Yikes! Our Interviews

In the interest of horrifying you with my flapping arms, I did a video interview with my friend Lee for Journeystreams, a project National Geographic is working on about Digital Storytellers. If you go to their main site, you will also find interviews with my friend radio/film producer Alex Fountain and friend/video producer Libby Mann.

Lee Buric is an amazing producer who has worked for Democracy Now!, is one of Free Speech TV's regular stringers, and consistently uses media to advance social change. It was an honor to get to work with her!

Hyperlocalism

I adore poet Maggie Anderson's line:

History is one long story of what happened to us,
and its rhythms are local dialect and anecdote.

Beyond the violence of the academy, the failures of hegemonic narrative, the sweatless, bloodless, sexless sterility of Wikipedia, the quantitative perversion of sociology, psychology, and political science, Anderson's line suggests that history is of the people and their stories. At Free Speech TV, I have the opportunity to work with groups like Appalshop, Global Action Project, SCRIBE, Denver Open Media, and dozens of community cable stations. Doing this work, I witness hyperlocalism in real time. Media creates the opportunity for localisms to merge in a web of interactive revolutionary possibility as structured as flows of exploitation via capitalism. Interconnected local dialects and anecdotes create a formal, social, cultural machine capable of both maintaining and destroying oppressive systems of capitalism, government, and oppression.

Art Threat

If you've not come across this blog, Art Threat does a great job reviewing a variety of art projects in a political context. Check it!

From their website
"Set against a cultural landscape saturated with profit pop and reality TV, Art Threat is a website about political art. We showcase political artists who mix art and politics to create artwork seeking social change."

Stacy Sent Me a Sweet NPR Story

My friend Stacy, a badass editor, amazing friend, and wonderful artist, sent me and a few others this incredible NPR story about a man who treated his mugger right. This made me a bit teary. What I love about this story is that instead of calling the police, this guy was just so friggin' sweet and understood the motives that make people steal. While I can get a bit rant-abulous, Julio Diaz, the protagonist of the story, demonstrates the kind of behavior that could get us out of the violence and horror of our contemporary world.

4000 Dead

The four-thousandth U.S. soldier has been killed in Iraq and the war has yet to come home. While our government sends young people of color to kill other people of color in Iraq, our nation continues to consume. The death of U.S. and Iraqi youth hardly phases us. We are distracted and as a result people continue to die.

The United States is killing its children and destroying Iraq. We must fight this murderous system at every turn.

Appropriate Ressurections: An Easter Manifesto

Jesus has been killed so many times: first by the Roman State, then by the various Christian states, Empires, monarchies who killed, tortured, pillaged, and raped in his name, and finally today by the mulitnational capitalists who take advantage of poor people, spread war, and hatred while espousing so called "Christianity." Christianity is the final thorn in his crown, stab in his side, nail in his wrist. Jesus taught messages of love, resistance, and equality. The church kills him when they ignore the poor, support genocidal wars in Iraq, enable the suffering of the Palestinians abroad and communities of color at home. The same people who killed Jesus run the church today. Everyday they crucify him in a million ways.

So when a preacher with strong language and analysis enters the American imaginary, the media, churches, and parties crucify him like they crucified Jesus. Reverend Jeremiah Wright has suffered the gauntlet of the ideological state apparatus as Barack Obama has struggled to get into a seat of power. For acknowledging racism and genocidal foreign policy, he has been denigrated by Obama and the public alike.

To be Christlike, or Christian, a person must follow in the footsteps of Jesus and confront the horrors of the contemporary world, bare witness to the suffering of others. This is the Jesus and the Christianity that should be resurrected this year. The self-help megachurches and their capitalist empires should fall like Babylon, turn to salt like Sodom and Gomorrah and those who bare witness, multiply food and wine, comfort and love should rejoice. They are the true Christians and in each witness of human suffering, each act of selfless kindness and humility, each confrontation of the state, Jesus is resurrected.

I Like "Stuff White People Like"

White narcissism is back with gusto. A week or so ago my friend Kelly and I were eating dinner and ranting about white people (of course both of us are white...this is what we do...). He introduced me to an incredible website, Stuff White People Like. If you haven't had a chance to check it, you've got to. Whether you're white or not, this site is all the rage amongst people stuck around various aspects of white culture.

