 |
HOME |  |
SCHEDULE | |
PROGRAMS | |
KIDS & FAMILY | |
LOCAL | |
SUPPORT KCET | |
ABOUT US | |
SHOP KCET |  |
| About Us | Contact Us | |
 |
|
 |
          |
|
|
 |
 |
||
|
|
Life & Times Transcript
8/20/07 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, they mine California history for comedy. We visit one of Los Angeles's favorite troupes, Culture Clash. 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>> The immigration controversy heated up over the weekend with the arrest of one woman. Her name is Elvira Arellano and she's here in the United States illegally, but she has an eight year old boy who is a citizen. Arellano had taken refuge at a church in Chicago, but then she came to Los Angeles to speak and that's when immigration officials arrested her. That begs the question. Do churches have the right to offer sanctuary to illegal immigrants? Well, about a dozen churches and temples here in southern California are doing just that. Toni Guinyard takes a look at The Sanctuary Movement and that one man who is being given shelter here at La Placita Church in the heart of Los Angeles. [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 Knight 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 then. 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 slanting 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. 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>> In the movie "Sicko", Michael Moore makes his point of view perfectly clear. He believes the only answer to our health care problems is to establish a national health service like Britain's or Canada's. [Film Clip] Val Zavala>> Well, I met one doctor who says that Michael Moore's movie didn't go far enough. He believes that a system like Medicare will eventually cover everyone and health care insurance companies will go out of business. He's not just any doctor. He's Dr. Robert Gumbiner. For more than thirty years, he developed and managed one of the largest managed care companies in the United States, an HMO. He has spent years studying health care systems worldwide and he's written a book, "Curing Our Sick Health Care System". He believes eventually the government will have to be the single payer for health care. So you're a proponent of the single payer system, but how do we get that instituted in the United States? There's such a bias against it politically and otherwise. Dr. Robert Gumbiner>> Well, first of all, the biggest single payer system in the world covers around forty-seven million people and it's in the United States. It's called Medicare, and everybody likes Medicare. Medicare wastes a lot of money, there's a certain amount of duplication, waste and fraud, but everybody likes Medicare. It's the third rail. You try to get any politician to get rid of Medicare and he's going to start running the other way. It is a single payer system, period, end of report, and here's the way we do it very simply and incrementally. First of all, you lower the age to fifty-five. I ran a program called Free Health Plan out of the foundation I was the chairman of and we had five small clinics, each run by a nurse practitioner, and five of them supervised by one doctor. We thought we were going to see a lot of Well Baby and pregnant women dot to dot. No, we didn't see that. The problem was, all the people we saw that needed care were chronically ill between the ages of fifty-five and sixty-five. They weren't Medicare yet, but they couldn't work because they were sick with one thing or another. Val Zavala>> Dr. Gumbiner proposes including not only those fifty-five and up, but pregnant women and especially children. Children consume very little health care and their needs are relatively simple and inexpensive compared to the elderly. Dr. Robert Gumbiner>> Besides, I think it's sort of discriminatory that you should not be covered by Medicare, but I am. What's the difference? You pay the same taxes as I pay. I just got to be sixty-five, so I'm covered. Well, that doesn't seem right to me. Val Zavala>> Well, what about people who say, "Yeah, but our taxes are going to skyrocket to cover all this?" Dr. Robert Gumbiner>> Well, that's the main gist of the book I wrote and that is that it's instead of and not in addition to. People forget. They could get full coverage right now if we had the system organized correctly by the amount that the employer pays, the employee pays and government supports. That's enough money right there if the system were organized correctly to pay for everybody to get full coverage, including prescriptions. Val Zavala>> That would be enough? Dr. Robert Gumbiner>> Plenty. I'll tell you what's really interesting. In the next twenty years or so, we're going to be there anyhow. Why is that? America is aging. More and more people are going to become -- they calculate that there's something like sixty or seventy million baby boomers out there that are just starting to turn sixty-five. They will add to the forty-five or forty-seven million people who are now on Medicare. Most of the care is going to be spent on Medicare people. Insurance companies