ban on "natural" hair

(picture from http://www.howtodread.com/dreadlocks.html)


January 1st "extreme" and "fad" hairstyles like cornrows, twists, locs, mohawks and afros are banned from the police dept. People with locs are forced to cut their hair off and women with natural hair are forced to either straighten or shave their heads. I find this to be extremely racist against black people considering locs, cornrows, twists and fros are worn by mostly Blacks. The sad thing is this was set in place by a BLACK mayor and BLACK police commissioner.

Their excuse: The police would "blend in" with the criminals.

Now if you all care about equal rights (despite of how you wear your hair) I suggest you sign this petition. We cannot allow these kinds of regulations to perpetuate internalized racism. There is nothing that dictates that "straight" hair is more "normal" or less offensive than natural hair, except our socialization process.

Please help by signing the petition at the site below.


http://www.petitiononline.com/baltpd/petition.html

tags: hair black law

protecting equality

LANSING VOTES TO PROTECT GLBT PEOPLE

(Lansing-MI) - Tonight the Lansing City Council voted unanimously to pass a human rights ordinance that bans discrimination within the city, including discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

Today, Michigan's Capital City, became the 14th municipality in the state to outlaw discrimination against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) people when the city council voted unanimously to support a human rights ordinance. The ordinance bans anti-gay discrimination in housing, employment and public accommodations. It also includes local protections based on race, religion, sex, weight, and other characteristics.

"Today is a great day for everyone who lives or works or even passes through, Lansing," said Sean Kosofsky, Director of Policy for Triangle Foundation, Michigan's leading civil rights organization for GLBT people and their allies. "The unanimous vote by city council, should send a loud message that discrimination has no place in Lansing."

Anti-gay discrimination is still legal in the State of Michigan, because the State's civil rights law, The Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act, does not prohibit discrimination based on "sexual orientation" or "gender identity or expression." Fourteen cities have gone the extra step of banning such discrimination, within their borders.

Anti-gay activists from the American Family Association - based in Midland - have threatened to repeal the protections for GLBT tax-payers and residents of Lansing.

"This ordinance is like a holiday gift to the entire Lansing community. It is a shame anti-gay extremists from outside Lansing want to divisive and mean-spirited agenda to Lansing," continued Kosofsky.

The other Michigan cities with protections for GLBT people are: Detroit, Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti, Douglas, Birmingham, Oak Park, East Lansing, Grand Rapids, Saginaw, Flint, Huntington Woods, Ferndale and Grand Ledge.


tags: equality glbt law

Role of Arts in a Time of Crisis

(click post title to link to video and text)

Mary Schmidt Campbell, Dean of the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, presented this keynote address at a conference last year in Brazil, called "Performing Heritage." In this keynote speech, she addresses the role of arts, the public intellectual and response to government and political policy. There is a full text and video of her address, available at the link above.

Ayanna turned me on to this series of conferences called Encuentros, which are really a mix of academics and arts. The next one is taking place in Argentina, and focuses on body politics. The deadline for proposals is January 15, 2007, and you can access info at this website.

tags: art call for artists intellectuals

Scratch and Sniff Art Exhibit

(click post title to read entire story)

My partner sent me this article about a really inventive idea for an art piece. I only wish I had thought of it first. Read on . . .

Exhibit captures the 'smell of fear'

RODRIQUE NGOWI,
Associated Press Writer
Wed Dec 6, 6:17 PM ET

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - Masahiro Sugiyama walked up to the gallery wall, gently scratched the paint and cautiously moved closer to capture the smell that many would try to avoid or mask with deodorants under normal circumstances.

A potent odor similar to that of an unwashed male armpit wafted from the wall, a scratch-and-sniff exhibit that captures the "smell of fear" as part of a show at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology exploring how artists use modern technology in creative work.

"This is not the kind of place where you you'd want to stay for long," MIT graduate student Sugiyama, 28, said of the artwork created by Norwegian artist and researcher Sissel Tolaas.

tags: art art event

Life in the Fast Lane

Stephen Crowley/The New York Times
Gloria Castillo, 22, works from 10:30 p.m. to 6:30 a.m. at a Burger King in West Dallas, earning $252 a week before taxes. She and her husband, who have two boys ages 7 and 8, work different shifts.

