Moral Inversion and Party Invitations

I do not typically address politics or social etiquette in this blog, yet at the same time, I rarely refrain from doing so.

This weekend I attended a party. At one point I was accosted by an acquaintance, perhaps the last stalwart of Boston's loony-left who still engages me in a friendly manner. Note: I am using "loony" in reference to a tenuous grasp on reality, logical coherence, and facts combined with a tenacious grasp on the party line of the faction of one's choice: I regard the left's guiding principles of liberté, egalité, fraternité [et sororité] as valid.

This acquaintance stated that he had told a friend about the party, and that I had some past conflict with this friend and wanted me to behave myself and not cause trouble. Those of you who are unfamiliar with my reputation for starting altercations at parties needn't worry: There is no cause for such a reputation. So who was this tag-a-long?

This guy:

This is David Rolde protesting an April 26, 2009 staged reading of my play Total War. Notice that he's a Hamas supporter and that he opposes a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Also notice that Total War does not discuss any aspect of the middle east conflict beyond a single line of dialogue. I recounted this bizarre incident in greater detail:

The oddest thing about Rolde's "protest" was that Total War is not about any aspect of the Middle East conflict: it's about Jews and Catholics. However, this did not stop Rolde from shouting "Jewish murderers!" as nauseum in a whiny voice while partially blocking the footpath between Outpost 186 and the sidewalk. I suppose he takes his street performance anywhere there might be an event that could be termed "pro-Jewish."

Eventually, I decided to invite him inside to attend the reading. Predictably, since it would have required him to have sat down and quietly listen to actors reading dialogue for a couple of hours, he did not accept.

So why the personal animus directed towards the playwright?

Here's a photograph from an earlier encounter, October 7th, 2007 at a rally for the people of Darfur who have been been murdered and displaced by the Sudanese government and the militias it supports. The speakers were survivors of a number of the 20th century's most infamous genocides and mass murders, who despite there different ethnicities, religions, native-languages, and country of origin had come both to share their own experiences but also to speak out against the horrors in Darfur.

Rolde and company were not only holding up a crudely painted cartoon which seems to insinuate that Israel engineered the September 11th attack on the World Trade Center, but also heckling the speakers, many of whom had lost their entire families to genocide before coming to the United States, often calling these survivors "liars." They believed themselves to have come to protest "a racist pro-war rally against Sudan organized by the [...] Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston."

And so, here I was at a party where there was an expected party-crasher with a past of heckling genocide survivors, supporting terrorism, spreading hatred and conspiracy theories, yet, I was the one being asked to not cause any trouble.

"So, Dan, have you ever known me to start an altercation at a party?"

"No, but..."

"David does some evil stuff and you're asking me to behave myself?"

"Well, he has no self-control and you do."

"Then maybe you shouldn't be inviting people like that to parties, or think about the friends you keep."

"Sometimes he drives me places."

It seems to almost like an allegory or a satire or perhaps a farce.

In the end, Rolde never actually showed up.

Total War Picketed in Cambridge!

Before I recap the staged reading of Total War, a process that has helped me immensely as a playwright attempting to develop his first full-length play, I have have to share with you the performance that was going on outside of the venue.

The reading had attracted a protestor. Total War is primarily about Jewish-Catholic relations, and secondarily about Holocaust denial, it doesn't portray student journalists in a very kindly manner. So one might imagine that a reading, which has been mostly promoted through the blogosphere and social networking sites, were it to be protested at all, might be protested by, say, a traditionalist Catholic group, but instead we have:

Close-up. Slight photo manipulation to make signs more legible. Note Hamas-flag and rejection of a two-state solution to Israeli-Palestinian conflict on signs.

