FRANK 31: Love Revolution by Frank151

20 Love Love Love 22 Give Peace A Sign 28 The Weight Of The World 36 Love To Read 40 A Love Supreme 46 In The Name Of Love 54 Be Kind To Children 58 How Can We Talk About Love? 64 Forgotten Wars

74 Love Revolutionaries 86 Fist Fight 90 The Earthâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Best Defense 100 Sweet Home New Orleans 108 Eleuthera 116 The Scent Of Love 120 Projecting Love 126 Film & Community Re-envisioned 132 Time For A Love Revolution

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“If you dance, dance love. If you paint, paint love. If you speak, speak love. Got the vibe?”

Words Lenny Kravitz Photo David Hindley There’s never been a greater need for change in our world. With a strained environment, social and political unrest, and economic hardships, we are constantly being bombarded with bad news, bad vibes, and bad examples. Now is the time to stand up for our lives. It is time for a movement to arise and amend the status quo.  The revolution must start from within.  We must love our neighbors and ourselves.  Love must come first in all that we do.  When you let love rule only positivity can be the outcome. IT IS TIME FOR A LOVE REVOLUTION!

Gerald Holtom was a conscientious objector during WWII. He graduated from the Royal College of Arts and became a professional designer and artist. He was approached by the organization backing the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) in Britain in 1958, to create a symbol that would be used at an anti-nuclear protest rally.

“I was in despair,” Holtom is quoted as saying. “Deep despair. I drew myself: the representative of an individual in despair, with hands palm outstretched outwards and downwards in the manner of Goya’s peasant before the firing squad. I formalized the drawing into a line and put a circle around it.” Holtom’s design would be placed on five hundred cardboard posters used during the first major anti-nuclear march. The march was from Aldermaston, where British nuclear weapons were and still are manufactured, to London. The symbol would almost at once cross the Atlantic. A representative of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. attended the anti-nuclear protest rally and brought the symbol of protest Holtom had designed back to the United States. Martin Luther King, Jr. used the symbol as part of his civil rights marches throughout the nation. Soon it would appear on anti-Vietnam posters. Soldiers back from the war splashed the symbol on their helmets; flowerchildren and hippies adorned themselves

with the symbol; musicians, artists and the 60s counterculture embraced the symbol as their own. Easier to draw than Picasso’s peace dove, the symbol became known, first in the US and then around the world, as the peace symbol. Eric Austin of Kensington CND made the first badges using the peace symbol. He made the badges out of white clay and painted the peace sign in black. The badges were distributed with a note explaining that in the event of nuclear war, the fired pottery badges would be among the few human artifacts to withstand the nuclear inferno. Although the symbol was specifically designed for the CND it has never been copyrighted. A symbol of freedom, the peace sign is free for all to use. From the Berlin Wall to the streets of South Africa, on the graves of victims of military dictators from the Greek Colonels to the Argentinian Junta, the peace symbol crosses all party lines and will endure for all time.

Allen Ginsberg & His Love Buzz Words David Greenberg In 1954 a twenty-eight-year-old Allen Ginsberg wrote a little poem in his notebook while he was chilling in San José. Actually, it started off as just some open and honest thoughts on life. He was a little high on weed, I believe, but straight enough to be insightful and open-hearted. A few days later, remembering the advice of his mentor William Carlos Williams, Allen re-arranged his sentences into a formal poetic structure. After a little bit of what his friend poet, Gregory Corso, called “tailoring,” Allen was finished. He titled his work “SONG” and it is perhaps his first truly great short poem. It begins:

The weight of the world is love. Under the burden of solitude, under the burden of dissatisfaction the weight, the weight we carry is love. 29

Photo courtesy of David Greenberg About twelve years later, singer-songwriter Mick Jagger would echo these lines, only a little cooler and with a back beat: “I can’t get no / satisfaction.” But it was Allen Ginsberg who kicked open the doors of perception enough so people like Mick and Keith Richards or John Lennon and Paul McCartney—as well as Bob Dylan, of course—could walk into a slightly altered universal cultural space and finally write about real feelings instead of just bubblegum pop sentiments. Allen Ginsberg, along with his spiritual brothers Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs and Gregory Corso, helped create a Love Revolution in America that spread throughout the entire

world. The press called it the Beat Generation, but I like to think of it more as a writers’ crew, much the same as the Wu Tang Clan of my youth in the 1990s. These guys, the Beats, way back in the 1950s, encouraged each other to venture into the deep, dark primordial zones of consciousness and mad tripped out visionary states— as Kerouac quoted his pal Allen in The Subterraneans: “Smart went crazy.” In 1989 I was lucky enough to meet Allen Ginsberg on the Bowery at a small club called the Continental Divide. Over the years, while I was still in school, however, I was a parttime guest at Casa Ginsberg at 437 East 12th Street in New York City’s

East Village. It was a heady time to be nineteen and then twenty-something. I learned a great deal about life, to say the least—and about growing old. The most amazing thing about Allen, I found, was his indefatigable faith in candor. By 1993, Allen was kind enough to allow me to live full-time in a small room in his apartment, saving me from post-collegiate homelessness. Eventually I got my own place on Sixth Street between First and Avenue A in late 1994; but Ginsberbg was cool with me slowly finding my way out his door. He was my first official guest in my first official NYC crib. He brought with him a whole refrigerator’s worth of food as a house warming gift. As singer-songwriter Marianne Faithfull said to me and many others: “Allen was everybody’s old Jewish Grandmother.” With a cheery enthusiasm, Allen tried to stay as in touch with socalled youth culture as best he could. He used to call me his “rock-nroll informant.” I introduced him to guitarist and poet Lee Ranaldo from Sonic Youth. I played him the Beastie Boys’ Check Your Head the day it came out. I told him about how important The Smiths were to me when I was sixteen, clumsy and shy. I tried to explain Method Man to him once. To his credit, Allen was always sincerely curious. I remember him crying the night I played him the Beck album One Foot In the Grave. “Wow,” he said, “Beck knows the Blues.” I told him that Beck’s grandfather was Al Hansen, the Fluxus artist. Not only did Allen know him pretty well, but one of Al’s Hersey collages was actually

hanging on the wall next to his little walk-in library. Allen also wept when he heard Kurt Cobain cover Leadbelly for his MTV Unplugged session. I played the CD for him while we sat in his kitchen. Cobain was dead only a few days. Allen drew a picture of a sweaty dragon for me in a copy of his latest book. We discussed Cobain and Ma Rainey and Leadbelly—and the general sadness and suffering in the universe. A few months before his suicide, Kurt had visited William S. Burroughs in Kansas. William was devastated by the news of the young man’s demise. He called Allen at home and I just happened to be there that night. Allen was in the bathroom so I picked up the phone. Although I didn’t know William all that well (I only spent a few days with him in Kansas around New Year 1993 and then had dinner with him in NYC), he often talked with me on the phone over the years since I had first started spending increasingly more and more time at Allen’s crib. Burroughs confided in me that Kurt seemed to be in so much pain when he had visited him in Lawrence, Kansas. Whether psychic or physical, William was rather empathetic with his young admirer’s wounded soul. “I feel just awful about it,” he told me— and then asked me to put Allen on the phone. The two life-long friends commiserated for about an hour. They were survivors, at heart, but saw their fair share of poetic casualties over the decades for sure. For all his hardboiled persona and junky rep, I found

