#and their actions and our support of them reflects on us as a diaspora

[sillyguy-supreme]

indian diaspora we cannot keep supporting politicians and celebrities simply because they are indian.

[hero-israel]

As a diaspora Jew, I worry somewhat about anti-Israel actions taken mostly by gentile politicians in countries like the US, Germany, and the UK that are a bit too enthusiastic in their crackdown on free speech and having that rebound on us diaspora Jews as if we asked them to do it.

Like, I think a fair amount of antizionism is either intentionally or unintentionally antisemitic, and a fair amount more is just unproductive, but I figure what isn’t threatening to Jews can be argued down in the public square.

As in, a reaction to anti-Israelism can make Jews look bad? Yes; I've particularly seen concerns about that regarding anti-BDS laws (regardless of whether one supports those laws, they reflect on us). We are faced with some people who loathe us and want to attack us, and others who want to stop that first group while not necessarily having our best interests in mind.

There is some grim comfort to take in how there have been reversals, some measure of Finding Out, forced upon antisemites through normal political engagement - not through criminal penalties. British Airways brought the sitcom back. The Berlin club apologized. Menorah lightings were un-cancelled. Lots of poster-rippers were fired. We can win, when we fight. It's just dispiriting and disgusting to see how hard we have to fight against people who say we must be eliminated from public life (or life in general).

[lastsonlost]

All this over the Japanese liking a game they don't like...

Ghost of Tsushima opens with a grand wide shot of samurai, adorned with impressively detailed suits of armor, sitting atop their horses. There we find Jin, the protagonist, ruminating on how he will die for his country. As he traverses Tsushima, our hero fights back the invading Mongolian army to protect his people, and wrestles with the tenets of the Bushido code. Standoffs take advantage of perspective and a wide field of view to frame both the samurai and his opponent in something that, more often than not, feels truly cinematic. The artists behind the game have an equally impeccable reference point for the visuals: the works of legendary filmmaker Akira Kurosawa

“We really wanted to pay respect to the fact that this game is so totally inspired by the work of this master,” director Nate Fox said in a recent interview with IndieWire. At Entertainment Weekly, Fox explained how his team at Sucker Punch Productions suggested that the influence ran broadly, including the playable black-and-white “Kurosawa Mode” and even in picking a title. More specifically, he noted that Seven Samurai, one of Kurosawa’s most well-known works, defined Fox’s “concept of what a samurai is.” All of this work went toward the hope that players would “experience the game in a way as close to the source material as possible.”

But in embracing “Kurosawa” as an eponymous style for samurai adventures, the creatives behind Ghost of Tsushima enter into an arena of identity and cultural understanding that they never grapple with. The conversation surrounding samurai did not begin or end with Kurosawa’s films, as Japan’s current political forces continue to reinterpret history for their own benefit.

Kurosawa earned a reputation for samurai films as he worked steadily from 1943 to 1993. Opinions of the director in Japan are largely mixed; criticism ranges from the discussion of his family background coming from generations of samurai to accusations of pandering to Western audiences. Whether intentional or not, Kurosawa became the face of Japanese film in the critical circles of the 1950s. But he wasn’t just a samurai stylist: Many of the director’s films frame themselves around a central conflict of personal ideology in the face of violence that often goes without answer — and not always through the lives of samurai. In works like Drunken Angel, The Quiet Duel, or his 1944 propaganda film The Most Beautiful, Kurosawa tackles the interpersonal struggles of characters dealing with sickness, alcoholism, and other challenges.

His films endure today, and not just through critical preservation; since breaking through to the West, his visual ideas and themes have become fodder for reinterpretation. You can see this keenly in Western cinema through films like The Magnificent Seven, whose narrative was largely inspired by Seven Samurai. Or even A Fistful of Dollars, a Western epic that cleaved so closely to Kurosawa’s Yojimbo that director Sergio Leone ended up in a lawsuit with Toho Productions over rights issues. George Lucas turned to Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress in preparation for Star Wars; he’d eventually repay Kurosawa by helping to produce his surreal drama Dreams.

Ghost of Tsushima is part of that lineage, packing in action and drama to echo Kurosawa’s legacy. “We will face death and defend our home,” Shimura, the Lord of Tsushima, says within the first few minutes of the game. “Tradition. Courage. Honor. These are what make us.” He rallies his men with this reminder of what comprises the belief of the samurai: They will die for their country, they will die for their people, but doing so will bring them honor. And honor, tradition, and courage, above all else, are what make the samurai.

Except that wasn’t always the belief, it wasn’t what Kurosawa bought whole cloth, and none of the message can be untangled from how center- and alt-right politicians in modern Japan talk about “the code” today.

The “modern” Bushido code — or rather, the interpretation of the Bushido code coined in the 1900s by Inazō Nitobe — was utilized in, and thus deeply ingrained into, Japanese military culture. An easy example of how the code influenced Imperial Japan’s military would be the kamikaze pilots, officially known as the Tokubetsu Kōgekitai. While these extremes (loyalty and honor until death, or capture) aren’t as present in the myth of the samurai that has ingrained itself into modern ultranationalist circles, they manifest in different yet still insidious ways.

In 2019, to celebrate the ushering in of the Reiwa Era, the conservative Liberal Democratic Party commissioned Final Fantasy artist Yoshitaka Amano to depict Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as a samurai. Though described as being center-right, various members of the LDP have engaged in or have been in full support of historical revisionism, including the editing of textbooks to either soften or completely omit the language surrounding war crimes committed by Imperial Japan. Abe himself has been linked to supporting xenophobic curriculums, with his wife donating $9,000 to set up an ultranationalist school that pushed anti-Korean and anti-Chinese rhetoric. The prime minister is also a member of Japan’s ultraconservative Nippon Kaigi, which a U.S. congressional report on Japan-U.S. relations cited as one of several organizations that believe that “Japan should be applauded for liberating much of East Asia from Western colonial powers, that the 1946-1948 Tokyo War Crimes tribunals were illegitimate, and that the killings by Imperial Japanese troops during the 1937 ‘Nanjing massacre’ were exaggerated or fabricated.” The Nippon Kaigi, like Abe, have also pushed for the revision of Japan’s constitution — specifically, Article 9 — to allow Japan to reinstate its standing military.

This has been a major goal for Abe as his time as prime minister comes to a definite close in 2021. And from 2013 onward, the politician has made yearly trips to the Yasukuni shrine to honor the memory of war criminals, a status of which his own grandfather was accused, that died with the ethos of the modern Bushido code. Abe’s exoneration of these ideals has continued to spark reactionary nationalist sentiment, as illustrated with the Nippon Kaigi and their ultranationalist ideology. These traditionalist values have encouraged xenophobic sentiment in Japan, which was seen in the 2020 Tokyo elections with 178,784 votes going to Makoto Sakurai, leader of the Japan First Party, another ultranationalist group. Sakurai has participated in numerous hate speech demonstrations in Tokyo, often targeting Korean diaspora groups.

The preservation of the Bushido code that was highly popularized and utilized by Imperial Japan lives on through promotion by history revisionists, who elevate samurai to a status similar to that of the chivalric knight seen in Western media. They are portrayed as an honor-bound and noble group of people that cared deeply for the peasantry, when that was often not the case.

The samurai as a concept, versus who the samurai actually were, has become so deeply intertwined with Japanese imperialist beliefs that it has become difficult to separate the two. This is where cultural and historical understanding are important when approaching the mythology of the samurai as replicated in the West. Kurosawa’s later body of work — like the color-saturated Ran, which was a Japanese adaptation of King Lear, and Kagemusha, the story of a lower-class criminal impersonating a feudal lord — deeply criticized the samurai and the class system they enforced. While some films were inspired by Western plays, specifically Shakespeare, these works were critical of the samurai and their role in the Sengoku Period. They dismantled the notion of samurai by showing that they were a group of people capable of the same failings as the lower class, and were not bound to arbitrary notions of honor and chivalry.

Unlike Kurosawa’s blockbusters, his late-career critical message didn’t cross over with as much ease. In Western films like 2003’s The Last Samurai, the audience is presented with the picture of a venerable and noble samurai lord who cares only for his people and wants to preserve traditionalist values and ways of living. The portrait was, again, a highly romanticized and incorrect image of who these people were in feudal Japanese society. Other such works inspired by Kurosawa’s samurai in modern pop culture include Adult Swim’s animated production Samurai Jack and reinterpretations of his work like Seven Samurai 20XX developed by Dimps and Polygon Magic, which had also received the Kurosawa Estate’s blessing but resulted in a massive failure. The narratives of the lone ronin and the sharpshooter in American Westerns, for example, almost run in parallel.

Then there’s Ghost of Tsushima. Kurosawa’s work is littered with close-ups focused on capturing the emotionality of every individual actor’s performance, and panoramic shots showcasing sprawling environments or small feudal villages. Fox and his team recreate that. But after playing through the story of Jin, Ghost of Tsushima is as much of an homage to an Akira Kurosawa film as any general black-and-white film could be. The Kurosawa Mode in the game doesn’t necessarily reflect the director’s signatures, as the narrative hook and tropes found in Kurosawa’s work — and through much of the samurai film genre — are equally as important as the framing of specific shots.

“I don’t think a lot of white Western academics have the context to talk about Japanese national identity,” Tori Huynh, a Vietnamese woman and art director in Los Angeles, said about the Western discussion of Kurosawa’s aesthetic. “Their context for Japanese nationalism will be very different from Japanese and other Asian people. My experience with Orientalism in film itself is, that there is a really weird fascination with Japanese suffering and guilt, which is focused on in academic circles … I don’t think there is anything wrong with referencing his aesthetic. But that’s a very different conversation when referencing his ideology.”

Ghost of Tsushima features beautifully framed shots before duels that illustrate the tension between Jin and whomever he’s about to face off against, usually in areas populated by floating lanterns or vibrant and colorful flowers. The shots clearly draw inspiration from Kurosawa films, but these moments are usually preceded by a misunderstanding on Jin’s part — stumbling into a situation he’d otherwise have no business participating in if it weren’t for laid-out side quests to get mythical sword techniques or armor. Issues like this undermine the visual flair; the duels are repeated over and over in tedium as more of a set-piece than something that should have a component of storytelling and add tension to the narrative.

Fox and Sucker Punch’s game lacks a script that can see the samurai as Japanese society’s violent landlords. Instead of examining the samurai’s role, Ghost of Tsushima lionizes their existence as the true protectors of feudal Japan. Jin must protect and reclaim Tsushima from the foreign invaders. He must defend the peasantry from errant bandits taking advantage of the turmoil currently engulfing the island. Even if that means that the samurai in question must discard his sense of honor, or moral righteousness, to stoop to the level of the invading forces he must defeat.

