Most people are unaware of the existence of Israelis or Palestinians working to find a non-violent solution to the conflict in the region. Violence and bloodshed make for better headlines and allow the conflict to be easily reduced to “us versus them.”

But Ronit Avni is trying to change that. Ronit is the founder and director of Just Vision, an organization that documents and raises awareness of Israeli and Palestinian grassroots peace activists. She is also the co-director of the documentary Encounter Point, which features the stories of activists she has met through the course of her work.

The film has been screened at several festivals over the past few months, including Hot Docs, the Jerusalem Film Festival, the Tribeca Film Festival, the Sao Paulo Film Festival, and the Vancouver International Film Festival. Encounter Point also won the audience award for best documentary at the San Francisco International Film Festival in May. It opens for a limited run at the Quad Cinema in New York on November 17.

The interviewer: Randy Klein, ITF Board of Directors member
The interviewee: Ronit Avni, filmmaker and activist

You have been involved in human rights work for a long time and Just Vision seems like an outgrowth of several of your past experiences. What was it like interning for B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories?

Human rights work is generally a sobering and difficult experience. You develop a vocabulary you wish you would never have use for; words to describe torture, degradation, assassinations, discrimination, abuse. It is painful to confront what we human beings are capable of. It is especially painful if you were taught to hold your community or society to high standards of moral conduct. The dissonance can be destabilizing.

I interned at B’Tselem in 1999, during the Oslo process. It was eye-opening. A field researcher, Najib Abu Rokaya, was kind enough to take me with him on various occasions to the West Bank as he collected testimonies of Palestinians whose homes had been destroyed or whose child had been hit by a rubber-coated steel bullet. At the time, the intern coordinator introduced me to the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) so I would split my time between my own research, PCATI, and B’Tselem.

What struck me was that communities who lived ten or fifteen minutes apart from one another had virtually no sense of the other’s perspective. It isn’t a unique phenomenonæthere are plenty of communities in Brooklyn or Manhattan that never interactæbut it really affected me. B’Tselem gave me the opportunity to see through these two separate lenses. I have tremendous respect for their work. It is never easy to hold a mirror up to one’s society. Many prophetic voices have been killed or ostracized over generations for critiquing dominant views or habits, and yet such voices are essential to our growth as ethical human beings. B’Tselem holds a mirror up to Israeli society. Those who take the time to read their reports see a picture that is less than flattering. I also started reading Stanley Cohen’s work during that timeæabout different ways that societies deflect responsibility through denial, or rationalization or by displacing blame. I was seeing this play out in the public’s responses to B’Tselem.

You spent several years working at WITNESS, which is an amazing human rights organization. Tell us a little about the organization and some of your experiences working there.

WITNESS was conceived by Peter Gabriel. The idea was to train human rights organizations to document abuses using video cameras. After the Rodney King beating, the organization was launched together with the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, now called “Human Rights First.” When I started, I was one of three full-time staff members, so each person wore many hats. Part of my role became to train human rights organizations from countries including Afghanistan, the Gambia, Honduras and Senegal to document violations using video and to strategize with them about effective uses of video for social change. I loved the work as it was at the intersection of technology, film, human rights advocacy and public policy. It was also tremendously humbling to meet so many courageous people. I was particularly inspired by indigenous rights advocate Joey Lozano from the Philippines, the women from RAWA [Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan], and the youth of color from the Bay Area who all demonstrated civic leadership in their communities despite personal hardship. They were not politicians, yet they had a sense of agency and urgency and this led them to get involved. They inspired me to look for Israelis and Palestinians doing the same within their own societies. This was the beginning of my journey to launch Just Vision.

What did you learn about using video as a tool for advocacy?

I learned about the strengths and limits of the medium. It is an inherently reductive, narrative-driven medium that lends itself to telling personal stories rather than providing a structural overview of a systemic problem. Also, there are few rules; what is safe or ethical or effective in one context might be entirely problematic for another. It takes patience, planning and networks of support to make change happen. Very few rights violations are documented as they unfold. Instead, video is often used for evidence, awareness-raising, to reconstruct events or as a deterrent to further abuse. Most of the work happens after the film is producedæto ensure it is seen by those with the power to effect change. I learned that ultimately it is about community organizing, strategic thinking, reliability and quality. If all those elements come into play, you are more likely to be effective. If you are disorganized, lack buy-in from potential stakeholders, or are unreliable or shoddy in your work, you are unlikely to succeed.

When did you get the idea for Just Vision? Which came first, the film or the organization?

Encounter Point is an integral part of a broader effort to raise awareness about Palestinians and Israelis at the vanguard of a movement to promote nonviolence and peace building. The film was never meant to emerge in isolation. From the beginning, we wanted to create in-depth materials online to complement the film, since no 90-minute film can ever do justice to the painful, divisive and complex Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For this reason we are interviewing 180 peace builders and publishing this living history archive online at JustVision.org together with educational curricula and a timeline of the conflict through the lens of these 180 people who are committed to ending it. We are also trying to connect such peace builders to policymakers, journalists, community leaders, religious figures and more. We’ve taken our work to members of the State Department, Capitol Hill, the World Bank, the Oprah Winfrey Show, temples, mosques and community centers, to name a few.

Why do you think stories of these brave and inspiring individuals are so absent from the coverage of the situation?

