Activist and documentary filmmaker's archives catalogued

Done at last! -- Activist and documentarian Trella Laughlin rejoices on the steps of the Austin History Center. Laughlin spent several weeks in the spring in Austin, Texas, cataloguing the Center's vast collection of documentary work she created between 1980 and 1997 for causes ranging from women's advocacy issues to anti-government resistance in El Salvador, Nicaragua and other hotspots around the globe. Photo Submitted

AUSTIN, TEXAS -- A life's work is seldom gathered in one place, and rarely would such work be important to hundreds of people scattered all over the world.

  In Trella Laughlin's case, all the above is true. For almost 20 years, Laughlin travelled the globe from Bosnia to Nicaragua and elsewhere, documenting human injustice for the the Foundation for a Compassionate Society and chronicling the efforts of men and women to right those injustices.

  In February and March, Laughlin spent weeks in Austin, Texas to archive the vast collection of videotapes of her shows held at the Austin History Center. The archiving was funded by a grant from the Eastman Foundation.

  Now that a catalogue of the holdings has been completed, it will be possible to digitalize the hundreds of hours of footage, recorded on now-obsolete video formats.

¡Revolution!

  Laughlin was in El Salvador during the uprising of the Farabundo Mart' National Liberation Front. The FMLN is a political party in El Salvador, formerly a revolutionary guerrilla organization that organized to overthrow the U.S.-backed military dictator who ruled the country. The FMLN is now one of the two major political parties of the country.

  "I interviewed women commandantes in the FMLN and taught them how to use video equipment to record their own grass-roots efforts and struggles toward liberation," Laughlin said.

  "I saw a mother who had walked hundreds of miles, with her baby in her arms, to participate. What hardships people go through to have dignity in their lives."

Origins

  Trella Laughlin was born in Mississippi and grew up in her grandmother's boardinghouse in Jackson.

  "My mother Trella Mae died when I was eight months old, and I was raised by a mixed-race nanny, Daisy," Laughlin said. "I didn't like the way she was treated and heard scary stories of what happened to black people, and I dearly loved her.

  "I became an anti-racist, then realized I liked girls, then became a feminist. My radicalism I owe to the United States Air Force."

  After graduate school at the University of Texas, Laughlin taught English literature for the University of Maryland through a program that offered classes abroad to U.S. military forces.

  "I could not believe the arrogance of Americans and the absolute delight the military took in warmongering," Laughlin said. "Remember that was during the Viet Nam war. So I quit my cushy job and hitchhiked to North Africa, camping out with the excommunicated son of the head of NATO forces."

  Laughlin described the enlisted military she worked with as "just ordinary folks trying to get a skill, a job, sent overseas by rich, old white men."

  But she said the officers were "elitist, racist, and mostly drunk."

  She said, however, it was the American disdain she experienced for other countries, "cultures other than WASP," that made her ashamed.

  "Not to mention the corruption and waste of money I saw."

Travels and Agent Orange

  Later, Laughlin played in an all-women's country western band in Austin, then moved to the South Fork of the Little Red River in central Arkansas "to live in an Army mess tent without electricity or vehicle, trying to live simply with nature."

  This experiment ended when Laughlin and others were sprayed out of the valley by 2,4,5-T, a component of Agent Orange which Laughlin describes as "pushed on Arkansas farmers as a good way to clear hardwood forests for cattle pasture."

  Laughlin described the herbicide as highly toxic and added many of her friends who were exposed to it have since died from cancer.

  "I had ovarian cancer myself," she added.

  Eventually, Laughlin settled back in Austin, teaching at Austin Community College.

Enter the KKK

  "I taught Journalism, questioning, and 'taking it to the streets,'" Laughlin said with a laugh. "I also joined an anti-racist group of white people who confronted the Ku Klux Klan. I got threatened, spit on, beat up, brakelines cut, my friends harassed by the FBI, phone tapped, mail opened, and house broken into."

