This week I wanted to share a short film about the final years of Malcolm X and what it can do to inform our own thoughts about socialism and liberation today.

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The film spans from about 1947 to 1960 and addresses the period when Dalton Trumbo (played by Bryan Cranston in an Oscar-worthy role) and nine of his colleagues were placed on the Hollywood Blacklist due to their refusal to cooperate with the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC). First sent to jail and then prevented from working in not just film but almost any industry, the group ended up writing B-grade scripts using pseudonyms and secretive couriers to make a living. He ended up earning two Oscars during this period and was unable to collect them until Kirk Douglas hired him to do rewrites on the troubled SPARTACUS film and listed him in the credits, effectively breaking the embargo.

Disclosing this history is nothing new, all of this is public record. Furthermore, the virtues of the film are not in the narration but the portrayals. Previous to viewing this film, I had seen the 2007 documentary, also titled TRUMBO, and so I had become familiar with the historic personage and biographical details at hand. Cranston is fantastic in this film. He becomes Dalton Trumbo, exhibiting his mannerisms, quirks, and frailties, embodying the tragedy an entire generation of Leftists faced after World War II.

For those who are unclear, a brief summary is in order. From 1935 to 1939 and again from 1941 to 1945, the Communist Party USA engaged in a broad-base, big tent political strategy called the Popular Front. Using rhetoric like ‘Communism is the Americanism of the 20th Century’ and creating propaganda materials that positioned Washington, Lincoln, Lenin, and Stalin in the same revolutionary spectrum, they achieved a degree of popularity among progressive-leaning liberals, especially in the entertainment and publishing industries, that were disenchanted with the shortcomings of the Roosevelt administration when it came to things like African American and women’s rights. Dalton Trumbo, like so many others, joined the CPUSA without any understanding of the brutality of the Stalin regime that would be disclosed by the 1956 Khrushchev Secret Speech and instead, much in the way Bernie Sanders seems to be trying to push the Democrats to the Left, voted for FDR while agitating for a more progressive set of policies. He and so many thousands of people were destroyed by McCarthyism not because they were spies, as some reviewers of this film are now claiming, but because they supported labor, minority, and feminist causes that were set back a decade or more because of the Red Scare. This was a moment where men and women were put in jail for exercising their First Amendment rights regarding a political party and ideology that did advocate peaceful coexistence with the Soviet and Chinese Communist countries but also opposed lynching, segregation, and sexism. And to be abundantly clear, this was not just targeting Communist Party members, the net was so wide it ended up ensnaring a good many liberals and Democrats who were merely caught associating as Fellow Travelers with members of a political party.

Louis C.K. also is worthy of awards here for his supporting role of Arlen Hird. A veteran of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and chronically-ill writer whose family abandons him due to the stress, he is in many ways Trumbo’s conscience and moral barometer. For example, he is willing to hold Trumbo’s feet to the fire over the fact he says he is a member of the proletarian vanguard party while living on a large estate with horses and a lake. In another sequence, the two have an argument over injecting Marxist themes into their screenwriting that cuts to the core of the moral dilemma writers on the Left have always faced, how to create entertaining material that both serves as agitprop and an income generator in a capitalist system, a conversation I have with my editors to this day. In this character I found a reflection of myself and colleagues at the publications I write for.

To imagine Jeffrey St. Clair, Bob Plain, or myself being sent to jail and then stripped of our ability to write is a haunting, dystopian vision of totalitarianism in a somewhere else, be it Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany, but the reality is that it did happen here, people died because of it, and we have yet to build a monument to victims of this terror. Instead, there are still crazy people in the publishing world who are trying to vindicate McCarthyism! And even when the mainstream press talks about McCarthyism, it is not about how wrong the entire thing was to begin with (which it was) but instead how he went too far in accusing Dwight Eisenhower of being a Commie symp during the Army-McCarthy hearings. With the exception of perhaps Victor Navasky’s 1980 volume Naming Names (a title which itself has some troubled spots), there is very little willingness to say with a robust voice that there was nothing wrong with being a Communist and that the entire episode was a disgrace.

Or perhaps we should say these things in the past tense now as Jay Roach has finally said it out loud.

