Venice Community Celebrates the Life of Carol Fondiller Berman

By Karl Abrams

Venetians gathered together at Beyond Baroque for a joyous memorial on February 13 to honor the wit and wisdom and amazing life of Carol Fondiller Berman who died on January 9. In a program moderated by Jim Smith of the Beachhead, speaker after speaker spoke of their deep friendship and loving respect for Carol, while others read brilliant and funny excerpts from some of her 41 years of writings for the Beachhead she helped to found.

Maryjane presented a video she made of Carol and Linda Lucks spoke first about her many years of friendship with Carol. Karl Abrams read one of Carol’s numerous articles in the Beachhead about living in Venice in the 1970s.

Carol’s sister, Judi Richards, talked lovingly about spending her 21^st birthday with Carol. Tomito, an old friend read a poem he had written about the “early years” with Carol in the 1960’s where Carol was described as “spewing volcanic truths and blazing new trails…”  Moe Stravener, another old friend who wrote with Carol on the Beachhead, reminded us that “she was a light to the community” and how “no one could write like Carol.”

Ruth Galanter, former L.A. councilmember spoke of how she met Carol at a Venice canal festival and has, ever since, been “honored to have known Carol.”

Debra Bowen, our California Secretary of State, remembered Carol as a much respected (and sometimes feared) Venice activist with an “incredible laugh”. Bowen referred to Carol as a “pure individualist” who was such a natural leader that sometimes she just walked to the front of a community meeting and “just started to chair.”

Carol would later be honored in 2006 as the “Queen of Venice” by the L.A. City Council.

Pam Emerson read a Beachhead story describing how for Carol, “…living in Venice was a form of immortality.” Carol will always be remembered as a humorous story teller, political guru and conscience of the community who dedicated her life – moment by moment it seemed – to the “preservation and betterment” of Venice.

Composer and pianist Brad Kaye played an original classic piece entitled “Funeral March” written for and dedicated to Carol. Venice singer Suzy Williams, accompanied by Eric Ahlberg and Sam Clay, sang “Moon Over Venice”. And then, towards the end of the memorial, Suzy led the audience in singing lyrics about Venice written by Carol entitled, “Too Poor to Live Here”.

Carol Copatch, Emily Winters and Larry Gross spoke of their friendship with Carol, Carol Tantau read from the Beachhead. Chuck Bloomquist read one of Carol’s poems followed by Lynne Bronstein,

Don Geagan, Steve Goldman and Phyllis Korn speaking of their memorable moments with Carol.

Carol was a long time advocate of keeping benches on Ocean Front Walk. She ran against Tom Hayden for State Assembly on the Peace and Freedom Party ticket she also co-founded.

Carol was a leader who inspired. Whether it was a featured Beachhead article that would get the whole community talking – or her fearless and publicly outspoken advocacy of affordable housing and protection of the homeless and the poor. This was evident in the adoring and sad faces of the many who came to honor her.

After the memorial program, a dozen or so close friends walked past Carol’s house on 5 Rose Ave and scattered her ashes on the beach. Some placed white roses in the Venice Sea.

Carol was so full of life it seemed as if everyone could feel her presence that afternoon.

Praising Howard Zinn: A People’s History of the United States, and The People Speak

By Erica Snowlake

It is good to recall Ms. Thelma Trotty, the first teacher who blew (enlightened) my mind. She taught high school history in the late seventies in upstate New York from her unique perspective as a native Iroquois and a gay women’s rights advocate. Condemning the recorded history of our textbooks “propaganda” she initiated the dissemination and discussion of versions of the past which didn’t necessarily serve “liberty and justice for all”. Opening our eyes to the suffering of the oppressed, and the ongoing struggle for equality in our society, she encouraged independent thought and critical analysis with the liberating anarchist mantra “Question Authority!” infusing our hearts with yearning for the dignified community of all beings in solidarity. Radical compassion! I began to shed (in layers) the skin of a privileged young white woman.

In 1980 Professor Emeritus Howard Zinn published The People’s History of the United States, encouraged by his wife Roslyn to spread to an ever-widening audience the lectures he gave students at Boston University. The book re-tells American history from the point of view of “the people who have given this country whatever liberty and democracy we have”; the brave souls who have eloquently spoken out and organized resistance against genocide, slavery, war, poverty, and racial and gender inequality, while in the midsts of enduring it, often having sacrificed their very lives for it. These voices of our ancestors; Native Americans, slaves, soldiers, war dissenters, union organizers, immigrant laborers, peace marchers, yippies, feminists, resonate louder than ever today, reminding us democracy only originates and prospers by and for the people who serve to vigilantly nurture and uphold it.

