In Haryana’s Kunal village, a glimpse of life before Harappa

A commendable piece of reporting - do read the original with the detailed explanations of archaelogical processes etc :

Link

Kunal village in Haryana’s Fatehabad is one of the oldest pre-Harappan settlements. The seventh round of excavations, which started in January and ended two weeks ago, will bring to the forefront more about the lives of people — mostly artisans associated with Hakraware culture.
Updated: May 19, 2019 13:05 IST

Sadia Akhtar

Hindustan Times, Fatehabad

The origins of the people of Kunal village in Haryana’s Fatehabad are being tracked by going back in time through geographical strata. Through the process of digging, different layers are being detected for the presence of cultural material so that a better understanding of the communities of Kunal can be ascertained.(Parveen Kumar / HT Phgto )

The road that goes from Digoh to Ratia in Fatehabad, more than 220 kilometres away from the heart of Gurugram, bears witness to a sense of quietude on a hot summer day. Flanked by farmlands on both sides, the stretch is largely uneventful and morose, with little human presence owing to the sweltering heat. However, it’s from here that a small detour off the main road leads one to the sleepy village of Kunal. On the face of it, Kunal is much like any other Indian village, except it was once a Harappan village and is imbued in history that predates India’s ancient settlements. Located at a distance of 12km from Ratia tehsil, Kunal is one of the oldest preHarappan settlements and dates back roughly to the 5th millennium BC. The roughly 6,000-year-old site holds within it a rich legacy and its ties to the past can possibly help trace the history of Haryana, and the country. First discovered in 1986, excavations in Kunal have taken place over different seasons in 1992-93, 1996-97, 1998-99, 1999-2000, 2001-2002 and 2002-2003.
...

Majid Derakhshani & the Mahbanoo Ensemble - and Daz Music

Lets listen to the amazing Majid Derakshani (a disciple of Mohamed Reza Lotfi no less) and the Mahbanoo Ensemble...

And while we are on Persian music why not some from Daz Music - Hanabandan -

The amazing Joy Harjo...

Joy Harjo has won the 2019 Jackson Poetry Prize. The prize, endowed by John and Susan Jackson, carries an award of $65,000 and aims to provide what poets need: time and encouragement to write. She joins previous winners Elizabeth Alexander, Patricia Spears Jones, Henri Cole, and others. Read more: at.pw.org/Jackson2019...

What a poet, what a performer...

Her Eagle Poem:

To pray you open your whole self
To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon
To one whole voice that is you.
And know there is more
That you can’t see, can’t hear;
Can’t know except in moments
Steadily growing, and in languages
That aren’t always sound but other
Circles of motion.
Like eagle that Sunday morning
Over Salt River. Circled in blue sky
In wind, swept our hearts clean
With sacred wings.
We see you, see ourselves and know
That we must take the utmost care
And kindness in all things.
Breathe in, knowing we are made of
All this, and breathe, knowing
We are truly blessed because we
Were born, and die soon within a
True circle of motion,
Like eagle rounding out the morning
Inside us.
We pray that it will be done
In beauty.
In beauty.

Joy Harjo, “Eagle Poem” from In Mad Love and War. Copyright © 1990 by Joy Harjo. Reprinted with the permission of Wesleyan University Press,
www.wesleyan.edu/wespress.

Source: In Mad Love and War (Wesleyan University Press, 1990)

From the teardrop nation by way of irony...

While looking for more news on the Sri Lanka Easter-weekend bombings, especially in Sri Lankan media outlets, I stumbled upon the Daily Mirror of Sri Lanka. Scrolling through the various news items regarding the bombings - the hints at the "radical" group behind the attacks yet not garishly spalshed across its pages, I came across this interesting bit of news and analysis:

Arrest of writer Sathkumara sparks debate on freedom of expression

From the piece:

On April 1, award-winning author and poet Shakthika Sathkumara was arrested and remanded on contrived charges of inciting religious hatred, a move that has been decried by artists, academics and free-speech advocates as setting a dangerous precedent against the freedom of expression.   Mr. Sathkumara, a 33-year-old father of two, and Development Officer at the Nikawaratiya Divisional Secretariat, was arrested by the Polgahawela Police on a complaint filed by a group of monks of the Buddhist Information Centre led by the Ven. Angulugalle Siri Jinananda Thero. On February 25, this group had written to the Inspector General of Police (IGP), charging that the short story ‘Ardha’ (Half), penned by Mr. Sathkumara and posted on Facebook, was derogatory and defamatory to Buddhism, and had insulted the life of the Buddha and the Maha Sangha. Prior to this, the same group had complained against director Malaka Dewapriya for his radio drama series ‘Kanata Parak’.   

