Vigil for Don Belton

Another Murder of A Black, Gay English Professor

Don Belton. Photo credit: Indiana University.

The ranks of Black and openly gay professors, already not large, has been tragically diminished, again.

Two days after the accused murderer of UC Riverside (and formerly UC Irvine) English Prof. Lindon Barrett was found dead in his jail cell, another Black, gay English Professor has been murdered, this time in Indiana.

Don Belton, an English Professor at Indiana University, was viciously stabbed to death 27 December 2009 at his Bloomington, Indiana, home by Mike Griffin, a blue-eyed ex-Marine who had served in Iraq. Griffin turns 26 next Monday. According to friends of Prof. Belton, Griffin has an ongoing relationship with Belton and invited him and his girlfriend over to his home on Christmas day. A policeman's affidavit notes that Belton, in a diary entry written a week before, had expressed happiness about "Michael" coming into his life.

Griffin, who was turned in by his girlfriend, is now claiming that Belton sexually assaulted him twice on Christmas Day and when Belton would not apologize, he killed him two days later, stabbing him "until he quit moving", with a "peace keeper" knife he acquired before heading for Iraq, according to the police. However, in court today, Griffin pleaded not guilty.

Belton's friends have rallied to the slain professor's defense, arguing that Griffin's claim of being assaulted is nothing short of a dubious "gay panic" defense, used to inflame the public and stirr up homophobia. They have organized a vigil for New Year's Day and also created a web page to ensure justice for Don Belton: http://justicefordonbelton.com/.

The site also links to research materials debunking the gay panic defense.

Hopefully, the truth will prevail, given that Griffin appears to have acted with premeditation, arriving in Belton's home with a change of clothes (he later dumped the bloodied clothes) and his peace keeper knife tucked in a scabbard on his belt.

The parallels with the Lindon Barrett case are inescapable. Both professors (Belton was 53; Barrett, 46) apparently had younger lovers, in their 20s, and both lovers in the end betrayed them.

According to Belton's profile on the IU web site, he is the author of a novel, Almost Midnight and editor of anthology on black masculinity, Speak My Name.

He previously taught literature, fiction and world cinema at Macalester College, the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and the University of Pennsylvania.

Belton's own web site, still up, shows some of his quirkiness and humor: "Greetings! Don Belton here. I am an author, educator, jazz fiend, bibliophile and cineaste. Welcome to my website and blog. In the coming weeks and months you will find here what I trust will be an exciting and growing compendium of culture, arts, and commentary. So, stay tuned!"

His own bio states, tongue in cheek: "Don was born in posh penthouse on the Right Bank of Paris with a silver spoon in his mouth, listening to Miles Davis playing live in celebration of his birth."

Another life snuffed out. Rest In Peace Don.

Suspect in Lindon Barrett murder found dead Christmas Day

Lindon Barrett

Marlon Martinez, accused in the 2008 strangulation death of longtime UCI English/African American Studies Prof. Lindon Barrett (who had gone to teach at UC Riverside at the time) has been found dead in his cell in the Los Angeles County Men's Central Jail.

According to the Long Beach Press Telegram, Martinez, 22, "died in a six-person cell on Dec. 25 after sheriff's deputies conducting a security check found him suffering from respiratory distress and were unable to revive him."

Autopsy results are inconclusive, pending toxicology tests, which could take more than six weeks, according to the 28 December 2009 news report.

This brings to a sudden and unexpected close any opportunity to uncover why Prof. Barrett was killed and the nature of his relationship with the accused.

For the July 21, 2008 KUCI Subversity radio program on Prof. Barrett (which also aired on KUCR at UC Riverside) and was excerpted on KPCC, click here: .

A Look Back: 2009 Passings: Los Angeles Times Orange County Edition

Irvine -- In our end-of-the-year edition today (28 December 2009),
Subversity, a KUCI public affairs program, looks back at 2009. It is
customary to reflect on those who have passed away in the year. We
did a show on Michael Jackson as a queer icon when the pop icon died,
and two programs on the elimination of an important UCI resource, SAAS, the
Student Academic Advanced Services, and over the months, many shows
on the slow -- and lingering death -- of the California Master Plan
for Higher Education and of the University of California as a public
institution.

Today, however, we look back another passing, that of a once-important OC
institution.

