Random, day-to-day reflections of what it means to live as a member of the human race on a planet which has become as vulnerable as a human body. Cecile Pineda's books are available from Independent Publishers Group.
Sunday, February 28, 2016
NO CATHARSIS: MICHAEL MOORE’S TRAGIMENTARY
Scheduled appearances
March 8 at 4 PM. International Women’s Day. Omega Salvage, 2403
San Pablo between Channing & Dwight in Berkeley.
I will be sharing reflections about women’s role “saving the
world.” connected with Apology to a
Whale: Words to Mend a World.
April 5 at 7 PM. City of Berkeley Temporary Council Chambers, 1222 University Ave. . The City
of Berkeley will honor Cecile Pineda for a life-time achievement as a literary artist.
April 7 at 3:30 PM
Doubletree Hilton, Denver Colorado: NACCs panel
Colonialism, Environmental Justice, Land
Politics within Chicana/o Studies
discusses Apology to a Whale: Words to Mend a World.
April 20 at 5:30 PM Ethnic
Studies Library, 30 Stephens Hall, UC
Berkeley
"WHERE TO INVADE NEXT"
With “Where to Invade Next” Michael Moore may have created a
new form, the tragimentary. From the point of view of an outsider, viewing this film struck
me as deeply tragic. Coming from a world where there seems to be perpetual
sunshine, where the best learning curve can be found where kids start out with
fewer school hours per day, and no homework but score #1 of the world best
educated children, (Finland—the US ranks 29th); where university is
free, with 100 different programs conducted in English, (Ljubljana, Slovenia);
where bankers whose hands are caught reaching into the till are sentenced to 21
years (because that’s the maximum sentence in Iceland); where prisoners are
free to govern themselves as a preparation for civic participation on release
(Norway); where women’s health is constitutionally guaranteed (Tunisia); and
where workers enjoy 5 months paid family leave and at least 6 weeks annual vacation
(Italy), viewing clips of a darkened place where the lights have gone out for
decades, where prisoners are beaten and gang raped, where men are hanged and
set on fire while crowds rejoice, where bank robbers run the banks, and where
people are too “bought” to protest what is done to them, the only possible
reaction is pity and terror. And that is the definition of what tragedy is
supposed to evoke.
With the demise of George Carlin, Michael Moore has
inherited the mantle of America’s last jester, but unlike the angry clown
Carlin was, Moore is the tragic clown, the fat, ungainly, unkempt flatfooted
fellow who braves the wind and the waves to bring the tattered American frag to
where it is least needed: countries which are getting it right and making it
work. But, as he makes clear, he’s coming to invade, and like good invasions
everywhere, to steal that country’s resources (in this case their good ideas)
and bring their policies back home.
And where did the ideas come from in this sunny world that
gets it right? Ah, that may be the most tragic truth of all: from the country
which now has more people of color incarcerated in the new plantation where
they work for corporations like Victoria Secret, for as little as 21 cents an
hour.
Most of the spokespersons in this one-man “invasion” are
women. We watch their faces, we watch them fight back tears. Vigdís
Finnbogadóttir, Iceland’s first woman president, states without qualification
that if the world can be saved at all, it will be women saving it. One
Icelandic woman CEO stares into the camera. She measures her words carefully
before she speaks. We notice her visibly swallowing, we see the deep distress
in her eyes. Her observation however is not measured. It explodes out of her: “I
would never want to live in America. I would never want to live where people don’t
care about their neighbors. I couldn’t live in a place where the sense of neighborliness
is gone.”
We come to see Michael Moore because we know he will make us laugh. And he does at first: his vision of the joint chiefs sitting around the war room, is pure theater, the costumes, the mise en scene, the marks of the State’s heavy hand. All are clutching their crotches. It is a no-fly zone but soon our laughter catches in our throats as the self-portrait is held up to our denying faces. We are number one at home and abroad: in cruelty and unusual punishments. And Michael Moore suggests it’s time to notice.
Sunday, February 21, 2016
I CAN’T BREATHE
 |
| Allegory of Good and Bad Government by Ambrogio Lorenzetti |
 |
| Peace |
Is domestic United States in 2016 a war zone as that
expression is normally understood?
Pondering this question, I was reminded from my college days
of the Allegory of Good and Bad Government painted in the Council Chambers of
the Town Hall of the City of Siena in Italy by Ambrogio Lorenzetti, in the year
1338-1339. Three room-sized frescoes depict not only the allegory of good
Government, but very methodically address the Effects of Bad Government in the
City; the Effects of Bad government in the Country; and the Effects of Good
Government in the City and the Effects of Good Government in the Country. They
were commissioned by the townspeople of Siena in order to remind the town
council to exercise the responsibility of their office by promoting the
wellbeing not only of its citizens, but of the entire environment, cultural,
social, political, and agricultural, obeying the natural order of the seasons
in alignment with the planets.
 |
| Justice |
The buzz is bad
I am reminded as well of the 1980 documentary film “From Mao to Mozart” where Isaac Stern is seen concertizing with musicians all over China. He encounters performers ranging from 5 years of age through old age. Midway through the age groups, we actually hear a band-in-time in which musicians display even more amazing technical pyrotechnics, but whose musicality (i.e. emotional range of expression) is entirely absent. Even before the film announces what we are meant to hear, it becomes clear that this band of time coincides with the period of Chinese history we call the Cultural Revolution.
