THE GOPHER PLAN PLAYS TIMES SQUARE

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Strawberry Bulletin

Volume II, Number 5 Serving the 500,000 Veterans Living in Greater Los Angeles

March 2013

THE GOPHER PLAN PLAYS TIMES SQUARE

On October 13 and 14, 2012, the Metabolic Studio occupied Times Square in New York City with The Gopher Plan, a two-day puppet show musical about the Deed of 1888. Times Square produces a buzz, a heat of friction generated by millions of bees attending the hive. Driving into the Square one is sucked in, pulled by the tides of competing electromag- netic moons. That’s where we parked, pitched our awnings, and set up shop for a couple of days.

It’s hard to know if we communicated anything about the Deed and land use issues at the VA of West Los Angeles, or whether our reasons for being in Times Square—our hopes of galvanizing the Presidential dia- logue with intent—came across. I doubt that Obama heard about our singing telegram to the President.

However, we did have a unique exposure to meta-life. We parked and set up camp in a world apart, one in which the only regulars are hard-worn buskers and self-proclaimed gurus: Rubber Chicken Man will berate you with an argument; the fake Indian Chief, who wears full headdress and Calvin Klein under- pants, walks like a cuckoo bird and hourly bangs a tribal drum; Christ impersonators with giant crucifixes bleed from the fake nails driven through their palms; and a mercenary army of Hello Kittys drift by like landed bal- loons. This was the regular audience for our performance, which, needless to say, was probably too subtle for its environment.

We had been invited to Times Square by the Times Square Alliance, which engaged us to perform The Gopher Plan puppet show mu- sical as an extension of the annual Creative Time Summit. Like a concierge on a well- organized safari, Times Square Alliance met us, explained the importance of following all the rules, and pointed out the challenges and dangers of life on the Square. Its representatives provided us with a quiet, secure office with running water in which to regroup, and, most importantly, a fabulous photographer.

They were clear about the need for us to follow strict land use codes, and to do what had been

The VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System (GLAHS) hosted a groundbreaking ceremony January 25 for the renovation of Building 209, the first step in the renovation of three buildings to house homeless veterans promised in 2007. “Once renovation is com- plete,” said the GLAHS press release, “Build- ing 209 will serve as a therapeutic and supportive residence for chronically homeless Veterans.”

Spring 2014 is the scheduled completion date, according to that release. But a Decem- ber 3, 2012 letter from VA Secretary Eric Shin- seki to Congressman Henry Waxman, whose district includes the property, states, “The es- timated project completion is scheduled for July 2014.”

In a December 4, 2012 release, GLAHS had announced the award of the renovation contract to Westport Construction Company in Arcadia, CA. “This project will create approxi- mately 190 construction jobs,” said the VA;

it did not say whether Westport was veteran- owned or whether any of the jobs would go to veterans. Though the VA did not mention the contract amount, Shinseki’s letter to Waxman

VA Breaks Ground on Bldg. 209

Valentini Update

In the Valentini v. Shinseki class action law- suit filed by the ACLU and other lawyers in June 2011, the court has announced a schedule for the parties to brief summary judgment motions during April, May, and June of this year.

A plaintiff class of veterans challenged VA land use and treatment policies at the West L.A. campus on various grounds in the original complaint. By a succession of motions to dismiss, the government defendants have

Continued on page 5 Continued on page 5

Congressman Henry Waxman poses with Metabolic Studio gophers after a February 19 breakfast in Venice at which he discussed district issues including land use at the West L.A. VA. Later that day, Waxman met with plaintiffs’ lawyers in the Valentini class action lawsuit against the VA.

disclosed that it was $17.6 million. The project will provide housing for sixty-five veterans.

In response to the contract award in De- cember, the Los Angeles Times editorialized,

“Ordinarily, such news would be cause for celebration. In this case, however, the prospect of moving ahead is tempered by the reminder of how long it takes the agency to do so little, despite the enormity of the problem.” After reviewing the delays, the paper opined, “This sort of slow-rolling exemplifies much of the

Continued on page 5

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PAGE 2 OPINION IN THE BULLETIN

The Strawberry Bulletin invites letters from readers on any subject. All letters must include the writer’s name and a phone number and address through which the writer can be reached. Address and phone number will not be published; name may be withheld upon request. Letters are subject to editing by the Bulletin for reasons including length or questionable expression. Views expressed in Letters to the Editor are not necessarily the views of the Strawberry Bulletin.