it fitting that the last thing William Burroughs ever wrote was: “Love? What is it? Most natural painkiller what there is. LOVE.” Walt Whitman loved America and believed in what it could be. He saw love, openness and candor as a way to cut through the bullshit paranoia that American politicians muddied themselves in. He lived through the greatest crisis in U.S. history: the Civil War. Yet he never faltered, at least in his verse, in his faith in a nation built on love. Whitman’s vision for America inspired Allen Ginsberg—but Allen was a bit more pragmatic than dear old Walt. Guided by his serious study of Tibetan Buddhism, Ginsberg took the Bodhisattva Vow in the 1970s; basically, he promised to try and help enlighten all mankind. This was no joke. An impossible task, yes, but Allen took to it with gusto and compassion—and with his odd sense of humor. Allen could be very funny. Gregory Corso once told me: “Jews have humor, man; they just don’t have a sense of humor.” It took me years to figure that one out. But Gregory never doubted Allen’s sincerity: especially when it came to love. As Allen Ginsberg lay dying in the early hours of April 5, 1997, Gregory Corso asked me what to do: the classic should I stay or should I go question. I

told him it was up to him. He downed half a bottle of Wild Turkey and left. “Call me if anything happens,” he instructed me. At around 2:30 A.M. Allen slipped into oblivion. After hugging my friends Peter Hale and Oliver Ray (along with Oliver’s then companion Patti Smith), I went to the kitchen in Allen’s loft and called Gregory—Allen’s best friend. “I knew something was happening. I just woke up before you called,” Gregory explained. Allen approached his own death with a surprising sense of wonder and enthusiasm. As Gregory said to me: “He didn’t teach me much how to live, but he sure taught me how to die—Allen slipped through death like a hot knife through a stick of butter.” Surrounded by some of his former lovers, dear friends and family, Allen Ginsberg certainly did have a beautiful death. The last thing he told me was: “I feel exhilarated.” And his actual last words to me were quite simple: “I love you.” After all, as Allen put it so eloquently: THE WEIGHT OF THE WORLD IS LOVE.

The Classics never grow old. Profound, moving and monumental in scope and significance, these novels will expand your awareness of the complexities of love and relationships, politics and the universal messages about love that connect every citizen of the world.

Words EJS Of all the great tenor saxophone giants of Jazz, John Coltrane stands as a hero, a legend, and patron saint of the modern generation. His album A Love Supreme symbolizes a silent but undeniable claim for the Black American Revolution. Historically, John Coltrane stepped out into the spotlight of Jazz music when he joined The Miles Davis Quintet in 1955. Miles Davis is truly one of the few artists in history to transform so many styles across multiple decades and eras. From Be-Bop to Cool, to Modern, to Hard Bop, Free, Rock, Funk, on into Hip Hop, Miles was there and doing it better than the rest. It was Miles who also brought me closer to John Coltrane.

In 1988, my father called to say he had extra tickets to see Miles Davis at the Studio Museum of Harlem. Given the size of the museum I knew just how intimate this performance would be. I hopped the train from Providence and high-tailed it uptown to 125th Street only then to find that the word intimate would be an understatement. Instead of a stage, there were two chairs, a table, and a tabletop microphone. Once seated in the audience, facing this odd set-up, without any introductions necessary, in walked the legendary Miles Davis, with his autobiographer, Quincy Troupe. Quincy then explained that Miles’ history was so rich, and the stories so incredible, that he needed an audience to hear them first hand. Miles’ stories were amazing. He recounted from the early days of BeBop under the wing of Charlie “Yard Bird” Parker, and the birth of “Cool”, but when he came to his years with John Coltrane, those particular tales really struck a chord with me. One jocular story seemed to summarize the legend of Coltrane. Miles proceeded to explain, in the raspiest of raspy and coolest of cool tone, how he noticed that Coltrane loved to eat bananas. When he asked, “Trane, why you always eatin’ bananas?” John responded, “Gorillas eat them, and they strong as a motherfucker.” This is John Coltrane, strong as a motherfucker. He had to be strong. Playing the music that he played and as well as he played it, all the while suffering ignorant and vitriolic racism of America throughout the 40s, 50s and 60s. It was an incredibly powerful strength that set John Coltrane apart from the rest of the pack. So much so, that most Jazz heads don’t appreciate the beautifully sublime approach to his

sound, even in the later free exploration and cacophonic phases found in such records as The Avant-Garde, Sun Ship, and Interstellar Space, his playing maintained a purity that few will ever match. Still, many Jazz aficionados look to John Coltrane’s years with Miles as his most impressive, if only as a master soloist. In fact, one of my favorite tenor sax solos of all time is Trane’s ferocious rip through an innocuous pop tune once sung by Bing Crosby called “Sweet Sue Just You”. The Miles Davis Quintet reduces the tune to a clean example of modal exploration. Trane’s attack on the piece is scorching, evidence of a virtuoso unparalleled at the time. In one point of the solo, Trane releases his mouthpiece to emit a guttural “Hunh!” that says, “Damn, I’ve got to keep it moving”. Yet it’s Coltrane’s later work as a composer and bandleader that remains some of the most important music of all time. In December of 1964, in Englewood Cliffs, NJ, John Coltrane recorded the seminal album, A Love Supreme. While it would be a full five years later in 1970 for the record to reach Gold status, by all musical standards of measure this album is widely considered a masterpiece. The musicians with Coltrane at the time of the recording were McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison, and Elvin Jones. As a group they are largely regarded as the most talented quartet ever assembled in the history of Jazz music. From a revolutionary standpoint, A Love Supreme was released in the midst of The Civil Rights revolution. In 1963 JFK had been assassinated. Medgar Evers was also murdered that year. In 1964 LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act. Then in 1965 Malcolm X was assas-

sinated and the Watts Riots broke out. But Jazz music was never a stranger to the voice for change and revolution in the Black American community. In 1929 Louis Armstrong dropped Black & Blue. In 1939 Billie Holiday recorded Strange Fruit. In the late 50s Charles Mingus wrote and recorded The Fables of Faubus. (Both “Strange Fruit” and “Faubus” were banned from radio air-play in the United States.) Sadly, the vast majority of the world’s

population doesn’t really care about Jazz music now. Few care about its history, legacy, or impact on modern culture. Even as a truly original American art form, the Jazz legacy has summarily fallen into the bottomless vat of historical amnesia and ignorance. It will be curious to see how Hip Hop survives the same fate years from now, though it apparently is well on its way into oblivion as the legends and pioneers of the game struggle to find and maintain their influential status,

deserving of respect and recognition by the next generation of Americans. The way I see it, A Love Supreme is an anchor in a storm of violence and despair. An album that transcends time and space that to this day provides a meditative solace to the initiated. In four parts, Acknowledgment, Resolution, Pursuance, and Psalm, John Coltrane dedicated the album as a humble offering to God and directs the audience with a letter that begins, “Dear Listener, ALL PRAISE BE TO GOD TO WHOM ALL PRAISE IS DUE.” He writes of how in the year 1957 he experienced a spiritual awakening which lead him to a “richer, fuller, more productive life.” Ten years later

in July of 1967, just as the summer of love was taking flight, John Coltrane would take flight into the afterlife, leaving behind an incredible catalog of music and an indelible legacy to study, revere, ponder, and enjoy. Not one to proselytize that God is for everyone or an absolute concept of God must be elevated over another, my philosophy is secular, people should be free to practice their faith and beliefs as they choose. But love is essential to our existence and there will always be at least one time in everyone’s life when we need A Love Supreme.

