Yongho Kim

Category: english

  • Faith and Social Justice

    Yongho Kim
    March 11, 2004

    Anthropology Internship: Faith and Social Justice
    Prof. Sonia Patten

    Finding Common Grounds: Religious Morality as a Catalyst for Economic Justice

    What Faith Groups Say About “The Right to Organize”, by the National Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice (NICWJ), brings together the strongest arguments made in alliance with the workers’ rights for a fair wage and organizing by the Roman Catholic Church, various Protestant denominations, and the Central Conference of American Rabbis. Throughout the texts runs the theme of religious morality as a reason for seeking economic justice in the world.

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  • Weatherford rocks

    amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0609610627/qid=1080489130/sr=8-3/ref=pd_ka_3/103-6648822-4747822?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

    Weatherford’s Genghis Khan and the making of the Modern World ranks 31 in Amazon.com rankings! I gotta buy one and send to my younger bro.

    [added in 2005] heh heh. what was THAT review

    If all history books were this fun I wouldn’t have flunk…, November 10, 2004
    Reviewer: Ma WenRui “soukouslover” (Minneapolis, MN USA)

    Wow! This was a great read! It covers so much history and best of all gives context and brings life to characters, administration systems, battles and feuds like few other books (which focus on silly dates and show no meaning or the reasoning behind events). Plus, you’ll be surprised how little you (probably) knew about a most visionary empire: innovations, postal systems, no taxes for doctors and teachers!, psychological warfare, international trade policies, blitzkrieg! (and you thought the Germans were smart)… I loved this book. When is the movie coming out???

  • Making connections with the audience: professionalism and alienation

    Yongho Kim
    Labor’s Story through Music
    May 10, 2004. (due May 7th – three days late )

    Making connections with the audience: professionalism and alienation

    In reflecting on the production of “Forgotten”, I want to focus on the difference between the performance at the Union Hall and the one at Macalester in the level of connections it allowed student performers to make with the audience during the show itself.

    The Union Hall was not meant to be used as a performance space – it had a podium dedicated to lectures and some backstage space. Bob arranged it so that the main actors would hide behind the backstage space when they were not performing, but the worker’s chorus had to stay in the back of the hall, visible to the audience. In between scenes, and in the majority of scenes where the worker’s chorus was not present, we (the worker’s chorus) could stand in the back and listen to peoples’ reactions – laughter, exclamations, suspense, etc.

    Having not had the time to stay and chat with audiences, this was a medium through which I could connect with the audience. They laughed when the foreman said “It’s in the corner where no one else ever goes”, they were focused and silent during the introduction of “The Ford Hunger March”. I also had a chance to confirm feelings I had towards situations – a bitter taste for Lewis not listening to his wife, for example – by finding reactions or the lack of them in the audience. In the same vein, not having a proper lightning set helped view the expressions in the faces of the people present there.

    On the other hand, Macalester’s concert hall was conceived from the beginning as a performance space. There were doors that closed well (the Union Hall’s backstage was not an enclosed space, but just a wall separating the hall from the back stage) at the stage and a separate entrance hallway outside of the concert hall, which was where the students waited. Behind the thick walls, we could only follow the general melody in order to know when to enter. The intense spotlight also prevented us from seeing the audience.

    This contributed to separating the student performers from the performance experience. Although a stretch, I parallel this to a general pattern where technical professionalism matches an increased distance between artist and audience as in Rose’s account of western music isolating the musician through sheet music. As Pete Seeger’s effort to incorporate the audience in the singing was a way to break through his contradictions between the message portrayed and his own life (Filene 196), directions to the opposite pole seem to alienate the performers.

    As a side note, I would like to point out that our Thursday concert was the second time I had listened to the lyrics for the whole show attentively and could figure out what the whole story was about.

    As a result, in the brief moments that I exchanged brief commentaries with audiences after the show, I felt there were more shared emotional links in the Union Hall, not because it was a working class space, but because it was less professional and allowed for informal human expressions such as laughter to transmit both sides.

