practicing the arts of cogitation since the late 1900s
23 May 2007
I received this message from quilter Kyra Hicks--check her out!
Over the weekend, Amazon.com published my short essay and quilt pattern, The Liberian Flag Story & Love of Liberty Quilt, over the weekend. And, it's only 49 cents (smile!). Have you heard of Amazon Shorts? [I had not, but I ordered it!]
WASHINGTON – Millions of students who attend America’s public schools are being indoctrinated with “Eurocentric” curricula that diminish their history and cause them to feel less than their white counterparts.
That is the contention of Carl Noldon, a senior honor roll student at the Bronx High School for the Visual Arts, in a speech written for a Black History Month program, which, amid controversy, was never presented.
“What I have to say is designed for the enlightenment of those who suffer from a school system that hypocritically manipulates black history in a way that causes a disconnection from black students and their history,” Noldon writes in the speech. “If you try to make a black child co-exist with a racist school system or a Eurocentric school system, then you are basically putting that child back into slavery, perhaps mental slavery…There is something wrong with the educational system and the country. I believe the parents should take an active role in challenging the school system and even the curriculum of this school so that any residue of Eurocentrism is gone.”
Noldon continues, “All the history teachers I ever had were white and from every last one of them I never received the link to the genius of Africa. Those teachers always taught European history with a much stronger emphasis. The result was I was brainwashed. I was brainwashed because I thought genius equated to white people because the teachers talked about how much a genius a person like Einstein was or the Greeks.
“Later on I had to realize that those people that the white history teachers talked so greatly about were used as devices to implant a slave mentality in me and an inferiority complex. But, what the textbooks never taught me was how Europe took a lot from Africa and how Africa precedes Europe with thousands of years of philosophical, religious, mathematical, scientific, artistic, and medicinal knowledge. The African represented a genius so powerful that advanced civilizations flourished even before the concept of Europe was thought of.”
Noldon, set to graduate June 27, wrote the speech for a Black History Month assembly held Feb. 27. Instead, he ended up calling the NNPA News Service, pleading, “I want my voice heard.”
Noldon said in an interview that he never got to give the speech – for one main reason: “The principal was basically talking about how he wanted me to change what I was saying in the speech… There were certain things in my speech, the content, you know, he wanted me to change to make it appeal to everybody. The principal gave me two options. The first one was to omit what I was saying in my speech, the other option was to not read my speech at all.”
Contacted by NNPA, the principal, George York, who is white, praised Noldon, calling him “one of our brightest and best.” But York declined to discuss specific details of why Noldon did not give the speech.
“We offered Carl every opportunity to share his article with our entire student community. We wanted him to go into classes, faculty meetings, assemblies, etcetera. We even spoke to Carl on several occasions, myself and my assistant principal [Ms. Debra Logan], about finding a scholarly venue to publish his fine work… Carl demonstrates the excellent education that he received at the Bronx High School for the visual arts, that he was able to do this research on his own on a topic that he is so passionate about,” says York. “He is really onto something that’s so important. It was really Carl’s decision not to present.”
Though the speech hasn’t been presented, the message is riveting, says Ron Walters after reading excerpts of it, shared with him by NNPA. Walters is director of the African-American Leadership Institute at the University of Maryland and author of “White Nationalism, Black Interests” and “Freedom Is Not Enough."
“The first thing I want to say is ‘wow,’” Walters says after reading excerpts of the speech.
Walters says Noldon “points out the major contradiction of any student expecting an objective education - that the institutionalization of racism within the American system of education causes African-descendant students to adjust to a one-way pattern of socialization … in a manner that devalues their own humanity, history and culture.”
“He quite rightly calls for a new paradigm of American education that respects all cultures," Walters adds. "The problem here is that his perspective, a black perspective, has been sacrificed by black leaders, parents and others in order to position black students into a framework of viability with the American economic system as the primary function of education.”
Noldon’s mother, Anna Noldon, says she was not surprised at her son’s views.
“All he does is comes home and studies,” she says. She says he was getting failing grades through elementary school until his uncle, Vincent Noldon, began teaching him about black heritage and middle school teachers took an interest in him.
On the day of the Black History Month program, she recalls, “He called me at work and he was very, very upset. He said they were not allowing him to do his speech.''
Ultimately, she said she met with York and told him that she wanted everything to be resolved. "I told the principal that I felt that him not letting Carl do his speech was really wrong,” she says. The principal offered a special assembly for his speech to be heard, she says.
But, by then, it was too late. He said he felt violated at being disallowed to state his views to the student body which is 45 percent black, 50 percent Hispanic, and two percent white at the Black History Month assembly. He contacted the NNPA News Service within a week after the program, asking that NNPA help his views be communicated.
Noldon ticks off a list of authors, speakers and mentors who have influenced his thinking, including Dick Gregory, Michael Erik Dyson, Cornell West and Cheikh Anta Diop, author of “The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality.” He credits his uncle Vincent, a videographer, for introducing him to tapes of orators like Dick Gregory.
The speech, which is 2,700 words, also quotes “The Myth of Black Progress,” a book by Alphonso Pinkney, and “Solutions For Black America” by Jawanza Kunjufu.
Based on his personal studies, Noldon uses his speech to question the credibility of some public school textbooks.
