Ms.>National Reports>From Harlem to Hollywood

From Harlem to Hollywood

A New York "boot camp" turns young women of color into feminist filmmakers

By Beth Schwartzapfel
Summer 2007

Instead of playing outside, “I was that kid who was up in her room, writing her screenplay,” says Karly Beaumont, 27, of growing up in New York City's Washington Heights neighborhood. “But I didn't see any women out there making movies--definitely not women of color who look like me.”

Harlem-based media justice organization Chica Luna Productions is trying to change that. Beaumont participated in the inaugural class of the F-Word program--“F” stands for “feminist”--a yearlong “boot camp” that trains young women of color, ages 16 to 25, to be socially conscious filmmakers. As her capstone, Beaumont produced I’m Not Here, a gripping short about a young girl cowering in her bedroom as her father’s heavy bootsteps approach.

Although the program is about creating a safe space for self-expression, it’s also about developing participants into professional filmmakers. At a time when pop-culture-commentators are hailing YouTube as a great democratizer, Chica Luna aims higher: for “well-crafted films with visual soul,” says co-founder Elisha Miranda. In addition to achieving “media literacy”--the ability to recognize even the subtle racist, sexist, and homophobic undertones in films in order to avoid perpetuating them--the young women study producing, screenwriting, directing, camera work, lighting, and editing. They grapple with questions such as, “How do you light this well for people of color so they all don’t look like shadows?”

Several of the program’s weekly sessions are also dedicated to film industry nuts-and-bolts such as applying for artist grants and developing a salable film treatment. Co-founder Sofia Quintero says, “You could have the most powerful, important, conscious message, and if your craft is not tight--and if you don’t have the resources and know-how to get your film exhibited--“no oneís going to listen to it.”

Chica Luna founders Miranda, Quintero and Sonia Gonzalez each interrupted their own fledgling film careers to mentor young women of color. With a shoestring budget and a 6-month lease on a tiny office space, the women opened Chica Luna in September of 2001. “We did this primarily for selfish reasons,” says Quintero with a grin. “We didn’t want to be the only ones out there. This is a big recruitment drive for us.”

The program is starting to get Hollywood’s attention. One F-Word graduate is now a director’s assistant on the upcoming Michael Pinckney film You're Nobody 'til Somebody Kills You. Symphony Space hosted a Chica Luna film festival this year, and this classís May graduation ceremony was held at the Times Square headquarters of HBO. “I was pretty impressed,” said Doris Martinez of Alianza@HBO, the company’s Latino networking group. “It really took me by surprise, the level of maturity that these girls have.”

One of the shorts screened was Sol, Mar, Y Estrella, by Yaromil Fong-Olivares-- the story of a young Dominican girl who falls in love with her mother’s lesbian friend. “What’s out there in film is not very woman-positive,” she says. “A lot of what we see in the media is tits and ass, and you’ve gotta be tall and skinny, have light skin and straight hair. It’s a counter-protest for us to be able to take that power of the media and throw it right back.”

FORWARD>News>GOP’s Page Scandal Could Boost Dem Candidate in South Florida

GOP’s Page Scandal Could Boost Dem Candidate in South Florida

By Beth Schwartzapfel
October 6, 2006

The scandal over a disgraced Republican’s sexually suggestive emails to teenage congressional pages could end up swinging at least one key Florida race in the fight for the House of Representatives.

Political observers are predicting that a Jewish Democratic candidate and state senator, Ron Klein, is poised to capitalize off of the recent resignation of Republican Rep. Mark Foley and subsequent revelations that House GOP leaders were aware of at least some of his emails months ago. Klein, running in a heavily Jewish district in south Florida that abuts Foley’s, is seeking to oust 12-term incumbent Republican Rep. Clay Shaw.

“I think most experts down here would agree that [the Foley scandal] has the potential for really hurting Clay Shaw,” said Jim Kane, chief pollster of the nonpartisan organization Florida Votes.

The Democrats, who need to pick up 15 seats to take back the House, are increasingly looking at Shaw as a Republican incumbent who can be defeated.

