile his government shoveled out huge tax cuts to the rich.
The 'Time' magazine art critic Robert Hughes had never liked Warhol's art. Now he went after Warhol again. Warhol, he said, " was the shallow painter whose entire sense of reality was shaped like Reagan's sense of power, by the television tube." All of this was true. Warhol by the way was gay and had many close male friends. Whether he made love to any of them remains an unanswered question.
Andy Warhol told people in effect in the mid-1960's, "I'm retiring from painting." In fact Warhol never did stop painting. Yet soon he was making films that often bored people. Then he sponsored a rock band called 'The Velvet Underground' and started to write books. He set up a work space in New York City called 'The Factory' where he painted, wrote and filmed movies. The Factory was soon overrun with disturbed speed freaks and heroin addicts. Even so, Warhol had by now become one of the most famous visual artists in the United States.
Warhol showed himself indifferent to the deaths and/or suicides of some of the unhinged people around him. Then in 1968 Warhol himself nearly died. On June 3,1968, a disturbed feminist named Valerie Solanas shot Warhol twice in the stomach as well as one other man in The Factory. "He had too much control over my life," Solanas said after surrendering to police.
Warhol survived but he went around in great pain for the rest of his life. Warhol then went on to discard most of the disturbed people that had cluttered up his life. In the 1970's, he moved into the circle of celebrities. As a child Warhol had adored the film stars of Hollywood like Judy Garland and used to send them fan letters. Now in the 1970's, he hung out with celebrities like Judy Garland's daughter Liza Minelli, Elizabeth Taylor, Bianca Jagger, the wife of rock star Mick Jagger and Lee Radziwill. He danced at Studio 54, an exclusive dance hall where only celebrities were allowed in.
"It's hard to get in to Studio 54," Warhol wrote. "But once you're in you could end up dancing with Liza Minelli. At 54 the stars are nobody because everybody is a star."
Warhol also befriended families of loathsome dictators like the Shah of Iran and Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines. He got to know the Shah's sister and also Imelda Marcos, the wife of Ferdinand Marcos. Imelda Marcos, the wife of Ferdinand later became infamous because of her massive shoe collection. While tens of millions of Filipinos eked out a bare existence the Marcos family lived high off the hog. Later the Shah and Marcos were overthrown by revolutions.
Warhol also painted many portraits of Mao Tse Tung, another brutal dictator who ruled China with an iron fist from 1949 to 1976. Warhol never met Mao. He just used an official photo as a guide to his portraits. By now, Warhol was raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars a year by doing portraits of the rich and famous.
In 1981, Warhol attended the inauguration of Ronald Reagan as U.S. president. He also taped an interview with First Lady Nancy Reagan for his now flourishing magazine quite rightly called 'Interview'. Left wing critics like Alexander Cockburn raked Warhol over the coals for breathlessly listening to Nancy Reagan and never once criticizing her or her husband for the uncaring lives they were living. As U.S. president Ronald Reagan cut social programs to the bone making millions of poor Americans even poorer. Meanwhile his government shoveled out huge tax cuts to the rich.
The 'Time' magazine art critic Robert Hughes had never liked Warhol's art. Now he went after Warhol again. Warhol, he said, " was the shallow painter whose entire sense of reality was shaped like Reagan's sense of power, by the television tube." All of this was true. Warhol by the way was gay and had many close male friends. Whether he made love to any of them remains an unanswered question.
Thursday, 1 August 2019
Andy Warhol Kept Me Drawing by Dave Jaffe: Part One.
Andy Warhol Kept Me Drawing: Part One
It's possible to like an artist's work but dislike his or her character. Andy Warhol's an example of this.
A few weeks ago I was going to stop painting and drawing, which I've done as a hobby for decades. Yet then I came across a small book on Andy Warhol, written by the British artist and writer, Trewin Copplestone.
After thumbing through Copplestsone's book called 'The Life and Works of Andy Warhol' I decided to copy Warhol's painting style and go back to drawing. Warhol's art inspired me. Warhol's life was a classic American rags to riches story, that also interested me.
He was born Andrew Warhola to a poor immigrant family from Slovakia in 1928. The next year the Great Depression started and wrecked the world economy. Warhol's family was hit hard by this terrible economic collapse.