Jin’s honor and the cost of the lives he must protect are in constant battle, until this struggle no longer becomes important to the story, and his tale whittles down to an inevitable and morally murky end. To what lengths will he go to preserve his own honor, as well as that of those around him? Ghost of Tsushima asks these questions without a truly introspective look at what that entails in relation to the very concept of the samurai and their Bushido code. This manifests in flashbacks to Jin’s uncle, Shimura, reprimanding him for taking the coward’s path when doing his first assassination outside of forced stealth segments. Or in story beats where the Khan of the opposing Mongol force informs Shimura that Jin has been stabbing enemies in the back. Even if you could avoid participating in these systems, the narrative is fixated on Jin’s struggle with maintaining his honor while ultimately trying to serve his people.

I do not believe Ghost of Tsushima was designed to empower a nationalist fantasy. At a glance, and through my time playing the game, however, it feels like it was made by outsiders looking into an otherwise complex culture through the flattening lens of an old black-and-white film. The gameplay is slick and the hero moments are grand, but the game lacks the nuance and understanding of what it ultimately tries to reference. As it stands, being a cool pseudo-historical drama is, indeed, what Ghost of Tsushima’s creators seemingly aimed to accomplish. In an interview with Famitsu, Chris Zimmerman of Sucker Punch said that “if Japanese players think the game is cool, or like a historical drama, then that’s a compliment.” And if there is one thing Ghost of Tsushima did succeed in, it was creating a “cool” aesthetic — encompassed by one-on-one showdowns with a lot of cinematic framing.

In an interview with The Verge, Fox said that “our game is inspired by history, but we’re not strictly historically accurate.” That’s keenly felt throughout the story and in its portrayal of the samurai. The imagery and iconography of the samurai carry a burden that Sucker Punch perhaps did not reckon with during the creation of Ghost of Tsushima. While the game doesn’t have to remain true to the events that transpired in Tsushima, the symbol of the samurai propagates a nationalist message by presenting a glossed-over retelling of that same history. Were, at any point, Ghost of Tsushima to wrestle with the internal conflict between the various class systems that existed in Japan at the time, it might have been truer to the films that it draws deep inspiration from. However, Ghost of Tsushima is what it set out to be: a “cool” period piece that doesn’t dwell on the reasonings or intricacies of the existing period pieces it references.

A game that so heavily carries itself on the laurels of one of the most prolific Japanese filmmakers should investigate and reflect on his work in the same way that the audience engages with other pieces of media like film and literature. What is the intent of the creator versus the work’s broader meaning in relation to current events, or the history of the culture that is ultimately serving as a backdrop to yet another open-world romp? And how do these things intertwine and create something that can flirt on an edge of misunderstanding? Ghost of Tsushima is a surface-level reflection of these questions and quandaries, sporting a lens through which to experience Kurosawa, but not to understand his work. It ultimately doesn’t deal with the politics of the country it uses as a backdrop. For the makers of the game, recreating Kurosawa is just black and white.

[chsamuseum]

CHSA Interns Respond: What does AAPI Heritage mean to us?

This month, we asked our interns to share their reflections on AAPI Heritage, answering the question, “What does AAPI Heritage mean to you?” Here’s what they wrote: 

AAPI Heritage Is…

...a living history 

Shou Zhang, Research Intern (We Are Bruce Lee) 

I am a 1.5 generation Han Chinese American.

I believe our communities' diverse and beautiful history lives through us like water flowing from the past into the present and onwards to the future. Our very existence in this country is a testament to the resilience of those who came before us. When I can go to a Chinese grocery store and buy goods that satisfy my taste for the Chinese Lu culinary cooking style, that experience is the legacy of our lived history. When I cook the dishes that my family taught me, the very act of it is a celebration of my Han Chinese culture. 

Examples of China’s Lu cuisine, originating in Shandong. (PC: China & Asia Cultural Travel).

To me, the AAPI history of my community is a lived experience. I recognize that the Han Chinese and Han Chinese American community in America are members of a wider community whose struggles and experiences intersect with our own. So for me, AAPI History Month means going beyond protecting, sustaining, and sharing the history of the culture of my community – it means finding the emotional space to listen to the stories of other AAPI communities.

In my journey as someone who grew up and emigrated from the People's Republic of China, I have been particularly invested this month in learning more about the lived experiences of other ethnic and indigenous communities who emigrated from mainland China, who have had a drastically different experience than my own.

...a way to understand my identity

Samantha Vasquez, Research Intern (Chinese in the Richmond) 

Being Asian American is integral to my identity, as I have spent almost twenty-one years attempting to understand what it meant to be Asian and American. I am a Chinese adoptee with a third-generation Chinese American mom and a first-generation Mexican American dad. I learned about the term "third-culture kid" in a Multiracial Americans course in college, and I found it to describe my experiences almost perfectly. This experience is defined as the phenomenon in which a child grows up with their parents' culture and the culture of the place they grew up.  Both of my parents grew up in the U.S. and have navigated what it means to be American. For me, I have my Chinese heritage, through which I participate in traditions and cuisine, and I also have my Mexican culture, through which I understand Spanish phrases and attend religious ceremonies.

There are so many nuances with my identity that I had trouble understanding when I was younger, but I embrace being Asian American because it can encompass these nuances. I want to give my children the tools to begin to understand their identities, no matter what their culture is. I want them to know my parents and their cultures' influence on my upbringing. I want them to embrace all cultures and realize how interconnected we all are.

...a source of political strength

Katherine Xiong, Community Programs Intern 

I have to admit that I struggle a lot with the term “AAPI.” Doubtless, the lived experience of individuals grouped together under the AAPI umbrella are extremely disparate -- even within ethnicities, there’s so much diversity that it’s hard to say that people belong ‘together.’ Take the term “Chinese” for example: It’s fuzzily defined. It can (or can not) include diaspora from the mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, etc., many of whom chafe under the label “Chinese American” because of political connotations in their countries of origin. It can include descendants of the first railroad workers, migrant workers, and communities facing gentrification, but can also include some of the richest people in America, many of whom have become the gentrifiers. We don’t all have the same history, or the same political issues, either. Questions of affirmative action that my conservative parents are thinking about and questions of media representation my friends are thinking about are not the same problems that massage workers or Chinese American elders in large cities are facing. Zoom out to all of the ‘AAPI’ umbrella, and the differences grow still vaster. Yet outsiders often read us as “all the same.” 

A protestor displays her support for solidarity between the Black and AAPI communities. (PC: NBC News). 

As I interpret it, the power of the term “AAPI” has less to do with identity and more to do with politics. And it’s not about having the same political ‘issues’ or racial/ethnic stereotypes. It’s about coalition-building and solidarity in spite of difference -- building from communities up, across ethnic and class lines. It’s about recognizing the ways in which we all get ‘read’ as one people from the outside and leveraging those misconceptions to say, ‘If you treat us all as one people, fine. Then we’ll face our problems together, and support each other in each other’s problems, no matter how different we are. We are not the same, but our communities do not have to form around divisions and differences. We can borrow each other’s strength. We can -- and will -- make change.” 

...the past (and the people) who shaped our present 

Samantha Lam, Development Intern 

As Asian Americans, we have been taught to believe that we are the model minority, and thus a greater ‘proximity to whiteness.’ AAPI history tells us the exact opposite. For example, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was the first immigration ban towards a specific ethnic group, and was only fully repealed with the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which abolished the National Origins Formula. Discrimination towards Asian Americans is not as much a “thing of the past,” as some people like to think. 

I cannot stress how important it is to know about how we as Asian Americans have reached our current status, thanks to the sacrifices of people like early Chinese laborers, who came to the U.S. hoping to find work, and Asian American activists who fought for our civil rights. I know more about this thanks to heritage museums and cultural institutions like CHSA. I am so grateful to CHSA for filling in the blanks for me and many other young Asian Americans who may not have been taught Asian American history in school. 

High school students in Oakland at Black Panther Party funeral rally for Bobby Hutton. (PC: Asian American Movement 1968). 

AAPI Month this year has been far sadder than I think anyone anticipated with increasing reports of hate crimes towards Asians. However, I can see a silver lining in the uptick in Asian American activism and with more resources being made available online discussing topics like intersectionality and the history behind the model minority myth. I believe learning and connecting with Asian American history has allowed me to better understand the struggles other minority groups have faced here in the U.S., and I know I need to do more with the privileges I have.

…a diverse community with many voices

Kimberly Szeto, Education & Research Intern 

Real talk: I am not the biggest fan of umbrella labels like AAPI, API, etc. There is so much to being Asian American or being Pacific Islander that just gets bunched up into one monolithic category. As people, we are more than what labels and stereotypes define us to be. 

But what the labels such as “AAPI” and “API” do instead is bring together a community of people with similar but different backgrounds and give a space to embrace and celebrate who we are, as well as giving us a voice. Yes, May is the month to celebrate AAPI, but why don’t we celebrate all year round? As Asian Americans, we should not have to conform to what “societal norms” in the U.S. constrain us to be, for us to stay quiet and not rock the boat in fear of backlash. Furthermore, we must debunk the model minority myth stereotype, where Asians are seen as uniformly more prosperous, well-educated, and successful than other groups of people. This is a dangerous generalization of vastly different groups of people, one that allows the white majority of America to avoid responsibility for racist policies and beliefs. We need to embrace who we are and educate those who may not know or are less aware.

I started hearing the term AAPI more prominently when I got to college and found a place in the AAPI community at UC Santa Cruz. I think this is where I started to feel more comfortable and began to champion my Asian American identity because I felt like my community was a safe space. I was no longer embarrassed by my family out in public and the customs of our culture that others may have found foreign. 

As an Asian American, I think it is very important to keep history and customs alive. That includes our lives here in America as well as the history of those who came before us, and all the triumphs, struggles, and little things in between. These are the experiences that should form the narratives of any human being, no matter where you are from and who you are. 

I invite you to celebrate AAPI Month with me, and to encourage you to embrace your own heritage and to educate and support yourselves and others. 

[simply-shakera]

Embodying Black Joy

Before Black History Month 2021 comes to an end, I want to take this moment to reflect on how significant this time truly is. Although my belief is that Black History and culture should be celebrated throughout all months of the year;  for now, I do believe it is important that we continue to utilize this time to acknowledge the historical feat against monumental odds that Black people have been able to achieve. It is the responsibility of the current and future generations to take what we have learned and keep the momentum going. It is also necessary for us to utilize our talents and gifts to uplift those around us.

As a natural caregiver, I  nourish the people around me by creating and sustaining a community of care, joy & connection. Carnival Spice has allowed me to complete much of this work and I am truly grateful for that. Typically in February months I see an increase in Carnival Spice bookings due to Black History Month. Our most popular offering during this time is our family-friendly cultural presentations that highlight Black culture using dance, fitness and story telling in such a unique way.