I guess one can see "radicalism" and "fundamentalism" in all shapes and forms...

Mark Ernestus’ Ndagga Rhythm Force - Yermande (Ndagga)

Listening Now:

A day in the life of an Indian Hindi newspaper

 

  

A day in the life of an Indian newspaper - I

It is easy to be voyeuristic, distant, mocking...but that is not the intent here...this is more in the spirit of the documentary...to get a snapshot of a certain illness, a certain morbidity that seems to be ever-present (or newly present?) in Indian society...

I'll follow this up with a collection from Hindi newspapers...

 

The Time of Anarchy: the Susquehannock Scattering and the Crisis of English Colonialism, 1675-1685

Visited the Mass. Historical Society on Boylston Street this evening for the first time for an intriguing lecture, "The Time of Anarchy: the Susquehannock Scattering and the Crisis of English Colonialism, 1675-1685."

The Susquehannock tribe, in what would be the Potomac valley in the Washington DC area today, were a major force in their times (refered to as the "Titans of the mid-Atlantic" in the paper). They fell afoul of the English colonists and after five of their sachems were done to death, they "scattered" - the term that the author used - as smaller bands - in different part of the country, mostly along the east coast.

The presenter, Matthew Kruer of UChicago, seemed to have invested tremendous research effort in excavating information about the Susquehannocks and the disturbance they caused in colonial rule by their scattering. There was a lot of archival research that went into this project and the paper was thick with historical references to various governors, skirmishes, battles and political configurations.

It was interesting to see the "landscape" against which the paper was set, foregrounding the Susquehannocks - and yet there were other tribes such as the Haudenosaunee (Five Nations Iroquois),  the Chesapeake Algonquians - and Doegs somewhere in the background. What a web of relationships, and truly how teeming was this land with the various tribes...and, sad to note, of the mighty Susquehannocks no direct descendants remain...of their strength, according to the paper, and I paraphrase [to adhere to terms of the paper circulated], Susquehannocks were a superpower of the mid-Atlantic... Their region, Gandastogue, had a population of 5-6 thousand; they were part of great trade routes used by Europeans...and yet their influence was based on  alliance, involving trade and kinship, among other things.

The seminar room was nearly full, with several academics from area institutions like BU, UMass Lowell, Wellesley College, BrownU etc. There were also some "lay people" like me, who expressed a "general interest in history" as the reason for their presence.

The responses to the paper were fairly probing, in the main having to do with the sources used to construct what was ostensibly an effort towards a non-Eurocentric narrative but utilizing...European sources, since as the author/presenter confessed, there were no Susquehannock sources...another critical point rasied was the identity of the Susquehannocks, as there was no real way to delineate who the Susquehannocks were - the colonial records have no real names, there existing no other official records, so one had to rely solely on the colonists for their identification of the Susquehannocks.

The "Time of Anarchy" in the title also caused a lot of confusion among the readers and I am not sure a consensus was reached on its appropriateness.

All in all a good paper but somehow more documentary, in the end, than one which "surfaced" a people's narrative with the people prominently in it. Kudos to MHS for such high quality lectures open to the public - and also providing refreshments later!

NYT's AO Scott's wistful, mildly acerbic review of Avengers: Infinity War

Good critics - and journalists who write on non-mainstream-newsy areas - are a pleasure to read if they create a narrative style of their own. Travel writers generally have it easier as their experiences are often novel and, maybe exotic, and even rather prosaic writing can sparkle on occassion. Wine critics seem to have a certain flair when they describes wines - and certain "tropes" almost immediately communicate to the reader a world of lush, rich colors and heavenly tastes, of sunshine and verdant vineyards somewhere in Italy or France. Even something almost mundane - and often technical - as weather reporting has taken a certain caring, informative tone in the hands of David Epstein of the Boston Globe, with his detailed weather reports, replete with maps as also the occassional picture of his backyard...but always honest and candid to a fault.