They are not sensational. They are complex and hard to describe. They don’t “sell” or “pitch” well. A photo of a bomb or the wounded is self-explanatory. The picture tells the story. Peace work is slow, incremental, it is relational and requires context. I don’t think there is any ill-intent by journalists who do not cover this story, but it requires them to know more background, to speak the languages of the peace builders, to take time to learn the nuances of different approaches. And social change is slow. Policy is immediate and wide-ranging in its impact so it feels urgent to report on. Grassroots work is ongoing and develops over years or decades, Sometimes we take this for granted and don’t bother to stop and say, “Wait, this is important.” We have yet to fully appreciate the impact of this type of work, though. The Israeli movement to withdraw its troops from Lebanon began with small grassroots organizations and networks of mothers and then soldiers and others who wanted to see change. It took two decades, but it finally happened by and large. These movements take a long time to take root, and to enter into public discourse and ultimately to reflect the mainstream.

Just as the individuals featured in the film come from different backgrounds, Just Vision is itself a collaboration of people from various parts of the globe. Can you talk about some of the various staff and what their perspective brings to the organization?

We are a core team of young women from Israel, Canada, the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Brazil and the US. Julia Bacha is from Brazil. She was the co-writer and editor of the filmControl Room, and studied Middle Eastern history and politics. Joline Makhlouf is the first Palestinian woman pilot. She’s worked with Israeli-Palestinian co-existence and dialogue groups ranging from Face-to-Face, Faith-to-Faith and Seeds of Peace. Nahanni Rous is a journalist from the US who interned in Jerusalem with Linda Gradstein of NPR and traveled cross country interviewing families after September 11th. I am part Israeli, part Canadian. It takes everyone to move this agenda forward. The more communities begin to back non-violent peace builders, and the more we demand that they be reported on and supported, the better.

You have shown the film at locations in Israel and the West Bank.  Can you talk about the reaction of the audience at these screenings?

The reactions to Encounter Point have been largely positive. We opened the film in West Jerusalem at the Jerusalem International Film Festival to a sold-out audience. It was perhaps the most diverse group of people I have seen in the region with cynics and sceptics along with those eager for the film. They ranged from Israeli orthodox Jewish settlers to Northern Tel Aviv secular affluent Israeli Jews to Palestinian Christians to Palestinian Muslims from Ramallah, Jenin, East Jerusalem and other nearby cities. We were terrified at how they would react but the film subjects received a standing ovation at the end. One orthodox Jewish Israeli man got up and stated that he felt the film was biased in favor of Palestinians. One devout Palestinian Muslim woman stood and expressed that she felt it was biased in favor of Israelis. Afterwards, most people went outside and continued the conversation for 1.5 hours. This included the two individuals who felt the film favored the “other side.” It was truly amazing.

In East Jerusalem we received a similarly positive response. We also showed the film in Haifa and Jenin. In Haifa, we screened the film three times but people were just returning to their homes so the turnout was low. They have invited us back for a proper, publicized screening. In Jenin about 100 people came, watched the film, clapped and then ran into the streets as the Israeli army had just invaded, so we didn’t have a substantive Q&A afterwards. In Gaza, I wasn’t there, but my understanding is that the audience had a hard time. The Israeli army was engaged in military operations in Gaza at the time, so it was even more tense than usual for residents. Their only exposure to Israelis are as settlers and soldiers so they had difficulty seeing empathic depictions of Israeli civilians. Also, they wanted to see the army invasion reflected in the film, which it was not, although the military occupation is. We have just been invited to screen the film in Nazareth and Tel Aviv and are working on a Ramallah screening.

Are there any plans to reach out to schools or community groups to use this for educational purposes?

Yes, definitely. We made a special Arabic and Hebrew version of the film and have offered it to local educators and community leaders to use as a tool for sparking dialogue and understanding on some of these issues.  We’ve been working with graduate students from Columbia University Teacher’s College, as well as the staff of Abraham’s Vision to provide in-depth educational lessons about this issue. We hope to distribute the lessons to high schools and colleges across the country, as well as online.

Has the trouble over the summer in the West Bank and Lebanon impacted the work of the activists featured in the film?

Not really—Robi, Ali, Shlomo, Tzvika and Sami continue to be advocates for resolving the conflict through non-militant means. As far as I know, everyone is still engaged in their work.

Finally, it is impossible to have a conversation about the conflict without asking about the elections.  You have commented that Just Vision tries to focus on the people who will “have to live with the peace.” What are your thoughts and what have your contacts on both sides expressed to you concerning Hamas gaining so many seats in the Parliament?

Generally, we really focus on the people who do this work regardless of who is in power. So many events garner that question. When [Ariel] Sharon was elected, many Palestinians reacted similarly to Israelis’ reactions to Hamas’s victory. Yet peace building must continue, and it does. We want to strengthen the voices of those who are trying to build a culture and consensus that favors nonviolence and peace. This will take time, but it is essential. I was not surprised about the Hamas election. I don’t think it signals the radicalization of Palestinian society, just as the Likud vote for Sharon did not necessarily signal a major shift to the right by the Israeli public. People want to trust their leaders, and they want change. History demonstrates that sometimes hard liners make tough choices that doves cannot. I can only hope that whatever the outcome of these two elections, ultimately the voices for compromise, dignity and diplomacy on both sides take center stage. “Inshallah,” as they say.

Randy Klein

Beijing’s successful bid to host the 2008 Olympic Games signals the increasing geopolitical influence wielded by China, as it tries to transform itself into an economic and political superpower. Though the eyes, or at least the television sets, of the world will be fixated on the world’s most populous country during the summer of 2008, neither China nor the mainstream media is likely to offer viewers and competitors a behind-the-scenes look at the experiences of the Tibetan and Tai people, two ethnic minorities residing on China’s geographic, cultural, and political border.