By the beginning of this week, several GOP candidates were returning donations from Foley. Shaw, whose district includes parts of Broward and Palm Beach counties, reportedly donated the $2,000 that he had received from Foley to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

While the Foley scandal itself may not have impacted races across the country, Kane said, coupled with the GOP’s mounting problems it could prove to be a key factor.

“If you look at things that are going on with the economy, particularly gasoline, and then the war in Iraq, and some of the ethics violations that have gone on with lobbyists,” the pollster said, “and you add this significant transgression by a well-known south Florida Republican congressman — it just adds to the problems that Republicans are facing in general.”

Klein’s bid to unseat Shaw was initially considered a long shot. Now, Kane told the Forward, it’s “too close to call… and every week it gets tighter and tighter.”

Foley, a six-term congressman representing parts of Palm Beach, St. Lucie, and Charlotte counties, resigned suddenly September 29 after being questioned by ABC News about suggestive emails that he sent to a 16-year-old congressional page in 2005. The emails, in which Foley asks the page how old he is, what he wants for his birthday, and to email him a picture, were not sexually explicit but were described by the teenager as “sick sick sick.”

In the days since the scandal broke, several additional pages came forward with transcripts of instant message communications dating back to 2003 in which Foley referred explicitly to sexual organs and acts. The Congressional Page Program brings 66 teenagers to Capitol Hill each summer to relay messages, answer phones and learn about the workings of the House of Representatives. The page whose emails sparked the investigation did not work directly with Foley, but rather with Rep. Rodney Alexander, a Louisiana Republican.

The scandal has led to a rift within the GOP leadership, and many groups across the political and religious spectrum have criticized the way the leadership has handled the story.

On Tuesday, the right-leaning Washington Times called on House Speaker Dennis Hastert to resign. Hastert knew about the 2005 emails, which he described as “overly friendly,” several months before the scandal broke. He had Rep. John Shimkus, who oversees the page program, and Alexander ask Foley to stop communicating with the boy, but did not take any further action at the time.

Also on Tuesday, House Majority Leader John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, told a Cincinnati radio station that Hastert did not handle the situation appropriately.

The same day, however, White House spokesman Tony Snow described the situation as “simply naughty emails.”

Foley served as the chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children and introduced several pieces of legislation intended to prevent sexual predation of children.

Democrats are predicting a heavy fallout for Republicans in Florida and nationwide.

State Senator Nan Rich, a prominent Florida Democrat and an active member of the Jewish community, said that discontent with the Republican Party is growing among Florida’s voters, and “Klein will be the beneficiary of that.”

David Goldenberg, spokesman for the National Jewish Democratic Council, told the Forward that nationally the scandal is “going to have a horrible effect on Republican candidates in general.”

Many leading Christian conservatives have criticized Foley and the GOP leadership’s handling of the situation. As of Tuesday, religious conservatives and Republicans in the Jewish community appeared mostly to be staying mum on the matter.

One Orthodox Republican activist, Jeff Ballabon of the Center for Jewish Values, argued that the actions of one man does not reflect the overall values of the GOP, which he believes are more in line with traditional Judaism.

“People who share traditional values want to keep control of Washington away from Democrats,” he told the Forward.

FORWARD>Allen's Allies Fight Back

Allen's Allies Fight Back

By Beth Schwartzapfel
September 29, 2006

As Senator George Allen’s re-election campaign was engulfed in a firestorm of racial and ethnic gaffes, revelations and accusations, leading Jewish Republican allies attempted to reverse the tide with claims that his Democratic opponent had engaged in “antisemitic” ploys.

Allen, a Virginia Republican in a tough race against Democrat James Webb, was scrambling this week to deny allegations from former college football teammates that as a student he frequently had used a racial epithet to refer to blacks. The allegations came as Allen was already facing a wave of criticism and ridicule over his initial denials that his mother had been raised Jewish.

