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Life & Times Transcript
5/09/07 Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times -- The Sanctuary Movement carries risks for both churches and undocumented immigrants, so why are they doing it? Reverend Alexia Salvatierra>> The truth is that the system that we have currently is illogical, irrational and ineffective. Val Zavala>> And then, his works are acclaimed the world over, but caused friction in his homeland. The amazing art of Rufino Tamayo. It's all straight ahead on tonight's Life and Times. Announcer>> Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education. And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg. Val Zavala>> Do churches have the right to give refuge to undocumented workers to protect them from being deported? Well, that's what several churches in Los Angeles are doing. But is it legal? Toni Guinyard went to La Placita Church near downtown Los Angeles to find out more about this sanctuary movement. [Film Clip] Toni Guinyard>> Jose has lived in southern California for seventeen years successfully holding down a job and raising a family. The entire time, he kept a secret. He'd entered the United States illegally. Immigration and Customs Enforcement eventually tracked him down, he believes, through his job at the airport in the wake of heightened security after 9/11. Now he lives in fear of being deported. Jose>> I'm afraid Immigration is going to come back. To live through that again is not good for anyone. Toni Guinyard>> But what Jose is about to do could be just as frightening. He's one of a handful of people chosen to be shielded from deportation by a nationwide network of churches, temples and mosques. He is part of the backbone of what is being called The New Sanctuary Movement. Reverend Alexia Salvatierra>> The families that are coming forward are families that really usually have a profound faith and moral commitment that they're willing to risk themselves because no one knows whether we will ultimately be able to protect them and save them or not. Toni Guinyard>> Reverend Alexia Salvatierra is a Lutheran pastor and executive director of CLUE, Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice of California. Reverend Alexia Salvatierra>> Even in the very short time that we've been planning this, many of us have received hate mail. Many of us have received very frightening phone calls. It is really quite a risk. Toni Guinyard>> La Placita in downtown Los Angeles will be a host, or sanctuary church. Associate Pastor, Father Richard Estrada. Father Richard Estrada>> In the 1980s, this was the hub. This was the center here in the southwest for one of the many religious communities that gave sanctuary to Central American refugees. Diane Winston>> The Sanctuary Movement is in the Bible, so it's really an old movement. It comes around every so often when there's these issues with people who are faced with death or persecution if they should be deported. Toni Guinyard>> USC professor, Diane Winston, holds the night chair in Media and Religion at USC's Annenberg School for Communication. Diane Winston>> I remember the old sanctuary movement. I was a reporter in North Carolina and I remember covering folks who were being sheltered by churches. This was really a life or death experience for them. They needed the sanctuary or else they were going to possibly get killed if they were deported. Toni Guinyard>> The people, their situations, and the movements approach has changed. Diane Winston>> You could say that it's a tad cynical because these may not be the people who need the most help. But on the other hand, they're the people who middle America may be able to rally around. I think they'd like to get a lot of churches involved so that they can make a difference when the politicians decide what to do with immigration reform. Toni Guinyard>> The church has become media-savvy on this issue? Father Richard Estrada>> Yeah, you bet. Toni Guinyard>> You have to? Do you feel you have to? Father Richard Estrada>> Oh, yes. I think, well, as Christians, we call it evangelization. Diane Winston>> What is interesting about this iteration is the fact that it's so well orchestrated. Toni Guinyard>> La Placita is reprising its role in The New Sanctuary Movement. This time, so-called representative families are being hand-picked rather than offering sanctuary to everyone. Reverend Alexia Salvatierra>> If we were to just open the doors of the congregations like we did last time and invite people in, first of all, everybody wouldn't fit. There would be no way we could respond to their needs. Father Richard Estrada>> The criteria, one, is that they have a deportation hearing, but an order that they've been here for many years, they're an exemplary family, no problems at all, and they have American-born children and they're willing to go public and tell their story. Toni Guinyard>> Jose fits the criteria. Two of his four sons, both teenagers, were born here and are legal United States residents. His personal story is one movement organizers want to emphasize. Reverend Alexia Salvatierra>> So we don't feel like we're discounting the truth. We feel like we're making sure that the truth is revealed. Toni Guinyard>> And what is the truth? Reverend Alexia Salvatierra>> The truth is that the system that we have currently is illogical, irrational and ineffective. Toni Guinyard>> Even well before the official rollout of The New Sanctuary Movement, twelve congregations in Los Angeles had agreed to participate. They've been described as being fully committed to the cause. But for many other congregations and churches, taking part in this campaign simply comes at too great a cost. Father Richard Estrada>> The liability is bottom line. What do you do if your congregants who are very wealthy and who are contributing to your church are saying, "We're not going to support you anymore." So you have to think about that, right? Toni Guinyard>> They also have to think about federal law. Ira Mehlman is Media Director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform. Ira