The film is also an achievement that plays a subtle game with notions of media that can be called post-modern while not venturing too far into the morass like that of Derrida that can be called post-thinking. It uses a variety of film stock textures, camera lens apertures, and sound qualities to bring the story to life through the medium that broadcast it to millions, newsreels in the final days before the proliferation of television and newspapers. This is a film about an awful episode in media history and it is fully aware of this in how it utilizes intertextuality.

I will not say the film is perfect, I think it lost the opportunity for a great comedic sequence by failing to detail the period the writers spent in Mexico boozing and writing. It also fails to deal at all with the fact that the two films that broke the blacklist by listing Trumbo’s name, EXODUS and SPARTACUS, were proto-hasbara propaganda films that had some pretty awful issues with racism and homophobia on reflection. Furthermore, it would have been interesting to include at least a mention of the struggles African Americans like W.E.B. Du Bois or Paul Robeson faced due to their Communist Party affiliations, a moment when McCarthyism truly showed its racist side. Yet in a time when our society is filled with the same kind of paranoia due to alleged foreign infiltration, TRUMBO is the film we need more than ever and to deny such is to deny reality.

6/30
LAST DAY! Get Real at Spring Bull Gallery, Noon-5 pm, Free admission
Featuring artwork by Del-Bourree Bach, Kyle Bartlett, Deonta Beauchine, Joan Boghossian, Barnet Fain, Carol FitzSimonds, William Hyett, Robert Lavoie, John MacGowan, Johanna McKenzie, and Michele Porior-Mazzone

Ghost Hit Wall by Hao Ni at Yellow Peril Gallery, Thu-Fri 3-8 pm, Sat-Sun Noon-5 pm, Free Admission, June 11, 2015-July 19
An eclectic series of video, mixed media installations, sculptures, and drawings

Fine Artists of the Jewelry District at ArtProv Gallery, Wed-Fri 11 a.m.-2 p.m., every Gallery Night Providence, and weekend/evening viewings by appointment, June 3, 2015-July 24, 2015
Featuring artwork of the late Alfred DeCredico, Cesare DeCredico, Ira Garber, Patricia Hansen, Bunny Harvey, Nick Paciorek and Allison Paschke

My Sky: an exhibit exploring the universe at Providence Children’s Museum, 9:00 am-6:00 pm, Free with $9 museum admission

Stretch & Strength at AS220 Live Arts Dance Studio, Noon-1 pm, $5 drop-in

Open Life Drawing at AS220, 6 pm-8:30, $6

Intermediate Ballet Class with Danielle Davidson at AS220 Live Arts Dance Studio, 7:15 pm-8:45 pm, $13 per class, $60 for 6 classes

Dr. Jones And The Shiners, Hoochie Coochie Men and Tommy Alexander at AS220 Main Stage, 9 pm, $6

Top 5 Fiend Presents: Sgt. Baker & The Clones, The Wolf Hongos, Tomorrow And Tomorrow, and Rich Polseno at Psychic Readings, 9 pm, $6

7/1
Wheels at Work: Bobcat Utility Vehicle at Providence Children’s Museum, 10 am-Noon, Free with $9 museum admission

Open Level Modern Dance at AS220 Live Arts Dance Studio, 6:30 pm-8 pm, $13 per class, $60 for 6 classes

Vinyasa Yoga with Julie Shore at AS220 Live Arts Dance Studio, Noon-1 pm, $5 per class

Laurie Amat, Brian 4 Ever, Paper Balls w/ David Grollman, Lucio Menegon and Jeff Barsky, + Flandrew Fleisenberg at AS220 Main Stage, 9 pm-1 am, $6

Lulz! Comedy Night at AS220 Main Stage, 9 pm-11:30 pm, $6

7/2
Works by Abbot Low, New Paintings by Candace Cotterman Thibeault and Ceramics by Will Heacock at Bristol Art Museum, Thurs-Sun 1 to 4 pm, Admission $2 non-members

Evening Yoga at AS220 Live Arts Dance Studio with Jamie Arnold, 6:15 -7:30 pm, $13 per class, $60 for 6 classes

Free Speech Thursdays Presents: Providence Poetry Slam at AS220 Main Stage, 8-11:30 pm, $4