will go out of business because now they don't have enough people to spread the risk. Val Zavala>> They would go out of business, he says, because, as more and more people are covered by Medicare, fewer would be available as customers for insurance companies. That's not a bad thing, he says, because the insurance business and health care is a bad match. Dr. Robert Gumbiner>> Health insurance itself is a misnomer because it's not insurance. It's prepayment for something you know is going to happen. First you're going to get born, so that costs money. Secondly, you're eventually going to die and that costs money. And in between, you get sick. That costs money. Now insurance is for one thing that may happen once, like life insurance. As far as I know, that only happens once, life insurance, or something that may never happen like fire insurance on your house. How many people's houses have burned down? Very few. Val Zavala>> So you're saying that insurance companies are basically betting that you won't get sick, and the one thing that we all know is that we will eventually all get sick. Dr. Robert Gumbiner>> Right. So it's not really insurance. It's a prepayment for something you know is going to happen. Val Zavala>> Another thing he says will have to go is paying a doctor for each treatment you get. It's an a la carte system instead of just a monthly fee for anything you may need. Dr. Robert Gumbiner>> First of all, fee for service has to go. Fee for service is antithetical to any kind of decent care and/or, you know, any kind of a controlled economic situation because, think about it, the more the health provider does for the patient, the more they make, so why would they do less? Why would a dentist be for something that prevented cavities from ever happening? You see, the way we have it now is a very strange system because the person who gets the service does not know how to evaluate the service. They don't know how to evaluate whether they're getting good care or bad care. All they can tell you is the doctor seems like a nice guy, he or she. Val Zavala>> If he or she says you need this, you go along with it. Dr. Robert Gumbiner>> Right, because they don't think they pay for it. They think a third party pays for it, their insurance company, who has no control over what's ordered. The person who decides what you're going to get, they don't pay for it. That's the doctor. So here you have a person who can't evaluate it, a person who decides what you're going to get doesn't pay for it, the organization that pays for it has no control over it, so that is a recipe for disaster. Val Zavala>> And finally, he says the system would have to be run by the federal government and not the states. It would be a mess administratively and then each state would have their own little world and would make it crazy. Dr. Robert Gumbiner>> You got it. So the wife works in Connecticut and she's got one set of rules. The husband works in Maryland and he's got another set of rules. Their son works in Washington, D.C. and he's got another set of rules. We pay more than any country in the world for health care and we get less. It's just wasted in duplication, drugs that are marginally useless, if not useless, procedures that we don't need, one thing or another. Val Zavala>> Dr. Gumbiner, thank you very much for your thoughts and your book. Dr. Robert Gumbiner>> "Curing Our Sick Health Care System". Val Zavala>> Good advice. Dr. Robert Gumbiner>> Easy read, big font (laughter). 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>> They gained a reputation as a comedy troupe, but now they're taking a very different turn. Culture Clash is getting serious about Mexican-American issues in history. They tackled the story of Chavez Ravine on stage several years ago and now, as Vicki Curry tells us, they're taking on the powers that be. [Film Clip] Vicki Curry>> You may recognize the actors, but the scenes might seem less familiar. [Film Clip] Vicki Curry>> And unusually dramatic for Richard Montoya, Ric Salinas and Herbert Siguenza, the performance ensemble known as Culture Clash. [Film Clip] Vicki Curry>> Culture Clash built its reputation on comedy, but this play called "Water and Power" takes a turn towards tragedy. [Film Clip] Vicki Curry>> This might surprise long-time fans of Culture Clash. When the group started in 1984, they set out to explore American-Latino life through edgy satire. [Film Clip] Vicki Curry>> By the early 1990s, Culture Clash had a national audience. They were the first to have a Latino sketch comedy show on television. [Film Clip] Vicki Curry>> But they're all eager to put those days behind them. Richard Montoya>> It really has spread out in a campaign to drive a stake through the heart of and kill off the notion of us as a comedy troupe. It just hasn't served us well. We're much more than that. Vicki Curry>> The evolution of Culture Clash won't surprise those who know that Montoya, Salinas and Siguenza all came out of El Teatro Campesino in San Francisco. But like most American kids, they were also raised on a steady diet of popular