Mehlman>> The legality of The Sanctuary Movement is that churches, like any other institutions in this country, fall under the laws of the United States. While they may choose to violate the laws of the United States, the government does have the ultimate authority to enforce the law. Whether the government chooses to do that or not remains to be seen, but they are not exempt from the law simply because they're a church or a religious institution. Toni Guinyard>> In a statement to Life and Times, Immigration and Customs Enforcement said "it has the authority to arrest those who are in violation of our immigration laws anywhere in the United States" and that "for security reasons, ICE does not discuss or speculate about future enforcement actions." Father Richard Estrada>> What are you going to do if the INS comes in? Toni Guinyard>> What are you going to do? Father Richard Estrada>> Well, we're organized to press this button, get on the phone and immediately respond by going out to the closest ICE office. That's all we can do. Reverend Alexia Salvatierra>> We don't believe that what we're doing is illegal and we have very good legal counsel who say that, as long as we are not concealing the people, as long as we are open, as long as we are not concealing them, we are not harboring them, we are accompanying them and supporting them and serving them as we are called to do by our faith. So we are not actually doing anything illegal. Toni Guinyard>> In their eyes, they're introducing the country to people like Jose with personal stories the public may not have heard before, people willing to leave their families to live in the church. Father Richard Estrada>> Okay. This will be the room and then there's another room next door. Toni Guinyard>> Okay, now you'll be able to have one person here? Father Richard Estrada>> One person, yes. Toni Guinyard>> Jose will leave his family and live here not because he's forced to, but because he wants to prove a point. Jose>> It's hard for everyone, but it's a decision that I have to make for the well-being of my children because I don't want to leave them. It's a difficult situation, but necessary. Reverend Alexia Salvatierra>> By going public, they are risking all that public humiliation. They are facing all that hatred, all those threats, all that abuse that could come to them, all that hostility that will come to them, and they're facing the danger. Father Richard Estrada>> We're not going to do it just for one day. We're here and we want change. There needs to be change in the immigration law. Toni Guinyard>> And changing immigration law person by person is at the heart of The New Sanctuary Movement. I'm Toni Guinyard for Life and Times. Val Zavala>> So what do you think? Should churches have the right to protect undocumented workers? You can post your opinion. Just go to kcet.org and click on the Life and Times Blog. Announcer>> Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, plus transcripts and audio of past episodes and links to some of our most interesting features. Just go to kcet.org, scroll down the page and click on "Life and Times". Val Zavala>> Do the successes of the 1960's civil rights movement mean it's over? Does affirmative action mean that groups like the NAACP are unnecessary? And are black leaders out of touch with the African American community? For a provocative kitchen table conversation, we brought together three people. Joe Hicks with CommUnity Advocates, Libertarian historian, Tom Phillips, and commentator, Jasmyne Cannick. The Kitchen Table is made possible by Ralph Tornberg. Joe Hicks>> Is America in a post-civil rights era or is it not? Tom, what do you think? Tom Phillips>> Well, I definitely subscribe to the theory that we are in a post-civil rights era. The NAACP, unfortunately, is mired in what I call somewhat of a utopian atavism, that they're going on utopian notions that existed and were prevalent and very popular, in fact, at a certain time in American history. Jasmyne Cannick>> You know, I've been questioning the role of the NAACP for a while now. Joe Hicks>> That's right. I've been reading stuff. You've been writing about the NAACP, in fact. Jasmyne Cannick>> As someone who's twenty-nine and definitely benefited from the struggles in the 1960s and the 1970s, you know, I'm here and I look at what's going on in America especially with African Americans and I do think that we still have civil rights issues that need to be fought. The issue I have with the organization is just that they don't seem to want to move into the year 2007. They seem to be stuck in the 1960s and that is how they're operating. Joe Hicks>> What are the kind of issues facing black America today? Jasmyne Cannick>> One of the first things is that they would start addressing the gay and lesbian civil rights movement because it does affect African Americans. As we saw in previous presidential elections, that issue was used to divide our community and organizations like the NAACP were silent and they continue to remain silent and it's causing a lot of damage in our communities. It's on those sort of issues that they typically tend to be silent that I would push them to be more vocal on and not just sort of those issues that we always think about, sort of like police brutality and education. But there are other cultural and social issues like rap music and what that is doing to our children and in terms of our self-image as women. I mean, I think that's a very significant issue that would connect with a lot of different generations in the African American community that they, again, have slept on and haven't said anything about. Joe Hicks>> What would you think that the NAACP could or should be addressing if it is to maintain some vitality? Tom Phillips>> Okay. Well, I'll answer that question by answering the first as well. The issues certainly are there. There are still issues undecided. The NAACP is running off of the theory that the same issues that existed in 1960 still exist in the year 2007 and that's not necessarily the