Stealing Christmas (play)

Clockwise from left: Jen, Larry, me, Shruti and Victor.

Casing the joint.

Part of our responsibilities as members of the Karamu education department, in addition to the daily outreach tour to schools around northeast Ohio, was to perform in the annual holiday play for young audiences.

In 1991 that was a new play by John Cameron, Stealing Christmas, directed by education department director Justin Dennis.

The tale is straightforward. Four kids, Chris, Lila, Tony and Donny, craft a plan to make some money on a cold, winter's night. Chris (Victor Dickerson) is the ring-leader, deciding it would be clever to  knock on the door of some old person, sing carols or something, and when they get invited in, he would distract them while the others go through the place and rob them blind.

New Jerk Hustler

The first house they try, they meet Edna (Jennifer Silver) who lives on her own, and is all too happy to have company. Soon Chris is seated, eating cookies while Lila (Shruti Amin), Donny (my college roommate Larry Trice) and Tony (myself) have disappeared into the rest of the house.

Edna's childhood stories were played out onstage by three of us, with me returning as her father, Larry her brother and Shruti as a young Edna, showing how she and her family always got by without much, except love and happiness and positive feelings. 

In the end Chris learns the true meaning of Christmas, and his friends return to tell what they have learned: the old woman has nothing, her house is practically empty.

Christmas memories.

I was reminded of this tale when my family and I journeyed downtown this afternoon to see the new holiday play A Carol for Cleveland at Cleveland Play House.

Written by Eric Coble and based on a novella by mystery writer Les Roberts, this play tells the story of an out-of-work steelworker in the late 1970s. Originally from the Pittsburgh area, Ed Podolak (Charles Kartali) has been living hand-to-mouth in the armpit of the nation for a year, trying to find steady employment.

As in Stealing Christmas — indeed, as in the original Dickens' classic, A Christmas Carol — the past is used as a device not only to educate the audience about the history of an individual, and how they came to be who they are, but to provide a reminder of what they were always meant to be. Or could be. Or after all, should be.

Yelling at hobos on Public Square.

However, as my wife pointed out, it is Dickens who dared take that extra step, and to wade into class politics.

It is important for us, all of us, to be grateful for what we have, to share with those closest to us, and with those we do not even know, and above all to remain positive. To have hope.

But Dickens also suggests that those who live in plenty have a moral responsibility to contribute to the general welfare, and to engage with and to care for mankind.

Or to burn for all eternity in the pits of Hell.

The Pledge of Allegiance

The Pledge of Allegiance was written by Socialist Frances Bellamy in 1892. It read:

"I pledge allegiance to my flag and the republic for which it stands: one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all."

It was published in a children's magazine on the 400th anniversary of the discovery of Christopher Columbus by the native peoples of the Caribbean. Frances wrote the pledge to 'inoculate' immigrants and native-born Americans against the potential for radical subversion.

Bellamy wanted to include the words "equality and fraternity" but in 1892 those rights weren't really extended to everyone, certainly not women or blacks, so he kept his pledge brief and to the point. Today the pledge is no longer brief, and the original point has been considerably twisted.

DID YOU KNOW ..? The original pose for appropriately pledging your allegiance to the American flag involved giving it what would be familiar to everyone as what we call the "Nazi" salute. During World War II, President Roosevelt declared a hand over the heart was more appropriate. Already, the pledge had moved from something suggesting American unity to something much more personal and individual.

This picture is so fucking cute.

There were those who had pressed President Truman to add the words "under God" into the religion-free pledge, to no avail. Finally, in 1954 President Eisenhower attended a church service on Lincoln's birthday, at Lincoln's church, in Lincoln's pew. The pastor, a Reverend Docherty gave a sermon which argued the Pledge of Allegiance could be said by the citizen of any country to their flag ... that something was missing.

GOD WAS MISSING!

Yes. Once again, once and always, God was missing from America. Something must be done. And so, on June 14, 1954 a joint resolution of Congress added the words "under God" to the pledge.

The Black Legion

The Black Legion was a KKK splinter group operating in the 1930s. Centered in Michigan the Legion was also active in Ohio.

AP described the organization on May 31, 1936, "as a group of loosely federated night-riding bands operating in several States without central discipline or common purpose beyond the enforcement by lash and pistol of individual leaders' notions of 'Americanism.'"

They were allegedly responsible for numerous murders of alleged communists and socialists.

Date unknown, paper unknown
Police Reopen Probe of Two Weird Killings
Anonymous phone call: “Look into the muders of those two men in the gully at E. 49th Street and you’ll find the Black Legion was responsible.”

Sources: Wikipedia
Eliot Ness personal scrapbook, property of Western Reserve Historical Society

Power (play)

POWER
A Living Newspaper
by Arthur Arent

ag·it·prop /ˈædʒɪtˌprɒp/ –noun
1. agitation and propaganda, esp. for the cause of communism.

I am leftist, I will admit it. Not a Leftist, I do not define myself that way, that is not me as a person. But my belief system veers to the left of center. I believe in tolerance and compassion, I accept alternate points of view, and often champion them. And I believe in the obligation of our society, our civilization, our government, to see to the needs and assistance of those who need assistance.

I am not a Communist. Neither am I a Capitalist, in its purest sense. I am against slavery. I am against slave-like conditions. I oppose starvation and want. I oppose fear, fear of oppression, of domination, either through direct threatening means, or by the endorsement and reinforcement of the dominant paradigm, of the necessity of an underclass, or workers doing all they can for little while the few live lives of unspeakable luxury and waste. And yes, that might make me sound like a Socialist. Today, over 55% of Americans believe the President is a Socialist, which means they don't really know what the fuck that word even means, but if they think Barack Obama is one, then paint me red and call me Uncle Joe.

Having said that, upon reading another "Living Newspaper" by Arthur Arent, I am not so sure I feel as strongly as I once did about the House Committee on Un-American Activities efforts at pulling down the Federal Theater Project.

The majority of work created by the FTP was non-political. There were many children's plays, and when conservatives called those productions out for indoctrinating the young against the Man, well that is probably because most good, strong children's stories do have moral lessons pertaining to fairness, honesty, being kind, and all kinds of messages that leave, I dunno, British Petroleum, for example, withering under scrutiny.

But these Living Newspapers are inarguably agitprop - they are propaganda which agitates. They are not well-told stories which inspire the mind or the heart. They are also not dispassionate portrayals of fact. In the case of POWER they are quotes taken out of context (Arent himself admitted this was a technique of The Living Newspaper, though he did not use that turn of phrase) and bent in such a way as to turn the viewer in a certain direction, and keep them pointed that way until a direct appeal is made; the audience is instructed, to-wit, to rise up, take a stand, to take action against the forces which oppress them. To stand with strong government and against big business.

Are these good ideas? If you can't find work and your children are dying before your eyes, well, sure, they are the only ideas. I didn't say it was wrong, or even proper to create this work. But reading it, I can understand why there are those who would believe that plays which champion the efforts of the current administration should not be paid for with public funds.