culture. Ric Salinas>> The three of us grew up, of course, watching endless hours of television, sitcoms and growing up with listening to Richard Pryor and Cheech and Chong and Lenny Bruce. So all those influences, Monty Python, you know, so Culture Clash is definitely a product of all that. Vicki Curry>> And a product of the Chicano political movement and its ongoing focus on equality, education and ethnic identity. Richard Montoya>> But we took what we thought was the most urgent part of that and infused it with what we had grown up with, which was really television. [Film Clip] Vicki Curry>> What started as a cabaret style act in the 1980s quickly evolved into full-length stage plays. Herbert Siguenza>> We talk about society. We talk about our bi-culturalness, you know. We talk about growing up Latino in the United States. And we found out that we were representing millions of people in the United States that grew up just like us. [Film Clip] Vicki Curry>> It's lines like that that garnered plenty of criticism. Some Latino groups assailed Culture Clash for reinforcing negative stereotypes. Ric Salinas>> I don't think we'll ever receive the positive Hispanic image awards, you know, because we portray people that are real. They really exist out there. Are we going to deny those people, those characters, on the stage because they do live a life that's alternative, that might be dangerous? We show it. They exist. Herbert Siguenza>> We're like lone wolves. We really are. I think that's really because we basically create and say and act the way we want. We don't have someone's agenda or some group's agenda. We're just, you know, reporting back, you know, what we see. Vicki Curry>> In the early 1990s, Culture Clash started seeing even more of America. They began creating site-specific plays based on the experiences of local residents. Ric Salinas>> We've gone into communities, San Diego, Miami, Washington, D.C., and we interview people and then we tell their stories and we portray those people. [Film Clip] Vicki Curry>> As the subjects of their work expanded, so did the depth of their writing and acting. Herbert Siguenza>> And we're interpreting real people with real stories. You know, we couldn't clown them. We had to dignify these people, so I think that really changed our acting patterns to fit, to really create a realistic three-dimensional character. [Film Clip] Ric Salinas>> We have a good feel of the pulse of communities across the country and that's why I think Culture Clash, you know, we probably are the leading Latino touring company in the country. We've just been able to go into all the repertory theaters, top-notch, and why they bring Culture Clash to those theaters is because we bring in the new audience. Vicki Curry>> In recent years, Culture Clash has come back home creating a series of plays about California. The first tells the story of Chavez Ravine, a Los Angeles neighborhood sacrificed to build Dodger Stadium. [Film Clip] Ric Salinas>> When we wrote "Chavez Ravine", it just got so into this whole history of Los Angeles and how there's a lack of history. Vicki Curry>> Their next play in the California series is called "Zorro in Hell". It goes further back in history by looking at the legend of Zorro. Ric Salinas>> We took the Zorro character who we had no interest in doing because it's a Spanish concoction by an Irish-American writer, but we found that we could use it telling history, the 1800s, the Californians, the Spanish, the Mexicans. Herbert Siguenza>> That's a throwback to our old style which was very funny, very satirical, very historical. [Film Clip] Vicki Curry>> Their latest California project, "Water and Power", takes a decidedly darker tone. It's a fictional tale about twin brothers, one a California State Senator and the other an LAPD cop. Through their stories, it explores Latinos' relationships to power. Richard Montoya>> We haven't quite mastered what the Anglos and Jews probably already know about power, to have it and not use it. And if you do have it, spread it. We're still kind of, you know, "I've got it and you can't have it." [Film Clip] Richard Montoya>> And when I look at the typical Hollywood Hispanic fare, at the center of it is an authenticity problem. I don't see people that I recognize and this is one thing that we are trying to remedy with "Water and Power". It's in your face. [Film Clip] Vicki Curry>> But how are audiences reacting to this in-your-face approach, especially non-Latino audiences? Richard Montoya>> I see Anglos on their feet every night in this audience and I'm just flabbergasted. Herbert Siguenza>> We have a specifically very Chicano, very Latino, play, so that just tells you that even if you get specific about your culture, it's still very universal. [Film Clip] Val Zavala>> And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, thanks for watching. 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:  | |
|
Home | Features | Arts | Health/Science | OC Edition | L&T Blog | Archives | About Us | Contact Us | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use |