Words Banks Fordham Love has motivated many artists and architects throughout time. Here are a few examples of great world architecture and sculpture inspired by love. Love Park in Philadelphia, PA, haven of skateboarders the world over, was named after the famous LOVE sculpture by artist Robert Indiana. The skateboarders have been banned, but LOVE remains! Robert Indiana created the LOVE sculpture as part of his series of “sculptural poems”. The Taj Mahal, otherwise known as the “elegy in marble”, was built by griefstricken Shah Jahan after the death of his beloved wife, Queen Mumtaz Mahal. Built in Agra, India, during the 1600s, the Taj is the world’s most stunning mausoleum and monument of enduring love. Devoted to Queen Mahal until the very end, Shah Jahan was buried alongside her in the Taj Mahal for all eternity. Coral Castle, located in Miami, Florida, was built by Latvian native, Edward Leedskalnin, in the early part of the 20th century. Agnes, the love of Edward’s life, left him the day before they were to be married. Edward spent the greater part of his life building a castle monument out of coral as a testimony to his lost love. Edward’s love for Agnes went unrequited until the day he died. Star-crossed lovers Romeo and Juliet are forever immortalized in bronze in New York City’s Central Park. Romeo and Juliet is considered an iconic love story, a tale of tragic, thwarted love that belongs to a literary tradition going as far back as the Ancient Greeks. World-renowned sculpture and native New Yorker, Milton Hebald created the sculpture for the Delacorte Theater where most of the Shakespeare plays are performed in New York City.

The Taj Mahal in Agra, India

Coral Castle, located in Miami, Florida

Romeo and Juliet in Bronze, New York

And The World Will Change Words Timothy Nicely The Hippies and their Summer Of Love in the 1960s eventually lost to Disco. But regardless of this deviation from the Love Revolution, the mind still contains love circuits. The more we understand what thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s all about, the kinder we become.

The information age has given humanity a step up. Older conservative generations were not raised with the same content. Their lives were relatively simple compared to what’s happening now. It’s not their fault they were born too early. But it’s also not the fault of younger generations who have had the privilege of knowledge never before examined on such a grand scale. Youth are the keepers of this Love Revolution that is impossible to stop. No force is greater than love. Examining the bottom line, the agonies of humanity are often caused by cruel individuals in powerful positions. Leaders of countries who torture and murder their own people, are the result of extreme child abuse. By the time they were two years old, these emotionally hardened adults were “damaged” with memory impressions of brutal experiences stuck in their subconscious. Infamous Dr. Irene Kassorla explained this “garbage can child” syndrome as early as the 1970s in her ground breaking book on child behavior. Over the years, cell memory research has concurred with her work. Young minds are moving faster than ever. This information age has spawned new generations of geniuses. To abuse these potential “superstars” is not the answer to a better world, and verbal abuse can be just as destructive as physical violence. Children need to be cultivated with kindness. Society has become more

sensitive to this, and a large number of new programs have been initiated to protect young people. It’s even cruel to slap a child in the face. This minor humiliation upon a defenseless child contributes to a child’s destructive behavior and low self-esteem. Imagine, if slapping a child in the face is detrimental to their development, how much more horrible it must be for a child who is a victim of greater cruelties. Children who are often the target of abuse and unkindness are in crisis, which contributes to our worldwide state of affairs. Cruel leaders were once these same mistreated children. To stop these brutalities is a matter of communicating ideas and solutions, and then following through to raise the self-esteem of these young victims. As publishers, Baby Books of America, is inspired to search for stories by displaced kids. Their published personal stories and creative fantasies will give them a taste of success and hope for their future. Our bumper sticker campaign is to spread the thought “Be Kind To Children and the World Will Change.” This is all a part of the Love Revolution which young people are more capable of understanding then many of the jaded souls who walk through life in quiet desperation. For more information visit www.babybooksofamerica.com

“I’m fighting for the African people. Instead of picking up a gun, it’s through my music.”

Interview with Femi Kuti by Synapse Photos courtesy of Universal Music France Afrobeat is African music, Nigerian native highlife music, African percussion and vocals, mixed with American Jazz, Funk, Blues and Soul. Fela Kuti was the foremost bearer of the Afrobeat flame, and his son Femi continues the legacy. As his father Fela did, Femi Kuti speaks, through his music, about powerful political and social issues, African poverty and international injustice. He isn’t a fan of the Nigerian government, or the American one. Femi feels the joy of life has been stripped away, due to war, famine and corruption. Collaborating with artists such as The Roots and Mos Def, Femi has been able to bring his music even further than one might have expected. By

playing with some of today’s most sought after musicians, the younger generation is able to experience Femi’s music in a context they can

understand. Clearly, Femi is concerned with giving to our children. He has now given his own son the chance to continue the tradition Femi and his father have carried on by putting him on stage to perform with his band. Femi sees the music as tradition, but doesn’t feel his journey is the same as his father’s. He is his own man, and puts forth his own message and his own music. Frank151: Do you think your father’s message of fighting corruption and giving voice to oppressed people is still having an effect? Femi Kuti: You’ve been talking to me about him—then it must have an effect. His death and his fight were not in vain. F151: What would you like to see happen today in terms of fighting injustice and a revolution based on compassion and love? FK: I would like to see the end of corruption. I would like to see roads, good roads, good schools. I would like to see a good life for the African people. F151: Could you say a few words about the relationship between love and music? FK: That’s a very difficult question because in Africa I’m still trying to find the love Europe and America stole. How can we talk about love with so much injustice, how can we talk about love when you see so many people deprived and so many people raping the resources of Africa to the detriment of Africans? It is easy for me to talk about love, but when you are in pain and you see so much injustice, where is love? How do you think about love when there is so much pain around? And when there

is so much non-chalantness from the rest of the world towards the pain. How do you talk about love when there is a war in Iraq? As we speak right now, thousands of people have lost their lives. Women and children, all those young boys, don’t have a future in this life anymore because they have been caught up in the war and they have lost their hands or their legs or their feeling for life. How do we talk about love when there is so much injustice and we don’t know when the terrorists are going to strike and when we are all vulnerable? We should clearly believe in love and peace. So your question, I would not know how to answer your question, truly, because if I had a partner I love so much, with the pain around me and in the news, it would be very hard to have a very healthy, loving relationship with so much pain around. F151: Do you think there is any way to bring more love to the world, to create more love in the world? FK: You create love by being truthful, that’s love. Don’t forget, love is not just a four-letter word formed by somebody to express abundance. There is no love when there is no truth. So I think we need to be very truthful with each other and very honest. And out of all this truthfulness and honesty and adventures of our lives, no more fights. But first we need to be very truthful about the true meaning of the word—not just talk about love because many people just like to talk, give speeches, be famous. I’m fighting for the African people. Instead of picking up a gun, it’s through my music. It’s time for the world to face the truth with my music, like my father did.

