Mark Anthony Neal's Blog, page 182

Edwidge Danticat on the Devastation in Haiti

 

'In August of 2021, a 7.2 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti, leveling buildings in the western region of the country and killing around 1300 people. Hundreds are still missing and heavy rains from tropical depression Grace make relief efforts more complicated.  Before the earthquake, Haiti was already struggling with extreme poverty, systemic gang violence and a political crisis made worse by the recent assassination of President Jovenel Moïse.  And the country still has not fully recovered from the devastating earthquake that hit Port-au-Prince in 2010 and killed a staggering 300,000 people.  The Takeaway's Melissa Harris-Perry spoke with award-winning Haitian-American writer Edwidge Danticat.'

Valerie Cooper: 'Black DEATHS Matter, Too'

'Dr. Valerie Cooper’s lecture, titled “Black Deaths Matter, Too: Doing Racial Reconciliation after the Massacre at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, SC,” covered how to pursue justice in a contentious age. She is Associate Professor of Religion and Society and Black Church Studies at Duke Divinity School and a 5th generation United Methodist.'

Into America: The Incredible Story of Dewey Bozella's Fight for Freedom

'Dewey Bozella was 18 years old when he was arrested for murder. It was a terrible crime: An elderly woman had been beaten and suffocated in her home in Poughkeepsie, New York. But Dewey had nothing to do with it. Five years later, Dewey was convicted on flimsy, circumstantial evidence, and became one of the estimated tens of thousands of innocent people stuck in prison for crimes they did not commit. Black people are overrepresented in that group: They are seven times more likely to be wrongfully convicted of murder than whites. Before he was locked up, Dewey had taken up boxing. And while incarcerated at Sing Sing Prison, Dewey turned back to the sport he loved, something he says helped save his life. He became the prison's light heavyweight boxing champion, and after being released in 2009, he began mentoring young people and teaching them to box. He didn’t give up on his dreams of boxing, and two years after his release, Dewey competed in his first professional fight, at 52 years old. Trymaine Lee sits down with Dewey to talk about his fight to prove his innocence and to live out his dreams, and the lessons he learned along the way.'

Identity And Dance: Camille A. Brown Talks With Lara Downes

'The groundbreaking choreographer, Camille A. Brown, who is also the first Black director at the Metropolitan Opera, tells Amplify With Lara Downes, she found self-expression through dance.'

The Vanishing of Harry Pace: Episode 3

'Black No More, White No More.  Radiolab follows Harry Pace's grandkids and great grandkids as they grapple with his legacy in their own lives.'

Otherppl with Brad Listi: Kendra Allen

'Kendra Allen is the author of the poetry collection The Collection Plate (Ecco). Allen was born and raised in Dallas, Texas. She is the recipient of the 2018 Iowa Prize for Literary Nonfiction for her essay collection When You Learn the Alphabet, awarded by Kiese Laymon. She has been featured on C-SPAN, interviewed in The Rumpus and Poets & Writers, and her work has been taught by New York Times bestselling author Jason Reynolds alongside that of Jamaica Kincaid and Eve Ewing, among other distinctions. She lives in San Antonio.'

'Making Good Trouble: Cori Bush' by Ben Jealous

Making Good Trouble: Cori Bush

by Ben Jealous | @BenJealous | NewBlackMan (in Exile)

 

Rep. John Lewis, the civil rights icon who died last year, liked to tell activists that building a better world depended on people being willing to make “good trouble.” Rep. Cori Bush has just given us an example of effective troublemaking that should inspire us to action.

 

Rep. Bush is in her first term as a member of Congress representing St. Louis, Missouri. She didn’t come with a typical resume of prestigious college and law school degrees and previous political jobs. Bush got into politics protesting police killings of unarmed Black men. Because her work was seen and respected in her community, she beat the odds and beat a long-time member of Congress.

 

Bush has experienced eviction herself. She knows how disruptive and dangerous it can be. So she wasn’t going to stay quiet when Biden administration officials and congressional leaders were ready to let a COVID-19 moratorium on evictions expire and put millions of families at risk.

 

The temporary eviction ban was put in place by the Centers for Disease Control last September as a public health measure. Millions of families fell behind on rent because of the economic turmoil caused by the pandemic. The CDC knew that forcing those families out of their homes and into shelters or onto the streets in the middle of a pandemic would cost lives.