So Warhol grew up in a poor blue collar family in Pittsburgh, a tough provincial city of steel mills in the American heartland. Yet Warhol's family in the end struggled out of poverty. His father, who passed away when Andrew was quite young, left a sizeable sum of money behind to help his son. For there were some fine educational places and schools in Pittsburgh. Warhol ended up going to the Cranegie Institute of Technology. Here he got a good education in the visual arts.
"If anyone had asked me at the time who was the least likely to succeed," said one of his teachers at the institute named Robert Lipper, "I would have said Andrew Warhola."
Warhola, as his last name was then, was shy and had problems doing academic work. He had, he later claimed, three nervous breakdowns before the age of ten. His skin often erupted into some form of acne. And his hair fell out at a very young age. People, including his older brothers, taunted and bullied him.
Yet Warhol had a great drawing ability and some self-confidence. After graduating from the Carnegie Institute in the late 1940's, he went along with another soon-to-be-famous visual artist called Philip Pearlstein to New York City. He came there with only $200 in his pocket, which is about $2,000 to-day.Yet by 1956, he'd become one of the most successful commercial artists in the United States. By now he'd dropped the 'a' at the end of his name and was simply known now as 'Andy Warhol'. Also his mother had moved to New York City and stayed with her youngest son for the rest of her life.
Though now rich and successful Warhol still wanted more. "I want to be Matisse," he told his friend Charles Lisanby when they took a tour around part of the world in 1956. Lisanby thought Warhol was really saying, "I want to be as famous as Henri Matisse." Back in 1956 Matisse and Pablo Picasso were seen as the greatest artists of the day.
Still by 1966, or ten years later, Warhol was even more famous than Matisse. He painted than silkscreened pictures of Campbell soup cans, the U.S. dollar bill, the by now dead Marilyn Monroe, the soon to be dead Elvis Presley, and car crashes, race riots and electric chairs. Warhol was now acclaimed - or detested- as one of the founders of the art movement now called "Pop Art".
It's possible to like an artist's work but dislike his or her character. Andy Warhol's an example of this.
A few weeks ago I was going to stop painting and drawing, which I've done as a hobby for decades. Yet then I came across a small book on Andy Warhol, written by the British artist and writer, Trewin Copplestone.
After thumbing through Copplestsone's book called 'The Life and Works of Andy Warhol' I decided to copy Warhol's painting style and go back to drawing. Warhol's art inspired me. Warhol's life was a classic American rags to riches story, that also interested me.
He was born Andrew Warhola to a poor immigrant family from Slovakia in 1928. The next year the Great Depression started and wrecked the world economy. Warhol's family was hit hard by this terrible economic collapse.
So Warhol grew up in a poor blue collar family in Pittsburgh, a tough provincial city of steel mills in the American heartland. Yet Warhol's family in the end struggled out of poverty. His father, who passed away when Andrew was quite young, left a sizeable sum of money behind to help his son. For there were some fine educational places and schools in Pittsburgh. Warhol ended up going to the Cranegie Institute of Technology. Here he got a good education in the visual arts.
"If anyone had asked me at the time who was the least likely to succeed," said one of his teachers at the institute named Robert Lipper, "I would have said Andrew Warhola."
Warhola, as his last name was then, was shy and had problems doing academic work. He had, he later claimed, three nervous breakdowns before the age of ten. His skin often erupted into some form of acne. And his hair fell out at a very young age. People, including his older brothers, taunted and bullied him.
Yet Warhol had a great drawing ability and some self-confidence. After graduating from the Carnegie Institute in the late 1940's, he went along with another soon-to-be-famous visual artist called Philip Pearlstein to New York City. He came there with only $200 in his pocket, which is about $2,000 to-day.Yet by 1956, he'd become one of the most successful commercial artists in the United States. By now he'd dropped the 'a' at the end of his name and was simply known now as 'Andy Warhol'. Also his mother had moved to New York City and stayed with her youngest son for the rest of her life.
Though now rich and successful Warhol still wanted more. "I want to be Matisse," he told his friend Charles Lisanby when they took a tour around part of the world in 1956. Lisanby thought Warhol was really saying, "I want to be as famous as Henri Matisse." Back in 1956 Matisse and Pablo Picasso were seen as the greatest artists of the day.
