These movies are not tickets to escapism. If you don’t want more proof that some people’s (too many people’s) lives are way too hard, don’t watch them. But you should watch them, and you should bring friends. And tissues.
LA MISMA LUNA (Under the Same Moon)
A mother and son through a week of their respective journeys to be reunited across borders, despite all who stand in their way (be they La Migra, exploitative employers, police, or even folks trying to help). Bonus: this film has one of the best nine-year-old actors I have ever seen.
STOP-LOSS
A soldier and his fellows as they return from Iraq to civilian life, only to find that the President has “stop-lossed” them, sending them back to Iraq, regardless of whatever they have to say about the matter.
These two movies deal with different communities facing different battles, and yet their core features, which make them great movies, are shared:
1. They’re both really good movies.
2. They have strong female characters.
3. They show that the government is not always our friend.
4. They pull you in one way and then another, ripping your heart along with you, so much that you never know just how things will turn out.
5. Some of the saddest characters are the ones I would least expect.
6. They give glimpses of worlds rarely portrayed with such richness in movies: the nuts and bolts of the US economy in the former, the mortar fire on the ground in the Iraq war in the latter.
7. They both present the real life decisions we have to make (or we don’t have to make - in which case, we should be wondering why we don’t).
8. You should really see them both. But maybe not on consecutive nights - I speak from experience on that.
Yet again, we mourn this hellish incarnation of war. This war is on Iraq, and it is showing yet again why all war is humanity’s great sin.
Here are some pictures: one sign from today’s rally at San Francisco’s Civic Center (put to good use); the other sign from the two-way protest at Berkeley City Council a few weeks ago (the one where the Lafayette Flag Brigade deigned to enter Berkeley city limits in order to sing patriotic songs (poorly) and make it known to anyone who would listen that they didn’t like the Berkeley City Council’s decision to support the Code Pink protests at the Berkeley Marine recruiting station; in response, ‘Code Pinklets’ (as the Flag Brigadiers called them) and folks from the World Can’t Wait campaigns staged a counter-protest; I’ll let you guess which protest this sign is from).
The pictures below are from the memorial vigil at Grace Cathedral. As an acolyte passed among the crowd dispersing incense, clergy from various faiths (among them Christian, Buddhist, and Jewish) read off the names of victims of this war on Iraq. We crowded around them, standing among pairs of shoes placed on the cathedral steps.
The effect of the shoes was profound. I appreciated the somber tone of the vigil, even while my soul is fed by the liturgy of street protests just as much. The memorial vigil allowed me a few moments to pause and try to really remember the loss, as Jesus urged us to do as his disciples.
I imagined the people who, but for being murdered by this war, might have stood there on the steps filling those shoes. There would have been hundreds of them, thousands, hundreds of thousands - the actual number don’t really matter when mourning. Too many. I wondered if they would stand in those shoes staring out from the steps, as the shoes were pointing, facing the world with accusing eyes, or if they might turn around and listen to the prayers being spoken from the top of the cathedral steps.
With the lessons from my Swedenborgian friend still fresh on my mind, I understood for the first time the concept of angels, at least as she describes them: the disembodied presence of those humans who have died but are still among us. And even though fear (and its companion, hatred) was the source of their deaths, these angels only love, and ask us to remember.
I also knew that a pair of shoes was not nearly enough to remember the complexity of even one single person lost in this war. Standing next to my partner and amongst many of my dear friends, I felt just how much effort it would take to properly remember anyone so dear to me as them.
Shoes were not made to memorialize murders; they are not strong enough to bear the burden. But they are an important start.
Yet another murderous attack on civilians at a UN building in Algiers. The BBC reports that several dozen people, students and workers, may have been killed.
It doesn’t matter what you think of the UN. Whether you’re a US isolationist or an Al Qaeda terrorist, there is NO higher purpose served in killing people. No agenda is worth taking (innocent) human life. Violence becomes your agenda. Even if you think you are saving lives in the end, you must be both cowardly and uncreative to think that killing people is the best way to do that.
Crucifixes Made Under Horrific Sweatshop Conditions In China, Linked to St. Patrick’s Cathedral and Trinity Church in New York, And Nationally to the $4.63 Billion Association for Christian Retail
At a press conference today in front of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City, Charles Kernaghan, director of the National Labor Committee, released a 73 page report documenting the brutal sweatshop conditions under which crucifixes are made for Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Trinity Church and the Association for Christian Retail at the Junxingye factory in Southern China.
Holding up a crucifix made in the Junxingye factory and sold at Saint Patrick’s and Trinity, Kernaghan said, “This crucifix was made by young women—several just 15 and 16 years of age—who were forced to work 15 ½ hours a day, from 8:00 a.m. to 11:30 p.m., seven days a week, toiling for months on end without a single day off. Workers were routinely at the factory over 100 hours a week. Before the crucifixes had to be shipped to the U.S., there were also mandatory 22 ½ to 25-hour all-night shifts from 8:00 a.m. straight through to 6:30 or 9:00 a.m. the following morning. Workers were paid just 26 ½ cents an hour, $2.12 a day and $10.61 a week, which is less than half China’s legal minimum wage. After deductions for primitive company dorms and food, the workers’ take-home wages actually drops to just nine cents an hour.”
Primitive dorm conditions with workers sleeping in narrow, double-level metal bunk beds. Dorm walls are filthy and smudged with black, while spider webs cling to the ceiling. The bathrooms are so damp and dirty that moss grows on the floor.
Workers describe the company food as “awful.” The soup is just water with a few vegetable leaves and drops of oil floating at the top.
