Secret powers of Avedon's 'family'

While we were in DC we stopped by the Corcoran Gallery of Art to see Richard Avedon's Portraits of Power exhibition.

Lot of interesting stuff there, including the 1976 portrait series “The Family,” -- 69 individual portraits for Rolling Stone magazine of the most powerful people in the United States. Reagan, Carter, Kissinger, Barbara Jordan, Tip O'Neil, Caesar Chavez, plus a lot of Washington bureaucrats we didn't know.

Martin spotted the most interesting bureaucrat:

W. Mark Felt, Former Associate Director, F.B.I., Fairfax, Virginia, 7-8-76

He was indeed very powerful in the early-70s, but only a few people knew how powerful. It wasn't until May 2005 the rest of us learned he was Deep Throat.

Labels: politics

- posted by Amy @ 11/11/2008 04:41:00 PM

 
DC: McCain, now 50 percent off

Across the street from DC's Ford Theater, we popped into one of those full-on tourist shops looking for "new president" goods. The guy behind the counter told me all they had so far were buttons, so we bought a few of those.

In the back of the shop were the sale goods:

Labels: pictures, politics

- posted by Amy @ 11/09/2008 09:07:00 AM

 
Today in DC

We're in Washington until Sunday.

Today I stopped by the Newseum, where they've still got several dozen Obama wins papers out front. People were still going nuts, taking pictures, grinning, and crying.

I liked Newark's a lot.



Met up there with my friend Peter who was taking a break from work. We walked over toward the Capitol to see the inaguration platform, which he said has been under construction since August.

Labels: pictures, politics

- posted by Amy @ 11/06/2008 06:24:00 PM

 
The hate factor on Election Day

From my hometown paper:

In this image from a video, Kern High School District Trustee Ken Mettler is shown punching an opponent of Proposition 8.

The full story in the Bakersfield Californian.

Prop. 8, which will be on the same ballot as Obama-Mccain, seeks to end same-sex marriage in California.

The county's unemployment rate is 9.3 percent, it's one of the worst-hit places in the country for housing foreclosures/value declines, voter registration is at an all-time high -- and when we were there in August I heard stories of people saying things like "I agree with Obama's politics, but I'm not gonna vote for a N-."

Labels: bakersfield, politics

- posted by Amy @ 10/25/2008 08:25:00 AM

 
Brooklyn hearts Obama



If you happen to be passing through the Buttermilk Channel and look toward Brooklyn, you'll see somebody with a lot of paint hearts Obama.

Labels: brooklyn, pictures, politics

- posted by Amy @ 10/21/2008 07:54:00 PM

 
Video: Czech march against US radar facility



We're back in England now, but here's the quick video I shot a week ago in Prague.

Just before heading out to dinner, I caught a bit of CNN mentioning Condeleeza Rice was in Prague for the signing of the agreement that will allow the US to build a radar monitoring station in the Czech Republic. (It would guide defensive missiles launched from Poland or Lithuania if one of those sites are approved.)

As we were walking along Nerudova, up comes peaceful protesters with a police escort. The steplad was delighted like crazy to get a front-row view as the Czechs marched up to the castle. My crowd estimate (which by the way, have always been very close to official numbers when later released) was about 3,000 -- though the husband pegged it at a mere 1,000. (Harumpf.)

Their banners -- mainly anti-US, anti-nuke, anti-Condeleeza -- showed that they were an amazingly diverse group: greenpeace, veterans in uniform, communists and anarchists included.

Labels: politics, prague, video

- posted by Amy @ 7/15/2008 03:49:00 AM

 
Bringing back the 'Balkanization'

I'm watching CNN's footage of the mess in Belgrade. Maybe it was inevitable, but still very heartbreaking.

Reminds me of two things in particular from my time living in Europe.

First, there was an extremely annoying train ride in May 1992 I took solo from Athens to Prague. It was epic in the number of things that went wrong, (including a train conductor who pinned me against the window as he triend to stick his tongue down my throat,) but the problems leaving Belgrade had to do with another amorous gentleman. This guy was a Serb, a passenger sitting next to me. Early on, I slipped the fake wedding band on and feigned sleep. That didn't stop him, as he continually jabbed my shoulder to ask questions -- from would I have sex with him since my husband wasn't on the train to "When are the Americans going to come and help us?"

That was a question I certainly wasn't going to answer. The U.S. had just closed our embassy there, and I had been worried I wasn't going to be able to get a transit visa through Serbia (allowing me to get back to Prague in time for the Guns 'N Roses/Faith No More/Soundgarden concert.)

What I was thinking, but wouldn't say, was that 1) The Americans probably aren't coming, and 2) if they do, it will be to bomb your city. (Which eventually the U.S. did.)