In preparation for their March 2 reading in New York, I recently sat down with Sara Davis and Robert Barnett. Dr. Davis is the author of Song and Silence: Ethnic Revival on China’s Southwest Borders. She is a former China researcher for Human Rights Watch and has written for several publications, including the Wall Street Journal, International Herald Tribune, and Modern China. Dr. Barnett is the author of Lhasa: Streets with Memories. He is a lecturer in Modern Tibetan Studies at Columbia University and a former journalist for the BBC.  He is also the former director and founder of the now-defunct Tibet Information Network.

The interviewer: Randy Klein, chair of the Human Rights Watch Young Advocates of New York
The interviewees: Robert Barnett and Sara Davis

How did each of you become interested in studying the Tibetans and Tai Lües?

Robert Barnett: I was working in Hong Kong about 15 or 20 years ago. A friend persuaded me to travel around China and India. In order to get to India overland, one had to go through Tibet.  Unfortunately, the day I was to go see the main tourist site in the capital, Lhasa, I walked into the middle of a big demonstration in which a number of people were killed. No Westerner had ever [witnessed] one before in Tibet. So I became one of a group of foreigners who were [the first] eyewitnesses to these events.

Sara Davis: I was studying Chinese oral literature and folklore in graduate school.  I knew I wanted to study Chinese storytelling but did not know where.  I had seen storytellers in Sichuan, [a province in southwest China], when I [was] traveling around in that post-college, pre-anything-else period.  I saw these amazing storytellers and decided I was going to study that, but the question was where, since there was almost no storytelling going on in China anymore.

Why was that?

SD:  Television, radio, movies, the usual stuff.  My graduate school advisor suggested I work in Yunnan.  I [spoke with] people I knew who had spent time in Yunnan, and found someone who said [he was] once in this temple in Sipsongpanna, in southern Yunnan, and saw this woman telling a story.  I managed to dig up someone’s master’s thesis that had a passing reference to storytellers in Sipsongpanna.  So based on these two slim pieces of information, I submitted an entire dissertation proposal and convinced them that I was going to go off and find storytellers — without actually knowing if there were any.  That’s how I wound up in Yunnan and did my doctoral research on the Tai Lües, which became the basis for the book.

How many other nationalities other than the Han are there in China?

RB: This is a huge question. China has a population of roughly 1.3 billion people and 91 percent are considered ethnic Chinese or Han. The Chinese run a very tight ship in which classification is done by the government in a highly organized and pre-determined way.  They had a system where [different communities] had to register to have their nationalities recognized.  About 400 managed to register … [The Chinese government] sent specialists around the country … to determine which of the 400 actually met the criteria. [The scholars] used Marxist criteria, which were actually Stalin’s criteria for [determining what constituted] nationality. Eventually, 55 [groups were] accepted as “minorities.”  

The Chinese [government] are very definite in saying there are only 56 nationalities, including the Han.  Although the 91 percent are all the same nationality, they see themselves as treating all nationalities equally and as being very tolerant.

SD: When they were doing this process of boiling down the 400 ethnicities and coming up with 55, they initially sent out teams of anthropologists and ethnologists to create books on the different [ethnic] regions.  

What time period was this?

SD: It went on for a while. Most of it was done [in the 1950s and 60s], but some of it continued into the 70s.  I don’t know about Tibet, but the books on Yunnan are quite serious scholarly research. They categorized the ethnic groups, placing each one on a different level of evolutionary advancement.  The Tibetans and the Tais were in the middle because they had written scripts and their own systems of government.  Some groups that had never had any contact with each other were lumped together as one group while others that have had lots of contact were split in two — so it wasn’t always a rational system

Based on this evolutionary scale the government decided they were going to move everyone up the scale. Of course, at the top are the Han.  The idea was to accentuate the positive qualities and eliminate the negative.  The government, often including ethnic scholars themselves, then went through and picked out which qualities were good qualities (such as singing and dancing, wearing nice pretty clothes), and which qualities were bad, like polygamous marriage.  They then set up programs to “improve” all of the nationalities.    

RB: This all came from an American model.

SD: Henry Morgan, based on his study of the Iroquois.  

RB: His idea that society can be organized in an evolutionary pyramid inspired [19th century German political philosopher Friedrich] Engels, who gave it to [19th century German philosopher, political economist, and revolutionary organizer Karl] Marx.  

SD: [The Chinese government] went around creating practices that would be “better.” For instance, with the Tais, they felt their dances were okay, but they needed to be improved.  They [had] a nice written alphabet, but not good enough, so they needed to improve the alphabet.  The government got very involved in almost every aspect of the public and private lives of these border people.

This sounds similar to the Chinese government’s stated goal in Tibet of modernizing them.

RB: It’s very interesting because the –ize word [changes] over time.  When the Chinese invaded Tibet, they never mentioned anything about equality or [advancement].  They just said, “We are here to liberate you, not from oppression by nasty aristocrats or religion, but from imperialists from the West who are trying to take you over.”  Then, nine years later, it changed from feudalism to liberation.  They gave that up in the 1980s and changed it to “We’re here to modernize you.”  

SD: In Yunnan, too.  It started out as, “We are liberating you from the nationalist warlords”. Actually, there was a certain amount of delight about that because people in Yunnan had really been oppressed and were suffering economically under the thugs … running the southwestern part of the country.  Then it became, “We are going to liberate you from your past,” which [was] much more abstract and cleared the space for all kinds of different projects.  

RB: There were huge changes that took place with enormous consequences that led to thousands of deaths, and some of these changes have never been acknowledged.  The state always gives the impression that the changes happened seamlessly.  

SD: You’re still not allowed to talk about what happened.  

