by Lucas Benitez '16
Television, Film, and Media Studies
02/13/2015
Rough Cut Documentation of the Higher Form of Politics book launch event below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RpHvFO-CRI
Other Statement Magazine Video Links:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeeZmW938gY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JmZjBeNLnI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4qQ3Qj8P-s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZshQk6MG2c
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUhIATSX5s4
Drafts of Cal State LA alumni bios to soon be published.
Alan Arkin:
Alan Arkin, class of 1953, majored in Acting when Cal State Los Angeles was sharing it’s campus with Los Angeles City College, and is now an Actor, Comedian, Director, Musician, and Singer. He is dedicating his present time to acting and other film projects.
A few years after his time Cal State L.A in 1956, Arkin and his band The Tarriers did a rendition of the “Banana Boat Song”, which ranked #4 on the top 100 Billboard chart. In the early 1960’s, Arkin was also a member of “The Second City” comedy troupe and in the 1970-1971 season of Sesame Street, Arkin and his then wife had recurring roles on the show. Since then, Arkin has become widely known and respected for starring in such films as “Little Miss Sunshine”, “The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming”, “Gattaca”, “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter”, The In-Laws”, “Wait Until Dark”, “Argo”, “Catch-22”, and “Edward Scissorhands”.
Arkin’s credits include a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor, from The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming (1966). A National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actor, for Catch-22 (1970). Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, in Little Miss Sunshine (2006).
Barry Gordon:
Barry Gordon, class of 1983, B.A. in Political Science from Cal State Los Angeles, graduating, earning the Summa Cum Laude status. He is also an American television, film, voice actor, producer, and political talk show host. an He is currently a political science teacher and as well as a media law teacher at his alma mater Cal State LA.
Since his time graduating from Cal State LA, Gordon received his Juris Doctor from Loyola Law School in 1991. A veteran of American Media, Gordon has credits ranging from “The Jackie Gleason Show”, “The Jack Benny Program”, “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” all the way to the Broadway and film version of “A Thousand Clowns”, to “All in the Family” Star Trek: Deep Space Nine”, “Star Trek: Voyager”, “Curb Your Enthusiasm” down to the voice of Donatello on the world famous cartoon, “The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turltles”. In addition to a successful acting career, Gordon has also hosted several radio talk-shows including “Left Talk” and “Barry Gordon From Left Field” which held guest ranging from senators, congresseman, best selling authors, and entertainment figures.
In 1955 Gordons recording of, “Nuttin for Christmas” made #6 on the pre-Billboard top 100 chart, and it was the first time a young performer to ever do that. At age thirteen Gordon’s performance in A Thousand Clowns earned him a Tony nomination.
Charles Bukowski
Charles Bukowski, Cal State Los Angeles, was a German-born poet, novelist, and short story writer. Bukowski’s writing is known to be heavily influenced by Los Angeles and its cultural ambiance.
Unfortunately after attending Los Angeles City College for two years, taking courses in art, journalism, and literature, he quit at the start of World War II. He then moved to New York to begin a career as a writer. In 1967, Bukowski wrote the column "Notes of a Dirty Old Man" for Los Angeles' Open City, an underground newspaper. In 1986, Time Magazine called him the "laureate of American lowlife." Bukowski published extensively in small literary magazines and with small presses beginning in the early 1940s and continuing on through the early 1990s. Some of these works include his Poems Written Before Jumping Out of an 8 Story Window, published by his friend and fellow poet Charles Potts, and better known works such as Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame Bukowksi’s works have not only influenced many contemporary poets and authors, but have been adapted into successful films.
Bukowski’s published books include; Post Office, Factorum, Women, Ham on Rye, Hollywood, Pulp.
Douglas Woodfull-Harris
Douglas Woodfull-Harris, an alumni from Cal State LA who majored in composition and musicology. Harris, is an editor for Barenreiter Editions based in Germany.
Since his time from Cal State Los Angeles he has worked with renowned musicologists and performers such as Christopher Hogwood, Jonathan Del Mar, Andrew Manze, Larry Todd, Clive Brown, Robert Levin, Steven Isserlis and Anner Bylsma.