(click post title to view read article and view video on nytimes website)

From the car window, the whole fast-food experience is a numbing routine. Pull up. Order from the billboard. Idle. Pay. Drive away. Fast food has become a $120 billion motorized American experience.

But consider the life inside that window on Loop 12 in West Dallas. There is a woman with children and no health insurance, undereducated, a foot soldier in the army of the working poor. The fry cook sneezes on the meat patties. Cigarettes go half smoked. Cameras spy on the employees. Customers throw their fries and soft drinks sometimes because they think it’s funny.

tags: immigration jobs texas american poor

immigration: these arguments incense me

How does this make any sense? (click title of post to read full article from USA today)

"City Council members (in a suburb of Dallas, Texas) unanimously approved fines for landlords who rent to illegal immigrants, making English the city's official language and allowing local authorities to screen suspects in police custody to check their immigration status."

English is used here as an indicator of legal citizenship status. How does that make any sense? I know a lot of people back home in Miami that speak very little, or poor English, and are fully legal citizens. Talk about politicizing and criminalizing language! Arguments like these really incense me, because they terrorize people. Then, the advocates wonder why people get angry and get into fights. Hello! I'm angry, and I don't even have to worry that anyone's going to come knocking on my door to see whether or not I speak English, and then use that against me in terms of immigration status.

Then, there's that part about landlords being fined for renting to illegal immigrants. Now, I understand, as a property owner, that it is my responsiblity to be sure that there is, like, no drug ring action happening in my condo, and that I get my rent check on time. But, how does a mere landlord gain the credentials and reponsibilities of an immigration officer? That is not my job, and it is not the job of any landlord in Texas (well, I guess now it is!). See, it just doesn't make any sense.

All of these policies come out of fear. Fear of what? Fear that their city is going to "become Hispanic." Well, they should've realized a long time ago that that city that they think is "theirs" doesn't really "belong" to anyone. It is not their job to "make it white." And, if they really want to see whose land it is, then it is definitely not historically theirs. Texas, before it belonged to the US, was most assuredly part of Mexico. And, before it was part of Mexico, it belonged to the indigenous people who lived there.

That's the end of my rant for today . . .

tags: immigration language texas english spanish

the Bluest Eye: Detroit this weekend

The Bluest Eye is playing at Plowshares Theater through the end of this weekend. Don't worry about getting a bad seat because it's general admission! I just bought my tickets, and I am super excited to see this adaptation of Toni Morrison's book. Here the description from the theater's website:

Eleven year-old Pecola Breedlove has desired the love of her family and friends all her young life. Instead, she faces constant ridicule and abuse. Blaming her dark skin, Pecola prays for blue eyes - as blue as Shirley Temple's. Everyone adores little blue-eyed girls. Her prayers are granted in the most poignant way. The Bluest Eye is the heartrending story of a young black girl's tragic coming of age in 1941 Ohio. Toni Morrison’s poetic and piercingly relevant debut novel is brought to the stage with loving care by playwright Lydia R. Diamond.


tags: theater women art toni morrison detroit black

Shorts on the Beach (films, that is)

tags: film miami art

NYC makes gender a personal choice

Read the article linked above. NYC now makes it possible for transgendered people to "change" their legal gender with or without undergoing surgery. This has many interesting implications for the use of the words 'sex' and 'gender' in society, well in NY anyway, and how people perceive themselves v the way the world interprets them. But, what I am unclear of is, does this mean that there are still only two legal genders, male and female? What if a person rejects both of those categories?

tags: new york gender transgender language

a poem to kick your butt to the polls!

a poem from Staceyann Chin on tomorrow's necessity . . . I have already sent in my absentee ballot, so you all go on and exercise that right.


