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Moe FonerMoe Foner
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Session:         Page of 592

Foner:

Because it's South Africa, see. But I was saying you could have done “We Are the World” for South Africa.

Q:

The consciousness of the musicians was different. Steve VanSandt, who comes out of Springsteen's band and organized Sun City, he consciously, for instance, chose musicians from every different kind of music. He said, “We have to break down apartheid in music.” So he has light rock and roll, country singers, blues singers, rap singers. So there's a much higher level of consciousness.

Foner:

But look at the other thing. You have the farm thing -- you know what I'm thinking of. When you had the unusual thing of the Martin Luther King show -- it was a two hour spectacular that Stevie Wonder put his imprint on -- you had a lot of good stuff in there, a lot of junk in there. But it was, generally speaking, a very good thing. You know on their terms, on television's terms -- although he added something to it. So things can be done.

You can't do it on labor because labor doesn't have that kind of, nobody agrees that they are anything. See they're not an issue, they're not a cause. P9 is a cause, see, that's the thing.

Q:

It's like the stuff Springsteen has done for that OCAW local in Freehold.

Foner:

See I think it still could be done, and it could. Bread and Roses won't happen again in the form it took place. Nothing happens that way. But what our experience is -- and I think the tape is valid for that reason, to put down those experiences -- at some time in the future will serve as the basis for some other developments in some shape or firm. That's what it is. You know, you don't repeat anything the same way, but you learn from what you did before.

Having said that, what? Let me see if I can wrap up a couple of things.

The fact that we had a couple of other exhibitions that moved around the country and are big, I'll just mention them. A very fine exhibition called “Social Concern and Urban Realism,” it's paintings of the 1930s. You can tell from the title -- Patricia Hills was the curator of it. She was a member of the advisory board, she was the head of the Boston University Museum and is a BU professor of art history. She's not old. She did a book on Alice Neel. Her sympathies are very clear. But in order to get an exhibition like that approved by the endowment, it was called “Social Concern and Urban Realism -- Paintings of the 1930s.” Once she got it approved she went and selected -- she knew what was going to be in it, it just had that hokey title. Here the American





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