I feel so full-filled when leading these presentations - especially when it is for our school-aged groups. Seeing kids of all ages so excited to learn and embrace the richness of Afro-Caribbean culture really motivates me to keep going. I particularly appreciate how engaged they are in the experience and the high vibrations they exude. Though all of our presentations were virtual this year, you could still feel their energy and joy through the screen.

"The most radical and revolutionary thing we can do for ourselves is to connect to joy and to allow ourselves to feel. That is how show up positively in the world and complete dissolve ancestral trauma."  -- Devi Brown

Joy, that deep-rooted inner feeling that inspires that outward expression of happiness... But Black joy goes far beyond that. Black people have contributed so much to this world yet sadly the way we as a people have been treated does not reflect that. Racism, social injustice, and trauma runs rampant plus there isn't enough spaces that allow for healing. Thankfully, joy is a form of healing; and while society often condemns Black people for being "too loud", "too angry" or "too much", revelling in joy is an act of resistance too.

Engaging in Black joy sends a message to your mind and spirit that you are worthy, you are important, and you are loved. We should make a habit of taking inspired action to bring joy into our lives. I put together a few light-hearted lists for you that may help you engage in Black joy daily:

The Beauty of Affirmations

I believe the universe has the power to align us with people, things and experiences that match our vibrations. It is important for us to keep our vibrations high to increase the opportunity of positive attraction. Practicing the act of repeating and affirmations (positive statements) is a powerful way to strengthen our mindset by helping us believe in the potential of an action we desire to manifest.

I encourage you to write out an affirmation related to joy and set it as a as a daily alarm on your phone. When the alarm goes off repeat the statement out loud and be present in the moment and positive energy.

Listen To Music

Music is a powerful tool that unlocks joy. From the beat, to the lyrics, to the melody certain parts of songs just know how to hit our soul. I created a playlist with a mix of feel good songs from different eras and genres - take what you'd like:

Can’t Take My Joy by Terri Lyons

My Dream by Nesbeth

Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Could See by Busta Rhymes

The Anthem by  Todd Dehaney

Blessed by Wizkid and Damien Marley

Beat of Life by Sarz ft. Wizkid

Jerusalema by Master KG ft. Burna Boy

Skip To My Lou by Ding Dong, Serani & Biggy

Just Dance - Wacky Dip by Ding Dong feat. Voicemail

Go Crazy by Chris Brown

High Life by Machel Montano

Full of Vibes by Voice &  Marge Blackman

Lose Control by Missy Elliot - ft. Fat Man Scoop

Happy by Pharell Williams

Dance Heals

Dance truly does heals and it is such a positive way to embody Black joy. Here are some of my favourite dance moves from the African Caribbean Diaspora - taken from popular genres such as afrobeat, soca, dancehall and hip - hop.

Shaku Shaku (Nigeria)

"Although the dance is credited to Olamide, the truth is that he is not the inventor of the dance. But he played the major role in the crossing over of the dance to the mainstream media. The dance originated in the streets. According to DJ Real, Shaku Shaku name is for street guys, and the dance was named after their particular style of dances when they are hanging out" - Source. The move involves crossing one arm over the other and bringing that same arm toward the ear as if you are making a phone call.

Palance (Trinidad)

In 2010, the world was introduced to the song and dance that is palance. The song by JW and Blaze ’s popularity was established when it took the "Road March" title at Trinidad’s Carnival that year where it was played along the parade’s judging route 417 times.The move involves jumping side to side on one foot at a time while waving yuh flaggg. Back then, soca song's weren't known for having dances - so palance truly broke the mold. We have even seen Beyonce and Justin Trudeau do it.

Krazy Hype (Jamaica)

This mid school dancehall move will always be one of my favourites. It was created in 2003 by choreographer Crazy Hype from the The MOB Dance Group to Elephant Man hit song of the same name. The move involves hopping from side to side but landing on your heels.

Harlem Shake (Us)

The dance was created by Harlem resident Al. B. in 1981. However, in 2001 the dance resurfaced and was renamed when it featured heavily in G.Dep’s music video for the song "Let's Get It". When you hear this song one can't help but get to shakin'.

Enjoy A Movie

Get your laugh on or enjoy a flick that makes your heart smile. While your at it, support a Black art! I have helped you out by compiling a list movies that exude Black Joy.

Soul (2020)

Critics Consensus: A film as beautiful to contemplate as it is to behold, Soul proves Pixar's power to deliver outstanding all-ages entertainment remains undimmed.

Synopsis: A music teacher who dreams of performing jazz live finally gets his chance, only he travels to another realm to help someone find their passion, he soon discovers what it means to have soul.

Soul Food (1997)

Critics Consensus: Much like the titular cuisine, Soul Food blends a series of savoury ingredients to offer warm, generous helpings of nourishment and comfort.

Synopsis: This hit domestic comedy-drama concerned the fortunes of an extended African-American family recalled through the eyes of young narrator Ahmad Hammond.

Love and Basketball (2000)

Critics Consensus: Confident directing and acting deliver an insightful look at young athletes.

Synopsis: A young African-American couple navigates the tricky paths of romance and athletics in this drama. Over the years, the two lead characters begin to fall for each other, but their separate paths to basketball stardom threaten to pull them apart.

Sister Act 2: Back In The Habit (1993)

Critics Consensus: Sister Act is off-key in this reprise, fatally shifting the spotlight from Whoopi Goldberg to a less compelling ensemble of pupils and trading its predecessor's sharp comedy for unconvincing sentiment.

Synopsis: In the sequel to the hit comedy Sister Act, Whoopie Goldberg reprises her role of Deloris Van Cartier, a Las Performer. It appears Deloris is needed in her nun guise as Sister Mary Clarence to help teach music to teens at a troubled school in hopes of keeping the facility from closing at the hands of Mr. Crisp (James Coburn), a callous administrator.

[kicksaddictny]

Video: STAYME7O Propel SS21 “A BLACK FUTURE”

Carmelo Anthony presented the inaugural collection of the STAYME7O PROPEL Program, titled PROPEL SS21 “A BLACK FUTURE,” via a hyper-real 3-D digital show during New York Fashion Week. Anthony collaborated with emerging and established Black design groups including Barriers Worldwide, DIEM, The Brooklyn Circus, Demestik, Ghetto Gastro, TIER & Shakira Jovanni to create a piece of clothing that honors their shared vision of the Black movement.

Derived from Anthony’s passion for sartorial creativity and his desire to honor the Black creative community, the STAYME7O PROPEL Program reimagines the cultural landscape and creative spaces where diversity has been underserved, starting within the fashion industry. This unique platform will focus on the movement for Black independence, freedom of expression and how Black creativity always has, and continues to, move and change the world around us. This initiative champions not just emerging fashion talent but honors a vision of Black excellence that inspires a culture to create and move further, together. Throughout the design process for the PROPEL SS21 collection, the seven designers considered their visions for a Black Future and what it meant to them. Throughout history, Black people have suffered and continue to suffer discrimination and systemic oppression. At a time of unquestionable change, collective communities must intentionally reflect and unapologetically reawaken the civil rights movement to create transformation and opportunities that for so long were withheld or denied to the Black community. Anthony’s goal for the STAYME7O PROPEL Program is to amplify the historically marginalized and underrepresented voices to address their own message and carve the future they, themselves, plan to progress. The STAYME7O PROPEL SS21 collection featured in ‘A Black Future’ is now available for pre-order at www.stayme7o.com.

TIER TIER is a New York City based Creative and Fashion brand founded by Brooklyn-natives Nigeria Ealey, Esaie Jean-Simon and Victor James. Tier believes that “Art Never Dies”. What’s most important is the impact you leave on Earth; your impact is your art. What will you be known for? What did you accomplish? What change have you made? Tier’s sole purpose is to scale this impact by fusing design and culture with the lifestyle of everyday wear. It is important for us to share our stories and inspirations through our garments as a collective and as individuals. We design to create memorable moments and challenge artistic interpretation. When it comes to fashion, comfort is our standard while implementing functional and future-forward thinking.

Ghetto Gastro Jon Gray, Pierre Serrao and Lester Walker are the Bronx-born creative collective known as Ghetto Gastro, defining their own lane that transcends food, art, music, fashion, and design. The Bronx is part of the team's lifeblood, and every piece of the Ghetto Gastro universe is meant to uplift and celebrate the borough, and other places like it, as an unsung driver of global culture. Since inception in 2012, the collective’s work to explore global food traditions through the lens of the African diaspora has led to its masterminding events for fashion designers, artists, entrepreneurs, musicians, and organizations, including Virgil Abloh, Rick Owens, Naomi Campbell, the Serpentine Galleries, the Museum of Modern Art, and many more. After nearly a decade of breaking down boundaries between cultures and cuisines, Ghetto Gastro is making 2020 a marquee year— releasing a custom line of kitchen appliances, seasonings, and kitchenware, producing a forthcoming television series, and continuing to bring The Bronx to the world and the world to The Bronx.

Shakira Jovanni Shakira Jackson, founder and designer of Shakira Javonni, was born and raised in Queens, New York. Drawing inspiration from her immediate environment and “people watching,” Shakira is known for demonstrating her sartorial individuality by utilizing her creative foundation of garment construction, pattern-making, tailoring and most recently chainstitch embroidery. Her belief in sustainability has become central to her creative process. “With fashion being the second most polluting industry on Earth, I hope to impact the footprint any way possible”. By utilizing already existing garments over buying new garments she was able to vastly reduce the amount of waste from her process. Second to sustainability Shakira Jackson draws on the notion of artistic discovery. By merging textures, and being malleable with fit, she is able to make bespoke one of one garments that encourage personal style and individuality. Heavily committed to embracing and celebrating the culture, she desires to make an impact by continuing to create pieces that empower the Black imagination, the freedom of self-expression all while supporting greater unity within the community.

The Brooklyn Circus Ouigi Theodore, Creative Director, cultural connector & lead curator of The Brooklyn Circus has cultivated a unique style that has garnered recognition not only among the fashion pundits of New York, but also from streetwise fans across the world. He has established himself as a trend forecaster for advertising and marketing agencies looking to get an edge in the fashion market and consulted on campaigns for the likes of Hennessy/LVMH, Toyota, Casio G-Shock, American Express, PF Flyers, Liberty Fairs, ENVSN FEST, New Balance, Reebok, Deutsch Advertising, Sennheiser Audio. As founder of The Brooklyn Circus, he looks to tell the story of style throughout American history and to emphasize the power of presentation. In doing so, BKc wants to change the way Americans dress, one iconic silhouette at a time through the 100-Year Plan.