“In the world history textbook in this school, it doesn’t directly say that the Egyptians were black people. The Egyptians were just as black and diverse as the black people in this country. In that world history textbook, it is quick to point out how the Greeks called their own thinkers ‘lovers of wisdom’ because they used observation and reason. But isn’t that a characteristic of the Africans?” he quizzes.
“I realize that a lot of parents are just concerned about their child or children learning as much as they can. But I think the parents have to examine the psychological impact that the textbooks in the school system [have on] black students as well as students of other nationalities and cultures.”
National Urban League President Marc Morial, in NUL’s 2007 State of Black America report, describes the underachievement of black males as being among America’s greatest crises.
Noldon declines to cast all the blame on public schools for the conditions of black students. But the 17-year-old, who says he will major in film and metaphysics at Manhattan’s City College in the fall, attributes part of the problem to ignorance about their roots and schools that offer little cultural enlightenment.
“I don’t think schools should use Black History Month as the only time to talk about the historical genius of black people,” his speech states.
Noldon’s speech concludes:
“History has been twisted to brainwash the genius of the black child. These students are learning that African thought is primitive while European thought laid the foundation for civilization… The parents have to take a stand and challenge the school system, the teachers, and those that misinterpret black history because the misinterpretation of one’s history will lead to a misinterpretation of the knowledge of who you are.”
You can enlarge this invite by clicking on it. GO SEE THIS SHOW! I loves me some Zoe.
Silverstein Photography is pleased to announce If You Reading This, the first New York solo exhibition of works by the photographer and installation artist Zoe Strauss. This exhibition is a midterm review featuring the artist’s ongoing “I-95” project, which Strauss refers to as her “epic narrative.”
Featuring photographs of downtrodden city dwellers, abandoned structures, bemusing signage and remnants of urban decay, “I-95” is an annual installation that began in 2001. Photographs are adhered to support piers under the highway overpass at Front and Mifflin Streets in Philadelphia. The outdoor exhibition is on view from 1-4pm the first weekend of each May. Strauss encourages visitors to remove the laminated photographs, and throughout the year she offers Xerox reproductions for five dollars on her website—an expression of her commitment to community accessible art. Invitations to this exhibition have been signed, annotated, and editioned by the artist, keeping with that tradition.
Strauss, 37, was the first in her immediate family to graduate from high school. She worked as a nanny and didn’t attend art school. Having previously worked on large-scale installations, including an indoor medical laboratory entitled “Whirlforce Medical Research Laboratory” in 1997, as well as a live work of two motorboats crashing together, Strauss turned to photography after buying a 35mm camera with money received from her 30th birthday. She shoots most frequently in her native South Philadelphia neighborhood. Both her imagery and motivation are likened to Diane Arbus, Garry Winogrand, and Nan Goldin. “The juxtaposition of the difficulty involved in getting by and the beauty in our everyday lives is what I’m interested in,” says Strauss.
Strauss’ ongoing commitment to community activism led to the establishment of the Philadelphia Public Art Project (PAP), an organization she runs on her own that is dedicated to making art accessible. In 2006, she had a solo exhibit at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, part of the Museum’s Ramp Project. Strauss’ exhibit was based on the theme of desire. Thirty photographs mounted to wood were displayed for three months in the museum, during which time she removed a few at a time to hang outdoors in the neighborhood.
Strauss was selected for the 2006 Whitney Biennial, where she presented a slide show of images made primarily in Philadelphia, but also Biloxi and Gulfport, MS after Hurricane Katrina. She received a 2005 Pew Fellow, a 2004 Arcadia Works on Paper Award, and a 2002 Leeway Grant. Her work is included in the Philadelphia Museum of Art permanent collection.
A special edition print will be available with all proceeds going to the Center for Arts Education in New York City and the Philadelphia Public Art Project. Accompanying If You Reading This, Strauss will hold an outdoor slide show presentation in Chelsea at a date to be determined. Please contact elizabeth@silversteinphotography.com with inquiries.
i highly recommend this film; it's one of the best documentaries I've seen
Greetings Everyone:
I'm writing to invite everyone (who's based in the Bay Area) to two San Francisco Women Against Rape organized screenings of NO! (The Rape Documentary) on Thursday May 17 and Saturday, May 19.
For me, the purpose of these two screenings is to definitely raise awareness abount intra-racial rape and sexual assault, while raising money for SFWAR.
NO ONE will be turned away due to lack of funds. However, I am personally asking those of you who have the resources to pay more than the requested sliding scale donation to please pay more because SFWAR (like too many rape crisis centers in this country) needs financial support.
If you're not based in the Bay Area, please spread the word to your friends/comrades/colleagues who are based in the Bay.
Peace,
Aishah Shahidah Simmons Producer, Writer, Director NO! (The Rape Documentary)
***Please forward widely***
SFWAR presents two screenings ofNO! The Rape Documentary
Join us at SFWAR's screening of NO! the rape documentary an AfroLez production followed by a discussion with NO! filmmaker Aishah Shahidah Simmons. Winner of both a juried award and an audience choice award at the 2006 San Diego Women Film Festival, this ground-breaking feature length documentary explores the international reality of rape and other forms of sexual assault through the first person testimonies, scholarship, spirituality, and activism of African-Americans.
"If the Black community in the Americas and in the world would save itself, it must complete the work this film begins."
Alice Walker, Pulitzer Prize Winning Author, The Color Purple.