Anyone missing a day is docked 2 ½ days’ wages.
Workers fear they may be handling toxic chemicals, paints and solvents—which sting their eyes and cause skin rashes—but they are not allowed to know the names of the chemicals they are working with, let alone their health hazards.
Kernaghan commented that something has gone terribly wrong, “The Association for Christian Retail has decided, en masse, to follow Wal-Mart to China, where they can exploit defenseless workers and pay them pennies an hour to make their religious goods. These are workers who have no freedom of religion, no freedom of association, and no human or worker rights protections.”
“Especially during the holiday season,” he continued, “the American people can draw a line in the sand, refusing to allow crucifixes and other religious items to be turned into just another cheap sweatshop commodity. As things stand now, there are enforceable laws backed up by sanctions to protect corporate products and trademarks, but no similar laws to protect the legal rights of the young people around the world who made the religious or other goods we will purchase this holiday. This is morally wrong and must change.
I am very glad and relieved to share with you the news that I have been granted political asylum today. I was interviewed July 18, and today I picked up the results at the San Francisco Asylum Office. Thank you so much for your support and prayers. Please keep the Philippines in your thoughts, prayers, and continue to help advocate the resolution of human rights cases in my home country.
Admittedly, I feel I am in a very conflicted space – getting the protection of the conquistador. However, I resolve to make use of the benefits granted to me as a political refugee in the United States to continue struggling for justice alongside the rising class of the oppressed, and seek a stop to the killings in the Philippines.
Again, thanks so much for your support.
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Me to him:
Hooray! Congratulations! Thank goodness!
Yes, I can understand feeling conflicted about it, that there is some privilege implicit in your position of sanctuary here, but for goodness’ sake, physical and emotional safety is something EVERYONE should have. It should not be parceled out sparingly; it should not be something people compete for or feel bad about having. The only injustice is that so few have this fundamental right, not that you are one of the few.
You are very important in the PSR community, for all you do for us. Your openness about the issues you and your fellow citizens are facing in the Philippines is only one of the ways we are blessed to have you. I am grateful that you will get to spend your next year with us with the pressure of asylum-seeking lifted from your shoulders.
So, I am so happy for you. Congratulations! Much love to you!
How unsurprising that the military under the Bush Administration will giddily oppose gay marriage, but will support the use of anal rape against prisoners. They support “sodomy” - but only when it’s violent.
Starting with Nancy Pelosi’s infamous “Impeachment is off the table” declaration, the Democratic majority in Congress, with the exception of a scant few courageous heroes like Dennis Kucinich, have refused to begin impeachment hearings against the most corrupt, anti-democratic, secretive, and destructive Administration in US history. Presumably, this decision to avoid doing their sworn duty to defend the Construction against attack is a strategic decision, based on some hypothetical political advantage proposed by a Party strategist. Likely this is the same Democratic Party strategist who told war hero John Kerry to refuse to flaunt his purple hearts in debates with AWOL coward GW Bush, thus negating Kerry’s enormous advantage.
The failure of Congressional Democrats to react to repeated insults and abuses by the present Administration is a colossal error that is certain to backfire. Americans will conclude, justifiably, that Democrats do not have the moral courage to defend the US Constitution from vicious, unrelenting, conscious, and premeditated attacks. This Administration has, by Presidential decree, declared its intention to violate the law and conduct illegal surveillance on US citizens who are accused of no crime. This Supreme Court-appointed “President” rarely signs a bill into law without attaching a “signing statement” which is an explicit assertion that the President refuses to recognize the Constitutionally mandated authority of Congress to enact legislation. This Administration has declared itself exempt from International Law and the Geneva Convention, and has authorized the use of torture. This Administration has decreed that the President is above the Law, a supreme dictator, and that everything he does is therefore legal. This Administration has refused to provide documents requested by Congressional subpoenas, and instead has destroyed evidence of their crimes. The Attorney General has openly lied to Congress about his firing of US Prosecutors who refused to obey Administration demands to selectively indict Democrats and exempt Republicans from prosecution. By a recent Presidential decree, Bush declared that at his own discretion, he can seize the property of any US citizen whom he considers to oppose his policies in Iraq. A large majority of Americans have stated that they support the impeachment of Bush if it is proven that he lied about the reasons for starting the Iraq War, which we know now that he and Cheney did repeatedly. Why does Congress refuse to do their job? If all of these outrageous high crimes and misdemeanors do not constitute grounds for impeachment, then what would? If Congress refuses to protect the American citizens from these egregious attacks, then who can we turn to?
If a police officer witnesses a brutal murder, he/she does not have the option of deciding to ignore it because it is inconvenient to arrest the murderer, possibly because the work shift is nearly over and paperwork might be involved. No, the police officer must arrest the murderer - there is no option but to do the job. A Democratic Congress was elected because the American Public is fed up with the unrelenting abuse of power by this Administration. Even a prominent Republican (Paul Craig Roberts, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration) declared that the systematic attempts by the Bush Administration to assume supreme dictatorial power are precisely the kind of abuses the Founding Fathers had in mind when they created the option of impeachment. In the face of the extraordinary attempts by this Administration to destroy our democratic system of government, why does Congress refuse to do their job? The very fabric of our Nation is being systematically destroyed by a pack of ruthless, brutal despots. Congress alone has the power and authority to restore democracy, but they evidently are too timid to confront the sociopathic criminals who have stolen our Democracy. Martin Luther King stood up to police dogs, but our present Congress is afraid to stand up to Karl Rove and the rest of the neocon media attack dogs.
