(upbeat music) - Hi everyone, I'm Steve Adubato.

Recently my colleague Jacqui Tricarico and I traveled with our team to do a series of interviews down at the 2024 New Jersey Education Association Convention Annual convention.

We talked to educators, educational administrators, authors, poets, people engaged in a whole range of activities, impacting our kids, impacting our schools in the world of education.

Here now are those conversations.

Jacqui, myself and some really interesting people in AC.

One of the many fascinating people who have come here to speak, to engage with educators from across the state is Robert Shetterly, who is an artist, activist, and he is an artist who is featured in the portrait series, it's a documentary, "Americans Who Tell The Truth."

Robert, great to have you with us.

- Thank you very much.

Wonderful to be here.

- Help us understand this, "Americans Who Tell The Truth," it's a portrait series of your work.

- Right.

- Who were these Americans and what truth are they telling?

- 'm a self-taught artist, and I live on the coast of Maine.

I was a surrealist years ago.

But in the run up to the Iraq War, I was so distressed, enraged, full of grief about the country was doing this thing based on lies.

- Weapons of mass destruction.

- Weapons of mass destruction, the connections with al-Qaeda.

None of that stuff was true.

And I was thinking, what can I do at this moment to feel less angry, less enraged, and less alienated from this country?

And I thought, why don't I surround myself with people who make me feel good, you know, and about who we are and what we believe in?

And I started painting people who, originally, they were sort of 19th century icons.

You know, Frederick Douglas, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Jane Adams, Mother Jones, Susan B. Anthony.

- Disproportionately, other than Susan B. Anthony, disproportionately African Americans?

- No, but there's an interesting thing there is because, I mean, the way that we have reconnected with our values, it's usually by the people who've been marginalized, who've been left out, you know, who have to fight for it.

So often you see that, you know, the alienated groups are the ones who are represented in the people who've actually worked the hardest to make us live in more direct honesty with our own values about equality, justice, freedom, you know, for everybody, not just for rich white folks, you know?

- And you're here at the convention, because?

- Well, we were invited here to, you know, try to talk to teachers about using what we do.

Taking the images and the stories into their classrooms to get kids more engaged.

I mean, I don't think kids today are taught what their responsibility is.

You know, we have rights, but we don't know if they'll teach the responsibilities.

- Yeah, they don't find it on TikTok.

- And we can't have those rights unless we assume the responsibilities.

- So, you started out with 50 portraits, excuse me, 260, if I'm not mistaken right now.

- Right.

- You're an artist, self-taught, you said?

But, you're clearly an activist.

You care deeply.

I would be remiss if I did not ask you as we tape this just a few days after a historic, significant presidential election, Congress, both Houses, as well, for the people you feature in "Americans Who Tell The Truth," what truth was told in that election to you?

- Well, that truth was the opposite of what I believe in, and I think that probably every person I've ever painted would believe in.

I mean, this is a truth about, I mean, what's happening in our country right now is about exclusion.

It's about inequality.

It's about separation between people.

It's about undermining what might be the common cause and the common good.

I mean, it's everything that's antithetical to how we solve problems by coming together as people, seeing each other as equals, and then figuring out a way to solve the problems.

And we can't solve the problems unless we name what the truth of the problem is.

I mean, we can fiddle around with symptoms, which is mostly what we do anyway.

But until we go to the, you know, the heart of the problem, you know, like climate change, the most urgent problem we're facing, we're gonna have a new administration that calls it a hoax.

So, I mean.

- So, here's what I'm curious about, your film coming out now, or this film, right, you're smiling, at this time, significant, isn't it?

- It is significant.

- [Steve] Because?

- I mean, it's significant because it's trying to say, if you really want to know what the heart of the matter is here, and how we have to stand in relationship to any kind of injustice, the lengths we have to go to organize, to commit civil disobedience, to stand up as people.

You know, William Sloane Coffin, who was one of the people I painted, he used to be the pastor.

- Tell everyone who that is.

- William Sloane Coffin, he was the pastor at Yale.

He was indicted by our government for encouraging young men to resist the Vietnam draft.

You know, he said, 'Without courage, there are no other virtues."

And so what we're talking about here that this is a moment, right now, and maybe the biggest thing about this election that calls for the courage of people to stand up.

Because if we don't, there may be a very short future for this country and all the other species that live on this planet.

- Okay, let me ask you this, from in the last 15, 20 years, who are some of the people telling the truth, these heroes in this portrait series?

- Oh, there are so many, but I mean.

- Who jumps out at you?

- Well, I painted a portrait of Howard Zinn.

I don't think I could have done this without Howard Zinn.

He was still alive when I started this.

- Tell everyone who Howard Zinn.

- Howard Zinn is the professor from BU, and Harvard, and, you know, in Cambridge and Boston, who wrote the "People's History of the United States."

I mean, historians usually focus on, you know, the winners.