The important “take-away” here is that the manifestations of
bad government include the actual sound
track of a society. Recently social scientists have reported that a whole
cohort of white men exists in the age range of 40-50 years, people who have not
attended college, who are killing themselves variously by tobacco, drink, or suicide. And we have a whole
band of murdered children. As more men are released from prison, the numbers of women incarcerated has gone up. The growing intensity of anti-abortion regulation by state legislatures has increased exponentially starting
in 2005 and peaking in 2011. Eventually social scientists will report on the
increase of domestic violence in and outside the home as it affects its most defenseless
victims: women, children and—yes—animals.
These are the significant barometers of a society which has
lost its way. And these symptoms indicate what happens to people in an economic
war zone, where the downward pressures on a society are such that its most
marginalized people cry out in the words of Eric Gardner, who to survive
economically was trying to sell loose cigarettes on the streets of Staten
Island: “I Can’t Breathe.”
 |
Tyrrany |
Monday, February 8, 2016
GETTING IT RIGHT- MAKING IT WORK
Cecile Pineda will be talking about the Apology to a Whale: Words to Mend a World project and signing books during the month of February:
SCHEDULE OF FEBRUARY APPEARANCES
PLEASE NOTE CANCELATION BELOW
February 13 - PEN WEST at 3 PM
home of
Margret Schaefer
1 Quail Avenue, Berkeley
RSVP & directions:
NOTE:
space is limited. Call for
reservations
reservations
February 25 – Ethnic Studies
Postponed till further notice
because of staffing problems at the library.
February 1 – S.F. Occupy Forum at
6 PM
Global Exchange
2017 Mission St. at 16th Street 2nd floor
San Francisco
A link to this talk will be
posted on this newsletter as soon as it becomes available thanks to a team of
WILPF-Disarm/End Wars women who joined S.F. Occupy Forum. The WILPF team is on a West Coast speaking tour ranging
from Southern California to Bremerton, WA, home of the trident submarine, where
a great part of the US arsenal is stored.
GETTING IT RIGHT- MAKING IT WORK
Apology to a Whale:
Words to Mend a World makes the case that the sameold sameold doesn’t work.
“Civilization” has resorted to it repeatedly, in disregard of Einstein’s dictum
that repeating the same behavior hoping to achieve different results is a form
of dementia, but unfortunately there’s no locked facility big enough to hold 7.4
billions of us and counting.
Western European civilization
is the technologically dominant civilization or our time. Global technological
culture is its ultimate articulation. All seven billions of us are now in
thrall to its totalitarianism and technology. Its overarching power
arrangements—economic, geopolitical, and technological—are destroying our planet.
The good news is that pockets
exist in the world, small enclaves where new ways of thinking are being
implemented. None of them are entirely radical because none are entirely free of the taint of the old culture. This
week, a number of such projects modeling significant change have caught my eye.
•A landmark settlement in the federal
class action Ashker v. Governor of California will effectively end indeterminate, long-term
solitary confinement in all California state prisons.
•Obama announced a
ban on solitary confinement for juveniles in federal prison.
As such, neither development
signifies a radical re-thinking of incarceration itself. Both initiatives still
carry the taint of old ways of thinking.
Michael Moore talks about
Norway’s radical approach to incarceration here at 20:29.
•In response to growing
popular outrage against the militarization of law enforcement, exemplified by
police lynchings of people of color, and police violence accompanying arrest of
demonstrators practicing civil disobedience, some police forces are rethinking use of force practices.
•Last
year for the first time, New York City allocated a line item in its budget to develop
worker-owned cooperatives. And the number of worker cooperatives in the city has tripled since
2014. Foundation grants have been made available to owners who may be thinking
of transforming entrepreneurial businesses into such cooperatives.
•Movement Rights, a new
organization, formed just over a year ago which focuses on the Rights of Mother
Earth, is working with indigenous people in California and nationwide in efforts
to ban fracking, oil trains, and other unnatural disasters, modeled on a study
of Cultural Survival’s New Zealand Project among the Moari, “I am the River,
the River is Me, giving the rights of a person to the Whanganai River.
•As
of now the EPA joins the Surgeon General’s early warning system, a reflection that
health of the body is metaphor for health of the planet. Modeled on gas pump
labels in some provinces of Canada, and in response to the threat of climate
change, the San Francisco City Attorney’s office drafted a proposed label to be
displayed on city gas pumps. But when we give up driving altogether for public
transportation and walking, we’ll be lots farther along the road to stemming
some of global warming’s impacts.
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