A Reporter's Life: David Reyes and the Los Angeles Times

This past Tuesday, the Los Angeles Times killed its Orange County edition. We look back at an era in print journalism when the newspaper won Pulitzers and covered ethnic communities and OC and San Diego counties, in depth. Tune in Monday 9 March at 9 a.m. for a conversation with longtime Times staff writer, now retired, David Reyes.

David Reyes has had more than 30 years reporting experience for major dailies and weeklies in Los Angeles, Orange County, Oregon, and San Diego. He has shared in two Pulitzer prizes, a 1992 spot news reporting of the Los Angles riots while at the Los Angeles Times and in 1984 the Gold Medal for in-depth series on Latinos in Southern California, again with the LA Times. He has covered education, the legal system, immigration, government and transportation. While in Orange County, he wrote The Times� first surfing column for the edition. He is a member of the Chicano News Media Assn., and a founding member of the National Assn. of Hispanic Journalists.
Joining us in the conversation is OC Voice publisher John Earl, who remembers growing up reading a meaty Los Angeles Times.

To listen to the show, click here: http://kuci.org/~dtsang/subversity/Sv090309.mp3

David Reyes also profiled Subversity and its host 15 years ago (March 14, 1994) in the L.A. Times: "UCI Lecturer, Mentor Out `to Change Society' " From that article:
...
His [Dan's] newest project, a one-hour radio talk show on KUCI, the student radio station, is billed as an "alternative view of what's behind the Orange Curtain." Guests and subjects have included supporters of gay teen-agers at Fountain Valley High School, decriminalizing prostitution, and gang hysteria in Orange County.

"This is a call-in format," Tsang, .. said. "I'm asking critical questions of my guests, and people get to call in."

The program doesn't attempt balance. "I don't do the other side," Tsang said. "All my shows are like that." After all, he said, the 4 p.m. Tuesday show is titled "Subversity."
..........
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For those with UCI access the URL for the full text is here.

Subversity now airs 9 am Mondays, on KUCI, 889 FM in Orange County, Calif., and is simulcast via the web via http://kuci.org. No callins though (I can't interview and answer calls).

Iranian Women Today

To commemorate International Women's Day, Subversity, a KUCI public affairs program, focuses on its Monday 2 March 2009 show (9-10 a.m.) on the struggles of Iranian women within and without Iran.

We talk, through an interpreter, with C. Sussan, an Iranian women living in exile in Europe, who has traveled to southern California to build for the International Women's Day events at Pico and Westwood in Westwood on March 7 (1 pm rally and march kickoff).

In the late 1970s Sussan lived in the U.S. and was part of the Iranian student movement against the brutal U.S.-backed Shah of Iran. She returned to Iran after the Shah's overthrow and took part in the struggle against the Khomeini regime. She was imprisoned for her political activity, was tortured and later released. After many years she was allowed to leave Iran. Throughout the years in exile she has continued to oppose and organize resistance against the Iranian regime as part of the March 8 Women's Organization.

To listen to the show, click here:

Indonesian Film "Chants of Lotus"; Homeless Crisis

For the edition of Subversity airing Monday 23 February 2009, we started off about film, but it's not about Hollywood nor the Oscars. We featured (in a repeat airing) an interview with UCI's film and media studies Professor Fatimah Tobing Rony, who is one of the co-directors of a film from Indonesia (that was released theatrically there) showing at the UCI Film and Video Center the coming Thursday. She introduces the unexpurgated version of the film at the event.

The screening highlights women directors, and the film, Chants of Lotus ("Perempuan Punya Cerita"), covers women's own stories about such controversial subjects as teenage sex, abortion, child trafficking and AIDS. Our interview was first aired last April 28 on Subversity. See the film trailer .
To listen to the interview with Fatimah Tobing Rony as edited for rebroadcast, click here: .

We also aired National Radio Project's Making Contact program on the Homeless, "How We Survive: The Deepening Homeless Crisis." Making Contact says: "We spend the day with a family who lost their home and now lives inside their cramped trailer at a city parking lot. And we heard how two different communities are dealing with the economic crisis by taking matters into their own hands." Featured were:

David Clements, homeless, lives in trailer with family; Jennifer, Chloe, Yanni, Enya, and Kierlan, David's family; Nancy Kapp, New Beginnings Counseling Center homeless outreach coordinator; Max Rameau, Take Back The Land founder; Eric Evinowskis, Pinellas Hope facilities manager; Sheila Lopez, Pinellas Catholic Charities CEO and Pinellas Hope director; Rocco Mariano, Laura Letziati, James Stockstill, Pinellas Hope clients; Marie Nadine Pierre, Take Back the Land participant; Kelly Penton, City of Miami spokesperson. Also, Nancy Folbre, a professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is also a blog writer for the The New York Times "Economix." She speaks with Making Contact's executive director, Lisa Rudman about the U.S. economy.

For audio of and information about the segment: www.radioproject.org/archive/2009/0709.html.

Sex and Race in Vagina Monologues at UCI

On our President's Day show (February 16): An interview on sex and race with folks from the UCI production of The Vagina Monologues.

