Sean Jacobs's Blog, page 336

The dream is free

I must have been looking elsewhere at first, because all I remember was moving closer to the screen at one moment, saying to myself: “Who is this and how did I miss him?” The person in question was Serge Ibaka. His magnetic presence had appeared on my screen at the 2011 Slam Dunk Contest, as he stepped into the flashing lights and cheers, the NBA AFRICA flag flying behind him. It meant wherever the cameras pointed, the word ‘Africa’ and its most recent ambassador was being beamed around the world.

I wasn’t alone in my admiration. Hall of Famer Charles Barkley, commentating on the Dunk Contest remarked: “Tell you what, that kid has a great body.” That comment led the other commentators to tease Barkley about his body when he was Ibaka’s age. Barkley said they needed to come over to his house and watch old Barkley tapes. Ibaka then dunked from the free throw line. No seven-footer had attempted that dunk before. It was always left to the realm of the guards, especially Julius ‘Dr. J’ Erving and The Greatest Michael Jordan. Ibaka dared to fly with the gods of the court and he soared.

In April of 2015, xenophobic violence spread throughout Durban in South Africa, and later spread to other parts of the country.

Back in September 2006 at a youth tournament in Durban, a young Serge Ibaka won MVP honors at The Afro-Basket Tournament. He was the top scorer, top rebounder and top shot blocker. Two years later he was playing in the NBA. His journey there was not anything like the journeys of the 700 Africans who perished at sea in April 2015 and the many others before and after them.

For every soul driven to a watery grave on the journey to seek a better life, there are a few that break through. That is the premise of the story of The Son of Congo directed by Adam Hootnick and produced by the sports and culture website Grantland. It’s their first documentary and it follows Serge Ibaka on his return to the country of his birth, The Republic of Congo.

The documentary also tries to tell the story of 15-year-old Ricardo. A boy, who dreams of the hardwood and of the United States. He plays barefoot (what else?) and wants to be like Serge. This story runs parallel to Serge’s visit home. While admirable Ricardo’s presence in the film is problematic – or unsatisfying – because we never know what will happen to Ricardo. The legendary 1994 documentary Hoop Dreams had the benefit of time – we follow the young protagonists and aspiring basketball players for years. This documentary doesn’t allow for the time and patience needed to do justice to Ricardo’s story and motivate his presence, other as the mirror of the young Serge. There is a scene where the two meet but for it to really ring true and for us to really sense who Serge used to be, and equally important who Ricardo is today – we need to know more about Ricardo. To use an example, this famous picture of Clinton meeting JFK only has resonance because we know that years later Clinton became President.

I understand why Ricardo is there but as Ibaka says the dream is free, so why not include more Ricardo’s – who deserve to be more than a mere story device – dream and journey too?

I thought of a few things while watching the documentary on Serge Ibaka. The documentary premiered as a full feature at the SXSW festival in March, and is available to be watched in episodic format on Grantland.

When Serge walks the streets of Kinshasa, he is greeted with a chorus’ of people asking him for money: ‘Give me the money and I’ll go!”, “I never get to see you, so give me the money so I can”, “Give me some money man”, “Give me something so my kids can have something to eat”, “Tell him to leave something”. In these scenes there are people that are happy to see him, but the pressure to drop something reigns supreme. What the film doesn’t provide, and maybe it doesn’t have to is the context of this poverty, beyond the spectacular. It’s the context that leads people to say “I’d rather die at sea than stay there”. It doesn’t mean that the film must tell the entire story of the Republic of Congo, but again, it means treating context and juxtaposing elements as more than just backdrops.

“There” is where most people live. And people look to folks like Ibaka to lift them out of “there”. Ibaka understands that. He lifted himself out of “there” against incredible odds. To hear his grandmother, Mama Titi tell the story, she uses Serge’s Christian name of Jonas. As Jonas sacrificed himself to save the sailors at sea and lived in the belly of the whale for three days, Ibaka, she maintains has returned from his journey to save the family.

Both Serge’s parents played for their national teams. His father Desire is a legend in Congo and his late mother Amadou represented her country, The Democratic Republic of The Congo on many occasions. The story of his mother is fondly recalled by his grandmother in a touching scene when the family reunites.

Serge’s mother died when he was very young. He grew up to a soundtrack of guns and death. This did not deter him. Basketball was the way out. He woke up at 4 A.M every morning to jog, sometimes with no food in his stomach. He kept his dream alive. His father, Desire, who worked in the ports of Brazzaville and Kinshasa was captured as a suspected anti-government rebel after crossing the Congo River in 2001. He was held without charge for two years and Serge had to fend for himself, first staying with his uncles. After an argument, he was kicked out of the house. He roamed the streets doing menial jobs, until he went to live with his grandmother. These same Uncles are the one’s he supports today. He forgave them. I thought of footballer Emmanuel Adebayor’s famous letter on Facebook in which he basically accuses his family of robbing him blind, which he posted, as he says: So other African families learn from this.