This is not the first time I have encountered this man, who, as one can see, practically wraps himself in the Palestinian flag. He first came to my attention when he and a group identified as Boston Anti-Zionist Action (BAZA - website hasn't been updated in over a year) were heckling a bill of genocide survivors who had come to speak at a rally in solidarity with the people of Darfur. I later discovered that his name was David Rolde, former Party Secretary of the Green-Rainbow Party of Massachusetts, and at least as of October 10, 2007, was still listed as serving on the GRP State Committee. (On October 29, 2007, Nathanael Fortune, Co-Chair of the GRP informed me, that Rolde had resigned from the party.)

The oddest thing about Rolde's "protest" was that Total War is not about any aspect of the Middle East conflict: it's about Jews and Catholics. However, this did not stop Rolde from shouting "Jewish murderers!" as nauseum in a whiny voice while partially blocking the footpath between Outpost 186 and the sidewalk. I suppose he takes his street performance anywhere there might be an event that could be termed "pro-Jewish."

Periodically as the actors were preparing, I would step out onto the patio of Outpost, unable to restrain a chuckle as I could not make any sense of why he was protesting Total War. Eventually, I called out to him something along the lines of:

"Excuse me, do you know what tonight's play is about?"

To which Rolde responded, "It's a play about Holocaust denial but you're denying the genocide in Palestine! You're a Holocaust denier!"

"I'm not sure you understand the meaning of the word 'genocide.'" said I, only to take on a more condescending tone, "You could, of course, use the word to mean anything you please just because you know is has emotional resonance, but that doesn't mean you know what you're talking about. Would you like to come inside and see the play and maybe learn something?"

Rolde scuffled a few feet down the sidewalk so that my view was largely occluded by the fence. He quieted down for a few minutes. I have no idea of he scared any potential audience members away, though he apparently had a verbal altercation with at least one late arrival.

Next: The reading itself, and what I learned.

Hecklers Abuse Genocide Survivors, October 7, 2007, Part 2

After a number of other blogs picked up the story I reported regarding the attempt to disrupt the October 7th Dream for Darfur rally at Boston City Hall Plaza, more information has turned up.

It appears that I was mistaken to assume that the group that came to heckle the genocide survivors who came to speak were only tangentially connected with either the national or state Green Party. I have since learned that they were more closely affiliated with the Massachusetts Green-Rainbow Party than I has suspectedd. I had assumed that the GRP was being unfairly dragged through the mud by Boston Anti-Zionist Action, as extremist fringe groups often falsely claim affiliations with more respectable groups. However as reported by Adam Holland, Solomonia, and Adam Gaffin of Universal Hub the "rotund bespectacled man" whom I photographed and spoke to at the rally was David Rolde. Rolde is not merely a registered member of the Green-Rainbow Party, but the former party secretary and a currently serving member of the GRP State Committee representing Middlesex County. The committee's job includes "[f]ormulating and disseminating statements of Party policy and platform".

I find it disturbing that an elected officer of any political party whose "Ten Key Values" includes nonviolence, respect for diversity, personal and global responsibility, would also have a leadership role in an organization whose actions include attempts harass and intimidate genocide survivors for talking about their experiences in a public forum, disseminate anti-Semitic propaganda on their website, and hold signs proclaiming support for Hezbollah, an armed paramilitary that initiated an unprovoked war in 2006 by attacking civilian targets in Israel.


Back in the 1990s, I was allied with the Greens, because they were talking electoral reform, feminism, and sustainable ecology and had Ralph Nader as their candidate during a period when Bill Clinton and Bob Dole's differences seemed slight. I started having some differences with the Greens on foreign policy when I found myself supporting Clinton's military interventions in Kosova to stop the massive human rights violations the Serbian government was visiting upon the Kosovar Albanians, and eventually drifted back to the Democrats when I noted a renewal of commitment to the social issues I cared about as well as with the necessity of having a progressive movement with strong foreign policy and counter-terrorism experience.

I have never been surprised by Republican politicians having connections with hate-groups (Trent Lott's connection with the CCC is an obvious example) however, I never expected virulent hateful bigot in the leadership of the Green Party.