Mail:

1745 N. Spring Street, No. 4, Los Angeles, CA 90012

Email: [email protected]

Strawberry Bulletin

Published by the Metabolic Studio, Los Angeles 1888.metabolicstudio.org

Lauren Bon, Editor-in-Chief

Terence Lyons, Veterans correspondent Jen Curtis, Production design

Contributing writers: Andrew Douglas, Rochelle Fabb Contributing artists: Sarah McCabe, Graeme Wior, Lovis Denger Ostenrik

Edition of 2000

Letters

To the Editor: Re: Building 209 to House Homeless Veterans.

As politicians, homeless advocates and others gather to celebrate the groundbreaking ceremony for the long awaited homeless program in Building 209, a subtle sleight of hand is occurring. Lost in the excitement, the culmination of battles to secure Building 209, the reality of the situation is not as it seems, nor as it is being portrayed.

Building 209 will not remove a single veteran in extremis off the streets of LA County.

Rather, it is simply another VA-run revolving door program to cycle the existing medical center population through.

GLAHS has long been averse to housing homeless veterans long term on the sprawl- ing campus. Note that New Directions located their apartment program on the Sepulveda campus, not GLAHS, although their other programs (as a result of battling the VA and ob- taining a McKinney Act status) are located on this campus. According to the VA’s own press release dated December 4, 2012, “Building 209 will be used for a compensated work therapy/

transitional residence CWT/TR program for ap- proximately 65 homeless veterans for whom pre- vious recovery attempts have failed.”

The CWT/TR program has been in existence at many other VAs for decades. It has not been run as a “specific” homeless program at other sites although some “homeless” vets have benefitted. It exists as a vocational train- ing program live/work model where veterans share chores, pay rent and work at stipend jobs either on the VA campus itself or at a participating business in the community.

Existing CWT jobs on the GLA campus typi- cally last 6-12 months per assignment and pay minimum wage.

Currently veterans at our facility involved in CWT live in a variety of settings—some in independent housing, some in the Domi- ciliary, or the Haven. Most CWT veterans are

maintained on already established outpatient roles. Many have served CWT positions mul- tiple times though some move on to competitive employment/housing. Everywhere else year after year, the tendency is to see the same people in some combination over and over again which leads me to believe that the VA programs in general, and this one in particular, is simply part of the VA holding pattern.

To be fair to the veterans, six months of minimum wage work doesn’t really give much of a leg up in the LA area economy. With low wage jobs and prohibitive rents to live in a safe to decent area, I don’t see how this program is going to equip anyone to live and work in the real world. I see it as just another stop in the VA circuit, which brings me to the phrase in the press release, “Veterans for whom previous recovery attempts have failed”—what does that mean exactly? What criteria are used? What will be different about this program? … It is telling that no official invite was posted on campus for veterans or employees other than a parking map. It seems like an open se- cret.

The VA can say it is advancing Secretary Shinseki’s plan of ending homelessness by 2015, but this is simply a political “Trojan Horse.”

Long term homeless housing in large num- bers (i.e. a resurrection of the Old Soldiers Home) is simply not going to happen at this VA. Congressman Waxman has mismanaged this facility for 30 years. The location, the Westside of Los Angeles, is a highly desirable,

high-income enclave. The Brentwood Home- owners Association, VA local leadership and the Brentwood Community Council and Vet- erans Park Conservancy (who have leased a 16-acre parcel park for no one on the VA campus) is actively working to get more of it.

Some West Side homeless providers have all fought off attempts to create an on campus safe-haven, such as Project Go Vets, a winter cold weather shelter and public/private part- nership. This leadership of this campus is strictly throwing the community and homeless advocates a bone and hoping that no- body catches on. If the VA were really sincere, it would put the CWT/TR program in Build- ing 205 (which is another empty building op- posite building 209), which housed a similar program called the intermediate recovery unit. As for the CWT/TR program currently exists on this campus in several different programs. This would simply be expanded and put under one roof and Building 209 would be used for what the homeless funds were meant for housing homeless veterans (!)—

many too impaired to work—not to backfill just another VA program.

—Name withheld

To the Editor:

It does not matter who is the President—

nothing changes. The President stands at the top of the heap and tells his Secretaries, “Get it done!” The Secretaries turn to the Under/

Assistant/Deputy Secretaries, who turn to the Bureau/Office/Department Chiefs, who turn to their legal counsel and a bevy of oh- so-experienced bureaucrats to write the rules for “Getting it done,” and a few years later nothing happens. Meanwhile the same stack of participants devise the reporting mecha- nisms and the evaluation metrics that send reports back up through the system all the way to the President which say “We are getting it done, sir, just as you ordered!”

The President is alone at the top, and you Continued on page 3

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PAGE 3

Building

Watchdog

OPINION IN THE BULLETIN

Benito’s food truck has been serving the Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System’s West Los Angeles campus for sixteen years.

But although Benito says he has had an exclu- sive contract with the Veterans Canteen Ser- vice approved in Washington, DC, there are now other trucks on the VA campus as well.