Why the Fuck Should I Vote in 2006? (only a portion, go to her myspace to read the whole thing)
by Staceyann Chin (www.myspace.com/staceyannchin)


Less than twenty-four hours

left

before the mid-term elections



the weeks have tricked us

into days/the moment

descends and my fingers itch

for a poem

a great rage to inspire you

to rise you up

early or late tomorrow



to go vote



for Katrina

and the ill winds that flapped

incumbent at the throats of old women

who marched in Selma



for the children who will never know

the New Orleans into which they were born



for Alabama

and Georgia



for Tennessee

Missouri



New York City and how this town

has become a place

only the wealthy can enjoy

vote against these small boxes we pay

entire months wages for



every month

I have to cut something else

snip

snip

snip away at the doors Black teenagers can walk through

pile all the Puerto Ricans on top of each other

call them Mexicans

because you don't know better



if your mother is Dominican

if your father is from Barbados

your older brother is still in Belize

grandfather is in Nigeria



if your maternal grandmother is Jamaican

if you have never seen the city where your people are from

white as a WASP and liberal

or independent

or you used to be republican



Go Vote

tags: vote poem art staceyann chin culture

being a woman artist

Guerrilla Girls
Originally uploaded by 16_sparrows.

i am supposed to be working on writing my NSF grant, and instead i got lost looking at flickr photos. but, this has some bearing on the subject of what it means to be a caribbean woman artist, so i thought i would share.

tags: women art artists guerilla girls

a girl like me

read this opinion piece, by Leonard Pitts in the Miami Herald. it's associated with this video by Kiri Davis. she's a 17 year old who made a short film about the self-image of young black women. in this short film, which is part of the media that matters film festival, davis investigates self-image, beauty and how young women understand their own histories. she also recreates a 1930s "doll test" which engages young children to express the ideas and stereotypes they've already been shaped by.


soon to come on this blog (i will try. grad school work is keeping me far away from blogging.)
-a weekly recipe so long overdue, i should just call them "monthly"
-why do we still have a holiday called "columbus day?"
-what i learned from sandra cisneros

thanks for hanging in there. meanwhile, i'd like to let you know that comments really motivate me, so keep 'em comin',

tags: art video black women self-image history film

Sandra Cisneros and Ruth Behar, Ann Arbor

Thursday, September 28, 7:30pm, in the Rackham Auditorium

The Hispanic Heritage Month 2006 Keynote Address will feature Sandra Cisneros on “Why I’m Not Hispanic.” Sandra Cisneros is a novelist, poet, short story writer, and essayist whose work gives voice to working-class Latino and Latina life in America. Her lyrical, realistic work blends aspects of “high” and popular culture. Her work includes the novels: The House on Mango Street (1983) and Caramelo (2002), Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories (1991), poetry: Bad Boys (1980), My Wicked Wicked Ways (1987), and Loose Woman (1994), a children’s book Hairs/Pelitos (1994), and Vintage Cisneros (2003), a compilation of her works. In 1995 Cisneros was awarded the prestigious MacArthur Foundation Fellowship and in 2003 she received the Texas Medal of the Arts. She lives in San Antonio, TX, where she has created the Macondo Foundation, a unique writers workshop with a Latino focus and a commitment to community service.
Followed by a light reception and book signing by Sandra Cisneros.



Friday, September 29, 11am-1pm, in 3512 Haven Hall


Talking in our Pajamas: A Conversation Between Sandra Cisneros and Ruth Behar. Dressed in their pajamas, author, Sandra Cisneros and U-M Professor of Anthropology and Women’s Studies, Ruth Behar will have a public conversation. They will discuss a range of topics, including writing, books, and being Latinas, topics which they have been talking about for over a decade. A continental breakfast will be served.

tags: art art event writers ann arbor latina cuban ann arbor latina cubana chicana ruth behar sandra cisneros author women

A Ban on Skinny?

Skinny models wearing thin in fashion shocker By Andrew Hay
Tue Sep 12, 11:43 AM ET


MADRID (Reuters) - The world's first ban on overly thin models at a top-level fashion show in Madrid has caused outrage among modeling agencies and raised the prospect of restrictions at other venues.

Madrid's fashion week has turned away underweight models after protests that girls and young women were trying to copy their rail-thin looks and developing eating disorders.

Organizers say they want to project an image of beauty and health, rather than a waif-like, or heroin chic look.