Thursday, May 17th*
First Congregational Church 2501 Harrison Street (at Broadway), OaklandCA 6:00 8:30 pm $5-15 sliding scale donation, no one turned away for lack of funds
*We are prioritizing the attendance of Women of African Descent at this screening.
Saturday, May 19th
The Women's Building 3543 18th Street, San Francisco, CA Audre Lorde Room 5:00 - 7:30 pm $5-15 sliding scale donation, no one turned away for lack of funds
“Let Your Motto Be Resistance: African American Portraits” at the International Center of Photography is a praise song in pictures, a shoutout to history. It’s also a fancy-dress inaugural party for the yet-to-be-built National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington. As such, it is a little too fancy, too heavy on glitz, too short on grit. Still, what a party it is.
The guest list includes an abbreviated Who’s Who of charismatic black statesmen, from Frederick Douglass to Malcolm X. In terms of entertainment, the event is beyond compare. Josephine Baker and Bill (Bojangles) Robinson dance. Sarah Vaughan, Leontyne Price and Odetta share a stage, with Sidney Bechet on sax, and Hazel Scott, looking divine, at the keyboard.
You’d look divine too if you had James VanDerZee behind the camera, or Berenice Abbott or Edward Weston or Addison N. Scurlock or any of the other great photographers responsible for the 100 vintage-print portraits here, all from the archives of the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery.
There are more artists and writers than usual at such an affair. You’ll recognize Horace Pippin, Edmonia Lewis and a beaming Lorraine Hansberry, by name if not by face.
And a few people you may be meeting for the first time. Ernest Everett Just (1883-1941), a pioneering biologist who spent much of his career in Europe after he was stonewalled by the American scientific establishment. And Henry Highland Garnet (1815-1882), a Maryland slave who escaped north, became an abolitionist firebrand and delivered the phrase that gives the show its title: “Strike for your lives and liberties. Rather die freemen than live to be slaves. Let your motto be resistance! Resistance! Resistance!”
As you look around the gallery, you can imagine some of the portraits reacting to his call. Elizabeth Catlett (in a wonderful likeness by Mariana Yampolsky), A. Philip Randolph, Paul Robeson, Amiri Baraka, Sojourner Truth and a young, blanket-swaddled James Baldwin seem to hear it and they’re on the alert. Mr. Garnet’s words aren’t party words. They are stark, preaching, move-now words.
Which brings us back to the kind of party this is. It is, as I said, a housewarming in advance, and a buzz-builder, for a national African-American museum. When that museum goes up on the National Mall — 2015 is the target date — an essential aspect of American history will have its official monument. America and African America are one and the same. They’re inseparable. If this show can be taken as a preview of exhibitions to come, what will that history look like? Obviously, it will have glamour to burn, to judge by the lush, burnished portraits chosen by the guest curator, Deborah Willis, a professor of photography at New York University.
Roland Hayes, who sang like an angel, looks like an angel in a 1934 light-and-shadow likeness attributed to Johan Hagemeyer. Lena Horne floats like a butterfly for Philippe Halsman’s Vogue-savvy eye. One after another, people glow or glower. Everyone is a star, an inspiration, a certified member of W. E. B. DuBois’s Talented Tenth.
This Hall of Fame approach to cultural history delivers thrills, no question. But it also has a too easy, been-there air. The show feels like a throwback to another era, to a kind of exhibition that might have been mounted 20 years ago at the Studio Museum in Harlem, an institution that was until recently deeply invested in black pride, devoted to ethnic uplift.
That devotion was effective in its time. Among many other things, it encouraged the upward mobility of what has since become an economically and politically powerful black middle class. But is uplift on the same terms, for the same ends, the right framework for viewing African-American, or any other American, history in 2007? Is Bright and Beautiful the model to follow? The show doesn’t entirely adhere to the model. Wall texts make clear that almost every person portrayed had to fight bitter odds for a seat in front of the camera. Each likeness was, consciously or by default, an effort to cast the African-American image, distorted by racism, in acceptably positive, mainstream terms. Three images, set by side by side at the start of the show, make life-and-death stakes clear.
In a 1956 picture the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. — just a year after he had successfully used passive resistance as a tactical tool in Montgomery, Ala. — stands in the sunshine beside his smiling wife, Coretta, holding their infant daughter, Yolanda Denise, in his arms.
In 1968 the same daughter, now in her teens, looks down at her murdered father in his coffin as her 5-year-old sister, Bernice, reacts with open-mouthed shock to the sight. A year later Stephen Shames catches the 25-year-old Angela Davis standing at a microphone, her mouth open to deliver a speech. Passive resistance is over; active resistance has begun.
Significantly, some of the best things in the show are action shots: the Supremes — Diana, Mary and Flo — in a recording session; Stokely Carmichael and a white-suited Adam Clayton Powell Jr. cracking up at a joke; Malcolm X impassively hawking broadsides on the street; Marian Anderson singing as a skinny young Leonard Bernstein looks on.