Benito’s Catering, the company name, is a family-operated business. Originally, the truck was owned by another young man. He found out the route was for sale and inquired, visited the route, and liked what he saw. The first man did a good business, and sold it to attend college.

Benito, his wife Patricia, and daughter Pat- ty, along with occasional other helpers, are open for business seven days a week. Their day starts in the wee hours of the morning to stock and ready their truck in the yard in Bell, California, which is some distance from the VA.

Benito’s truck is on campus by 7 a.m. Beni- to’s truck serves breakfast, lunch, and break times; takes an afternoon break to restock;

and returns for dinner and evening breaks.

He generally departs campus by 8 p.m. The truck serves a fixed route on both the north and south campus, spread over 300 acres.

He also serves a wide range of customers from doctors to severely disabled veterans in a wide range of settings from hospital, construction sites, to nursing home, outpatient clinics. He also makes a stop at the CalVets home to serve staff members. The CalVets home is embedded on the VA campus.

Benito’s truck serves a wide-ranging menu comprised of short order, Mexican and Amer- ican favorites, and a wide variety of bever- ages and packaged snacks. His prices have remained fairly constant over the years. For many years, regular customers were able to run a tab; nowadays that has been pretty much eliminated for economic reasons.

A can of soda is $1; a 20-oz. bottle is $1.50, now less than the VA store price of $1.80. Ta- cos are $1 apiece; an order of French fries or tamale is $2. A plate dinner (spaghetti, salad, and garlic bread) is $6.50. Favorites are large, freshly made burritos, meatloaf plates, and fresh-cut fruit.

Benito’s provides a needed service. After 3 p.m. and on weekends, there is nowhere else to get a hot meal. A small vending room is located in a couple of locations. Off campus affordable eats are a half a mile or more once you exit campus.

Benito, Patricia, and Patty have been around so long they have integrated themselves into the daily life of the VA community. Not only does the toot of the horn or the sound of the truck bring loyal customers running, but also the truck is a welcome sight for a visitor who is able to buy an unexpected cup of coffee.

Benito, Patricia, and Patty have always run a professional, well-organized route. They are genuinely compassionate and deal with customers individually. Many they know by name. So in addition to providing food service they also provide an equally valuable but more rare service, which is their kindness and acceptance of all kinds of people. Many long- term alienated VA patients have formed an emotional bond with them. For some, these three are the only non-staff people they have contact with. For a few, a smile, a wave, and being addressed by name are the only ordi- nary social exchange they engage in.

December 2012 marked Benito’s truck’s sixteenth anniversary. A lot of meals and people have passed their way. They hope to keep going strong into the future. But recently the local food-truck craze has caught up with them. Upscale, brilliantly colored, designer trucks have sprung up all over Southern Cali- fornia. Some of these are run by well-known chefs or restaurants. These usually have upscale, highly specific, themed menus, usually ethnic, such as Korean fusion tacos or “Ilogi”

the Greek truck. These are generally pricier than “working class” trucks like Benito’s, sometimes by several dollars.

The new trucks also have a contract with the Veterans Canteen Service, although it is a shared roster, one truck per day in a fixed location during business hours (8 to 4) adjacent to Building 304.

The VA plans to expand gourmet trucks to VA Sepulveda campus in the San Fernando Valley as well as the Temple Street VA clinic in downtown Los Angeles.

Gotta run! I think I hear the truck coming!

February 13, 2013 Jeffery Zeints Acting Director

Office of Management and Budget 725 17th Street, NW

Washington, DC 20503

Dear Director Zeints:

We write to urge your continued support for homeless veteran programs in the Greater Los Angeles region. Los Angeles is home to the largest population of homeless veterans in the nation, and we ask that you prioritize the renovation of Buildings 205 and 208 on the West LA VA campus in the Fiscal Year 2014 Budget to address this unwelcome distinction.

The situation in Los Angeles demands im- mediate attention. According to Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority Homeless Count in 2011, the most recent survey that accounts for homeless veterans living in shelters and on the streets, there are 8,131 homeless veterans in the Greater Los Angeles Area. Put in context, this statistic is shocking: 1 in 10 homeless veterans reside in Los Angeles.

As you know, the President and Secretary Shinseki have committed to eliminating veteran homelessness by 2015. To meet the President’s goal, the Secretary committed to renovate Buildings 205 and 208 on the West LA campus to house homeless veterans and provide support services. These buildings are

Benito’s Catering Faces Threat of Competition

are alone at the bottom, and in between are hundreds of thousands of people who don’t seem to care whether either you or the Presi- dent are pleased with the results (as long as their boss is pleased). After all, as soon as you get out of the kingdom of the political appoin- tees and are in the realm of the bureaucrats, they know that both you and the President will be gone someday so they really don’t have to worry about you that much.