In an effort to counter the perception that Allen had covered up his ancestry because he was embarrassed by his Jewish roots, the Republican Jewish Coalition and two of the three Jewish Republicans in Congress, Senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota and Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, issued statements defending the Virginia senator and blasting his opponent.

The Republicans accused Webb and his campaign of attempting to push the issue of Allen’s background in an effort to damage him.

“Senator Allen’s opponent and his opponent’s supporters have engaged in a pattern of intimidation and intolerance that I am saddened to see in this country,” said Coleman, who serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee. “I welcome the news of Senator Allen’s Jewish ancestry. I am sure it adds further depth to his demonstrated commitment to fighting oppression and antisemitism and his championing of human rights and freedom.”

Cantor went further, accusing Webb of launching antisemitic attacks against his Jewish opponent in the primary, Harris Miller.

During the primary, the Webb campaign distributed a flier with a cartoon image of Miller, in which he’s depicted with money in one pocket and described as the “anti-Christ of outsourcing.” Miller suggested that the flier was antisemitic; in response, the Webb campaign insisted that the cartoon was simply ridiculing Miller’s work as a lobbyist for the information technology industry and his support for outsourcing. At the time, several Jewish communal leaders dismissed the notion that bigotry was at play.

Just as efforts to paint Webb as antisemitic did not work well for Miller in the primary, they were unlikely to help Allen, said James W. Ceaser, a professor of politics at the University of Virginia.

“It’s a race of Allen against himself,” Ceaser said. “Webb’s just standing on the sidelines.”

Ceaser said that Allen hurt himself during the September 18 debate, when he bristled at a reporter for asking whether his mother was Jewish and then appeared to deny that she is. Allen released a September 19 statement saying that his mother’s ancestors were Jewish but she was raised Christian. But the next day, Allen’s mother, Henrietta “Etty” Allen, told The Washington Post that she indeed had been raised Jewish. She also said she had told this to Allen when he asked about the subject last month. She attributed her decision to keep the truth from her children to her fear of antisemitism after living under Nazi rule in Tunisia.

According to Allen and his staff, the senator was prompted to ask his mother about the issue after reading an article in the Forward demonstrating that his mother hailed from a prominent Sephardic family. He said that he only lied about the matter because his mother asked him not to talk about it with anybody.

“I think people have seen that these things have been mishandled,” Ceaser told the Forward. “It’s been just a series of making people doubt him. That’s been the whole dynamic.” Valerie Sulfaro, an associate professor of political science at James Madison University, told the Forward that the back-and-forth about Allen’s Jewish heritage is not gaining much traction among Virginia voters. “I don’t see the Jewish issue as being a factor of any kind in this race,” she said. “I doubt it will have much of an effect on voters.”

Susan Weinberg, president of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington, told the Forward that the organization wishes the candidates would simply focus on the issues. “The Republicans accusing Webb of being antisemitic, and the digging up of the various racial charges against Allen — they’re ugly on both sides,” she told the Forward. “Our desire would be that these allegations would stay out of the campaign.”

Allen’s Jewish ancestry, however, is still making waves.

“This was a good joke on Allen at Rosh Hashanah services,” Ceaser said. “The rabbi began by welcoming him. It brought a good deal of chuckles from everyone in the synagogue.”

Tribeca Trib>Hearings on 60 Hudson Street Draw to a Close

Hearings on 60 Hudson Street Draw to a Close

By Beth Schwartzapfel
September 18, 2006

In the third and last in a series of contentious hearings before the city’s Board of Standards and Appeals, the Tribeca neighborhood group Neighbors Against NOISE took issue with a site visit made by BSA commissioners to the building in question: 60 Hudson Street.

The Sept. 13 hearing, over a variance granted by the Department of Buildings that allows the building to contain more diesel fuel than city code allows, began with a statement by the residents’ attorney, Norman Siegel, urging the commissioners to inspect the building and “clarify the facts before a decision regarding the variance is rendered.” But Siegel responded angrily when Jim Farley, an executive of the building’s owner, GVA Williams, let it be known that the commissioners had, in fact, conducted a site visit, which had not been previously disclosed.