DEMESTIK Reuben Reuel is the Designer and Creative Director of DEMESTIK. A native of Virginia Beach, VA with ancestry from West Africa, his designs take inspiration from the past, present, and future to create a universal language all its own.Through a timeless-first focus, he pulls inspiration from his own cultural experiences and imagination merged with places unknown. His versatile and effortlessly chic designs encourage audiences to discover the truth of self-love and happiness; garments that lift your confidence and welcome grace from both yourself and the real world. Reuben Reuel believes how you feel in this life is significant. Define the feeling and design your life with DEMESTIK. 

DIEM DIEM Is a lifestyle brand that embodies the phrase “Does It Even Matter. The phrase is the pulse of the brand’s attitude which exudes a sense of assurance, justification of one's lifestyle and the individual's daily approach to life. Inspired by the cultural expressions and innovation present in Flatbush, Brooklyn— Michael Nicholas fuses his passion for design with his cultural history, using streetwear as a vehicle for tangible educational messaging. The brand’s core belief, aligned with their mission to empower through storytelling, is a continual investment in community and conversation. Nicholas resurfaces images of timeless, legendary figures such as Arthur Ashe and Peter Toshe, with heavily-scaled messaged campaigns that act as a call-to-action to those wearing the garments and for those who witness at a distance. These projects have led to further collaborations with Okay Player, Fabolous, Dreamville, Bleacher Report, and Fila. Mike with his wife and business partner Nicole, look forward to further innovating and expanding the potential of streetwear as a way of positively impacting a community with accessible, visceral word and image.

Barriers Worldwide Hailing from Valley Stream, NY— Steven Barter, pulls inspiration from almost every facet of his life. Examining the history of the African-American community is his primary draw, but he also attributes Barriers growth to his continual exploration of lesser known cultural revolutionaries and moments of change. Additionally, Barriers pulls from our zeitgeist’s nostalgia — from comics and cinema, to sneakers and toys. An unshakable drive has fueled his personal and professional growth, allowing Barter to refine his craft that has translated into his work for his brand, Barriers Worldwide. His design philosophy evolves as he ‘learns on the daily’ via his collaborators and their energy - as he channels it to help him evolve the future of the brand. In doing so, he hopes Barriers continues to inspire, energize, inform and grow as a creative hub for kids of all races.

[latinxcastingmanifesto]

Your questions answered

Recently you tweeted us questions. Gabi and Quiara spent a day eating lunch, sunbathing, and responding to what you asked:

@gmorningstunner: If you are an Afro-Latinx woman, and you look more African than Latina, how likely is it that you will be cast as a Latinx role?

A casting director cannot legally ask about your identity when casting. But if you want your identity to be known, you are free to and encouraged to share it! So, please do go audition for those Latinx roles, and consider sharing your identity on your photo/resume for that particular role.

Self-designation and self-id is an under appreciated casting tool! And trust me, the director, writer, and casting director want as much information about you as possible! But they’re not allowed to ask, plus if they have a more limited sense of the Latinx diaspora then they really may not know.

QUIARA: For writers, we need to consider ourselves producers, too, and push very hard for Afro-Latinx casting as normal and not exceptional. I have had to educate producers and casting directors that the cousins in my Elliot Trilogy plays, well, one cousin can be a black Latina and the other cousin a white Latino, and that this reflects the reality of many Latinx families. Many producers and casting directors didn’t know this and it was absolutely my job to advocate for the truth and integrity of my work. I have given up expecting other people to know my truth and reality, and I say it aloud and clearly and with love and as early in the process as possible. Say these things at the very first meetings, or it may be too late.

Another call to action for playwrights: designate on the script that your casting must include Afro-Latinx. Or say that loud and clear on the first casting conversation.

@SalvadorVasqu10: Why are stories of the latinx community still to this day some of the most un-produced works? How can we make Latinx stories more accessible to all? When are you and @TanyaSaracho gonna team up for a musical?

Who picks up a play and reads it? Not necessarily our family members.

Call to action: professors, help us spread the word about Latinx work by assigning Latinx reading.

Call to action: artists, we need to produce our own work and each other’s work in order to get it to the community. Downtown institutions are our allies, but if we rely exclusively on preexisting production pipelines, the community will remain on the fringes. Our assignment is to figure out how to center the community as artistic creators and producers.

Call to action: we are the living library. Keep creating and producing. We need a few more generations of this work. We need to reach a critical mass.

Call to action: swap reading lists with your Latinx theater allies. Spread the word about the work you know.

(As to Tanya Saracho, I can’t wait to world-build with that FEROCIOUS artist. Till then, I’m blessed to call myself a fan and ally.)

@dbirdsoprano: How can we do more to address the imbalance of privilege in representation onstage?

Call to action: playwrights, literally address it. Write poor characters, working class characters. Write non-college-educated characters. Show various family structures. Break silence.

Call to action: producers, invest in the leadership of POC. Not internships, top positions. Scrutinize and criticize seasons centering wealthy and well-educated characters.

Call to action: universities, teach about professional sustainability (grant-writing, for example) in addition to art curriculum so poor and working class students can stay in it for the the long hall and we don’t lose them for financial reasons.

@AlexChurchyG: As a Young Latina director, who can I look to for role models in an industry of old white men?

WOCA  (Women of Color in the Arts) is a mentorship program for women of color in the theater.

Latina women have been directing plays and kicking ass. Latinx Theatre Commons is a phenomenal community of Latinx theater professionals including working Latina directors.

If you network with someone, follow up. It is not their job to chase you. Chase them! Invite them to coffee! They may say no. But they may say yes.

As Latinas, we’ve been trained to not ask for help. To be caretakers and never be on the receiving end. Stop it! Our spirits can ask for help.

@LaMeraFeli: I’m not in theater myself but have a daughter… can we talk about body type? Roles for the llenitas and the gorditas?

Make sure your daughter knows how to write. Make sure she’s jazzed about producing. If she’s sitting around waiting to get cast in gordita roles created by others, it’s not gonna happen or it will be brutal.

She should write her own stories and act in them. Or she should find a writer friend who gets who she is and ask them to create monologues for her.

Teach her to find her village. She’s not gonna do it alone.

Gabi literally started an entire theater company for this reason. Power Street Theatre Company. They are amazing and breaking new ground in Philly. Come to Philly and join their journey. Or create something like that in your own backyard.

@itsnikkig_: When are we going to start casting some fat Latinx actresses?!

Now. Writers, put ALL BODY TYPES in your actual character descriptions. Producers, put ALL BODY TYPES in your casting calls. You have to write it in as a clear directive or it will be more skinny bodies, always and forever.

@starmacosta: Is hiring an agent necessary? My mom does most of the work when it comes to booking or auditions…

GABI: I’ve always had that question myself. In Philly most of the actors I know don’t have agents. This may be contingent on where you live.

QUIARA: Find local working actors whose career you admire and ask them. For playwrights, no an agent is not necessary until you have a production contract in hand, or an offer from a producer. Then you get an agent. Before then, you have to get your own work produced. Use google to figure out which theaters have produced work that most resonates with your own. Submit your work to them. Or find your fellow travelers, find your village, and produce together.

@saybarra: How do we make space for aaaaalllll the variations of what it means to be Latinx in this country? In casting, in writing, in subject matter, in form, etc etc etc etc

The Latinx Theater Commons is very diverse in terms of pan-Latinx community. Find organizations doing the work, and they may not necessarily be theater groups. They may be drum circles, community college teachers, prayer circles. If you really can’t find a space you need, then it’s time to create the space. Bring the space into your living room or local park. We must always be creating space.

We are a diaspora, so how do we both engage all the specific variations of who we are while also embracing fluidity and openness? Those with more cultural leverage can use that to create spaces for underrepresnted Latinx stories: for instance, Latinx queer stories, Latinx trans stories, Afro-Latinx stories, biracial stories.

@zjriv: How do you manage your ideas? Every time I get writers block it’s because another comes along and I can’t stop thinking about it. Then another idea. Then another idea.

QUIARA: Sometimes you get 30 pages into an idea and can’t take it any further. That’s ok. Let it go. Let the new ideas continue to blossom in your imagination at their own speed. If they are still growing six months later, there may be a play there. Write what is speaking to you most today. No need to ignore it. The other stuff will still be there tomorrow. But also, letting ideas blossom is enough, they do not always need to be written out yet. I just had new insights for a play I thought up in 2003. I had forgotten about the play completely and then it tapped my shoulder over 15 years later.

@sleeplessinmit: What opportunities are available for presenting blended-language or Spanish-language works of theatre? What tools are available to make them accessible to all audiences?

Repertorio Espanol in New York has been doing this work for a very long time! Reach out to them and ask if they know of other bilingual theaters in your area. Ask what tools they use for this work. Suerte!

Also check out Spanglish theaters in your area. Miracle Theater in Portland, Power Street Theatre in Philly, Urban Theater Company in Chicago are just a few. Make allies and seek out mentors!

@omixmix: my plays are nonrealistic and include Spanglish. How do I shift attention to working on my style of nonrealism when everybody else seems to latch on to the “challenges of a foreign language”?

See above answer about Spanglish theaters. There are probably some in your area!

Also, stick to your guns. Live your truth, speak your truth, write your truth, and that’s what matters. You don’t need anyone’s permission to create, and you also cannot control others. Articulate to yourself and others why this work speaks to you and is important to you.

QUIARA: I have had to get into a deep practice as a playwright that I have no control over an audience. I only have control over the words I create. I have to believe in my writing, whether or not it’s what people want.

@ajdm: How do the Iberian colonial conquests in what we now call Asia (east, south, and Pacific) and those diasporic movements figure into this conversation?

Exactly. They do. What about collaborations and bridge-building between local Asian theater groups and Latinx theater groups? This would be fire. Let them know you’re hungry for this. Let them know how you willparticipate in bringing this question to the stage!

For instance, Power Street Theater Company (Gabi’s company) supports the Asian Arts Initiative. Gabi attends their town halls, though she’s Puerto Rican. She listens, observes and supports. And when she’s invited to share, she does. World building together, and doing the work.

Showing up for each other.

@alejandroraya_: I find casting requiring Latinx are given less reach than castings for other POC. Many projects in need of POC are often wide searching, but it seems casting for Latinx feels somewhat inaccessible. How do you feel casting directors can create larger reach for Latinx artist?

This is not necessarily true about other POC groups. A lot of communities have limited casting access and are underserved. This may be for budget reasons, and also because the roles simply aren’t being produced.

Create a list of all the Latinx folks you know, find out who the casting director is, and send it to them. Are there Latinx casting lists and resource groups in your area? The Kilroys did this cool experiment about creating a visible google-searchable list of unproduced plays by womxn. This may be a neat thing to do in your area for Latinx actors. The internet is a great tool for harnessing visibility!

