Mark Anthony Neal's Blog, page 209

Your Hometown: Lynn Nottage – Boerum Hill, Brooklyn

 

'Lynn Nottage is the first woman ever to win two Pulitzer Prizes for Drama, and she’s one of the most important voices writing for the stage and screen today, with works that include Infinite Apparel, Crumbs from the Table of Joy, Ruined, Sweat, and MJ: The Musical, an upcoming show on the life of Michael Jackson. She often writes about characters in private, intimate spaces, where and how real people really talk. It’s a process that began in her hometown of New York City, where she was a girl growing up in the Boerum Hill section of pre-gentrified Brooklyn. On the surface, she says, it was the kind of neighborhood people passed through to get to other neighborhoods in 1970s. But to Lynn, it was the setting for her story, starting on her block and in the brownstone where her parents, Wally and Ruby Nottage, raised her and her brother and hosted family, friends, artists, and activists. There was lots of noise in the house, especially in the kitchen. Lynn still lives in that house today, a wife, mother, professor, and playwright surrounded by the memories and materials of her ancestors.'

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Exhibition: 'New York, New Music 1980-1986'

'The Museum of New York City’s new exhibition New York, New Music 1980-1986 opened on June 11th, highlighting the diverse musical artists of the decade and exploring the broader music and cultural scene centered in New York City. Photographer Janette Beckman and the Museum’s curator of photographs and prints Sean Corcoran join All Of It to discuss the exhibition.'

Black Churches Have Moral Authority to Defend the Black Vote by Ben Jealous

Black Churches Have Moral Authority to Defend the Black Vote

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

 

During the civil rights movement’s struggle against discrimination and voter suppression in Jim Crow America, the Black Church was a source of refuge and resolve. Today, a new wave of voter suppression laws is targeting Black voters, and new generations of Black clergy are bringing their moral authority to a campaign to defend the Black vote.  

 

We need these prophetic voices. The new Jim Crow doesn’t look exactly like the old Jim Crow, but it is grounded in the same assault on the dignity, humanity, and citizenship rights of Black Americans. We need our communities’ truth-tellers to speak out. Because the new Jim Crow is grounded in layers of lies.  

 

The Big Lie told by former President Donald Trump and his supporters is that he won the 2020 election, but had his victory stolen by corrupt election officials and Black and brown people casting fraudulent votes.  

 

The existence of widespread voter fraud is itself a lie. It has been debunked over and over again. But Republicans in dozens of states are using that lie to justify new restrictive voting rules. They claim to be protecting “election integrity” but they are really trying to make it harder for some Black and brown people to cast a ballot and have it counted.  

 

Right-wing lawmakers feel free to impose discriminatory voting rules thanks to another lie—this one told by John Roberts, the Chief Justice of the United States. He justified the decision of a conservative majority of the Court in 2013 to abolish a key enforcement mechanism of the Voting Rights Act by saying in effect that racial discrimination in voting was a thing of the past.  

 

States from across the old Confederacy proved him wrong, by acting to impose new restrictions on registration and voting. Some went into effect just hours after the Supreme Court gave them the green light.  

 

That was bad enough. But the right wing’s voter suppression machinery really kicked into high gear after the 2020 election. Republican lawmakers saw that Black voter turnout helped President Joe Biden win key battleground states. And they vowed not to let that happen again.  

 

Republican lawmakers’ strategy for holding onto power is not to reach out to Black voters, but to shut them out. But we won’t be shut out. We will push Congress to pass the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, two laws that are needed to overturn the new Jim Crow laws and prevent future restrictions on voting.  

 

The late Rep. John Lewis told us in his farewell message last year that if we don’t use our right to vote, it can be taken from us. This year we are seeing new efforts to take the vote from us because we voted.  

 

We can’t let politicians turn us around. At People For the American Way, we are investing more resources in our Defend the Black Vote project. We are sounding the alarm about disenfranchisement. And we are building our capacity to reach, educate, and mobilize even more Black voters than we did in 2020 through digital media, paid advertising, and an ambitious peer-to-peer texting program.  