These portraits are close to snapshots; their subjects look like regular people, Americans who happen to be black, in the middle of their accomplished lives. African America has, of course, a distinctive history, of profound pain and amazing grace. But the figures in these on-the-fly images are also part of a larger fabric: We the People. They are us; we are them. And with all our shared flaws and heroisms, we make up one mercurial, complicated, crazy quilt of a crew. Many of the young artists seen at the Studio Museum these days are intensely interested in complications, in giving “black” and “white” hard critical scrutiny, in consigning racial pride, along with all other essentialisms, to the shelf. Such artists resist the old, easy-chair version of history that this crowd-pleaser of a show comes too close to emulating. I hope the National Museum of African American History and Culture will resist it too, when it finally gets the home it should have had years ago at the heart of the nation.
“Let Your Motto Be Resistance: African American Portraits” continues through Sept. 9 at the International Center of Photography, 1133 Avenue of the Americas, at 43rd Street; (212) 857-0000, icp.org. It opens at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington on Oct. 9.
...but she just keeps putting up great artists and I want to help spread the word! Check out this young Los Angeles-based photographer's work, Nnenna Areté, though she doesn't have a website yet. Click the title above for more info on the Fly site or view more work at www.myspace.com/3dollars6dimes.
(Seriously. Contact me @ carla@spenational.org to write a 500-word review for exposure, the journal I edit, and thanks Delphine for sending the images!)
DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHER DELPHINE FAWUNDU-BUFORD PRODUCES PHOTO-ESSAY FEATURING OPENLY HOMOSEXUAL BLACK & LATINO MEN
Beyond Fierce: Photographs and Words of Black & Latino Men in the Life opens at The Gallery at Harriets Alter Ego
Opening Reception June 3, 2007 Exhibition Dates June 3 July 6, 2007
The Gallery at Harriets Alter Ego 293 Flatbush Ave. (btw. St. Marks & Prospect Pl.) Bklyn, NY 11217 718.783.2074 -- www.harrietsalteregoonline.com Gallery Hours: Tuesday Sunday 11-7pm
Brooklyn, New York, April 24, 2007 -- Homosexuality has been under intense criticism for as long as anyone can remember. Pair that lifestyle with the scrutiny of being Black or Latino in America, and its a double dose of backlash. Weve seen the sensational side of the gay Black and Latino man the cross dressing fairies to the overly-animated, finger snapping queens to more recently, the controversial Down Lo brother. Photographer, Delphine Fawundu-Buford, investigates a community of openly homosexual Black & Latino men in a new photography exhibition entitled, Beyond Fierce: Photographs and Words of Black & Latino Men in the Life.
This community is one that the general public only really knows through stereotypes, the characters that we see on TV and in the movies, explains Delphine, a mid-career photographer and educator based in Brooklyn. As a social documentarian, I am constantly producing work that dares us to think beyond common stereotypes and question societal prejudices.
Beyond Fierce opens at The Gallery at Harriets Alter Ego June 3rd and will feature small- to medium-scaled color and black and white portraits of men who take pride in who they are.
Described as a living photo-essay, Beyond Fierce includes text alongside the images in the exhibition. Delphines subjects sound off on myriad ideas and issues related to homosexuality: Are people born homosexuals? What is homophobia? Can one be homosexual and religious? Is it easy to come out? Gay Rights? Should marriage be allowed? Thoughts on the DL? Do relationships work? What do the term gay mean to some black men? These are some of the many questions for which the men voice their opinions.
Some of the men photographed for Beyond Fierce are popular names such as, Emil Wilberkin, the Vice-President of brand development for designer Marc Ecko; power couple Nathan Williams and Keith Boykin; DeVon Christopher, Publisher of Bleu Magazine, and celebrious television and fashion personality Andre J. Delphine also documents, students, corporate professionals and community organizers such as Anthony Morgan of the Black Gay Network, John Martin Green of Black Mens Exchange and Francisco Roque, The Institute for Gay Men's Health.
Delphine notes that homosexuality is something that African-Americans want to believe isnt prevalent in the community; its not a mainstream lifestyle so its swept under the rug. We acknowledge that its there but we dont really get much into it, explains Delphine Its also more complex than meets the eye; the men presented her with an array of perspectives, no two men are the same, she notes, the main common assertion was that they all have an inner attraction to men.
A photographer for over 15 years, Delphine Fawundu-Buford is among the young lions of Black photography. Her work has been exhibited nationally including the International Center of Photography, the Anacostia Museum in Washington, DC and most notably the Brooklyn Museum of Art where her photograph graced the cover of the catalog-book of the Committed to the Image exhibition. She recently traveled to New Orleans as a Gulf Coast Fellow with the National Association of Black Journalists.
Paris-based photographer and graphic artist Delphine Diallo's Magic Photo Studio. There's so much exciting work out there! Reminds me of the late Christian Walker's work. He was brilliant and underrated. I could only find one of his images online, but it was nothing like this work.
PMS media's newest video explores the Cruise ship fundraiser of Ms. Magazine...This video is a critique of the complexities and devestating impacts of cruising as well as a look into what it means to be feminist.
But in the stampede to remove him from the airwaves, some crucial principles were crushed underfoot. For the consensus soon emerged that the problem with his comments was not that they were said at all but that they were said about the wrong people.
"Imus lost his job not when he leveled his double-barreled slur at the Rutgers team, but when the team held its press conference," argued Newsweek. "The image of the self-possessed young women encouraged employees at NBC to rise up and call for Imus's firing; their poise may also have persuaded advertisers to begin pulling their sponsorships of Imus's show."
