Webinar on "The Whistleblower of My Lai"

Learn more about the film, click here   http://clarityfilms.org/mylai.html


See it.    

by clicking here    https://vimeo.com/ondemand/thewhistleblowerofmylai  $4.99 for 24 hours of streaming

or

DVD for personal use $29  The Whistleblower of My Lai | Purchase - CLARITY FILMS  http://clarityfilms.org/purchase_mylai.html


Watch the webinar on youtube by clicking here


Webinar chat and Q & A posted here   

https://vnpeacecomm.blogspot.com/2021/03/chat-from-my-lai-webinar.html


Tuesday, March 16, 2021


Program on the 53d anniversary of the massacre

  • Moderator John McAuliff
  • Professor / author Howard Jones
  • Vietnam helicopter pilot Lawrence Wilkerson
  • Film maker Connie Field
  • Composer Jonathan Berger
  • Kronos Quartet's David Harrington
  • Music Performer Van-Anh Vo


Speakers


Connie Field 

Academy Award nominated & Emmy winning director Connie Field has  made high profile documentaries shown all over the world: Al Helm: Martin Luther King in Palestine; Independent Lens’ Have You Heard From Johannesburg; The American Experience’s Freedom on My Mind and The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter,  and the Council on Foundation’s award winner Salud. Winner of many numerous awards--Sundance Grand Jury Prize, British Academy Award Nominee, & Best Feature Documentary. http://www.clarityfilms.org/index.html



Jonathan Berger

Described as “gripping” by both the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune, “poignant”, “richly evocative” (San Francisco Chronicle), “taut, and hauntingly beautiful” (NY Times), Jonathan Berger’s works deal with both consciousness and conscience. His chamber operas, Theotokia and The War Reporter explore hallucination and haunting memories, while his monodrama, My Lai portrays the ethical dilemmas of an individual placed in an impossible situation. His most recent commission, The Ritual of Breath is the Rite to Resist responds to the murder of Eric Garner and, through his martyrdom, confronts wanton lynching and killing of people of color.

Berger’s “dissonant but supple” (NY Times) compositions are often inspired by science and the human condition, including the adaptation of satellite imaging data to turn the dispersal of an oil spill into music (Jiyeh), spatial representation of brain activations of a schizophrenic hallucination (Theotokia), and sonic expression of the chemical spectroscopy of cancer (Diameters). His symphonic, chamber, vocal, and electroacoustic works are performed throughout the world.

Thrice commissioned by The National Endowment for the Arts, Berger’s commissions include The Mellon and Rockefeller Foundations, Chamber Music America, and numerous chamber music societies and ensembles Including  Rime Sparse, for soprano Julia Bullock and piano trio (co-commissioned by the Lincoln Center Chamber Society and the Harris Theatre).

Winner of the Rome Prize, and a Guggenheim Fellowship, Berger was composer-in-residence at Spoleto Festival USA. His violin concerto, Jiyeh, paired with that of Benjamin Britten, was recorded for Harmonia Mundi’s Eloquentia label by violinist Livia Sohn, who also recorded Berger’s War Reporter Fantasy for Naxos and solo works on Miracles and Mud, his acclaimed Naxos recording of music for solo violin and string quartet

Jonathanberger.net


David Harrington

Kronos Quartet's David Harrington:  Kronos has become one of the most celebrated and influential groups of our time, performing thousands of concerts worldwide, releasing more than 50 recordings of extraordinary breadth and creativity, collaborating with many of the world's most intriguing and accomplished composers and performers, and commissioning more than 800 works and arrangements for string quartet. In 2011, Kronos became the only recipients of both the Polar Music Prize and the Avery Fisher Prize, two of the most prestigious awards given to musicians. The group’s numerous awards also include a Grammy for Best Chamber Music Performance (2004) and "Musicians of the Year" (2003) from Musical America.   http://kronosquartet.org/about


Van-Anh Vo

Music Performer Van-Anh Vo is a virtuoso of unique Vietnamese instruments who has composed Emmy award winning documentary soundtracks. Her music is riveting, her stage presence theatrical and her contribution to Vietnamese musical culture is outstanding.http://vananhvo.com/


Howard Jones

Howard Jones is University Research Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Alabama. After receiving his Ph.D. from Indiana University, he taught at the University of Nebraska before coming to the University of Alabama in 1974, where he chaired the Department of History in Tuscaloosa for eight years. A recipient of both the John F. Burnum Distinguished Faculty Award for teaching and research and the Blackmon-Moody Outstanding Professor Award, he taught courses in American foreign relations and the U.S.-Vietnam War.

He is the author or editor of more than a dozen books, including To the Webster-Ashburton Treaty: A Study in Anglo-American Relations, 1783-1843—Phi Alpha Theta Book Award; Mutiny on the Amistad: The Saga of a Slave Revolt and Its Impact on American Abolition, Law, and Diplomacy—used in writing the screenplay for Steven Spielberg’s movie “Amistad”; The Crisis over British Intervention in the Civil War—Phi Alpha Theta Book Award; Death of a Generation: How the Assassinations of Diem and JFK Prolonged the Vietnam War—one of Choice magazine’s “Outstanding Academic Books”; The Bay of Pigs; Blue and Gray Diplomacy: A History of Union and Confederate Foreign Relations—“Honorable Mention” for the Lincoln Prize; My Lai: Vietnam, 1968, and the Descent into Darkness—“Editors’ Choice” in the New York Times.

