Elise Frances Miller

Hanukkah dedication to a child who inspired me

Posted on December 22, 2014 by elisefrancesmiller

Available on Amazon, published by Sand Hill Review Press.

With my planned historical fiction novel based on my family’s immigrant history in the research stage, I decided it was time to return to my Jewish roots for story themes.

Rina helping Mama make homemade Sufganiot, the traditional Hanukkah jelly-filled donuts.

Ironically, I had already written the story “Pierced Ears”-subsequently accepted for publication in the literary anthology Fault Zone: Diverge—when at Hanukkah, my son told me that my granddaughter Rina, who will turn seven in March, recently came home from school with the name “Hitler” in her vocabulary. Shocked at first, he soon realized—as he explained to me—that Hitler, like Haman, the Book of Esther and the Purim story villain, was a “bad man.” Nothing less, or more. Darkly, I wrestled with images of how it would be when my sweet and good-natured granddaughter learned the horrifying truth about what humans have done and continue to do in order to exclude “the other.”

Rina with little sister Gabriella and Mama – Sufganiot ready for dessert.

I wrote “Pierced Ears” to work through my anxiety over how the gruesome details of the Holocaust might be broken to a child, especially a Jewish child. In my own experience, I recalled that at just Rina’s age, a new girl entered my class in West Los Angeles, where I grew up in the 1950s. She had been born in Europe following the Holocaust. I knew nothing of this. Only a few years later was I able to make a connection to the events of (then) recent history. In the 2^nd grade, I knew only that she was different from the other children in my class, and that each of her ears held—uniquely, in my experience—a beautiful, shiny earring.

Years later, in fifth grade, Temple Emanuel religious school (“Sunday school”) screened the newly-released film, “Judgment at Nuremburg” about the trials and convictions of Nazis. And we learned in a unit devoted to the Holocaust to better understand and cope with the photographs of the concentration camps liberated by American soldiers.

Rina and Gabriella inspire me every day! But it was a few days after I had submitted my story to Fault Zone: Diverge that I thought to ferret out my Castle Heights Elementary yearbooks and on the Internet for the little girl who inspired this particular story. It turned out that her lifetime of dedication to Holocaust survivors as an activist, volunteer, therapist, and advocate before the House of Representatives, has kept her in the news and all over the Internet. Someday, I may be brave enough to send her my story.

Meanwhile, I dedicate my work, including the forthcoming work on Jewish themes, to Klara Firestone. With many fabrications wrought by storytelling exigencies and the half-century gone by, Klara was the little girl with the pierced ears. Read the story first, please, then read below about this remarkable individual, all grown up.

Klara Firestone – Assembly District 45

Klara was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, after the end of World War II, to two Holocaust survivor parents. She came to the United States as an infant and was raised in West Los Angeles. Following in her mother’s footsteps, she began her volunteer career in her early twenties in the pediatric department of Los Angeles County General Hospital. Later, she served as a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) in dependency court, working on behalf of children under the protective custody of the court. In 1978 she was asked by Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Associate Dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center / Museum of Tolerance, to begin a group for children of Holocaust survivors, thus becoming the founder and first president of Second Generation of Los Angeles. She has been serving for the past 15 years in her second term as president of the organization. In addition to her work with Second Generation, she has been involved with the Simon Wiesenthal Center/Museum of Tolerance, was an interviewer for Steven Spielberg’s Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, she represented the second generation as a Board member of the Council of Post-War Holocaust Organizations, and currently sits on the Board of the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust, chairing its Education Committee.

In 2003, she was honored, along with her mother, for their work in the Holocaust community, by receiving the first Bessie Gotsfeld Humanitarian Award of AMIT Los Angeles Council. In 2005, she was honored by the Children’s Scholarship Fund (Rabbi Sholem Perl) for “Support in Rebuilding the Jewish People,” as well as being recognized by The 1939 Club at their Gala for her work in the Holocaust community. In 2010 she was honored by SHARE!, the Self Help and Recovery Exchange of the County of Los Angeles, with their Frances E. Jemmot Award for her work providing support groups for children of survivors. In 2012 Klara received a special recognition award at the Jewish National Fund’s Tree of Life Gala for her service to the Holocaust survivor community.

Finally, Klara has been a guest lecturer on the Holocaust at various organizations, synagogues and schools, and was a featured speaker at the 2004 City of Los Angeles’ annual Holocaust commemoration.

Professionally, she was a legal secretary and paralegal for 31 years before deciding to change careers. After returning to graduate school, Klara received her Masters degree in clinical psychology, and is currently completing her hours for licensure as a Marriage and Family Therapist. She specializes in treating two unique populations . . . the Second Generation (children of Holocaust survivors) and transgender individuals.

Honors & Awards

Sept. 18, 2014, Invited to testify before the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee as an expert witness on Holocaust Era restitution and Second Generation issues. Link to testimony:
http://foreignaffairs.house.gov/hearing/joint-subcommittee-hearing-struggles-recovering-assets-holocaust-survivors [Click on first box, then drag timeline at bottom to approximately 33 minutes to begin video.]