Still by 1966, or ten years later, Warhol was even more famous than Matisse. He painted than silkscreened pictures of Campbell soup cans, the U.S. dollar bill, the by now dead Marilyn Monroe, the soon to be dead Elvis Presley, and car crashes, race riots and electric chairs. Warhol was now acclaimed - or detested- as one of the founders of the art movement now called "Pop Art".
Monday, 22 July 2019
A Tale of Two Churches: Part Three by Dave Jaffe.
A Tale of Two Churches: Part Three.
If you're like me you may attend the Canadian Memorial United Church or the Society of Friends, more commonly known as the Quakers. Then you might tell yourself, "Canadian churches are very liberal." Many of the people who go to the churches I've just mentioned usually support a women's right to abortion. They worship a compassionate caring God - that is if they believe in the divine. They have no problems now with same sex marriage. Many of the people in these churches believe in helping the poor and welcoming refugees to Canada.
Yet not all Canadian or North American churches cling to this type of religion. Nor did all ever do so. Lucien Pope, an American sociologist found out over 80 years ago that many groups favour a much harsher religion. The U.S. sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset came to the same conclusion a few years later. "The poorer working classes," Lipset wrote in the 1950's, "want ministers who preach hellfire and damnation."
This is still true today. In her recent book, 'Strangers In Their Own Land' Arlie Russell Hoschchild found the same thing. In Louisiana, Hoschchild studied, mingled with and befriended supporters of U.S president Donald Trump. She found that these mostly white working class Americans believe in 'the rapture' or time when the Book of Revelations says, "The earth will burn with fervent heat." Until that time though, the devil is on the rampage.
Along with this harsh theology, these white citizens had no time or sympathy for black Americans, feminists, gays or environmentalists. God, says Derwin Arenos, a young white worker, will fix the polluted bayous of Louisiana. "And that will happen shortly," he says. "So it doesn't matter how much man destroys now."
A woman I'll call Clara may share the same viewpoint. She lives in Vancouver in a one bedroom basement suite, alongside three other neighbours who also live in one bedroom places. Clara is bipolar and survives on a small handicapped allowance. She doesn't have much money and sometimes asks people to buy her a cup of coffee. When Donald Trump was elected U>S. president Clara was overjoyed. "He''ll fix the elites," she said. "They're too powerful."
Clara goes to an east end church that preaches that the world may be doomed and damnation awaits all sinners. In Metro Vancouver there are quite a few churches preaching this sort of message. One many I met was a strong supporter of the Anglican Church he went to. "We don't believe in abortion here," he says. "And we have no time for same sex marriage." Another man I know is a churchgoer who totally is against any new social programs.
One Sunday morning I slipped into the pews of a Baptist church and heard a strong message. A big powerfully built preacher took an American senator to task for saying that he enjoyed going to church on Sunday. "You don't go to church to enjoy it," he thundered. "You go to church to feel God's presence. Your enjoyment is not important."
At the service's end, one church usher asked me if I'd come back. "not me," I replied. "the sermon was powerful but it's not my trip. I'm a bleeding heart liberal." Even so I put a few dollars in the dish that was passed around. For I don't go to churches without leaving some money behind.
If you're like me you may attend the Canadian Memorial United Church or the Society of Friends, more commonly known as the Quakers. Then you might tell yourself, "Canadian churches are very liberal." Many of the people who go to the churches I've just mentioned usually support a women's right to abortion. They worship a compassionate caring God - that is if they believe in the divine. They have no problems now with same sex marriage. Many of the people in these churches believe in helping the poor and welcoming refugees to Canada.
Yet not all Canadian or North American churches cling to this type of religion. Nor did all ever do so. Lucien Pope, an American sociologist found out over 80 years ago that many groups favour a much harsher religion. The U.S. sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset came to the same conclusion a few years later. "The poorer working classes," Lipset wrote in the 1950's, "want ministers who preach hellfire and damnation."
This is still true today. In her recent book, 'Strangers In Their Own Land' Arlie Russell Hoschchild found the same thing. In Louisiana, Hoschchild studied, mingled with and befriended supporters of U.S president Donald Trump. She found that these mostly white working class Americans believe in 'the rapture' or time when the Book of Revelations says, "The earth will burn with fervent heat." Until that time though, the devil is on the rampage.