Ibaka’s family problem doesn’t seem to be at that level but scenes in the documentary reveal his frustration with his family at times. Along with the people of the streets and his family, Ibaka is the genie that they all wish to rub. Like others before him, his money goes into the community in other ways. The documentary shows him supporting Hall of Famer Dikembe Mutombo’s Biamba Marie Mutombo Hospital in Kinshasa where he witnesses a young girl through the help of hearing aid that he puts on her, hear for the first time, his own money goes to support The Pediatrie De Kimbondo orphanage, he set up The Ibaka Games which are a series of clinics and exhibitions he created to help young Congolese basketball players get training and visibility with foreign scouts and he oversees the reconstruction of the Avenir du Rail basketball court, where his parents once played and where a young Serge first learned to play basketball.

He also learned something else on his journey, that he had a daughter, Ranie. This section of The Son of Congo is where the documentary sizzles because Ranie, like her dad is a force of nature. Her mother, who remains nameless, was Serge’s girlfriend before he left. He left not knowing she was pregnant. When the news about the pregnancy reached Ibaka’s family, his father Desire told the family that he would take financial responsibility for Ranie. Not wanting to put more pressure on a son that had left home for foreign lands, Desire kept her a secret for five years. The scenes between Ibaka and his daughter are the strongest scenes in the documentary as they reveal rare moments of intimacy in the context of a sport where the image of black male is both lauded and exploited to the maximum and where stories of caring fathers don’t really fit in. The Riley Curry press conference when MVP Steph Curry brought his two-year-old daughter to the podium is another such moment, which has become legendary. For me, its moments like Riley with Steph, Ranie with Ibaka that their true characters are revealed and one cannot help but smile.

While I am touched and moved by what Ibaka does to empower others, I’m more interested in his budding relationship with his daughter. Given his history, his upbringing, he is faced with the challenge of now raising a daughter. The image of African families torn apart by colonial exploitation and war is a real one that permeates today and so positive reinforcement of an attempt to redress that image is welcome. It’s something Brain Windhorst, Colin Cowherd and Skip Bayless may never understand.

Documentaries like this live and die by their subject. In Serge Ibaka, the film has the perfect host. Charming (his nickname is Mister Avec Classe), funny (He states that the crocodiles of the River Congo know him by name) and a genius on the basketball court. He sacrificed a lot and gives a lot, for me, his greatest gift is his daughter.

Shake the Dust: How Break Dancing Unites the World

Shake the Dust is a documentary film directed by journalist Adam Sjöberg, and produced by American rapper and producer Nasir “Nas” Jones. The movie is a showcase of the break dance culture of Bogotá, Colombia; Kampala, Uganda; Phnom Penh, Cambodia; and Sana’a, Yemen.

The crews of dancers that are the protagonists of the film have no relation to each other, except for their shared b-boy culture which, as many of them mention, has helped them find purpose in life and escape from dark moments in their past. Most of the dancers featured come from humble, if not depressed, backgrounds: slums, drug addiction, or criminal lives. But break dancing has given them a community of friends, teachers and students to rely on, and a way to re-purpose their urban settings.

The dancers speak little in the film, which is heavier on the dance scenes, but their moves are more than enough to put the movie’s message across: there is not only movement, but also history, art, community, family and friendship in break dancing.

___

I briefly interviewed Sjöberg on the choices he made for this film and the hip-hop community of Latin America:

Why did you choose these countries in particular?

I was tired of seeing the same kinds of stories out of the so-called “developing world.” Documentary film is a powerful tool to be able to show people important social and political injustices, to illuminate the darker sides of things that we don’t often see. But I felt that the genre as a whole—as well as mainstream media in general—was doing a terrible job at painting holistic pictures of a lot places in the world. My own experiences traveling were very different—they were so rich, and I had had so many positive experiences in places that are traditionally seen in a negative light.

Do you think there was something that was connecting the countries you included in the movie?

I picked Cambodia, Colombia, Uganda and Yemen, because they had interesting, robust hip-hop scenes, and because I wanted to choose countries from different regions around the world that symbolized the misunderstanding we often have of places we only think about when we see them on the news. Colombia is often associated with the drug trade or conflict, Yemen with terrorism, Cambodia with poverty and the Khmer Rouge, and Uganda—like many other African countries—war, disease, and poverty. I picked these places precisely so that I could begin to build a more complete narrative around them.

What in particular attracted you about the hip-hop culture in Colombia?

I wanted to cover South America in general—originally, I was going to go to Brazil. There is such a rich hip-hop culture in the entire region but the opportunity to film in Bogotá came up when I got connected with Don Popo and Familia Ayara—a hip-hop non-profit working in Bogotá.