2012, Jewish National Fund, Tree of Life Gala special award for service to the Holocaust survivor community

2010, Frances E. Jemmot Award from SHARE! (Self-Help and Recovery Exchange, County of Los Angeles)

2005, Award from Children’s Scholarship Fund (Rabbi Sholem Perl) for “Support in Rebuilding the Jewish People”

2003, Bessie Gotsfeld Humanitarian Award of AMIT Los Angeles Council

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged children, Fault Zone: Diverge, Hanukkah, Holocaust | 4 Comments

Do it for yourself (not just for your kids)

Posted on September 12, 2014 by elisefrancesmiller

Note to friends of my blog: Is this still about the 1960s? Oh yes…from the 1960s to the 21st century and beyond.

In 1998, I retired from San Diego State University and as a state employee for 16 years, became a proud member of PERS, California’s Public Employees Retirement System – at $301 billion, one of the largest such funds in the nation. Today, I was stunned and saddened to find out that my pension money is funding oil, gas and coal and blocking the transition to renewable energy.

I recently read in the CalPERS newsletter that my retirement fund has a set of “investment beliefs.” I was pleased to see that environmental and climate issues were among its concerns.

SDSU’s center still looks the same from above – but does the earth?

Why was I especially pleased? When my children were in elementary school and I was working at SDSU, I began to write letters to corporations and elected officials about preserving the environment. In those days, we talked about “pollution” – air, water, land. The most global we got was the Rainforest Action Network and anti-nuclear protests in the 1970s and 1980s. That was working for the future – my children’s future.

Suddenly, it IS the future. As my children and their friends meet the challenges of their thirties, all our environmental issues are global and the last calendar page has been torn off.

Climate change is the most pressing issue of our time, bar none. War? Racism? Income inequality? All urgent, but I am learning that climate change does not affect everyone equally, and so it is also a social justice issue. Problems bundled together are easier to attack, and my own attack now begins against unethical, dangerous fossil fuel investment, and climate change.

CalPERS’ investments in fossil fuels….

Ignored an ongoing, vibrant international discussion about the effect of fossil fuels on climate issues,

Ignored the rolling disasters hitting the new,.
Doubled their substantial coal, oil, and gas reserves over the past 10 years,
Are are not even good investments – my honest and heartfelt concern, as it is for all pensioners. They run the risk of becoming “stranded” investments as carbon emissions are regulated, and of all things, some of our money is supporting fossil fuels in Putin’s Russia!
In doing all this, CalPERS has also ignored both its own professed “investment beliefs” and exciting opportunities for investment in renewable energy.

So as I learned all this, I pep-talked myself, ‘Don’t just sit there terrified – you should take action now!’ If I wrote letters in the 80s for my children’s future, how much more important to do so now – for myself, today, as well as for the kids and grandkids?

So I urge you, especially CalPERS members, please respond to the urgency of the climate change reality: write or email your PERS contacts today, or contact Deborah Silvey, deborah.silvey@gmail.com, to volunteer or share contacts helpful to us. Please insist that our own retirement fund divest from fossil fuels – and invest in renewable energy. Urge our retirement fund to transform its huge domestic and international fossil fuel entanglements. The environment and reduction of the human and financial costs of climate change are considered in its “investment beliefs.” Let your pension investors know that it is time they put their values up front.

Then, on Sunday, September 21, the People’s Climate March will coincide with the gathering of world leaders in New York City for the UN summit on the climate crisis. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is urging governments to support an ambitious global agreement to dramatically reduce global warming pollution. Take a look at http://350.org or go directly to http://peoplesclimate.org/march/ to sign up to march with 100,000 other concerned Americans and world citizens from Columbus Square in NYC, and to hear from author/activist Bill McKibbin and others who inform and energize this movement.

I’ll admit that I am not going to make it to NYC, but I will be at the concurrent People’s Climate Rally in Oakland on Sunday, Sept. 21^st. Find out more and sign up at the Northern California People’s Rally – in solidarity with the People’s Climate March in New York, THE CLIMATE EVENT OF THE YEAR. Hope to see you there!

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged activism, CalPERS, climate change, fossil fuel divestment, protest, SDSU | Leave a comment

Why I keep returning to stories about the 60s – blog hop

Posted on July 21, 2014 by elisefrancesmiller

Carole Bumpus caught me when we met at the Belmont post office to sort out CWC SF-Peninsula branch membership renewals, due beginning this month. We have enjoyed working together these past two years as membership chair (me) and treasurer (lucky for CWC, Carole), while we swapped anecdotes relating to family, writing and life. I had never heard of a blog hop, but being a Boomers chronicler, I naturally thought of the Bunny Hop we used to do at dances and parties (sorry, Audrey Kalman, no mammalian associations, unless you include Boomer mammals).

What am I working on/writing?

Following the release of my novel,A Time to Cast Away Stones(Sand Hill Review Press, 2012), set in Berkeley and Paris in 1968, I was simply bowled over by messages from readers from more than one generation who communicated with me about how much my book meant to them, often confiding in unexpected ways.

But I found myself writing and re-writing in essay or epistolary form what I had already expressed in a novel that took me years to complete! When an intense year of marketing wound down, I wanted to turn my back on the ’60s for a while. Read on to find out how I’ve found new writing energy for the 60s!