case. Organizations such as that who put their lives into achieving an idea, put their lives into achieving a particular form of civil rights, to admit that either the struggle has been successful and therefore there's very little, so you have to change the nature of the struggle, or to admit even that some of the things you've achieved have failed and in fact produced the opposite of what you wanted, that's a very difficult thing when you put your life into achieving it. So, unfortunately, they have reshaped what they consider freedom, civil rights. It has now become a theory of distributive justice. They want to create certain ends. They want to create results and not necessarily opportunities. Joe Hicks>> Is part of the problem, though, Jasmyne, that we still call it the civil rights movement? Maybe it really is more of a self-analyzing of what are the issues in terms of the black community and what organizational forum need should it take to address it? Jasmyne Cannick>> We need to be talking to each other right now. It's not so much what the man is doing to us even though that hasn't ended quite yet either, but we have more internal issues. We have more issues with our kids knowing, you know, who's on the top five in "American Idol", but couldn't tell you what two times two is. You know, those are issues that we have. We have these issues where, you know, we've gone from saying, "Hey, brother and sister" to saying, "Hey, N word and B word" and accept it as a gesture or a token of, you know, welcoming. I mean, we've changed our language. We don't relate to each other. Half of us are scared of each other because I know there are some young black men that walk down the street that I'm scared of. It's like we spend all this time focusing on, A, having these grand conventions and conferences where the who's who get together and sit around and don't really talk about the issues and then all go back to their various states while the same problems that are going on in the black communities are still going on. They don't address those issues. That's why I talk about the relevancy because, when I leave from here today and I go back home, I'm driving by homeless African Americans. I'm driving by young women who are on the street corners selling their bodies because they have no other option. Those are the issues that we need to be focused on. We need to be trying to build our community up and our people up. Tom Phillips>> I do agree. There certainly is a reason and need to have an organization or even a group of people who can address and positively address the issues in the black community of America. It's not that I'm against the organization in and of itself. What I'm against is politicizing issues that are societal, that are cultural, because the problems that affect the black community are the problems that affect America. The black people are not unique in America, so I think that addressing those problems, you have to do it in a way that addresses the needs of the people as they are Americans. How are you going to advance in a society? Not advance as black people? Not constantly see yourself pegged into a vulcanized hole? That really started happening in the 1960s after the civil rights struggle had achieved so many advances, but it didn't happen because of anything unique to blacks. It happened simply because people started to have a vested interest in continuation of those problems. As long as leaders, so to speak, including political leaders, have a vested interest in those problems, they will continue and they will perpetuate themselves. Joe Hicks>> In many ways, this is the crux of this discussion. You know, where are we in contemporary American society and what's the path forward? Jasmyne Cannick>> I'm not saying that we don't need organizations like the NAACP, but we need to rethink what our strategy is and we need to rethink how we're going to go about achieving whatever it is we're trying to achieve for our folks. That's where we have not been very good at. All I see lately is just a lot of folks making a lot of money and the folks who aren't making money still aren't making money, the haves and the have-nots. I don't see the NAACP making a concentrated effort to reach back and bring those of us that don't have it with them. Joe Hicks>> Tom, do you think that the NAACP of the world would be supplanted by the organizational forums or can an organization like that be reformed? Tom Phillips>> No. It can certainly be reformed, but I don't think it will be supplanted. They are far too entrenched, but in terms of reshaping the organization as she mentioned earlier, people don't live forever, so I think by attrition it's going to reshape on its own. Whether it will be infused with new ideas and personalities, who knows? Joe Hicks>> I guess that's going to be the last word for right now. We're out of time, but we'll continue this at some other point. Guys, thanks for coming in and having this discussion. Appreciate it. Jasmyne Cannick>> Thank you. Announcer>> To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us by mail at this address: Life and Times 4401 Sunset Blvd. Los Angeles, California 90027 You can also call our viewer comment line (323) 953-5555) or contact us the fast way by e-mail at kcet.org. Val Zavala>> Rufino Tamayo is one of Mexico's and the world's most renowned artists and yet, for much of his career, he was embroiled in political controversy. Well, now the Santa Barbara Museum of Art has launched a major retrospective of Tamayo's work and they're asking maybe it's time we rethink the career of this fascinating painter. Tamayo, the son of a Oaxacan shoemaker and seamstress, started painting at age eleven. His enormous talent would earn him the title of "the fourth great one" in line after the three great Mexican painters, Rivera, Orozco and Siqueiros. But for much of his career, the younger Tamayo would clash with the three greats over the politics of art. Diana Du Pont curated a major United States exhibition called "Tamayo: A Modern Icon Reinterpreted". As a child, Tamayo grew up in