Monday, June 23, 2008

Remembering Photographer Dolores Neuman

On the 23 June 2008 edition of Subversity, a KUCI public affairs program, in the first half-hour, we celebrated and remembered the life of photographer Dolores Neuman. The Washington-D.C.-based photographer documented social movements and the people within them. She was involved with CovertAction Information Bulletin (later CovertAction Quarterly), co-founded by her husband, Louis Wolf. She provided photography for "Northern Lights", a documentary about farmers in North Dakota, and Rob Epstein's "The Times of Harvey Milk," a documentary about the slain gay San Francisco supervisor. She was instrumental in promoting many independent films and independent directors. She was a founder of the Jewish Film Festival. She passed away June 5.

We talked with friends of Dolores Neuman, including Amanda Spake, former managing editor of "Mother Jones" magazine, and a writer and investigative reporter for national magazines and news outlets, specializing in health and medicine, environmental issues, education, food and drug safety, and consumer protection, focusing recently on post-Katrina investigations as a Katrina Media Fellow. She is a UC Irvine graduate.


We also talked with Janet Cole, a social-issue documentary film producer ("Absolutely Positive", "Regret to Inform," "Paragraph 175" and others) who had a close friendship with Dolores for almost 30 years.

During the late 1970s through the mid-1980s when the American independent film genre was first being coined and documentary films were initially being shown in U.S. theaters, Dolores was one of the first grassroots specialists in creative audience development: Working with independent theater owners and distributors to attract audiences to see such social-issue films. She worked with Janet Cole on two films, first "The War At Home," which they promoted together in SF and a few years later, "Soldier Girls".

Also joining in the conversation was another long-time friend, Rob Epstein, the director of "The Times of Harvey Milk."

See the obituary adapted from the Washington Post: "Dolores Neuman, 66; photographer, promoter for public interest causes."

See: Guest Book on Washington Post site

To listen to the show, click here: .

Monday, June 16, 2008

Earthquake Relief: Organizing to Help

Irvine -- On our show airing 16 June 2008, KUCI's Subversity looks at how concerned UCI students and others helped spark relief efforts over the devastating earthquake in Sichuan, China last month.


We talk with Wei Li, a UCI doctoral student in Social Ecology, who spearheaded a relief drive at UC Irvine, raising over $30,000 in just days. He also organized a candlelight vigil at UCI for the victims of the earthquake.

Wei Li was born and raised in Shangqiu, Henan Province. He graduated with a Bachelor of Business Administration from Renmin University of China (Beijing), after working as an undergraduate for the Chinese Young Volunteers Association. He begin his interests in environmental planning in 2003 by joining the MA program in Environmental Studies, University of Waterloo (Canada). He came to UCI in 2006 as a PhD student in Planning, Policy and Design, focusing on environmental policy and economics. He is currently working on a research project on how trees in Los Angeles influence house values.

Wei Li can be contacted at: mailto:%20wli3@uci.edu.

He is working with the Orange County Chinese Professional Association on handling further donations.

UCI news profile: Campus responds to crisis.

To listen to the show, click here: .

Monday, June 9, 2008

Demystifying Diasporic Vietnamese Politics

On our 9 June 2008 edition, Subversity, a KUCI public affairs program, features a conversation with an editor and journalist who was fired from the country's top Vietnamese-language newspaper in a failed attempt to appease anti-communist protesters, and who has now resurrected himself as a blogger writing about Vietnamese diasporic politics in and beyond Little Saigon. We talk with the writer who goes by the moniker "Bolsavik".


The Bolsavik's meek alter ego is Hao-Nhien Vu, a mathematician with a knack for telling the truth, he says. He was previously employed at Nguoi Viet Daily News, the largest Vietnamese-language newspaper in California and probably in the country. For four years he was the Managing Editor, until anti-communist protests over an artwork involving a pedicure spa caused the paper to fire him. Since then, he has been writing and editing the blog Bolsavik.com, which is playing a major role demystifying all that's happening within the Vietnamese American community here in Orange County and elsewhere.

Our interview with The Bolsavik (coined from Bolsa, the main drag in Little Saigon, and Bolshevik) is set against continuing demonstrations against his former newspaper, Nguoi Viet, as well as against Viet Weekly, another publication in the region. Our earlier interview with Publisher Le Vu of the Viet Weekly appears here: mp3 audio.

To listen to the show with the Bosavik, click here: .

A new profile of Subversity's show host appears on the KUCI web site: "Spotlight on Dan Tsang.".

An earlier Subversity interview with outgoing UCI History Prof. Mike Davis is extracted in AMASS, issue 29 (2008), pp. 32-35: "The War at Home: Interview with Mike Davis" by Dan Tsang. (The issue is available from Atomic Books, or directly from the publisher, Society for Popular Democracy, see: Subscriptions).