@mingarla: If you don’t sing and dance as a Latina actress, is there any chance of finding work in theater? Seriously thinking of giving up my Equity membership.

GABI: I seriously relate to that.

QUIARA: This is hard. As a playwright, I have recently pressed pause on my playwriting life. For various reasons. It’s ok to step aside. I think life as an actor must be hard, because you’re at the whims of writers, producers, directors, etc. However, if you’re an actor who’s also a writer, designer, producer, then you can start to create work for yourself.

GABI: Another option is to find other paying jobs that sustain you, that you love, because you will need that income. If you’re only sustained by being an actor in someone else’s thing, then the reality is that’s a hard road.

[lostprofile]

THE CASE OF THE PARTHENON SCULPTURES

III. THE ETHICS OF REPATRIATION

I think that the time has come for these marbles to come back to the blue sky of Attica, to their natural space, to the place where they will be a structural and functional part of a unique whole … We are asking for the return of a portion of a unique monument, the privileged symbol of a whole culture. Of course, the Parthenon is not, unhappily, the only example of a mutilated monument. Greece … maintains and will continue to maintain that mutilated groups scattered throughout the world must be returned to their countries of origin, must be reintegrated into the place and space where they were conceived and created; for they constitute the historical and religious heritage, the cultural patrimony of the people who gave them birth. Melina Mercouri, Greek Minister of Culture, Speech at UNESCO Conference, 29 July 1982.

You must understand what the Parthenon Marbles mean to us. They are our pride. They are our sacrifices. They are our noblest symbol of excellence. They are a tribute to the democratic philosophy. They are our aspiration and our name. They are the essence of Greekness. Melina Mercouri, Greek Minister of Culture, Speech at Oxford Debate Union, 1986.

The argument for the return of the Parthenon sculptures removed by Lord Elgin is based on three claims: 1) Lord Elgin illegally removed the sculptures and/or the Ottoman authorities had no right to dispose of them; 2) the Parthenon and its sculptures constitute a unique monument the significance of which is only apprehended in its entirety in its original context; 3) Greek art is a manifestation of a monolithic, ahistorical national identity. Given its importance to collective national psyche, Greek art always already belongs to, and in, Greece and to deprive Greece of its art is to deprive the nation of its identity. The various Greek parties seeking the repatriation of the sculptures believe the third claim is the strongest.

The legality of Elgin’s actions (outlined in the previous posting) will apparently never be reviewed in a court of law because, the current Greek government has decided not to initiate any proceedings for fear would lose and, at 200 years old, the complaint predates the existence of the plaintiff. This amounts to a concession, which is supported by the scant period evidence, that Elgin had legal authority to remove the sculptures.

The assertions made about the integrity of the monument and the necessity of seeing its components reunited in situ are completely disingenuous. The destruction of the larger pedimental sculptures and half of the building in the 17th century had already irreparably compromised the monument’s integrity when Elgin arrived on the scene in 1801. The sculptures not taken by Elgin were removed from the temple in 1993 to protect them from the ravages of Athenian air pollution. None of the original sculptures will ever be reinstalled on the building, which has been under restoration since 1975. If the British Museum sculptures were relocated to Athens, they would be viewed in indoor museum lighting, and not against “the blue sky of Attica,” which, in Athens at least, ceased to be blue in the 1970s. Furthermore, the repatriationists’ concern for the monument’s integrity is undercut by the fact that no demands have been made for the return the Parthenon marbles in the collections of the Louvre and the Vatican Museums, or those fragments in the British Museum that were not purchased from Lord Elgin.

The third, and principal contention, exemplified by the excerpts from speeches given by Melina Mercouri quoted above, is unapologetically nationalistic. It posits an essential national identity, rooted in the land and in monuments such as the Parthenon, which are viewed as embodiments of timeless Greek values shared by antiquity and the modern state. The significance of those monuments is fully apprehended only by Greeks in Greece

While this exclusionary ethnic and geographical essentialism may recall the Blut und Bogen philosophy of national and racial identity espoused by the Third Reich, it has its origins in modern Greek history. From its inception through World War I, modern Greece sought to realize the Μεγάλη Ιδέα, or Great Idea, of an expanded Greek nation, with its capital in Constantinople, that united all ethnically Greek regions. Although these territorial ambitions were never realized, the 1923 settlement of the final Greek and Turkish war included a forced population exchange affecting 1.5 million people, which effectively purged Greece of Turkish Muslims and shifted the Greek diaspora to a recently-created nation to which it had only a historical connection.

The repatriation movement is a less destructive version of the Μεγάλη Ιδέα, with antiquities substituted for people. The forced repatriation of objects alienated from the homeland will allow essential Greekness to obtain. This is the primary justification for the repatriation the Parthenon sculptures—the British Museum is preventing Greece from being fully Greek.

The fostering of any national identity obviously is not the responsibility of foreign museums, and yet a nation with no legal right of ownership is attempting to force a foreign museum to hand over priceless antiquities to service a nationalistic ideology based on a geographical coincidence.

If the British Museum is compelled to return the sculptures, that outcome will set a precedent inviting other nations to make similar repatriation demands. The encyclopedic museums of northern Europe and north America including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Louvre and the Hermitage and museums specializing in antiquities like the Glyptothek in Munich and the Ägyptisches Museum in Berlin, will be flooded with repatriation requests based not on legal claims and factual evidence, but on subjective emotional, political grounds.

The logic of repatriation would bring about a radical reshuffling of the world’s art, concentrating objects in their place of origin. Should that occur, the sense of a global identity, not only reflected in, but enabled by, the display in museums of artifacts from foreign regions, which fosters a supra-national understanding and solidarity, will be lost

With over 6 million visitors a year, the British Museum is the world’s top tourist attraction and the Parthenon sculptures are perhaps its biggest draw. Tourism is the main Greek industry, responsible for 20% of its GDP. The transfer of tourist income that would follow the relocation of the Parthenon sculptures to Athens would be a great boon to small nation crippled by unemployment and debt. The recent governments of Greece have bet heavily on that windfall, investing €130 million in the spectacular Acropolis Museum, designed to prove to the world that Greece is finally prepared to care for its antiquities. (Whether the Greek economy will recover sufficiently to be able to support the maintenance and staff of the new museum is not clear.) These economic concerns explain the fixation on the Elgin marbles and the lack of interest in the Parthenon fragments in other museums: those bits and pieces would generate no tourist income.

The relocation of the Parthenon sculptures will affect the British, as well as the Greek, economy. The Greek government intends to tie the return of the Parthenon sculptures to the trade agreement Great Britain must negotiate with the European Union as a consequence of the disastrous Brexit decision. Having badly bungled the Remain campaign, the next Labour government will be under great pressure to make concessions to E.U. member states to secure favorable separation terms. Submitting to Greek extortion, Party leader and shadow Prime Minister Jeremy Corbyn informed the Greek press that his government would repatriate the sculptures. 

The repatriation of legally-obtained, high-value artifacts will establish a dangerous precedent that will force museums agree to further unmerited repatriation demands. This will diminish the ability of museums to expand their visitors’ horizons and to promote a sense of a common global culture. In the case of Greece, repatriation will also validate a discredited and objectionable nationalist ideology. Allowing this to happen at this historical moment of rapidly escalating xenophobia, balkanization and bellicose nationalism, in order to achieve expedient, short-term political would be the worst possible resolution of the issue.

Greece would be the loser too as the repatriation of the Parthenon sculptures might improve popular morale for a week, but will not save the Greek economy. Furthermore,the absence of Greek antiquities abroad will diminish interest in Greek history abroad, which will have a negative impact on tourism. Like Italy, Greece is saturated with artistic monuments in cannot afford to maintain and restore. The repatriation of large, high-value works will severely strain the state’s already inadequate conservation resources. The repatriation of Greek artifacts would also sacrifice the wildly effective and entirely cost-free advertising campaign provided by Greek works of art in foreign museums on which the travel and tourism industry depends, in order to satisfy an irrational and atavistic national grudge.

There remain one potential obstacle to the implementation of this very bad idea.

[jamesstegall]

India is grappling with covid grief

Spring 2021 in India has been horrific and frightening: ambulances wail constantly, funeral pyres are alight 24 hours a day, seemingly endless body bags stack up, and grief hangs heavy in the air.

A year ago, it looked as if India might have escaped the worst of the coronavirus. While the Western world was struggling, India was relatively unscathed, hitting a high of about 1,300 deaths per day in late September 2020 before bottoming out again. Earlier this year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared that the country had won its battle against the virus. In a virtual appearance at the World Economic Forum’s Davos Dialogue on January 28, Modi boasted about  India’s “proactive public participation approach, [its] covid-specific health infrastructure, and [its] trained resources to fight covid.”

Then, with vaccinations beginning to ramp up and cases continuing to fall, mitigation efforts were relaxed for what turned out to be catastrophic superspreader events in late March and early April: the Kumbh Mela (a major Hindu pilgrimage to India’s four sacred rivers) and giant election rallies in the states of West Bengal, Kerala, Assam, and Tamil Nadu. These crowded events attracted thousands of unmasked people who had traveled to get there. Within weeks, the hospital system collapsed; this month has been the deadliest yet in India’s fight against the coronavirus, putting the country just below Brazil and the US overall. Over 311,000 Indians have died from covid so far, according to official sources—but the true death toll is believed to be far higher.

As in other places, people are struggling to cope with these deaths at a time when traditional ways of grieving have been ripped apart. Natasha Mickles, a professor of religious studies at Texas State University, where she studies Hindu and Buddhist death rituals, says that millennia-old traditions have had to be ignored. “Traditionally, in Hinduism and Jainism, the eldest son is responsible for lighting the funeral pyre,” Mickles says. But covid’s infectiousness and fatality rate mean that the eldest son is often not available or, worse, dead. That means families are having to figure out how to cremate or bury their family member while already overwhelmed with the task of notifying relatives about the death.

“Death rituals are some of the most conservative parts of culture,” Mickles says. “A lot of them are so ingrained that they require cultural cataclysms to change. We’re seeing that with the pandemic raging. We’re seeing a transformation in how we grieve.”

476 #Funerals In One Day In #Kanpur#COVID-19 #victims being #cremated at #Bhairav Ghat Hindu Crematory, as coronavirus cases surge in record numbers across the country, in Kanpur. #SecondCOVIDWave #up78 #CoronaUpdate #CoronavirusIndia #CoronaCurfew #photojournalistarun pic.twitter.com/LBtzsKwcte

— Arun Sharma (@ARUNSHARMAJI) April 23, 2021

Online spaces have offered a crucial forum for expressing grief and venting anger about the Indian government’s handling of the crisis. Families that have faced loss are sharing their pain in WhatsApp groups. In mutual aid organizations that are crowdsourcing help, volunteers can barely process their grief for those who have died as they race to organize help for the next person. Twitter has become a steady stream of obituaries; one grieving woman’s plea to Modi to allow for mercy killings has gone viral.