Interview Stefanie Schumacher Photos courtesy of Paul Freedman The killing fields of Rwanda led documentary filmmaker Paul Freedman to Darfur. His latest film, Sand and Sorrow, narrated by actor George Clooney, chronicles the increasing despair and frustration of a people displaced and brutalized by a murderous Sudanese regime. And yet hope and love remain undefeated as various world citizens plea on behalf of the displaced persons of Darfurâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the murdered, raped and maimed. Humble, compassionate and unflinching, Paul Freedman is protesting international indifference to the suffering of the people of Darfur through the medium of documentary film so all the world may bear witness. Frank151: What was it like to be in the killing fields of Rwanda? Paul Freedman: When I went to Rwanda I went ten years after the genocide had happened. I went to cover the ten-year commemoration. It was a very somber, sort of national day of mourning and remembrance. They tried to make it international but unfortunately a lot of the big countries like the United States sent some sort of deputy of the undersecretary of the deputy of the deputy of the something else. But I tried to tell the history of the genocide and how it happened

through people that lived through it and had children killed and also the people who did the killing. I really immersed myself in the whole genocide ten years after the fact. Actually walking through the killing fields was mind blowing because they left a lot of these places untouched because there are genocide deniers in Rwanda like there are Holocaust deniers here. You go to places where you still step on, crunch on a little childâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s jawbone; you still see shoes scattered everywhere, womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s handbags, rib bones. I mean there are places where

just scores and scores of people were massacred and what’s left are their bones. Being your sort of normal American guy who had been editing documentaries with a human rights flair, I suppose I’m a reasonably compassionate being by definition but I was not prepared for immersing myself in that—it really shook me up, it rocked my world. I suppose if I could sum it up, if someone asked, “What happened to you, Paul?” I would say I discovered how ashamed I was of the way I was before in 1994 when this was happening—when I knew it was happening. I didn’t understand it but I knew it was going on, along with most everybody else in this country. The genocide happened so quickly, but it was in the newspaper, there was some broadcast news, and I would read about it and go, “Oh my God, how horrible.” Meanwhile I’m having my coffee at the same table I sit at now and then say “Honey, please pass me the sports page.” So I came out of it with a deep sense of shame at how I was a bystander back then. And when I began really looking into the whole thing and began crafting this Rwanda film for The History Channel, it took on a real sort of indictment of the international community about how we all were bystanders and how this wasn’t the first time we were bystanders. This is what we do when these really huge, huge crimes against humanity happen. They’re so big and the numbers are so unfathomable—6 million dead, 1.8 million dead. 800,000 dead—what’s really scary about it is that what Joseph Stalin said unfortunately rings true, “The death of one man is a tragedy, but the death of a million is a statistic.” That’s the way we see these things.

Not to mention that this was happening in Africa and there’s a general apathy towards Africa—“Oh my God, they’re doing it to themselves,” or “They’re savages.” When you get over there and immerse yourself in the scene you realize that these people just aren’t that far away. The mothers there cradle their baby’s faces the same way mothers do here. They want their kids to go to school. They want them to be safe and well-fed. They weep when they die. There’s just not that much difference. So I came out of that film a different person. While I was wrapping up that film the experts were starting to talk about the same things happening in Darfur. I was thinking, “what the hell’s Darfur?” People I was interviewing about Rwanda—there were whispers out of the Sudan that the same kinds of thing were happening in Darfur and that’s what led me there. I remember telling my wife that I had to go do this film in Darfur and she asked me how I was going to pay for it, which is a pretty good question! History Channel paid for the Rwanda one but there were no takers on this one. I tried. I developed a treatment and a concept and took it around to a bunch of people but no one was interested so I just plowed full speed ahead and we did it on our own with initial support from friends. And twoand-a-half years later it’s finished and unfortunately, still relevant. F151: Do you think it’s possible that there will ever be peace in Darfur? PF: That’s a really difficult question because it’s the Sudan and the problem right now with Sudan is that the government, the regime, is a criminal regime. The president and his ministers and all the others in high places are criminals. They aren’t white-collar

criminals—they’re murderers. And what’s happened in Darfur is symptomatic of what’s happened in the rest of the country over the last 20 years. What’s happening in Southern Sudan today is the slow unraveling of a peace agreement there which could be disastrous for not only the people in the South but for Darfur as well. The government fought the southerners for twenty-one years and two-and-ahalf million people died there; four million were displaced from their homes making Darfur tiny by comparison. But it was cataclysmic what happened down there. And that’s where the term Janjaweed came from. They sent militias, paid these guys to ride in on horseback and camels to burn villages and rape women and kick people out and then they would bomb them, drop refrigerators and car chassis and 55 gallon drums of

gasoline and military bombs. All the same things we’ve seen play out in Darfur for the last three-and-a-half, four years, is exactly what happened in the South for twenty years. So to say there will be peace in Darfur, there could be someday but you have to get the criminals out of Khartoum because if there’s any hint of rebellion, any hint that people are unhappy with their horrible treatment and their marginalization, then they just brutally put them down and it’s just. . . it’s just. . . it’s evil. There will be peace talks starting later this month. They might get a sort of temporary restraining order against everybody, they might lay down their weapons for a while, but this is what happened in May of 2006. They signed a peace deal that fell apart the next day. They are so far away from peace in that country. . .

Unearthed grave

F151: Do you ever wonder why the US doesn’t go to Darfur and establish a government in a place that clearly needs order and infrastructure, rather than invading places we don’t need to be? PF: That’s what many, many people are asking themselves. Why do we go and topple a guy like Saddam Hussein—who was a bad guy, and what he did to his people was brutal and repressive and many hundreds of thousands of people were killed and many more hundreds of thousands were brutalized and terrorized and imprisoned—but it’s small potatoes compared to what’s happened in a place like Sudan. Why go into Iraq? Well, there’s lots of reasons. There’s a similiar dynamic in the Sudan with the oil. But two chief problems make it so complex in dealing with Darfur. First, the Comprehensive Peace Agreement that was signed between the

70 Janjaweed near Zam

southerners and the government of Khartoum, ended the longest civil war in Africa in 2005. George Bush and his administration really rolled up their sleeves, they went into Sudan and made sure they got a peace agreement. And this is a good thing, this is one of the greatest things the Bush Administration has done since they came to power in 2000. So, and I touch on this in the film, they do not want to upset this historical peace agreement because it’s the one good historical legacy people will say about Bush—that he brought peace to Southern Sudan. Second, and I touch on this in the film, is that after 9/11 the Bush Administration really set its sights on a number of countries—North Korea, Iran, Iraq and Sudan—and called these guys state sponsors of terrorism and the Sudanese government really thought the Bush Administration was going to come after them militarily because Osama bin Laden lived in Sudan for a while, there’s a lot of Al Qaeda there— at one point it was called a Holiday Inn for terrorists. They really thought they were going to get invaded or bombed into the Stone Age. So what they did is they started coming forward with a lot of intelligence. Stuff the CIA and the security apparatus in America found very useful. And so every time we started in on them about Darfur, they’d tell us to relax and give us some more information. They became a valuable ally in the war on terror. So it’s very complex. The next president who comes in, Darfur—and tragedies like Darfur—is going to fall probably in the same place that it falls right now on the priority list which is somewhere on page four, column six, down at the bottom of the page.