As the editor for Barenreiter Editions bhe has had an influential role for publishing over 20 books in music including Beethoven’s Nine Symphonies edited by Jonathan Del Mar and Seven Great Mendelssohn Overtures edited by Christopher Hogwood.
Henri Collette:
Henri Collette class of 1952, Cal State Los Angeles, was an American educator, valued scholar and nationally recognized poet.
After his time at Cal State LA, Coulette earned a doctorate at the University of Iowa with a Ph.D. In 1959, Collette returned to California State University Los Angeles, to become a member of the english department. His first book of verse, "The War of the Secret Agents" published in 1965, won critical acclaim and brought him the James D. Phelan Foundation Award given each year to a California artist and the Lamont Poetry Prize for the best first volume of poetry published in America. His second collection, "The Family Goldschmitt" was published in 1971 and was praised in a Times review by poet Jascha Kessler for "compressing unbearable depths of emotion, of sheer pain, into every phrase and fashioning a level, conversationally flat tone, to convert the tension, the agony, into supportable thought."
Colettes credits include winning the Lamont Poetry Prize, for The War of the Secret Agents and Other Poems in 1965.
John Divola:
John Divola, class of 1974, M.F.A in _, Cal State Los Angeles, is a world renowned contemporary visual artist and currently teaches in the art department at UC Riverside.
Since his time at Cal State L.A. Divola, has held residencies at many institutions including California Institute of the Arts. His work has also been featured in many solo exhibitions across United States, Europe, Japan and Australia. In 1978, 1989, and 2000 Divola art was featured in the Museum of Modern Art group exhibitions and in 1981 his art was featured in Whitney Biennial exhibition .
Some of the awards Divola has received include Individual Artist Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1973, 1976, 1979, 1990. He also had a Guggenhein Memorial Fellowship in 1986. Divola also has four published books including: Continuity, Isolated Houses, Dogs Chasing My Car In The Desert, and Three Acts.
Luis Rodriguez:
Luis J. Rodiguez class of 1973, Cal State Los Angeles, is a columnist, novelist, journalist, and is the 2014, Los Angeles Poet Laureate. Rodriguez continues to be active in the Chicano movement and continues writing.
Since his time spent at Cal State LA, Rodriguez felt a sense of indebtedness to those who had helped him and he decided to leave the gang life and dedicate himself to commnity organizing. Rodriguez also focused on political study and organization, including running for Los Angeles School Board in 1977. In addition, he worked as a bus driver, truck driver, in construction, a paper mill, a lead foundry, a chemical refinery, and a steel mill, learning the millwright trade, carpentry, maintenance mechanics, and welding. At the same time, Luis helped with various gang peace truces and urban peace efforts throughout the L.A. area. In Chicago, he was editor of the People's Tribune in 1985. Rodriguez became active in the Chicago poetry scene, and founded Tia Chucha Press and published its first book Poems Across the Pavement. In 2005, he brought Tia Chucha Press, now a renown small press with more than 50 books of cross-cultural poets, to Los Angeles.
Rodriguez' credits include, My Nature is Hunger: New & Selected Poems, 1989-2004 , winner of a 2006 Paterson Poetry Book Prize. He also received the Hispanic Heritage Award for Literature in 1998. Rodriguez has published 15 books, including four poetry collections.
Malcolm McClain:
Malcolm McClain was an Artist, Poet, and Professor at California State University Los Angeles. McClain dedicated over sixty years to the arts, ceramics and poetry, until his death in May 2012.
McClain taught at Cal State Los Angeles from 1965 to 1988. He was the Art Department Chair at Cal State Los Angeles from 1985-1988. A scholarship, “The Mac McClain Scholarship for Sculpture” was created at Cal State Los Angeles in his honor. He was involved with both the Los Angeles art and literary scenes.
McClain’s credits include, Some Kind of Happiness (1995).
