Resources for October 20, 2017

Armstrong, Scott, Randy Goodman and Jeremy Scahill. "'The Most Important Journalist You’ve Never Heard Of': Remembering William Worthy (1921-2014)." Democracy Now (May 19, 2014)
["We spend the hour remembering the pioneering journalist William Worthy, who died earlier this month at the age of 92. During the height of the Cold War, Worthy defied the U.S. government by reporting from the Soviet Union, Cuba, China, Iran, North Vietnam and Algeria. He also worked closely with many African-American leaders, including A. Philip Randolph and Malcolm X. In the late 1950s, the State Department refused to renew his passport after he returned from a reporting trip into China. Despite not having a passport, Worthy traveled to Cuba in 1961 — two years after the Cuban revolution — and interviewed Fidel Castro. He was arrested upon returning to the United States — not for traveling to Cuba but for entering the United States illegally — an American citizen without a passport. The ordeal became the subject of Phil Ochs’ song, “The Ballad of William Worthy.” In 1981, Worthy traveled to Iran, two years after the revolution ousted the U.S.-backed Shah, resulting in a series of blockbuster exposés about U.S. actions in Iran. “For this generation of younger journalists who are coming of age in the era of the Edward Snowden documents, WikiLeaks, of the government surveillance on the metadata of journalists and many millions of people in this country and around the world, I would say that William Worthy is the single most important journalist that they’ve never heard of,” said investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill, who considered Worthy a mentor. “If Bill Worthy was a white journalist, and not been an African-American journalist, he would be much better known than he is right now.” We air excerpts of our 1998 interview with Worthy and speak to Scahill, former Washington Post reporter Scott Armstrong, and Randy Goodman, a photojournalist who worked and traveled with Worthy throughout the 1980s."]

Belzile, Becky. "A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night and Emotional Connection." Pop Culture Case Study (June 22, 2017) ["We talk about female directors, horror movies, vampires, male and female gaze..."]

Brenner, Rebecca. "How American Racism Shaped Nazism." Black Perspectives (October 5, 2017)

Cargill, Robert C. and Brian Salisbury. "Spaceballs." Junkfood Cinema (June 22, 2017)

Davis-Cohen, Simon. "Fossil Fuel Misinformation Helps Quash Community Effort to Ban Fracking in Youngstown, Ohio." Desmog (October 18, 2017) [Lambert Strether at Naked Capitalism comments: "In Ohio, initiatives can now be removed from the ballot, either by local boards of elections or the Secretary of State, even if they gather the required number of signatures. Fighting resource-extraction projects like fracking out in the colonies through the permitting and regulatory process is already difficult, and democracy-stifling laws like this just make matters worse (although easier for the comprador class in local power structures). This is exceptionally nasty, and the fossil fuel industry used their new tool to good advantage."]

Ellsberg, Daniel. "Edward Snowden: saving us from the United Stasi of America." The Guardian (June 10, 2013) [When lamenting the rise and reign of Trump try not to operate in an ahistorical vacuum that pretends that Trump came from nowhere and is an anomaly in the American government/system. I was reminded of this as I read Daniel Ellsberg's (leaker of the Pentagon Papers) 2013 editorial on/about Edward Snowden (leaker of materials detailing the NSA's spying on citizens at home and abroad).]

Kiang, Jessica. "Xavier Dolan’s F’d-Up, Profane And Amazingly Alive Mommy." IndieWire (March 21, 2014)

Koski, Genvieve, et al. "Blade Runner 2049 (2017) / Blade Runner (1982), Part 1." The Next Picture Show #98 (October 17, 2017)

---. "Blade Runner 2049 (2017) / Blade Runner (1982), Part 2." The Next Picture Show #99 (October 19, 2017)

Rodriguez, Rocky. "Can Theatre Change Your Mind?" Open Democracy (October 17, 2017) [A powerful piece on the possibilities of theater, and all of the arts, to help us recognize our confirmation biases and to transform our lives - highly recommended, please share with performance creatives and the supporters of their efforts.  What would it be like if we were able to work to truly make performances/art like this?:  "The highest form of art is the creation of community—worker-to-worker, person-to-person, friend to friend. Real learning—the only kind that counters bias—happens only when people are open with each-other in a trusted environment, where they can develop authentic relationships."]