Robert Rosen

 

Last week's post about muralist Jorge Manjarrez went over so well on social media, for the holidays I'm posting another photo of Jorge's T-shirts. The two T-shirts seen here, with Robert Smith of The Cure printed directly on the shirt, and Jim Morrison as the King of Hearts printed on plastic and fused to the shirt, are only two examples of the wide variety of work Jorge does. He's best known for painting murals on Mexico City's subway stations, but also does illustrations for major Mexican newspapers and magazines, and has a line of playing cards illustrated with portraits of 54 (two jokers) different musicians and bands.

 

Julio Malone and I are collaborating with Jorge on turning our screenplay, The Diaries of Juan Dolio, into a graphic novel. This is the beginning of not only a beautiful partnership but what I think will be a most interesting collaboration.

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All my books are available on Amazon, all other online bookstores, and at your local brick-and-mortar bookstore.

 

I invite you to join me on Facebook or follow me on Instagram and Threads.

 

Jorge Manjarrez paints murals on the walls of Mexico City's subway stations. This is an official job, not graffiti. He also does illustrations for major Mexican newspapers and magazines; has a line of T-shirts featuring his portraits of rock stars, like the one above; and created a deck of playing cards, also illustrated with musicians' portraits. (You can see more of his work on Facebook.)

 

Jorge was recently in New York to paint a mural on the wall of a Mexican restaurant in Yonkers. Roberto Ponce, my editor at Proceso magazine, asked me to meet Jorge—because he's interested in turning a screenplay I wrote many years ago, in English and Spanish, with Julio Malone, into a graphic novel. The screenplay, The Diaries of Juan Dolio, was Roberto's idea. He thought he could get it produced in Mexico. The story is a fictional outgrowth of my book Nowhere Man: The Final Days of John Lennon.

 

In the screenplay, Juan Dolio is a diary-keeping Mexican rock superstar living in New York City. When he's murdered by an insane fan, his personal assistant, Luke, liberates the diaries, and with Dolio's widow's security thugs in hot pursuit, makes a run for the Mexican border intent on returning the diaries to the Mexican people as part of their cultural heritage.

 

Well, Jorge made it back to Mexico with the screenplay, and I look forward to sharing some of his illustrations for The Diaries of Juan Dolio, sooner or later to be a graphic novel.

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All my books are available on Amazon, all other online bookstores, and at your local brick-and-mortar bookstore.

 

I invite you to join me on Facebook or follow me on Instagram or Threads.

 

The events of November 5 reminded me of another election 52 years ago. The Republican candidate, Richard Nixon, running for a second term, was arguably more distasteful than the current president-elect. And the Democratic candidate, George McGovern, running to end the war in Vietnam, was doomed to lose, according to every poll. A scene in the book I'm working on, about a radical, antiwar student newspaper, OP, at the the City College of New York, takes place Election Day, 1972.

 

The reference to Geraldo Rivera needs some explanation. In 1972, Rivera was a superstar, quasi-hippie TV reporter who came to City College to give a speech in support of McGovern. He assured the crowd that McGovern was going to win.

 

Watergate by this time had already begun to consume Nixon. Yet the wise people of America voted for him anyway, in overwhelming numbers. But 18 months later the scandal would drive Nixon from the White House.

 

The scene below is a reminder of how quickly things can change. It's from Chapter 14, tentatively titled either "Rebuild Your Heads Like a Bombed-Out City" or "Hope Is the Only Illusion," both titles based on quotes from a speech Reverend Daniel Berrigan gave at City College just before the election.

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I'm thrilled to pull the lever for George McGovern, voting for the first time in an election that matters—even though I understand like everyone (with the possible exception of Geraldo Rivera) that his chances are nil or close to it. Yet part of me continues to cling to the illusion of hope.

 

Naomi and I watch the election returns dribble in, and as the inevitable creeps closer I go home around midnight to witness the bitter end with my stoic mother, a nominal Democrat who voted for McGovern, and my law-and-order-Republican father.

 

"Who'd you vote for?" I ask him.

 

"That's my business," he says.

 

The outcome's worse than anyone predicted. Only Massachusetts and the District of Colombia go for McGovern. In the other 49 states it's a Nixon massacre. He finishes with 520 electoral votes and 60.7 percent of the popular vote, more than any Republican presidential candidate in history. The final score: Nixon, 47 million; McGovern, 29 million.

 

I sit in front of the TV imagining the despair of Steve and my other OP colleagues who'd fought so hard for so long for anything but this. Peace is not at hand or around the corner or anyplace else nearby. The "light at the end of the tunnel" is an oncoming train. The war might indeed go on for the rest of my life, and I know that even with my golden draft-lottery number I better find a way to stay in college, forever if possible, because if the war's still ongoing in, say, 1984 (to pick a year at random), the government could just end the lottery and draft everybody who's upright and breathing.

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All my books are available on Amazon, all other online bookstores, and at your local brick-and-mortar bookstore.

 

I invite you to join me on Facebook or follow me on X, Instagram, or Threads.

 

For several years I've been working on a book about my experiences at a radical student newspaper, Observation Post, at the City College of New York, in the 1970s. I was a member of the first open admissions class, and I wouldn't have gotten into City if not for open admissions. My high school average and SAT scores weren't good enough for the "Harvard of the Proletariat." But after this experiment in higher education was implemented in September 1970, all you needed to get into CCNY was to graduate in the top half of your high school class. That much I'd done.

 

Open admissions wasn't meant for underachieving middle-class white kids. The student uprising that shut down City in the spring of 1969 came about because the school, in the middle of Harlem, was 97 percent white. The Black and Puerto Rican protest leaders wanted the student body to reflect the makeup of the neighborhood and New York City's public high schools.

 

Open admissions was a direct result of the protests.

 

The Five Demands, directed by Greta Schiller and Andrea Weiss, is the story of the uprising told from a very different perspective than I tell it in a chapter titled "How I Got Into the Harvard of the Proletariat." In the spring of 1969 I had no idea what was going on at City College. But my free education, especially my tenure on Observation Post, was life-changing. That's why I spend my days writing about it, trying to make sense of what I now realize was a miracle.

 

You can stream The Five Demands here.

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All my books are available on Amazon, all other online bookstores, and at your local brick-and-mortar bookstore.

 

I invite you to join me on Facebook or follow me on X, Instagram, or Threads.