GUEST: Jen Marlowe, award-winning author, documentary filmmaker and playwright, talks about her recent production, "There Is a Field," and how the play helps audiences understand Palestinian suffering.
Jen Marlowe is a multitalented person with a deep sense of fairness. We spent most of the interview talking about her play There is a Field, written about a young Palestinian killed by Israeli soldiers. She had worked with the young man, and wrote the play in collaboration with his sister.
She describes the goal of her plays, documentary films, and books as the education of the American people. Without the consent of US citizens, Israel couldn't occupy Palestinian land, destroy their houses, and murder their children. The occupation and the apartheid treatment of millions of Palestinians will be forever a part of the story of the American Empire. That such suffering and injustice were constantly defended by the US media will be proof of how effective pro Israel propaganda was during our decades of war making.
So it was quite natural that Jen would turn her attention to the blatant racism facing people of color in the heart of the empire. Her book on Troy Davis, again written in conjunction with the victim's sister, exposes how young Black men are falsely accused, denied fair trials, abused by the prison system, and often murdered by the state. Of course the two liberation movements are connected; Black and Palestinian lives don't matter in the least to an empire built on exploitation and violence.
We had a call during the interview. A man told us that we were "depressing" him. I told him that was good, he was getting the picture. "Would you prefer being ignorant?" I asked him. Change won't happen until millions of Americans get depressed by what our government is doing. Depressed, disgusted, angry, and eventually part of the resistance.