If these women had less poise maybe Imus would still be on the air. But they suffered as only black people are supposed to suffer--with dignity. This is not a criticism of the team or even a description so much as a statement of fact. The crowning of the worthy victim has very little to do with the actual victims, and everything to do with how those with more power or less principle or both seek to cast them in a broader morality play of their own crafting.
and which led me to this. Apparently they also published her photo but I'm not going to do that here. I am leaving the author's E-mail at the bottom in case you'd care to write to him.
LET THE LIAR BE NAMED & SHAMED
April 12, 2007 -- HER name is Crystal Gail Man gum.
She is the woman who falsely accused three Duke University students of rape. Yesterday, the attorney general of North Carolina came forward and flatly declared the three young men "innocent of these charges."
That means their accuser is a liar.
Her name is Crystal Gail Mangum.
It is the policy of the news media not to publish the names of rape accusers on the grounds that they should not have to fear public shame for coming forward with word of a horrifying personal violation.
That is a noble policy. But it needs a codicil. The codicil is that if a rape accuser is revealed as a liar, her name should be spoken loudly and often - as loudly and often as the names of those whom she falsely accused have been over the past year.
Her name is Crystal Gail Mangum.
She must be denied anonymity because she makes a mockery of the very policy of granting anonymity to rape accusers. We do not publish their names so that they will not fear public exposure. But people who are tempted to do the monstrous thing Mangum did should fear public exposure.
They should be terrified of it.
They should have nightmares about it.
They should be given no encouragement whatsoever to believe they can launch a nuclear weapon at someone's reputation and escape unscathed.
Her name is Crystal Gail Mangum, and she should not escape the world's scorn because she is poor, or because she is black, or because her life circumstances led her to work as a "stripper."
Her name is Crystal Gail Mangum, and she does not deserve to lick the underside of the shoes of hardworking and honest people of color and modest means who somehow manage to get through life without attempting to destroy and defile the lives of others.
At his press conference yesterday, Attorney General Roy Cooper said something odd about the liar Crystal Gail Mangum. He said she would face no charges for her false accusation.
He said, "Our investigators who talked with her and the attorneys who talked with her over a period of time think that she may actually believe the many different stories that she has been telling. They worked real hard with her. It doesn't make sense. You can't piece it together."
The suggestion here is that she has psychological problems. So do millions upon millions of people in the United States. And they too manage, somehow, not to spin lies about rape into false arrests.
They somehow manage not to force families of those they falsely accuse to incur legal fees reportedly totaling more than $1 million per family. These families are sometimes described as "affluent," as though the fact that they live in nice communities in nice houses means they can afford million-dollar fees.
Attorney General Cooper did a good thing by making so unambiguous a statement of innocence as he freed David Evans, Reade Seligmann and Colin Finnerty from their year of torment.
Until I hear more that might justify his decision beyond a desire not to inflame racial passions in the Tar Heel State, I cannot help think that Cooper has done a very, very wrong thing by allowing Crystal Gail Mangum to avoid the judgment of his state's legal system.
Unless he changes his mind, then, the only justice she will face is the public exposure of her name and the revelation to all the world that, if she had had her way, three young men would have been sent to prison on false charges.
My Republican co-worker and I scored the same top two ideal candidates--Dennis Kucinich and Barack Obama*--go figure! So I'm curious to see how other people fare.
*Funny thing about the folks out campaigning for him--several evenings in the past couple months there have been Obama supporters set up at the BART station where I live in the hipster-hell of the San Francisco Mission district (otherwise, I like my 'hood.) There ain't many black folks in the Mission--there aren't many in San Francisco at all--but these Obama supporters not only have never spoken to me, they deliberately look the other way. I kid you not, because eye contact is not my strong suit so I have made a point of it to try to make it with them. What, do they assume all black folks are an automatic vote for him and they needn't bother? They're wrong, and it gives me a weird feeling about his supporters. Booooo, Obamacampaignersat24thStreetBart, booooo.
Filmmaker Jessica Ann Peavy, E-mailed me for some info so I checked out her site, http://jessicaannpeavy.com. I can't view the videos here but her work looks fantastic, with titles such as "Tootsie Roll" and "Grown Folks Business." Definitely give her a look. Jessica was part of this show which had just a great title and an even greater roster of emerging black women artists--I wish I could have seen it. Keep your eyes on all of these women.
Inspire a new generation of writers as a teacher for WritersCorps. WritersCorps offers low-income youth opportunities to write, publish, and perform through workshops in public schools, libraries, public housing, and detention facilities. Our long-term, in-depth model gives teaching artists what they need to inspire youth to improve their writing skills and to grow as individuals. Our teachers serve up to 3 years, are part of a group that meets often, receive extensive professional development training, and are paid summers for teaching-related writing projects. Applications are now being accepted for the 07-08 school year. Find out more about teaching for WritersCorps at one of our public presentations: May 1, 6 PM Oakland Public Library, Rockridge Branch 5366 College Avenue, Oakland94618 May 2, 6 PM San Francisco Public Library, Main Branch, 100 Larkin Street, San Francisco 94102 Stong Room, First Floor
The application deadline is May 31st. People of color and bilingual people are especially encouraged to apply. For more information and to download an application visit http://www.writerscorps.org or call 415-252-4655.
SANTA ANA, Calif., April 25 — Anyone convicted of a crime knows a debt to society often must be paid in jail. But a slice of Californians willing to supplement that debt with cash (no personal checks, please) are finding that the time can be almost bearable.