Along with this harsh theology, these white citizens had no time or sympathy for black Americans, feminists, gays or environmentalists. God, says Derwin Arenos, a young white worker, will fix the polluted bayous of Louisiana. "And that will happen shortly," he says. "So it doesn't matter how much man destroys now."
A woman I'll call Clara may share the same viewpoint. She lives in Vancouver in a one bedroom basement suite, alongside three other neighbours who also live in one bedroom places. Clara is bipolar and survives on a small handicapped allowance. She doesn't have much money and sometimes asks people to buy her a cup of coffee. When Donald Trump was elected U>S. president Clara was overjoyed. "He''ll fix the elites," she said. "They're too powerful."
Clara goes to an east end church that preaches that the world may be doomed and damnation awaits all sinners. In Metro Vancouver there are quite a few churches preaching this sort of message. One many I met was a strong supporter of the Anglican Church he went to. "We don't believe in abortion here," he says. "And we have no time for same sex marriage." Another man I know is a churchgoer who totally is against any new social programs.
One Sunday morning I slipped into the pews of a Baptist church and heard a strong message. A big powerfully built preacher took an American senator to task for saying that he enjoyed going to church on Sunday. "You don't go to church to enjoy it," he thundered. "You go to church to feel God's presence. Your enjoyment is not important."
At the service's end, one church usher asked me if I'd come back. "not me," I replied. "the sermon was powerful but it's not my trip. I'm a bleeding heart liberal." Even so I put a few dollars in the dish that was passed around. For I don't go to churches without leaving some money behind.
Thursday, 11 July 2019
A Tale of Two Churches by Dave Jaffe. Part Two.
A Tale of Two Churches: Part Two.
Churches have their uses which is something that the new aethiests like Christopher Hitchens, Sam Adams and Richard Dawkins sometimes ignore. To be fair to Hitchens, he did mention the positive role churches played in the U.S. civil rights movement. Yet even the hard core right wing politicians
sometimes realize that churches can help people.
In late 1975, William 'Bill' Bennett became premier of British Columbia ousting Dave Barrett's short-lived New Democratic government from power. The hard-nosed, tough Social Credit premier at once started cutting the social programs the Barrett's government had set up. Eight years later, in 1983 Bennett wiped out the rest of Barrett's reforms.
When confronted by irate demonstrators in the B.C. legislature, Bennett gave no ground.
"What will people do when you get rid of all the social programs?" Joe Arnaud, a demonstrator demanded of Bennett in 1975.
""Why they'll go to the church basements," said Bennett, a very wealthy son of a wealthy former premier, W.A.C. Bennett. "That's what they did when I was young." Maybe we'll need church basements again to feed many more of us as some church basements do now. If so, I recommend Canadian Memorial United Church and the Vancouver Quaker worship house. I like both these places and I've often eaten at both of them.
Yet right now we live in an age when most right wing governments often stay in power for a long time and shred one social safety net after another. Who will protect the poor and the homeless against the Bennetts, the Thatchers, the Trumps and the Doug Fords? Churches can play a small but useful role here. The United Church of Canada was formed after the first World War from three separate churches: the Presbyterians, the Congregationalists and the Methodists.
As a result of this merger, the United Church has often played a progressive role in Canadian history. Before the First World War, Methodist ministers like James Shaver Woodsworth pushed what was called 'The Social Gospel'. This was a religious platform with a progressive bent. Unfortunately after World War One, a right wing wave swept across the world and buried the Social Gospel. Woodsworth left the newly formed United Church and went on to sit in Parliament and then help found the left leaning Co-operative Commonwealth Federation or C.C.F. in the 1930's.
Despite the vanishing of the Social Gospel, United Church ministers have often spoken up for peace and social justice. To-day for instance, the First United Church still does wonderful work in the now slowly disappearing Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. It certainly helped the poor after the right wing Liberal government swept to power in the 2001 B.C. election.
"It was an aberration," one high level N.D.P. organizer said about this event as he saw the Liberal party grab 77 of the 79 seats in the B.C. legislature. The N.D.P. government had run the province for the past ten years. Once in power, the tough, hard-nosed new premier and Liberal leader Gordon Campbell did what former premier Bill Bennett had done nearly 20 years before. He slashed social programs to the bone, fired thousands of government workers, and gave big tax cuts to the rich.