You know, the military winners, the corporate winners, the people who seem to make those, you know, the big decisions that seem to guide our policies.

Howard Zinn told the story of the people who were left out, the people who have been struggling, the people who were being marginalized and exploited.

And it's just a history that he tells of incredible determination and courage.

And so I had read Howard Zinn.

And before doing this project, I started looking, you know, mining Howard Zinn to look for people I should paint.

And then I went to meet Howard Zinn and paint his portrait, because, you know, nobody else had told that history the way he tells it.

And when I was with him, I said, "You know, Howard, if you were doing what I'm doing, who would you paint?"

And the first name he mentioned was Fannie Lou Hamer.

- Tell everyone why Fannie Lou Hamer still matters.

- Fannie Lou Hamer is, you know, she was the 20th child of sharecroppers in Mississippi who dropped out of school in the sixth grade, so she could pick cotton with her family.

Desperately poor.

And in the early '60s when the first, you know, voter registration people came to Mississippi, she had no idea that black people had any right to vote at all.

And she started listening to them and going to their freedom schools.

Then realized, this is what she should be doing.

And she became, you know, one of the greatest of the Civil Rights organizers in the South.

And then she and Bob Moses started the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in 1964 to get a integrated delegation seated at the convention.

- And she sat at that convention.

- She sat at the convention.

- And stood out.

- Well, she sure did.

- She sure did.

Was she the only African American?

- At the convention?

- [Steve] Yes, being seated in that Mississippi delegation?

- Well, they never got seated.

- They never actually got seated.

- They got denied.

And they were told they could have a couple of people.

And they said, no, no.

You either take the whole delegation or we're not going to do it at all.

And they denied, and so they didn't get seated.

She got a chance to do a press conference, which was so famous, you know?

She said, you know, is this my country, you know, that is not seating an integrated delegation?

- Are you a positive person right now?

- Mostly.

- [Steve] Optimistic?

- I am, when I get depressed, which I do.

- Join the club.

- I often find another person to paint.

And the reason for that is I paint people who are determined to do something with their courage to try to make this a better country for all of us.

- Is that inspiring to you?

- It's incredibly inspiring for me.

I mean, it always challenges me.

I said, if this person is still doing the thing they're doing, what am I, you know, not to do that too?

You know, what should I, you know, how can I drop out or let my despair get ahead of me, you know?

It's so important that we do not give up at any time.

I mean, many of the people I've painted, like Fannie Lou Hamer, were so badly treated, with such violence, you know, and you look at what they went through, and they did not give up.

And you think, well, okay, well, you know, how cynical or despairing should I be?

- You know, let me ask you something.

I shouldn't throw a name at you and assume, because I don't know who's in it and who's not, but we're actually doing a special on the Civil Rights leader, John Lewis.

- I painted John Lewis.

- You did?

- I sure did.

- I just threw that out there.

- Yeah.

I went to meet him, you know, before he died.

- You met Lewis.

- Spent a day with him and then painted him.

Of course, he is one of the most inspiring of Civil Rights workers of the contemporary era.

- He was there on the Pettus Bridge.

He was beaten to within an inch of his life on the Pettus Bridge.

- In our film, the "Truth Tellers," that footage of him being beaten is in there.

- Bloodied.

Beaten by the- - Well, his skull was cracked.

- Cracked, wide open.

- Yeah.

- A hero.

A truth teller.

- Absolutely.

- Final question for me.

Why should everyone see this film.

Regardless of their politics, their ideology, who they voted for, why should everyone see this film?

- Well, I think that a lot of people think that the rights they have, the freedoms they have, the time they have to be in a sort of, you know, just at peace in this country, if they can be, they think it comes because we have a Declaration of Independence and a Constitution and maybe a local government or who knows what they think.

- Like, nobody died for it.

Nobody suffered for it.

- They don't realize the effort that's had to gone into, you know, fighting for those things.

That they were not, you know, the words were there, which is the incredible thing, that language, you know, that talks about equality and justice and freedom and dignity of people.

The language was there.

The truth of it was not there for people.

And so the fact that these things exist to the extent that they do exist is because they were fought for.

And people need to know about that struggle.

Not just because it's an important history, but because of what it requires of them.

Because every one of us faces moments where we have to stand up for something.

And if we have no models, it's very hard to do.

- Robert Shetterly, is an artist and activist.

He's the artist best known for his portrait series "Americans Who Tell The Truth."

Check out this film, this documentary.

Thank you, Robert.

- Thank you.

It was wonderful meet you.

- It's a pleasure to meet you.

- [Narrator] One-On-One with Steve Adubato is a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Funding has been provided by The New Jersey Education Association.

The Turrell Fund, a foundation serving children.

New Jersey Sharing Network.

Hackensack Meridian Health.

Valley Bank.

PSEG Foundation.

Johnson & Johnson.

The Fidelco Group.

And by The Adler Aphasia Center.

Promotional support provided by Insider NJ.

And by Meadowlands Chamber.

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