Stuff like this just isn’t high up on our list. F151: What are some of the other wars that have been forgotten or ignored? PF: There are a number of hotbeds in the world and a couple of them are in Africa. Right now obviously what’s happening in Burma/Myanmar is illustrative of us letting another brutal regime take root and play out repression on the world stage. There’s not a lot we can do. We can sanction them and pressure them but short of sending in the troops, what do we do? But there are things you can do. You can get more active. A lot of grass roots organizations for Darfur here in America are using tools they learned from the fight against apartheid in the 80s. Another place is the focus of my next project—The Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly Zaire. It’s probably the most mind-boggling, massive humanitarian crisis that’s going on right now. Since 1996 when Rwanda went in and attacked Congo—between then and now they’ve probably lost 8 million people. Which has by far and away made it the most brutal conflict for civilians since World War II. And the real heart-wrenching thing about the Congo is that everybody in there is fighting because of the wealth of the Congo. There are so many natural resources in the Congo—there’s diamonds, manganese, cobalt, gold, oil, timber, it’s probably one of the richest countries in the world with probably the poorest people. So everybody’s trying to control these resources and the civilians are the ones that pay the price. So what’s happened in terms of people knowing about what’s going on in the Congo? Not much—it’s not called “the forgotten war” for no reason.

F151: Why is there so much violence in Africa? Is it because they lack infrastructure? They lack facilities other countries have? Why so much brutality in a particular place? Even the governments seem to be excessively brutal. PF: Don’t forget—Africa was not always this way. There was tribal warfare throughout its history. But when the colonial powers came in the 1800s, many of these now sovereign countries were drawn up by a bunch of rich guys in Belgium or Germany sitting around a map. They took pencils and drew lines down the middle of these lands and often these lines would cross the middle of a village and they would say, “on this side of the line you’re going to speak English and on this side of the line you’re going to speak French and we’re going to control you and we’re going to take your resources, we’re not going to educate you, we’re going to enslave you.” And we left them bereft of any type of real help. The Congo is probably the showcase of our misdeeds and our greed and our malevolence and our mismanagement and our lack of forethought because the Congo was made up of hundreds of groups of people who didn’t understand what living under Western rule was like. It’s not the way they lived for centuries. So when you go in and say to all the different tribes, “You’re now one country,” it’s like, “What?” And then on top of that literally enslave these people, have them dig up the gold and dig up the diamonds, put the stuff on railcars and send it out of the country and not give them any money for it, really, really raped them literally and figuratively. We left these people with nothing. They’re hungry, they’re sick and what they do is turn to violence to feed their

families. They need to ultimately take responsibility for pulling the trigger or lifting the machete and swinging it, but we—the international community, the white faces—we are deeply responsible and culpable for what has happened there. Most people in Africa are non-combatants. Most people in Africa have only three things on their minds: where am I going to get my next meal; when I go to sleep tonight, am I going to be safe; and the third thing is, “please, God, don’t let my child get sick.” For 95% of all the people living on that continent, those are the three things going on in their minds. We here in the West and developed countries, those three things never cross our minds. For most of the people in Africa there is this incredible nobility of getting through each day, of loving their family excessively because they might not see them the next day. So there is this incredible beauty in the way that most of the people in Africa live their lives and it’s really humbling to be around a poor African farmer, because he’s a better guy than me! Unfortunately there’s that other 5% of people in Africa who have the weapons and are eager to wreak havoc. But there’s a real beauty in Africa. That’s what happens when people visit Africa, especially people who are journalists and spend long periods of time there: as soon as you fly out of there you’re so relieved to get home, sleep in your own bed and take a shower, but you’re home maybe a-day-and-ahalf, and you’re wondering, “How the fuck am I going to get back there?!” There is something so incredibly magnetic about it, it’s so beautiful and ugly at the same time. It’s like a fire—you can’t not watch it. It’s a remarkable place.

DARFUR

CHAD BORDER REGION CONFIRMED DAMAGED AND DESTROYED VILLAGES

Artwork Cade Beaulieu

William Shakespeare 1564-1616 “Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove. Oh, no! It is an ever fixed mark. . .” Sonnet 116

Jesus Christ 8-2 BC “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.”

John Cleland 1709-1789 In the first “modern” erotic novel, Memoirs of a Women of Pleasure, Cleland was charged many times with corruption for writing about his erotic heroine, Fanny Hill.

Alfred Nobel 1833-1896 Alfred Nobel was a Swedish chemist and the inventor of dynamite. A guilty conscience motivated the chemist to establish the Nobel Prize with funds from his will and testament.

Mahatma Ghandi 1869-1948 Ghandi changed the world through ahimsa, or total non-violence, by resisting tyranny with mass scale civil disobedience.

D.H. Lawrence 1885–1930 The mainstream censored D.H. Lawrence for writing frankly and poetically about issues of sexuality, instinctive behavior, spontaneity, and humanity amidst the confines of modernity and industrialism.

Dr. Bronner 1908-1997 Dr. Bronner’s use of all organic ingredients and his message of peace, unity and empathy, and his concern for the environment, made him an icon of the 60s and 70s counter-revolution. He died peacefully in 1997 after “a life dedicated to God, Mankind and Spaceship Earth.”

Nelson Mandela 1918-present Mandela spent 27 years in a South African prison during his struggle against apartheid. During his imprisonment he was revered as an icon of freedom and equality.

Harry Belafonte 1927-present Born in Harlem, with deep roots in the Carribean, Harry Belafonte continues to sow and harvest the seeds of a lifelong love revolution. Beyond music and acting, the “King of Calypso” has been engaged in social activism since well before the 1963 March on Washington. With Paul Robeson as his mentor, Belafonte continues to fan the flames of the love revolution.

Mother Teresa 1910-1997 For over forty years, Mother Teresa ministered to the sick and poor, the orphaned and dying. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. When she received the prize and was asked what can be done to promote world peace, her answer was, “Go home and love your family.”

Roberto Clemente 1934-1972 Clemente was a Major League Baseball right fielder. He was the first Latin American selected for the Major League. Clemente was born in Puerto Rico and gave baseball supplies and food to his fellow countrymen and to other Latin American countries. He died in a plane crash while en route to deliver aid to earthquake victims in Nicaragua.

Jimi Hendrix 1942-1970 Jimi Hendrix revolutionized Rock and Roll in the late 1960s with his guitar, fiery stage presence and mystical vocals. Merging lead and rhythm guitar duties, Hendrix opened the door to an exploration of the heart of Rock music. His passion and brilliance produced some of the most daring and colorful music of the era. Dalai Lama 1935-present His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, is the head of state and the spiritual leader of Tibet. “The key to creating a better and more peaceful world is the development of love and compassion for others.” Until his dying breath, the Dalai Lama will strive to alleviate misery and suffering in the world.

Barry White 1944-2003 Otherwise known as the “The Sultan of Smooth Soul”, Barry White brought romance to the masses with his deep bass voice and suave demeanor. With record sales in excess of 50 million, his message of passionate romance can still be heard around the world.

Bob Marley 1945-1981 “Catch a Fire” and “Concrete Jungle” are just a few of the revolutionary songs of Bob Marley and the Wailers. Profoundly political and deeply poetic, Marley changed the world with his Rasta-influenced message of peace and justice for all oppressed people.

Steve Bantu Biko 1946-1977 Biko was a noted antiapartheid activist during the 60s and 70s in South Africa. He was a student leader and later created the Black Consciousness Movement. He led the revolution for much of South Africa’s urban population. “The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor,” said Biko, “is the mind of the oppressed.” Steve Bantu Biko died under suspicious circumstances while in police custody.

