[News] Freedom Archives: A place where subjugated histories thrive

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Freedom Archives: A place where subjugated histories thrive

Charity Crouse :: EL TECOLOTE
http://eltecolote.org/content/2011/01/freedom-archives-a-place-where-subjugated-histories-thrive/
4:20 pm Wednesday January 26, 2011

<http://eltecolote.org/content/2011/01/freedom-archives-a-place-where-subjugated-histories-thrive/cointelpro/>
[]


History is constantly being remade at 522 Valencia St., home of the 
Freedom Archives, where primary sources on some of the most visionary 
social, political and cultural movements are housed for activists and 
artists to access.

The archives have more than 10,000 hours of audio and video 
recordings documenting local, national and international social 
justice movements from the 1960s to the present. "The Freedom 
Archives provides a community-based resource where subjugated 
histories can be restored, repurposed and revised by communities," 
said Claude Marks, Director of the Freedom Archives.

The Freedom Archives features speeches of movement leaders and 
community activists, protests and demonstrations, poetry and music. 
Material spans the Civil Rights, student, anti-war, prison, women's 
and gay and lesbian movements as well as a sizable La Raza 
collection. Some of the individuals that can be explored through the 
archives include Malcolm X, Paul Robeson, Abbie Hoffman, Assata 
Shakur and Lolita Lebron among others.

The archives are meant to be a countermeasure to university archives 
that are difficult for people who are not on a degree track to 
access. "The histories of various communities like the Mission and 
what's left of the Fillmore have a way to connect communities to 
their past, particularly a past connected to a vision of a just 
world," said Marks. People interested in utilizing the archives can 
search the entire catalogue on the Internet. The archives are 
available to anyone who intends to use their experience to make a 
more public expression of what they find. The archives have been used 
by documentarians and teachers, as well as performance artists. There 
is no set fee to use the archives; the project works with people on 
an individual basis. "It's not catering to collectors but to people 
who make it more public," said Marks. "It's a long-standing approach 
where people who want to use it to increase the impact [of the 
material] can use it."

The origins of the Freedom Archive go back nearly 40 years, when 
independent radio producers started collecting interviews and 
performance tapes. Meetings between members of the Third World 
Department, the Black Programming Collective and Comunicacion Atzlan 
began to happen. Many of these producers worked through Pacifica 
Radio; the station was not interested in archiving their material. 
The individual producers held onto their own recordings and 12 years 
ago Marks started organizing and mobilizing as people started 
reconnecting to set up a way to present the recordings and make them 
available for public dissemination. That is when the Freedom Archives was born.

In addition to audio recordings, the archives have compiled video 
footage that they've used along with the sound recordings to present 
documentary stories that attempt to educate the public about the 
power of social organizing and fighting against systemic oppression. 
The most recent example of their work, COINTELPRO 101, premiered at 
the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts in October of 2010. The 
documentary explores the histories of the Black Liberation movement, 
the Chicano movement, Native Americans and the Puerto Rican 
Independence movement over the course of the late '60s and early '70s 
and how government repression was as the root of their dissolutions.

Marks said that a lot of the material that is in demand focuses on 
the history of imprisonment and prison struggles. These demands 
dovetail with larger projects that seek to connect the climate of 
current political repression with the history of the actions taken by 
the U.S. government and law enforcement against movement organizers. 
It is with this in mind that COINTELPRO 101 was released and is being 
distributed. "We're taking it on the road and releasing the DVD with 
the hope that it will spark a level of activism around current 
political prisoners and the history of imprisonment," said Marks.

One of the goals of the archives is to work with people to develop 
curricula on the history of the featured movements and activists. 
COINTELRPO 101 has been used recently at a public high school in Los 
Altos; a Spanish subtitled version recently premiered at a campus at 
the University of Puerto Rico.

Much of the archives includes cultural performances and is locally 
focused. Another project that the archives are working on is a book 
and CD called Outspoken Roots that reflects poetry that came out of 
the Mission District in the 70s. Themes explored in this collection 
include the coup in Chile and other struggles of Central and Latin 
Americans in the neighborhood. The archives also serve as a source of 
information on the cultural growth of the Mission District music 
scene connected to the diaspora from Central and Latin America. Marks 
hopes to obtain funding for a compilation of the annual Encuentro del 
Canto Popular music concerts sponsored by El Tecolote, an effort that 
represents more than 20 years of musical performances in the Mission.

A community center is set to open in the building housing the Freedom 
Archives in a few months. Plans are in the works to collaborate with 
the East Side Arts Alliance to have public events. "We want to be a 
vibrant part of the community," said Marks.

For more information on the Freedom Archives, go to 
<http://www.freedomarchives.org>www.freedomarchives.org.




Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110

415 863-9977

www.Freedomarchives.org  
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