Since last year, then, I have been researching how two branches of my family came to have unusual experiences in the process of immigrating to the U.S. in the nineteenth century. I thought their stories would expose how much our problems and our values have changed, for better and for worse, since my grandparents were the “youth” driving my great-grandparents crazy.

My plan was to finish the research, choose one branch, and write an historical novel based on what I had learned. I joined the Historical Novel Society, Northern California chapter, and found their meetings and knowing other historical novelists helpful and inspiring. I also discovered how much work is involved in learning the details and background about an era—how the world looked, sounded, tasted and engaged each individual emotionally.

I have not given up on this project, but while I dive into the research, I keep having this wild need to write something. I’ve tried twice to write short nineteenth century pieces, but I am not ready with those vital descriptive details. So, I have reverted to writing about the 1950’s, ’60s, and ’70s, the decades I know best (granted, to some, this would be “historical fiction”!).

Times They Were A-Changing

Then, last month I helped Darlene Frank to organize a program for the Literary Arts Stage at the San Mateo County Fair, and moderated the panel discussion on writing about the 60s. All but one woman on the panel had contributed to Times They Were A-Changing: Women Remember the ’60s and ’70s (She Writes Press, 2013), and all of us had written and published material, fiction and nonfiction, about that era. That wonderful evening, I was reminded again about how much I still have to say about those years. You can read my two new short stories, one which takes place in the 1950s, in the upcoming California Writers Club publication, Fault Zone: Diverge (2014). A third story takes a 1960’s Depression-era mother’s point of view when her daughter’s hippie wedding plans mangle her lifelong dreams.

How does my writing/work differ from others in its genre?

I don’t actually see too much fiction about the ’60s. I have written only one memoir, published in Times They Were A-Changing…” The rest of my work is well-researched fiction, in which real events, personalities, locales, and cultural aspects play a significant role in altering the lives of fictional characters. I can inject more humor and drama in this format, impart a relatively accurate history, and tell a good story. I admire the many others who manage to do this in a memoir. They must have had more exciting lives than I did—and they must have been more aware and informed when they were young!

Why do I write what I do?

This month, I’ve been reeling from one news catastrophe after another. Are you going through “overload” like I am? There are always plenty of wars and devastating human injustices to keep us on the edge, but this summer both the number and horror factor of the news stories seems to have intensified.

I write about the 1960s because I feel that the era’s image has been tarnished by all the media hype in the intervening years. Our youthful idealism has been blamed for all of the world’s current woes, when in truth, we inherited terrible problems from that self-proclaimed “greatest generation” – and just could not solve them all. But at least we tried, and we did manage to change plenty, especially by expanding the scope of public and private conversations. My goal is to reflect what life was like for both men and women in those years, and to reveal not only the motivations for action but the way individual lives (and loves!) were changed by the results.

A Time to Cast Away Stones is about one young woman’s hatred of war and yearning for a peaceful world. My memoir in Time They Were A-Changing…” also portrays an awakening to the value of civic action. If my novel and stories have encouraged readers to speak out publicly for a cause, to work in direct service to individuals in need, to add mind and hands to a civic organization, or simply to become an informed voter, then I have accomplished what I have set out to do. Especially if along the way, readers have had a few hours of a well-written story.

How does my writing process work?

If I possibly can, I write every morning, sitting at my computer, but often pausing to stare out on the backyard garden and the deer who graze above our deck. I like to start with research, as I’ve said, always vowing to wait until it is complete before I begin to write. And then I break my vow, because first, when I break into my research to write, I become aware of just what I need to learn when I go back online or to the library. And more importantly, I break my vow because I love the writing, inventing scene and character and imagery. To me, it really is more fun than the Bunny Hop at the best of parties.

I would like to introduce your next blogger, Jessica Rosenberg, author of the popular Aloha Also Means Goodbye (2014). We will hop to her blog soon – check back here or on my Facebook page! We share our terrific publisher at Sand Hill Review Press.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged 1960s, 1968 history, A Time to Cast Away Stones, current-events, historical novel, literature, motivation, political action, politics, protest, writing process | 3 Comments

Lyrics jammed in my throat…

Posted on September 30, 2013 by elisefrancesmiller

Elise in 60s garb, Sept. 29 book launch

How I loved the 1964 Bob Dylan song The Times They Are A’Changin’ when I was at Cal Berkeley. I knew every line by heart, sang them triumphantly with my friends, intoned them under my breath, marching in time to the music as I took the long walk to campus for class. My favorite verse, once screeched at my conservative parents (who snickered throughout my performance):

“Come mothers and fathers throughout the land
And don’t criticize what you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly agin’
Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin’.”

Bill Polits leads crowd in Dylan song

And yet, last night, surrounded by over one hundred of my peers for the launch of the anthology, Times They Were A-Changing: Women Remember the ‘60s & ‘70s (She Writes Press), at Books Inc. in Berkeley, as Bill Polits strummed his guitar and asked us to all sing along, I couldn’t open my mouth and go with it. The words and melody jammed in my throat and I was afraid that if I tried to eject them, I’d get only nostalgic bawling!

