[The 90’s raw: Blase Bonpane]

Office of the Americas

00:00Copy video clip URL Black. Raw footage continues from tape 16063.

00:05Copy video clip URL Dr. Blase Bonpane at Office of the Americas, in Los Angeles, makes a phone call.

00:13Copy video clip URL A woman in mid interview about how ridiculous it is to support people killing other people. She prefers not to be interviewed.

00:41Copy video clip URL B-roll of office. Bonpane on phone. Various mundane office activity. The Executive Director says they are trying to improve their peace calendar for the public. She says they regularly contact 100 sustainers for support. In turn for financial contributions, they send them a peace calendar and updates on activities, events, and getting them involved. She adds that to help support themselves, Bonpane teaches. A salary from Office of the Americas just isn’t enough. Otherwise, they just pray they’ll be able to pay bills each month.

04:03Copy video clip URL She adds the big issues for the 1992 Presidential election stem from crime in ghettos. If we don’t get our house in order we’re going to have a revolution. People are going out killing each other out of anger and frustration. They do this instead of organizing themselves politically to try and turn the country around.  It’s all connected to militarism. If we didn’t put all the money toward the military we could put it towards things like health and education. OA deals with these issues. We try to show the relationship. It’s easier for people to give money to a world humanitarian cause, but we want to show that we will never have the money in the US to attack the causes right in our own backyard until we stop focusing so much on  military spending.

08:13Copy video clip URL The executive director says she thinks Jesse Jackson is the only person she would trust as President of the United States.

09:03Copy video clip URL Interview with Joyce who is entering data about sustainers into the computer. Every month  they get an acknowledgment letter and announcements, and thanks. That’s important for any fundraising action. She says she volunteers her time. She’s learned the computer since being here.  She knew Bonpane for many years. “I was working at William Morris as a script reader and Blase had written a script I read. That was my first introduction to Blase. I loved his script.” She notes years went by then she discovered his Office of the Americas organization and got in touch with him. “I’ve been here ever since. Four years now.” She considers herself an activist, but would like to do more like go out on a Green Peace ship and blow up something.

12:25Copy video clip URL Videographer continues roaming the halls of Office of the Americas. Various mundane b-roll: executive director on phone, Bonpane takes a phone call.

13:13Copy video clip URL B-roll, Bonpane in mid-conversation on the phone. When he hangs up the videographer asks him about free speech as an issue of human rights. Bonpane notes that the President can speak to anyone he wants to at any time and most of us citizens can respond to any three people around our dinner table. “We have a relationship between media and state. What’s said in a public way often reflects the corporate relationship to government. That’s unfortunate. We have a mass media that is generally not critical on structural things. There’s a presumption that what we have is the best. I think this is unfortunate because we need to develop of critical line of thinking. We need to think critically about economics, government, in an effort to discover how we can make these things better. But we are non-critical. If someone speaks out against something the President does he is considered anti-American, which is childish. People think to be critical is to be negative. It’s not negative. It’s not negative to improve. We have a free speech problem. It’s tough to get on commercial television and take a critical approach to government structure.”

17:07Copy video clip URL B-roll of the Office of the Americas office. Posters on the wall. One poster reads: Rest in Peace – Rely on the New World Order. Another reads: No Peace without Justice. Another reads: Words cannot express our rage.

18:07Copy video clip URL END