Film criticism and review is certainly an art, the ability to convey the gist of another artfom, a visual artform, often in prose.  It involves the task of being able to dwell on multiple layerings in the narrative, the storylines, hint at the drama, appreciate camerawork, sense the said-and-the-unsaid and imbibe the creative endeavor in general. Khalid Mohammad of the Times of India (and many other publications) evolved a unique style wherein he gave extravagant  nom-de-plumes to the cast of characters in a movie, all pertinent and connected in some way, and then went ahead with forging his review in that spirit.

Other than the truly versatile Roger Ebert, it is always a pleasure to read the reviews of film critics like Anthony Lane of the New Yorker - and AO Scott of NYT - who make a review more like a story with nuances, personal musings and read-between-the-lines references than something which is straight-up compilation of the pluses and the minuses. (I think Ty Burr of the Boston Globe also is a very competent reviewer).

So, despite knowing what Scott might write with regard to the latest Marvel movie, it was still with some disbelief, and even restrained-and-pleasant surprise that one read his review. Scott was quoted in the Boston Globe as having 'used the first half of his review to pen a mini-diatribe on how films like “Avengers: Infinity War” have changed the critical profession, but eventually got around to panning the film for boring action scenes and repetitive pacing.'

Scott is expansive and reflective as he launches into his review - it is evident the review is less about the movie really, more about what it represents - for all of us, and for the critic who is, in the end supposed to review it as honest-to-goodness entertainment, keeping public sentiment in mind, and even back-handedly, recommend it. However, you can feel the cringiness that Scott probably suffered in the theater seeping into his writing. He begins in the I-do-not-know-what-to-tell-you-but-regardless-I-must mode. Somehow the seemingly deadening mighty-hammer prowess of Marvel-and-Disney who keep churning out these movies brings forth a lot from his subconscious angst, as it were -  even a reference to capitalism (as in, the "mindless" and mind-numbing output of movies has become an inevitability or a fact of life, like capitalism...).

I myself am getting increasingly confused about all these superhero movie-mashups now. Which is which league now and who is in which one? Everyone is in one big league..or...Captain America has his own gig and the Hulk his and Superwoman...Batman...wait...we are in the era of consolidation, I see...maybe that is what is going on...these movies are just another variant of Fantastic Beasts and (what they can do) and where to find them, aren't they?

Postscript - I came across this very intriguing article in the Salon - which takes the "capitalism" bit very seriously in relation to (the glut of) spuerhero movies...(this article is somehow hard to find on the salon.com site right now - what happened - someone hid it?) -
"Peak superhero? Not even close: How one movie genre became the guiding myth of neoliberalism"
[https://www.salon.com/2018/04/28/how-superhero-films-became-the-guiding-myth-of-neoliberalism/]

Beginning with an overview of neoliberalism - complete with charts etc - the author, Keith A. Spencer, presents his thesis on why superhero movies seem to be so wildly popular now, with the sharp political analysis continuing to hold the arguments together ("relationships of production," and "redistributive politics" no less!) -

 Superheroes are, by definition, more powerful and more important than the state.
More importantly, the superheroes’ work may save lives, but it never inherently changes the relationships of production: If the people are poor, they’re likely to stay poor. They don’t participate in redistributive politics except to attack the sort of universally detested social relationships about which there is broad consensus — for instance, slavery. Superheroes can’t and won’t save the middle class; many of them are rich anyway and stand to benefit from the kinds of inherent economic injustices that, say, Bernie Sanders or Jeremy Corbyn fight against.

Trio Da Kali (Mali) w/ Balla Kouyate and Nathaniel Braddock (Boston)

Really fortunate to see the Trio Da Kali, Malian musicians, at the Villa Victoria in Boston recently. The mastery of each of the musicians was very evident - including local Balla Kouyate who began the evening!

"There Won't Be Hair Grease in the Apocalpyse"

When a friend forwarded this FB event, I was immediately intrigued - "Join us for a day of creative reflections on dis/appearance of black and brown women in American sci-fi narratives."