But Cathy Gould, of New York's Elite modeling agency, said the fashion industry was being used as a scapegoat for illnesses like anorexia and bulimia.

"I think its outrageous, I understand they want to set this tone of healthy beautiful women, but what about discrimination against the model and what about the freedom of the designer," said Gould, Elite's North America director, adding that the move could harm careers of naturally "gazelle-like" models.

Madrid's regional government, which sponsors the show and imposed restrictions, said it did not blame designers and models for anorexia. It said the fashion industry had a responsibility to portray healthy body images.

"Fashion is a mirror and many teenagers imitate what they see on the catwalk," said regional official Concha Guerra.

The mayor of Milan, Italy, Letizia Moratti, told an Italian newspaper this week she would seek a similar ban for her city's show unless it could find a solution to "sick" looking models.

QUALITY, NOT SIZE

The Madrid show is using the body mass index or BMI -- based on weight and height -- to measure models. It has turned away 30 percent of women who took part in the previous event. Medics will be on hand at the September 18-22 show to check models.

"The restrictions could be quite a shock to the fashion world at the beginning, but I'm sure it's important as far as health is concerned," said Leonor Perez Pita, director of Madrid's show, also known as the Pasarela Cibeles.

A spokeswoman for the Association of Fashion Designers of Spain, which represents those at Madrid fashion week, said the group supported restrictions and its concern was the quality of collections, not the size of models.

Eating disorder activists said many Spanish model agencies and designers oppose the ban and they had doubts whether the new rules would be followed.

"If they don't go along with it the next step is to seek legislation, just like with tobacco," said Carmen Gonzalez of Spain's Association in Defense of Attention for Anorexia and Bulimia, which has campaigned for restrictions since the 1990s.

Free Tuition to Harvard and More Opportunities!

1.
"O" The Oprah Magazine
is looking to hire Fall Interns in the Fashion & Style Departments.
Candidates must be highly organized, detail-oriented and
able to juggle multiple tasks at once.
Prior internship experience preferred, but not required.
This opportunity is available for college students in need of
credit hours and recent graduates who are available
to start immediately, full-time from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm,
5 days a week.
Send resumes with a cover letter to:
Cindy M. del Rosario, Associate Editor
O, The Oprah Magazine
1700 Broadway, 38th floor NY, or call 212-903-5149.
_____________________

2.
Verizon
is looking for students who are 2004-2005 graduates of
Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU).
If you know of someone graduating from a HBCU this year with
a degree in Engineering, Computer Science and Technology, Information
Technology, General Business, Finance or Marketing,
please have them forward their resume to: melissa.w.langham@verizon.com
to
be considered for career opportunities with Verizon!
_____________________

3.
The Women's Technology Program at MIT
is a 4-week summer residence program to introduce
high school girls to electrical engineering and computer science.
If you know a girl who is currently a high school junior who
demonstrates math and science ability and an interest in
finding out about EECS, please encourage her to visit
our website for more information and for an application form.
(Applications were due Feb 3, 2005.)
Still, explore possible exceptions: http://www.mit.edu
Our classes are taught in a supportive environment by
a staff of women MIT PhD candidates and undergraduates.
The full-time academic program includes hands-on experiments
and team-based projects in computer science,
electrical engineering, and mathematics
No prior experience in computer programming, physics, or electrical
engineering is expected, but applicants typically have strong academic
records, especially in math and science.
_____________________
4.
HARVARD'S TUITION ANNOUNCEMENT
Harvard University is offering free tuition for students that have
a family income below $40,000. If you are a mentor or have nieces
and nephews who might be interested,
please give them this information.
If you know any one/family earning less than $40K with
a brilliant child near ready for college, please pass this along.
The prestigious university recently announced that
from now on undergraduate students from low-income families can
go to Harvard for free!
No tuition and no student loans!
To find out more about Harvard offering free tuition for families making
less than $40,000 a year visit
Harvard's financial aid website at:
http://adm-is.fas.harvard.edu/FAO/index.htm or call the school's
financial
aid office at 617-495-1581.

tags: internship college tuition oprah job verizon harvard mit women low income hbcu student

kvetching, art and cooking - September events at Books & Books

Below is a list of events that I would DEFINITELY attend if I were in Miami. They include a linguistic exploration of Yiddish, a celebration of Cuban poetry (including my talented advisor, Ruth Behar), tragic photographs, Queer humor and a self-assigned cooking project. Go to the Books and Books website to see all of the events.