  She said these experiences either help radicalize a person or frighten them away, and, in her case, it radicalized her.

  Laughlin's M.A. from Stanford University was in Communications and Journalism, but her training in video work came from classes she took at Austin Community Television in camera work, editing, special effects, lighting, audio and multi-cam production.

  "I had many talented friends in public access TV who shared their skills with me," she said.

The Show

  "Let the People Speak" was the name of Laughlin's weekly show, produced in Austin and shown there as well as in San Francisco, Washington, D.C. and elsewhere.

  The show began in 1980, when Laughlin and other protesters, countering the Klan's efforts to recruit across Texas, demonstrated at every Klan appearance.

  Laughlin video-recorded and broadcast the results.

  "At one event I accidentally got onto the wrong bus," Laughlin said. "It was the Klan bus. They knew who I was, too. I felt like I was surrounded by mountain rattlers. There's a certain risk that goes with being a 'left' journalist."

Fifty years of tyranny

  Laughlin was in Managua, the capital of Nicaragua, the night before the Sandanista revolution.

  The Sandanistas were a revolutionary group which overthrew the rule of the dictatorial Somoza regime, which had held power for 50 years, then went on to engage in a long struggle against the U.S.-backed Contras.

  "The Somozas, backed by the U.S., had ruled the country for half a century," Laughlin said. "When they were losing to the Sandanistas, the CIA sent a plane. Somoza had stolen millions from the World Health Organization and fled to Miami.

  "He had actually pocketed money for medicine, for polio vaccines, and substituted red dye in the sugar cubes in place of the vaccine. There is a whole generation of people there of a certain age who suffer from having had polio as a result of that red dye."

  While in Nicaragua, Laughlin interviewed the Sandanistas, who overthrew the Somoza regime, covering their literacy campaign "Each One: Teach One," as well as women's health initiatives and the art and culture of the revolution.

  "I also recorded the damage and death caused by the contras who were trained and paid for by our U.S. government," she added.

The Foundation for a Compassionate Society

  At first, Laughlin said, she paid for her own videotapes and "hit up friends" for money to continue.

  She also got several grants from the Live Oak Foundation.

  In the mid-1980s, Laughlin met Genevieve Vaughan, a native Texan heiress who donated her millions for social change.

  "She is an extraordinarily brilliant woman who puts her money where her mouth is," Laughlin said.

  Vaughan started the Foundation for a Compassionate Society, an assortment of women from all backgrounds and cultures whose mission was to carry out programs for social change in the U.S. and abroad, working with other people in progressive organizations.

Protesting Columbus

  Over the next decade, the Foundation for a Compassionate Society sponsored Laughlin's hour-long weekly programs of interviews with activists from many areas who were involved with a variety of issues, using Austin, Texas public access television.

  "We recorded the American Indian Movement's protest of the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria being brought to Corpus Christi to glorify colonialism and Columbus," Laughlin said, "as well as the Anishinabe of Minnesota and the Indigenous Women's Network, and the the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Gaza and the occupied territory."

One-woman TV crew

  In those pre-digital days, Laughlin traveled with two huge, blue anvil cases full of electronic equipment.

  "The case must have weighed 600 pounds," Laughlin said. "I exaggerate, but lugging heavy equipment around the world gave me lopsided shoulders and a twisted back. I was a one-woman crew."

  Laughlin provided video coverage of conferences and special events put on by the Foundation and by other organizations.

  Due to the pace of her work, Laughlin explained she often didn't get to absorb the content of what she was filming until later, during editing.

  She said when she did absorb the events she'd recorded, the impact was often overwhelming.

  "When the Committee of the Mothers of the Disappeared in El Salvador came to Austin for a benefit, they wanted to drink beer and dance. I was astonished at their strength, that they could suffer through the murder and torture of their families, yet be strong enough to carry on with their lives, to enjoy their lives, to be the ones able to come to me and say 'Cheer up.'"

[Editor's note: this is the first part of a two-part series.]