“The people in the neighborhood have come here with due confidence that the process would be open and fair,” Siegel said, “and with due respect, I think what you did the other day…violates the due process rights of the petitioners.”

BSA Chair Meenakshi Srinivasan replied that “this board has been particular about keeping a transparent process.” She noted Siegel’s objection and promised that a report of the site visit would be entered into the record.

The Board is expected to render its decision on Oct. 17.

The former Western Union building at 60 Hudson Street is now used as a “telecom hotel,” or a hub where telecommunications companies warehouse the massive computer equipment used to power their operations. The machinery requires dozens of backup generators in case of power outages. These generators run on diesel fuel and the neighborhood group alleges the diesel storage creates a fire hazard for the neighborhood and makes the historic building an especially tempting target for terrorists.

Much of the hearing focused on how the contested diesel tanks are refilled. Existing building code requires that they be filled and transported by machine in order to minimize spillage and leakage. The variance allows building employees to fill and transport the tanks by hand if certain conditions, including special training by the Fire Department, are met.

Other provisions of the variance at issue include whether the basement or the ground level should be considered the “lowest floor” (building code only limits the number of tanks above the lowest floor), the fire-resistance rating of the walls enclosing the tanks, and how 60 Hudson should be classified. Bess Matassa testified on behalf of Assemblywoman Deborah Glick that “the inappropriate classification of 60 Hudson as [an] Office Building belies the fact that its use is clearly industrial.” The neighborhood where 60 Hudson is located is zoned as a C-6 commercial district, which allows for office buildings but not industrial properties.

Members of Neighbors Against NOISE were cautiously optimistic following the hearing. “I just have the feeling that they have their minds made up already,” said Deborah Allen, who lives three doors down from 60 Hudson and is a member of Neighbors Against NOISE. “Historically, they’ve sided with the Buildings Department. But I still think we have a good chance. I’m always hopeful.”

FORWARD>News>Chafee Survives Challenge

Chafee Survives Challenge

By Beth Schwartzapfel
September 13, 2006

Stephen Laffey received 11th-hour support from several pro-Israel political action committees, but he still fell short of defeating incumbent Senator Lincoln Chafee in Rhode Island’s GOP primary.

Though Rhode Island is the nation’s smallest state, this contested Senate race has national implications: Democrats have targeted the seat as part of their national strategy to win back the Senate. Chafee has angered the pro-Israel PACs with his support of the Palestinians and his criticism of Israeli government policies. Most recently, he blocked the nomination of John Bolton, who is seen by many Jewish groups as an ally of Israel, to the post of ambassador to the United Nations; criticized new Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank, and urged the Bush administration to “have a more balanced approach” to the peace process.

Early in the year, the pro-Israel Washington Political Action Committee donated $5,000, the maximum amount allowed, to Laffey, mayor of Cranston and a staunch conservative. Federal Election Commission records show that the Los Angeles-based pro-Israel Citizens Organized PAC followed up with a $5,000 donation in June.

During that same period, the conservative Club for Growth, and other rightwing PACs, spent more than $50,000 in independent expenditures, campaign contributions and in-kind contributions to defeat Chafee, who is far to the left of most Republican lawmakers in Washington on taxes, the environment and Iraq.

Laffey spokesperson Nachama Soloveichik told the Forward that an additional four pro-Israel PACs, including the prominent Chicago-based CityPAC, contributed a “nice amount of money” to the campaign in the third quarter, but Soloveichik conceded that it comprised a “small percentage of the total amount” of contributions.

Spokesmen for these PACs either declined comment or were not available.

Reasons for the less-than-anticipated financial support include the fact that PACs often have rules preventing them from contributing to primary races, especially those against incumbents. Perhaps more important, however, is the fact that the Democratic candidate, the state’s former attorney general Sheldon Whitehouse, is favored to win in November and is a candidate whom members of pro-Israel political groups consider to be strong on Israel. As a result, some pro-Israel PACs chose to make donations to Whitehouse’s campaign. “In November, Whitehouse will win,” said Mark Vogel, who is chairman of NationalPAC, the largest pro-Israel PAC in the country, “so I thought the logical way to approach the race is to put all our chips on Sheldon Whitehouse.”