Sunday, September 10, Coral Gables, 4pm
In the popular imagination, Yiddish is an ancient language with many ways to express grumbling, hand wringing and displeasure, full of earthy attitudes and vulgar humor. While that's all true, it's not a complete picture. In Born to Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture in All of Its Moods (Harper Perennial, $13.95), author and expert Michael Wex takes a probing look at just what makes Yiddish, the principal spoken language of the Jews for over a century, so original, so resilient - and so full of complaint. Almost impossible for a non-Jew to learn or understand, Yiddish started out as a bastardized version of German to give voice to systemic exclusion and exile. Born to Kvetch explores Yiddish in relation to nature, food, childhood, courtship and marriage, sex (setting the record straight on the difference between shmuk and puts, both part of the colloquial vernacular, neither for use in mixed company!) and death, all topics worthy of a good kvetch. Armed with stories, anecdotes and perfectly delivered punch lines, Wex strikes a skillful balance between the somber and the comical aspects of his subject matter. 4pm

Wednesday, September 13, Gables
Burnt Sugar Caña Quemada: Contemporary Cuban Poetry in English and Spanish (Free Press, $14) brings us the sights, sounds, and rhythms of Cuba, revealed in the evocative works of some of the finest Cuban and Cuban-American poets of the twentieth century, including Gustavo Pérez Firmat, José Abreu Felippe, Enrique Sacerio-Garí, Reinaldo Arenas, Heberto Padilla, Pablo Medina, Agustín Acosta, Angel Cuadra, Eugenio Florit, Severo Sarduy, Virgil Suárez, Sandra M. Castillo, Lissette Méndez, Ruth Behar, Rita Geada, Belkis Cuza Malé, Ricardo Pau-Llosa, José Kozer, Orlando González Esteva, Uva de Aragón, Adrián Castro, Carolina Hospital and Armando Valladares, among others. Bestselling translator Lori Marie Carlson and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Oscar Hijuelos have created an intimate collection of some of their favorite modern poems, all of which are informed by cubanía -- the essence of what it means to be Cuban. Stirring, immediate, and universal in its sensibility, Burnt Sugar is a luminous collection lovingly compiled by two of the world's foremost authorities on the subject. This event is presented in collaboration with the Florida Center for the Literary Arts and the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center (FIAC). 8pm

Thursday, September 21, Lincoln Theatre, 541 Lincoln Road, Miami Beach
Joel Meyerowitz is an award-winning photographer whose work has appeared in over 350 exhibitions in museums and galleries around the world. His work is in the collection of the MOMA, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and many others. After the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001, nobody who was not directly involved in the recovery effort was allowed on the Ground Zero site. Journalists were included in this ban, but, with the help of the Museum of the City of New York and sympathetic city officials, Meyerowitz became the sole photographer granted unimpeded access to the site. For eight months, at all times of the day and night, he photographed “the pile” as the WTC came to be known, and the 800 people a day that were working in it. Influenced by Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange’s work for the Farm Security Administration during the Great Depression, Meyerowitz knew that if he didn’t make a photographic record, there would be no history. His work is contained in a major new book, Aftermath (Phaidon, $75) that features, for the first time, the vast archive of his unpublished photos from Ground Zero. Join us for an unforgettable program, Ground Zero Through the Artist’s Lens: An Evening with Joel Meyerowitz. FREE tickets for this event are available at all Books & Books locations, beginning September 1st. 7:30pm