This touches on the notion of research.  How did each of you manage to get people to talk to you about these and other issues?

RB: I don’t do any research in Tibet now and I don’t ask people there any questions. If I did, the people I speak to could [get] in serious trouble. Lots of people won’t speak to me in Tibet because I said on a U.S. radio interview about a year and a half ago that “lots of people say to me that they don’t want a railway in Tibet.” [In 2001, the Chinese began construction on a 685-mile, $2.3 billion railway from Golmud to Lhasa]. I was threatened with [banishment] from China for a while because the Chinese do not allow criticism of their new railway project.  The Tibetans are terrified because I said “lots of people say,” which means I talked to specific people. They might investigate whoever talked to me, even though I used the phrase in a general way.  

SD: Yunnan has much more freedom and it’s interesting to compare the different border areas, and … ask why some areas have more leeway than others. In Yunnan, people are very adept at self-censorship.  You can go there as a backpacker and get invited into people’s homes. You can talk about all kinds of topics, but when you get to politics, the conversation shifts to, “Oh never mind, let’s go back to hearing about America, tell us more about your wonderful country.” They are also very good at preserving certain areas where they have some space, and keeping [them] marked off from public view. There are areas in Yunnan where people are able to do things that would [have] stiff repercussions in Tibet.  

What kinds of things?  

SD: Religious activities, border crossings. There is a lot of trade across the border, which is legal. It means that Buddhist monks can also cross the border to Thailand and come back with computers and new ideas. They are allowed to do that, but they are very good at keeping it quiet. The Tais are monitored by the government but they manage their government interactions. There are no conflicts or mass protests in the streets, but they do have Buddhist ceremonies with thousands of people who come across the border to participate.  It’s all done in some little town far away from the center of the prefecture. So if you’re a government official, you can know about it and not know about it. It is not challenging the state’s control, even though it is actually subverting it.

RB: In Tibet, you can talk to people, just not about politics. They won’t get arrested as long as they are not talking about “dangerous” things. The question is, how [does the government determine] what you are talking about? So you have to talk in public, and have a third person present so it does not look suspicious. And you must avoid certain topics.

SD: I once asked one of my Tai friends why they are treated differently from the Tibetans.  She said, “[The government] feel they eliminated our culture during the Cultural Revolution, so now there is nothing to worry about.”  But the Tais have been able to revive and reinvent their culture.  They are rebuilding temples but they are also bringing in new ideas.

RB: We should say that there were some gains to be had from being part of the Chinese system.  It’s just that they really didn’t have much choice.  Most Chinese citizens make shrewd calculations on where the gains are, such as “My children might get an education” or “We can travel outside of the country if we do x and y.”  It’s highly pressurized and there are only a limited set of choices that can be “successful.”

SD: I think the Tais and Tibetans are like the carrot and the stick. It’s an equation that is also very clear to the rest of the country.  If you misbehave, you’ll get slammed, but if you behave, then everyone will come to watch you sing and dance.

What role do each of you see the Internet playing in cultural survival, especially in light of heavy Chinese censorship?

SD: That is very easy for me to answer since the Tais I know have computers but do not have the Internet.  I keep nagging them to get it, but they don’t really care about it.  They use computers to produce materials in Tai on disks, and then they carry these across the borders and exchange them by hand, just as they have been doing with other goods for centuries.  It is an effective system, and they can avoid Internet censorship, but they are also not as connected to the outside world. They don’t have as large a profile as they could if they were more Web savvy — but it works for them.

RB: There is a lot of Internet use in Tibet, but people have to be very careful how they use it. They have to [show] an ID card before they log on, so it is heavily monitored. Public computers throughout China have software embedded in them that records every keystroke and transmits it back to the police.

Randy Klein

Recently, InTheFray Literary Editor Laura Madeline Wiseman spoke with Irene Kai about her recently published memoir, The Golden Mountain. Their conversation — and Kai’s thoughts on the American Dream — follow:

The interviewer: Laura Madeline Wiseman, InTheFray Literary Editor

The interviewee: Irene Kai, author of The Golden Mountain

In The Golden Mountain while visiting your old school in Hong Kong as an adult it seemed like you came to a moment where you decided you were done with being a seven-year-old girl and were ready to be an adult woman. After coming to the realization that you were no longer going to let certain people treat you as a child, what motivated you to begin the journey of writing your memoir?

When I was living in Los Angeles, at the pinnacle of success, I realized that I have achieved the American Dream as I understood it. I was [on] the brink of exhaustion, emotionally and physically. I started to question what my life [was] about, [since I had] spent most of my life [trying] to get to where my family and society claimed would provide respect [from family and the United States] and found out things had never changed. I was still the person who lived under everyone’s thumb. So I went on the journey of deep remembrance, to understand where I came from and where I wanted to go from there with clarity and understanding.

And that motivated you to begin the memoir?

Yes, it took three years, seven hours a day between crying and writing. An extremely healing process.

In The Golden Mountain the sections on your great-grandmother, grandmother, and mother flow smoothly. How were you able to create the cohesiveness apparent in the text? Did you speak to living family members to fill in the gaps during those three years of writing or is The Golden Mountain simply a compilation of all the stories you were told?

I lived with all of these women. Since my great grandmother and I were the outcasts, we spent a lot of time together and she told me many stories. I have been practicing meditation for many years. When I started to write, I would go into deep meditation and the memories came back like a movie and I just recorded them.

You only write in the first person in one section, the section on you. Yet the sections on your great-grandmother, grandmother, and mother are written in third person. Why did you choose to organize the book this way? And did you experiment with other ways to tell this story?