But while smartphones are widespread in India at all socioeconomic levels, digital literacy and the ability to connect online are still linked to wealth and privilege—meaning that only a certain segment of the population is able to grieve online.

“I haven’t seen anything on this scale of pandemic grief ever,” says Shah Alam Khan, an orthopedic oncologist and professor at Delhi’s All India Institute of Medical Sciences. “Previously, you saw numbers of people who died from covid. Now, there are names. Each and every one of us knows someone who has been taken away by covid. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t know someone who’s died.”

In Khan’s hospital alone, he is seeing doctors so overwhelmed with grief that they are falling apart themselves. Just recently, after an eighth unsuccessful resuscitation attempt, a colleague killed himself in his office. It’s a death that Khan speaks of quietly: he admits he hasn’t wrapped his head around it yet.

“When death happens in our deeply religious society, grief becomes more a part of tradition than anything else,” he says. “I am atheist, but in this country, death and grieving are easier if you are a spiritual person.”

Seema Hari has been one of countless people using the Stories feature on Instagram to share resources such as Google Docs with information about where to find oxygen tanks, focusing on her native Mumbai. But as members of her own family have fallen ill with covid, she’s tumbled into grief, isolated save for her Instagram page. 

“I spent most of my days worrying and trying to share resources with people, and nights checking in via WhatsApp—not just with my family but with other friends all over India, asking them the dreaded question of whether everyone on their side is okay and if they need any help,” she said via email.

Hari said she hasn’t felt the ability to grieve properly and doesn’t see herself doing so: “There is so much collective and personal grief to process, but it is almost like we have not even been afforded the privilege to grieve, because loss is so relentless and so many things demand our action and attention.”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Seema Hari (@seemahari)

Nikhil Taneja, the founder of the youth media organization Yuvaa, has helped people connect during the unfolding catastrophe by hosting Twitter Spaces sessions with Neha Kirpal, a mental health professional.

We had an extremely insightful @TwitterSpaces session yesterday on COVID-19 grief and anxiety with @theInnerHour. Here are some excerpts

(THREAD)#MyMindMatters @tanejamainhoon @NehaKirpal1

— Yuvaa | Masks Up & Stay Safe India

(@weareyuvaa) May 20, 2021

Taneja says hosting these sessions has been an important way to help young people he saw posting on Twitter and Instagram about the grief they were dealing with. “There doesn’t seem to be any acknowledgment of grief in our country,” he says, pointing to the lack of apologies from Modi. “We are losing family and friends and loved ones. People’s lives are being reduced to statistics and numbers.”

It’s also hard for young people to reach out for help in a culture that finds mental health difficult to address. As Taneja notes, the word “dukh” means both sadness and depression in Hindi: “There is a difference, yet our language doesn’t reflect that,” he says.

Mickles says the past year has seen funerary rituals changing all around the world. “This is universal,” she says. “The move is going online.” Often that can be as simple as holding a phone up at a cremation site so  family both near and far can be part of the process via Zoom.

But Zooming a funeral, using Instagram to crowdsource available oxygen tanks, or even WhatsApping the family group chat all require a level of digital access and literacy that correlates with wealth in India. 

“So many people can’t afford laptops,” says Taneja. “A lot of people can afford smartphones but are just not able to access the internet.” He acknowledges that his Twitter Spaces sessions are only available to those who are digitally literate and can afford to get online. Options for grieving safely have to be far broader in reach.  “The solution lies offline as much as online,” he says.

Hotlines might be one solution. Lekshmi Premanand, a senior psychologist for the mental health organization Sukh-Dukh, says she is dealing with multiple people who are grieving, isolated, and depressed, often without internet access. 

Premanand, based in the current covid hot spot of Kerala, has noticed a difference in the type of grief people are experiencing. “If economic loss and loss of opportunity were the result of the first wave, losing friends and family is the scary, glaring effect of the second wave,” she says. 

She’s found that increasingly the people calling into the help line are younger and with less access to the internet, yet desperate for support. Similar resources might start popping up as covid hits more rural areas without infrastructure, she predicts: “Where there is a need, an alternative is going to emerge.” In this case, that means going back to the more basic technology of the telephone.

Grief over what’s happening in India isn’t constrained by the nation’s borders, says Mickles. Those in the Indian diaspora are going to struggle to come to terms with what is happening in their home country while reopenings continue where they live. “Covid is teaching us the truth of interdependence,” she says. “What happens in India is going to affect us in America eventually, and vice versa. We need to understand that we are socially interdependent with each other. Indian grief is our grief.”

from MIT Technology Review https://ift.tt/3hUyO5s via IFTTT

[armeniaitn]

Aurora doubles Artsakh aid program

New Post has been published on https://armenia.in-the.news/society/aurora-doubles-artsakh-aid-program-66983-21-12-2020/

Aurora doubles Artsakh aid program

The Aurora Humanitarian Initiative doubled its humanitarian aid program for Artsakh, adding numerous local and international projects to the list in phase two. After the war, the people of Artsakh faced a grave humanitarian crisis that continues to unfold amidst a global pandemic, and Aurora stepped up to bring them immediate relief. Aurora’s humanitarian aid program for Artsakh has since doubled, with a total budget of $400,000 (over 208,000.000֏) allocated to support 46 projects listed below.  Among them are the initiatives run by the HALO Trust and the Near East Foundation (NEF) – with contributions to both matched – reflecting further development of Aurora’s global cooperation with international partner organizations possessing relevant expertise.

In addition, the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative also continues to run the global #AraratChallenge4Artsakh crowdfunding campaign, which encourages people worldwide to express their Gratitude in Action by offering a second chance to people in need, and invites world humanitarian leaders to Artsakh where their expertise helps maximize the impact of the Initiative’s aid program in the region.

Urgent Humanitarian Aid to Families and Children

Assisting in resettlement of displaced persons from Shushi in Stepanakert and other Artsakh localities (in cooperation with the Shushi “Narekatsi” Art Union and the “Hrant Matevosyan” Foundation) – $12,500 (6,400,000֏)

Providing urgent humanitarian assistance to the population of 7 villages in Martakert Province (Nor Maraga, Nor Aygestan, Nor Seysulan, Nor Karmravan, Nor Haykajur, Nor Jraberd, Hovtashen) – $10,000 (5,100,000֏)

Providing 1,000 bedding sets to the temporarily displaced people from Artsakh relocated to Armenia – $12,700 (6,500,000֏)

Making 450 warm jackets for the people of Artsakh at the Stepanakert Clothing Factory – $12,000 (6,100,000֏)

Humanitarian aid program assistance for 600 Artsakh residents affected by the war (in cooperation with the Bari Mama Foundation) – $10,000 (5,100,000֏)

Providing 210 heaters to the temporarily displaced Artsakh families – $2,500 (1,300,000֏)

Supporting the development of an online platform that engages Diaspora’s resources to mitigate the humanitarian crisis and boost local economy (in cooperation with AMIA) – $5,000 (2,600,000֏)

Assisting in the creation of job opportunities for war widows in textile industry (in cooperation with Bari Mama) – $7,000 (3,640,000֏)

Assisting in providing urgent humanitarian support to displaced people in Artsakh (in cooperation with Street Workout Armenia) – $10,000 (5,200,000֏)

Educational and psychological support program for the displaced people from Artsakh in Vayots Dzor (in cooperation with the Vayots Dzor Regional Youth Center) – $2,800 (1,456,000֏)

Supporting professional trainings and job opportunities creation for displaced women from Artsakh (in cooperation with Hay Mayrer Charity Organization) – $2,885 (1,500,000֏)

Creating safe spaces for young women and children to participate in sport and educational programs in Artsakh (in cooperation with GOALS Armenia) – $4,800 (2,505,705֏)

Supporting emergency cluster munitions and other explosives clearance operations in civilian areas to allow the safe return of displaced people to Artsakh (in cooperation with HALO Trust; the organization will also match Aurora’s funding) – $25,000 (13,000,000֏)

Supporting the Made in Artsakh program to create job opportunities in Artsakh (in cooperation with Support Market) – $5,000 (2,600,000֏)

Supporting the underprivileged people affected by war via a grant to the Artsakh Ministry of Labor, Social Affairs and Housing – $10,000 (5,200,000֏)

Providing 425 bedding sets to the temporarily displaced people from Artsakh relocated to Armenia – $5,500 (2,860,000֏)

Supporting providing shelter and food to 83 Artsakh families affected by the war (in cooperation with Mission Armenia Charitable Foundation) – $4,700 (2,444,000֏)

Creating new job opportunities for the displaced people from Artsakh relocated to the Syunik Region of Armenia (in cooperation with NEF; the foundation will also match Aurora’s funding) – $15,000 (7,800,000֏)

Healthcare Services

Assisting in the repairs of X-ray equipment of the Republican Hospital of Stepanakert – $10,500 (5,400,000֏)

Assisting the Traveling Doctors of Armenia Foundation in organizing at-home medical services for the wounded (with limited mobility) in the hard-to-reach regions of Artsakh and Armenia – $10,000 (5,100,000֏)

Contributing to the acquisition of ambulances for Artsakh (in cooperation with Support Our Heroes Foundation) – $20,000 (10,200,000֏)

Purchasing vital medication for senior citizens residing in Artsakh (in cooperation with Miasin Foundation) – $2,000 (1,000,000֏)

Purchasing 55 folding beds for the forcibly displaced people from Artsakh (in cooperation with the VIVA Foundation) – $3,000 (1,500,000֏)

Supporting the production of post-coma recovery equipment, designed and manufactured in Armenia during the war (in cooperation with QaylTech) – $7,000 (3,640,000֏)

Providing orthopedical items to injured soldiers (in cooperation with VIVA Foundation) – $7,000 (3,640,000֏)

Providing support to wounded soldiers with mobility issues from Artsakh and Armenia (in cooperation with Arites Tour Тeam) – $2,000 (1,040,000֏)

Supporting a training program for locals in Artsakh dedicated to using acupuncture for pain relief and mental health care in war and post-war context (in cooperation with EliseCare NGO) – $5,000 (2,600,000֏)

Supporting building a mobile clinic to provide the health care services necessary for the rehabilitation of the wounded soldiers and civilians in Artsakh (in cooperation with EliseCare NGO) – $5,000 (2,600,000֏)

Supporting the rehabilitation of the children and adults affected by the war via a grant to the Rehabilitation Center named after Caroline Cox in Stepanakert – $10,000 (5,200,000֏)

Providing 500 heaters for temporarily displaced Artsakh families – $5,300 (2,756,000֏)