—Sandy Cook Veterans United for Truth

Letters contd.

Senator Feinstein and Rep. Waxman sent the following letter to the Office of the President regarding the remaining buildings promised as housing for homeless vets.

FREEDOM BARBER SHOP

OPEN DAILY 9AM-7PM

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NEWS IN THE BULLETIN PAGE 4

As the new Congress convened in January, the Senate and the House of Representatives had the fewest number of veterans serving since World War II. This marks a continua- tion of a nearly four-decade-long decline of veterans in office since the peak of their service in the years after the Vietnam War.

In 2013, just nineteen percent of the 535 combined members in the U.S. House and Senate have active-duty military service on their resume, down from a peak in 1977 when eighty percent of lawmakers boasted military service.

The transition from the draft to an all-vol- unteer military in 1973 is a driving force of the decline, but veterans and their advocates say they face more challenges running for office in the modern era of political campaigns.

Newly elected Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Ha- waii, said she faced “huge challenges” in her campaign, which initially showed her forty- five percentage points down in the race. She said she used her skills as a platoon leader to manage her grass-roots campaign operation for a victory, but she noted that many veteran candidates face challenges to raise money.

“Generally, veterans tend not to be wealthy

people,” she said.

“There’s so few opportunities that we have where veterans can run a federal campaign,”

said Jon Soltz of VoteVets.org, a liberal veterans’ advocacy group that supports candidates for office. “They are credible messengers to the public, but only if they’re financed. A veteran with a great narrative that doesn’t have the infrastructure to sell themselves is a tree falling alone in the woods.”

A combination of electoral factors contrib- utes to veterans’ decline in the 113th Con- gress. Military veteran candidates in eight competitive Senate races this year were defeat- ed by opponents who did not serve. Among the dozens of military veterans who ran for the U.S. House, only twelve were elected.

Army veteran Tom Cotton, R-Ark., one of the dozen incoming lawmakers with military service, said he expects to see a rise in the next decade and beyond among veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan running for office. “I think you probably would see a steady increase in this generation of veterans, and it’ll be faster as we put a little bit more time between us and the war, and a little bit more gray on our temples,” he said.

Lauren Bon and the Metabolic Studio awarded its $25,000 Chora Prize for 2012 to the Combat Paper Project in recognition of its work with military veterans transform- ing their uniforms into handmade paper on which they may write, draw, or paint as an expression of their thoughts and feelings.

Chora is a project of the Los Angeles-based Studio that supports the intangibles that pre- cede creativity. The Chora Prize acknowledg- es a fully realized project of originality and merit; it stimulates the incorporation into institutions of “out of the box” ideas.

The Combat Paper Project, in making changes “from uniform to pulp, battlefield to workshop, warrior to artist,” engages veterans not only in the artistic creation of the paper itself but also in the inspiration for the writing, drawing, or painting that follows that process.

Bon and the Studio also announced seven- teen year-end grants of $10,000 and one of

$20,000, to each of the following individuals and organizations recommended by Studio team members:

The Children’s Lifesaving Foundation; Di- abetes Camping & Educational Services, Inc.

for its Camp Conrad Chinnock; Anne Hars, in recognition for her work at the intersec- tion of art and neighborhood activism; De- nise Roberts Breast Cancer Foundation; and Yvonne Savi, in recognition for her exception- al and selfless community leadership.

Friends of the Los Angeles River; Water Station; the Telling Project; United Way of Western Connecticut’s Sandy Hook School Support Fund; Rabbi Michael Roth, of the Beth Ohr Congregation; and the Ventura Project of Surfrider.

Aaron Thomas, Urban Forestry & Youth Environmental Stewards Program Manager at North East Trees; One with the Water; Ani- mal Advocates; The Point Foundation; The Mayme Clayton Library & Museum; Studio Matejka of Poland; and Robert Desmarais, caretaker of Cerro Gordo.

METABOLIC STUDIO ANNOUNCES 2012 CHORA PRIZE AND YEAR-END GRANTS

Fewest Vets in Congress Since World War Two

The Combat Paper Project, [makes] changes “from uniform to pulp, battlefield to workshop, warrior to artist”

Metabolic Studio artist Roxanne Steinberg performs in Times Square during The Gopher Plan presentation in October 2012.

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NEWS IN THE BULLETIN PAGE 5

Continued from page 1…

arranged without much alteration.

The Gopher Plan played several times a day for two days. The first performance was a di- saster: possibly the most humiliating experience of my life. But no two shows were alike, as we increasingly reached beyond our man- date and did wild improvisations like rope- jumping—the kind you see in studies of New York street life from the 1940s.