In this Subversity look back at 2009, we repeat an airing of our
March 9, 2009 remembrance of the glorious days of the Los Angeles
Times OC edition, with long-time Times reporter David Reyes, and
observer John Earl, now publisher of OC Voice, now "the Green Voice for the Orange Coast."
The show airs 9 a.m. today on KUCI, 88.9 FM in Orange County,
California, and is simulcast via kuci.org.

See also:

Orange County - Ex-Times Scribes Dishes on OC Edition Demise, OC Weekly Rise.

Win for all: Library to open 24 hours

Irvine -- In a victory for common sense, UCI will keep a large campus library open 24 hours starting this coming Friday (4 December) through the end of Finals (the subsequent Friday at 5 p.m.). See library announcement.

Faced with the prospect of student protesters staging a "study-in" after the original 5 p.m. closure Friday at what the protesters have renamed the Langston Hughes Library, wise heads prevailed and the University found the money to keep the library open.

Some faculty members have been invited to participate in the teach-in announced earlier. According to the protesters' posters, teach-in activities begin outside Langson Library at 3 p.m. on Friday, 4 December.

The prospect of police intervening if the library were occupied after hours must have spurred the University to find the funds to keep the library open. After all, keeping the library open 24 hours costs less than paying overtime to police decked out in riot gear.

And UCI protesters have this reaction to the library staying open during exam week and the weekend before: "Direct action gets the goods!" See more of the protesters' reaction here.

Naming Opportunities

Posters from protesters' site

Irvine -- When UCI opened in 1965, its main library was named, appropriately enough, Main Library. It was not until 2003 when a Newport-Beach real estate entrepreneur, Jack Langson, gave $5 million to the University of California that it got renamed, of course, after himself, as Jack Langson Library.

The library got itself a needed facelift, new carpeting and more PCs for students to use and comfortable, colorful sofas for them to sit in, and for some to sleep on.

Talking about naming opportunities, Lang Son is of course, the name of a northern province in Vietnam, next to China, so colleagues there often laugh when I say I am from Langson Library.

Fast forward to late November 2009, right after the UC Regents hike "fees" (they can't call it tuition according to the California Higher Education Master Plan) an outrageous 32%. UCI students protesting the fee hikes now plan a "study-in" at Langson Library Friday December 4, 2009, after 5 p.m. closing hours, calling it a form of resistance to the fee hikes. In "liberating Langson," "students, faculty and workers" have also taken the opportunity to rename it, rather creatively one might say, "Langston Hughes Library," after the gay Harlem Renaissance poet and literary master.

Their Facebook page on "liberating" the library already has over a 1,000 listed as potentially attending the study-in.

Their manifesto, addressed to UCI's librarians and library staff, declares:

"As students, we believe we should have full access to books, computers,
and library materials before and during Finals Week. We also know that
the funds exist within the UC system to maintain a fully-staffed,
adequately paid 24 hour library on campus. Close to 8 billion dollars of
discretionary funding is sitting untouched, and the UC has taken out
over 6 billion dollars in construction bonds. This money comes from our
tuition and our and our parents’ taxes, and we want a piece of it.
Similarly, we are disgusted by the University’s negotiation process,
offering library staff representatives the “choice” of layoffs or pay
cuts; we want neither!"

The unionized librarians accepted the University's pay cut/furlough plan, but library assistants (in the Coalition of University Employees) will be undergoing 11 rotating layoff days next summer.

The study-in organizers explain:

"In taking over the library and keeping it open overnight Friday and
perhaps indefinitely thereafter, we are exerting our agency as students
and members of the UC community. We do not expect anything of you beyond
your normal work requirements, and despite administrative claims to the
contrary, we are not asking you to stay beyond your regular work hours.
We only ask of you, and of the University, that we retain access to
automated check-out machines, computer labs, and other basic unstaffed
resources. We additionally condemn any attempts by the administration to
shut off power or Internet access or lock the main doors.

"Our only barricades will be our bodies so long as authorities respond
peacefully to us, and it is our intent to leave the library cleaner than
how we found it. We intend to use the space for teach-ins about the
budget crisis, exam review sessions, study groups, and quiet study. On
Saturday at 1pm, we will be holding a General Assembly for the UCI
community to assess our ability to remain in Langson Library and
consider our capacity for further action. Should you or your coworkers
voluntarily choose to stay in the library for any period of time in
order to assist us in any way, you have our humble appreciation."

