Chet Tchozewski is an environmental activist, social entrepreneur and founder of the RTC Impact Fund and the Global Greengrants Fund. He has served on the boards of the Chino Cienega Foundation, the Voqal Fund, the Environmental Grantmakers Association, and many others.

Son of a mechanic and a librarian with roots in the Texas Hill Country and the Mississippi Delta, Gary Phillips must keep writing to forestall his appointment at the crossroads. He has written comics, novels, short stories, and The Washington Post named his novel One-Shot Harry one of the best mysteries of 2022. He was also a staff writer and co-producer on Snowfall, streaming on Hulu, about crack and the CIA in 1980s South Central where he grew up.

Go directly to our a 3-Part Interview with Len Chandler.

Len Chandler was born and grew up in Akron, Ohio. Pivotal early influences included his step mother and his grandmother, both of whom introduced him early on to the joys of music. His father was a jazz musician, and music curriculum in the schools he attended quickly became Len’s primary educational interest.

The first instrument he played was a recorder, but he quickly graduated to oboe. From his early training, when his Step-Mother would buy him opera librettos and take him to opera local productions, his emphasis in music was classical in nature. Once he was a teenager, he started writing and singing little songs to impress the girls.

Continue on to the complete interview…

Carol Wells is an American arts educator and activist who co-founded the Center for the Study of Political Graphics in Los Angeles, California.

(View our new 6-part interview here)

Michael Letwin is a lawyer and public defender whose early political experiences included being part of a high school collective that produced a radical newspaper against the Vietnam War, The Red Tide. His parents and grand parents were politically active leftists. His grandparents on both sides of his family were in the Russian Revolution. Thanks to Bob Zaugh for introducing us.

View The Red Tide (1971-1981) archive here.

More information about Michael Letwin and his family history:

Michael Z. Letwin
Alita Zurav Letwin (1932-2020)
Leon Letwin (1929-2015)
Zurav

At the Gary Tyler Birthday on Sunday, although I wanted to tell the story of The Red Tide, The Peace Press, Jan and Jerry's Home as ground zero for social change, and Liberty Hill, I knew that it would add too many words to the program. I told the audience that I would post the story on Facebook and stick strictly to thank you's for those who have help Gary Tyler over the years.

As the story of what happened relating to Gary Tyler is so unique I put it out to you as a lesson on the importance of people  staying connected over years, over decades, to make important things happen.

Click on this link to read the full story of how we linked up to help Gary Tyler…

As a part of our work throughout the last thirty years, we often did videos for social justice groups who were fund raising. One group we work with often was Physicians for Social Responsibility especially under the auspices of Jonathan Parfrey. This video highlights the philanthropy of Suzy and Wally Marks, who were foremost in our community of activists/philanthropists and who supported numerous organizations with their donations. This video was done for PSR when they honored Suzy and Wally at their annual event. To this day, Suzy is carrying on the legacy she and Wally built.

In the early 1980's we were moved by the number of Catholic religious - nuns, priests and bishops - who were getting involved in feminist politics, the refugee crisis in Central America and/or the burgeoning anti-nuclear movement.

We started what we intended to be a feature length documentary. This section of footage gives a sense of what we were trying to explore with the film. It was a very controversial topic and there was a lot of opposition from more traditional parts of the Catholic Church.

We found it impossible to sustain the funding for the film which we were raising from individuals who championed this activism.

We added a new section called L.A. RESISTANCE COLLECTION documenting the young Americans in the Los Angeles area who chose to resist the Vietnam War, and openly refuse military service, risking prison to end the horrors of war.

Many of the current generation are not aware of the war in Vietnam and they do not know of The Resistance.

View interviews, panel discussions, the film trailer, clips from the and access the feature length documentary film The Boys Who Said NO!

View the new
L.A. RESISTANCE COLLECTION

Twenty years after the civil unrest, Michele Prichard videotaped a series of interviews as background research for “LA Rising: the 1992 Civil Unrest, the Arc of Social Justice Organizing, and the Lessons for Today’s Movement Building” co-authored with Manuel Pastor of USC.

The collection includes interviews with Karen Bass, Anthony Thigpenn, Marqueece Harris-Dawson, Kent Wong, Victor Narro and Maria Elena Durazo, to name a few. Each interview explores the theory, practice and lessons learned by these leaders in social change to chart a way forward for progressive L.A.

We are proud to host this important collection of interviews so they can be watched, analyzed, and used by journalists, filmmakers, and activists to further enhance the story of progressive Los Angeles.

View the new
L.A. RISING COLLECTION

The Reverend James Lawson has died at the age of 95. Lawson was a godfather of the civil rights movement whom Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once called the “the leading theorist and strategist of nonviolence in the world.”
-DemocracyNow 6.11.24

A TRIBUTE TO
SARAH PILLSBURY AND LIBERTY HILL

LIBERTY HILL
UPTON SINCLAIR AWARD SPEECHES

“This is an amazing collection that will deepen our understanding of the past and inform our activism of the future. In one word: Wow!”
-Manuel Pastor
Director, USC Equity Research Institute

"No history is mute. No matter how much they own it, break it, and lie about it, human history refuses to shut its mouth. Despite deafness and ignorance, the time that was ticks inside the time that is."
- Eduardo Galeano

The Activist Video Archive is proud to be a research resource for Mike Davis and Jon Wiener’s new book:

SET THE NIGHT ON FIRE: L.A. IN THE SIXTIES

Read more about Mike Davis in Gustavo Arellano’s 7/22/22 LA Times Column

Norman Lear (1922-2023)

Peg Yorkin (1927-2023)

Daniel Ellsberg (1931-2023)

Reverend Al Cohen

Ed Asner (1929-2021)

Ed Pearl (1932-2021)