Our theatre was also our vehicle—an old Volkswagen van that we fitted out for traveling across the country. The van was packed full of puppets, curtains, instruments, speak- ers, and such cherished things as our hand- embroidered quilts. While setting up our theatre we played music over a loudspeaker from a radio play version of The Gopher Plan.

This part worked the best. Times Square is like an ADHD vacuum; nothing, or anything, can hold anyone’s attention for long. Adding a radio-play soundtrack to the cacophony was great. Larry Garf’s music worked so brilliantly in Times Square, as did the Broadway voices of Suzy Williams and Brad K.; and Maya Bon’s version of “Arcadia’s Song” gave meaningful purpose to the activity.

The show, like the site, could not be taken in from any one point of view. The performance was necessarily in-the-round. And the night performances were by far the most charged.

Roxanne Steinberg’s performance on top of the van as a puppet holding the Deed of 1888 has become one of a series of priceless images captured by the photographer from Times Square Alliance.

For me the biggest surprise was the intima- cy we experienced on the inside of the van. The theatre space became our home (or gopher den, since we were adapting gopher strategies for land use), a cozy, safe place in a hostile and overwhelming environment. Even in the cold autumn of the northeastern United States, the daylight inside the curtained van softened the acid light of Times Square. The safety and focus of that internal space gave us all—Cur- tis Bailey, Dave Baine, Lauren Bon, Rochelle Fabb, Guy Hatzvi, Dani Lunn, and Roxanne Steinberg—a critical knowledge of “troupe”

that made the theatrical experience a memo- rably human one, even in Times Square.

THE GOPHER PLAN

currently slated to be seismically corrected as part of the VA’s “Seismic Correction of Eleven Buildings” Major Construction Project, but future funding will be required for the reno- vations necessary to turn these buildings into effective housing and treatment centers. We are disappointed that the Administration has neither requested authorization nor funding for these critical projects.

As representatives for the Los Angeles community and strong supporters of the Presi- dent’s goal, we ask that the Fiscal Year 2014 Budget include a request for authorization and funding to fully renovate these buildings so that they can quickly become safe and effective supportive housing for the thousands of homeless veterans in Greater Los Angeles.

The magnitude of the situation demands no less.

Thank you for your consideration of our request. We look forward to working with you to address this unacceptable situation.

Sincerely, Dianne Feinstein United States Senator Henry A. Waxman Member of Congress Continued from page 3…

209 Watchdog

Right: A cloth napkin made at the Veterans Print Studio in Building 209 during Strawberry Flag.

Created for High Tea #7 in June 2010.

local VA’s work on homelessness.”

The Times concluded: “Local officials ran out of patience with the VA long ago. The region’s representatives in Washington should too, and start using the tools at their disposal to speed the conversion of underused buildings on the West L.A. campus…. As should be clear by now, if the VA is allowed to set the pace of progress, there will be precious little of it.”

At the January 25 groundbreaking, Rep.

Waxman said, “[W]hile we recognize this first step today, it is long overdue.” Elected officials L.A. County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky and L.A. City Councilmember Bill Rosendahl also spoke and commented on the delay.

The 2007 promise from then-VA Secretary Jim Nicholson to renovate Buildings 205, 208, and 209 to house homeless veterans resulted largely from a campaign begun a few years earlier by then-Santa Monica city councilman Bobby Shriver. Shriver was not invited to the January 25 groundbreaking. He was, however, quoted in the Santa Monica Lookout as saying,

“’This step took nine years. Is it going to take another nine years’ to renovate one of the other buildings?”

VA Breaks Ground

whittled plaintiffs’ claims to one: that the VA’s practices in allowing outside companies and other organizations to use veterans’ land vio- late statutory restrictions.

Because the issues raised by this remaining claim are largely legal rather than factual, it is expected that both sides in the suit will file “summary judgment” motions asking the court to rule in their favor without a trial.

In a February 12 order, U.S. District Judge James Otero set the schedule for the briefing process. The first brief is due from the defendants April 10. When the final brief has been filed by plaintiffs June 21, the judge will deter- mine whether a hearing is needed.

If the motions do not dispose of the case, a trial date may be set.

Valentini Update

weekly Wednesday offering in the parking lot adjacent to Building 304.

March 2013: Veterans mark the 125th anni- versary of the Deed of 1888 at a gathering at a sidewalk gathering at Wilshire and San Vi- cente Boulevards outside the locked gates of the VA property.

Continued from page 8

Our Town

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PAGE 6 FEATURES IN THE BULLETIN

Hessel, resistance fighter, diplomat, writer of Time for Outrage! and co-author of Univer- sal Declaration of Human Rights, dies.