Howard Zinn died in January, leaving us the inspiring legacy of his life as an educator, prolific writer, historian, playwright, social activist, remorseful WWII bombardier, and compassionate human being. He was instrumental in supporting the non-violent actions of students at Atlanta’s Spelman College in fighting segregation, including the writer and poet Alice Walker. Arrested more than half a dozen times for civil disobediance, it is rumored on his last day at BU, 100 students enthusiastically accepted Zinn’s invitation to join him in a picket line. He did not shy from telling the truth of the genocidal depredation of Christopher Columbus, the blood lust of Theodore Roosevelt, or the racial failings of Abraham Lincoln. His last piece was a critical expose urging President Obama to follow the policies of Dr. Martin Luther King. It is no surprise those who call him friend include Mumia Abu-Jamal and Leonard Peltier.

The People’s History of the United States has now been read by over two million people! I recently discovered the graphic adaptation entitled A People’s History of American Empire, which opens with the events of 9-11 and explores U.S. imperialism from Wounded Knee to Viet Nam, the Iran-Contra scandal to the invasion of Iraq. It chronicles Mr. Zinn’s own story, the son of poor Jewish immigrants growing up in Brooklyn tenements.

A few months ago, the History Channel aired a two-hour spoken word and musical performance based on Voices of a People’s History of the United States. “The People Speak”, narrated and co-directed by Howard Zinn with Arnold Arnove, features readings from live performances at Boston’s Cutler Majestic Theater and Malibu’s Performing Arts Center by a variety of acclaimed actors and musicians, bringing to life the valiant speeches, poetry, dying words, and shining integrity of those throughout history who refuse to be compromised by greed, privilege, and power. Performers channel the immortal words of Chief Joseph, Frederick Douglas, Mark Twain, Genora Dollinger, Langston Hughes, Woody Guthrie, Caesar Chavez, Marion Wright Edelman, and dozens of jes’ plain ol’ regular folk with guts.

In an interview with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now, Howard Zinn summed up our chances for a universal peaceful co-existence: ”If you want to end terrorism, you have to stop being terrorists, which is what war is.” For all his insight into history’s cruelties, he always held hope, reminding us human history is equally filled with acts of compassion, sacrifice, courage, and kindness. In his autobiography, You Can’t Be Neutral from a Moving Train, he promises “If we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is a succession of presents, and to live now as we think humans should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself, a marvelous victory.”

Thank-you Howard and Roslyn Zinn, you are in all hearts that are dreaming for freedom.

Women Speak Out! From Howard Zinn’s “Voices of A People’s History of the United States”

Emma Goldman, the Lithuanian immigrant, feminist orator, agitator, and anarchist, arrested in 1917 on conspiracy charges of “inducing persons to not register” excerpted from a 1908 speech in San Francisco before the outbreak of WW1, entitled Patriotism: A Menace to Liberty:

What, then, is patriotism? “Patriotism, sir, is the last resort of scoundrels.” (quoting Dr. Samuel Johnson) Indeed, ignorance, conceit, arrogance, and egotism are the essentials of patriotism, which assumes our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who have had the fortune of being born on some particular spot, consider themselves better, nobler, grander, more intelligent than the living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill, and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all the others. Yet our hearts swell with pride at the thought that America is becoming the most powerful nation on earth, and that it will eventually plant her iron foot on the necks of all other nations.”

Such is the logic of patriotism…..Thinking men and women the world over are beginning to realize that patriotism is too narrow and limited a conception to meet the necessities of our time. The centralization of power has brought into being an international feeling of solidarity among the oppressed nations of the world; a solidarity which fears not foreign invasion, because it is bringing all the workers to the point when they will say to their masters, “Go and do your own killing. We have done it long enough for you.”

Sojourner Truth, the black abolitionist, freed from slavery in 1827, at a women’s convention in 1851, in which she “joins the indignation of her race to the indignation of her sex”:

“That man over there says that a woman needs to be helped into carriages and lifted over ditches…..Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud puddles or gives me any best place. And ain’t I a woman? Look at my arm! I have ploughed, and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I a woman? I would work as much and eat as much as a man, when I could get it, and bear the lash as well. And ain’t I a woman? I have bourne thirteen children and seen em most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman?

If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women ought to be able to turn it back and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them!”

Rose Chernin on Organizing the Unemployed in the Bronx in the 1930′s:

I would address the crowd gathered in the streets below : “People, fellow workers. We are the wives of unemployed men and the police are evicting us. Today we are being evicted. Tomorrow it will be you. So stand by and watch. What is happening to us will happen to you. We have no jobs. We can’t afford food. Our rents are too high. The marshal has brought the police to carry out our furniture. Are you going to let it happen?” Our fight was successful. The rents came down, the evicted families returned to their apartments, the landlord would stop fighting us. Within two years we had rent control in the Bronx.