He is completing a book tentatively titled, Forged in the Dark House: Theodore Roosevelt and the Role of Character in Statecraft.



Lawrence Wilkerson

For the last fifteen years, Lawrence Wilkerson was the Distinguished Visiting Professor of Government and Public Policy at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia.  In December 2020 he retired from that position.  Before that he was chief of staff to Colin Powell at the U.S. Department of State.  He served 31 years in the US Army.  His final military assignments were Special Assistant to then-chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff General Colin Powell and, later, Deputy Director and Director of the U.S. Marine Corps War College at Quantico, Virginia.    

From Wikipedia: "Wilkerson arrived in Vietnam as an Army officer piloting an OH-6A Cayuse observation helicopter and logged about 1100 combat hours over a year. He flew low and slow through South Vietnam, and was involved in one incident in which he says he prevented a war crime by purposely placing his helicopter between a position that was full of civilians, and another helicopter that wanted to launch an attack on the position."  



John McAuliff

John McAuliff is the executive director of the Fund for Reconciliation and Development and coordinator of the Vietnam Peace Commemoration Committee.  As a student at Carleton College, he organized support for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and participation in the Mississippi Summer Project of 1964.  After serving in the Peace Corps in Peru, he became the first President of the Committee of Returned Volunteers, leading its participation in the Vietnam anti-war movement, including the demonstration at the Chicago Democratic Convention.  He represented CRV in national anti-war coalitions and the U.S coalition at international conferences in Sweden.  For ten years he directed the Indochina Program in the Peace Education Division of the American Friends Service Committee, traveling on its behalf to Hanoi with a delegation that arrived on April 30, 1975, the last day of the war.  In 1985 he founded the Fund for Reconciliation and Development to continue his AFSC work for normalization of relations with Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.  After that was accomplished in 2005, he refocused most of his work on a similar goal with Cuba.  He was "detained" at the March on the Pentagon and the Mayday civil disobedience action and while demonstrating against George Wallace during his Presidential campaign in New York. 


Resources




"Ron Ridenhour’s Last Talk: My Lai and Why it Matters"  a moving talk, the last he made, on the 30th anniversary of the massacre, given at Tulane University on youtube here

"My Lai: Vietnam, 1968, and the Descent into Darkness" by Howard Jones  (Amazon summary here)

"Four Hours in My Lai" by Michael Bilton and Howard Sim, published in 1993

"Four Hours in My Lai, anatomy of a massacre"  Yorkshire Television documentary

"My Lai Revisited: 47 Years Later, Seymour Hersh Travels to Vietnam Site of U.S. Massacre He Exposed"   Democracy Now on youtube here



Remarks by John McAuliff at a meeting with Quang Ngai Province leaders after the 50th anniversary ceremony at the My Lai memorial, March 19, 2018

Reason for our delegation being with you from the Vietnam Peace Commemoration Committee (VPCC)

We are people who worked against the war in many parts of the US, in many different ways.

 1) We came to honor the people of My Lai, bear witness to the horror they suffered, applaud their personal and national recovery and the restoration seen in daily life as we drove here.

 2) Justice has not been done; no official statement of national responsibility or regret; no visit or apology from a high level representative of the US government; very limited legal accountability for the perpetrators; no compensation to the victims or their descendants.

Ironically the one institution in the US to attempt to acknowledge the nature of the event is the US military.  The Peers Commission report of 1974 was repressed for four years but released.  The courage of Hugh Thompson has been recognized officially as a positive example.  The lessons of My Lai are incorporated into the doctrine of war as imperfect as that may be in practice

 3)  My Lai / Son My was not the only My Lai although by far the largest and most notorious.  We know of the Tiger Force rampages in Song Ve Valley from May to Nov 1967 and the atrocities at Ben Tre involving former Senator Robert Kerry.  We heard the reports by veterans in the Winter Soldier hearing.  We want all the archives made public from the investigation of Pentagon’s war crimes working group.

4)  We recognize the other forms of inhumanity emerging from the character of the American war:

Victims then:  Pacification, free fire zones, forced relocation of population, destruction of centuries of rural life  

Victims now:  land mines, unexploded ordnance, Agent Orange

 5)  Today at noon in Washington, VPCC has organized a vigil at the White House and released a sign on letter.*  Commemoration activities took place in other places, including in religious services

 

* Original  tinyurl.com/MyLaiAppeal       Updated  tinyurl.com/RememberMyLai



Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War


1 comment:

  1. Being a former Vietnam combat veteran, and a long time member of Veterans For Peace, the story is very difficult for me to re-visit. Thank you all who participated in the opera and the people who put the film together. America is shameless and no apology.

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