What I discovered was what felt like, at times, a hip-hop Utopia. I saw some of the best dance moves, and most beatiful graffiti, and we threw a huge “Shake the Dust” cypher in the streets that made me feel like I was in The Bronx back in the heyday of hip-hop.

 

What do you think is the current state of Latin American hip-hop and what do you think about its future?

Throughout my travels and research I’ve experienced hip-hop in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Brazil, Mexico, Peru, and all over the Caribbean, including Haiti. But, as I mentioned, Colombia had one of the most impressive hip-hop scenes of anywhere I went.

There were multiple government-funded programs (locally, countrywide, and even UN-backed programs). Colombia’s street art scene rivals few and is possibly one of the best in the world. Most importantly, the culture has maintained a purity in its form, a socially conscious core – but has found it’s style within the context of Colombian culture. My experiences in Latin America as a whole have been similar. I’m impressed, moved, and incredibly excited to see how hip-hop continues to grow and spread and impact people throughout the region.

Shake the Dust is available on iTunes here.

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Morocco joins the miniskirt wars

On June 14, Sanae and Siham, 23 and 29 years old respectively, identified as students and professional hair stylists, went to shop in Inezgane, south of Agadir, on the southern part of Morocco’s Atlantic Ocean coast. A shopkeeper attacked them, claiming their skirts were too short. Soon they were surrounded by a more than threatening mob. Terrified, they sought shelter in a boutique and waited for the police to arrive. The police did arrive … and arrested them for “indecent exposure”, or “gross indecency.” Their trial was heard Monday, June 6. If convicted, the two women face up to two years in prison.

And so begins another chapter in the miniskirt front of the global war on women, from New York to Kampala to Jakarta. In May, Algeria had its “affaire de la jupe”, when a security guard barred a law student from her exams because he decided that her dress was “indecently” short. Earlier this year, it was Zimbabwe’s turn, which produced #DontMinimizeMyRights. The year before that, it was Kenya, where women organized around #MyDressMyChoice and #StripMeNot. Before that, in the same year, women in Uganda responded to an assault against women with #SavetheMiniskirt. The year before that, Namibian women responded to an anti-miniskirt campaign with “Rape is not NAMIBIAN.” And the year before that two teenage girls were attacked by a crowd of 50 or 60 `adult’ men `because’ one of them was wearing a mini-skirt. Four years earlier, Nwabisa Ngcukana was stripped and assaulted for exactly the same `crime’, at exactly the same taxi rank in Johannesburg.

In Morocco, the real story is once more that of women organizing, pushing back and pushing forward, creating new spaces precisely where others try to shut them down. Moroccan women, with male supporters, organized a campaign, using the hashtag #mettre_une_robe_nest_pas_un_crime. Wearing a dress is not a crime. First, they pushed to have the police investigate those who had harassed and threatened the two young women. Finally, the police gave in, investigated and arrested two young men. Demonstrations were organized all over Morocco. Women organized July 6 as a National Day for Our Individual Freedoms, with demonstrations in Rabat, Casablanca, Marrakech, Agadir, Tangiers, and beyond.

Women’s associations mobilized. According to Fouzia Assouli, President of the Federation of the League of Women’s Rights, LDDF, “It’s outrageous, arresting the two women rather than those who surrounded and threatened them. This is about sexual harassment and violence against women. Now, violence in public space has been institutionalized and approved by the justice system.”

Feminist activist Boutaina Elmakoudi posted a video that went viral, in which she argues that this affair touches on all Moroccan women and that it’s not only the story of these two women but rather a general threat to all individual freedoms.

The judge will render his verdict on July 13. Meanwhile, the two women are staying away from the press, because one is engaged to be married and the other is afraid of her parents. In 2001, Zimbabwean activist Tafadzwa Choto was asked about the events that had shaped her as a feminist socialist revolutionary. She answered, “The first one was when a woman at the University of Zimbabwe was stripped of her skirt. It was said to be a miniskirt and was publicly ripped off her. I was disgusted.” That happened in 1993, and fueled and informed Choto’s lifelong struggle for women’s freedom, justice, and power. Wearing a dress is not a crime.

New Music Series #RespecTheProducer – Battlekat On Working With Flabba

This article is part of a series of articles on music producers throughout the African continent called #RespecTheProducer. Check out daily updates on tumblr and follow the Instagram account. 

Tongogara “Battlekat” Ntlokoa was the most sought-after producer of his era. As in-house soundcrafter for Outrageous Records, he oversaw production duties on a handful of the indie label’s releases, many of which now occupy classic status in the hearts of many a South African rap fan.