Movies on the Block: Breakin’ at Grant’s Block, 7:30 pm, Free

7/3
Family Fun Friday: Toe Jam Puppet Band at Blithewold Mansion, Gardens & Arboretum, 11 am-1 pm, Included with admission

Skyjelly, Deep Likes, Jarva Land + Special Appearance By Josh Kemp Of Beta Motel at AS220 Main Stage, 9 pm-1 am, $6

Live Bait presents Lucky at 95 Empire Black Box, 10-11:45 pm, $7

7/4
Chalk the Walk at Providence Children’s Museum, 9 am-6 pm, Free with $9 museum admission

Standpoints at Just Art Contemporary Art Gallery, Fri-Sat 12-5 pm, Free Admission

7/5
LAST DAY! Art Exhibit on the Figure at Imago Gallery, Thurs 4-8 pm, Fri and Sat Noon-8 pm; Sun 11 am-3 pm, Free Admission
Featuring the art work of Carl Keitner, Martha Antaya, Allison Newsome, Jessie Nickerson, and Germana Rodrigues

Stars and Night Sky at Providence Children’s Museum, 10 am-3 pm, Free with $9 museum admission

ALEX AND ANI Sunday Jazz Series At Carolyn’s Sakonnet Vinyard, 1:00 pm – 4:00 pm, Admission $10 per car

Core Workout with Daniel Shea at AS220 Live Arts Dance Studio, 9-10 am, $5

Beginner Ballet at AS220 Live Arts Dance Studio, 10:30-11:30 am, $13 per class, $60 for 6 classes

Intermediate Ballet with Stephanie Albanese at 95 Empire Dance Studio, 12-1:30 pm, $13 per class, $60 for 6 classes

The 9th EMPIRE REVUE – The Literature Show at AS220 Main Stage, 8-10 pm, $8 at http://ninthanniversary.brownpapertickets.com

7/6
Intermediate/Advanced Modern Dance at AS220 Live Arts Dance Studio, 6:30-8 pm, $13 per class, $60 for 6 classes

From Scratch: A Works in Process Night at AS220’s Blackbox, 7-9 pm, $7

7/7
Stretch & Strength at AS220 Live Arts Dance Studio, 12-1 pm, $5

Open Life Drawing at AS220, 6 pm-8:30, $6

Intermediate Ballet Class with Danielle Davidson at AS220 Live Arts Dance Studio, 7:15 pm-8:45 pm, $13 per class, $60 for 6 classes

OPEN Sewing Circle * a night of making things * at Psychic Readings, 9-11:30 pm, Free

The presentation Dr. Victor Matheson, professor of economics at College of the Holy Cross, gave to a capacity crowd at the Blackstone Valley Visitor Center in Pawtucket last Wednesday on the economics of public money funding sports stadiums, and specifically on public money building a new stadium in downtown Providence for the Pawtucket Red Sox (PawSox), has many people wishing that they were able to see and here it.

My write-up could only skim the surface of Matheson’s compelling presentation, which was an in depth condemnation of the very idea of public money for stadiums or an economic boom commensurate with such and investment. As we wait for sports consultant Andrew Zimbalist to complete his report for Speaker Nicholas Mattiello and for Governor Gina Raimondo to resume negotiations with the PawSox owners in the aftermath of the surprising and sudden death of the stadium’s chief proponent, James Skeffington, I can present Dr. Matheson’s complete talk, with the original slides from his PowerPoint presentation.

Maybe not as good as being there, but it’s a close second.

According to data provided by the office of the Public Safety Commissioner, the 444-officer Providence Police Department is 76.3 percent White, 11.7 percent Hispanic, 9.0 percent Black, 2.7 percent Asian or Pacific Islander, and 0.2 percent American Indian. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, the city as a whole is 37.8 percent White, 38.3 percent Hispanic, 16.1 percent Black, 6.5 percent Asian or Pacific Islander, and 1.4 percent American Indian.

That means the white portion of the PPD is 38.6 percentage points overrepresentative of the city as a whole, while the Hispanic portion is 26.5 percentage points underrepresentative, the black portion is 7.1 points underrepresentative, the Asian/P.I. portion is 3.8 points underrepresentative, and the American Indian portion is 1.2 points underrepresentative.

These numbers seem vaguely interesting without context, but in the context of other cities, they’re far more troublesome.