the 1910s during Mexico's violent revolutionary war where the powerful elite were under siege by champions of Mexico's poor. Diana Du Pont>> For the three, Rivera, Orozco and Siqueiros, art was supposed to have a social and political message and be, in a sense, direct in your face narrative. It was supposed to move the social agenda further. Tamayo believed in social progress in exactly the same way. He was part of redefining a new modern Mexico after the revolution, but he believed in an art that was poetic and he addressed political and social issues, but in an indirect, more personal way. So therefore, because he was not out front and direct and narrative, he was considered a traitor. I mean, this is the kind of language that was levied at Tamayo. Val Zavala>> When he was thirty-four, Tamayo married a light-skinned musician, Olga Flores Rivas. This painting is based on a childhood photograph of her. It's called "Nina Bonita", or "Pretty Girl". Diana Du Pont>> She's holding calla lilies and calla lilies are a symbolic flower in Mexico. You'll remember how Diego Rivera so successfully used the image of the calla lily and it's this exotic Mexico. Then the other thing is, look at this young girl's skin color. This is part of a series in the show where Tamayo highlights brown skin color because he is involved with celebrating indigenous Mexico. He wanted to honor the indigenous Mexico. [Film Clip] Val Zavala>> Over his lifetime, he would live in New York, Paris and Mexico allowing himself to be deeply influenced by American and European artists. Diana Du Pont>> Tamayo came to New York in 1926 for the first time. You see him analyzing his relationship to the city. This is the border of a patio, no? But it's also the border between Mexico and the United States. It's a symbolic border. He is standing at a distance looking at New York through a telescope. There's a tension, right? He's of New York, but yet he is not of New York. [Film Clip] Diana Du Pont>> This picture is called "Women of Tehuantepec". It was painted in 1939 and it's an extraordinary canvas. Here you see this woman in the center, but look at her. I mean, she's imaged as white. I think that this is a reference to his wife, Olga. Here you see this messenger, this brown-skinned messenger, coming in from the side bearing flowers, bearing gifts. Val Zavala>> Well, now the fact that the women are white, what is he saying? Diana Du Pont>> I think what Tamayo is talking about here is that Mexico is a mixture of races, that he was building on the tradition of caste painting in Mexico where you begin to actually study how races intermixed in Mexico through the colonial experience. Tamayo takes that tradition and brings it up to the modern period. Val Zavala>> Tamayo's work reflects European influences and that drew sharp criticism from leading artists back home in Mexico. Diana Du Pont>> How dare he not work in the same modem? He's turning around and saying, "Wait a minute, we just fought this revolution for freedom of expression, for liberty, and now you're telling me that I can only paint in your way? That I will only be accepted if I do what you say?" Then they would throw back and say, "No, you're a traitor to the cause, you're bourgeois. You make easel paintings. You should make mural paintings." I mean, it was going back and forth and, as I said, it was almost like a soap opera. Val Zavala>> When World War II broke out, it was impossible for artists of the time not to be impacted by the horrors of war. [Film Clip] Diana Du Pont>> This is a picture by Tamayo called "A Girl Attacked by a Strange Bird". This bird is, in essence, a symbol for the bombers that flew above the skies in Europe during World War II and attacked. Notice that it's a little girl, but notice the way she's styled. She's also styled in a naïve way as if a child had drawn that. Tamayo is deliberately doing that and looking to children's art as an inspiration, so this remains one of the great, great images of the 1940s and perhaps one of the most famous images by Tamayo that exists in institutions in the United States. This gallery is devoted to the artist's mature period, meaning the 1940s and 1950s when Tamayo made his greatest contribution to art and that is as a major figure painter of the twentieth century. [Film Clip] Diana Du Pont>> This is called "Sleeping Musicians". This is 1950, but he's still existing in that cloud that World War II brought to humanity. So you see these two figures asleep under the dark eclipse of the moon. They're under this shadow of darkness. They are sleeping. You see the scroll of music rolled up. This is the world that has not yet woken up from the horrors of war, from the horrors of the holocaust, from the threat to civilization. Val Zavala>> And yet the potential is there. Diana Du Pont>> And the potential is there. Tamayo then, you'll see as his work develops, the music does play again. [Film Clip] Diana Du Pont>> "The Singing Man", if you'll notice, is also painted in the same year, 1950. But here the music is being played. The world has awoken. We are now hearing sounds of life. Notice how that head is slightly scary and yet comical at the same time and you're not sure which direction you're going. That's very typical and Tamayo played that fine line like an instrument. This picture is called "Lovers Contemplating the Moon" where Tamayo is dealing with his reflections on the cosmos and also tapping in to a profound activity in pre-Columbian culture which is star-gazing. Tamayo is a world-class artist. He is a legend in Mexico. If you love painting, he's a painter's painter. Val Zavala>> The exhibit of Tamayo's work will be up through May 28 at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. For details, you can go to their website at sbma.net. And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. We'll see you next time. Announcer>> Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education. And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg. Sponsored in part by:  | |
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