Sal Castro
Salvador B. Castro (October 25, 1933 – April 15, 2013) was a Mexican-American educator and activist. He was most well known for his role in the 1968 East Los Angeles high school walkouts, a series of protests against unequal conditions in Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) schools. Although he retired, he continued to lecture about his experiences and the importance of education, especially for Mexican Americans. Castro was born in Los Angeles and began kindergarten at Belvedere Elementary School in East Los Angeles, but moved to Mexico when his father was forcibly repatriated during the “Repatriation Movement”. There he attended a private elementary school in Mazatlan, Sinaloa. Returning to East L.A. while still in grade school, he experienced discrimination for speaking Spanish in the classroom. After graduating from Cathedral High School, a Catholic school, he was drafted into the Army. He saw no combat action as hostilities with Korea ceased shortly after his entry, but was stationed at bases in Atlanta, Georgia and Fort Jackson, South Carolina. Always interested in higher education, he was particularly impressed by the campus of College of William and Mary while stationed in Virginia but he left the Army to marry his high school sweetheart, and attended Los Angeles City College (LACC) before transferring to L.A. State, now known as California State University Los Angeles (CSULA) where he obtained his B.A. in social science. He died in Los Angeles on April 15, 2013. Around 1956, while still a student at LACC, he got his first job in the educational field, as an assistant playground director in the inner city neighborhood school. He held various positions in the Los Angeles-area schools before being hired at Belmont High School in Downtown Los Angeles as an interpreter and social studies teacher. He began coaching Mexican-American students to run for positions in student government. At a campaign assembly, candidates from the new political party addressed the student body in Spanish; when addressing the student body in Spanish was prohibited at that time. This prompted the cancellation of the assembly and the suspension of the offending students. Castro, who was ignorant of the rule, had given the go-ahead to use Spanish, and was immediately transferred to Lincoln High School in Lincoln Heights, in East Los Angeles. Meanwhile, Castro continued his education, undertaking a Master’s program at CSULA. He joined the Mexican-American Education Committee, a group of graduate students who made recommendations to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on ways to improve services to Mexican-American students. The only committee recommendation the supervisors acted on, however, was the creation of an "Urban Affairs Liaison", which had little effect on the quality of education in Los Angeles schools. Nonetheless, Castro began meeting informally with Mexican-American college students, who were by this time beginning to call themselves Chicanos and Chicanas, and a network of Mexican American education activists began forming. The result of the network was the holding of Chicano Youth Leadership Conferences (CYLC), training grounds for student activists, the first of which was held in 1963. At conferences, students discussed inequalities between schools within the LAUSD, the need for bilingual and culturally relevant education, and the need for systemic reforms that would place students on the track to higher education. They founded the Piranya Café, which became the headquarters for the movement. Castro continued to lecture student groups across the country and helps run leadership conferences for high school students. On October 13, 2009, the Los Angeles Board of Education voted to name a new Middle School, located on the campus of Belmont High School, Sal Castro Middle School. The school was officially dedicated on Saturday June 5, 2010 with a ribbon-cutting ceremony. “As President Obama said when told that he had won the Nobel Peace Prize, I too am surprised and honored that a school is being named after me,” said Castro, visibly moved by the honor. “It is extremely humbling for me and East L.A. kids to be put on the same list with giants of our country, including Lincoln, Jefferson, Washington, Grant, Roosevelt, and Garfield; also, Kennedy, Mendez and Ochoa. “I know that by naming a school after me you are really honoring the students who, 41 years ago, tried to improve education with their courageous walkouts,” he added. “The naming of the Middle school on the Belmont High School campus in honor of Sal Castro is much more than a token acknowledgement of his long career in education; it serves as a constant reminder to those staffing the school and to those served by the school, to strive for the model of education to which Sal Castro has devoted his entire life” said former student and mentee Carlos R. Moreno, a current California Supreme Court judge who spoke before the board in favor of naming the school after his mentor.
Wanda Coleman
Wanda Coleman was born Wanda Evans, and grew up in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles during the 1960s. She received fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, The NEA, and the California Arts Council (in fiction and in poetry). She was the first C.O.L.A. literary fellow (Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, 2003). Her honors included an Emmy in Daytime Drama writing, The 1999 Lenore Marshall Prize (for "Bathwater Wine"), and a nomination for the 2001 National Book Awards (for "Mercurochrome"). She was a finalist for California poet laureate (2005). She is also an alumni at from California State University, Los Angeles.