On October 1, data journalism blog FiveThirtyEight.com published an analysis of the 75 largest municipal police forces in the country. Providence has approximately the 90th-most officers in the country, so was not included in that analysis. The main thrust of that analysis was examining the effectiveness of residency requirements (tldr?: They actually correlate with worse representativeness). However, there is an excellent visualization putting all 75 departments side by side, ranked in order of how racially misrepresentative they are of their cities. I highly recommend checking it out.

So Providence wasn’t included in that analysis, and there are about 15 other departments that also weren’t included and have bigger departments than we do. But how do we compare to the 75 cities included in the analysis?

Only three of the cities FiveThirtyEight looked at have police departments worse at representing their communities than Providence. So that’s a problem.

In a statement, Providence Public Safety Commissioner Steven Paré said, “Recruiting a diverse workforce is always a priority.  We hired two recruit classes for the PFD and one recruit class for the PPD.  It was one of the most diverse classes we’ve had in our history.  Our goal is to mirror the community we serve.  The challenge is to reach out to the available workforce in the region and recruit the best candidates.”

The new class of 53 police officers was the most diverse in 20 years, with 9 Hispanic recruits and 13 other minorities. But the class itself overrepresented white Providence by 20%, and barely budged the underrepresentation of Latinos.

When it comes to recruiting new and diverse officers, Paré said he’s “battl[ing] the perception that you need to have a connection to become a police officer,” he said. “It exists in the profession.” He acknowledged the fire department “can do a better job…recruiting more women. It is always difficult to get women interested in the fire services because of the physical demands that is required.” (What, because women have trouble doing physical work? *facepalm*)

Importantly, Paré welcomes ideas from the community. “We have invited community stakeholders to become part of the process for their input, ideas and recommendations to improve how we hire police and fire,” he said. “They have been critical partners in these last 3 training academies.”

There’s racial misrepresentation to address in Providence Public Safety, but with willing leadership and the active participation of community groups, maybe we can solve the problem together.

Politicians and representatives with a vast array of different ideas about government and religion came together. I saw Ed Doyle, Brett Smiley, Doreen Costa,  Harold Metz, David Cicilline, Angel Taveras, Clay Pell and many more office holders and candidates united behind a single cause. At that rally we were not divided by our ideologies, we were united by our humanity.

There are still ways to help. As I said yesterday:

The truck, placed so as to spare hotel management and guests the sight of underpaid and overworked employees advocating for fair wages and treatment, became a source of amusement and jokes among the protesters. When a gigantic 18-wheeler rumbled by emblazoned with a large “Teamsters” logo, chants of “We’ve got a bigger truck!” began, followed by laughter.

To highlight the abuse of workers rights alleged to take place at the hotel by the workers on the picket line, the protesters held a mock funeral for the United States Constitution. The document had a good run, said the protesters, only to be murdered by the Prociaccianti Group that owns and manages the hotel. Speaking in memory of the Constitution were Adrienne Jones, interviewed here at RI Future last Monday, and Krystle Martin, whose interview will be on this sight shortly, as well as many other workers and Providence Councilperson Carmen Castillo.

Since the unionization effort began, three union leaders have lost their jobs at the Hilton Providence and eight workers have been reprimanded, according to the organizers, so the Prociaccianti Group appears to be playing union busting hardball. Two of the fired workers, the aforementioned Jones and Martin, are single moms, leading some on the picket line to assert that the Hilton is targeting single mothers, who are more vulnerable economically. It’s hard to imagine more deplorable behavior.

Forming a union is an essential human right, and whatever efforts the hotel is undertaking to squelch the union is morally indefensible. The Prociaccianti Group is already bleeding business. The Unitarian Universalist General Assembly is bringing thousands of people to the Providence area this Summer, and they are not staying at the Hilton or the Renaissance (where workers are also batting for their right to unionize)  in response to the hotel’s treatment of its workers. More groups are sure to follow.

Meanwhile, local media, including the rapidly declining Providence Journal and local TV news continue to ignore the plight of workers fighting for their rights, leaving coverage of this developing story to the Brown Daily Herald and RI Future. Stories about real human suffering and economic exploitation are beneath their notice, it seems.

I just had to share this gem I found. This was a high school project by Jennifer Huang, a student in Canada. She nails it on the head and does so interestingly and with a sense of humor. If I was her teacher, she’d get an “A”!