To tell you the truth, I was trained as a visual artist. I came to the [United States] when I was 15, so I missed out on all the lessons on grammar and learning how to speak. I have no training as a writer. Believe it or not, it just fell into place as I wrote. It is pure GRACE.

In the book, there’s a clear sense that women in your family always knew their place and acted in such a way to encourage others to follow that same axiom. What seemed to be the turning point for you to break from that cultural tradition?

For thousands of years, women in China [have] only [been able to] survive through marriage. They are owned by the husband’s family … where would they go if they got kicked out of the family? [I had timing] on my side and location, the United States. I survived by getting a job, building a career, which … in China … was impossible.

Do you think that is still true for women in China today, particularly under the current regime?

China is changing rapidly. For the first time in the history of China, women now have jobs, they don’t have to be married to survive. But the old tradition is hard to [get rid of]. Amazingly only a few months ago, I read in a Chinese newspaper that the government just changed the law claiming that employees no long require their employers’ permission to get married. I couldn’t believe it. They also still have to get the government’s permission to travel and to relocate. The first sentence of my book says it all, “I am sorry, it’s another girl.” In the 1970s China imposed the one child policy. Routinely, family disposed of daughters because it was against the law to have more than one child. Traditionally, the Chinese needed to keep boys to help out the family and when the parents got old, the son and daughter-in-law [would] take care of them. If they only have a daughter, who is going to take care of them when they get old? The daughter belongs to her husband’s family and it is her obligation to take care of her in-laws.

In The Golden Mountain you do a very good job of conveying that telling family secrets is a Chinese taboo, particularly in your family. How has your family reacted to The Golden Mountain?

My sisters didn’t take it too well. Teresa still doesn’t talk to me. I asked their permission before I wrote, but after they read the book, they were disgusted. No one talks about the book. They just pretend it didn’t happen. My children have gone through a lot.
They were caught between their loyalty to me and to their aunts and cousins. Teresa’s daughter wrote me a nasty email and sent it to all the members of my family including my children. She asked if I [know] what love means. Family is all we have, it doesn’t matter who hits who when we should just love each other. Meanwhile, her father is an alcoholic and so is her husband. The chain of abuse just goes on and on. My children stayed out of everyone’s way and kept quiet but I know they are proud of me. Bob, their father really surprised me. After he read the book, he called and said, I was a schmuck.” I nearly fainted.

Are you planning on writing another book and if so, what will be the topic?

I have another book coming [out] in 2006. It is a book of photography. The title is: What Do You See? They are photographs of my hands but [they] look like genitals. It is a challenge for readers to face their assumptions and ask deeper questions about their judgments.

To read Laura Madeline Wiseman’s review of The Golden Mountain, click here.“

In The Fray Contributor

(Melvin Piro)

Most of us write to-do lists, but most of us do not found magazine’s based on them as Sasha Cagen did.  Her magazine, To-Do List, wais “committed to exploring the details of modern lives” that “make us click, roar, think, develop, and sometimes break down.”  It useds the to-do list as a window into the complex shape of our lives and communities.  To-Do List was the winner of the Utne Reader‘s Alternate Press Award for Best New Magazine 2000, Reader’s Choice.  Since then, Cagen has been forced to put the magazine on permanent hiatus.  But as I found from interviewing Cagen, who lives in San Francisco, is much more than just a thousand lists.  Her essays have appeared in various publications including The Village Voice, Utne Reader, and the San Francisco Chronicle.  She is also the author of Quirkyalone: A Manifesto for Uncompromising Romantics, which investigates people the person who “enjoys being single (but is not opposed to being in a relationship) and generally prefers to be alone rather than dating for the sake of being in a couple.”  As an avid list-maker myself, Cagen’s magazine intrigued me enough to contact her for the following interview, which illuminates how lists often offer a window into our culture and how projects such as To-Do List might succeed.

Francis Raven: How did you start collecting lists?

Sasha Cagen: I wasn’t really a listmaker when I first started To-Do List magazine. Sure, I made the occasional pros and cons list, a Christmas list as well as a list of all the presents I bought for family, but listmaking didn’t structure my days the way they do now. I made them sometimes at work to help me organize my day and my tasks, but I called them “work plans,” because I saw someone else use that title, and I figured that it would look good to my boss if I had a “work plan.”

I started collecting to-do lists when I decided to start a magazine of the same name.
Before we launched our first issue, I placed an ad asking for people to send us their to-do lists. Once the actual, handwritten lists started coming in the mail, I became addicted to getting them, and my ideas about the name changed. At first, the name To-Do List was more conceptual — about the to-do lists of young adulthood rather than real to-do lists themselves. But I started to realize the name To-Do List conveyed a lot more than the tasks and hopes and dreams one would have as an adult. There’s something completely universal about the to-do list written at any age, and something both voyeuristic and comforting in reading another person’s list. You see that you are not the only person struggling with daily tasks like buying stamps to mail a bill on time — things that are supposed to be easy. And you also see how people think about larger issues too — because people write to-do lists about everything. Not just what they hope to accomplish in a day, but also what they hope to accomplish over their whole lives.

The to-do list concept became a jumping-off point for examining the details of daily life, and to convey the breadth of topics we would cover in the magazine, from the mundane to the meaningful, just like the random jumble of items on any one’s to do list (from flossing to finding your soul mate).

FR: What’s the quality you are looking for in a good to-do list?

SC: To-Do List published essays and interviews, and actual handwritten lists accompanied those pieces as artwork. When we were choosing lists, we were just as selective as when we were choosing essays. We were looking for lists with unexpected, human, mysterious, funny items: lists that told a story, but not in an over-the-top, calculated way. It’s very obvious when someone constructs a list and sends it in to the magazine to be reprinted. The handwriting is too perfect and well aligned. The items are too precious. A good list raises questions and tells a story, but it’s elliptical. The items should be slightly mysterious, so that you start to imagine your own story about the person’s life.