1st view of “our” new book

I am so proud to be included in this collection of powerful stories and poems about the various “cultures” of my era – political, artistic, experimental, feminist, etc. When editors Kate Farrell, Linda Joy Myers and Amber Lea Starfire came up with the concept of doing a writing contest and book, I got a dozen emails. “Enter!” they commanded. “This is your subject!” Sand Hill Review Press had just published my novel, A Time to Cast Away Stones, about friends and lovers contending with events in 1968 Berkeley and Paris. Yet, I hesitated. I had never written a memoir before, preferring the sheltering scrim of fictional characters and scenes.

In the end, one of my own experiences overtook my fears and I wrote “My People’s Park” – my own particular version of that historical Berkeley conflagration – and I won second place in prose.

Berkeley Books Inc., launch of anthology, author Darlene Frank in tie-die skirt

At the launch last night, I was thrilled to finally meet my peers, the women who are brave and talented enough to expose their youthful strivings to a world of readers, and even more difficult and meaningful, to make sense of their experiences all these years later!

I loved seeing the faces and hearing the voices as they read from their own poems and stories, but perhaps my personal favorite part of the presentation were the introductions by the three editors. Kate, Linda and Amber first explained why they selected each piece (only 48 out of 265 entries!) and then told us a little bit about the writers and what they had done in their lives subsequent to their adventures 40 or 50 years ago.

Autographs, after reading

Most of those sitting (and standing, too!) at Books Inc. last night were of the same generation as the readers. But as those introductions were being made, telling us about lives fully, energetically, and passionately lived, I wanted to place this book into the hands of younger people, men too, but especially young women. As they go through their own struggles, make their own difficult decisions, they might take heart from those who have lived through their younger years, and emerged able share what they remember and what they learned with such grace.

Media credit: Thanks to Jay Miller for the photos.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged 1960s, 1968, 1970s, A Time to Cast Away Stones, Berkeley, history, literature, memoir, politics, sexual revolution, student protest | Leave a comment

Organization Predicts Outcome – Paris, 1968 compared to OWS, 2011-2012

Posted on July 6, 2012 by elisefrancesmiller

Does it make any difference if a populist movement is planned or rises spontaneously? What do the origins and structure of the Occupy Movement tell us about its potential for success – when compared to the 1968 May Revolution in Paris*?

July 4 – the Occupy Movement is strong and moving forward! This was the kind of participatory democracy our Founding Fathers – and Mothers! would have been proud of!

In France 1968, the uprising began when the university reacted to student group decisions. But then everything reversed. The organization of the movement developed, step by step, as a reaction to events (largely violent) controlled by the government. This single condition may be the most important difference between the May Revolution in Paris and Occupy Wall Street.

Occupy’s long life is by design! June, 2012, NYC – Liberty Square, Feminist General Assembly, Washington Square Park.

Although there have been many surprises during the months of OWS –including the amazing and electrifying surprise of its spread all over the country as the common currency for a powerful cause—Occupy’s structure and actions developed as a philosophically deliberate construct. Adbusters, an anti-consumerism magazine based in Vancouver, British Columbia, lit the match. But Kalle Lasn, Adbusters’ legendary co-founder, is the first to disclaim control of the movement. From the summer of 2011, participants have thrown energy and exuberance into modelling a vision of direct and open democracy for the larger society.

Janet Magill speaks out at her Revolutionary Action Committee, falls in love, and takes actions she never dreamed she could in 1968 Paris.

In France, the government officials in authority literally created the crisis, setting in motion the spontaneous explosion of the populist movement. Hundreds of small groups formed spontaneously, one such portrayed in my novel, A Time to Cast Away Stones, as the “Revolutionary Action Committee” Janet Magill and her boarding house friends join. Once the students captured the Sorbonne, they met in classrooms and hallways, while the central drama played out at the Assemblées Générales. These plenary sessions were staged every night in the Sorbonne’s giant amphitheatre, just as they are in Zuccotti Park and in other Occupy venues in New York and around the country. At this point, the two movements converge—briefly. The two-tiered structure appears the same.

July 4 – The Illuminator Road Trip Slide Show: Artwork symbolizes the impact of the Occupy National Gathering, Philadelphia – to illuminate.

But what happened next made all the difference. By careful design, nothing is decided at OWS’s General Assemblies (GAs). By their insistence on the direct democracy format and facilitator role, all types of ideas are heard. Extreme causes are championed. Anti-this and pro-that. But because of the consensus needed, these extreme viewpoints cannot pass through to action at a GA. This does not, however, mean that there is no action. Occupy has “affinity” or “unaffiliated” groups and more official “working groups.” These smaller groups translate what they learn at GAs into action. As they have always done, groups stage events and marches, pressure lawmakers, and push for change.

State power! (Hambourg, 1968).

In 1968, Parisian students were caught in an exhilarating moment (only a few weeks, start to finish!). With each victory, they boldly escalated their demands. The most strident groups could not be satisfied with less than toppling of the president and the entire capitalist system. Other groups—like Janet’s in A Time to Cast Away Stones—realized that in doing this, they would be usurping the very state power that they despised.

