https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/saul-landau-told-truth-about-cuba/
Saul Landau told truth about Cuba
September 13, 2013 2:31 PM CDT By W. T. Whitney, Jr.
Saul Landau – reporter, author of 14 books, filmmaker (45 of them), poet, college professor, and determined foe of U.S. assaults on Cuba – died Sept. 9 in Alameda, Calif., at the age of 77.
Landau served as senior fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington. At one time or another, he taught at California Polytechnic University in Pomona, the University of California-Santa Cruz, and American University in Washington. But his main vocation was that of agitator and political educator.
That bent emerged in Madison, Wis., where, as a student, Landau organized a “Joe Must Go” group aimed at the red-baiting Wisconsin senator, Joseph McCarthy. Later, Landau was a researcher for anti-imperialist sociologist C. Wright Mills and helped found Ramparts and Mother Jones magazines in San Francisco. He was a public television reporter there and also joined a mime troupe.
The breadth of Saul Landau’s interests shows in themes he pursued in books and especially films. Often in collaboration with others, he wrote about “The New Radicals” (1966), “National Security and U.S. Foreign Policy” (1988), guerrilla insurgencies in Central America (1993), George W. Bush’s “Preemptive Empire (2003), and U.S. culture (“Bush and the Botox World” – 2007).
Landau’s documentary films explored Syria (2004), Iraq (2002), the U.S.-Mexican border (1999), Zapatistas in Chiapas, Mexico (1966), Iraq (1999), Nicaragua (1983), Beirut, Lebanon (1982), Jamaican President Michael Manley in 1976 and 1980 – and much more. Landau’s highly regarded film “Paul Jacobs and the Nuclear Gang” (1980) documented the cover-up of terrible health effects from U.S. atomic bomb testing in the 1950s.
Notably, Landau produced films covering the rise of Chilean President Salvador Allende, later overthrown in the U.S.-assisted military coup in 1973. Orlando Letelier, foreign minister in the Allende government, was one of thousands who ended up being tortured and incarcerated. Landau helped spearhead a worldwide campaign for his release. Yet Chilean agents killed Letelier in 1976 in Washington. Landau and co-author John Dinges’ book on the case, “Assassination on Embassy Row,” alleged FBI involvement. Declassified U.S. intelligence material subsequently released by Washington’s National Security Archives provided confirmation.
Ultimately, Saul Landau’s signal contribution may have been that he told the truth about Cuba and 50 years of U.S. siege. He made six Cuba-related films. The most remarkable were “Fidel,” a report of Landau’s week-long jeep trip across the island with the Cuban leader in 1968, and his 2012 film “Will Real Terrorist Please Stand Up.” There, Landau documented the falsehoods and violence marking the notorious anti-Cuban terror campaign emanating from the United States. He showed how the Cubans Gerardo Hernandez, Ramon Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, René Gonzalez, and Fernando Gonzalez came to Florida to defend against the terror and why four of them remain in U.S. prisons after 15 years. Through that film and in other ways Saul Landau contributed mightily to the cause of the Cuban Five.
During the last three years of Saul Landau’s life, he and actor Danny Glover visited and became friends with prisoner Gerardo Hernandez, who is serving two life terms. Landau issued down-to-earth, intimate reports after each visit. They circulated widely.
A month before Landau’s expected death, Hernandez wrote him: “It is just a journey, Saul, the other is not true … How could it be true, with so many people who admire you and love you? A trip where? …You’ll be here whenever Danny visits me, and in Cuba when the Five are reunited.” In August, Saul Landau received Cuba’s Medal of Friendship, issued by the Cuban Council of State.
Photo: Saul Landau, right, with actor Danny Glover, left, visits Cuban Five prisoner Gerardo Hernandez.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danny_Glover#Civil_rights_activism
While attending San Francisco State University (SFSU), Glover was a member of the Black Students’ Union,[35] which, along with the Third World Liberation Front and the American Federation of Teachers, collaborated in a five-month student-led strike to establish a Department of Black Studies. The strike was the longest student walkout in U.S. history.[36] It helped create not only the first Department of Black Studies but also the first School of Ethnic Studies in the United States.[citation needed]
Hari Dillon, current president of the Vanguard Public Foundation, was a fellow striker at SFSU. Glover later co-chaired Vanguard’s board. He is also a board member of the Algebra Project, the Black AIDS Institute, Walden House and Cheryl Byron’s Something Positive Dance Group. He was charged with disorderly conduct and unlawful assembly after being arrested outside the Sudanese Embassy in Washington during a protest over Sudan’s humanitarian crisis in Darfur.[37]
In 1999, he used his leverage as a former San Francisco cab driver to raise awareness about African Americans being passed over for white passengers.[38] In response, Rudolph Giuliani launched Operation Refusal, which suspended the licenses of cab drivers who favored white passengers over black ones.[39]
Glover’s long history of union activism includes support for the United Farm Workers, UNITE HERE, and numerous service unions.[40] In March 2010, Glover supported 375 union workers in Ohio by calling upon all actors at the 2010 Academy Awards to boycott Hugo Boss suits following announcement of Hugo Boss’s decision to close a manufacturing plant in Ohio after a proposed pay decrease from $13 to $8.30 an hour was rejected by the Workers United Union.[41]
On November 1, 2011, Glover spoke to the crowd at Occupy Oakland on the day before the Oakland General Strike where thousands of protestors shut down the Port of Oakland.[42]
Political activism
Glover was an early supporter of former North Carolina Senator John Edwards in the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries until Edwards’ withdrawal,[43] although some news reports indicated that he had endorsed Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich,[44] whom he had endorsed in 2004.[45] After Edwards dropped out, Glover then endorsed Barack Obama.[46] In February 2016, Glover endorsed Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders for the Democratic presidential nomination.[47] In February 2019, Glover again endorsed Sanders for US president in 2020.[48]
In 2017, he co-authored a petition along with Noam Chomsky, Mark Ruffalo, Nancy Fraser, Oliver Stone and Eve Ensler, urging French citizens to vote for candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon in the 2017 presidential election.[49]
Glover was an outspoken critic of George W. Bush, calling him a known racist. “Yes, he’s racist. We all knew that. As Texas’s governor, Bush led a penitentiary system that executed more people than all the other U.S. states together. And most of the people who died were Afro-Americans or Hispanics.”[50]
Glover’s support of Proposition 7 led him to use his voice in an automated phone call to generate support for the measure before the election.[51]
On April 16, 2010, Glover was arrested in Maryland during a protest by SEIU workers for Sodexo’s alleged unfair and illegal treatment of workers.[52] He was given a citation and later released. The Associated Press reports “Glover and others stepped past yellow police tape and were asked to step back three times at Sodexo headquarters. When they refused, officers arrested them.”[53]
On the foreign policy of the Obama administration, Glover said: “I think the Obama administration has followed the same playbook, to a large extent, almost verbatim, as the Bush administration. I don’t see anything different... On the domestic side, look here: What’s so clear is that this country from the outset is protecting the interests of wealth and property. Look at the bailout of Wall Street. Why not the bailout of Main Street? He may be just a different face, and that face may happen to be black, and if it were Hillary Clinton, it would happen to be a woman.... But what choices do they have within the structure?”[54]
Glover wrote the foreword to Phyllis Bennis’ book, Challenging Empire: How People, Governments, and the UN Defy US Power.[55] Glover is also a member of the board of directors of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a think tank led by economist Dean Baker.