Thousands of welfare recipients had their monthly cheques slashed or reduced to zero The amount of homeless people in the streets soared. Yet many of the homeless huddled in the pews of the First United Church on the corner of Main and Hastings.
"It's really crowded in there," one Downtown Eastside resident said at the time about the First United Church. "Without that place many people would be a goner." At this time in 2002 and at many others times, the United Church has saved many people from starvation and even an early death.
Churches have their uses which is something that the new aethiests like Christopher Hitchens, Sam Adams and Richard Dawkins sometimes ignore. To be fair to Hitchens, he did mention the positive role churches played in the U.S. civil rights movement. Yet even the hard core right wing politicians
sometimes realize that churches can help people.
In late 1975, William 'Bill' Bennett became premier of British Columbia ousting Dave Barrett's short-lived New Democratic government from power. The hard-nosed, tough Social Credit premier at once started cutting the social programs the Barrett's government had set up. Eight years later, in 1983 Bennett wiped out the rest of Barrett's reforms.
When confronted by irate demonstrators in the B.C. legislature, Bennett gave no ground.
"What will people do when you get rid of all the social programs?" Joe Arnaud, a demonstrator demanded of Bennett in 1975.
""Why they'll go to the church basements," said Bennett, a very wealthy son of a wealthy former premier, W.A.C. Bennett. "That's what they did when I was young." Maybe we'll need church basements again to feed many more of us as some church basements do now. If so, I recommend Canadian Memorial United Church and the Vancouver Quaker worship house. I like both these places and I've often eaten at both of them.
Yet right now we live in an age when most right wing governments often stay in power for a long time and shred one social safety net after another. Who will protect the poor and the homeless against the Bennetts, the Thatchers, the Trumps and the Doug Fords? Churches can play a small but useful role here. The United Church of Canada was formed after the first World War from three separate churches: the Presbyterians, the Congregationalists and the Methodists.
As a result of this merger, the United Church has often played a progressive role in Canadian history. Before the First World War, Methodist ministers like James Shaver Woodsworth pushed what was called 'The Social Gospel'. This was a religious platform with a progressive bent. Unfortunately after World War One, a right wing wave swept across the world and buried the Social Gospel. Woodsworth left the newly formed United Church and went on to sit in Parliament and then help found the left leaning Co-operative Commonwealth Federation or C.C.F. in the 1930's.
Despite the vanishing of the Social Gospel, United Church ministers have often spoken up for peace and social justice. To-day for instance, the First United Church still does wonderful work in the now slowly disappearing Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. It certainly helped the poor after the right wing Liberal government swept to power in the 2001 B.C. election.
"It was an aberration," one high level N.D.P. organizer said about this event as he saw the Liberal party grab 77 of the 79 seats in the B.C. legislature. The N.D.P. government had run the province for the past ten years. Once in power, the tough, hard-nosed new premier and Liberal leader Gordon Campbell did what former premier Bill Bennett had done nearly 20 years before. He slashed social programs to the bone, fired thousands of government workers, and gave big tax cuts to the rich.
Thousands of welfare recipients had their monthly cheques slashed or reduced to zero The amount of homeless people in the streets soared. Yet many of the homeless huddled in the pews of the First United Church on the corner of Main and Hastings.
"It's really crowded in there," one Downtown Eastside resident said at the time about the First United Church. "Without that place many people would be a goner." At this time in 2002 and at many others times, the United Church has saved many people from starvation and even an early death.
Tuesday, 9 July 2019
A Tale of Two Churches: Part One by Dave Jaffe
A Tale of Two Churches: Part One..
One church is tiny. One church is reasonably sized. The small church has about 10 to 20 people come to it every Sunday. In the bigger church hundreds flock to its services once a week. The tiny church has a n annual budget of close to $30,000. "Our budget," the forty something head minister of the big church proudly told me, "is close to $850,000 annually."
The big church has lots of stained glass windows, a full throated choir and is staffed by four full time ministers. The tiny church has no minister, no choir and no ordinary service. It's surrounded by evergreen trees that circle the tiny house and protect it from the elements. I go to both these churches from time to time. For both of these churches support a liberal version of Christianity which is now my favourite religion.