For offenders whose crimes are usually relatively minor (carjackers should not bother) and whose bank accounts remain lofty, a dozen or so city jails across the state offer pay-to-stay upgrades. Theirs are a clean, quiet, if not exactly recherché alternative to the standard county jails, where the walls are bars, the fellow inmates are hardened and privileges are few.
Many of the self-pay jails operate like secret velvet-roped nightclubs of the corrections world. You have to be in the know to even apply for entry, and even if the court approves your sentence there, jail administrators can operate like bouncers, rejecting anyone they wish.
“I am aware that this is considered to be a five-star Hilton,” said Nicole Brockett, 22, who was recently booked into one of the jails, here in Orange County about 30 miles southeast of Los Angeles, and paid $82 a day to complete a 21-day sentence for a drunken driving conviction.
Ms. Brockett, who in her oversize orange T-shirt and flip-flops looked more like a contestant on “The Real World” than an inmate, shopped around for the best accommodations, travelocity.com-style.
“It’s clean here,” she said, perched in a jail day room on the sort of couch found in a hospital emergency room. “It’s safe and everyone here is really nice. I haven’t had a problem with any of the other girls. They give me shampoo.”
For roughly $75 to $127 a day, these convicts — who are known in the self-pay parlance as “clients” — get a small cell behind a regular door, distance of some amplitude from violent offenders and, in some cases, the right to bring an iPod or computer on which to compose a novel, or perhaps a song.
Many of the overnighters are granted work furlough, enabling them to do most of their time on the job, returning to the jail simply to go to bed (often following a strip search, which granted is not so five-star).
The clients usually share a cell, but otherwise mix little with the ordinary nonpaying inmates, who tend to be people arrested and awaiting arraignment, or federal prisoners on trial or awaiting deportation and simply passing through.
The pay-to-stay programs have existed for years, but recently attracted some attention when prosecutors balked at a jail in Fullerton that they said would offer computer and cellphone use to George Jaramillo, a former Orange County assistant sheriff who pleaded no contest to perjury and misuse of public funds, including the unauthorized use of a county helicopter. Mr. Jaramillo was booked into the self-pay program in Montebello, near Los Angeles, instead.
“We certainly didn’t envision a jail with cellphone and laptop capabilities where his family could bring him three hot meals,” said Susan Kang Schroeder, the public affairs counsel for the Orange County district attorney. “We felt that the use of the computer was part of the instrumentality of his crime, and that is another reason we objected to that.”
A spokesman for the Fullerton jail said cellphones but not laptops were allowed.
While jails in other states may offer pay-to-stay programs, numerous jail experts said they did not know of any.
“I have never run into this,” said Ken Kerle, managing editor of the publication American Jail Association and author of two books on jails. “But the rest of the country doesn’t have Hollywood either. Most of the people who go to jail are economically disadvantaged, often mentally ill, with alcohol and drug problems and are functionally illiterate. They don’t have $80 a day for jail.”
The California prison system, severely overcrowded, teeming with violence and infectious diseases and so dysfunctional that much of it is under court supervision, is one that anyone with the slightest means would most likely pay to avoid.
“The benefits are that you are isolated and you don’t have to expose yourself to the traditional county system,” said Christine Parker, a spokeswoman for CSI, a national provider of jails that runs three in Orange County with pay-to-stay programs. “You can avoid gang issues. You are restricted in terms of the number of people you are encountering and they are a similar persuasion such as you.”
Most of the programs — which offer 10 to 30 beds — stay full enough that marketing is not necessary, though that was not always the case. The Pasadena jail, for instance, tried to create a little buzz for its program when it was started in the early 1990s.
“Our sales pitch at the time was, ‘Bad things happen to good people,’ ” said Janet Givens, a spokeswoman for the Pasadena Police Department. Jail representatives used Rotary Clubs and other such venues as their potential marketplace for “fee-paying inmate workers” who are charged $127 a day (payment upfront required).
“People might have brothers, sisters, cousins, etc., who might have had a lapse in judgment and do not want to go to county jail,” Ms. Givens said.
The typical pay-to-stay client, jail representatives agreed, is a man in his late 30s who has been convicted of driving while intoxicated and sentenced to a month or two in jail.
But there are single-night guests, and those who linger well over a year.
“One individual wanted to do four years here,” said Christina Holland, a correctional manager of the Santa Ana jail.
Inmates in Santa Ana who have been approved for pay to stay by the courts and have coughed up a hefty deposit for their stay, enter the jail through a lobby and not the driveway reserved for the arrival of other prisoners. They are strip searched when they return from work each day because the biggest problem they pose is the smuggling of contraband, generally cigarettes, for nonpaying inmates.
Most of the jailers require the inmates to do chores around the jails, even if they work elsewhere during the day.
“I try real hard to keep them in custody for 12 hours,” Ms. Holland said. “Because I think that’s fair.”
Critics argue that the systems create inherent injustices, offering cleaner, safer alternatives to those who can pay.
“It seems to be to be a little unfair,” said Mike Jackson, the training manager of the National Sheriff’s Association. “Two people come in, have the same offense, and the guy who has money gets to pay to stay and the other doesn’t. The system is supposed to be equitable.”