Thursday, September 28, Miami Beach
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (Houghton Mifflin, $19.95) by Alison Bechdel (the author of the long-running comic strip, Dykes to Watch Out For) takes its place alongside the unnerving, memorable, darkly funny family memoirs of Augusten Burroughs and Mary Karr. It's a father-daughter tale pitch-perfectly illustrated with Bechdel's sweetly gothic drawings and- like Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis- a story exhilaratingly suited to the graphic memoir form. Meet Alison's father, a historic preservation expert and obsessive restorer of the family's Victorian house, a third-generation funeral home director, a high school English teacher, an icily distant parent, and a closeted homosexual who, as it turns out, is involved with male students and a family babysitter. Through narrative that is alternately heartbreaking and fiercely funny, we are drawn into a daughter's complex yearning for her father. And yet, apart from assigned stints dusting caskets at the family-owned "fun home," as Alison and her brothers call it, the relationship achieves its most intimate expression through the shared code of books. When Alison comes out as homosexual herself in late adolescence, the denouement is swift . . . graphic . . . and redemptive. This event is presented in collaboration with the Miami-Dade Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce and Design Within Reach. 8pm


Saturday, September 30, Gables
On a visit to her childhood home in Texas, Julie Powell pulls her mother's battered copy of Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking off the bookshelf. And the book calls out to her. Pushing thirty, living in a run-down apartment in Queens, and working at a dead-end secretarial job, Julie Powell is stuck. Her only hope lies in a dramatic self-rescue mission. And so she invents a deranged assignment: in the space of one year, she will cook every recipe in the Julia Child classic, all 524 of them. How hard could it be? With fierceness, irreverence, and unbreakable resolve, Powell learns Julia Child's most important lesson: the art of living with gusto. Julie & Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously (Little, Brown & Co., $13.99) is "a feast, a voyage, and a marvel," says Elizabeth Gilbert, author of The Last American Man, for anyone who has ever cursed at a cookbook or longed for a more delicious life. Tonight, the Café at Books & Books Coral Gables will offer a Julia Child-inspired menu to celebrate the author’s reading. Powell’s visit last year was cancelled because of Hurricane Wilma, so we are hoping to make it up to her during the paperback tour. Please join us! 7pm

tags: yiddish books miami coral gables books and books cuban poetry cooking julia child alison bechdel joel meyerowitz photography 9 11

Castro turns 80

(In a photo released by a division of Fidel Castro's personal support group, he holds a copy of the Aug. 12 edition of the Communist Party newspaper. It was impossible to confirm the authenticity of the photograph.) from the NYtimes

On August 13, 2006, Fidel Castro turned 80. Figures that he's a Leo.

He released a statement and a picture explaining that Cuban people should brace for the worst. Maybe more was said and I missed it in the news, but what is his opinion of the worst? US invasion? His death? Constant badgering by journalists who "have the right to know and report on Cuba."

Meanwhile, photos that are being taken and released from Cuba, show a nation of empathetic people, hoping for the well-being of their longtime leader.

Castro ill, future uncertain

Fidel Castro has recently turned over "temporary power" to his brother, Raul, as he has fallen ill and must undergo surgery. He has explained his illness is a result of stress due to recent world affairs and travels. Castro has NEVER turned over power! Even when he fell, and shattered his kneecap, he was still the man in charge. What does this mean for the future of Cuba? The people of Cuba? And, what will exiles, who mainly live in Miami, do now and in the future?

Well, from what I have been watching on the news, Miami's Cubans are celebrating as if they "have won the world cup" (Associated Press). Watch the video on this page.

Politicians in Miami have been plotting for the demise of Castro since he took power in 1959. Now, the US government has officially come out with the Compact with the People of Cuba. It is basically a written plan that says the US government will "help" the Cuban people with medical supplies, food and other goods should they "ask" for help.

What the US government and Miami Cuban exiles fail to consider is the thoughts and feeling of those people actually still living IN Cuba. In my opinion, it is their decision; not mine, not the US government, and NOT Cuban exiles. I understand the connection to Cuba, but they made a decision to leave, and make a life in a different country. To most who left, the measure of success is how many material goods they can acquire. In Cuba, there must be a different measure: life, family, leisure time. They cannot acquire material goods, but SO WHAT!

And, what is the reaction in Cuba today? From what I have seen on the news, it is "business as usual." What? No protests? Revolts? Revolution? Wouldn't this be the time, if they so desire, to pressure Castro out of power? Not happening . . .

More to come, as I process and collect thoughts and info.

Tracked pictures

Here are a few from the first two nights. More after my big move up north . . .