 

And we will continue to be inspired by the vision and leadership of Black clergy like the Rev. Timothy McDonald, who launched the African American Ministers Leadership Council and its Souls to the Polls movement more than 20 years ago. When Georgia Republicans tried to shut down Souls to the Polls by banning early voting on Sundays, Rev. McDonald called them out as “the Klan in three-piece suits.” 

 

Rev. McDonald’s righteous truth-telling shamed Georgia Republicans into dropping that part of their voter suppression plan. But the rest of it became law—including the infamous ban on groups providing water to people forced to wait in long voting lines. Voting rights activists have gone to court to challenge the Georgia law and others like it. Organizers will do everything possible to help Black voters overcome any new obstacles that have been put between them and the ballot box.  

 

And the Black church will once again give voice to the aspirations of our people, drawing on a long tradition of prophetic witness against injustice combined with strategic organizing on behalf of freedom and equality.  

 

“We endured slavery, Jim Crow and lynching by being creative and strategic,” Rev. McDonald told CNN. “We’re going to use their own tools and throw them back at them. We have to beat them at their own game.”  

 

Preach!  

 

***

 

Ben Jealous serves as president of People For the American Way and People For the American Way Foundation. 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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Raheem DeVaughn: "Marvin Used to Say"

'"Marvin Used To Say" is a time period piece of visual art in tribute to the musical icon and legend Marvin Gaye, from Raheem DeVaughn’s album What A Time To Be In Love.'

Shawna Murray-Browne | Decolonizing Mental Health

'Before Shawna Murray-Browne’s brother was murdered, she dreamt about it. It was a residue from the trauma of seeing so many Black men being killed around her. This turning point in her career as an integrated psychotherapist made her focus on empowering communities of color to access ways of nurture, care, and healing, that the racist-capitalist society keeps away from them.' -- WORLD Channel

Kindred The Family Soul - "Break It Down" (Official Music Video)

'"Break It Down" is the second music video from the Auntie & Unc (2021) album from Kindred The Family Soul.'

Legendary Songstress Eartha Kitt Is Remembered Through The Eyes Of Her Daughter In New Book

'Songstress Eartha Kitt enthralled audiences beginning in the 1940s up until just months before her death in 2008. She’s known for the sultry Christmas classic from 1953 “Santa Baby.” But Kitt was much more than her sex-kitten image. She supported Martin Luther King Jr., and advocated for women's rights and the LGBTQ community. And though the world viewed her as Black, she refused to be defined by the color of her skin. Kitt’s daughter, Kitt Shapiro, was her mother's closest confidante. Shapiro tells the story of their relationship in the new book Eartha & Kitt: A Daughter's Love Story in Black and White, which she wrote with Patricia Weiss Levy.' -- Here & Now

Merry Clayton: Tiny Desk (Home) Concert

'This performance is an inspiring comeback for Merry Clayton, who has been making great music for almost 60 years. Clayton is one of rock's most important backup singers (for starters, see The Rolling Stones' "Gimme Shelter," Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama" and Carole King's Tapestry). She recorded several excellent solo albums that never broke big, but eventually received the recognition she deserved in the 2013 documentary 20 Feet From Stardom. In 2014, she was in a serious car accident that required months in the hospital and extensive rehabilitation. With encouragement from her longtime friend and producer Lou Adler — who's watching this performance off-camera — she decided to record a new album.'

Floating Along In Uncertainty With Vijay Iyer

'For the final entry in Morning Edition's Song Project series, Vijay Iyer wrote a rhizomatic, inviting — and not entirely placating — instrumental piece to encapsulate his past year.'

Yusef Komunyakaa Shares Poems From His Collection 'Everyday Mojo Songs of Earth'

'Weekend Edition Saturday host Scott Simon speaks to Pulitzer Prize winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa about his new collection of poems, Everyday Mojo Songs of Earth New and Selected Poems, 2001-2021.'