Restoration / Equipment

Assisting in restoring secondary school №1 in Martakert (in cooperation with Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, Artsakh) – $20,000 (10,200,000֏)

Assisting the Martuni City Administration in restoring school №2 named after Mesrop Mashtots hit by aerial bombardment – $20,000 (10,200,000֏)

Assistance in founding a bakery in Stepanakert for the purpose of free distribution of bread for 6 months and for providing new jobs (in cooperation with Tikoonq Initiative Group) – $10,000 (5,100,000֏)

Contributing to the fitting out of temporary shelters in Stepanakert for the displaced people from Artsakh – $10,000 (5,100,000֏)

Assisting the Stepanakert City Administration in restoring local civil infrastructure – $10,000 (5,100,000֏)

Supporting housing and renovation in Artsakh for the people affected by the war (in cooperation with We Are Armenians Charity Foundation) – $5,000 (2,600,000֏)

Assisting in the restoration of a hospital in Martakert (in cooperation with the Support Our Heroes Foundation) – $15,000 (7,800,000֏)

Providing an electric generator(120kw) to Martuni City Administration to secure drinking water delivery – $20,000 (10,400,000֏)

Providing 2 electric generators to a school and a kindergarten in Askeran and 4 more units to Martuni villages (in cooperation with the Artsakh Ministry of Education, Science and Culture) – $5,200 (2,700,000֏)

Food

Contributing to providing meals for 166 people currently housed in Sevan, Dilijan, Yerevan for 15 days (in cooperation with Victory-2020 Foundation) – $10,000 (5,100,000֏)

Contributing to providing meals for 65 children and adults from Artsakh currently housed in Holy Mother of Armenia Catholic Center (Gyumri) for 30 days – $9,750 (5,000,000֏)

Supporting food delivery to 300 people in the border village of Nor Shin (in cooperation with Dilijan Nor Shin Initiative Group) – $5,000 (2,600,000֏)

Essentials

Purchasing essentials for 200 Artsakh families temporarily relocated to Armenia (in cooperation with House of Hope Foundation) – $3,000 (1,500,000֏)

Providing 50 kits with essentials to the children forced to relocate from Artsakh to Armenia (in cooperation with Global Shapers) – $2,050 (1,500,000֏)

Providing 20 tires for Artsakh ambulance cars – $1,631 (830.000֏).

Supporting providing essentials’ kits to 85 newborn children from Artsakh (in cooperation with Prolife) – $10,000 (5,200,000֏)

The Aurora Humanitarian Initiative, founded on behalf of the survivors of the Armenian Genocide and in gratitude to their saviors, is transforming this experience into a global movement based on the universal concept of Gratitude in Action. By addressing real, on-the-ground challenges, the Initiative provides a second chance to those who need it the most. We believe that even in the darkest times, a brighter future is in the hands of those who are committed to giving others help and hope, and Aurora welcomes all who embrace this philosophy.

This eight-year commitment (2015 to 2023, in remembrance of the eight years of the Armenian Genocide 1915-1923) aims to promote global projects and support people who tackle the needs of the most helpless and destitute and do so at great risk. This is achieved through the Initiative’s various programs: Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity, Aurora Dialogues, Aurora Grants, Aurora Community, Aurora Index, 100 LIVES Initiative and #AraratChallenge.

The Aurora Humanitarian Initiative is the vision of philanthropists Vartan Gregorian, Noubar Afeyan and Ruben Vardanyan who have been joined by thousands of supporters and partners. Our Chair, Dr. Tom Catena, draws on his experience is a surgeon, veteran, humanitarian and the 2017 Aurora Prize laureate to spread the message of Gratitude in Action to a global audience.

The Aurora Humanitarian Initiative is represented by three organizations – the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative Foundation, Inc. (New York, USA), the 100 Lives Foundation (Geneva, Switzerland) and the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative Charitable Foundation (Yerevan, Armenia).

Read original article here.

[uk-news-talking-politics]

Growing UK solidarity movement backs 'Polish Stonewall'

By Juliette Bretan

Curling up towards Regent's Park, the wide thoroughfare of Portland Place in Marylebone – a street hemmed in by stylish terraced houses, bedecked in various flags – is an international corner of central London. Among many other embassies and institutions, number 47, towards the northern end of the street, is the Polish Embassy, four-storeys of fashionable black and white brick. Attached to the front are Polish and EU flags, which project out into the street.

On Saturday, beneath those flags, you could also see a rainbow, drawn in chalk, spilling out from the building's elegant chequered entrance onto the pavement. It was there that around a hundred people gathered to protest against the recent detention of an LGBTQ rights activist, amid an escalation of homophobia in Poland.

The activist, Margot Szutowicz, was taken into custody in Poland for two months, accused of hanging rainbow flags on monuments in Warsaw and damaging an anti-abortion campaigner's van.

"We want to show all the people who are brave enough in Poland to go out and protest and risk being arrested that we are with them," says Robert Kocur, who was one of the organisers of Saturday’s protest – along with Polish Rainbow in the UK, the first Polish LGBTQ group in the country. They were joined by Marek Ciechanowski, who organised a separate protest at the embassy. The demonstrations were held at the same time as several other protests across the UK, from Manchester to Newcastle, as Poles in the UK spoke out against increasing homophobia in Poland.

Poland is now a dangerous place for the LGBTQ community. Over the last two years, ruling party Law and Justice (PiS) have clamped down on what they call an "LGBT ideology", claiming it opposes Polish values and tradition. Incumbent President Andrzej Duda, a PiS ally, made anti-LGBTQ rhetoric a centrepiece of his election bid in the recent presidential race, suggesting it was worse than communism and unveiling homophobic election pledges.

Homophobia is on the streets too, with pride marches attacked and rainbow sculptures vandalised. In the last year, as many as 97 municipalities across an area spanning a third of Poland have declared themselves "free from LGBT ideology" or adopted family rights charters - prompting several European towns to sever their twin town arrangements with these municipalities, citing human rights violations.

In May, Poland was ranked by ILGA Europe as the worst country in the EU for LGBTQ rights, with attacks from the government and church particularly blamed for increasing discrimination.

Earlier this month, the situation took an even more worrying turn. Three activists were detained, accused of offending religious feeling and insulting monuments, after rainbow flags appeared on statues in Warsaw – including, most controversially, a statue of Christ. Days later, Margot, from the organisation Stop Bzdurom, was given a two-month temporary arrest sentence, charged with vandalising a van belonging to an anti-abortion campaigner back in June. She now faces up to five years in prison.

Thousands have since protested against her arrest, both in Poland and across the world. On Friday August 7th, demonstrators in Warsaw surrounded a police van taking Margot to a station. In the ensuing scuffle, 48 others were also arrested. The incident has been dubbed the 'Polish Stonewall'.

The UK-based protests may only be in the hundreds for now, but organisers believe they reflect a powerful show of support for those in Poland.

One organiser is the London-based Robert Kocur, a 29 year old who works at METRO Charity, coordinating workshops about sexual health in the Polish language. He is a founder of SLAV 4 U, the first ever Polish Drag Show in the UK, which showcases Polish pop culture with a queer twist.

"After the alarming situation in Poland regarding the LGBT+ community, me and my friends decided that we can't stay still and need to show our support in a form of protest," he says. "The first one we've organised was very symbolic and gathered around 15 people. It was our protest against the homophobic words that our president said in public: 'LGBT are not people, it's an ideology'. Those dehumanising words reminded us of how, back in the day, people were dehumanising Jews… and we know what happened later."

Kocur says that since he moved to the UK over six years ago, he's seen the situation for the LGBTQ community in Poland deteriorate. But, as reports of hostility in Poland have increased, so has the number of protestors at the embassy.

"Now it's also about our visibility," Kocur says. "We are sending a clear message to Polish politicians that our community is ready to fight for our rights."

Other UK-based LGBTQ organisations are also getting behind the campaign. "We are extremely alarmed by what's happening to LGBT people in Poland and we stand in solidarity with them as they face continuing violence and hate," Leanne MacMillan, director of Global Programmes at Stonewall, says. "The global LGBT community owe it to the brave activists on the ground in Poland to come together, show visible support for them and work towards a solution to this appalling situation."

On Saturday, a separately-organised protest at the embassy was held by Marek Ciechanowski, who is British-born with Polish parents. He said this was the first time he had organised a solidarity protest for the Polish LGBTQ community, and wanted to"show support" for LGBTQ friends in Poland.

"I think it's a very important time to let the world know about the worrying changes that are happening in Poland right now," he says. "When a president and leading government encourage homophobia by suggesting LGBTQ people are not human, it's time for everyone to take action and protect the lives of minority groups before it's too late and history repeats itself."

Madga Oldziejewska, from Polish Rainbow in the UK, also thinks the British public need to be more aware of growing discrimination. "I don’t think there is a lot of awareness in the general society about what is going on," she says. "It's not just happening in Poland. The wave of hate and the move towards the far-right is something we're seeing internationally."

Nevertheless, Oldziejewska says that around 100 people turned up on Saturday to what she calls an "amazing" protest, although there was also a small group of counter-demonstrators. "There were only a few of them but they managed to cause quite a scene – calling us names like fascists – which is ironic, to say the least."

Kocur says he thinks UK protests could have a real impact on the struggle  in Poland. "I truly believe that our protests in the UK have positive impact on the situation of the LGBT+ community in Poland," he says. "I would certainly feel empowered if I would be sitting in Polish arrest by knowing that the Polish diaspora is backing me up and sending a message of support. At the end of the day those people are the true fighters that are changing the Polish history. They need our help."

Oldziejewska agrees. She's hopeful Saturday's protests are part of a bigger growing movement. "The events of last week are so stark," she says. "They show how far we've gone."

[gibsongirlselections]

China Leaves Russian Meddling in the Dust

At least Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, and their surrogates in the Mainstream Media got one point right regarding foreign interference in U.S. politics: that it is totally bogus to compare the records of Russia and China in election meddling and in other aspects of American public life, and their abilities to do so.

Trouble is, the House Speaker, the Chair of the House Intelligence Committee, and other Never Trumpers are wildly off-base about who the main culprit has been and will be for years to come. It’s not Russia, it’s China— and by orders of magnitude. 

In fact, on top of efforts to shape voters’ opinions during election campaigns, Beijing for decades has been influencing American politics in ways Moscow can barely dream of.

Commenting on the spotlight that U.S. intelligence officials have placed on both countries’ interference efforts (along with Iran’s), Pelosi and Schiff declared that the analysis “provided a false sense of equivalence to the actions of foreign adversaries by listing three countries of unequal operational intent, actions, and capabilities together.” 

In particular, they charged, the actions of Kremlin-linked actors seeking to undermine Vice President Biden, and seeking to help President Trump” were glossed over.