But cities argue that the paying inmates generate cash, often hundreds of thousands of dollars a year — enabling them to better afford their other taxpayer-financed operations — and are generally easy to deal with.
“We never had a problem with self pay,” said Steve Lechuga, the operations manager for CSI. “I haven’t seen any fights in years. We had a really good success rate with them.”
Stanley Goldman, a professor of criminal law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, has recommended the program to former clients.
“The prisoners who are charged with nonviolent crimes and typically have no record are not in the best position to handle themselves in the general county facility,” Professor Goldman said.
Still, no doubt about it, the self-pay jails are not to be confused with Canyon Ranch.
The cells at Santa Ana are roughly the size of a custodial closet, and share its smell and ambience. Most have little more than a pink bottle of jail-issue moisturizer and a book borrowed from the day room. Lockdown can occur for hours at a time, and just feet away other prisoners sit with their faces pressed against cell windows, looking menacing.
Ms. Brockett, who normally works as a bartender in Los Angeles, said the experience was one she never cared to repeat.
“It does look decent,” she said, “but you still feel exactly where you are.”
(I just got this announcement in my Inbox, and I'ma be honest--this isn't the kind of work I'm generally interested in--especially that drinking-from-a-vessel-while-a-milky-white-liquid-cascades-down-her-black-body stuff--male fantasy at its worst and we have, in fact, seen that many times--but obviously I'm interested in the subject matter).
"Where can I find the book?" has been a constant request since the WOMEN OF A NEW TRIBE exhibition premiered in Charlotte NC in June 2002. This exhibition which has been called a "stunning" and "spectacular" collection of black and white photography is the source of a book that is destined to become a collector's item. This book is more than a homage to the physical and spiritual beauty of the black woman it is an experience. An experience in seeing in a new way and in a new light. Blue Greenberg of the Durham Herald-Sun wrote, "Taliaferro turns our ideas of stereotypical beauty upside down...". Rarely has the black woman been protrayed in such a manner, WOMEN OF A NEW TRIBE presents its subjects in way normally reserved for the great icons of feminine beauty like Garbo and Crawford. Through the use of large format black and white photography and a style that harkens back to the great glamour photography of 1930's and 1940's Hollywood the beauty of black women is lain bare. The meticulously "built" images echos the works of such photographers as George Hurrell, Sinclair Bull and Laszlo Wilinger.
If the book I DREAM A WORLD celebrated black women who changed America then WOMEN OF A NEW TRIBE honors the black women we see around us everyday. It is a magnificant tribute to our mothers, sisters, wives, daughters and friends.
In September 2007, the exhibition will open at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute in Birminham AL. This event will also mark the release of this much anticipated book!
Publication Date: September 2007 Format: Hardcover Trim Size: 10x12 in. Category: Photography U.S. Price: $49.95 Publisher: Jerry Taliaferro Photography Contact: Email newtribe8@cs.com
(Spotted at Stereohyped, where I tried to post this comment but it didn't seem to work)
This kind of imagery is as old as photography, though it never ceases to shock me. The more common and insidious permutation of it is when people of color are just exotic backdrops, as in the new Free People catalog and the May '07 (page 4) Anthropologie catalog.
I like both of those stores, and Free People strives to be progressive (and indeed defended the image at the link above), but it's samo, samo bullshit. Just once, show me the reverse. Just once. I'm sure it doesn't exist.
Some donations spoiled, while millions still haven’t been collected or spent
By John Solomon and Spencer S. Hsu
The Washington Post
Updated: 4:41 p.m. PT April 29, 2007
As the winds and water of Hurricane Katrina were receding, presidential confidante Karen Hughes sent a cable from her State Department office to U.S. ambassadors worldwide.
Titled "Echo-Chamber Message" -- a public relations term for talking points designed to be repeated again and again -- the Sept. 7, 2005, directive was unmistakable: Assure the scores of countries that had pledged or donated aid at the height of the disaster that their largesse had provided Americans "practical help and moral support" and "highlight the concrete benefits hurricane victims are receiving."
Many of the U.S. diplomats who received the message, however, were beginning to witness a more embarrassing reality. They knew the U.S. government was turning down many allies' offers of manpower, supplies and expertise worth untold millions of dollars. Eventually the United States also would fail to collect most of the unprecedented outpouring of international cash assistance for Katrina's victims.
Only a fraction of promised aid collected Allies offered $854 million in cash and in oil that was to be sold for cash. But only $40 million has been used so far for disaster victims or reconstruction, according to U.S. officials and contractors. Most of the aid went uncollected, including $400 million worth of oil. Some offers were withdrawn or redirected to private groups such as the Red Cross. The rest has been delayed by red tape and bureaucratic limits on how it can be spent.
In addition, valuable supplies and services -- such as cellphone systems, medicine and cruise ships -- were delayed or declined because the government could not handle them. In some cases, supplies were wasted.
The struggle to apply foreign aid in the aftermath of the hurricane, which has cost U.S. taxpayers more than $125 billion so far, is another reminder of the federal government's difficulty leading the recovery. Reports of government waste and delays or denials of assistance have surfaced repeatedly since hurricanes Katrina and Rita struck in 2005.
Administration officials acknowledged in February 2006 that they were ill prepared to coordinate and distribute foreign aid and that only about half the $126 million received had been put to use. Now, 20 months after Katrina, newly released documents and interviews make clear the magnitude of the troubles.