Anti-War Protestors Rock DC

According to DC Indymedia, K Street, home to smarmy pro-war lobbyists galore, was rocked by anti-war demonstrators this morning. Non-violent Civil Disobedience, blockades at the IRS, and street theater shook the city reminding people that people in the United States still hate this war.

Gray Panthers

As I've been brainstorming Free Speech TV's upcoming acquisitions strategy, i came across an organization known as The Gray Panthers. They are "an intergenerational, multi-issue organization working to create a society that puts the needs of people over profit, responsibility over power, and democracy over institutions." Founded by Maggie Kuhn, the panthers work on keeping medicare public, fighting for universal health care, legalizing medical marijuana, oppose the death penalty, end nuclear testing, create a Cabinet-level Department of Peace, break up media conglomerates, and fight for public school funding. More about their policies can be found here.

The Great Easter Spy Camera Hunt

This weekend, my friends at Recreate 68 are organizing The Great Easter Spy Camera Hunt this Saturday. This is a great opportunity to join those of us in Denver in identifying and mapping surveillance cameras that are being installed throughout our city. Having lived in Chicago, where the police put up cameras with flashing blue lights in poor neighborhoods with large numbers of people of color, it is clear that these cameras will be used to reinforce the violence of the state, protect the capitalist thieves in power, and defend murderers from the righteous indignation of the people. So, if you wanna, go get your hunt on and help Recreate 68 mark these cameras so we know our city well for the upcoming protests against the Democratic National Convention!

Roque Dalton: Poetry for Revolution

Lately, I've been reading Salvadoran revolutionary poet Roque Dalton after encountering his essay "Poetry and Militancy in Latin America," in Art on the Line: Essays by Artists About the Point Where Their Art and Activism Intersect." After reading his poems in the bathroom, I walked into the living room and asked my roommate if she had heard of him. Of course, being a revolutionary scholar, she giddily said, "He's my favorite." When she grabbed his small book, Poemas Clandestinos from my hand, I had it turned to the poem, Como Tú, which I have copied below. While I don't pretend to be a literary critic of much worth, I do believe that the following line sums up a profoundly important and often lost truth about poetry:

"Creo que el mundo es bello,
que la poesía es como el pan,
de todos."

"I believe the world is beautiful
and that poetry, like bread, is for everyone. " (Trans. Jack Hirschman)

As we fight media elites who create content without poetry and sell it like drugs to the masses, as we combat politicians and business leaders hellbent on privatizing education and stripping it of poetry, as we grapple with antiintellectuals who claim that poetry is for ivory towers and that the masses are asses, Dalton's words guide us forward towards liberation, a world where all people's need for bread and poetry has been filled and the ivory towers, the banks, and the government halls have been torn to the ground or turned into monuments of a grotesque and embarrassing past when thieves and murderers ruled the land and used poetry and bread as a weapon.

On another note, Roque Dalton did express some doctrinaire homophobia common in Big-C ideological Communists of that era. Now, I know it is wrong to pardon him for his propagandistic sins against my people, but one must take into consideration that he was extremely hot, militant, sweaty, and lyrical. Now, what could be gayer than that?

Wafaa Bilal: Digital Jihad

Check out Iraqi Artist Wafaa Bilal's webpage and learn more about his project Virtual Jihadi and the controversy his incredible work has sparked at RPI.

What Happened to the Anti-War Movement?

After watching a number of the Winter Soldier Hearings, I found myself, once again, standing outside the Colorado State Capital at a lackluster peace rally wondering, "why this, again?" According to The Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, 3988 U.S. soldiers have been killed in Iraq. Over one-hundred have died from suicide, tens of thousands have been wounded. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been murdered, countless injured, the soil irrevocably contaminated by depleted uranium, and the people traumatized. Over a third of the U.S. homeless population are veterans and rates of post-traumatic stress disorder have sky rocketed leaving hundreds of thousands of young people forever scarred by Iraq. No need to review the senselessness of this war, the lies that provoked it, the wealthy who send poor Americans to die for oil.