His work on Maximum Sentence and Expressions, two compilations released in a period of frantic output between 2002 and 2003, stand as testament to his ability to hop from chopped-up and pitched-up loops backed by hard drums and crusty snares, to soulful cuts with deep, pervasive and enduring basslines. He contributed music to Zubz’s Listener’s Digest and Proverb’s Book of Proverb — debut albums by revered emcees who’d cultivated a small but cult following. This helped further cement Battlekat’s place as a noteworthy producer in South African hip hop’s broader context. Add to that his work with Optical Illusion (or Optical Ill), the four-man rap clique in which he was both rapper and chief producer, and it becomes evident that this cat single-handedly ran an era.

We meet with Battlekat at Flabba’s memorial service. The two had worked together on a song called “Accelerate” which appeared on Skwatta Kamp’s Khut en Joyn album. Flabba, an emcee who’d figured out how to mix street smarts, cut-throat lyricism and shock value to astounding effect, passed away after being stabbed following an altercation with his partner on 9th March 2015, a Monday morning. The woman accused of his murder shall stand for trial in August.

Below, Battlekat speaks about the session which bore not only the Flabba track, but a feature on Optical Illusion’s pre-label project called Thoughts Illustrated.

Rapper Flabba performing @ Maftown Heights 2014

Wasn’t there an album between you and Flabba that was supposed to come out?

Well, it was a thought, not an album. It was a thought that we had.

So the “Accelerate” joint, was that just a single cut?

What had happened with “Accelerate” was, it wasn’t even a single. At the time, we weren’t even planning albums or anything; we were in college. At the time I wasn’t even…I was still practicing, you know, beats and everything. It was just a matter of ‘yo man, I’d like to give that joint a beat.’ He [had recorded] over a Cypress Hill beat; I think it was a Wyclef/ Cypress Hill beat. It wasn’t necessarily for Skwatta; it was just me knowing him from college, I just wanted to lace his joint with a beat. For that, he gave me a verse for the Optical Illusion album. Since I knew him for being vulgar and extreme, there was a song I wanted to do. I got influnced too much by Eminem, and I knew Flabba would be…we just went crazy. He was just too bare man, and for that song I knew [that] he was the dude. On the day that we did the song for Optical Ill, I gave him one of the beats that I had for that joint. He was also looking to do a solo [project] at the time, before Skwatta.

Were you in the same session, or did you just give him a beat?

He came to the studio with Initial M on the day. [Initial M] was supposed to be on another Optical Ill joint. He recorded the verse, [we] actually lost the material for that song. It was called “Impossible to picture.” Initial M was on that one, and then Flabba was doing “Crack a finesse” and his joint as well on that day. It was a cool session; everyone was there! Well, except for Opticall Ill — it was just me, Jerrah, Intial M, I forgot who else.

Where did you record that joint?

Braam. There was some…I think it was an NGO or NPO called Joint Centre for Political and Economic studies. My dad worked for that company and he’d persuaded them to have a studio there, because I was doing sound (at Allenby College, where Proverb also studied). After school, that’s where I would go and record with dudes like Optical Ill, Mad Scientist, everyone!

 

Weekend Music Break No.79

An abbreviated music break for the weekend of July 4th, 2015:

Joey B and the Akwaaba Sound System do an impressive live interpretation of his international hit “Tonga”; Blitz the Ambassador has a new track “Shine” produced by Soulection crew member IAMNOBODI; Kwaito continues it’s resurgence with “Mr. Party”; Iba One from Mali declares his status as a “Rappeur International”; Kendrick Lamar says in spite of everything “We gon be Alright”; and Chilean rapper Ana Tijoux represents for the global South alongisde Palestinian Shadia Mansour.

Chile’s Copa América – Can Football Still be Political?

Copa América, the South American football championship, is over and, for the first time ever, Chile are the champions. To lift their first-ever piece of silverware, Chile, who also hosted the tournament, beat neighbors Argentina yesterday in penalties, after a tense and tactic goalless final match.

Arsenal’s Alexis Sánchez delivered the final penalty kick in cheeky fashion and, despite a not-so-memorable performance during most of the cup, he instantly became part of national folklore. La Roja finally has a title to show for, and the image of the wonderkid from Tocopilla calmly putting the ball past Argentinean goalkeeper Sergio Romero, and then running erratically and euphorically until he is finally embraced by his teammates will for long remain in the consciousness of Chilean football fans.

Chile finally rejoiced in the football pitch and the usual rhetoric of winning national teams doing it “not just for themselves, but for the whole country” came quickly. But so did the accusation that this was merely a smoke curtain distracting from the country’s ailments. For example, Chilean president Michelle Bachelet was omnipresent at La Roja’s matches, even when protests were breaking around the country to demand changes in the education law.

Was anybody paying attention to that? The stadium was full every time Chile played. TV ratings (about 36 for Canal 13, about 11 for TVN, about 3 for Chilevisión and about 1 for Mega) showed that more than half of the country was immersed watching the final yesterday. But does that mean that Chileans didn’t care about anything else?

