Friday, October 28, 2011

Cool School Girls

Yay Aaron I love this!!!

 
 

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via Take Five by leedowell on 10/28/11

Last month my cousins come over, and we decided to make a film. This is their first film. They created the story, wrote the dialogue, helped arrange shots, and acted. We created the story dialogue and shots in one hour, and then we shot it – in an hour. Apparently, they now want to be actors. :-D



 
 

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No, You Aren’t Amber Cole’s Father

 
 

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via The CFC on 10/28/11

No, You Aren't Amber Cole's Father: superhussyisms: Jimi Izrael gets it handed to him. Boom!

 
 

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Love is Lifeforce: June Jordan and the Horizon of Education

Greetings loved ones!  I'd love to see you at the second installment of the Survival Series: Black Feminism for the Future at Stanford L. Warren Library!
 
Tuesday, November 1 · 6:30pm - 8:30pm

Stanford L. Warren Library
1201 Fayetteville Street
Durham, NC



In this the second part in the "Survival Series: Black Feminism for the Future" this lecture draws on author June Jordan's essay “The Creative Spirit in Children’s Literature” which explains that “love is lifeforce” and describes the intergenerational work of nurturing the spirits of children as the most sacred work that adults can do. In a time when the education budgets for Durham schools are under attack and the Wake County schools are actively resegregating, Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs will present a multi-faceted vision for educational justice in our times.

Thursday, October 27, 2011

Occupy the Machine – Stop the 1%, Literally | Deep Green Resistance

 
 

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via The CFC on 10/27/11

Occupy the Machine – Stop the 1%, Literally | Deep Green Resistance: guerrillamamamedicine: Occupy...

 
 

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Somewhere Between Black Power and White Rage

 
 

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via The Crunk Feminist Collective by crunklife on 10/25/11

There have been several public "events" privileging race, gender, and class during the past weeks in New York City that featured prominent Black feminists.  After the film screening of The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975, the conference about Anita Hill 20 Years Later: Sex, Power and Speaking the Truth, and the Occupy Wall Street  movement based in Zucotti Park/Liberty Square, I  wanted to mark how Black womanhood and Black feminist thought are positioned.

The Black Power Mixtape, 1967-1975

The Swedish film is an incredible compilation or mixtape that chronicles the US Black freedom movement by arranging interviews, speeches, and snapshots of activists and urban Black life. The most compelling moments include Black women. There is one scene, for example, when Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture) sits on an apartment floor boyishly looking up at his mother Mable.  In a "play" interview, he presses her to describe the intersections between race and class. It is a humorous, affectionate exchange that complements the defiant image of Carmichael championing Black power. Carmichael's fiery rhetoric at the beginning is matched by Angela Davis' cool midway through the film when she responds to a question about armed resistance. Davis recalls the 1963 Birmingham church bombings when

Picture of  four Black girls, Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Denise McNair who were killed by the Klan during the 1963 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama

1963 Birmingham Klan bombing that killed four Black girls

neighborhood girls Addie Mae, Cynthia, Carole and Denise were brutally murdered by white supremacists.  She places her personal recollection within a context of ongoing racial terrorism experienced by African descended people. In one story Davis reveals American hypocrisy. In one story she creates an emotional bridge to connect with the film so the audience could better understand the complexities of Black America then and now.  (The CFs in the audience echoed, "that's Black feminism for you.")

The Davis and Carmichael interviews are followed by a third moment, which is the most unsettling part of the film because I am left hanging, wondering what to do with a local teary-eyed young Black woman who describes how she has had to wrestle with her drug addiction after a family member sexually assaults her as a child. In the midst of the Black power movement, we are invited to read her story as part of "the ghetto" and hear the PSA-like radio voice-over about premature babies from drug-addicted mothers as hers. The film explains drug abuse by Black male Vietnam veterans who return home disillusioned, homeless and unemployed, and it illustrates gender-specific forms of (sexual) violence experienced by Black men who are tortured during the Attica uprising, but there is no commentary, no gender framework to really see her or other dazed Black women shooting up in an abandoned New York apartment. In fact, if we are to gather any meaning at all from the voice-over, street footage, and her interview, we might believe that she has failed her family and by extension the Black community—ideas echoed by the news media a decade later when audiences are re-introduced to the bad Black woman as the crack-welfare-mother.  That the director-editor, Goran Hugo Olsson, opted to let saturated images of the ghetto "speak for itself" while admittedly letting go of the archived footage of the landmark 1972 Presidential Candidate, Shirley Chisolm, suggests specific discussions about gender added an unwanted complexity to the Black power he envisioned.

