Activism In My DNA - Danny Schechter on "Reality Asserts Itself" with Paul Jay (1/3

[KoKo]

Activism In My DNA - Danny Schechter on Reality Asserts Itself (1/3

---------
DANNY SCHECHTER, EXEC. EDITOR, MEDIACHANNEL.ORG: Thank you, Paul.JAY: So, Danny Schechter is a journalist, author, a documentary filmmaker. He's the executive editor of MediaChannel.org, an online media issues network, and cofounder and executive producer of Global Vision, a film production company. His films include Plunder: The Crime of Our Time, which covered the subprime lending and economic crisis, and six films about Nelson Mandela. He also produced Emmy Award-winning segments for ABC news. He's currently working on a new documentary film called The Making and Meaning of Mandela: A Long Walk to Freedom. He's the author of 15 books, including Occupy: Dissecting Occupy Wall Street and his latest, Madiba A to Z: The Many Faces of Nelson Mandela.

You're here to talk about your book. We're going to focus on Nelson Mandela. But as people who watch Reality Asserts Itself knows, we normally start with a little bit of biographical discussion about our guest. And that's what we're going to do with Danny. So start with the story of Danny Schechter. It's a long story. You have been involved in so many things. You've covered so many issues. You've lived about 19 lives. So we can't do it all. But something I try to focus on in these interviews to start with is: what was the politics of the household you grew up with?

SCHECHTER: Right. I grew up in a home where my father had been--was a worker in the garment industry. My grandfather was a shop steward in the Ladies' Garment Workers' Union. So I grew up in the ethic of sort of a democratic socialist culture, and also a bit of a Yiddish culture, because we were brought up in the Bronx in a housing project, a cooperative housing project. So these values were sort of instilled in me early on, a respect for working-class culture, a respect for people who were struggling not only in the United States but around the world, and also a recognition that sort of activism was sort of in my DNA. And I went to high school in the Bronx. I became the editor of the high school newspaper at DeWitt Clinton High School. But I also then became active in the civil rights movement, and it was there that I was really introduced to a larger world, a world of struggle throughout the United States and then, ultimately, around the world.JAY: Okay. Before we get into your involvement in the civil rights movement, you're born in what year?

SCHECHTER: I was born in 1942.JAY: So you're--.SCHECHTER: A big war, my friend. This was World War II. Okay?JAY: The big war.

SCHECHTER: And my father was, you know, in the Army, and my uncle was in the Army as well. So, you know, we grew up in that culture of--in a way, of deprivation, because we didn't have a lot of money. We were dependent on, you know, the salary that a soldier gets. And I went to public school. And fortunately I was able to live in this co-op housing project built by the labor unions in the Bronx. So that's kind of how I was nurtured and where I was nurtured.JAY: So you're ten or 11 years old. You're living in this co-op. Your family's kind of lefty, in trade unions. But it's also now more or less the height of McCarthyism, the House Un-American Activities Committee, Cold War propaganda. And you in some ways are the target of all of that. Are you aware of it as a kid?

SCHECHTER: Well, first of all, my parents were anti-communist, not communists, because there had been bitter fights between the socialists and communists. So they weren't really very sympathetic to the Communist Party and its politics. On the other hand, I was attracted to folk music, and rock and roll later, and that music was the music of Pete Seeger and other people, who were called fellow travelers, people who had really promoted, you know, communist causes and issues. So I was open to it. I wasn't really critical of it so much. But I was learning about politics through music and also through my own family.

MORE of TRANSCRIPT and PARTS 2 and 3 of VIDEO AT:

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=11464