  • imagined conversation between Benjamin Filene and Ruth Glasser on "authenticity"

    Yongho Kim
    Labor’s Story through Music
    May 10, 2004 (due April 15 – 3 weeks late)

    [DJ plays “We shall not be moved” by the Almanac Singers]

    Glasser: I like how the band uses the banjo, which gives it a more folk feel. Were the instruments made in the east coast before being sold to the singers? (G 18)

    Filene: I think you are right in that it was made in the east coast through the producers.. but I look more into the intention of the singer behind using “traditional” instruments. Pete Seeger was always torn between wanting to speak out for the working class and only being able to do so through a commercial distribution process. He faced the contradiction and expressed it overtly. (F 201)

    G: Did he? Still, that sounds a bit hypocritical – if you do not come from a middle class background, why would you pretend to sound like one, and then “apologize” for doing it? Pete should have worked along with singers from true working class background – those who worked partly in music and were dedicated in daytime to mining and other working-class jobs. (G 93)

    F: It can’t be that easy… he had to negotiate with the industry in order to be heard – we could most likely not be able to discuss his music had Pete not gone commercial. (F 203)

    G: Maybe.. what about the lyrics, though? What does he mean by “we” in “we shall not be moved”, “the union is behind us”, and “we’re black and white together”, when the Almanac Singers does not come from a working class background, is not really related to the union, nor is racially diverse? Puerto Ricans bought the discs made by Puerto Ricans about Puerto Rico, not because they expected people to imitate their accents and present a self-image intended to represent them, but because they knew that these were their brothers and sisters telling their stories. (G 124) Why cannot we expect a similar background for American “folk” singers?

    [Music shifts to “Casey Jones”]

    F: With folk musicians it’s a bit of a different story – people needed to work together for common causes. Civil rights activists, for example, didn’t mind a white guy singing the struggle of African-Americans – we could say that they didn’t expect him to represent the cause, but rather to draw middle class, white sympathizers to be able to identify with the movement. (F 201) The story of Casey Jones, for example, is a case in point. Pete also brought the folk music back to the folk with his sing-alongs. (F 195)

    G: That sounds more like a transitional way of negotiating the limitations of the music industry. Shouldn’t Pete’s goal to change the fact that singers cannot reach audiences unless they are abiding by commercial demand?

    Kim: Ruth! Hello! What are you people talking about? I heard you mention Pete Seeger.

    G: It’s that Ben annoys me because he says that all musicians face contradictions by their involvement with commercialized music industry and that Pete did what he could – highlighting the limitations of folk music, without really trying to do anything about it.

    K: Oh, you should check Tricia Rose! I guess you read her.. doesn’t she say in Black Noise that hip hop’s relationship with the commodity market does not necessarily mean that hip hop is being absorbed by the system, but rather an appropriation of the conditions of production. (Rose 40). Take women graffiti writers, for example – they use colors and shapes set by society (pink color, landscapes) but not as a way of reinforcing preconceived notions, but in order to gain visibility in an area often known as male-dominated (R 44). Rappers also encourage audience participation (R 54), which is not the focus but could be seen as a continuation of Pete.

    F: Thanks for the help, Yongho. Indeed, singers to subvert commercial structures – for instance, Lead Belly sued the Lomaxes, his former [scrip] employer, for the control of revenues produces from his concerts. (F 62) It’s just that during Pete’s times the industry was very complex.

    [Yongho plugs “The Message” with Dr. Dre]

    G: But it’s still not authentic – granted, judging authenticity by merely the country the artist is from is quite silly (G 155) But what if a white, suburban, middle-class singer claims a share of black hip hop identity while hiding his backgrounds?

    F: Dylan would be a good example. He concealed his background but his songs were consciousness-raising in a number of ways.

    G: No. You don’t just justify racial masquerading by saying that the singer was trying to face contradictions in a creative way, in the same way you would do it along class lines.

    Y: [silence] I think it’s about how we’re locating the artist within society – is the artist going to merely become part of the music industry, or is the artist conceive as an active agent working with the given tools and environment? (R 63) That’s how we could see some hope for the working class people who have to deal with societal structures of exploitation on a daily basis.

  • Coalition-making in The Fuse’s Seattle 1919

    Yongho Kim
    Labor’s Story through Music
    February 25, 2004

    Coalition-making in The Fuse’s Seattle 1919: Class Solidarity and Divisiveness, and Incorporation of the Other in post-World War I Unionism.

    Seattle 1919 addresses issues of class solidarity frequently present in the newly emerging U.S. unionism and attempts to unite workers from different race, gender, and skill groups under a common struggle against the capitalist classes. Babson defines solidarity as that which “defined an injury to any one worker as an injury to all workers” (Babson, 9). In practice, this amounted to workers striking in sympathy for a strike held by workers from another industry brought together by geographical links (such as the different unions in the Seattle 1919 strike) or by relationships in their modes of production (such as the Pullman 1894 strike, in which railroad workers joined train operators’ strike). Indeed, the Seattle 1919 strike appears to have been a major show of class solidarity in the inter wars period; was this the reason that it was picked as the title for The Fuse’s rock opera – because the songs focused in class solidarity and Seattle 1919 was its symbol?