Anita Hill 20 Years Later: Sex, Power and Speaking the Truth

The daylong conference began with sessions about Anita Hill's 1991 testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee during the confirmation hearings of then US Supreme Court nominee, Clarence Thomas. The Sex and Justice film excerpt and morning sessions were followed by lunch discussions about sexual harassment in the military, on the streets, and in schools, and a keynote about home with Hill herself.  Hill asked (and I paraphrase), "Is there a way to Race-ing Justice Engendering Powertalk about race that isn't so male dominated?" Hours before Hill posed this question I asked myself, is it possible to talk about gender on a national scale that isn't so white identified? I had come to the conference to learn more about Hill specifically and about Black feminist thought in general (as the tag was "an all day conference about race and gender identity").  I got it even though it felt sandwiched between a kind of deracialized gender, which eclipsed the intersectionality so many women of color emphasized.  Long before Kimberlé Crenshaw reminded us about intraracial resistance to Hill and other Black women who dared to air dirty laundry, and before Melissa Harris Perry offered us her exacting critique about respectability and the reception of The Help, a New York college instructor leaned over to school the Black-girl-too-young-to-remember about the Thomas-Hill hearings. Pulling out her Black feminist good book, Race-ing Justice, En-gendering Power, my informal Black feminist instructor suggested Hill had been embraced by white feminists because Thomas seemed less threatening to their social standing than the white men who systematically harassed Black women in the workplace.  From my back-seat instructor to the panelists on stage, it would appear the symbolic body of Hill was still very much in the making. At the daylong conference, Hill stood (in) as a testament to interracial feminist solidarity, "front line" Black feminist mobilization, and white feminist cooptation (for at least one sistah in the audience).

 

Occupy Wall Street

Occupy Wall Street has been characterized as white middle class rage against the capitalist machine. Prior to the Harlem march where folks from Liberty Park joined activists of color to protest the stop-and-frisk policies that disproportionately targeted Black and Latino persons, communities of color insisted the "occupiers" reconsider language (e.g., replace occupy to decolonize) and reconsider tactics, such as voluntarily camping in spaces that displaced homeless persons.   The first time I went to Liberty Park, Black folks peppered the space. We were mainly on the margins, taking up space on the steps and the stone parameters of the blue tarp makeshift community.

The physical make up of the protestors at the Park and on the street during the Manhattan marches appeared to be the same, yet the meetings and talks I attended attempted to be inclusive and intentionally anti-racist even in the absence of a lot of colored folk. (See Greg Tate's Top 10 Reasons Why So Few Black Folks Appear Down to Occupy Wall Street.) And just like I stayed at the Hill conference, I came back to Liberty Park because I wanted to hear an amazing Black intellectual, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, explain capitalism's connection to group exclusion, criminalization, and racialized labor. When Gilmore evoked CLR James,  she reminded me of another Trinidadian thinker, Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael), that I had seen weeks earlier in the Black Power Mixtape. Immediately after Gilmore's talk, I walked upstairs to see a remarkable scene for which I still have no meaning.  To my left, Rev. Jesse Jackson was surrounded by a small group of men with studio cameras and a spotlight.  To my right, the actor Rev. Billy began his popular street performance as the crowd circled. Onlookers held up camera phones to record the spectacle of the Black-led choir and the Reverend, who dramatically preached about the evils of consumerism. Each had a platform at Liberty Square to talk about economic justice, however, their messages were digested and distributed differently. Jesse was on my left, Billy was on the right, and Ruth (or Ruthie if you know her) was somewhere in between…



 
 

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Feminism 101 or Why Women’s Studies Can’t Wait: A Workshop for Girls

 
 

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via The Crunk Feminist Collective by crunktastic on 10/26/11

Oftentimes undergraduate students complain that they are not introduced to women's studies and feminism early enough.  In an effort to support the development of girls as social agents we must consider exposing to them feminist spaces at earlier ages.

The Crunk Feminists are on the case! In November, we will facilitate a workshop on "Feminism 101" with a group of 10 Atlanta area teens, at the National Women's Studies Association Conference. We want to provide them with powerful readings, music, and speeches/spoken word as a means of introducing them to the language, issues and fierce care and resistance of our foremothers.  We intend to share our stories, hear their stories, and work with them to start making connections and naming their experiences. Family, we solicit your help and your donations to make this possible.