June 2012 – Occupy Caravans, uniting people from all over, traveling the nation, reaches New Orleans to interrupt the auctioning off of land for offshore drilling.

OWS is more sustainable than the May Revolution because it was initiated and organized to allow for (1) the maximum level of direct democracy, (2) the mutual care of a community that encourages responsible behavior, and (3) a peer response to corruption and violence. These are the tenets that brought forth huge numbers of citizens and politicians, who even today, continue to speak the language of the 99 percent.

* The 1968 May Revolution was the first student-worker-middle class alliance and “revolution” in an advanced, Western, capitalist democracy. Over ten million French citizens were involved in a general strike, tens of thousands battled the police and the French army. For details, visit http://www.elisefmiller.com.

**Elise Frances Miller’s novel, A Time to Cast Away Stones (Sand Hill Review Press), is set during the 1968 Berkeley antiwar protests and French May Revolution*. Available in print or Kindle from Amazon or order it from your local bookstore.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged 1968, May Revolution, occupy-wall-street, open democracy, organizational structure, Paris, politics, populist movement | Leave a comment

Is Occupy’s Horizontal Leadership Like Laying Down on the Job?

Posted on June 29, 2012 by elisefrancesmiller

Horizontal Leadership? Occupy SEC protest, June, 2012

The concept of horizontal, non-hierarchical leadership, cherished by the Occupy Movement, was an ideal much less fulfilled during the 1968 May Revolution* in France. We’ve traveled from the plugged in speakers of the 1960s to the human mic, OWS 2011, but is that necessarily a good thing?

Across the Atlantic, those who rose to speak at meetings and rallies during the May Revolution strove for consensus decision-making and shared and non-hierarchical leadership. “Horizontal” refers to a leadership ethic in which nobody is any higher up than anyone else, nobody can give orders, make unilateral decisions, nor enjoy greater status. Now we recognize that what were the best of unachieved intentions during the May Revolution are a commonly-held ethic, struggled for at all levels of organization in the national Occupy Movement (read their Statement of Autonomy.

As part of my job as communications coordinator at San Diego State University, I participated in annual Student Leadership and Emerging Leaders Conferences. A t-shirt we did for one of those events reminds students not to get too puffed up with their roles as officers of clubs and organizations. Leaders are nothing without their followers, and “followership” was actually a workshop offered. In my workshops on publicizing campus groups and their activities (there were over 300 at SDSU!), I tried to reflect that theme.

France, 1968. General Assemblies and the hundreds of small groups, eventually called Revolutionary Action Committees, were led by natural, acknowledged leaders like the fictional character in A Time to Cast Away Stones,** Remi Guitry. While attending a rally with his Action Committee, Remi deals with disgruntled students unable to see the speakers on the podium. “Never mind. Shut up all of you.” Remi was laughing…“What does it matter if we can see?” he shouted…. “He is a person like you or me, a valuable voice. The ideas are important, not the personality…”At group meetings, Remi made it his business to act as an inspirational leader and facilitator, encouraging everyone to speak and be heard.

Daniel Cohn-Bendit speaks at a rally, May 1968.

But on a higher level, the May Revolution had several leaders whose names were on everyone’s lips. These men (all men!) spoke at rallies reaching thousands upwards to half a million people. Each represented groups and were largely respected for stepping forward to lead. In A Time to Cast Away Stones, we hear from several real-life leaders, including Dany Cohn-Bendit who has gone on to Green Party leadership in the European Union.

Once the French radical students’ cause became popular, aspiring politicians, especially communists and socialists, sought to speak for them. Ambition had them playing to both sides. Where hierarchical leadership persisted, where Cohn-Bendit and other known leaders shied away from political responsibility or aspiration, the movement had no real power. Everyone talked and listened, but it was only higher up where leaders used their names and power to block or effect change. And by the end of May, it was to crush the movement and block real change.

Occupy Wall Street, 2011-12. At meetings of “affinity” groups or the more official “working groups,” ranging from yoga to accounting (listed on the OWS website), even “natural leaders” who step forward are meant to rotate through or share those roles. When decisions are made by, say, the Direct Action Working Group, the goal is that everyone knows they are welcome, and decisions are by consensus. Facilitators almost always begin by asking the group, “I ask for your permission/consensus to facilitate.” In any open group, there will always be people who disrupt try to take over. The problem of hierarchy is re-hashed constantly. In small groups, at GAs, and in bars in the middle of the night. On the higher level, at large Occupy rallies, people were surprised, in the beginning, when some speakers used only their first names or their group affiliations. Even union leaders are not, as in 1968 Paris, leaders of the movement, nor do they represent it. They merely support it, like all other participants.

Hope! Occupiers must stand up for visible, accountable leaders who are listening to them.

President Obama and Democrats generally have been pushed to the left on the issues raised by Occupy. Many are cynical about the specter of co-option. I say, no reason to be cynical! The Occupiers have forced the hand of these political liberals (a noble term, ill-used!), whose policies have crept to the right for twenty years, often for same plutocratic reasons as Republicans.

This is a point to be savored! The Occupiers’ power is in their multiple messages, their capture of the media’s imagination, and their spread throughout the cities and towns of the nation.