Martin Luther King 1929-1968 Martin Luther King, Jr. was a spiritual visionary and one of the great orators of our time. Although his platform was primarliy political, King spoke to freedom, accptance, and non-violent revolutionary change that inspired a cultural awakening.

Maya Angelou 1928-present Maya Angelou is a poet, playwright, and author of contemporary literature. An active member of the Civil Rights Movement, she seeks to transcend cultural barriers such as class and race through compassion and truth.

Oprah Winfrey 1954-present Oprah Winfrey is the most popular television talk show host in history. But she is also known for her enormous philanthropic contributions to society and the world. The Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girlsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;South Africa, opened in January, 2007. Girls from impoverished backgrounds who show academic promise are invited to attend the academy. Oprahâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hope is that the girls will go on to become the future leaders of South Africa and lead the way to greater peace and opportunity for all South Africans.

Al Gore 1948-present The 45th vice president of the United States, Al Gore went on to become a prominent environmental activist. Gore authored An Inconvenient Truth and starred in the subsequent film. Al Gore, along with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, won the Nobel Peace Prize for their work to raise awareness about the threats posed by global warming.

The Beatles 1960-1970 The Beatles stormed the world with a distinctive musical style and fashionable look. During the 60s peace and love era, the Beatles evolved spiritually and culturally and went on to become the best-selling musical group of all time.

Ishmael Beah 1980-present At the age of thirteen, Ishmael Beah was forced to fight as a child soldier during a vicious civil war in Sierra Leone. Ishmael and the other child soldiers were made to smoke marijuana, sniff amphetamines and “brown-brown”, a mixture of cocaine and gunpowder. He has said that he “killed too many people to count.” He was rescued by UNICEF and made his way to New York City. He is a graduate of Oberlin College and currently works for the Human Rights Watch Children’s Advisory Committee. He is working to end the abusive practice of conscripting children to fight war. He is the author of Long Way Gone, Memoirs of a Boy Soldier.

Throughout the world, the fist symbol represents resistance and unity. The clenched fist usually appears in full-frontal display and shows all fingers, and is sometimes integrated with the peace sign or a tool.

The human hand has always been used in art. Starting during Neolithic times, the human hand could be found in cave paintings. In modern times the fist has been adopted for its graphic simplicity and political import. Early examples of the use of the fist for political goals can be found as far back as 1917. Numerous political parties would use the symbol, including the French and Soviet Revolutions, the United States Communist Party, and the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. What is common amongst the various parties is the use of the fist as always being part of something—holding a tool or other symbol of resistance, with part of an arm or a human figure, or shown smashing something.

In 1968 the New Left changed the representational style of the fist. The “new” fist stood out as stark and simple. People immediately recognized its meaning of rebellion and resistance. Easy to reproduce graphically, the “new” fist became as popular and accessible as the peace sign. Numerous student demonstrations used the fist as their emblem of defiance. After the 1970s, use of the fist was not as prominent. Occasionally, the fist would appear along with the activities of a new movement or protest march. In 2000, the icon was used for the Women Take Back the Night flyer. Shock Jock Howard Stern used a variation on the icon during his fight to break free from FCC regulation.

Dr. Gina Solomon, a senior scientist at NRDC, prepares a sampling device to test for mold and particulates in the air after Hurricane Katrina.

Words Adam Pasulka Photos courtesy of Natural Resources Defense Council Whatever your stance on global warming may be, few would deny that this “man-made natural disaster” has become an extremely compelling, not to mention ubiquitous topic over the last few years. What was once a way of life only for dedicated conservationists, “green” is now an image that many Fortune 500 companies strive to project. This tremendous interest in environmentalism is also evidenced by the fact that in 2006, millions of moviegoers paid to watch one-time presidential hopeful and climate control enthusiast Al Gore point at line graphs for 100 minutes, a performance that won him an Oscar. The answer to “Why now?” is obvious to an increasing number of people, partly thanks to American media. Apocalyptic documentaries aside, it was the tireless, if not overzealous reporters and camera operators who brought us around-the-clock footage of the destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina, one of the worst natural disasters the United States has seen. Somewhat surprisingly, it was the same media that openly berated the United States government for their blatant failure to aide those in need, stirring up old questions of racism in America. While the issue of race and relief has since quieted, compassion for the environment turned to ecoaction once a connection between

pollution and increasingly turbulent weather was made. Though the world is now abuzz with talk of how to avert another ecological disaster of that caliber, post hurricane cleanup by federal and local governments has somehow been less swift and dedicated than initial relief efforts. But there are people, many not directly affected by Katrina, who have yet to put the plight of those hurt or displaced by the storm behind them. I sat down with one such person, Al Huang of the Natural Resources Defense Council, to learn about NRDC’s efforts to make New Orleans and other affected areas of post Katrina safe from toxic pollution and, working on a much larger

scale, to stop the progression of global warming. As the self-proclaimed “Earth’s Best Defense,” the Natural Resources Defense Council has grown into a 350person organization of lawyers, scientists and advocates since it’s inception in 1970. NRDC works to solve a wide variety of crises, including wildland depletion, oil dependence and toxic pollution. What makes NRDC unlike many other groups is their understanding of how race and class play into many ecological problems. It is the Environmental Justice Project, for which Huang works, that stands up for those who are often hit hardest by environmental calamities. “I think that global warming has been one of those issues that has solidified people’s psyche,” Huang told me as we sat in his office at NRDC’s New York headquarters. “In some ways they say global warming is the über environmental issue because it almost ties into everything.” One key to NRDC’s success is that they understand when it comes to affecting environmental change on a global level, there is greater power, and often times greater knowledge, in numbers. “Building a movement means you’re trying to go for systemic change. And part of that is the community needs to be better off than they were before.” Though this may sound like a standard goal for humanitarian organizations, other agencies’ aims are often much more short sighted. “Let’s say I’m a lawyer. I can come in and represent a community. We might kick ass and fight a power plant and beat it, or we might lose. And then I move on to my next case. Now where is

that community? Are they better off than they were before? And do they still need someone from the outside to fight for them? Part of lawyering for Environmental Justice is that the community drives decisions. They tell you when they want to litigate.” Huang added, “I can’t always speak for a community, nor can anyone. And often times they’re the best experts. You go to the community, they’re the ones who know who’s sick. They’re the ones who know where all the pollution is. And they know more about their immediate area.” Wherever they are working, it is imperative for Huang and NRDC to convince individuals that it is in their best interest to care about their surroundings. “I think the challenge for the survival of the environmental movement is, ‘How do you tie all these issues that are so far away from people to something that is right around you?’ Some environmentalism has to appeal to the ego. The other thing that environmentalism has at its core is your progeny and your future; what you leave to your kids. They say that once you have kids it changes your whole perspective. ‘How is that going to affect my kids?’” If Environmental Justice is concerned with ensuring the safety of future generations in New Orleans, they have their work cut out for them. Shifting focus to the South, Huang rattled off some quick statistics about the amount of pollution that was created or stirred up during Hurricane Katrina. “The coastguard and EPA reported over 575 toxic and hazardous spills caused by the hurricane. Over 8 million gallons of crude oil were spilled. One spill, at Murphy Oil in