So often young girls of color are not given the tools to name their experiences and are therefore dealing with various forms of oppression in silence or unheathy ways. In the tradition of Audre Lorde, this workshop will present the basic tenets of feminist thought to help these young women craft the tools that will "transform their silences into language and action."  To be clear, we see this workshop not as an end, but as a beginning of building relationships, acting as mentors and big sisters, and working with these young women to create a brighter feminist future. As our QBG sister Alexis Pauline Gumbs once said, "we do this work because we think it changes lives."

We would really appreciate your support. And there are two ways you can help.

1.) The cost of the workshop materials per girl is $20. Click here to sponsor a participant. You can contribute any amount. And every little bit will help.

2.) We have also created an Amazon wishlist, where you can purchase individual items (a book* and a journal) that will be included in the goodie bags we are providing for each girl. 

Thank each of you in advance for helping with this endeavor!

 

*After many conversations we have identified a feminist body book that we think will be an important reference for these young women, a book that will remain relevant as their questions become more complicated. It offers great information about women's bodies, does not center men's bodies, and is progressive on LGBTQ sexualities. We wish the representations were more racially diverse and that conversations about disability were included, but frankly, more feminist of color, non-ableist, queer inclusive teen body literature is needed. 



 
 

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AMC QBG Delegation i.e. "swarm" (h/t to apg) anyone?



VIDEO CALL FOR PROPOSALS

Proposals for Tracks, Network Gatherings and Practice Spaces at the 2012 Allied Media Conference are due Monday, November 14 at Midnight EST.  Learn more and submit a proposal.  

La fecha límite para proponer Ejes Temáticos, Asambleas de Redes o Espacios para prácticas es el 14 de Noviembre a la Medianoche EST.  ¡Envia tu idea ahora! (En Español).  Leer más.  

Watch our public service announcement explaining AMC Tracks, Network Gatherings and Practice Spaces.

Save the date: 14th AMC June 28 - July 31, 2012

 

halfrrule

AMP is supported by grants from the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program, Ford Foundation,  Nathan Cummings Foundation, Open Society Foundations, Instructional Telecommunications Foundation, Media Democracy Fund, and the Center for International Media Action.

AMC2011 was supported through the generous sponsorship of Consumer's Union, Detroit Creative Corridor Center, Media Equity Collaborative, the University of Michigan School of Social Work Community Based Initiative, Free Press, INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, Media & Democracy Coalition, University of Michigan School of Information, the James & Grace Lee Boggs Center, and Prometheus Radio Project. 

+ Learn more about AMC sponsorship opportunities.

     

So, Beyonce made a video for “Party.” A few...

so quick and dead on.

 
 

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via passport harlem on 10/27/11



So, Beyonce made a video for "Party." A few things:

1. Clearly J. Cole was not smart enough to know that you do not follow Dre. It makes one's verse sound even wacker. 

2. Ever seen the Drew Barrymore flick, Riding in Cars with Boys? Yeah, apparently Beyonce has, too.

3. With the above point in mind, Beyonce is so ominracial that she can play white (trash). That is really interesting to me. 

4. Video and J. Cole notwithstanding, this song is still the jam.


 
 

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Monday, October 24, 2011

“We Are More Loved Than We Know”: Masculinity, Feminism and the Love that Will Save Our Lives

From http://thefeministwire.com

June Jordan teaches that: “Love is lifeforce.”  And the healing power of love has saved my life more than once.  In the name of this truth I affirm the arrival of Freeing Ourselves: A Guide to Health and Self Love for Brown Bois, a recent resource published by the Brown Boi Leadership project and written by masculine of center queer people of color and their allies.
I think of this resource guide as a chapter that should have been, but never would have been in Our Bodies Ourselves or even in Jambalaya.   A resource that my partner, who identifies as a Black feminist boi and a gender queer artist, and our children one day will probably not read cover to cover chronologically like I did, but will flip through, looking at affirming and beautiful photography, reading stories of how people we know and strangers survived trauma, transformation and the oppression of the medical industrial complex.    They will browse it for a list of self-advocating questions before finding a health care provider.   We will look at for options of how we want to get pregnant, what health issues we should look out for at different ages, how one gender affirming surgery differs from another one.   Freeing Ourselves is a non-linear invocation of a community of people with different needs, at different stages of life, with different approaches to their own wellness and wholeness who will interact with this book from where they are at, and then differently again at another moment.  It is a tiny, audience-specific, audience-accountable encyclopedia.
“We are working towards profound social change, knowing that there are no disposable people or communities.   We all need to be here.”
– Brown Boi Health Manifesto by Prentis Hemphill (119)

Read the entire review here:  http://thefeministwire.com/2011/10/“we-are-more-loved-than-we-know”-masculinity-feminism-and-the-love-that-will-save-our-lives/

Saturday, October 22, 2011

strugglingtobeheard:afrotitty:This is great.reblogging...