But it’s yet to be determined whether this nameless, often faceless horizontal leadership will hit a snag where accountability is concerned. Is horizontal leadership, then, just another way of laying down on the job? Is it an abdication of responsibility for actions? A leader should listen carefully to his followers, give them credit and share the limelight – but at the end of the day, he or she will stand up and be counted.

A horizontal leader stands on his own two feet if he works with his group to elect those with the power to achieve what he is after.

If Occupiers have no named leaders, their consensus must form around the politicians who inspire them – or even their individual policies or speeches. They can stand up, and give noisy and visible support to people with power.

The politicians who are listening have power, but what is more important, they have names. Visibility. And therefore, accountability. On the left and center, they ARE co-opting the movement. The question is, what will they do with it if they are the only ones with the visibility, the voice and the power?

**Elise Frances Miller’s novel, A Time to Cast Away Stones, is set during the 1968 Berkeley antiwar protests and French May Revolution. Available in print or Kindle from Amazon or order from your local bookstore.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged A Time to Cast Away Stones, France 1968, leadership., May Revolution, Occupy, politics | Leave a comment

Spreading Pain or Catharsis? Perils of Turning My Own Era into Fiction

Posted on June 22, 2012 by elisefrancesmiller

A Time to Cast Away Stones
Photo credit: Michel Maiofiss, Collection: Gamma-Rapho, Getty Images. Archival photo from Paris, May 1968.

Given the exhilaration of the past week, it is easy to forget certain painful realities. Readers of my historical novel, A Time to Cast Away Stones, set in Berkeley and Paris in 1968, might be forced to relive sorrows and shocks, and to experience emotions that they would have rather left behind. Others may find themselves drawn into a funk by comparing fictional characters’ idealisms and expectations to the chaos and polarization gripping our world today.

Here are some excerpts from notes I have received. These people have not given me permission to use their words in my blog, so I am not including their names. I hope they feel sheltered here. But I want them to know that I am grateful to them for bringing me back to earth regarding my subject.

I wish that the events of the late 60s were not so present for me and that your book hadn’t, inadvertently, opened some painful memories… Which I think means that it’s important that you wrote the book. For many of us that period of time was so defining. And, perhaps, crippling.

Your novel has me reliving 1968 in Berkeley and Paris, with all of the complicated feelings that that is bound to evoke…

It has been years since I began writing the historical novel, A Time to Cast Away Stones, set in the time of my own youth. When I began, why I began, is because I was haunted by memories from the late 1960s. My writing has been an exploration of what I felt then, what I could and could not have done better, how I was and was not to blame for the evils all around me. I have come to terms with the frustration I felt when laughed or shoved “off the stage” by parents, professors, politicians, and pundits. And I have come to acknowledge the limits of both humans and governments.

In short, the writing process has been cathartic. And in some sense, the acceptance of my work for publication by people I admire – at California Writers Club-SF Peninsula branch and Sand Hill Review Press – has been a vindication of the years closed up with my vivid memories, learning to express myself through fiction. And then, as if all this wasn’t gift enough, there was the “pure joy” I have described elsewhere at speaking to the many wonderful friends who turned out for my book launch party at Books Inc. in Burlingame last week.

My readers, on the other hand, have enjoyed no such catharsis. Many of my readers were traumatized by the era. Many struggled with their yearning for peace and their notions of what a society should provide for its citizens. They broke with their parents, put themselves out on the streets, at great risk, and they lost dear friends and loved ones in a war they considered ill-advised, illegal and immoral. They felt those lives were wasted, those deaths unnecessary, and they never got over it.

That’s where I was, at one time, and I can’t let myself forget it now, now that others are taking the journey with Janet Magill and Aaron Becker and reliving some memories that were and are, frankly, quite terrible. At the beginning of the novel, it may be difficult to read about Janet’s naïveté and Aaron’s cynicism. Or to laugh with the characters who, after all, were young and alive and often enjoying themselves quite a bit! But as the story proceeds, and readers get to know the Europeans that change Janet’s perspective and her life—Teo the Czech, and Remi, Bérnard, Le Grand Laurent and all the French who found themselves together in hope during the month of May, 1968. My hope now is that these readers find their emotional balance transformed and pain ameliorated by this story.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged 1968, Berkeley, historical fiction, history, literature, Occupy, Paris, politics, student protest | Leave a comment

Occupy – Eyewitness to What is Is and Is Not

Posted on June 9, 2012 by elisefrancesmiller

SEC, in 1934 you were created, today FDR would be ashamed!

My husband and I were in New York City this week. I had read about dwindling Occupy numbers in so many articles that I wanted to lend tangible support to the effort – especially when I heard the issues: the “March To Call on the SEC to Investigate Jamie Dimon” and his role in JP Morgan’s CIO debacle – and the protest and performance in solidarity with students in debt, in Quebec and here in the U.S.

Right off, I learned some interesting twists on the so-called “dwindling numbers.” My daughter, on scene for the May 1^st protests, assured me that the reporters consistently downplay the numbers. She is sure that 30,000 people participated that day. The Occupy Movement waxes and wanes, but will not dissolve – like the 1968 May Revolution.