FR: What’s the most difficult thing about running a magazine?

SC: When you run a magazine, the more successful you become, the more difficult your life gets. Your to-do list becomes endlessly long, which is fine if you are getting paid a salary and know how to set limits on your workday, but a lot of independent publishers don’t know how to set limits very well, and the labor of love starts to take over your life, and you go crazy! The same can be true of writing a book, which is what I turned my attention to in the last few years. Since my first book Quirkyalone came out in 2004, I’ve been consciously working on writing shorter to-do lists so that more of my time is devoted to leisure, meditation, yoga, and pure hanging out. And I have to say, I like my shorter to-do lists.

(Kristian Birchall)

FR: How did you start the magazine?

SC: With a lot of passion, energy, and ideas but very little money. I started To-Do List in 1999 (our first issue was released in summer 2000) with paychecks saved from my proofreading job; at the time, I was 26. The staff was super-talented and all-volunteer. Annie Decker was the senior editor, Burns Maxey was the art director, and I was editor and publisher. Our efforts were bolstered by a gang of other volunteers in the San Francisco Bay Area. (This is a great place to start a magazine — there are so many talented designers, writers, editors, and proofreaders who are willing to work for reasons other than money.) Burns left after two years and she was replaced by another great designer, Sara Cambridge.

Among other major recognition, To-Do List won Utne’s Alternative Press Award for Best New Magazine, 2000, Reader’s Choice. We got press coverage in the San Francisco Chronicle, Real Simple, [National Public Radio’s] “All Things Considered,” and the Chicago Tribune. A fiction piece by Jenny Bitner was reprinted in Best American Nonrequired Reading, edited by Dave Eggers. To-Do List was an unusual, special, great magazine, but no matter how good a magazine ist, it still needs money, and that part of the equation wasn’t figured out from the beginning. We didn’t have capital, which now I realize you really need in order to launch and make a magazine a sustainable operation. After three years, I put the magazine on permanent hiatus. There’s no job I would rather have than publishing To-Do List, but now that I’m in my thirties30s, I have to focus on making money and I can’t work for free any more. In the future I’ll find a way to bring to-do list back to life as an operation that pays the people who work on it.

Meanwhile, I am thinking about a  book that reprints actual to-do lists, and I invite people to send me their actual, authentic lists (not made up for the purposes of contributing) to To-Do List, PO Box 40128, San Francisco, CA 94140. Please include a note describing yourself and the circumstances in which you wrote the list.

FR: What does a person’s to do lists tell you about them?

SC: Reading other people’s lists almost always makes me feel better. It helps to curb my own workaholism. I see either how insane other people are with their lists, and recognize the trait in myself, or, by comparison, realize how much I accomplish. Either way it is a lift.  . In their improbable mix of the mundane and the meaningful, to-do lists are a window into another human being’s private world, into her (and more often than not, to-do list writers seem to be women) ambitions, desires, failings, poor memory (the need to remind herself of the smallest task), and our imperfect humanity. Everyone writes to-do lists. These scratched-off catalogs are like diaries, except there’s no artifice, no arranging, no clear narrative or storytelling: they’re the most spare kind of a diary, private little scratched out versions of our lives.

Once the magazine started to gain attention, I realized that To-Do List was tapping into a community of readers who had never really been named or identified: the listmaker personality. People can become pretty identified with their lists. Husbands make fun of wives for listmaking. People store boxes full of them. An older man sent in a story about finding lists in his deceased father’s pockets, and what the lists told him about his dad. A gay man wrote about the coded lists he wrote as a teenager.

NPR’s “All Things Considered” asked me to be on their show on New Year’s Day 2002 to talk about making lists of New Year’s Resolutions. Noah Adams and I talked about some of the craziest lists we had ever received and the kinds of things I put on my to-do lists. The response from that one radio interview blew me away. Suddenly donations were streaming in — enough to help us pay our printer bill for the third issue.  . All of these people were so incredibly excited that a private part of themselves — a facet of their personality sometimes mocked by significant others and family members — was a shared experience, and that someone had actually made a magazine that printed to-do lists. About a dozen people sent in checks for $100 without even having seen the magazine. They were just so happy someone had started a magazine about lists and wanted to support it!

FR: Do you have a favorite to do list?

SC: Yes, the very first person who sent us lists, Rebecca, who lived in Berkeley, continued to send in the most beautiful lists for years. She once even sent in a whole mini-notebook. Her lists are really aesthetic and have the most unexpected items on them. They’re a work of art.

FR: Does running To-Do List make you intimidated to write your own to do lists?

SC: No, it’s just made me more conscious of my own to-do-list-writing style, and that I have become progressively more reliant on them — especially when I’m tackling a big creative project.

FR: What was the last to-do list you wrote?

SC: I’m starting to do more freelance writing now, and trying to figure out what next to do with my life. Here’s the latest mega-list of various projects that I may take on. This was written on a computer. I write lists in Microsoft Word when I’m really trying to organize my to-do items in various categories.

