The Kopkind Blog

‘Our End Is in Our Beginning’

Hearts and Minds with director Peter Davis, Saturday, October 13, 4 pm
The Latchis Theater, 50 Main Street, Brattleboro

Left Alive? with Alexander Cockburn and JoAnn Wypijewski, Sunday, October 14, 2 pm Late Brunch Tapas Feast at the Organ Barn at Guilford, 158 Kopkind Road

Ten years ago, loved ones of the late great radical writer and Guilford resident Andrew Kopkind embarked on creating a living memorial that would bring together independent journalists and activists, emphasizing critical political analysis and a vivid spirit of inquiry, community and joy in the struggle. A year of preparation was capped by the first annual fundraising Harvest Late Brunch, and since then Kopkind, the project, has held 13 summer sessions in Guilford, with 123 participants in residence from across the country and the world; it has put on 45 events, most of them free to the public, featuring a total of 48 nationally recognized speakers and filmmakers. This October, Kopkind launches its tenth programming year with a Harvest Festival featuring journalists whom Andy loved and respected, and whose work is a beacon for anyone striving to make sense of our world.

On Saturday, October 13, at 4 pm, Peter Davis will present his classic film of the Vietnam War, “Hearts and Minds”, a searing documentary of imperial hubris, which won the Oscar for 1974, has inspired countless filmmakers and remains strikingly relevant. When the film was released Vincent Canby of The New York Times called it “an extraordinary movie”, one less about the generals, presidents and advisers who prosecuted the war than “about the generations of attitudes, wishes and beliefs that these men represented. It’s about the power the country inherited” and the damage that power inflicts. As Davis wrote recently regarding the wars in Iraq and Vietnam, “We flew into both wars on the wings of lies [and] we have failed to understand those very elements – geography, ethnicity, religion, history – that we also got very wrong in Vietnam. When I reported from Iraq in 2003, these truths were so self-evident that a fully rational response would have had to include both laughter and tears.” The screening, at the Latchis Theater on Main Street in Brattleboro, will be followed by a discussion on Vietnam and Iraq, lessons learned and forgotten.

On Sunday, October 14, at 2 pm, Alexander Cockburn, “the most gifted polemicist writing in English”, says the London Times Literary Supplement , co-editor of CounterPunch and a speaker who has been dazzling audiences from Portland to Paris to Mumbai, will appear at The Organ Barn at Guilford as the featured guest at the Harvest Late Brunch tapas feast. He will be in conversation with JoAnn Wypijewski, president of the Kopkind board, who was Cockburn and Kopkind’s colleague for many years at The Nation (where Cockburn writes a regular column) and who edited the posthumous anthology of Andy’s work, The Thirty Years’ Wars: Dispatches and Diversions of a Radical Journalist, 1965-1994. The title of the talk, “Left Alive?”, reflects the political phenomenon of the day: the ruling groups having lost legitimacy to provide social security in the broadest sense; the people contemptuous of authority but largely unrebellious; the old movements tired, the new ones tentative or waiting to be born. And yet everywhere people measure the world as it is against a world of their desires and dream of making their own histories. Where are those being written today? As the empire heads for the rocks, where do we find the vital centers of political energy, of rage and perhaps then of a bracing hope?

“Andy liked to say, ‘Our end is in our beginning’, meaning first causes and history and intentions, what you imagine or fail to imagine, all these things matter – whether in politics or writing or … cooking a great meal”, said John Scagliotti, Andy Kopkind’s longtime companion and the administrator of Kopkind. “We started this project because we wanted to keep Andy’s spirit alive, and in our small way to keep the progressive community alive too, because people need the freedom to imagine a better world, and they need the time to think and debate and risk an idea. So this is our tenth Harvest festival, and we’re celebrating where we’ve come from and where we’re heading, and we’re thrilled to have with us Andy’s dear friends, Peter Davis, Alexander Cockburn and JoAnn Wypijewski, who are brilliant and daring.”

Tickets for “Hearts and Minds” are $12 and may be reserved in advance. Tickets for the Harvest Late Brunch are $30 and must be reserved. The event on Sunday will begin with a short tribute to Grace Paley, who was the Harvest speaker in 2002 and died earlier this year. For reservations or for more information, contact John Scagliotti at john@afterstonewall.com or 802.254.4859.

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