The woman in maroon, speaking to the group, broke away to chat with me.

Then, when we arrived at Liberty Plaza, a middle aged woman with an intelligent demeanor and a clean maroon shirt and khaki slacks, took a break from speaking to her group – the Fuck the Banks group – to explain that this group and the Direct Action Working Group met at Liberty Plaza every other Wednesday. “It’s not that there are so many fewer people coming out,” she said, “but that we have so many smaller, specialized groups meeting now.” The critical mass potential continues to grow.

I mention her appearance to counter the media’s other contention, second only to the dwindling numbers: the completely bogus harping on Occupiers as lazy, dirty, insane, nymphomanic drug addicts – or unemployed or homeless, which of course, is because they are lazy, dirty, insane, nymphomanic drug addicts. Pardon my sarcastic rant. The people here are diverse, no doubt about it, but just check out my photos. I felt at home and comfortable among them. Less comfortable among the suited white guys standing in a line and listening when we arrived at the SEC.

But I’m jumping ahead… At Liberty Plaza, we joined “Occupy the SEC” and the “Alternative Banking Working Group” in their well-organized march and educational open mic segments. We were calling on the SEC to investigate Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO of JP Morgan Chase, under Sarbanes-Oxley, and refer the case to the Department of Justice for prosecution. The Sarbanes-Oxley law says that CEOs cannot lie about the internal controls of their companies. Incredibly, Dimon sits on the Board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the most powerful bank in the Federal Reserve system – a glaring conflict of interest.

Schedule:
5:30 – 6:00: Gather in Liberty Plaza
6:00 – 6:15: March on J.P Morgan at One Chase Plaza
6:15 – 6:30: March on the Federal Reserve Bank of New York
6:30 – 7:00: March to the S.E.C./Teach-In

Wherever you looked, police vans, cars, and literally mobs of foot soldiers surrounded and infiltrated the Plaza to “protect” passersby from an extremely well-organized, educational and non-violent exercise of free speech.

This NYU Grad Student spoke eloquently about the types of crimes that caused the JP Morgan Stanley $3 billion loss. The open mic’s shouted chants of her teachings extended well beyond the group.

I learned that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was a government agency created during the Great Depression to prevent and prosecute criminal activity just such as this. And that even during the Ronald Reagan administration, the SEC indicted and convicted financiers gambling with public funds. There were fines and there was prison time. Today, on the 78^th anniversary of the founding of the SEC, with our democracy transformed into a plutocracy, the SEC sits on its hands, conflict of interest abundant in its ranks. Dimon himself has lobbied fiercely against the Volcker Rule, which (if properly crafted) might have prevented the recent $3+ billion trading loss by his federally-backstopped depository institution.

Students huddle under arch with their pots and pans, watching the drenched performers from a distance.

The People’s Staged braved the weather to entertain the protesters.

After leaving the SEC, we travelled north to Washington Square Park for the Casseroles Night in Canada – in NYC! Part 2. By then, it was pouring rain. About 50 people stood under the arch, another handful right in the rain near The People’s Staged performances. We were there to show solidarity with the Quebec student strike and the popular uprising in Quebec against Law 78 and the Charest government by banging pots and pans. The Quebec government plan to raise

the interest rates for students in debt is the prelude to the same plan here in the U.S. The rain drowned out the plan for a “bigger, louder, and rowdier” demonstration than previous versions, but the sheer numbers of wet protesters attests to the depth of emotion over this widespread issue.

There’s no house, says this student, yet some student debt can amount to the cost of a mortgage.

Banging on pots and pans in solidarity with indebted students of Quebec.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Dimon, JP Morgan Chase, Liberty Park, Occupy, politics, protest, Quebec student strike, SEC, student debt | 3 Comments

When is it a real “revolution”?

Posted on May 29, 2012 by elisefrancesmiller

Alternate meanings of “revolution” – what do you think? Thanks, Frankie Norstad from the San Francisco Writers Workshop, for access to your photos for my blog!

“Revolution” – my giant Webster’s Unabridged says it means “overthrow of a government, form of government, or social system, with another taking its place.” A friend from the San Francisco Writers Workshop recently reminded me that Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and now Syria–like America in 1776 and France in 1789–were and are “real revolutions.” Where people die, suffer, lose their homes, livelihoods, neighborhood coffee shops, not to mention fathers, mother-in-laws, cousins, goddaughters and favorite politicians.

Neither the so-called 1968 May Revolution, nor the current Occupy Movement, merit the moniker “revolution”! They are, properly speaking “protest movements.”

This is not to deny their value, nor to dismiss them. To the contrary, isn’t a large, effective protest movement the sign of a healthy democracy? Protest movements in the U.S. create change—in the halls of power, as did the Tea Party movement within the Republican Party (make no mistake: the Republican Party today IS the Tea Party); or in the minds and hearts of the general public, which includes political rhetoric and media focus, as with the Occupy Movement.

