I have published Jude's story and I have started to link yesterday's blog post to as many people and organizations as possible. I have started to write a script based on the transcript of her sanity hearing. I can probably produce this script, even paying union scale to cast and crew for between $2000 and $5000. As you can see, I'm already starting to work up a budget.
Now I'm going to move on to my story. But Jude's story hasn't gone away. This blog is only a notebook. People can drop in and read it any time, but the blog itself will not bring about social justice. Networking will. Writing--both nonfiction and fiction will.
There has not been a lot of interest in my posts about Jude's story since I published yesterday --according to my blog stats. It's a hard story to read, and the ending isn't happy. What is more, it's old news for most people. That's ok.
Nobody wanted to hear about the Holocaust right after World War II, either. The Diary of Ann Frank was first published in 1947, but it didn't become a bestseller until it was released in English in 1952. Julius and Ethel Rosenburg were executed in 1953, but their story wasn't really revisited until their own children started writing books and making documentaries.
It wasn't until 15 years after the Salem witch trials that the community recognized that mistakes were made and one of the original teenage girls who started it all made a public apology.
Yes, I am comparing the Rubber Room and the Bloomberg Teacher Witch Hunts to a. The Holocaust b. The McCarthy Witch Hunts c. The Salem Witch Trials
But people probably won't want to hear about it for another 5, 10 or 20 years. It's time to start writing the books and making the movies for when that happens.
2 comments:
Untamed, I always knew about the Rosenbergs since my father was very good friends with both of them, especially Ethel. I am the proud owner of a letter she wrote to my father when she and Julius were living and working in Washington DC. Their story and the anti semitism and Jew bashing surrounding the McCarthy era will never be fully exposed and told. Now it's teachers who are the "Jews" and "communists" of today. I wish you luck in your effort to shed light on the plight of teachers and education in our so called democratic society.
Thanks. Perhaps now that so many people are admitting to themselves that this is not really a democratic society, but one controlled by the "1%", we can start learning how to stop the kind of scapegoating that overtook the Jews in Germany and then later in America. It can happen to anybody. That's the lesson of the Rubber Room.
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