I tried telling myself I was just being paranoid. There were any number of reasons I could’ve been called down to my publisher’s office at Southern R.I. Newspapers’ Wakefield headquarters at 9:30 a.m. on a March Friday morning.

It could’ve involved some major changes at the East Greenwich Pendulum, the weekly newspaper for which I had served as the main news reporter since June 2010. Maybe it was a promotion, or a reassignment within SRIN’s family of papers. Perhaps the Pendulum won a Rhode Island Newspaper Association award, and our publisher, Nanci Batson, wanted to let me know in person.

But having been laid off twice before during a 28-year career in the newspaper business, it wasn’t paranoia. It was experience and wisdom smacking me mercilessly upside the head. When I walked into Nanci’s office and saw a document on the table, I didn’t have to read the fine print. The big right uppercut to the liver felt familiar, though.

She said all the polite and apologetic things. I’m not into bridge burning (I still freelance for the Pendulum). But she could’ve at least offered me a blindfold and a cigarette.

During my sleepless night while waiting for that fateful Friday morning meeting, I recalled the recent carnage at our sister daily papers, the Woonsocket Call and Pawtucket Times. Just a week earlier, during my pre-show schmoozing at the Providence Newspaper Guild Follies, I learned from several of my former Call colleagues about another round of buyouts and layoffs (the second since I left in 2004) at the two papers, which are being smooshed together in all but name, to the point where longtime reporters of each paper were being shipped to the other at least once a week. Kind of like the Boston Red Sox putting Daniel Bard on the bus down I-95 when the PawSox need a second starting pitcher for a doubleheader.

And one month before, South County Newspapers, publisher of our main print competition, the North-East Independent, announced layoffs, with the casualties including its East Greenwich reporter. Competitively, good news for my team, right? In any other business, perhaps.

It nagged me that my company had a chance to solidify its hold on a market through our competition’s pullback. Instead, it became just another convenient opportunity to hack at bone (four other heads in SRIN rolled along with mine) thanks to South County’s decision. I am not an MBA (just the son of one), but is that sound business practice?

The irony really hit home at a recent Greenwich Odeum restoration planning meeting, while talking a little shop with Odeum board chairman Frank Prosnitz, a former Providence Journal copy editor and Providence Business News editor who has since entered the public relations field.

“When you came to town,” he said, “I figured the changes in the business meant we were at least getting some experienced reporters coming to community newspapers.”

If only such things mattered, Frank.

So much for the job I hoped would launch me back close to where I had been, as a copy editor at the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, before I was laid off in February 2009. All I will say about my salary at the Pendulum was that, as a veteran journalist, my weekly paycheck was smaller than the weekly unemployment check I received from the state of Massachusetts (which, at 50 percent, is a lower portion of salary than R.I. unemployment compensation).

My first layoff, though, was in 1995. I returned to work from vacation only to be called into the office of then-managing editor Karen Bordeleau (now the Journal’s deputy executive editor) and informed that Bob Jelenic, the legendary CEO of The Call, had decreed a smaller newsroom. More precisely, a smaller copy desk, on which I was low man in seniority after seven years at the paper and four full-time on the desk.

Three months later, in November, I interviewed for an irregular extra job on the Journal copy desk (variable amount of work each week, no benefits), made the cut, surrendered some hair for the drug test and was slated to start in January. But in early December, The Call called me back (ironically, for an opening created after Karen was fired, a decision perhaps even more outrageous and ill-advised than my layoff. If you ever want to set a former JRC employee’s head afire and hear some of George Carlin’s favorite words, just say “Jelenic”).

I went back. As an unmarried guy at the time, I needed the health care.

Eventually, I found a copy desk opening at the Telegram & Gazette, where I spent 4½ years of feeling I had finally made it into a well-paying job in this business. Then its owner, The New York Times Co. (yes, the same organization you hear denounced on talk radio and by politicians as this flaming liberal monolith), decided it was time to do some hacking, through layoffs and buyouts. Falling just short of making the seniority cut, I had to take the buyout, and was able to at least walk away with some cash and free health care for a year. A few more colleagues laid off six months later didn’t have the buyout option. That $15 million golden handshake Times CEO Janet Robinson received at her retirement? She owes us more than one drink.