 

That original moratorium expired on July 31. It made no sense to kick people out of their homes just when the Delta variant of the COVID-19 virus was pushing the pandemic into another deadly phase.

 

But the Supreme Court’s right-wing justices had signaled their disapproval for the moratorium. So the White House and congressional leaders played a bit of last-minute hot potato before Congress left town for its August recess without taking action to protect the families at risk of homelessness.

 

Rep. Bush grabbed a sleeping bag and camped out on the steps of the U.S. Capitol for several days to shame people into action. You can be sure that many of her colleagues didn’t like being put on the spot as they went on vacation. Some of them anonymously criticized her tactics. Her hometown paper said she was ignoring “political reality.” Her right-wing critics ranged from dismissive to abusive.

 

But it worked. Bush’s troublemaking meant that public officials could not just deflect attention from the crisis that was about to engulf thousands of families. And the White House worked with the CDC to extend protection against eviction for the vast majority of people at risk.

 

The new moratorium is being challenged in court, and it will expire in October. But it is buying time for families at risk. It is giving local officials a chance to get money into the hands of people who need it.

 

Bush’s good troublemaking also brought needed attention to the fact that Congress had approved $46.5 billion to help renters and their landlords, but some states and counties hadn’t distributed a penny of it even months after they got the money.

 

When I saw people criticizing Rep. Bush for her tactics, I thought of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Letter from a Birmingham jail. He wrote that he had almost concluded that a greater stumbling block to the freedom movement than the KKK was the white moderate more devoted to “order” than justice, who constantly says, “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action.”

 

Rep. Bush saw that families behind on rent were facing a crisis point. Our democracy is also facing a crisis point. In state after state, where Republicans are in control, they are imposing new barriers to voting as they try to prolong and expand their hold on power. They want the power to resist progress on racial equity, access to health care, and all the other issues that motivated people to turn out and vote for Joe Biden.

 

We can’t let them win. Voting rights activists across the country are organizing. They’re looking for people to help them make good trouble. When that opportunity comes your way, think of John Lewis and Cori Bush. And answer the call.

 

***

 

Ben Jealous serves as president of People For the American Way. Jealous has decades of experience as a leader, coalition builder, campaigner for social justice and seasoned nonprofit executive. In 2008, he was chosen as the youngest-ever president and CEO of the NAACP. He is a graduate of Columbia University and Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar, and he has taught at Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania.

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Afropop Worldwide: Reggaetón and Race

'The dembow, the beat behind reggaetón, is much more than just a backdrop for a night of partying and dancing. The style of music, widely associated with Puerto Rico and forged from a mixture of Jamaican dancehall, Panamanian reggae en español, and American hip hop, has always existed as a form of social and political resistance. And as such, it has endured constant attempts to criminalize, censor, and police both the music and those who consume it, from the early tape-confiscations by Puerto Rican law enforcement in the 1990s underground scene to the present day, arguing its hypersexual content. In this episode of Afropop Worldwide Latin and Caribbean music scholars and social workers break down the racist and sexist undertones of the genre's constant policing, as well as provide examples of songs by artists such as Tego Calderón and Ivy Queen, that counter these assumptions.'

Afropop Worldwide · Reggaetón and Race

The Leon and Gloria Plevin Family Museum Director Lecture: Valerie Cassel Oliver

'Chautauqua Visual Arts spotlights curator Valerie Cassel Oliver for the annual Leon and Gloria Plevin Family Museum Director Lecture on the CHQ Assembly Virtual Porch. The annual lecture series was established in honor of the late Leon Plevin, husband to artist Gloria Plevin and avid supporter of the visual arts at Chautauqua. Hailing from Houston, Oliver attended the University of Texas at Austin, going on to attend graduate school at Howard University. Presently, she serves as the Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Richmond-based Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, one of the largest art museums in North America. In 2021, Oliver curated the unprecedented exhibition “The Dirty South: Contemporary Art, Material Culture, and the Sonic Impulse,” reemphasizing the importance of open dialogue in regard to urgent themes here in America. In this exhibition, Oliver details the intricate conversations between art, music and everyday objects found in Southern culture.'

Black Ownership In Atlanta’s Creative Economy

'A group of Black entrepreneurs come together to discuss their new creative space in Atlanta, GA, The HBUC.'