Brown Alumni Magazine>Under the Elms>One Way to Stop Genocide

One Way to Stop Genocide
Brown divests from companies supporting the Sudanese government, and Providence follows suit.

By Beth Schwartzapfel
July/August 2006

This winter, Brown became the sixth university nationwide to put its money where its mouth is. Since the Corporation voted last February to divest from companies whose activities support the genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan, divestment has be-come a national trend. Following Brown’s lead have been such schools as Columbia and the University of Califor-nia, as well as a growing list of states, including New Jersey and Illinois. In April, Providence became the first U.S. city to divest from Sudan, thanks in part to the efforts of Scott Warren ’09 of the campus group Darfur Action Network (DAN). “No doubt momentum at Brown carried over to Providence,” Warren says. “And we’re trying to continue that momentum.” The group is lobbying the Rhode Island legislature to divest as well.

DAN is the Brown chapter of a national organization called Students Taking Action Now: Darfur (STAND), which claims more than 100 college and 200 high school chapters. For nearly a year, DAN has been working with the Brown Corporation’s Advisory Committee on Corporate Responsibility in Investment Policies (ACCRI) to fine-tune a coherent position on Darfur. “The University should not be making money from clearly immoral activities,” says ACCRI chair Louis Putterman, an economics professor. “It shouldn’t try to earn the maximum return on the dollar without any consideration for the ethical consequences.”

The large-scale violence in Darfur broke out in February 2003, when the government responded to local ethnic skirmishes by giving money and arms to local militias called Janjaweed, which are primarily allied with Arab tribes. Since then, the Janjaweed have been systematically targeting non-Arab civilians with a pattern of human rights abuses the Bush administration and other world leaders have termed genocide. More than 200,000 people have died and more than two million have been displaced, according to the International Crisis Group. Because the Sudanese government is funding the Janjaweed, companies that substantially aid the government are seen as complicit.

“By re­main­ing invested in these companies, we are, in effect, supporting the government of Sudan,” says Michael Williams ’08 of the Undergraduate Council of Students, which backed ACCRI’s recommendation.

In April 2005, President Ruth Simmons asked ACCRI to see whether any of Brown’s $2 billion endowment was invested in companies directly contributing to the conflict. The committee initially identified just one company, Zurich-based ABB Ltd., and called for Simmons to write the head of ABB expressing the University’s concern.

But by February, when the committee made its recommendation to the Corporation, the group was taking a harder line. Working with DAN, ACCRI had assembled a “do not invest” list of companies it wanted Brown to avoid until the conflict in Darfur is resolved.

To compile the list, the advisory committee used research by other universities that had already divested, as well as additional research by ACCRI and consultation with Institutional Shareholder Services. After the addition and subtraction of several companies, the list now totals fourteen: ABB, Petro­China, Sinopec, Tatneft, Alcatel, Siemens, Alstom, Bharat Heavy Electricals, Harbin Power Equipment Company, Lundin Petroleum, Nam Fatt Company Bhd, Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, PECD Bhd, and Schlumberger. ACCRI will continue to revise the list as companies change their practices and as the situation in Darfur evolves.

Divestment is a familiar tool for universities seeking to exact social change. In the 1980s, many U.S. institutions divested from companies doing business in South Africa to protest apartheid. After months of contentious debate, Brown agreed to divest its South African holdings over a three-year period, starting in 1986. More recently, in 2003, the University voted to divest from companies that manufacture tobacco products.

Ultimately, the Brown vote on Darfur is symbolic. By the time ACCRI’s recommendations were adopted this winter, Brown was no longer invested in ABB anyway, says Executive Vice President for Finance and Administration Elizabeth Huidekoper.

Still, as more and more schools, states, and cities divest from Sudan, the cumulative pressure is being felt. This April the Sudanese embassy released an open letter urging U.S. entities to reconsider their choice to divest. “We took that as a sign that divestment really was working,” says Warren.