To the people who dismiss mainstream media as controlled by liberals (like those who complain that Charlie Bakst and Bob Kerr have dictated the Journal’s agenda): take a look at the people who are making the really important decisions. Who gets hired and who gets fired, what people get paid, how financial resources are committed. How many liberals are making those decisions?

And to those who whine about the Internet ruining the newspaper business: Please. While all types of other businesses, from Microsoft to McDonald’s, focus on improving the product if profits or market share slip, mine cuts people and resources, weakening the product further. Customers vote with their feet, turning away from it. And how does mine respond? More layoffs. And the self-fulfilling prophecy continues.

The most painful part of being an unemployed journalist is listening to people close to me question my choice of profession. My answer: for all the alleged security in accounting, my father had two significant stints of unemployment during my college days, when companies were bought and merged out from under him. That’s what he did, and this is what I do. The occasional pity party breaks out, and I look for the door.

Yes, my profession and its travails have cost me plenty in recent years, both financially and personally. Maybe I could’ve jumped the train safely earlier in life.

But it’s given me friends, memories, the satisfaction of knowing I’m skilled, versatile and respected in the field I’ve chosen, and some opportunities I look forward to pursuing – makes me a pretty lucky guy.

Being a journalist in 2012 means you get knocked down (or are likely to). But you also get up again. And so have, and will, I.

Essentially, I’m a big fan of initiatives that do two things: 1. make government more responsive, and 2. save government money. At the same time, for those of my generation who see this sort of stuff as patently obvious, it’s nice to know that people are actually doing this somewhere. There’s tons of issues with bureaucracy, but to put it simply, it’s not going away. We also forget (or just plain don’t know) how much policy is being made down the line by people in government. Sometimes, it doesn’t make sense to go after a politician when focusing on a bureaucrat will do just as well, and probably be more successful.

I hope more ideas like those Jennifer Pahlka and Code for America are producing will find their way into government. Because we can spend a long time arguing about how to fix it, and electing people who say they’re going to fix it, and still not fix it.

UPDATE: Bob’s pointed out there’s a very similar talk, that’s about ten minutes longer than the one up there that gets into way more than the other. Taken together, they’re a good meditation on the difference between advocating for smaller government and advocating for more efficient government.

And I should take the moment to point out how we respond to this stuff in our own cities and towns. We spend a long time squabbling over the same things because those are perennial issues and they’re guaranteed to get voters out. But as folks are advocating this “knowledge economy” we need to start focusing on making our government more responsive via its technology.

Take GoLocalProv’s “See Click Fix“. You don’t have to spend more than a minute to discover that almost all are still listed as “open”, meaning nothing’s been done. But a large portion of them are not things that government can actually effectively do anything about. “Eyesore building” is a problem for the building’s owner. And I wonder how connected this app is with, say, the Public Works departments of various cities (I suspect not at all). But graffiti? Guess what, you can do that on your own. Providence, with its budget deficit, is finding it harder and harder to fix things.

The great danger of government is that people use it to solve problems they themselves are capable of taking care of. I’ll give you a counterexample of that: when I was young a windstorm blew a large tree limb down across the sidewalk in front of an apartment building. Any time anyone walked down the street, they had to walk around the thing. I got sick of doing that after a few days, so I went home and got the saw out of the shed and went back and spent about twenty minutes or so clearing the limb. It didn’t take long, and it could’ve been done by anyone at any time. I just took the initiative.

Too often, people take an elitist attitude when dealing with others. “Those folks are just stupid,” we say, failing to attempt to comprehend the opposing view point. A commenter on this site recently quoted H.L. Mencken’s “no one went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.” I want to take this moment to call out that kind of attitude as both unproductive and just plain foolish. The American people are pretty intelligent. Collectively, they’ve built one of the most powerful nations in all of history. We all got rich off the intelligence of the American people.

It’s people like Ms. Pahlka and Code for America who are advancing us. It’s those that say there’s no way we can solve problems, those that throw up their hands and say “well, everyone’s just a crook” that aren’t helping. I like the idea that government is what we do collectively that we can’t do ourselves. That’s the government I want, in Providence, in Rhode Island, and in the United States. Nothing is insurmountable.