[act-ma] Thursday 1/17: "Patrice Lumumba" - Free UPandOUT film screening ["the most important assassination of the 20th century]

[pf soto]

  <http://rule19.org/download-film/film-130117-patrice-lumumba.pdf>/*Patrice
  Lumumba*/

*/"the most important assassination of the 20th century/**"*
~ Ludo De Witte, the Belgian author of the best book on this crime: 
*_The Assassination of Lumumba_*
__


Showing Thursday, January 17, in Cambridge [please download distribute & 
flyer <http://rule19.org/download-film/film-130117-patrice-lumumba.pdf>]

Patrice Lumumba, the first legally elected prime minister of the 
Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), was assassinated 52 years ago, 
on 17 January, 1961. This heinous crime was a culmination of 2 
inter-related assassination plots by American and Belgian governments, 
which used Congolese accomplices and a Belgian execution squad to carry 
out the deed.

This docudrama tells the true story of Lumumba's rise to power and 
brutal assassination. Using newly discovered historical evidence, 
Haitian-born and later Congo-raised writer and director *Raoul Peck** 
renders an emotional and tautly woven account of this man with a flair 
for oratory and an uncompromising belief in the capacity of his homeland 
to build a prosperous nation independent of its former Belgium overlords.

Lumumba is led to slaughter by commercial and political interests in 
Belgium, the US, and the international community -- where political 
entities, captains of commerce, and the military dovetail in their quest 
for economic and political hegemony.

    [****Raoul Peck* is an award-winning Haitian filmmaker, of both
    documentary and feature films, and a political activist. Briefly, in
    the 1990s, he was Haiti's Minister of Culture]

"/I had lunched with Larry Devlin***, my former patron and the famous 
eminence grise of the Congo program of the early sixties. After two long 
tours in the Congo, where he had shuffled new governments like cards, 
finally settling on Mobutu as president, Devlin had been put in charge 
of the agency's paramilitary program in Laos./"  ~John Stockwell, CIA agent

    *[***Larry Devli*n, stationed for many years in Africa, was CIA
    Station Chief in the Democratic Republic of the Congo [DRC] when
    Lumumba was assassinated.]

"/Alternatives for dealing with 'the problem' were considered, among 
them poison (a supply was sent to the CIA station chief in 
Leopoldville), a high-powered rifle, and free-lance hit men. But it 
proved hard to get close enough to Lumumba to use these, so, instead, 
the CIA supported anti-Lumumba elements within the factionalized Congo 
government./"     ~ Eric Hochschild, author King Leopold's Ghost_
_


See excerpt: Lumuba independence day speech 
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGdf7wX-E7g>

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGdf7wX-E7g>


*When/where*
doors open 6:40; film starts promptly 7pm
243 Broadway, Cambridge - corner of Broadway and Windsor,
entrance on Windsor
rule19.org/videos <http://rule19.org/videos>

Please join us for a stimulating night out; bring your friends!
*free film, free refreshments, & free door prizes.**
**[donations are encouraged]*

"/You can't legislate good will - that comes through education/." ~ 
Malcolm X

*UPandOUT film series* - see rule19.org/videos <http://rule19.org/videos>

Why should YOU care? It's YOUR money that pays for US/Israeli wars - on 
Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Palestine, Libya. Syria, Iran, So America, etc 
etc - for billionaire bailouts, for ever more ubiquitous US prisons, for 
the loss of liberty and civil rights...


*Dedicated to the memory and spirit of Patrice Emery Lumumba*
(2 July 1925  -- 17 January 1961)

/The soldiers stole you and two others
into the back of a truck
in the middle of the night
put you in a bag tied up your beaten bloody body with rope
sweating as they drove you into the middle of the country
Katanga Province, Africa
in a far off field
where there were no lights
where you could not see anything
they assassinated you and two ministers Okito and Mpolo

they attacked to kill you
they ripped apart your body
scattering it bone by bone across the fields
so that the blood mixed with the earth
they hid you and they hid their murder of you
they thought that by doing this your spirit would break
they thought that by doing this your memory would be broken

but a week before the killing you had written to your wife,
“I prefer to die with my head unbowed, my faith unshakable,
and with profound trust in the destiny of my country.”

Patrice Lumumba – born in the village of Onalua in Kasai province,
the Congo
you called for an independent country in those stuffy halls
where people taunted you with their viciousness
you were not afraid to speak the truth
because you knew that a village, a country, perhaps even
the world would remember your words

the night knows your secrets
the way you envisioned a united Africa
Lumumba
something about your spirit moves me
across these many years
in a land far away
something about your very presence on this earth moves
me to tears
just as your mother stood outside her small house
as the sky was changing to dusk
stood crying into hands which could not stop the tears
from falling, dripping onto the earth
so that a river of tears fell at her feet

Lumumba
Lumumba
your name should become a chant for all free thinking people
you who longed for corruption-free politics
who took pride in every step you walked
for a free independent Congo you said
and those words became a sacred chant for your people

they wanted your name to be forgotten
they wanted your warrior feeling to be cast out
they wanted to stamp on your vision
but it is not forgotten Lumumba
Lumumba
your mother weeping into her cupped hands
the tears filling her face her neck her body
Lumumba
your name is not erased from our history books
but brought back to life
and lived…
/
Copyright 2011 ~ Dorothy Johnson-Laird



















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