Chalmette, was over a million gallons. There were thousands of cars that were abandoned and flooded. Just assume that each one of them had a half of a tank of gas. You add that up with the amount of oil spills there were, it probably exceeded Exxon Valdez. And the Exxon Valdez spill was like 10 million gallons, but that was in a large bay. This is in an urban area; a highly concentrated population of people living there. “There was enough debris generated, 100 million cubic yards of debris, which is enough to fill the Superdome 55 times from floor to ceiling. Or another way, if you like sports analogies, enough to fill 1,000 football fields, three stories high. That’s a lot of trash. And that’s just buildings, trees, garbage. That’s a big challenge.” This challenge was exacerbated by

the enormous amount of pollution that existed in New Orleans prior to Katrina. Huang explained that there is a long history behind why high levels of pollution and severe flooding occurred in mostly low-income, minority communities. “After the hurricane hit, we knew, because of the history of New Orleans, because of the long history of pollution there, that with that much flooding there was going to be toxic pollution everywhere. And we were not wrong. “There’s an 85 mile stretch from New Orleans all the way to Baton Rouge, up the Mississippi river, called Cancer Alley, where 140 oil refineries and petrochemical plants are located. Within a three-mile radius of these plants more than 50% of the people are African American and a significant percentage

live below the federal poverty line. So you ask yourself, ‘How did that happen? There’s a large white population in the state, too. What’s the history behind that?’” Huang explained that the correlation between unhealthy living conditions and race has its roots in the history of slavery in the United States. “What’s really interesting is if you look at the history of Cancer Alley, that area used to be where many of the slave plantations were located. When slavery was abolished, many freed slaves received plots of land that they settled in, and many of these plots ended up directly adjacent to where the plantation they used to work at was located. When these oil and petrochemical companies came in, many actually ended up buying the entire plantation instead of negotiating with each individual landowner. So you’d have these fenceline communities where the plantation was replaced with a refinery.” Though the world’s attention was on New Orleans in the months following the hurricane, even with severe criticism coming down on the government, residents are still finding it difficult to get the support they need to clean up their communities. After flood waters receded, NRDC, in partnership with local residents, had to pressure the Environmental Protection Agency just to sample for pollutants fully and release the results to the public. “The EPA, to their credit, did a fair amount of sampling. So we analyzed EPA’s results, and then went out at the request of the local residents and community groups to do independent sampling. It turned out that our sampling and EPA’s sampling essentially

showed the same results. All over the city we both found high levels of lead, arsenic, and other toxic pollutants in the soil.” Just because the EPA found unsafe amounts of hazardous pollutants did not mean they felt obligated to do anything about them. “The position of the federal government and the local environmental agency is that, ‘You’re right. These numbers are really high, and they exceed our thresholds that would trigger cleanups. But, under our disaster laws, we don’t have to clean up unless you can prove the hurricane caused the contamination,’ which is a very strange nuance. But what they’re saying is, ‘Yeah, the stuff’s bad, that’s always been there. Every city has this stuff there,’ and because the hurricane didn’t cause it, they didn’t think they had the legal obligation to clean it up. So, the result is that the burden’s on the people to prove that the hurricane triggered it and, ‘If you can prove that then we’ll take a closer look.’ What we hear from people down there is, ‘That’s not OK.’” Pushing for aid from local and federal governments, even organizations that are in place to help, has been an uphill battle. Some agencies even worked against cleanup efforts, at times to a comical degree. NRDC has been working in collaboration with Dr. Beverly Wright and the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice to remove and replace the hazardous topsoil that has settled around their homes, parks and schools. It was at one of these instructional meetings where they received a visit from the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality. “The head of the DEQ showed up at one of [Wright’s] soil events and took

the contaminated dirt, ate it, and said, ‘Look! Look! I’m still standing. It’s fine! It’s safe!’ That’s a common industry thing. The thing is, none of this stuff is going to kill you in one exposure. It’s the prolonged exposure over time. So she invited him to come back and eat it every day for the next twenty years. Of course, he declined. She was genius. The press line she came back with was, Head of Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality says ‘Let Them Eat Dirt.’” Whether or not a satisfactory cleanup is eventually achieved, Huang and NRDC will be deeply involved in New Orleans for a long time to come. “There’s two ways to look at rebuilding New Orleans: ‘Let’s just get it up

and running again,’ or ‘Let’s build a city that fits our knowledge of what we know now. Let’s make it the most sustainable and green city.’ Because we know now about energy efficiency, we know about toxics. In many cities we don’t have the opportunity to go and rebuild it in a way that’s sustainable and safe. What we saw post Katrina, at least from the state and the federal government was, ‘We’re not too concerned about environmental stuff.’ What the community made clear to us was that everyone has a right to return. They have a right to return somewhere that’s safe and healthy. That’s really been the mantra.” For more information on the Natural Resources Defense Council visit www.nrdc.org

Benny Jones, Sr., is the snare drummer for the Treme Brass Band, a group renowned in the community for leading Jazz funerals, weddings, and parades. He is renovating his storm-damaged house with help from SHNO partners, and works with students to pass New Orleansâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; brass band tradition to the post-Katrina generation.

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Words Jordan Hirsch Photos courtesy of SHNO More than two years after Hurricane Katrina, many of New Orleansâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; residential neighborhoods remain battered and empty. As the city slowly recovers from the flood, a network of non-profit organizations is working tirelessly to bring home the artists that define New Orleansâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; culture and drive its economy. Sweet Home New Orleans (SHNO) is an umbrella organization that coordinates this effort, and provides housing and relocation assistance for musicians and other tradition bearers. By helping these families return, SHNO helps a unique American culture revitalize the city.

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Herreast Harrison is on a mission to restore community traditions and to enhance the lives of children through literacy initiatives and creative expression. At the Guardians Institute, currently housed in the Harrison home, children learn to sew the elaborate suits of the Mardi Gras Indians. With renovation assistance from SHNO, Mrs. Harrison will continue to perpetuate New Orleansâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; cultural traditions.

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Wardell Quezergue, “The Creole Beethoven”, drew from New Orleans’ street rhythms to write such classics as “Mr. Big Stuff” and “Groove Me”. He lost everything in the flood but was able to move back to town with assistance from the SHNO network. Now he’s leading a new band, bringing his famous sound to flood-damaged areas eager to rebuild. 103

Jessie Lee, better known as Zohar Israel, is a percussionist, visual artist and stilt walker. With SHNO assistance, he is reopening his gallery in New Orleans, stimulating the economic rebound of the Mid-City neighborhood.

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Photos Val Palluck Lenny Kravitz loves the Bahamian island of Eleuthera. He grows his own crops on his farm and is in the process of building a completely “green” house that will in no way adversely impact the delicate ecology on this thin lick of an island. Eleuthera means “free” in Greek and on Eleuthera Lenny can enjoy the freedom of peace of mind that the environment and close-knit community allows him. Nature, and the preservation of it, is critical to maintaining a balanced and peaceful mindset for all mankind. Lenny’s “all green” house will contribute to the growing awareness of environmental preservation that is reaching global proportions. Love of nature and the revolution of respect for its delicate balance and preservation keeps Lenny down to earth.

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Words Niki Robinson Photo Andy Benudiz The term â&#x20AC;&#x153;Pheromoneâ&#x20AC;? was introduced by Peter Karlson and Martin Lusher in 1959, based on the Greek Pherein (to transport) and Hormon (to stimulate). Pheromones are naturally occurring chemicals that send out subconscious scent signals to the opposite sex that trigger a very powerful sexual arousal response. Animals also emit pheromones during times of mating.

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Aggregation pheromones Produced by both sexes, these pheromones attract individuals of both sexes. Releaser pheromones These are powerful attractant molecules that some organisms may use to attract mates. Primer pheromones These pheromones trigger developmental change. There are alarm pheromones, food pheromones, sex pheromones and many others that affect behavior and physiology. Their use among insects has been particularly well documented, although many vertebrates and plants also communicate using pheromones. In mammals and reptiles, pheromones may be detected by the Vomeronasal organ, or Jacobson’s organ, which lies between the nose and mouth. The vomeronasal organ, or VNO, is the receptor organ of the sensory system involved in chemical communication. Among mammals, sex pheromones that advertise sexual arousal to potential mates are often detected by the VNO. Studies find that male pheromones are good for a woman’s health. Women who work together tend to get their menstrual cycles during the same period. This curious phenomenon known for years by common folk as well as scientists, has long been suspected as an indication that humans, like insects and some mammals, communicate subtly by sexual aromas known as pheromones. This study proposes that there are two types of pheromones involved. One, produced prior to ovulation shortens the ovarian cycle; and the second produced just at ovulation, length-

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ens the cycle. Both pheromones are released from the armpits. The pheromones are not detected consciously as odors, but trigger the hormonal changes that mediate the menstrual cycle. It has also been said that male scents play a role in maintaining the health of the female reproductive system. Researchers found that women who engage sexually with men at least once a week are more likely to have normal menstrual cycles, fewer infertility problems and a milder menopause than celibate women or women who have sex rarely or infrequently. Chemicals in men’s bodies can cause their female sex partners to be more fertile. Women with unusually long or short menses get closer to average cycles after regularly inhaling male essence, described as a compound of male sweat hormones and natural body odors. Women exposed to other women’s female essence tend to menstruate at the same time, confirming that women who live together menstruate together. On March 21, 2002, ABC News reported a scientist at San Francisco State University found that women who had pheromones added to their perfume experienced a more than 50% increase in sexual attention from men. The study, which was published in the journal Physiology and Behavior, found that 74% of the women saw an overall increase in: more dates, more kissing, affection, sex and spooning.

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Illustrations/Collages JiEun Lee, Bongi, Daisuke Shiromoto From Breathless to Harold and Maude, these films will give you a glimpse of love in all its sexy, mysterious, heartbreaking and strange manifestations. Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988) Philip Kaufman Zabriskie Point (1970) Michelangelo Antonioni Motorcycle Diaries (2004) Walter Salles Soy Cuba (1995) Mikhail Kalatozov Harold and Maude (1971) Hal Ashby Dr. Zhivago (1965) David Lean Contempt (1964) Jean-Luc Godard Breathless (1961) Jean-Luc Godard Man with a Movie Camera (1929) Dziga Vertov Jules and Jim (1962) Francois Truffaut

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From The South Bronx & Harlem With Love Words Billy Caliente aka Mr. P Photos Courtesy of Lee Daniels Entertainment and Billy Caliente “The cinema is truth 24 times a second.” — Jean-Luc Godard Inspired by love and the love of film, and as a teacher and filmbased artist, I forged and harnessed the lamp of the love revolution to unveil positive points-of-view to better shine the light where too often darkness and the absence of vision prevails, and too often those without connections or deep pockets find themselves excluded—film belongs to the people.

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Having taught for the past four years, and helped design the film and visual literacy foundation at the New Explorers High School for Film & Humanities (a small public school housed within South Bronx High School campus), I have been moved by the heartfelt impact film can often times have in changing both how teenagers see themselves and consequently how they re-envision their future horizons. The two Bronx sixteen-year-olds interviewed in the article have completed my film course and recently participated in a workshop where they had the opportunity to reflect on Harlem-based Producer/Director Lee Daniels’ words of love. Starting out as a casting director on films like Purple Rain, Lee Daniels later produced the Oscar nominated Monster’s Ball (Best Actress & Original Screenplay), The Woodsman, Tennessee (in post-production), and recently directed Shadowboxer (2006). Daniels is passionately committed to film, community, and social change both on and off screen with local youth in getting out the vote and engaging them through film. Billy Caliente: Why is your involvement with local teens uptown and in the South Bronx vital to your heart? Lee Daniels: Because the students represent me and help me stay in touch with myself. These students are hungry for knowledge and I am hungry to combat the nepotism and often privileged world of the film business. Often in the film business, people are not supportive of other people of color. Ultimately, I want the kids to know that they don’t have to be the only ones. BC: How is film a tool of love or a manifestation of your passion?

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LD: Every frame is a part of me, part of my head, so I‘m living out my fantasies, my realities. True talent is born of true pain and trauma: expressing this is my “high.” BC: How can film help community? LD: If you start by loving yourself, then you can love and help others. Film changes lives. It’s a very powerful medium. Whether you’re happy or sad, film reveals deeper views; if used properly film can help to make changes. BC: When you were a teenager did film hold any spell over you? LD: Well, wow, as a four-year-old I remember my first Western with a white woman, maybe the first one that I had seen, breastfeeding in this horse and buggy. It blew my mind. There were some bad things that had happened to me, and by tapping into this world, it was transformative. BC: How does seeing represent love? LD: You have a choice in life: you can look at something from a positive point-of-view or a negative point-ofview—it’s your choice. You have to project love. If you see love, you will be loved. It’s what we live for. BC: Which 3 films do you think inspire or were inspired by love and/ or revolution? LD: Although they may not be all that sophisticated as film, Sounder, Love Story, and Brian’s Song were revolutionary in heart and in candor. BC: What was the message you wanted to resonate with high school students this past summer during your film workshop? LD: Basically, the broader message I always leave students with is to never take no for an answer and to always love yourself.

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tasy, more reality, though we must dream to tell stories. BC: What’s your favorite film POSITIVELY speaking? Brian: Lean on Me because its theme is, “no matter who you are and where you are in life, you have a chance to make it.” BC: Before and after falling in love with film full on since entering high school, how do you see your future? Brian: Well, admittedly a year ago, I was exploring a more gothic, darker theme; nowadays my ideas are brighter with more of a focus on raising social consciousness, like in the short film I screened at Lincoln Center, The Last Gift, it’s basically a film with heart about police brutality and profiling.

Travis Davis, a Junior at New Explorers High School for Film & Humanities, and Sophmore, Brian Neris, speak with Billy Caliente. Billy Caliente: What was the message you took away from Lee Daniels’ workshop this summer? Travis: Color equals love, and to diversify film, is to keep love alive. Oh, and to always learn from your failures and keep on going. A man needs to be tenacious and persistent. BC: How has the past year immersed in film and school helped you to find your voice, or helped you to put your passions in focus? Brian: Before entering high school, I dreamt about being a video game programmer. Now my imagination is geared more for telling stories grounded in the real world, less fan-

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BC: How can filmmaking bring about individual or social change within community? Travis: It opens your eyes to things sometimes hidden below the surface and teaches empathy by showing what other people are going through. Brian : And it can clean, or ref resh, your imagination. Like seeing familiar things f rom the pa st with f resher eyes. BC : Which 3 films talk about love and /or revolution? Brian: John Waters’ Hairspray because it’s about a plus-size girl and racial integration told through a dance competition; King Kong (1932), and the most recent version of Romeo & Juliet with Clare Danes and Leonardo DiCaprio.