***
PITCHES I CAN MAKE AND STORIES I CAN WRITE
Hooping story
Rhode Island magazine expatriate story
Mr. Best Ever for Men’s Health (talk to Doug next time I see him)
Writer’s breakdowns after their books come out (Poets and Writers) — ask Dr. Gray for stories
Insomnia essay for SELF — write Paula Derrow and make sure she would be interested …. . . also look at the stuff that I have already written
Meditation and insomnia for Natural Health or Breathe — write that editor and ask for copy—and send her clips

PRACTICAL THINGS TO DO
Make photocopies of SF Chronicle Magazine piece, Men’s Health, and 7 x 7

FOR QUIRKYALONE
Publicize RI and NY Events — write up listings and send them to the bookstores and media in NY and RI

TO-DO LIST BOOK PROJECT
To-Do List book project — email self what I have written and put together a brief proposal to send to Jill in advance of our meeting, also scan in some of the best lists. Find a place to do this scanning! (Can I scan in a whole bunch at Jenny’s house and it won’t be a problem?)

FINISH TO-DO LIST INTERVIEW

FR: Is a person who makes lists a different type of person from a person who does not?

SC: There are different kinds of listmakers. There are people who make lists just to help them get through the day; there are also list-makers who just love making lists. It’s a fun activity for them to go to a café and make lists about the magazines they want to subscribe to or the places they want to visit. I recently interviewed a woman about things she loves to do alone, and she answered, “I really value time alone so I can sit in my room and make to-do lists.”

Men make lists, but on the whole, more women make them. I think that’s a reflection of how much women multitask — they’re mothers and workers and friends and so many other things. Men multitask too, but most don’t to the extent that women do.

FR: What makes you laugh?

SC: A good corny joke that is just goofy enough.

FR: What is a good charity to give money to?

SC: There are so many right now. Obviously there are a lot of organizations that are doing great work and we need their work so much in the Bush era. If I have to choose one, I would say organizations that are helping women and men who are in welfare reform get better training and child care to support them as time limits on their benefits run out. And of course you can always donate to an independent magazine! They need every penny!

STORY INDEX

RESOURCES >    

Quirkyalone: A Manifesto for Uncompromising Romantics
URL: http://quirkyalone.net

To-Do List
URL: http://www.todolistmagazine.com

In The Fray Contributor

What inspired you to make The Naked Feminist?

I became inspired to make The Naked Feminist after reading a magazine article on the famous porn star, Nina Hartley, declaring her feminist sensibilities and strengths as a sex entertainer and educator — a career spanning over 17 years. I wanted to know if Nina was a rare exception in this male dominated industry.

Feminism‚ is a somewhat contentious term that different people define in different ways. From your film, I get the sense that you define it in terms of being empowered and in control of oneself. Would you say that’s a pretty accurate characterization of your definition?

I think feminism for many women means different things, but for me it is essentially about choice and giving women a voice. I think once a woman has her voice and can make choices for herself, then empowerment, self-identity, and courage will follow.

Why did you choose the particular actresses you used in your film? They seem like a fairly close-knit group, which I found very interesting. It made the pornography film  industry seem much smaller than I imagined.

It was important for me to interview women who had a number of years experience in the industry so I could gauge the progress (or lack of progress) women had made in the adult entertainment industry.

Once I met Jane Hamilton and read about CLUB 90, I became completely inspired by this group of renegade female sex performers. They had created the first porn star support group for women. They have not only created a strong sisterhood amongst themselves, but [they] also have become incredible mentors and role models to other women in the industry. I consider these women to be the first feminists in the industry, and of course their voices are a crucial element in a film depicting feminist sensibilities within the world of adult entertainment. [Like Jane Hamilton,] Nina Hartley, Sharon Mitchell and Christi Lake … [have] all made incredible strides within the industry – Nina as a sex radical, performer, educator and mentor, Sharon co-founding the first medical clinic devoted to the health and emotional needs of people in the industry, and Christi through her political activism and entrepreneurial insight.

All industries are much smaller and [more] tightly knit than they seem, and this is fairly evident once you start working within mainstream Hollywood and similarly with the adult entertainment industry — especially within the same country. However, I think it is even more so with the adult entertainment industry as the people within that industry have been under attack from legislators, the government, and the public far more than any other industry and thus have banded together to fight for freedom of speech and other essential rights such as freedom of expression.
  
The adult entertainment industry is also an industry where the performers, especially the women, are breaking one of the biggest taboo a woman can break — that is having sex on camera for money … Since only a small percentage of women enter into this occupation, they are going to get to know each other and some will form bonds.

There is a peculiar absence of men in your film — aside from Seymour Butts — even though men are an integral component of the porn industry as both producers and consumers. The absence of men in The Naked Feminist seems to be a smart stylistic move to depict women as the agents of the porn industry and their stories. Did you consider interviewing other men besides Seymour, and if so, why are they not included in the edited version of the film? If not, why? And what is so special about Seymour that caused him to make the cut?

I interviewed a number of men — journalists, directors, writers, and performers in the adult entertainment industry, and they were included in every cut except for my final cut … I made this film to give women in the industry a voice, and I didn’t want to lose sight of that. Thus, if a woman spoke about a similar experience or point of view as a man [I interviewed], I chose to keep in the woman’s voice. This film is about [the women in the pornography industry] and their experiences, not the men’s. Even though I do consider [the men’s] viewpoints and experiences to also be incredibly valid, they essentially didn’t belong in this film.

Seymour Butts has one big specialty in my opinion. No, only joking. The reason I was so interested in keeping Seymour in the film was because of his huge female fan base. Even though his main target audience is men, he has all these women that love him and his porn films. When you go to the big adult entertainment conventions it is always astounding to see the number of women — of all ages and nationalities — waiting to get autographs from him. It was nice to illustrate this role reversal and disprove the right wing feminist mantra that no women like pornography.