    A major point of contention between workers (particularly the skilled) and the factory owner class in early 20th century was scientific management and the scrip system (Zinn, 9). Scientific management, a system of production introduced by Taylor in which workers were to perform minimum tasks on pieces carried on a line (Babson, 27), involved a decrease at the cost of production and the de-skilling of workers, which threatened to end with the relative autonomy enjoyed by skilled craftsmen. (Babson, 29)

    Class solidarity was a problematic concept in early U.S. unionism, especially when applied over marginalized minorities among the working class. White workers would often not accept African-American authorities, although they would appeal to class solidarity in times of hardship. (Arnesen, 80)

    In “Street Speech”, a rhetoric that seems to have been transplanted from that of freedom for slaves is used to advocate the right for workers to be free from the scrip system. The singer says, “brick by brick / nail by nail / we built the mansions / and we built the jails”, pointing out that the power to bring about both opulence of the upper class and oppression on the worker class lies within the worker class. At the same time, it is suggested that the struggle of the working class is akin to that of the African-American peoples because both are directed against a group that owns the means of production. The song goes on: “We don’t want them / we don’t need them / these parasites who live off someone else!”. Thus “Street Speech” is a coalitional effort to incorporate African-Americans to the organizing effort, while at the same time it is meant to rouse feelings of class solidarity from white union workers towards African-Americans who, driven by poverty, often acted as strikebreakers (Babson, 48), triggering racial lynching from union members.

    Unskilled workers were also often excluded in the support from skilled workers’ unions such as the American Federation of Labor (AFL). During World War I, unskilled workers’ unions such as the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) were prosecuted by the government under the implicit consent of the AFL (Babson, 37). In Seattle’s 1919 strike, even though local AFL affiliates cooperated with each other on a radical path more on IWW’s lane, national AFL representatives dissented. (Brecher, 105) It is to note that the price of such non-cooperation only came back to the worker. In “Caught in the middle”, the singer laments: “I joined IWW for a principle / and the AF of L for a job / now I’m caught in the middle / don’t know which way to go”.

    The uneasiness between the AFL and IWW is also closely bound by the tensions around the newly introduced scientific management. Scientific management, introduced by Taylor, was encouraged to union workers to work in small, mechanical tasks that didn’t require a specific skill. This meant that whenever a strike broke among skilled craftsmen, managers could easily replace them with dozens of unskilled workers from the streets. (Babson, 28) This was the chief reason why AFL would not offer membership to industrial workers. (Babson, 32)

    Seattle 1919 uses strategies of incorporation by appealing to shared experiences as described above. It also points out a common struggle against the capitalist class as a reason to unite forces. The scarcity of solidarity among different minority groups is sometimes compensated by recognizing a common opposing force.

    One form of such approach is by weighing the capitalist’s power against powers traditionally held as authoritative. The singer expresses this in “One Step Further”, in which he sings “I don’t care about the government / I think Rockefeller owns the president”. The capitalist class is portrayed as am powerful force that flies above any controlling mechanism. The weariness of an opposing force that go beyond law is a compelling reason to join a struggle against it.

    A definitive split between AFL and IWW, and the eventual demise of the IWW while AFL grew under government protection, took place during World War I. On the one hand the demand for industrial output increased, while available labor was held steady because immigration routes were blocked. The government, worried that a general strike may disrupt the highly profitable war machinery exportations situation, created the National War Labor Board (NWLB) that mediated negotiations between corporations and unions in order to prevent strikes from erupting. AFL was highly cooperative in the process, alienating the draft-resisting IWW in the process. (Babson, 39) Seattle 1919 is critical of this relationship. “The Push” goes like this: “You say it’s for the war but I think it’s for the money”, which may be referring to the NWLB that is pleading for no strikes because it would damage the country but also to the AFL that claims to show its patriotic stance while receiving compensations in the form of organizing support. I think the song lines up with the IWW, which is evident in the anti-war stance of the lines “In the bloody trenches / where is law and order? / Dying for your country”

    Seattle 1919 is a call to class solidarity across skill and racial lines, because there is a common struggle against a common opposing force. Unfortunately, the brief one-month general strike in Seattle, which most closely resembled such close knit solidarity among the working class in the city, fell down because of fissures with external AFL pressuring and the government threat of turning the peaceful manifestation into a violent one.

  • I just saw this on Tapestry

    I finally found him! He’s Roger Guenver Smith and he did The Huey P. Newton Story in the Fall of 2001. I loved his performance, and his after-discussion in which he advocated having holistic aspirations – I still recall him saying “Say, I my major is the sky.” Oooh! Happy happy.