The engagement of black and brown people - and woment - in sci-fi was recent news to me. I first came across this "phenomenon" in a class on Afr-Am literature over the fall of 2016 - there I discovered Octavia Butler. Then, while I was roaming around in Philly in January, I popped into a book store and there I came upon a book called "Black Quantum Futurism: Space-Time Collapse I: From the Congo to the Carolinas."

Space-Time Collapse is a new experimental writing and image series applying Black Quantum Futurism practices and theory to various space-time collapse phenomenon. This inaugural collection explores possible space-time narratives and temporal perspectives of enslaved Black African ancestors, pre- and post-liberation. The slave ships and plantations themselves are traversed by the visionaries as chronotopes containing layers of different times, imprinted by the experiences of the people held captive therein. 

This was getting curioser and curioser. I bought the book and then proceeded to attend a MLK Day celebration at my friend's house where I met a UPenn doctoral student who was researching black and brown artists who used sci-fi themes in their work. How cool was that - and how providential!

In the meanwhile, back in Boston, I chanced across this upcoming performance based on Octavia Butler's works - Parable of the Sower. 

And in the meanwhile again, managed to make my way to the Boston Sci-Fi festival to take in an evening to take in an evening of shorts. 

So this event coming after all the earlier providential encounters, as it were, was something that piqued my interest.

The evening, albeit one of the coldest in recent days, started out with 3 short cinematic pieces which had sci-fi themes and black and brown characters in them. First we say epsode 1 of the British serial The Misfits, following that with the Kenyan film Pumzi and ending with a film called Record/Play. The films were curated by Brookline High School teacher and filmmaker Thato Mwosa. 

[One must mention here, as I came to know later, the evening was put together by wonderful musician Allyssa Jones  of the 3050 Musical Group and writer Anika Arrington. More on them later.]

The films were of quite different, one from the other. The Misfits episode was very dramatic in its setting in a probation/corrections environment and the added "para-normality" was certainly a thriller, tho' not that much out of the ordinary. One would have to see further episodes so find out how that initial premise turns out. Pumzi was quite slickly produced - with appropriate space-suites, a controlling/controlled environment, state of the art computer interactions with "superiors"...but with a very real and down-to-earth problem - that of acute water-scarcity...

Record/Play dealt with some mind-bending ideas of space and time and very appropriately used the images of a cassette player/tape to think in terms of time - forward or reverse...

All in all a wonderful experience and a journey to different worlds and co-ordinates. 

A discussion circle which followed - led by Anika Arrington, Allyssa Jones and Thato Mwosa - sought to understand how the presence/absence of people-of-color symbols in our lives, esp. in the field of popular entertainment and culture. Several interesting examples came up of what seeing a person of color in a TV show or in a movie meant to people - from Uhura in Star Trek to some icons on cereal boxes to Russell Peters from the comedy act...

[Maybe we could have brought in Wakanda...and even Coffy?]


All in all, a very enriching day - and along a very unique path!

Bobby Seale holds forth in Cambridge MA...

Going to see old heroes is never straightforward - you have starry-eyed expectations, visions of towering achievement and bravado - but in many cases the present-day version of that vision that you see seems...almost banal...As the renowned co-founder of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense, one expected a legend with all attendant reputation of taking on the state and making Black Power come alive and ready to spring...like a black panther.

Seale, now old, almost benign. recounted his background and how he came to found the Black Panther Party. Never had the word "party" in the name of the organization meant more - it always seemed to be a stand-in for any other word for organization or something like that - till Seale emphasized that his chief aim was to take over political power - and hence the need for a party. Everything else - the confrontations with Bay Area police, the repeated run-ins with state and federal authorities, the show of defiance, the clenched fist, the uniform with guns...and Huey Newton - seemed a sideshow to Seale's recollection of the grand project.

This obviously came as a jarring piece of news to most of the attendees who had wanted a piece of the wildly gidy days of defiance, boldness and a new order of things based on black-power coming forth. And with the dashing Huey Newton certainly at the center of things. Not so in Bobby's script - Huey was no organizer, certainly nothing compared to Seale, no orator who could captivate an audience, and hence mostly a cad who wanted to take credit for things he did not do or had a claim to, like the co-founding of the Party.