Occupy looks more like Paris, 1968 in this photo – but in France, the lines of police wore helmets and dark plastic shields, looking more like space aliens – hiding their identities from their victims. (Photo credit: Frankie Norstad)

France in May 1968 was somewhere between a fascist dictatorship and a democracy (shows how tricky these labels can be). The so-called May Revolution resulted in a whole lot of injuries and one death (and that one is not firmly attributed to revolutionary activity). The government used rubber bullets to avoid killing the children of their bourgeoisie—their powerful middle class. Over 50 percent of these folks, even in ’68, supported President de Gaulle. His government was understandably edgy about alienating its major constituency.

The general strike in the spring of 1968 came closest to spurring systemic change, andthere was quite a bit of violence on the site of factory strikes. There were a lot of successful social experiments going on when factory workers took over places the factory Sud Aviation in Nantes, but still not nearly enough of either change or violence to warrant the term revolution.

There are contingents on both sides – pro-violence and therefore for a violent overthrow of Life-As-We-Know-It in the U.S. or those who prefer to follow the Gandhi-MLK model – persistence, nonviolence. Jericho. And intensity building as we reach out to political conventions, then the electorate, until the awareness and attitudinal change become fully a part of America, 2012. Which camp are you in?

I’m headed for NYC tomorrow, and one of my primary objectives is to learn more firsthand about whatever is going on – always PLENTY – with Occupy Wall Street. I hope I return to the Bay Area having heard more from lots of individuals with all their various opinions.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged current-events, fascist dictatorship, occupy-wall-street, politics | Leave a comment

Occupy is About “Liberty” – Even in our “Free Country”

Posted on May 23, 2012 by elisefrancesmiller

A brief hum filled the room, then everyone was turning my way, anticipating. I felt the heat rise in my face and glimpsed my hands, knotted tightly in my lap… What could I possibly say to these people? They wanted a hero from the Berkeley myth, not a girl with une voix aigue, my weak, high-pitched voice, spouting cliches in bad French. They were sitting patiently. They were waiting… Then I felt Annette’s arm come around my shoulders… “Jeanette, écoute… Please, whatever you have to tell us about American students… We want to listen to you.” –From Janet Magill at her first meeting of a small student “Revolutionary Action Committee” in Paris, 1968, in A Time to Cast Away Stones:

Both the 1968 protestors and the Occupiers have sought—and longed for—“liberty.” That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. When I made this claim at my writers critique group last December, people jumped on it (what fun!) – “How can you say Occupy is about a lack of liberty? Everyone is out there exercising their right of free speech! This is a free country!”

Up until now, I’ve compared the qualities that enabled sustainability in the Occupy Movement, qualities clearly lacking in the 1968 French May Revolution. I turn now to liberty as a purpose – you can call it an aim, goal, end, or a central theme. These movements were/are accused of having fuzzy goals. But even when you manage to grab hold of a central theme, the two appear very different from one another. To oversimplify—regime change vs. income equality and the restoration of the middle class.

In 1968, President Charles de Gaulle maintained tight control over the government, the media, and the tough security forces at his command. French students bristling at an antiquated and unfair educational system were forbidden from even assembling to complain to one another! So, you may ask, why compare the current Occupy Movement in the United States? Even with more police than protesters at some of the demonstrations and the destruction of tent cities, Americans have been permitted the space and opportunity to assemble and discuss. And no politician wants to be accused of subverting the Bill of Rights.

We are not in de Gaulle’s France, 1968. Or are we?

From OWS Project List, April-May 2012.

The Occupy Movement resuscitates the specter of seeking liberty from the May Revolution. What OWS has accomplished on a grand scale is to raise national awareness that the majority of Americans—the 99%—have relinquished their precious American voice. This national laryngitis has crept up on us. Our precious citizen’s voice is subdued by wealthy political donors and corporations (which have recently gained their peoplehood). Yes, unlike the French 44 years ago, we can talk publicly about sex and war and civil rights, complain openly and demand openly. But there is one thing we simply have not dared to talk about. Until now.

Now OWS has crushed, beaten and broken the last free speech taboo: money. Since OWS opened the floodgates, everyone from politicians to pundits speechifies about economic inequality. We acknowledge the reality of how our system has evolved over the past 25 years. While Americans endure the power of the few to make money by gaming the system, and those who would question economic inequality are media-whipped and censored, the power of money increasingly subverts democracy. The Occupy Movement seeks to regain that voice that admits the unthinkable, that the Democratic Republic has morphed into a Plutocracy.

If we have no voice, therefore we have no power, we have no liberty. OWS, like Paris 1968, has sought to raise awareness and reclaim our collective, inclusive voice.

Occupiers, like Parisians in May of 1968, feel alive. In A Time to Cast Away Stones, Janet hates her high-pitched “baby-doll” voice, and feels it will always prevent her from contributing to the improvement of her world. Today in NYC, she would have the “Human Mic” and Twitter to help her achieve meaningful involvement. But even without these remarkable innovations, in the City of Light, Janet discovers that her own voice can be effective, if only there is mutual respect among listeners. It took a year, but then de Gaulle was voted out. The conversation begun during the Events of May left a changed nation moving forward. Will Occupy do the same?

Visit http://www.elisefmiller.com for updates about A Time to Cast Away Stones, and more about the history of the May Revolution.

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