The manifesto goes on to make some grand statement of solidarity with past instances of direct action:

"This action is being carried out in solidarity with 15 prior occupations
in the UC and CSU systems this quarter, and with the occupations
throughout the world, most recently in Croatia, Serbia, Germany,
Austria, Italy, and Great Britain. While this may be the first attempted
occupation at UCI, it will not be the last. We will occupy the entire
campus, building by building, until everything that has been taken from
us is ours again.

It ends with a rallying cry: "LONG LIVE THE OCCUPATIONS!"

The planned occupiers say this: "We are an autonomous body in Orange County attempting to subvert hegemonic, state-supporting/ed protest by promoting radical discourse and militant action."

Of course, occupations have a mixed record in the UC recently, without the students necessarily achieving all their demands, although undoubtedly they became radicalized by the them. At UCLA, Berkeley, and Santa Cruz this past week, student occupiers of buildings on those campuses were forced to vacate them at risk of being arrested for "tresspassing." At Berkeley, over 40 were arrested.

Study-ins, however, have been successfully held at libraries in other UCs. One at Berkeley's Anthropology Library "led administrators to allocate funds from unrestricted donations" to keep that and similar specialized libraries on campus open. In addition, "student activism around the finals week closure brought about an awareness of the issue that led to a private donation to keep the libraries open during finals week" ("UC Libraries Face cuts, But Faculty and Student Activism Pays Off," UC-AFT Perspective, Fall 2009, p.9.)



Prospects for a peaceful resolution at UCI are as yet unknown. Will the University welcome students to stay for the duration of the study-in?

I like Langston Hughes, but given that Lang Son was where noted General Võ Nguyên Giáp defeated the French colonial forces there in 1950 in one of the first successes of the First Indochina War, facilitating military aid from China across the border, perhaps the students could have just added a blank space and renamed it Lang Son Library as well.

UCI Students Protest Fee Hikes

Dennis Lopez & Hadeer Soliman at KUCI. Photo © Daniel C. Tsang 2009

UCI Students Fight Back Against Fee Increases

Updated with audio link: To listen to our interview with Dennis Lopez and Hadeer Soliman, click here: .

Irvine - UCI students, faculty and staff gear up for a huge noon rally
Tuesday (24 November 2009) at the UCI flagpole.
The rally, sponsored by a host of student groups,
comes in the wake of Regental action the
past Thursday to raise student fees a third for the coming year,
starting Spring Quarter.

On the 23 November 2009 edition of Subversity, we talked with Dennis Lopez of UCI's Worker-Student Alliance
and Muslim Student Association member Hadeer Soliman.

According to the rally Facebook page.

"The UC has voted to raise tuition by 32%! Students were brutally
assaulted at UCLA for using their right of freedom of speech! Cuts are
coming from the bottom not the top, while the administrators are
getting raises workers are getting fired and student class sizes get
larger. It is time that we as students come together in solidarity to
tell the UC it's our UC!!!"

and

"Come out and hear stories from those affected and find out what we
can do from here! Please invite at least 10 others. This is our time
in history will we live up to the responsibility?

and

"We stress that this is a peaceful rally, however, we as citizens of
the United States can and will exercise of First amendment Rights of
free speech!"
________

Calling "even studying is now a form of resistance," the organizers
also plan a teach-in outside Langson Library Friday December 4 at 3
p.m. followed by a "study-in" in the library at 4 p.m., followed by an
"all-night" teach-in at 5 p.m., past closing hours. On the next day, a
Saturday, a "general assembly" is slated for the Graduate Reading Room
in the library at 1 p.m.

For details see another Facebook page.

From Liberation Struggle to University Presidency in Vietnam

Dr. Bui Tran Phuong at UCI's Langson Library. Photo © Daniel C. Tsang 2009.

Updated with audio link: To listen to our interview with Dr. Phuong, click here: .

On the 9 November 2009 edition of Subversity, a KUCI public affairs program, we talk with a university president from Vietnam. Dr. Bui Tran Phuong is president of Hoa Sen University in Ho Chi Minh City and she has an interesting story to tell, one that is rarely heard publicly in Orange County, California.