The Vagina Monologues is an annual benefit performance, which aims to raise awareness and funds for anti-violence against women groups within local communities. The Vagina Monologues is part of a global movement to stop violence against women and girls called V-Day. Half of the proceeds of the UC Irvine Vagina Monologues production supports the entire budget of the Campus Assault Resource Center. The other half of the show's proceeds go to Planned Parenthood, stage costs, and this year's national V-Day campaign against Rape in the Congo. The 'V' in V-Day stands for Victory, Valentine and Vagina.

Appearing on the Subversity show (updated list):

Lead Director: Hailee Pollard. She's a fifth year undergrad in the theater department. This is her second year as a director of the Vagina Monologues.

Cast Member: Playing The Woman Who Loved to Make Vaginas Happy (sex worker), Natalie Newton is a 3rd year graduate student in anthropology, a 2nd generation Vietnamese American, and a long-time queer and feminist activist.

Cast Member: Playing They Beat the Girl out of my Boy (transwoman), Mani Dhaliwal is a 4th year majoring in Biomedical Engineering/ Pre-med, she immigrated from India when she was 7, and this is her first time participating in the Vagina Monologues.

To listen to the show, click here:

Labor Update: Union Democracy Needed

Irvine -- As the U.S. enters a new Obama era, what are the prospects of a better future for American labor?

In the next edition of Subversity, a KUCI public affairs program, we talk with a former KUCI Public Affairs host who has been a labor activist locally as well as a labor organizer from Northern California.

John Earl is a former organizer and researcher for the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union, Local 681 (now UNITE HERE) in Orange County. He was also one of the organizers of a democratic reform movement in that union that led to the formation of a breakaway union, Local 50 UNITE HERE a the Disneyland resort in 2005. Since then he has been involved in efforts to help organize day laborers in the county. He is currently the publisher of the Orange Coast Voice newspaper. The OC Voice website is under construction but its blog is here: ocvoice.wordpress.com.

Steve Zeltzer is active in United Public Workers for Action and is the founder of Labor Video Project.

See also:

Two Unions in Marriage Now Face Divorce Talks

and

U.S. Labor Against the War.

To listen to the show, click here:

Obama's Silence on Gaza; In Bed with Neocons?

For the pre-inaugural edition of KUCI's Subversity, we delve into President-Elect Barack Obama's foreign policy on the Middle East, in the wake of his silence over the Israeli killing of children and families in Gaza, and his naming of a neocon to be his envoy on Iran. As the historic inauguration takes place Tuesday, is Obama not already failing to make any change in a foreign policy that is wedded to Zionism?

We talk with Gary Leupp, professor of history at Tufts University in Boston, while specializing in the history of Japan (also adjunct professor of religion) since 1988, has been writing columns on world affairs for such alternative pubications as Counterpunch and Dissident Voice since 2002.

He is the author of Servants, Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan; Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan; and Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's merciless chronicle of the wars on Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, Imperial Crusades.

His most recent article, "Obama's Necon" covers the appointment of Dennis Ross to the envoy position.

Leupp has also defended William Ayers, who has also appeared on Subversity. See: "Raising the Specter of the '60s".

Articles by Leupp archived in Dissident Voice: www.dissidentvoice.org/author/GaryLeupp/

See also Leupp's "Revisiting the Tale of Samson: A Gaza Bible Story"

Articles by Leupp archived in CounterPunch:

See also Simon Tisdall in the Guardian on Obama's silence on Gaza:

"Obama is Losing a Battle He Doesn't Know He's In: The President-Elect's Silence on the Gaza Crisis is Undermining his Reputation in the Middle East".

To listen to this show, click here:

Director Stephane Gauger and Executive Producer Timothy Linh Bui on The Owl and the Sparrow

Director Gauger (right) with Le The Lu (Hai, the elephant handler) at Ho Chi Minh City zoo

For the edition of Subversity airing 12 January 2008, we talked with Saigon-born Stephane Gauger, director of a new feature film from Vietnam, and his executive producer, Tim Linh Bui.

Gaugher is director of The Owl and The Sparrow, to open in OC and LA this weekend.

The film, set in bustling Ho Chi Minh City, focuses on the travails of a young orphaned girl runaway who ends up becoming matchmaker between an elephant handler at the local zoo and an airline stewardess.

This is Gauger's first feature film. He played a French colonial officer in The Rebel. Owl and the Sparrow has won numerous festival awards, including one at the LA Film Festival last year.

Gauger was last on Subversity back in 1999 discussing Vietnamese American filmmaking: kuci.org/~dtsang/subversity/Sv990323.ram.

Tim Bui leads an effort to promote Vietnamese film distribution in the West, called Wave Releasing. A director himself, he was last interviewed by Subversity's show host for a review in OC Weekly in 2001 on his role directing Green Dragon starring Forest Whitaker: www.ocweekly.com/2001-05-17/film/history-vs-memory/

The film opens Friday 16 January in OC at Irvine Westpark 8 and Regal Garden Grove 16, as well as in Los Angeles at Laemmle Sunset 8.

The film web site is: http://www.owlandthesparrow.com/

Trailer: www.owlandthesparrow.com/Trailer.mov

To listen to this show, click here: