Subject: "Memorial for John (Tito) Gerassi at the Brecht Forum in New York City : Sunday, December 2, 2012, at 14h."

Sunday
25 November 2012
Grenoble, France

Dear Colleagues and Friends of CEIMSA,

Below is an invitation to attend the Memorial for John Gerassi, to be held in New York next Sunday afternoon. If you are not familiar with the works of Gerassi, now is the opportunity to get to know about the life of this outstanding 20th-century revolutionary teacher and writer, who remained active until his death this year at the age of 81.

(please visit the Internet site below)

John Gerassi

 

Sincerely,
Francis Feeley
Professor of American Studies
University of Grenoble-3
Director of Research
University of Paris-Nanterre
Center for the Advanced Study of American Institutions and Social Movements
The University of California-San Diego
http://dimension.ucsd.edu/CEIMSA-IN-EXILE/

 

MEMORIAL MEETING for JOHN (TITO) GERASSI (1931 – 2012)
DATE – Dec. 2 (Sunday), 2012   /   TIME – 2:00 – 5:00 PM
PLACE - BRECHT FORUM (451 West St. – Between Bank and Bethune Sts. –
Just South of 12th St. on the West Side Highway, NYC)

 

Tito’s father was a Turkish Jew, who became a philosopher and friend of Heidegger’s in Germany in the 1920s, a painter and friend of Sartre’s and Picasso’s in France in the early 1930s, a general in the Republican army during the Spanish Civil War, the Ambassador from the Dominican Republic in France (handing out exit visas to thousands of Jews) just before the Nazi invasion, and a spy for the United States in Spain during W.W. II, before settling into a life after the war as a painter in New York. So Tito, naturally, ran away from home at the age of 15, became a juvenile delinquent and ran numbers for the mob - while continuing to attend the French Lycee (high school) – earning him a scholarship to Columbia University.
                       
From such beginnings, Tito went on to become  a journalist (“Time”, “Newsweek” and the “New York Times” – yes, really); a soldier (Korean War); a card shark; the author of a dozen books (including the best selling Great Fear in Latin America and two books, one being the official biography, on Sartre), a couple of plays and novels, one screenplay and innumerable articles, especially on the many faces of imperialism; an active as well as a supportive revolutionary on three continents; a jailbird - briefly (resulting from his participation in a strike at San Francisco State College); a friend of Sartre, de Beauvoir, Marcuse, Foucault, Che, Fidel, Garcia Marquez, George Jackson, Stokely Carmichael, Abbie Hoffman, David Dellinger, Lenny Weinglass, and many other of our best thinkers and fighters for a better world; a professor of politics at the University of Paris (Vincennes), the London School of Economics (where he received his doctorate), San Francisco State College, University of California – Irvine, Bard College, and, for the last three decades, Queens College – CUNY; and – as attested to by thousands of his students - one of the most inspired and inspiring teachers of our time.

SPEAKERS at the memorial meeting will include TITO (on tape), MICHAEL SMITH (radical lawyer), BERTELL OLLMAN (NYU professor of politics), JULIE RUBIN (former organizer of the Left Forum), TONY MONCHINSKI (author / editor of Unrepentant Radical Educator, a book on Tito with a good sampling of his writings, and a former student of Tito’s), MITCHEL COHEN (anarcho-green activist, essayist and poet), a few other close friends and students of Tito’s ….and anyone else in the audience who would like to share their thoughts and memories of this great force of nature whose future life now depends on what his words and example have helped so many of us to become and to do, and to continue doing until our side finally wins.
                        PLEASE SHARE THIS ANNOUNCEMENT WITH THOSE ON YOUR EMAIL LISTS
AND OTHERS WHO MAY (OR SHOULD) BE INTERESTED

                                                                From Bertell Ollman and Michael Smith