When she was ten, his father, who was in the Viet Minh resistance movement, was arrested with her by the south Vietnamese police under then-Pres. Ngo Dinh Diem. She was released after a day, but her father spent several years in prison, enduring torture.

Thus began her political awakening, that brought her to Paris where she
joined in distributing agitprop resisting both the south Vietnamese
government and U.S. invaders to her homeland, from the political active and (at the time) leftist Vietnamese diaspora abroad. After graduating from Sorbonne, she returned to Saigon and took part in the liberation movement.

Today she is a university president and grappling with the challenge of improving higher education in Vietnam. In an era of globalization, at her university, juniors and seniors will soon be offered the choice to be taught in English. But her enduring passion remains history; she is hoping to organize an international network of scholars interested in women and war.

Dr. Phuong visited UC Irvine this past Thursday, 5 November 2009.

The show airs Monday 9 November 2009 from 9-10 a.m. on KUCI, 88.9 fm in Orange County, California, and is simulcast via kuci.org.

Podcasts will be available afterwards. Interviewing her is show host Daniel C. Tsang.

Le-Van Kiet's Dust of Life begins theatrical showings with benefit premiere; Coco Paris LLC distributes the film

Lee Ngo, Dan Tran and director Le-Van Kiet outside KUCI. Photo © Daniel C. Tsang 2009

Updated with audio link: To listen to the 2 November 2009 Subversity show, click here: .

Irvine -- For the November 2, 2009 edition of Subversity, a KUCI
public affairs program, at 9 a.m., we feature again Le-Van Kiet, the director of Dust of Life, a gritty, local film focusing on youth in Little Saigon in an era of police surveillance of Asian youth and gang activity. Dust of Life makes its theatrical premiere this coming Friday. He is joined by the distributors of his film, Dan Tran, President of Coco Paris LLC, and Lee Ngo, marketing consultant. (Clocks have changed in U.S. and Canada 2 November 2009, with "fall back" one hour giving sleepers one more hour of sleep!).

Cocco Paris LLC is is "a media distribution company based in Orange County, California. Our mission is to distribute Vietnamese media content and to ensure their accessibility. The plan to achieve these objectives begins with several initiatives of creating awareness about the film industries, and working closely with and engaging filmmakers and the community for innovative marketing solutions to bring the Vietnamese media content to the general mainstream audience.

"Further, the plan is to create an effective and efficient platform to reach a wider audience by including distribution of media content through different venues and other distribution channels worldwide."

The premiere Friday 6 November 2009, starting at 6 pm, at STAR
Performing Arts Center, 16149 Brookhurst St., Fountain Valley, CA
92708. is a benefit for two worthy causes: The Vietnamese American
Cancer Foundation and Project MotiVATe, which seeks to mentor
Vietnamese teenagers and motivate them to civic involvement. Regular screenings of Dust of Life continue November 7 at STAR Performing Arts Center. For more information, see:

www.cocoparisllc.com/premiere_tickets.

The film runs 90 minutes, in English and Vietnamese with English subtitles. Le-Van Kiet did initial research for his film at the Southeast Asian Archive at UC Irvine Libraries.

Our earlier interview with Le-Van Kiet on Dust of Life is: here.

Dust of Life web site and trailer.

We also interviewed him on another feature of his, Sad Fish, which was featured at the 2009 Vietnamese International Film Festival at UCIrvine.
Audio of that Subversity interview.

Historic Protest at UC Irvine

Video clip from OC Register.

Updated 3:15 PM 10/05/09: To listen to the 5 October 2009 Subversity show, click here: .

Irvine -- In our 5 October 2009 edition, KUCI's Subversity program looks back at the historic walkout rally and teach-ins at UCI on September 24, 2009, with Dennis Lopez and Raul Perez, from the Worker-Student Alliance at UC Irvine. We'll also play audio from the day's noon rally that drew hundreds in a show of unity among workers, students, faculty and staff.

Dennis Lopez, a graduate student in English, and Raul Perez, a graduate student in Sociology, have been major forces in bringing students and workers together to fight for in-sourcing and for social justice, and Lopez has been a guest on Subversity before.

The show airs 9-10 a.m. on KUCI, 88.9 FM and is simulcast via kuci.org.
Resources:

Facebook page for WSA.

WSA Web site

New University coverage of rally

Student Newspapers' interview with
UC President Yudoff