What also surprised many was also the de-emphasis on the mode of, shall we say, aggression that Seale pushed for throughout the lecture. "Forget the guns, the guns were secondary," he kept saying, much to the consternation of the overflow audience. True as that may be, the Black Panthers with their power salutes etc cannot be easily separated from a certain show of defiance and dogged resistance, backed by the instruments of (righteous?) aggression...

I had a similar feeling of some sort of a disappointment when I went to seen Kathleen Cleaver - she is a corporate attorney now and something of the shine of the panther seemed to have rubbed off; and Huey was at the receiving end from her too...

"Diago: The Pasts of This Afro-Cuban Present"

Go see this free exhibition at the Hutchins Center on Mt. Auburn Street...there is a certain raw vitality in the art that leaps out at you! And the use of gunnysacks, automotive parts and body metal etc for artistic medium adds to the rough massiness of the art...

   

Lahooti Live Music festival - Pakistan Musically again...

The sheer musical riches of Pakistan came to us packaged through Coke Studio, of course...but I guess there is so much besides the universe of Coke Studio...like what came under the tents of the Lahooti Sufi festival -

What happens when Karachi goes to Hyderabad for a Sufi music festival?
Hint: lots of Hyderabadi friends were made, music by Mai Dhai, The Sketches, Zoe Viccaji and Gumby was heard

...

And take a look at the crowds - 

But since the writer of the piece did not provide any links to videos...I had to go over to youtube to sample a few...

In Memoriam - Richard Levins - Marxist Biologist

I had the opportunity to know and be in the company of Richard Levins, the professor of "Population Sciences" at the Harvard School for Public Health. I had heard about him vaguely through some circles I used to be part of but a formal introduction to his universe was facilitated a couple of years ago by my friend Paul Malachi, a graduate of HSPH and a former student of his.

From then on, I would meet him and his daughter, the writer, poet and activist Aurora Levins Morales, quite frequently - well, at least every couple of months or so. I even had the fortune of attending a couple of his lectures, one of which I recorded -

Richard Levins - The Two Faces of Science - HSPH Oct 17 2012

I have to confess I never understood the issues of complexity and dialectics that he addressed in his lectures - mostly because I did not try hard enough to understand. A recent tribute to him in the Jacobin magazine sheds some light on what Prof. Levins was arguing...

Levins was also a leading intellectual figure in the fight against biological determinism and remained an activist to the end of his life, often lecturing on his favorite topic: the use of dialectics to understand complexity and change in both the natural and social sciences.

...

Thus, whether an organism is subject to something as universal and seemingly natural as the laws of gravity depends on its genes. In this way, they uprooted biological determinism’s intellectual foundation: the reductionist fallacy that it is possible to detach genes from environment. 

Or maybe I might have read this piece of his -
Finding truth in ‘the whole

Levins argues that public health professionals can run into trouble when they don’t look at the bigger picture. He notes that for a brief period in the 20th century, some researchers believed that the emergence of antibiotics and vaccines heralded a new age in which infectious diseases could be stopped in their tracks. This optimism was dashed by a wave of globally emerging infections including HIV, Ebola, and West Nile virus.
“You can’t just look at humans if you want to understand infectious diseases,” Levins said. “Organisms evolve. When we invent something, so do the bugs.”
...
When studying an environment, Levins says he has always tried to see the “point of view” of the organisms involved and understand the reasons why they react the way they do. Much as he has encouraged biology students to see a forest from a tree’s perspective, he hopes future students who want to change human behavior to promote health will consider how the world looks through the eyes of the people they are trying to influence.

Among his papers are the following -

Is capitalism a disease? The crisis in U.S. public health.

Whose scientific method? Scientific methods for a complex world.

Our biology is social. A talk with Richard Levins. Interview by Bob Huff.

Toward an ecosocial view of health.

Genetics and hunger.

Fundamental and applied research in agriculture.

Genetics and ecology.


I only saw him as a genial old man who always expressed delight when he saw me. I had the fortune to attend some poetry sessions that his daughter organized at their home in Cambridge. While we read from a selection of books of Cuban poetry and Neruda and other poets, Prof. Levins would fish out some diary of his, in which I could see text crammed in a neat hand - and proceed to read limericks that he had composed...with  absolute childish delight! [I later came to know that he had various fantastical stories going on in his head, that he had a "satirical alter-ego, Isidore Nabi," and had authored a book of fiction as well!