 
 

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via Liquor&Spice on 10/21/11









strugglingtobeheard:

afrotitty:

This is great.

reblogging again cause this is the first time i saw the black face (black body!?!?!?) and I've appreciated all the ones I have seen.

THIS EXISTS???????? *posts to facebook immediately*


 
 

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strugglingtobeheard:afrotitty:This is great.reblogging...

 
 

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via Liquor&Spice on 10/21/11









strugglingtobeheard:

afrotitty:

This is great.

reblogging again cause this is the first time i saw the black face (black body!?!?!?) and I've appreciated all the ones I have seen.

THIS EXISTS???????? *posts to facebook immediately*


 
 

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Wednesday, October 19, 2011

thisiswhatlsdislike:ADORABLE! geigh-shagirls:{Sigh!}this...

 
 

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via Liquor&Spice on 10/17/11



thisiswhatlsdislike:

ADORABLE! 

geigh-shagirls:

{Sigh!}

this is motivation, as well.

~Puff

I LOVE this cute lil' black baby! Lookin like a real life cabbage patch kid. :D ~Mojo

Cabbage Patch is right on mark! Oh, I love her!!

~Puff

Ohhhhh MY gawd. Oh my god. Omg.


 
 

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Application Available for 2012 Barbara Jordan Health Policy Scholars Program



 
Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Application Available for 2012 Barbara Jordan Health Policy Scholars Program

CONTACTS
Craig Palosky
(202) 347-5270
cpalosky@kff.org
Tiffany Ford Fields
(202) 347-5270
tfordfields@kff.org

The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation is accepting applications for the 2012 Barbara Jordan Health Policy Scholars Program. This summer program provides college students with an opportunity to work on policy issues in a congressional office and to learn about other organizations and agencies involved in health policy.

The Barbara Jordan Health Policy Scholars Program is open to individuals with a strong interest in eliminating racial and ethnic health disparities. Eligible candidates must be U.S. citizens who will be either a senior at or a recent graduate of an accredited 4-year college or university in the fall of 2012. Individuals with a graduate degree and those individuals currently enrolled in a graduate degree program are not eligible to participate. The application deadline is 5 p.m. ET on Friday, December 16, 2011. Application materials and more information are available online at http://bjordanscholars.kff.org/.

Selected Scholars will work in congressional offices in Washington, D.C. for 10 weeks and participate in weekly seminars and site visits designed to increase their understanding of the intersection between policy and the legislative process. Scholars will also have an opportunity to improve their writing and presentation skills. Housing is provided through Howard University, the Foundation's partner in operating the program.

The Kaiser Family Foundation established the Barbara Jordan Health Policy Scholars Program to honor the legacy of Barbara Jordan – the first African American elected to Congress from Texas and a well-respected former member of the Foundation's board of trustees. Barbara Jordan had a distinguished career exemplified by her tireless advocacy on behalf of vulnerable populations. She brought this passion to her work, inspiring other to become involved in addressing challenging health policy issues.

For more information, please visit the program's website or contact Cara James, program director at the Kaiser Family Foundation at (202) 347-5270 or Jomo Kassaye, program manager at Howard University at (202) 238-2385.

The Kaiser Family Foundation, a leader in health policy analysis, health journalism and communication, is dedicated to filling the need for trusted, independent information on the major health issues facing our nation and its people. The Foundation is a non-profit private operating foundation, based in Menlo Park, California.



Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation 2400 Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park, CA 94025 (650) 854-9400
Washington DC Office 1330 G Street NW, Washington, DC 20005 (202) 347-5270


Tuesday, October 18, 2011

YOUNG WRITERS, artists, photographers, performers, and filmmakers: Narrative 30 Below Contest







CALLING ON YOUNG WRITERS, artists, photographers, performers, and filmmakers, between eighteen and thirty: TELL US A STORY. We're interested in narrative in the many forms it takes, including fiction, nonfiction, graphic stories, and audio/video works.
  • $1,500 First Prize
  • $750 Second Prize
  • $300 Third Prize
  • Ten finalists receive $100 each.
  • Contest Deadline: October 29. See the Contest Guidelines.

    All entries will be considered for publication. All are eligible for the $5,000 Narrative Prize for 2012 and for acceptance as a Story of the Week.

    Read the winners of last year's contest, including Kevin A. González's wonderful First Place story, "Cerromar."
  • PLEASE SHARE THIS NOTICE WITH ANYONE WHO MIGHT BE INTERESTED.