–Erica Snowlake

Poetry

• Tumbling – Karl Abrams
• dedicated to the memory of Milton and Bunny Bratton – Kitty Bratton
• Praise for a lost Woman - hillary kaye
• Life’s Work – Vecelina Minkovski
• for Carol Fondiller – R.F. Wagner, Jr.
• During the campaign – Edward Ferrer
• Changeling – Jim Smith
• Prayer – krista schwimmer

————————-

Tumbling
By Karl Abrams

So I waited for you,
This time completely.
Looking only at the garden gate
Where you would first appear.
Something moved gracefully,
gently in the languid afternoon.
It was you, I thought.
Then, no, it was just a leaf
in that sweet lonely wind…
tumbling effortlessly
But yes, that is also you.

————————-

(dedicated to the memory of
Milton and Bunny Bratton)

I long for the beach
I long for a beach
The one I recall is out of reach…

The dolly with the pink hair in the
Venice dept.store-gone
The candy striped playground at windward-gone
The 10 cent tram up and down the boardwalk-gone
The king neptune of P O P’s entrance-gone
Jack’s by the sea-gone
The Lafayette’s restaurant-gone
The green pagodas we sat in-gone
The Fox movie house-gone
The old val’s drug store-gone
Hotels on the beach front full of seniors-gone
Running into friends you know for years-gone

My parent’s love was born in venice,
and they both died there.

I long for a beach.

–kitty bratton

————————-

Praise for a lost Woman

by hillary kaye

A life covered
in the blood of betrayal
A cremation of dreams
A fire pit
of loss
A woman’s
life
the life of the soul
enmeshed
in sorrow and joy
She gives birth and nurtures
and still is slandered
by a world enthralled with
its own destruction
And yet she loves the very things
that hate her
and is buried by the
same blood as her sons

————————-
Life’s Work

By Vecelina Minkovski

Life demands
That we grow up and
Teaches us to persevere
Our independence is crucial cause
It frees our selves and
Gives us power to create
It reminds us that we’ve had
The choices we are learning all along…
Unfortunately countless human beings
Especially the women and children of this world,
Have a limited pool from which to choose…
Or they have no choice at all…
No thanks to
Oppression-
Ignorance-
Violence-
And Fear…
It is our duty to make these demons
Disappear…
It is our destiny to fulfill our utmost
Purpose… right now.
With the abundance of resources
That we have so generously been
Given…
It is our responsibility
To make this world a better place
One act of kindness
At a time
So make the best choices that you can
And help those who have no choice at all
This is what it means me to be alive.
The fresh breath of oxygen given…
Had better create a happy reality that
Flourishes and grows many other
Happy realities…
This is purpose.
This is life’s work…
Now come along
And sing the song
Of peace on earth
And good will to all.

————————-

20:35 Friday, February 26, 2010, behind the Talking Stick, for Carol Fondiller….. I never got to meet you. Now you’re lost To haunt me, and no ordinary ghost You are. Just what I needed: one more shock To waken me too late, a heavy rock Attached to my left ankle, pulling me In spirals to carve through a leaden sea. A millstone to embrace, held to my heart. A sense of sinking lingers. I report What I receive via eternity. I never got to know you. Certainty That you remain, in memories, to lock Into some private chamber, as the clock Has sounded from the tower, tolls at best, Reminding us: no ordinary ghost….. R.F.Wagner, Jr.

————————-

During the campaign

During the campaign
the hope rose
an Obama Nation
candidate Obama was a true single payer supporter
The truth
in the adage: “Campaign promises are meant to be broken”
gives us an
abomination.
Rahm Emanuel
“not a problem”
unfortunately, an apparent
role model
Our President
is part of the
“Best Democracy money can buy.”

–Edward Ferrer

————————-
Changeling

By Jim Smith

She rides upon her great mare, Gladus
From end to end this town is hers.
The timid peek over their fences
Others wave from their porches.
We recognize her without a doubt
A bit of pink or brightly blue, it’s her.
One of a kind, A Venice woman.
Hard to predict, easy to admire
She’s up to nothing but good.
Cooking for the sick.
Entertaining the elderly.
You’ve got to be Bad
for Suzy not to think you’re good
…down deep.

When night falls our fair maid
changes before our eyes
and under the moon
into the Vamp of the speakeasies
and Queen of the b l u e s
bop bop a be bop
Yeah, sing it baby sing
sing that song of a woman’s torment
sing that song of a woman’s ecstasy.

————————-

Prayer

Oh Goddess of the Winged Night
let not my heart go out to all men
as if each were a god.

Oh Goddess of the Many Moons
let not my mind turn towards all men
who cannot bear the brilliance of moonlight.

Oh Goddess of the Hidden Well
let not my mouth drink from any man
as if he were the source of life.

Now i invoke your tenderness!
Now i invoke your luminescence!
Now i invoke your strength!

And in the coolness of November rains
as the dead return to their graves
i rise up with them to return to you.

–krista schwimmer