I last saw him during Christmas break 2015...he had moved to senior-living at Youville. He was still cheerful but looked tired (And I remember he smiled when I had come in).

On Jan 16 I received a message from Aurora that Prof Levins was "in his final days and wanting lots of people around."  He breathed his last 3 days later, on Tuesday January 19 2016.

More riches from across the border from India...the riches of Photo-Essays!

To my continued delight, the DAWN newspaper from Karachi/Pakistan continues to produce a stunning blend of news, analysis, opinion (none better than the quirky Nadeem Paracha ) - and culture! Every few days or so it carries one photo-essay or other, lavishly produced by travel photographers, who very often are more hobbyists than real professionals...

Consider this gorgeous tribute to the Chenab river "Chenab: Pakistan’s river of love" by Syed Mehdi Bukhari whom a short biographical note describes as "a Network Engineer by profession, and a traveler, poet, photographer and writer by passion."

I take the liberty of reproducing couple of the images from that photo-essay -

 (I know...they don't look real...)

Danial Shah is described on his site as "an adventure seeker, independent, freelance travel & documentary photographer and writer wandering tirelessly around Pakistan for positive stories. As a storyteller, Danial travels extensively , working on commission, assignment, creative stock images, writing and training." His latest picture-essay in the Dawn tells the unending story of borders...this time with its locus in the Baltistan region of the western Himalayas...the forbidding mountainous regions now partly in Pakistan -

Borders that separate: A daughter’s lament




Basil Andrews is "is a young cultural photographer and aspiring social entrepreneur.
His personal interests particularly lie in advocating human and cultural rights and environmentalism through photography as a visual medium." His visual essays on the everyday are captivating slices from daily life in South Asia. Consider -

Love, labour and laundry: The remarkable stories of Karachi’s dhobis 




The wonderful thing about Basil's essays is that there is a human story also - in text that accompanies the splendid pictures! His most recent piece, titled "Karachi through time: A watchman, salesman and five fishermen," is a very interesting and rich reflection the concept of time - first through five fisherman whose lives progressed by many natural rhythms and signs from dawn to dusk as they went about their fishing activities. Today, of course, modern technologies and instruments - the GPS, various timepieces - have replaced the dependence on the previous methods. The essay then shifts to the people who deal with Time - the many watch-sellers and watch repairers. A fine transition that takes us into this other world which also has witnessed such vast technological changes. And some commonplace but yet apt observations by the many protagonists in the essay -

I explained the modern concept of time to him too. After a while, he looked at me and replied back with certainty. “Well that is how civilisation and people progressed. All the technology that you see today is because of this 'modern time'.”

But one cannot end this brief review without mention of another splendid recent essay by Ali Usman Qasmi (a professor at LUMS?) titled "1971 war: Witness to history."  Do check it out!

Pakistan, musically...

A friend, quoting from a recent talk by Pakistani human-rights activist Asma Jahangir, narrated how Jahangir had maintained a ray of hope for Pakistan, where despite the almost daily bombings and killings, there is still public debate, resistance - and also the flourishing of the arts.

For me, each time I see a report in the DAWN on some "music scene" in Pakistan, my heart gladdens. Like this one on the underground music scene -

Chasing the rockstar dream in Pakistan
http://www.dawn.com/news/1171786/chasing-the-rockstar-dream-in-pakistan

Ever heard of 'Dalt Wisney', 'Smax' and 'Tollcrane'? No? They are three Pakistani indie-electronic musicians that got selected at the Redbull Music Academy in 2006, 2013 and 2014 respectively.

or this maginificent summary of the 2014 music scene  -

http://www.dawn.com/news/1152906

>>>  a smorgasbord of the various musical events in Pakistan, from Coke Studio sessions to Nescafe Basement...to Music Melas!

But any list with a number by the Mekaal Hassan Band in it is irresistible!

'Ghungat' performed live from 'Andholan' by Mekaal Hasan Band from Mekaal Hasan Band on Vimeo.

February 2015 - Boston - Black History Month

UPCOMING EVENTS IN BOSTON - FEB 2015

TUE Feb 10 2015

1.

Feb 10 @ 7pm BECAUSE BLACK LIVES MATTER: WHERE DOES BU GO FROM HERE?

2. 

