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Rabbit-Proof Fence
Journey ends at 87 for inspirational aboriginal woman

21 Grams

Repackaged after 100 years,
Sambo still causes offense

Because food is a right,
not a privilege!

Upcoming art auction highlights
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Rabbit-Proof Fence
Journey ends at 87 for inspirational aboriginal woman

By Jamie Tarabay

Sydney, Australia, Jan. 16-- She was a young girl determined to return home, even if it meant trekking 1,000 miles across the desert with little food or water, sometimes carrying her little sister or her cousin as she walked.

Incredibly, Molly Kelly, then 13, succeeded, and became a symbol of resilience against the mistreatment of Aborigines by Australia’s European settlers.

On Tuesday, more than six decades after her astonishing journey, Kelly died while taking an afternoon nap. She was thought to be 87. Her nine-week trek in 1931 with her sister, Daisy Burungu, and her cousin, Gracie Fields, was the inspiration for the 2002 film Rabbit-Proof Fence, a movie that reignited passionate debate in Australia about the “stolen generations” of Aboriginal children separated, sometimes forcibly, from their parents.

The film was based on a book written by Molly’s daughter, Doris Pilkington Garimara. She learned of the story and wrote it when she was reunited with her mother more than 20 years after authorities separated them.

Garimara and Philip Noyce, the film’s director, plan a return to the remote western Australian settlement where Kelly died, a place called Jigalong on the edge of the Gibson desert, to pay their final respects.

“She was so very strong, so determined, a no-nonsense kind of person,” Garimara told the Sydney Morning Herald. “Everybody in the community respected her for that. Mum’s legacy is the calming influence and quiet dignity of the desert women, and the stolen generation’s story. She looked you straight in the eye.”

In 1931, Kelly, whose father was an English fence inspector, was taken from her mother with her sister and cousin, who also were of mixed ethnic background. They were sent to a government institution to be trained as domestic servants.

Thousands of such forced separations created what is now known as the stolen generations. And while many families were reunited, some will never know their real relatives. The Australian government has refused to formally apologize for the policy, fearing lawsuits.

The policy aimed at assimilating Aborigines into mainstream society began in 1905 and continued until 1971.

The day after the three girls were taken to the institution, they fled. Kelly decided that since Jigalong was on a rabbit-proof fence, intended to stop the spread of the imported animals, that ran through Western Australia, if they headed toward the fence and followed it north, they could not miss their home. They crossed a flooded river, sand dunes, a desert and a salt lake. They slept in dugout rabbit burrows and existed on sweet potato and wild banana.

“She was a person who was utterly willful, who decided she would not be dictated to, who took on the whole state apparatus, and won,” said Christine Olsen, the film’s screenwriter.

Source: Independent (UK)

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21 Grams

By Kent Miller

(AGR)-- The light-hearted, unrealistic reality of American Idol grabs hundreds of thousands of people or so a week. For these ‘Idols’ everything is apparent and blatant, a fairy tale told over and again every week. This is of course what we live, and to some, yesterday was nothing more then a Jerry Seinfeild rerun.

Film has no doubt taken this very route in the past, and like television, is a business of entertainment. So if I were to say that 21 Grams is a reality film you would hopefully cringe and stop reading or maybe you would secretly think somber thoughts of Jimbo getting kicked off Pepsi island on planet NBC. But it’s no fairy tale of the American Millionaire’s patriarchy. 21 Grams is edited like Memento with a twirling story like Magnolia. Its more reality than some people care to live. The film shifts to grainy light as moods change and acting intensifies.

As you may already know, this film is hyped and is very deserving of it. Sean Penn is a man well off but dying. He’s a cigarette smoker with a bad heart needing a new one. Beniccio Del Torro is an ex-con turned Christ-crazy family man. An emotionally distraught mother is thrown in between opening shots and later is found at the middle of the plot.

These characters leading separate lives slowly merge as the editing allows a plot to unwind in a collage of the characters’ lives spanning back and fourth from minutes, days, to hours from each of their points of view. There is no blatant theme or obvious morals to this movie. It’s just raw.

The characters are human with addictions and faults ,and they are fuck-ups like the best of us. A born-again Del Torro finds himself in jail having done everything God speaks of -- covered in crosses and all the lord’s godly merchandise.

There are awkward moments of interactions and conflict like any other movie but there is something human about the movement and editing of 21 Grams. The acting, like the directing, never gives out. The first American movie by Alejandro González Iñárritu it is one of the finest movies this year by far.

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Repackaged after 100 years, Sambo
still causes offense

By Rupert Cornwell

Washington, DC, Jan. 17-- A blithe fantasy of a boy who outwits savage jungle creatures, or a demeaning exercise in racial stereotyping? A century-old controversy has been rekindled by a new edition of The Story of Little Black Sambo, one of the most famous -- and most reviled -- children’s books published.

Helen Bannerman’s 1899 story resurfaced last month in a sumptuous new version published by Hand Print Books. It contains lavish illustrations by Christopher Bing for the tale of the little boy who escapes from four tigers. There is also a publisher’s note explaining the book’s “dark and complex history.” Bing presents the title character as a boy with short, curly hair enacting “a fantasy in India.” He wears a crimson jacket, purple shoes and other brilliantly colored clothes, set amid a vivid green jungle backdrop.

His parents, Black Mumbo and Black Jumbo are also in oriental garb; his father Jumbo wears a turban, his mother Mumbo a sari.

But no repackaging or cultural blurring, or the publisher’s highlighting of the book’s “core theme” of a “joyful child going into the wilderness and conquering it,” can conceal the racist undertows.

The word “sambo” derives from “zambo,” the Spanish-American term for slaves of at least three-quarters negro blood. In late-1960s Britain, it was a staple in the vocabulary of the bigot Alf Garnett, in the BBC series Till Death Us Do Part.

These days, it is little used in the US and Britain, and not on television. But in the English-speaking universe, it is instantly recognizable as racial denigration. Two earlier updated versions of the book, published in 1996, omitted the word “sambo.”

For Kirkus Book Reviews, where it features as one of the season’s top 40 children’s books, the new edition is “a classic story respectfully revitalized to a new grandeur ... Amid the beautiful, etched-line textures, sun-kissed colors, and lush greenery, the magnificent tigers not only steal Sambo’s clothes but also the visual show.”

But Russell Adams, chairman of the Afro-American studies department at Howard University in Washington, disagrees. However charming the story, it was so deeply entrenched in popular culture “that no amount of revision can sanitize it.”

Source: Independent (UK)

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Because food is a right, not a privilege!

By John Lapp

Jan. 21(AGR) — Recently the Asheville Global Report conducted an interview via email with Zola from the Knoxville Food Not Bombs (FNB) chapter. The Knoxville chapter is hosting a FNB conference this upcoming weekend (Jan. 23-25). FNB was founded in 1980 in Manchester, England; since then the “movement” has spread throughout the Americas, Europe and Australia, with hundreds of chapters all over the world.

AGR: Why have a Southeastern Food Not Bombs conference? What do you hope to get out of the conference?

Zola: This conference is way for different Food Not Bombs chapters to learn from each other, build community, and celebrate southern culture (and cookin!). We want to strengthen our network with radical folks in the southeast by spending a weekend cooking, eating, talking, and dancing. One of the things we’ll be talking about that I’m most excited about is organizing for the International FNB Gathering in NYC during the Republican National Convention during August.

AGR: Why is FNB vegetarian?

Zola: I didn’t write this but it reflects what I think:

“In addition to the collection and distribution of surplus food, Food Not Bombs encourages vegetarianism. If more people were vegetarian and demanded organically grown, locally produced foods, this would encourage organic farming practices and support smaller farms. This, in turn, would make it easier to decentralize the means of food production and democratize the control over the quality of the food produced and the stewardship of the land. More people can be fed from one acre of land on a vegetarian rather than a meat based diet. The current meat-based diet eaten by our society allows for huge “agro-businesses”, creates dependency on chemical fertilizers and pesticides, results in the declining nutritional value of the food produced, and destroys the environment.

All mass-produced meats in this country are full of chemicals, drugs, enhancers, and preservatives, and all milk is contaminated with radioactive fallout. Vegetarianism would be better for the environment, consume less resources, and be healthier for us.

All our food is vegetarian, that is, no meat, dairy, or eggs. While we encourage awareness of vegetarianism for political and economic reasons, this policy also has several more immediate benefits. The potential for problems with food spoilage are greatly reduced when dealing strictly with vegetables. Members of the group tend to eat a more healthy diet as they learn more about vegetarianism.

Teaching people about the health benefits of a vegetarian diet actually creates a healthy, caring attitude towards ourselves, others, and the planet as a whole. Therefore, the food we prepare is strictly from vegetable sources. People know and trust this standard for Food Not Bombs food whenever they come to our table.”

AGR: Is FNB an official organization; is FNB a revolutionary movement?

Zola: Nope! we’re completely volunteer run, anti-authoritarian and non-hierarchical. Food Not Bombs is an example of how mutual aid societies can successfully function, without bureaucracy, in our communities. FNB is about valuing community and life over profit and death. Cooking and serving food to hungry folks is something that is very simple and yet very direct and powerful.

AGR: There are dozens of charity groups that give out food to the hungry, how is FNB different?

Zola: Unlike many charity groups which are religious in nature, FNB doesn’t require anything from the people who eat our food but an appetite. A lot of these groups feed hungry folks (often homeless) in a location that is hidden away from the public. FNB, however, is a weekly protest; we serve people in public spaces to bring issues of hunger and poverty out into the open.

This Saturday at 3pm Knoxville FNB is changing our serving location to Market Square, an area downtown that has been a historic gathering place for all sorts of activities from political soap-box speeches to a farmer’s market. Recently Market Square has been “revitalized” by the city - this means covered in concrete with the former benches, tables, and green space removed. What was once a vibrant gathering place now seems cold and ugly in its new incarnation.

FNB seeks to bring back the spirit of a community center by hosting the “Carnival of Cacophony.” Besides the delicious free food, there will be spoken word poetry, music, human circus type acts, as well as speakers on poverty in Appalachia, vegetarianism, and the history of Food Not Bombs.

AGR: Where does FNB usually get its food?

Zola: Different chapters of FNB get their food from different places, but currently we salvage most of ours from grocery stores that are throwing it away. During the summer, we have a huge garden where we grow organic vegetables and herbs. In the past we’ve also gotten donations from grocery stores. We sometimes buy staple foods like rice or spices, but 90% of our food is food that would have gone to waste.

AGR: What is the schedule for the conference looking like?

Zola: Friday -- check-in, dumpster Olympics. Saturday -- big meeting, workshops, carnival + serving, dance party. Sunday -- more workshops, including: “Chop Shop” (professional food prep techniques), Dealing with the Authorities, Master Level Tofu Frying, Canning, Gardening/Radical Agriculture, Fundraising, Silk-Screening, and more!

AGR: Where can people find out more about the conference?

Zola: Our web site!

http://katuahfnb.tripod.com or they can email katuahfnb@riseup.net.

Asheville Food Not Bombs serves every Sunday (at 4pm) and every Tuesday (at 5 pm) in downtown Asheville at city/county plaza. To get involved with the local chapter, either go down one day and offer to cook or clean up dishes, or call the FNB house at 281-4343

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