‘Tell them we blew it,’ or not ... More than 10,000 pages of cables, telegraphs and e-mails from U.S. diplomats around the globe -- released piecemeal since last fall under the Freedom of Information Act -- provide a fuller account of problems that, at times, mystified generous allies and left U.S. representatives at a loss for an explanation. The documents were obtained by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a public interest group, which provided them to The Washington Post.
In one exchange, State Department officials anguished over whether to tell Italy that its shipments of medicine, gauze and other medical supplies spoiled in the elements for weeks after Katrina's landfall on Aug. 29, 2005, and were destroyed. "Tell them we blew it," one disgusted official wrote. But she hedged: "The flip side is just to dispose of it and not come clean. I could be persuaded."
In another instance, the Department of Homeland Security accepted an offer from Greece on Sept. 3, 2005, to dispatch two cruise ships that could be used free as hotels or hospitals for displaced residents. The deal was rescinded Sept. 15 after it became clear a ship would not arrive before Oct. 10. The U.S. eventually paid $249 million to use Carnival Cruise Lines vessels.
‘Will keep offer on hand’ And while television sets worldwide showed images of New Orleans residents begging to be rescued from rooftops as floodwaters rose, U.S. officials turned down countless offers of allied troops and search-and-rescue teams. The most common responses: "sent letter of thanks" and "will keep offer on hand," the new documents show.
Overall, the United States declined 54 of 77 recorded aid offers from three of its staunchest allies: Canada, Britain and Israel, according to a 40-page State Department table of the offers that had been received as of January 2006.
"There is a lack of accountability in where the money comes in and where it goes," said Melanie Sloan, executive director of the public interest group, which called for an investigation into the fate of foreign aid offers. She added: "It's clear that they're trying to hide their ineptitude, incompetence and malfeasance."
Feds say they learned lesson In a statement, State Department spokesman Tom Casey said that the U.S. government sincerely appreciated support from around the world and that Katrina had proved to be "a unique event in many ways."
"As we continue our planning for the future, we will draw on the lessons learned from this experience to ensure that we make the best use of any possible foreign assistance that might be offered," Casey said.
Representatives of foreign countries declined to criticize the U.S. response to their aid offers, though some redirected their gifts.
Of $454 million in cash that was pledged by more than 150 countries and foreign organizations, only $126 million from 40 donors was actually received. The biggest gifts were from the United Arab Emirates, $100 million; China and Bahrain, $5 million each; South Korea, $3.8 million; and Taiwan, $2 million.
Bader Bin Saeed, spokesman for the Emirates Embassy in Washington, said that in future disasters, "the UAE would not hesitate to help other countries, whether the U.S. or any other state, in humanitarian efforts."
Aid redirected to private charities Kuwait, which made the largest offer, pledged $100 million in cash and $400 million in oil. But the Kuwaitis eventually gave their money to two private groups: $25 million to the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund, a project of the former presidents, and another $25 million to the American Red Cross in February 2006. They still plan to contribute another $50 million, said the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States, Salem Abdullah al-Jaber al-Sabah.
"It was based on my government's assessment of the fastest way to get money to the people that needed it," he said. "The Red Cross was on the ground and action-oriented."
In the White House's February 2006 Katrina report, U.S. officials said Kuwait's $400 million oil donation was to be sold for cash. Sabah said it was an in-kind pledge made when it appeared that U.S. refining capacity was devastated and that the American public would need fuel.
"We have to see what we have to do with that. When you pledge something in-kind, your intention is to give it in-kind. I do not think now the American people are in need of $400 million of fuel and fuel products," he said.
Tens of millions unspent Of the $126 million in cash that has been received, most has not yet been used. More than $60 million was set aside in March 2006 to rebuild schools, colleges and universities, but so far, only $10.4 million has been taken by schools.
Half the $60 million was awarded last fall to 14 Louisiana and Mississippi colleges, but five have not started to claim the money. Only Dillard University in Louisiana and Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College have tapped their full awards, worth $6 million, U.S. Education Department officials said Friday.
Another $30 million was sent to Orleans, St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes in Louisiana and to the state-run Recovery School District in New Orleans to build libraries, laboratories and other facilities for 130 public schools.
‘The money should start to flow’ But none of that money has been used yet, said Meg Casper, spokeswoman for the Louisiana Department of Education. Allocations were just approved by the state board last week, she said, "so the money should start to flow."
The first concrete program officials announced in October 2005 -- a $66 million contract to a consortium of 10 faith-based and charity groups to provide social services to displaced families -- so far has assisted less than half the 100,000 victims it promised to help, the project director said.
The group, led by the United Methodist Committee on Relief, has spent $30 million of the money it was given to aid about 45,000 evacuees. Senate investigators are questioning some terms in the contract proposal, including a provision to pay consultants for 450 days to train volunteers for the work the committee was paid to do.
Jim Cox, the program director, said that the project is "right on track" but that its strategy of relying on volunteers foundered because of burnout and high turnover. He acknowledged that more people need help than are receiving it and said the program will be extended to March to use available funds.
"The resources aren't there, but these resources certainly are coming," Cox said.
I received this message from quilter Kyra Hicks--check her out!
April 12, 2007 -- HER name is Crystal Gail Man gum. 
WOMEN OF A NEW TRIBE