We need to bring the war home. People in the United States need to feel it. Peace vigils fail to bring attention to the horror of the situation. We need the rage and trauma of war to ring through the streets shattering the illusion that "everything's ok." We need politicians and businessmen, the catalysts of destruction, to quiver in fear of the people. Too many corpses, too much violence, too many victims. We need to demand joy, peace, and tranquility, but not without justice. The fight is on. Which side will we be on?

Winter Soldier Broadcasting Live

For anybody who feels on the fence about whether the United States should leave Iraq immediately, The Winter Soldier event is a perfect chance for you to hear first hand from Iraq Vetrans about their crimes and sufferings in Iraq. Politicians, business people, and the media beware, the rage of veterans is magnifying the voice of social justice!

Stickers Stick it to Recruiters: "I Love the Bicycle Bomber"

Reading about the bombing of the military recruitment center in New York, I came across this adorable sticker. Considering the number of poor youth murdered because of the lies of military recruiters, such a sticker expresses the thoughts of millions. Fuck the recruiters. Up with resistance!

Iraqi Artist Wafaa Bilaal Censored -- Sanctuary for Independent Media Shut Down

I just got word that my Chicago-friend Wafaa Bilal who has been teaching at the Rochester Polytechnic Institute was accused of being a terrorist, had his art show, Virtual Jihadi shut down, and was locked out of the university because of the accusations of an on-campus group of Republicans. When The Sanctuary of Independent Media decided to show his work, that space was shut down by the city government of Troy. When artists are targeted as terrorists, we are sorely losing our basic freedoms of expression that insure civil discourse, the basic foundation of Democracy.

According to a Wikipedia article, "In "The Night of Bush Capturing: A Virtual Jihadi," Bilal casts himself as a suicide-bomber in the game. After learning of the real-life death of his brother in the war, he is recruited by Al Qaeda to join the hunt for Bush."

When society and government repress the free exercise of fantasy, creative expressions of rage, and artistic catharsis, they create a scenario where acts of terror replace acts of cultural expression.

Wafaa, we stand in solidarity with you and your right to express your rage. To those who seek to stifle freedom of expression, you beg for violence and shame the very notion of Democracy.

Andy Smith Refused Tenure: A Bunch of Bullshit

Now, I no longer claim to be an academic in any shape, way or form; however, I am totally horrified that one of my favorite scholars, writers, and activists, Andrea Smith, from INCITE: Women of Color Against Violence has been refused tenure by myopic academics at The Women's Studies Program at the University of Michigan , Ann Arbor.

I have enclosed the press release from INCITE below.



FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE February 25, 2008

Statement of University of Michigan Students and Faculty in Support of Andrea Smith’s Tenure Case
CONTACT: TenureForAndreaSmith@gmail.com

On February 22nd, 2008, University of Michigan ’s College of Literature , Science and the Arts (LSA) issued a negative tenure recommendation for Assistant Professor Andrea Lee Smith. Jointly appointed in the Program in American Culture and the Department of Women’s Studies, Dr. Smith’s body of scholarship exemplifies scholarly excellence with widely circulated articles in peer-reviewed journals and numerous books in both university and independent presses including Native Americans and the Christian Right published this year by Duke University Press. Dr. Smith is one of the greatest indigenous feminist intellectuals of our time. A nominee for the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize, Dr. Smith has an outstanding academic and community record of service that is internationally and nationally recognized. She is a dedicated professor and mentor and she is an integral member of the University of Michigan (UM) intellectual community. Her reputation and pedagogical practices draw undergraduate and graduate students from all over campus and the nation.

Dr. Smith received the news about her tenure case while participating in the United States ’ hearings before the Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination at the United Nations in Geneva , Switzerland . Ironically, during those very same hearings, the 2003 U.S. Supreme Court decisions that restricted affirmative action policies at UM specifically were cited as violations of international law. At the same time, there is an undeniable link between the Department of Women’s Studies and LSA’s current tenure recommendations and the long history of institutional restrictions against faculty of color. In 2008, students of color are coming together to protest the way UM’s administration has fostered an environment wherein faculty of color are few and far between, Ethnic Studies course offerings have little financial and institutional support, and student services for students of color are decreasing each year.