The tiny church is a Quaker worship house that sits at the edge of southwest Vancouver. Few people come to this place of worship. When they do, they sit in silence in a circle of comfortable chairs.for about an hour. Once I counted the amount of persons in the room. I don't think the total came to more than 30. Some times there are an even dozen in this house. At times there may be even fewer people in the small upper floor of the house that is the worship space.
"Don't get hung up on numbers," a political organizer told me years ago. And at the Quakers I forget crowds or masses of people. I sit in silence and happiness, often recalling what the Quakers' founder George Fox discovered in 1650's England. The divine light is within everybody Fox said. To worship the divine you don't need big churches, massive choirs or even expensive places of worship. All you need to do is focus on the divine light within you.
I agree with all of this and have spent some lovely hours in the Quaker worship space. Yet sometimes I tell myself, "I need a regular church service." Then I head off to the Canadian Memorial United Church where there is everything that most people think of when they mention the word "church". A wonderful set of stained glass windows with a social theme line three of the church's walls. A big choir belts out hymns in the fall, winter and spring. In the choir three or four wonderful young women singers sometimes come forward from the choir to do solo turns. As one woman once said to the church congregation after the choir stopped singing, "You couldn't get this music anywhere else." She was right.
As for numbers of people who come to this church, the crowd sometimes swell to over 300. people. This is a huge contrast to the Quaker congregations.
The church's regular minister Beth Hayward often gives sermons, explaining parts of the Bible while giving inspirational twists to her comments. Lonnie Delisle, the music director and minister
works long and hard to keep the choir and solo singers on track. And all kinds of groups and people work on program and committees.. There's a healing centre in the church's other building that 's right across the alley from the church. This building is called the Peace Centre for reasons I'll explain below. Some people do meditation before the church service starts. The church serves meals once a week to street people. And the list of church committees goes on and on.
The Canadian Memorial United Church on Vancouver's west side was founded by a Canadian veteran who came back from World War One determined to remember those killed in that terrible event. He set up the church as a memorial to those that had passed away. 90 years later the church still has a strong social conscience and a liberal and pacifist outlook that not all United churches share. The church holds many of its political events in the Peace Centre. Many of the stained glass windows in the church refer to wartime events as well as Jesus and the apostles
Churches are still important in Canada, even though less than one in four Canadians go to churches on Sunday. I'm one of those that do and I'm glad that liberal churches are still around. I've not joined either church but I have given money to both. They have enriched my life in many ways.
"This is a magnet church," one of its loyal members Susan tells me. "It draws people from all across Metro Vancouver." Susan herself comes from the outer suburbs. Her loyalty shows that the Canadian Memorial Church has put down deep roots in people's hearts and minds.
One church is tiny. One church is reasonably sized. The small church has about 10 to 20 people come to it every Sunday. In the bigger church hundreds flock to its services once a week. The tiny church has a n annual budget of close to $30,000. "Our budget," the forty something head minister of the big church proudly told me, "is close to $850,000 annually."
The big church has lots of stained glass windows, a full throated choir and is staffed by four full time ministers. The tiny church has no minister, no choir and no ordinary service. It's surrounded by evergreen trees that circle the tiny house and protect it from the elements. I go to both these churches from time to time. For both of these churches support a liberal version of Christianity which is now my favourite religion.
The tiny church is a Quaker worship house that sits at the edge of southwest Vancouver. Few people come to this place of worship. When they do, they sit in silence in a circle of comfortable chairs.for about an hour. Once I counted the amount of persons in the room. I don't think the total came to more than 30. Some times there are an even dozen in this house. At times there may be even fewer people in the small upper floor of the house that is the worship space.
"Don't get hung up on numbers," a political organizer told me years ago. And at the Quakers I forget crowds or masses of people. I sit in silence and happiness, often recalling what the Quakers' founder George Fox discovered in 1650's England. The divine light is within everybody Fox said. To worship the divine you don't need big churches, massive choirs or even expensive places of worship. All you need to do is focus on the divine light within you.
I agree with all of this and have spent some lovely hours in the Quaker worship space. Yet sometimes I tell myself, "I need a regular church service." Then I head off to the Canadian Memorial United Church where there is everything that most people think of when they mention the word "church". A wonderful set of stained glass windows with a social theme line three of the church's walls. A big choir belts out hymns in the fall, winter and spring. In the choir three or four wonderful young women singers sometimes come forward from the choir to do solo turns. As one woman once said to the church congregation after the choir stopped singing, "You couldn't get this music anywhere else." She was right.