Dear White People (film)

February 10 @ 6:30 am - 9:00 pm

Time: 6.30-9 pm
Location: 10-250

http://diversity.mit.edu/event/dear-white-people-film/

3. 

UHURU: Black Liberation Lab - 

Every Tuesday in February 5:30-8pm at the Design Studio for Social Intervention

This year's Black History Month series will be a creative action lab to explore the components of a deep fight for collective Black liberation. The past 6-weeks have been marked by intense protests, actions, and symbolic resistance to state power from youth, activists, allies, and Black people throughout Boston and the nation. Uhuru: Black Liberation Lab will provide Boston's Black activists/leadership (and their allies) the opportunity to dream, brainstorm, and vision around what is next in terms of action and longer strategy. 

Over the course of the month, Uhuru: Black Liberation Lab will build upon itself using the insights, leadership, and capacity of the people in the room. 

Uhuru will change and evolve each week, so come join us in making it happen.

https://www.facebook.com/events/721281744657400/?ref_dashboard_filter=upcoming

THURSDAY FEB 12 2015

1.

"Black Votes Matter" with Civil Rights Icon Bob Moses

Thursday, February 12, 2015 - 6:00pm

46 Joy Street

02114 Boston , MA

See map: Google Maps (link is external)

Bob Moses initiated voter registration drives, sit-ins, and Freedom Schools as a visionary grass roots organizer and student leader of the civil rights struggle and Mississippi Freedo Summer Project. His work earned a MacArthur "Genius Grant", which he used to start the Algebra Project. 

RSVP by emailing RSVP@maah.org (link sends e-mail) or call 617-725-0022.

2.

Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative Open House

http://www.facebook.com/events/673156592789047/

SATURDAY FEB 13 2015

1. Pena @e5

MONDAY, FEB 16

1.

All Black Poets @Out of the Blue Gallery

TUESDAY, FEB 17

1.

Do #BlackLivesMatter?: A Dialogue on Blacktivism, Racial Justice, and the Value of Black Lives (@TUFTS)

http://www.facebook.com/events/1536866189929166/

THURSDAY, FEB 19

Labor, Racism & Justice in the 21st Century"

Rev. James M. Lawson Jr.

Pastor Emeritus, Holman United Methodist Church, Los Angeles, CA

Thursday, Feb. 19, 2015

4:00 – 6:00 pm

Ames Court, Austin Hall

Harvard Law School

FRIDAY, FEB 20

Court Date of I-93 protesters, Somerville District Court

In the world of graphic novels...

Many of us grow up reading coming books and even what are called "graphic novels," those of the reporter Tintin and the duo from Gaul, Asterix & Obelix being most popular in South Asia.

However, before Marjane Satrapi became a hit with her Persepolis novels, I had bumped into Joe Sacco's books on the...former Yugoslavia...but as the most recent conflict in Gaza reminded me of Sacco's work on Palestine! So off I went to the local library system to request those books of his...and then some more (and some quite unrelated...)! A look at what has kept me glued in the past few weeks -

1. Palestine by Joe Sacco
2. Footnotes in Gaza by Joe Sacco - a 400+ tome trying to get to the bottom of the 1956 Khan Younis massacre...quite a feat...
3. Jerusalem by Guy Delisle
4. Shenzen by Guy Delisle [Ah, the inscrutable but funny Guy Delisle, back in Shenzen after his forays n Pyongyang and Burma, following is MSF-employee wife...]
5. Not the Israel My Parents Promised  Me about by the master, Harvey Pekar
6. SDS - The Student for a Democratic Society - a graphic history - by Harvey Pekar
7. Tokyo Days, Bangkok Nights
8. The Color of Water - Kim Dong Hwa
9. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen v1 - Alan Moore, Kevin O'Neill - and Indian Rajah as Captain Nemo...
10. Black Dossier - Alan Moore, Kevin O'Neill
11. Farm 54 - Galit and Gilad Seliktar - a coming-of-age story on an Israeli farm...and some very acute observations...on occupation forces...on Palestinian labor in Israel...
12. Cuba - My Revolution - writer, Inverna Lockpezer
13. And...hold your breath...The Adventures of Herge - an illustrated chronicle that follows the artistic journey of Georges Remi aka Herge, the creator of Tintin! Very Tintin like....