The following obituary by Kim Willsher in Paris origi- nally appeared in The Guardian on Wednesday, Feb- ruary 27, 2013, just as this issue of the Strawberry Bulletin was going to press. We reprint it here to share this milestone with our readers.

The story of the French author Stéphane Hessel’s long and extraordinary life reads like a Boy’s Own adventure.

From his childhood in Berlin and then Paris, where he was brought up by his writer and translator father, journalist mother and her lover in an unusual ménage à trois, to his worldwide celebrity at the age of 93, when a political pamphlet he wrote became a best- selling publishing sensation and inspired global protest and the Occupy Wall Street movement.

And then there was everything in between: his escape from two Nazi concentra- tion camps where he had been tortured and sentenced to death, his escapades with the French resistance and his hand in drawing up the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.

Sometime between Tuesday and Wednes- day, just a week after his last big interview was published, Hessel’s long and extraordinary life came to an end. He was 95 years old, but as one French magazine remarked: “Sté- phane Hessel, dead? It’s hard to believe. He seemed to have become eternal, the grand and handsome old man.”

Le Point magazine added that the man with an “old-fashioned politeness and elegance from another age” had “danced” with the best part of a century.

“When one is received by the world in tele- vision studios, when one writes bestsellers, when one has baptised an international mo- bilisation movement, does one still die?” the magazine asked.

In 2010, when most people are winding down and after a long career as a diplomat, Hessel’s life took yet another dramatic turn when his 48-page pamphlet Indignez-Vous!, sold 4.5m copies in 35 countries. It was trans lated into English as Time for Outrage.

The work was originally written as a speech to commemorate the resistance to Hitler’s oc- cupation of France during the second world

war. It served as a rallying cry for those ap- palled by the gap between the world’s rich and poor.

Hessel said afterwards he aimed to imbue French youth with the same passion and fer vour as had existed in the resistance. He com- pared the 21st-century struggle against what he described as the “international dictator- ship of the financial markets” to his generation’s struggle against oppression as a young man during the war.

His wife, Christiane Hessel-Chabry, told France’s AFP news agency on Wednesday, that the writer had died overnight. No other details were given.

The French president, François Hollande, said Hessel was an “a huge figure whose ex- ceptional life was devoted to the defence of human dignity”.

“It was in pursuit of his values that he engaged in the resistance,” he added, conclud- ing: “He leaves us a lesson, which is to never accept any injustice.”

The French prime minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, also paid tribute to Hessel, whom he described as “a man who was engaged” and who was the incarnation of the “resistance spirit”.

“For all generations he was a source of inspiration, but also a reference. At 95 years, he epitomised the faith in the future of a new century,” Ayrault said.

As a committed European and supporter of the left, he was behind the Socialist Fran- çois Hollande’s successful presidential elec- tion bid last year. On Wednesday after news

Obituary

of his death broke, French politicians lined up to express their admiration, respect and sadness.

Hessel was born into a Jewish family in Berlin in 1917, the son of a journalist and a writer. The family moved to France when Hessel was eight and he took French nation- ality in the late 1930s, having passed his bac- calauréat at the young age of 15.

His parents’ unusual living arrangement was said to have inspired the celebrated Fran- çois Truffaut film Jules et Jim.

The young Hessel refused to follow Mar- shal Philippe Pétain’s collaborationist Vichy government and fled to London, where he joined General Charles de Gaulle’s resistance fighters. As a prominent figure in the resistance, he was arrested by the Gestapo in 1944 and deported to Buchenwald and Dora con- centration camps, where he suffered water- boarding torture. He escaped being executed at Buchenwald by exchanging identities with a prisoner who had died of typhus, and later escaped from Dora during a transfer to the Bergen-Belsen death camp. After fleeing his German guards, he met advancing American troops.

After the war, he worked with the US first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, in editing the Uni- versal Declaration of Human Rights.

Time for Outrage! argued that the French needed to become as outraged now as his fel- low fighters had been during the war. He was highly critical of France’s treatment of illegal immigrants, and Israel’s treatment of Pales- tinians, and passionate about the en

Continued on page 7 Stéphane Hessel, whose pamphlet Indignez-Vous! sold 4.5m copies in 35 countries. The French president, François Hollande, said of Hessel: ‘He leaves us a lesson, which is to never accept any injustice.’ Photograph:

Boris Horvat/AFP/Getty

Stéphane Hessel, Writer and

Inspiration Behind Occupy Move-

ment, Dies at 95

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PAGE 7 FEATURES IN THE BULLETIN

Standard Operating Procedure is an artwork by Chris Arendt, an Army veteran who served as a guard at the War on Terror prison facility at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. The image was printed on handmade paper pulped from military uniforms as part of the Combat Paper Project, which was awarded the 2012 Chora Prize (story, page 4).

mance component of the piece. The ritual- ized activity seeks to serve as a “catharsis in the house itself,” says Bon, at a time when photography must move into the next phase of development. The print will hang at East- man House in May, and silver will be mined from the bath and reused.