As for numbers of people who come to this church, the crowd sometimes swell to over 300. people. This is a huge contrast to the Quaker congregations.
The church's regular minister Beth Hayward often gives sermons, explaining parts of the Bible while giving inspirational twists to her comments. Lonnie Delisle, the music director and minister
works long and hard to keep the choir and solo singers on track. And all kinds of groups and people work on program and committees.. There's a healing centre in the church's other building that 's right across the alley from the church. This building is called the Peace Centre for reasons I'll explain below. Some people do meditation before the church service starts. The church serves meals once a week to street people. And the list of church committees goes on and on.
The Canadian Memorial United Church on Vancouver's west side was founded by a Canadian veteran who came back from World War One determined to remember those killed in that terrible event. He set up the church as a memorial to those that had passed away. 90 years later the church still has a strong social conscience and a liberal and pacifist outlook that not all United churches share. The church holds many of its political events in the Peace Centre. Many of the stained glass windows in the church refer to wartime events as well as Jesus and the apostles
Churches are still important in Canada, even though less than one in four Canadians go to churches on Sunday. I'm one of those that do and I'm glad that liberal churches are still around. I've not joined either church but I have given money to both. They have enriched my life in many ways.
"This is a magnet church," one of its loyal members Susan tells me. "It draws people from all across Metro Vancouver." Susan herself comes from the outer suburbs. Her loyalty shows that the Canadian Memorial Church has put down deep roots in people's hearts and minds.
Saturday, 29 June 2019
History May Be Partly Bunk: Part Ten by Dave Jaffe
History May Be Partly Bunk: Part Ten
Despite all the favourable conditions I was living with, in the 1970's, my life tumbled on a diownward slope. Then I was lucky again. I met a man who taught me survival skills. He taught me how to access social prgrams. He guided me into an unorthodox therapy that cured me of my sadness and damped down my ferocious temper. He also taught me how to write journalism. And this helped me get jobs.
"This man was the greatest guidance counselor I ever had," I told a woman who also knew this man too. When his grip fastened on me too tightly, I escaped into the world of anti-poverty movements. Once in this milieu I met two other men. One man guide me to apply to live in a housing co-op. Another helped me get a handicapped allowance. A third man gave me a book on drawing that transformed my life. All of these events and people turned my life around.
In my early 30's, I was a depressed abusive handicapped man. Ten years or so later I had become a more stable balanced human being who felt happy and secure. In the film 'Match Point' the tennis pro Chris Wilson over a dinner in an upscale London restaurant agrees that hard work is mandatory for any success in life. Yet luck and fate, he insists, counts most of all if you're going to thrive. I agree with Wilson and now in the closing days of my life I tell myself and others, "I've sure been lucky."
Henry Ford may well have been correct when he said, "History is bunk. Yet I now see that luck has enabled me to escape the terrible events that clutter up history books.
Despite all the favourable conditions I was living with, in the 1970's, my life tumbled on a diownward slope. Then I was lucky again. I met a man who taught me survival skills. He taught me how to access social prgrams. He guided me into an unorthodox therapy that cured me of my sadness and damped down my ferocious temper. He also taught me how to write journalism. And this helped me get jobs.
"This man was the greatest guidance counselor I ever had," I told a woman who also knew this man too. When his grip fastened on me too tightly, I escaped into the world of anti-poverty movements. Once in this milieu I met two other men. One man guide me to apply to live in a housing co-op. Another helped me get a handicapped allowance. A third man gave me a book on drawing that transformed my life. All of these events and people turned my life around.
In my early 30's, I was a depressed abusive handicapped man. Ten years or so later I had become a more stable balanced human being who felt happy and secure. In the film 'Match Point' the tennis pro Chris Wilson over a dinner in an upscale London restaurant agrees that hard work is mandatory for any success in life. Yet luck and fate, he insists, counts most of all if you're going to thrive. I agree with Wilson and now in the closing days of my life I tell myself and others, "I've sure been lucky."
Henry Ford may well have been correct when he said, "History is bunk. Yet I now see that luck has enabled me to escape the terrible events that clutter up history books.
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