Providence Phoenix>City Watch>Providence Police Try to Lower the Boom on Club Diesel

Providence police try to lower the boom on Club Diesel

By Beth Schwartzapfel
March 22, 2006

In the first of what promises to be a lengthy and sometimes contentious series of hearings, lawyers representing Club Diesel squared off at City Hall on March 15 against counterparts speaking for the Providence Police Department. Although the matter at hand is whether the Washington Street dance club is a “disorderly house,” the larger issue is really the future of nightlife in downtown Providence.

The police are seeking the revocation of Diesel’s liquor and entertainment licenses, an outcome that would effectively put the venue, as well as Lupo’s Heartbreak Hotel — which shares the same space in the Strand Building — out of business. The Providence Board of Licenses, which is slated to continue its hearings on the matter Friday, March 24, at 1 pm, could impose sanctions ranging from a fine to the license revocations.

To prove that Club Diesel is a “disorderly house,” police must show that the establishment’s owners have allowed it “to annoy and disturb the persons inhabiting or residing in the neighborhood” or permitted laws to be broken in the neighborhood. As part of the department’s opening statement, senior assistant city solicitor Kevin McHugh recited a list of more than a dozen incidents in which police officers were called to Diesel, or the area around the club, to quell disturbances.

McHugh called these incidents part of a larger pattern of disorderly conduct among Diesel’s patrons, and asserted that in the last three years there have been 332 calls to police and 174 calls to rescue from in or around the club. “This establishment has presented a drain on the police manpower,” said McHugh, noting that officers have been called downtown from their posts in other neighborhoods, “thereby leaving those neighborhoods with less protection than they normally would have.”

Lawyers Edward Mulligan and Dennis McMahon, representing 79-81 Washington Street Corporation, which owns Diesel, countered that there are 26 other licensed establishments within a two-block radius of the club, the capacity of which collectively totals 3222. They distributed maps of the area, in which these other bars and clubs were marked with clusters of red dots. “All of these establishments . . . let out onto the street into this neighborhood at the same time,” said McMahon. “It is highly unlikely . . . that our patrons are the only ones that are unruly.”

Also at issue are a series of statements taken by police from the victim of a January 6 downtown stabbing (which occurred in a parking lot owned by the Providence Journal) and his friends — that will prove, say Diesel’s lawyers, that the incident was unrelated to the club. McHugh says the statements cannot be released because they are part of an ongoing criminal investigation. But Michael Kent, one of the principals of 79-81 Washington Street Corporation, said in a subsequent phone interview, “They’re either going to give [the statements] to us, or we’re going to court to force them.” His own private investigator, Kent says, has interviewed the witnesses and found that the stabbing “had nothing to do with the facility.”

Lupo’s, a downtown institution since the ’70s and one of the city’s top attractions, has operated at the Strand since 2003, when it moved from the nearby Peerless Building to accommodate one of Arnold “Buff” Chace’s downtown residential developments. Although Lupo’s has not been accused of any wrongdoing, shutting Club Diesel would force the closing of the live music venue. (Disclosure: Lupo’s and Kent’s venues are longtime Phoenix advertisers.)

Kent, who owns other nightlife establishments, including the Complex and Art Bar, insists that the action against Diesel is part of a larger effort by the Police Department and the Cicilline administration to “hurt or eliminate the nightclub industry in the city.” Cicilline spokeswoman Karen Southern says, “The mayor has always said it’s important to strike the right balance, to have a thriving nightlife but also provide for the safety of the patrons of the city.” Police spokesman Gene Riccio declined comment.

The quest for balance cited by Southern notwithstanding, it seems that the city is more interested in using a broad brush against nightlife than in enforcing the law against the relatively small number of patrons who commit crimes.

The Board of Licenses’ hearings, taking place at 1 pm in room 112 at City Hall, are scheduled to continue Friday, March 24, Wednesday, March 29, Friday, March 31, and Monday, April 3.