Bon and her team are interested in the re- invention of what photography can be in the rapidly changing commercial photographic world, which leaves the field open for a re- definition in the face of digital, she says. The action echoes the team’s work in California.

In the Brackett Clark Gallery hang images of the dry Owens lakebed, with hills containing abandoned silver mines standing like tombs in the background.

During the process of creating “A Three Day Shoot Out,” the film currently showing in the Annex Gallery, Bon realized that her interest was shifting from filmmaking to the process of making film. The artist and her team have taken over the silos at the Pittsburgh Plate Glass company on the dry Owens lakebed, and have begun to excavate their own materials for making film using silver from the abandoned mine and sourcing gelatin from

the bones of deceased ranch animals. Bon is making prints of the desiccated landscape using materials from the landscape itself.

Liminal prints of artificial waterways on both coasts are included, contrasting the L.A.

Aqueduct pipeline as if it were already a ruin, says Bon, and the Erie Canal, both markers of human industry and need, which act as visual white noise cutting across the spaces between settlements. These are our Egypt, says Bon.

On the other side of a dividing wall, images of the destroyed California landscape reveal a dusty terrain, which has created airborne toxins that prompted a the enforcement of federal air quality regulations to refill part of the Owens lake. Bon also indexed this pitiful and nearly abandoned project in a print that reveals a sad, swirling mess of shallow silica sludge.

But the wreckage of civilization can become a playground for geniuses and artists, and we need it to be. “Silver and Water” continues the legacy of reinventing landscapes from the industrial ashes begun with her “Not a Corn- field” project, which sought to reimagine and repurpose a 32-acre industrial brownfield in the historic center of L.A., and was exhibited

vironment, a free press and France’s welfare system. His call was for peaceful, non-violent insurrection.

During the eurozone crisis, one of the names given to the protests against austerity programmes and corruption in Spain was Los Indignados, taken from the title of Hessel’s work. These protests, along with the Arab spring uprisings, inspired protests in other countries and the Occupy Wall Street movement in the United States.

“The global protest movement does not resemble the Communist movement, which declared that the world had to be overturned according to its viewpoint,” Hessel said in an interview a year ago.

“This is not an ideological revolution. It is driven by an authentic desire to get what you need. From this point of view, the present generation is not asking governments to dis- appear but to change the way they deal with people’s needs.”

at Eastman House in 2007.

As time moves forward, the artist and her team unravel more and more connections between our use and abuse of vital resources.

Bon has found more links between silver and water as chemotherapy treatments for industry-created cancers that plague humanity. She connects our misuse of natural resources to our abuse of another powerful American re- source: the members of the military who are forgotten by the nation. Bon’s interest in the plight of veterans is documented in prints that record the symbolic raising of a giant flag on Veterans Day, and the demolition of a building at Soldier’s Home in D. C., caught by the Liminal Camera in the moment when a fallen wall reveals an old silver screen within the structure.

Bon believes that in the future, the rea- son for Rochester’s original boom will make it a crucial place once again. But our nearby river and lake are currently polluted, and the energy-gathering infrastructure at High Falls, which has such potential for our city, has been sold to a foreign company. We stand in dubious territory, amid silver-tongued bu- reaucratic battles over regional fracking, and whether Rochester might store that process’s wastewater, which could leech into our own waterways. Artists such as Bon prompt us to question the value of moving forward with short-sighted industries, and to ask who the beneficiaries are in the short and long runs.

AgH2O:Rochester

Obituary

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FEATURES IN THE BULLETIN

The National Soldiers Home held in trust as a home for veterans in perpetuity is currently managed by the Department of Veterans Affairs, the second largest cabinet department in the United States, smaller only than the Department of Defense. The West Los Angeles property is the most valuable real estate in the VA network, one which regards its health care responsibilities as its main, even sole, function. The Strawberry Bulletin is communicating to the constituents for whom the property is a home not a hospital.

The passages listed here occur in the lives of some of the citizens of this place we claim as Our Town.

PAGE 8

Continued on page 7 December 2012: Woman veterans at Naomi

House in Building 212 are working with the Metabolic Studio to design their own kitchen at that facility.

December: FBI agent Paul Shannon, whose book of poems Songs of Iraq was reviewed in the July 2012 Strawberry Bulletin, is nomi- nated for a war poetry award given annually by the Marine Corps. Leatherneck Magazine plans to publish one of the poems, “Seal Di- plomacy,” in an upcoming issue.