I noticed that The Naked Feminist doesn’t explicitly address homosexuality and lesbian erotica. However, from what I have read, queer porn is particularly important for women and men who are questioning their sexuality or who are insecure about being involved with members of the same sex. Do you think there is any particular reason why your film ended up having a heterosexual slant?

I don’t think The Naked Feminist explicitly addresses heterosexual erotica either, but you are right, that it is the main genre of pornography that is delved into. That is mainly because heterosexual pornography is the most popular and most historic type of pornography out there. But this was not at all intentional. I did not look at sexual orientation when I made this film.  I was more interested in the female sexual pioneers and entrepreneurs who had made an impact on the industry and made working conditions for women better or who were making strides in today’s mainstream porn world. There are so many sub-genres in pornography and I am sure that many women and men are empowered by the different types. However, that discussion is, I believe, for another film. However, I would like to add that many of the women interviewed are gay, bisexual, polysexual and heterosexual. A wonderful mix really.

Your documentary argues that some pornography is in fact misogynistic and that such films are not the type of porn that the women you interviewed condone. How can one differentiate between misogynistic and non-misogynistic porn? The presence of violence? Consent (or the lack thereof)? Women both in front of and behind the camera? Or just the gut reaction of women involved in the film?

Subjectivity, taste, and consent will always creep into discussions regarding pornography and especially pornography and misogyny. I don’t think there is one exact definition of misogynist porn, and I don’t think there is a sub-genre [that] supports it. However, when I was making this film, I did encounter a disturbing trend in the industry to push the boundaries of sexual violence towards women as far as possible. I think this is mainly a knee-jerk shock tactic to gain notoriety in the business, and it might possibly exist as a backlash against the positive strides that women have made in the industry.  I don’t believe that the companies making this stuff represent the industry as a whole. However, the fact that this type of material (e.g. women being beaten to a pulp whilst being gang raped, made to vomit whilst giving oral [sex] and [being] punched around the head) is being produced saddens me, and in my opinion, it is misogynist as it is illustrating a hatred towards women.

Do you sense some urgency to disrupt the taboo associated with pornography in general, or is your goal merely to enable the women you interviewed to speak their stories and perspectives? What is it that you seek to contribute to the ongoing dialogue regarding sex and sexuality in Western culture (if anything)?

I made The Naked Feminist to give the women in pornography a voice. To me, the film is less about breaking down the taboo associated with pornography and more about breaking down the taboo associated with women who chose to be sexual educators and entertainers. When a man chooses to work in pornography, he is rarely viewed as being exploited or objectified. In reality the money shot and the penis are the most objectified aspects of the genre.  I really think it is time to get rid of this antiquated double standard.

What, if anything, do you hope to contribute to the independent film industry with The Naked Feminist? Is there anything you hope other filmmakers (adult entertainment or otherwise) will take from seeing your film?  Is there anything you hope viewers will take from seeing it?

I would like to contribute tolerance and acceptance to the [feminist] movement. It would be nice if some of the dominant women’s groups would accept these women’s choices, help them to change the system, and make it safer for women instead of denying them their voice and validity.

Laura Nathan-Garner

Recently InTheFray Contributing Writer Jairus Grove spoke with Rebecca Carroll about Saving the Race, The Souls of Black Folk, and the role that race plays in our world.

The interviewer: Jairus Victor Grove, InTheFray Contributing Writer
The interviewee:Rebecca Carroll, editor/author of Saving the Race: Conversations on Du Bois from a Collective Memoir of Souls.

To read Jairus Victor Grove’s review of Rebecca Carroll’s Saving the Race: Conversations on Du Bois from a Collective Memoir of Souls, click here.

The diversity of experiences expressed in this book alone calls into question the coherence of ideas like black identity or black community. What political utility do you think these concepts have after your engagement with this project?

I think the idea of a “political utility” in the context of race is counterproductive — and in terms of the coherence of an idea like black identity or black community, neither is an idea so much as a lived experience; an experience that can be defined and internalized individually as one is inclined to do so.

The recent rise to prominence of black conservatives such as Condoleeza Rice, Ward Connelly, and Clarence Thomas seems to reflect a Republican agenda to divide traditionally Democratic and progressive communities, both Black and Hispanic. Do you believe blackness is intrinsically political? If so, how do we keep race political?

If by political you mean involvement with government matters and larger social cause concerns, I don’t believe blackness is any more intrinsically political than human nature.

There is a definitive moment in your own narrative where you say that you decided or felt the conviction that you were a black woman. In our increasingly hybrid times, claims to identity require some history or heritage to be sacrificed or at least underplayed. Do you think the decision to elevate your blackness to the forefront of your own hybrid identity would have been different or more difficult if your other racial heritage was also marginalized, say, Hispanic or Arabic?

No, if anything I think it would have been easier — there isn’t the same stark contrast and opposition between blacks and Hispanics/Arabs as there is between blacks and whites.

Although this book makes a convincing and complex case for the necessity of blackness as at least a way of thinking through an existence marked by skin color and the trauma of survival, what is next? Too often the imagination of a world without race is simply a world of whiteness. Is it time to imagine what is to come after race?  If so, do you have any ideas resulting from this work particularly your conversations with LeAlan Jones and others who make reference to the need to begin imagining what a world without race looks like?

I don’t think LeAlan was suggesting a world without race, but rather a world in which race was more interconnected, more blurred, better understood, and less blatantly segregated which, progress being as it may, is still what it is. So no, I don’t think we need to begin imagining what a world without race looks like; I think we need to start imagining what a world WITH race looks like.

To read Jairus Victor Grove’s review of Rebecca Carroll’s Saving the Race: Conversations on Du Bois from a Collective Memoir of Souls, click here.