Of course not. Football fans are people and people are complex beings. Some organizers of the protests said that they didn’t want to miss the games, and that they had scheduled the manifestations around the time of the cup not to protest it or rival it, but so their demands could have a bigger media impact. Some demonstrations even were football-themed for maximum effect.

So, could this Copa América be political? Could the tournament which debuted back in 1916 introducing, on its first match ever, the first black players fielded in international play (for Uruguay against Chile – who back then complained of the “unfair” use of “African” players, by the way) still go beyond the football pitch?

As the competition started, the chances of that happening seemed bleak: Uruguayan striker Edinson Cavani was so out-of-touch with the world outside the field that he thought that his rivals Jamaica were an “African country.” Then, Chile’s star Arturo Vidal crashed his fancy car while driving drunk and, despite harsh laws regarding this kind of behavior in Chile, he was essentially pardoned (freed with only a confiscated license) and let back into the team. Football was above anything else.

But as the tournament advanced, there was at least one interesting thing in this regard. The Peruvian forward Claudio Pizarro started to tweet messages in Quechua (one of Peru’s indigenous languages) following his team’s games. This seemed like a small gesture, but it was an acknowledgement, an inclusion of oft-segregated Quechua-speakers into the larger idea of “Peru” and the Peruvian fans of its national team.

After Peru drew against Colombia and secured their qualification for the knockout stages, Pizarro tweeted again in Quechua, and he was recognized by the indigenous Mapuche community of Chile for giving a voice to an often ignored community. A few days later, Peru eliminated Bolivia in the quarter-finals. Pizarro tweeted in Quechua and in Mapundungun – the language of the Mapuches – this time. Maybe football can indeed be a positive force for unity.

Yet, despite everything else, it was the Chileans who made the biggest statement. Not just by winning the tournament, but by where they won it. Chile’s defender Jean Beausejour (whose father is Haitian, and whose mother is Mapuche) put it perfectly after the final game:

“I’m barely starting to realize how big this is. A few days ago I got a call from a cadet instructor and he said ‘I hope that we can have some joy in this stadium where so many were tortured and suffered.’”

Indeed, Chile played its six games in Santiago’s Estadio Nacional, the country’s biggest stadium and a venue with a documented tragic history:

On November 21st, 1973, the Soviet Union was scheduled to go to Santiago for a playoff game that would qualify one of the teams to the West Germany 1974 World Cup. But on September 11th of that year, Augusto Pinochet had staged the coup that ousted the democratically elected socialist president Salvador Allende.

Since then (and until 1981), Pinochet had used the stadium to incarcerate political dissidents, who were tortured there, and sometimes sent to be executed elsewhere. In total, over 40,000 people were detained in the stadium. At one point, the regime had 7,000 detainees there at the same time. The USSR national team caught wind of this and refused to play the game at the Estadio Nacional. They would have accepted a different venue, but the Chilean and the FIFA authorities wouldn’t be moved, so the Soviets declined to travel to the country.

The whole thing ended in a pathetic spectacle forced by then FIFA president Stanley Rous, who staged a match with only one side (a very reluctant, but also very scared of the consequences of disobedience, Chile), in which the team passed the ball around idly, until Francisco “Chamaco” Valdés scored a goal into an open net, qualifying the Chileans for the World Cup.

The act of defiance came later. During this Copa América, a small sector of El Nacional, behind one of the goals, was enclosed and empty. You could see it from most angles on TV. It was under its wooden bleachers that most political detainees were held, and it was above them that the prisoners were paraded to prove to FIFA officials that they were being kept “humanely.”

On September 11th, 2003, thirty years after the coup, that sector of the stadium was declared a historical monument, and it has been left untouched on stadium renovations. It has, instead, become a sanctuary, a museum dedicated to the victims of the Pinochet regime, a vivid and concrete reminder of how bad things can get when a country is divided. That Chile played all of its successful cup run here meant that this was a victory not only for the present Chile, but also a symbolic defeat of its past.

Surely this championship won’t heal any of the political or social issues Chile is dealing with. And obviously football is not the way to go about solving them. But, as the sign above the stairs to the enclosed tribune reads: “A people without memory is a people without future,” and for a brief moment, thanks to 11 men clad in red, the future of Chile looked bright.

“Liniersgate” – Is This Cartoon Wrong?

The image that you see above was circulated often on social media last week after the United States Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in all of the 50 states of that country.

The image is obviously a reference to the iconic picture of African-American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos receiving, respectively, the gold and the bronze medal for the 200 meters race in the Mexico 1968 Olympics.

Image #: 13530908 American athletes Tommie Smith (middle, gold medal) and John Carlos (right, bronze medal) at the Award Ceremony for the 200m race at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City, October 16, 1968. The Olympics Black Power salute was a notable black power protest and one of the most overtly political statements in the history of the modern Olympic Games. DPA/LANDOV

The image in the photograph was immediately dubbed the “Black Power Salute,” for Smith’s and Carlos’ pose and race, even though Smith would say later in his autobiography that his was a “human rights salute.” Nonetheless, as this picture was taken in 1968 (the year when Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered, no less), many in the United States and abroad came to identify it as one of the most powerful symbols of the civil rights struggle.