His total ignorance of the situation was surprising.

The other thing that comes to mind is well, rather quaint in retrospect. This is a Prognosis story, the English-language newspaper I worked for in Czechoslovakia. I believe we sent three guys down to Slovenia/Croatia in June 1991 to report what turned out to be the very first battle of the decade-long (or ongoing, if you prefer) Balkan War. Prognosis was a monthly publication at the time (only about the fourth or fifth issue of the paper actually,) and we had looong meetings trying to decide on the wording of the banner headline. Basically it came down to "War in the Balkans" but the final debate was weather to go with or without the question mark. Because, we reasoned, the "war" could be over on Wednesday and we'd have a stale paper on the stands for three weeks.

And by the way, the defunct Prognosis now has a Facebook page.

And Google books will let you have a look inside Stacy Sullivan's 2004 book: "Be Not Afraid, for You Have Sons in America: How a Brooklyn Roofer Helped Lure the U.S. into the Kosovo War"

Labels: media, politics, prague

- posted by Amy @ 2/21/2008 02:11:00 PM

 
'Bomb Iran' was big in Reagan Country

For those of you who didn't live in Reagan Country during the Iranian hostage crisis, "Bomb Iran" (which was sung by John McCain yesterday) was a huge novelty hit at the time -- like '79 or '80.

I remember listening to it on the school bus. The internets say it was done by Vince Vance & The Valiants.

Labels: politics

- posted by Amy @ 4/20/2007 11:18:00 AM

 
Kafka does Guantanamo

I heard this on NPR this morning and just assumed I was too sleepy to understand what I'd heard, but aparently not. From the NPR website:

The first serious cracks in the newly minted Military Commissions Act started to appear just two hours after Hicks entered the courtroom on Monday, when the judge disqualified two of Hicks' civilian defense attorneys.

One of the disqualified lawyers was Joshua Dratel, a well-known Manhattan criminal defense attorney. Dratel has been on Hicks case since Hicks was first charged, about three years ago.

Under the new regulations, civilian lawyers are required to sign an agreement to abide by the new tribunal rules. But the military hasn't finished writing the rules. Dratel said he could not sign a blank check, documents that might commit him to regulations that have yet to be written.

So basically the lawyer had to leave because he refused to sign rules that weren't yet written? Am I missing something?

Labels: politics

- posted by Amy @ 3/30/2007 12:49:00 PM

 
Political infiltration nothing new

So just a few quick thoughts on the news that the NYPD was keeping tabs on political protesters before the RNC Convention.

Before I left ABCNews.com with a repetitive-strain type injury in 2000, I was working on a story along these lines. Unfortunately it never ran because I couldn't so much as sign my name to a check let alone type by the time I left ABC. But the basics of the story were all out there, though no one had really pulled it all together at that point. To me, it sounded like the WTO riots in Seattle (in November 1999) took police departments by surprise across the US and they started to realize that they needed to be better prepared if their city was about to host any big political/govt/economic event. Yes, individual police depts acknowledged they were doing some stuff, but I couldn't get anyone to say this was being coordinated on a national level, even in an impromptu fashion. (Except the protesters, of course, who were certain it was a giant well-coordinated conspiracy to shut them up.)

At that point, it had already been well documented that the cops were infiltrating the protest groups. How well documented? A Reuters reporter was actually riding along with a protest group during the 2000 GOP convention in Philadelphia when they got diverted on the way to the protest and arrested -- except for the protester among them who was actually a cop. (Oddly, I can't find that story online now, but that link just above is useful.)

That single event alone should have been enough, I thought, to let every political activist across the country know it could/would go on again. And mind you this was all before Sept. 11.

I came to this story with the full knowledge it was nothing new. One of the best stories I did in college was a huge package on the FBI's infiltration (in the 1960s) of the Black Students Union at UC Santa Barbara. I had all the documents; there was no question this happened. They had gone so far as to enroll an FBI agent at UCSB with the sole purpose of joining the BSU and keeping tabs on them. The partially-blacked-out FBI reports (released through FOIA requests) went so far as to list the titles of books on the shelves in the apartments of the BSU leaders. For the story, I tracked down several of the former BSU guys -- some who never knew they'd been infiltrated until I started reading the reports to them over the phone. As best as I could find, the FBI agent never did anything except report what he/she observed.

It was pretty amazing stuff. And indeed, those guys were planing on making waves. In 1968 they took over a campus building for several days until their demands were met. No violence, except they did have chains they used to lock the building's doors. One of the things that resulted from their action was the creation of UCSB's Black Studies department.

Labels: nyc, philadelphia, politics, ucsb

- posted by Amy @ 3/26/2007 10:03:00 AM