December: West L.A. Regional Public Library establishes a reading area with materials of particular interest to military veterans. Librar- ian Alicia Randolph asks Metabolic Studio for copies of the Strawberry Bulletin to distribute at the library, based on requests she has received from vets.

December: Veterans Holiday Celebration stages its 20th annual dinner/concert/gifting celebration (aka “the Belushi concert”) on the West L.A. VA north campus with the help of a record number of volunteers.

January 2013: The Wadsworth Theater opens for the Weinstein Company’s screening of Silver Linings Playbook attended by Robert De- Niro, Bradley Cooper, Jacki Weaver, and Jen- nifer Lawrence.

February 2013: Documentary filmmaker Bill Dumas debuts Duty, Honor, Country: Betrayal at Beyond Baroque in Venice, California. The film examines land use at the West Los An- geles VA property and the plight of homeless veterans in Los Angeles County. Additional screenings are planned in the Southern Cali- fornia.

February: Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) visits the West L.A. VA and sits in on a veterans “mind- fulness group” in Building 257.

February: The Farmers Market resumes its

The following review by Rebecca Rafferty is reprinted from City Newspaper in Rochester, NY

“Silver and Water”

By Lauren Bon and the Optics Division of The Metabolic Studio

Through May 26

George Eastman House, 900 East Ave.

Tuesday-Saturday 10 a.m.-5 p.m., Sunday 11 a.m.-5 p.m. | $5-$12 | 271-3361

The souls of artists and philosophers are never still; their vigilant senses are buffeted by the urgently calling winds and tides of change that they often detect before others.

As such, some artists serve as the most hon- est of social critics. The current exhibit filling the South, Annex, and Brackett Clark galleries of George Eastman House is a photographic installation by Los Angeles artist Lauren Bon and her Metabolic Studio Optics Division. The project links ravaged lands in Southern Cali- fornia with the historic photographic industry of Rochester, as they are connected by the resources of silver and water.

In the 1800’s, westward expansion in the United States was underwritten with the promise of silver (and other prized minerals) being mined in the California hills and moun- tains, some of which was used to save the ail- ing U.S. economy. Some of that silver was used in the development of film at Eastman Kodak in Rochester, which was then shipped back west to build the emerging Hollywood industry.

“In the great American West, photography found a perfect subject: vast spaces and un- charted vistas were recorded in grains of silver,” says Bon in a provided statement. “In the form of postcards, broadsides, and railway brochures, each image became a silver promise. Photography traveled west, and people followed.”

Like many cities, Los Angeles sprang forth from the fountain of resources located nearby.

Just as Rochester’s boomtown status was due to the river and waterfall that we now often take for granted, L.A.’s existence is owed not only to the silver screen, but also to the water running through the L.A. Aqueduct, drawn from many miles away. But as resources de- plete, lands are left ravaged, and technology leads us in new directions, we stand between the thin vein of the known past and the wide- open mouth of the deep unknown.

Since late 2010, Bon and her team—including artists and technicians Josh White, Rich Nielsen, Tristan Duke, and Guy Hatzvi

—have returned to the relevant sites of this story of silver and water to bear witness to abandoned and used-up resources. They have traveled from the desiccated Owens Valley, formerly the site of the lake from which L.A.

drew its water; to Rochester, where the silver was turned into photographic material; to Manhattan, America’s financial artery; and to Washington D.C., where flags are flown above forsaken soldiers.

The Eastman House exhibition includes 18 large-scale photographic prints produced in these locations by Bon and the Metabolic Studio Optics Division, one video of a 16mm film, and one installation of two negatives immersed in water that Bon says will transform over the course of the exhibition.

The prints are a product of the Liminal Camera, a gigantic pinhole device made out of a 20-foot-long shipping container. The camera is aptly named in that it not only doc- uments relevant spaces on the threshold of a new trajectory, but in that it is a device that the crew actually trucks around the country, traveling and working within the camera itself, where these images take shape.

Upon entering the South Gallery, visitors encounter five mammoth prints. The haunt- ing works depict idyllic, rolling hills and railway tracks along the New York waterway. In the center of the room is an installation of two negative prints immersed in a shallow bed of water held by 2”x4”s and a sheet of black plastic. Bon and her team brought the Liminal Camera to Rochester in October 2011 to photograph Kodak while it was declaring bankruptcy. The double negative immersed in water is an image of a chemical processing plant, part of which is no longer standing.

“During the life of this exhibition, we will be re-mining the silver from this image,” says Bon. Returning visitors will notice minute changes in the paper as the emulsion loos- ens, disintegrates, and the image begins to change. “You’ll start to see the component parts of photography as elements, suspended in silver and water,” she says. The team will return to Rochester in May, when the tiny

“pond” has completely dried out, and make a contact positive from this work as a perfor