Because of this symbolism, the cartoon upset more than a few people, as many saw it as a way of appropriating and whitewashing the history of U.S. Black struggle to celebrate an event mostly unrelated to it.

Yet the cartoon was also mostly unrelated to the United States Supreme Court decision on same-sex marriage. It was drawn by Argentinian artist Ricardo Siri Liniers, known simply as “Liniers,” and it was originally published in early 2014 on his twitter, with the message “Winter Olympics are coming up in the homophobic Russia of Putin #GayPower.”

 

Se vienen las Olimpiadas de invierno en la Rusia homofóbica de Putin. #GayPower pic.twitter.com/UrUDcGj0Fq pic.twitter.com/Q4bsn0qkTJ

— Liniers (@porliniers) January 28, 2014

 

This was of course a reference to the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics (thus the snow) and the Russian “LGBT Propaganda” law, which came into effect in mid 2013, and was widely discussed in Western media during the sporting event.

Regardless, many people complained that, even if the message of the image was positive, the seemingly white skinned figures in the cartoon erased a long history of African-American oppression.

When the image was originally published, few, if any, seemed to mind it. But Liniers (who for long has been one of the most famous cartoonist in Latin America) has recently become well-known elsewhere, with his drawings, for example, landing on The New Yorker‘s cover three times in the past two years.

So, coming from Argentina – where discussions on race are practically invisible – Liniers (whose work I regularly find interesting and engaging, and usually socially committed) surely wasn’t aware of all the sensibilities of other types of audiences.

He spoke on his twitter last Sunday about this controversy:

It was supposed to de a double homage. To the iconographic nature of that great photo and to the advances in USA gay civil rights.

— Liniers (@porliniers) June 27, 2015

The good thing that came out of this is many people in Latin America who didn't know of this photo, got to. pic.twitter.com/NC0SyR6c3I

— Liniers (@porliniers) June 27, 2015

Important moments of struggle and overcoming injustice in human history are the heritage of the entire human race. pic.twitter.com/0SxUPcVAU3

— Liniers (@porliniers) June 27, 2015

I think appropriation would be to think Anne Frank belongs to the Jews, Gandhi to the Hindus,Malala to the Pakistanis pic.twitter.com/97YaRplecP

— Liniers (@porliniers) June 27, 2015

Human history is first and foremost, human. It's not "my people" or "their people". Their all our people. pic.twitter.com/1nJh5TZBNG

— Liniers (@porliniers) June 27, 2015

I'm very sorry if the drawing caused grief, specially in the racially charged USA that we've been watching in the news all over the world.

— Liniers (@porliniers) June 27, 2015

But I can't apologize for the drawing. It comes from mi ideas of social inclusion, stands against bigotry and disgust from discrimination.

— Liniers (@porliniers) June 27, 2015

Probably cultural differences between Argentina and USA generates the misunderstanding.For that I feel bad but hope you try and understand.

— Liniers (@porliniers) June 27, 2015

Yellow Marley says "Peace" pic.twitter.com/nhTfrEswcJ

— Liniers (@porliniers) June 27, 2015

And let's not forget what policing ideas of who should draw what brings… pic.twitter.com/TIzuZW7eHe

— Liniers (@porliniers) June 27, 2015

I understand that the drawing offends some people so I took them off twitter and Instagram because it was not the intention I had doing it.

— Liniers (@porliniers) June 28, 2015

He ended the discussion with a new drawing, saying “Let’s hope this one has better luck…”

Esperemos que este tenga mejor suerte… pic.twitter.com/KD4BILF9Se

— Liniers (@porliniers) June 28, 2015

What do you think?

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Why is Facebook asking me how to pronounce my name?

I love meeting people. When it comes time to say my name, I pronounce it slower and louder than my normal speech, with a punch of pride to sweeten the moment. Sometimes, people repeat it back for me, with a touch of anxiety because they know they’ll forget it a moment later. That’s always ok. I’ll once again say this lovely moniker (Sha-mee-rah) with as much enthusiasm as I had the first.

This is why Facebook’s new name game perplexes me. I mean, I get it. The millennials who run the site want to be as politically correct as they can. Avert a crisis before there can be one, I imagine them imagining, and let’s teach ourselves to be as worldly and ready as possible when confronting people with weird names. But that doesn’t work. Because you still may not get it right. You won’t hear the twang in my voice, and you won’t hear the inflexion I love so much. And best of all, you won’t learn that when it comes to names, it’s ok to be wrong. But this is weird. I’m not teaching a computer, and new Facebook friends, how to say my name by spelling it out phonetically. I couldn’t if I tried. But in the aim of being politically correct, Facebook has of course underscored that my name is weird and hard and it’s up to me to prevent awkward situations by teaching my “Friends” on how to say it right. And I’m not going to do that. But if you do want to learn how I like to be called, we can always just do an old-fashioned introduction.