Poet and writer Wanda Coleman was a blatantly humanist artist who won much critical acclaim for her unusually prescient and often innovative work, but who struggled to make a living from her craft. In discussing “my life in poetry,” More magazine, April 2005, Camille Paglia said of Coleman: “She’s not as central as she should be. Her language jumps off the page.” With twelve books of collected writings published by the small Black Sparrow Press by 2001, as well as numerous other publications, she has created a body of work that is first of all focused on racism and that, secondly, ponders the "outcast" status of living below the poverty line in California, specifically her birthplace Los Angeles, and the southwestern United States. Anger, unhappiness, hate, and violence are often intrinsic to the themes of her stories and poems. Her subjects are often controversial and her tone unapologetic. In his 1999 assessment, Alistair Paterson, Editor of Poetry New Zealand declared: “Coleman’s poetry, politically aware, darkly humorous, sensual and iconoclastic, presents a remarkable talent developed throughout a difficult life. . . . It’s the kind of poetry other writers can use as a yardstick for measuring their work—it sets a standard and demonstrates what a beautiful, adaptable, usable language colloquial English is.”
Coleman was a writer, journalist, and performer. Worked as production editor, proofreader, magazine editor, waitress, and assistant recruiter for Peace Corps/Vista, 1968-75; freelance journalist and celebrity interviewer (1969-1975), staff writer for Days of Our Lives, National Broadcasting Co. (NBC-TV), 1975-76; medical transcriber and insurance billing clerk, 1979-84; occasionally conducts workshops and teaches at university level, 1989 to the present. Writer in residence at Studio Watts, 1968-69; cohost of The Poetry Connexion interview program for Pacifica Radio, 1981—1996, with husband Austin Straus (Drunk with Light, Intensifications, Red Hen Press). Columnist, the Los Angeles Times magazine, 1992-1995.
Mike Sonksen:
The form may be vintage, but from the epic odes of Mike Sonksen the oldest form of storytelling is defibrillated into a state of verve and vitality. Best known under the moniker “Mike The Poet,” Sonksen is a third-generation LA native well-acclaimed for his exuberant spoken word performances, published articles, and comprehensive city tours. He is the author of three books, one of which, I’m Alive In Los Angeles!, has been added to the curriculum of over sixty universities and high schools. As a journalist he has been featured in LA Weekly, OC Weekly, The Los Angeles Times, and contributes a regular column to the KCET website. His popular tours have offered many adventurous citygoers a detailed travelogue of landmarks, LA lore, and best-kept-secrets. Of course, poetry is an integral part of his excursions.
A self-professed “peacemaker” and “geographical Rain Main,” Sonksen is living history, at ease in an eclectic range of communities and cultures throughout the City of Angels. “I went to UCLA when I was eighteen, and from eighteen to thirty I had twelve different apartments, all over LA,” says Sonksen. “I lived on the Westside, I lived on the Eastside, I lived in Hollywood, I lived alone, I lived with roommates, I lived in a loft, I lived in Koreaton. You name it.” Mike Sonksen, also known as "Mike the Poet," considers himself equally a scholar and performer, After earning his B. A. from UCLA, he decided to enter graduate school at Cal State LA partly because of the opportunities offered by CCPP. As a graduate student studying for an Interdisciplinary M. A. in English, Creative Writing and History, CCPP provided Sonksen with a place to become involved in many activities and events to enhance his education. He especially prized the multi-generational literary events, writing workshops, opportunities to mentor both undergraduate writers and youth from partner schools and organizations such as GEAR UP and Schurr High School, presentations and class visits by distinguished poets, and chances to interview visiting poets. A number of video clips have been made of the many events that Sonksen and classmates organized participated in from 2011 to 2014 with the support and guidance of CCPP. Sonksen also served for three years as an Editor of Statement Magazine. The literary journal and CCPP worked symbiotically to promote literature on campus and in the community. After completing his M.A. in June 2014, Sonksen continues to write and publish widely. His thesis, Poetics of Location, will be published as a book by Writ Large Press in August 2014. Sonksen also makes frequent appearances for performances and workshops at local universities and high schools. H credits his experience at Cal State LA and CCPP with honing the skills that resulted in his assignment to write weekly online KCET column, L. A. Letters Celebrates Literary Los Angeles:
http://www.kcet.org/socal/departures/columns/la-letters/