To Support Professor Andrea Smith : The Provost must hear our responses! Write letters in support of Andrea Smith’s tenure case. Address email letters to ALL of the following:

* Teresa Sullivan, Provost and Executive VP for Academic Affairs, LSA, tsull@umich.edu
* Lester Monts, Senior Vice Provost for Academic Affairs, LSA, lmonts@umich.edu
* Mary Sue Coleman, President, PresOff@umich.edu
* TenureForAndreaSmith@gmail.com

Write letters in support of Assistant Professor Andrea Smith’s tenure case by MARCH 31ST 2008!

Voice your ideas on the web forum at http://www.woclockdown.org/

To Support Women of Color at Michigan and the Crisis of Women’s Studies and Ethnic Studies: Attend the student organized March 15th Conference at UM!!!! Campus Lockdown: Women of Color Negotiating the Academic Industrial Complex is free and open to the public. Speakers include renowned activists and scholars Piya Chatterjee, Angela Davis, Rosa Linda Fregoso, Ruthie Gilmore, Fred Moten, Clarissa Rojas, and Haunani-Kay Trask. For more information and to register, visit: http://www.woclockdown.org/.

TALKING POINTS YOU CAN USE IN YOUR SUPPORT LETTER:
• Smith is author of the following books:
- Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide
- Native Americans and the Christian Right: The Gendered Politics of Unlikely Alliances
- Sacred Sites, Sacred Rites
• Smith is editor and/or co-editor of the following anthologies:
- Color of Violence: The INCITE! Anthology
- The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex
- Native Feminisms Without Apology
- Forthcoming on theorizing Indigenous Studies
• She has published 15 peer reviewed articles in widely circulated academic journals including American Quarterly, Feminist Studies, National Women’s Studies Association Journal, Hypatia, Meridians, and the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion
• Smith is the recipient of numerous prestigious awards from organizations such as the Lannan Foundation, University of Illinois , Gustavus Myers Foundation, Ford Foundation
• Smith was cited in the U.S. Non-Governmental Organization Consolidated Shadow Report to the United Nations
• A co-founder of INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence and the Chicago chapter of Women of All Red Nations, she has been a key thinker behind large-scale national and international efforts to develop remedies for ending violence against women beyond the criminal justice system. As a result of her work, scholars, social service providers, and community-based organizations throughout the United States have shifted from state-focused efforts to more systemic approaches for addressing violence against women. In recognition of her contributions, Smith was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005.
• As of June 2007, Professor Smith’s book, Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide (2005) had sold over 8,000 copies. Three-fourths of these sales have gone to college and university courses. In addition, the leading Native studies organization, Native American and Indigenous Studies Association, organized a special panel about this book at their last annual conference (2007). The international impact of Conquest is evidenced by its reprinting in Sami ( Sweden ) and in Maori Institutions in New Zealand ; by Professor Smith’s invitation to participate in an academic workshop in Germany based on the book; and by the book’s frequent use in Native Studies classrooms in Canada .
• She has also played a key role in contributing social-justice based research, teaching, and community building at the University of Michigan .
• Under Andrea Smith’s mentorship, a large number of undergraduate and graduate students have grown as intellectual members of the UM’s campus community.

FACTS FOR DR. ANDREA SMITH’S TENURE CASE
• Her intellectual work contributes to the fields of Native American Studies, Women’s and Gender Studies, Ethnic Studies, Religious Studies, and American Studies.
• Smith is jointly appointed in the Program in American Culture and the Department of Women’s Studies at Michigan .
• The Program in American Culture gave a positive recommendation for Smith’s tenure, while the Department of Women’s Studies gave a negative recommendation. After the tenure recommendations were released from the two departments, the College of Literature , Sciences, and the Arts reviewed the tenure file and also gave a negative tenure recommendation.
• She is currently the Director of Native American Studies at Michigan .

More blog discussion here:
http://brownfemipower.com/?p=2362
http://brownfemipower.com/?p=2361

True Fans

As I come to completion on The Patriarchs, I am beginning to ponder various ways to distribute it. Film festivals? Film tours? Word of mouth? DVDs? My friend Bart just sent me this article on Long Tail modes of distribution that I found to be pretty interesting. It suggests that artists work to develop a "True Fan" base of approximately 1000. Each of these people should give approximately 100 dollars a year which could go to an artists lively-hood and production. This seems like a reasonable, sustainable way to move forward by maximizing connections and networks. Pretty exciting stuff.