A Look at Hillary (and Bill) Clinton’s Past in Haiti

Hillary Clinton might have some explaining to do before she can claim the top spot in the Democratic primary. Any pro-Hillary voters who prioritize moral plans for American foreign policy should probably look into the candidate’s past in Haiti.

The Pulitzer Center hosted journalist Jonathan M. Katz on June 22nd for a discussion about the Clintons’ influence and rather infamous legacy in Haiti and I was fortunate enough to be able to attend. It’s surprising how little the failures and destruction of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s presence in Haiti have been brought up so far. Hopefully by 2016 this topic will be making headlines.

First, some background on the topic: on January 12, 2010, the deadliest natural disaster ever recorded in the hemisphere, a magnitude-7.0 earthquake, devastated Haiti’s southern peninsula and killed 100,000 to 316,000 people.

Former President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton led the Haitian reconstruction effort and vowed to help the country “build back better,” so that if another disaster struck, Haiti would be able to respond more quickly and with more efficiency. Hillary described their efforts as a “road test” that would reveal “new approaches to development that could be applied more broadly around the world.”

The Clinton Foundation alone has directed $36 million to Haiti since 2010. Another $55 million has been spent through the Clinton-Bush Haiti Fund, and an additional $500 million has been made in commitments through the Clinton Global Initiative’s Haiti Action Network.

But what does Haiti have to show for all of these investments? Not much, according to Katz. “Haiti and its people are not in a better position now from when the earthquake struck,” he said. The hundreds of millions of dollars and the years of reconstruction efforts have yielded negligible results. For a project so expansive, Hillary has kept relatively quiet about Haiti thus far in her campaign. Her spokesman declined to comment on how Haiti has shaped her foreign policy, saying Hillary would address that “when the time comes to do so.”

Hillary’s big plan for how she would “rebuild” Haiti in the wake of desolation was characteristically American: through business. With big corporate plans on the horizon, Bill and Hillary became exceedingly familiar faces in Haiti leading up to the 2011 presidential elections.

It’s not surprising that the candidate who vowed to make Haiti “open for business” was ultimately the victor. Former Haitian pop star Michel Martelly eventually won the race, after Hillary salvaged his candidacy when he was eliminated as the number 3 candidate by convincing the parties to accept him back into the race.

Katz said that this vote was fraudulent. Martelly, a businessman and strong proponent of foreign investment in Haiti, was “attractive” to the U.S. State Department, Katz noted. He very much had a “Clinton view of Haiti and a Clinton view of the world.”

That’s how Caracol Industrial Park, a 600-acre garment factory geared toward making clothes for export to the U.S., was born in 2012. Bill lobbied the U.S. Congress to eliminate tariffs on textiles sewn in Haiti, and the couple pledged that through Caracol Park, Haitian-based producers would have comparative advantages that would balance the country’s low productivity, provide the U.S. with cheap textiles, and put money in Haitians’ pockets.

The State Department promised that the park would create 60,000 jobs within five years of its opening, and Bill declared that 100,000 jobs would be created “in short order.” But Caracol currently employs just 5,479 people full time. “The entire concept of building the Haitian economy through these low-wage jobs is kind of faulty,” Katz stated on Monday. Furthermore, working conditions in the park are decent, but far from what should be considered acceptable.

Not only did Caracol miss the mark on job creation, but it also took jobs away from indigenous farmers. Caracol was built on fertile farmland, which Haiti doesn’t have much of to begin with. According to Katz, Haitian farmers feel that they have been taken advantage of, their land taken away from them, and that they have not been compensated fairly.

Hundreds of families have been forced off the land to make room for Caracol. The Clintons led the aggressive push to make garment factories to better Haiti’s economy, but what it really created was wealth for foreign companies. This trend was echoed when the Clintons helped launch a Marriott hotel in the capital, which has really only benefited wealthy foreigners and the Haitian elite.

Mark D’Sa, Senior Advisor for Industrial Development in Haiti at the U.S. Department of State, said that many of the Clintons’ promises remain unfulfilled and many more projects are “half-baked.” Haiti remains the most economically depressed country on the continent.

If Hillary wins in 2016, U.S. policy geared toward Haiti will undoubtedly expand, meaning even more money will be funneled to the Caribbean nation to fund the Clintons’ projects, for better or for worse. According to Katz, the truth is that we don’t actually know how much money has been thrown into the Caribbean country to “rebuild” it, and that with economic growth stalling and the country’s politics heading for a shutdown, internal strife seems imminent.

The introduction of accountability for the foreign aid industry is the most important change that can be made, according to Katz. Humanitarian aid does nothing positive or productive if there are not institutions in place, managed by individuals who actually live in these countries, to oversee that aid is serving rather than hurting the people it is supposed to “help.”

Hillary Clinton’s efforts in Haiti have fueled political corruption, destroyed arable farmland, and have forced hundreds of families to leave their homes and their jobs to make room for a factory that has not given even a fraction of the amount to Haiti as it has taken. If the introduction of accountability is the way to go, then we first need to start talking. So Hillary, what do you have to say about Haiti?

This article was originally published on Law Street Media.

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A meditation on that space I need for my rage, or, an independence manifesto

The space I need for my rage was taken from me long ago. I have spent the better part of my adult life recognizing both its social and personal absence with fierce determination to carve it out as I attempt to re-learn my entitlement to it and experiment with ways to express and relish in it especially on the stage.

Years of talk therapy have taught me the extent to which my conditioning influenced how I behave and negotiate this world in which I live. In this white world, as a black (Haitian) woman, I have had to negotiate my blackness within African-American communities where my additional otherness is invisible. We do not always see each other or align collectively around shared struggles. I am past the age and or the phase where this tore me up as a young immigrant in this country. I made peace with the reality that in the expanded scope of racial hierarchies, my race/color precedes my national identity. I became a U.S citizen a decade ago. I am simply black in the face of the white power that I sometimes dread for the ways that it categorizes and seeks to destroy blackness as some misappropriate it as CG writes, while others keep that blackness in an unhealthy state of awareness that denies us a social luxury of being, precisely because, as June Jordan puts it, “I am the wrong skin.”

The first thing I did the morning after the massacre in Charleston — I went for a run. An observer, from not so far away in CT, these times have been trying. I watched events surrounding the capture of Dylann Roof developing in the news while upholding an all too predictable narrative and quickly became conscious that my heart was beating too fast, faster than usual. The urge to run while standing still is a feeling I have come to associate with another anxiety that I have had in those moments when fear is setting in and there is no place to run for cover. I had an appointment but simply did not want to go outside. (Indeed, it dawned on me that I first fully absorbed this feeling in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti.) I did not want to leave the comfort of my home space and risk an encounter with anyone in denial about the targeting of black bodies and the state of racism in this hemisphere, and in the world.

As the families of the AME9 victims forgave the killer of their loved ones, I retreated in a combination of awe, respect and self-protection. I had neither the religious conviction nor faith to take this high road anymore than I could so clearly express its opposition as Roxanne Gay so poignantly did. I was preoccupied with the fact that this was taking an all to familiar physical and emotional toll, which has become conversation on my FB and Twitter feeds of late. Advice and notes about ways to be vigilant about self-care in these times. Ways to circumnavigate the psychic violence from a terror so close and so random that it will re-trigger and re-traumatize us as we live, knowing as Hari Ziyad asserted: blackness cannot be saved. But we can try to take care of ourselves to assure its collective survival. Anti-blackness knows no geographical boundaries. For Harriet wrote “If #BlackLivesMatter, we need to talk about the Dominican Republic” as she urged us to “Breathe. Heal. Organize. Because Ferguson is New York, is Baltimore, is Santo Domingo, is Port-au-Prince.” Stateless citizens are self-deporting. Living in limbo. The current situation in the DR is a time bomb that’s getting ready to blow as Jonathan Katz recently wrote in the NYT. And churches are being burned again and again keeping all of us on alert.  There is a target on our back. Thisismyback.org (please don’t shoot) calls on us to: “make some noise around a situation that has gone from unacceptable to unbearable. More overwhelmed every day by the unrelenting and unapologetic brutality against people of color, we have had enough.”

If there is one thing that I have learned from my years of therapy, healing is a process that takes its time. It cannot be rushed and it certainly cannot begin when wounds are still open. Still bleeding. Indeed, unprocessed trauma will become archived in bodies unless it is recognized, faced, confronted and worked through. Not everyone has the luxury of time and resources to commit to our certain types of self-care and protection, which is paramount to weather living with this ongoing terror. Audre Lorde said it best “caring for myself is not self- indulgence, it is self-preservation and that is an act of political warfare.” 

Full expression of our humanity, rage included, remains a site (too often) of (deadly) contention. We should be held not responsible for the social limits and ideologies that undergird legal structures, which reduce us to mere caricatures and stereotypes. It took me a long time to learn that I have as much a right to individuation as anyone. For me to live, the space I need for my rage has become non-negotiable. I no longer have any desire whatsoever to debate anyone about it. My aliveness and spirit depend on it so I can keep trying to do to this life thing, despite the fuckery, with some meaning, and a lil swag, albeit on my terms.

“Permanent readiness for the marvelous”

                                                   –Suzanne Césaire