Pelosi stated subsequently, “The Chinese, they said, prefer (presumptive Democratic nominee Joe) Biden—we don’t know that, but that’s what they’re saying, but they’re not really getting involved in the presidential election.” 

The liberal media, as is so often the case, echoed this Democratic talking point. According to The New York Times‘ Robert Draper, author of a long piece in the paper’s magazine section on Trump’s supposed refusal to approve anti-Russia interference measures or take seriously such findings by the intelligence community, China “is really not able to affect the integrity of our electoral system the way Russia can.”

What these Trump opponents have completely overlooked is that the Chinese are unquestionably meddling—though with some distinctive Chinese characteristics. And much more importantly, China has long been interfering in American political activities by capitalizing on the degree to which so many major American institutions have become beholden to the Chinese government through pre-Trump “bilateral ties.”

As for the narrower, more direct kind of election corrupting, you don’t need to take the word of President Trump’s national security adviser, Robert O’Brien that “China, like Russia and Iran, have engaged in cyberattacks and fishing and that sort of thing with respect to our election infrastructure and with respect to websites.”

You don’t have to take the word of Vice President Mike Pence, who in 2018 cited a national intelligence assessment that found that China “is targeting U.S. state and local governments and officials to exploit any divisions between federal and local levels on policy. It’s using wedge issues, like trade tariffs, to advance Beijing’s political influence.”

You can ignore Pence’s contention that that same year, a document circulated by Beijing stated that China must [quoting directly] “strike accurately and carefully, splitting apart different domestic groups” in the United States.

Nor do you need to take seriously the intelligence community judgement dismissed by Pelosi and Schiff that:

“China has been expanding its influence efforts ahead of November 2020 to shape the policy environment in the United States, pressure political figures it views as opposed to China’s interests, and deflect and counter criticism of China….Beijing recognizes that all of these efforts might affect the presidential race.”

Much harder to ignore: China’s decision at the height of the 2018 Congressional election campaigns to take out a four-page supplement in the Sunday Des Moines [Iowa] Register that clearly was “intended to undermine farm-country support for President Donald Trump’s escalating trade war.”

The New York Times itself reported that this past spring that U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that as the coronavirus pandemic was peaking in the nation, Chinese operatives were responsible for sending throughout social media scary sounding warnings that President Trump was about to lock down the entire country—complete with prepositioning  troops “to help prevent looters and rioters.”

At least as worrisome: A new report from the information analysis firm Graphika documenting how, “Social media accounts from the pro-Chinese political spam network Spamouflage Dragon started posting English-language videos that attacked American policy and the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump in June, as the rhetorical confrontation between the United States and China escalated.”

According to Graphika, such disinformation campaigns had begun in mid-2019, but were waged in Chinese and aimed at Chinese audiences. This new phase, however, targeted at the United States, represented “a clear expansion of its scope” and even featured “clusters of accounts with AI-generated profile pictures” to convey the impression that those sending these materials were actual human beings.

Also alleging that Chinese agents are increasingly active on major social media platforms—a study from research institute Freedom House, which reported that:

“[C]hinese state-affiliated trolls are…apparently operating on [Twitter] in large numbers. In the hours and days after Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey tweeted in support of Hong Kong protesters in October 2019, the Wall Street Journal reported, nearly 170,000 tweets were directed at Morey by users who seemed to be based in China as part of a coordinated intimidation campaign. Meanwhile, there have been multiple suspected efforts by pro-Beijing trolls to manipulate the ranking of content on popular sources of information outside China, including Google’s search engine Reddit,and YouTube.”

Last year, a major Hoover Institution report issued especially disturbing findings about Beijing’s efforts to influence the views (and therefore the votes) of Chinese Americans, including exploiting the potential hostage status of their relatives in China. According to the Hoover researchers:

“Among the Chinese American community, China has long sought to influence—even silence—voices critical of the PRC or supportive of Taiwan by dispatching personnel to the United States to pressure these individuals and while also pressuring their relatives in China. Beijing also views Chinese Americans as members of a worldwide Chinese diaspora that presumes them to retain not only an interest in the welfare of China but also a loosely defined cultural, and even political, allegiance to the so-called Motherland.”

In addition: “In the American media, China has all but eliminated the plethora of independent Chinese-language media outlets that once served Chinese American communities. It has co-opted existing Chinese language outlets and established its own new outlets.”

Operations aimed at Chinese Americans are anything but trivial politically. As of 2018, they represented nearly 2.6 million eligible U.S. voters, and they belonged to an Asian-American super-category that reflects the fastest growing racial and ethnic population of eligible voters in the country.

Most live in heavily Democratic states, like California, New York, and Massachusetts, but significant concentrations are also found in the battleground states where many of the 2016 presidential election margins were razor thin, and many of which look up for grabs this year, like Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Texas, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.

More broadly, according to the Hoover study:

“In American federal and state politics, China seeks to identify and cultivate rising politicians. Like many other countries, Chinese entities employ prominent lobbying and public relations firms and cooperate with influential civil society groups. These activities complement China’s long-standing support of visits to China by members of Congress and their staffs. In some rare instances Beijing has used private citizens and companies to exploit loopholes in US regulations that prohibit direct foreign contributions to elections.”

But even more thoroughly overlooked than these narrower forms of Chinese political interference is a broader, much more dangerous type of Chinese meddling that leaves Moscow’s efforts in the dust. For example, U.S.-owned multinational companies, which have long profited at the expense of the domestic economy by offshoring production and jobs to China, have just as long carried Beijing’s water in American politics through their massive contributions to U.S. political campaigns. The same goes for Wall Street, which hasn’t sent many U.S. operations overseas, but which has long hungered for permission to do more business in the Chinese market.

These same big businesses continually and surreptitiously inject their views into American political debates by heavily financing leading think tanks —which garb their special interest agendas in the raiment of objective scholarship.

Hollywood and the rest of the U.S. entertainment industry has become so determined to brown nose China in search of profits that it’s made nearly routine rewriting and censoring material deemed offensive to China. In case you haven’t noticed, show biz figures haven’t exactly been reluctant to weigh in on U.S. political issues lately. And yes, these entertainment figures include stars and leading coaches of the National Basketball Association, who have taken a leading role in what’s become known as the Black Lives Matter movement, but who have remained conspicuously silent about the lives of inhabitants of the vast China market that’s one of their biggest and most promising cash cows.

Moreover, the gap between this indirect Chinese involvement in American politics and Russian election interference is not only yawning. It shows no signs of closing. As a result, China’s overall advantage is so great that it makes a case for a useful rule-of-thumb: Whenever you find out about someone complaining about Russia’s election interference but brushing off China’s, you can be sure that they’re not really angry about interference as such. They’re just angry about interference they don’t like.

Alan Tonelson is the founder of RealityChek, a public policy blog focusing on economics and national security, and the author of The Race to the Bottom.

The post China Leaves Russian Meddling in the Dust appeared first on The American Conservative.

[supervidyavinay]

NEW DELHI: A set of non-military strategic methods to wrest back PoK and Gilgit Baltistan (GB) was explored at a recent webinar attended by a former General and academiciansOrganised by Law and Society Alliance titled “India's Non-Military Options to Liberate Pak-Occupied Kashmir” on May 29 the participants were Lt. General (R) Ata Hasnain; Dr. Manish, at Gujarat Central University; and Siddharth Zarabi (a senior journalist).Gen Hasnain elaborated on the current situation across the LoC and the LAC. Stating that GB has indeed been a fascinating topic for India, he argued that despite the tremendous political consensus of the 1994 resolution, Delhi failed in taking the advantage.The reason behind India’s moves over GB to date has been lack of strategic culture among Indians. Arguing about the need of developing a long-term strategy amid geopolitical developments taking place in the Covid era, he said, “nothing works overnight. GB is not something that is like to be taken as a low lying issue, rather it is a challenge! A lot of things are changing and panning out during the pandemic and Ladakh is currently going through a rapid development phase. The action of Chinese is to send us and the world a message. It also reflects the fact that actually Pak is too worried.”The post Covid period is going to witness non-traditional ways of dispute resolution. Due to economic losses, the ways of warfare are definitely going to be non-military.Gen Hasnain explained the concepts and practical aspects of the ‘Hybrid War’ and Grey War’. He explained that the concept of hybrid war is defined by resorting to deniability, yet using sponsorship. Hybrid is a combination of different aspects of war. It can be a combination of military, economic, cyber, information warfare, and so on and so forth - which Pakistan has been resorting to for more than three decades.A new concept has emerged called ‘Grey War’ - it is a method in which one finds political and psychological domain dominant. India has started to engage in such warfare very recently - just a few months back.Information warfare was the focal point of the webinar, which was echoed by every speaker.Gen Hasnain explained the strength of social media on the strategic front and argued that social media can not be efficient until we do not have a fixed strategy and plan. Unfortunately, we haven’t resorted to it.The generational integration is going to take place in GB and India must ensure that GB should not integrate into Pakistani society. “We also must explore the Shia connect. We have a Shia connect with Turtuk, Kargil, and 25 million Shias across India. We need to integrate the Shia identity from Lucknow to Kargil. Social media shall indeed be a part of it. Looking at the diaspora, they have a huge GB, Mirpuri, and PoK diaspora. We must look for exclusive meetings with those diasporas whenever our leaders visit foreign countries.”Dr. Manish echoed the views and stated that India apparently lacks strategic culture. He further said, “we are victims of our own history. We should think about developing a strategic culture amongst the youth of this country. India has very rightful claims over PoK based on the Instrument of Accession and resolutions passed by the Parliament. The new paradigm has developed because of the addition of the Chinese factor to the issue. There significant developments. By formally revising our claims over PoK and Aksai Chin, India has rightly moved in the right direction.”He quoted that instruments of coercive powers include military aid, propaganda, maritime intercepts, cyber ops, economic sanctions, supporting political oppositions, intelligence operations, etc are instruments. They have the potential to loosen the power of the state and lead to turmoil.“Two major things that are important in our scenario. Firstly, India should invent most of the cyber tech power and energise and enlarge this domain. The content should be news, ideas, debate, social networking, entertainment, etc. Secondly, it should lend support to adversaries. We can do so by providing non- military and military aid to them. Pro-democracy opposition movements are suddenly increasing that are too intense. Most of the news literature and the research in the past century show that there have been well laid planned and massive efforts to raise pro-democracy movements. Such efforts tend to change the economy for a prolonged period. We should resort to such movements.”Zarabi focussed on strategies to combat the disinformation campaign regarding GB, POK, and Jammu and Kashmir. He said that the challenge India faces in explaining its point of view to the world. The decision of 370 abrogation was an entirely internal matter of India. “But we were surprised to see the intensity of the global backlash - which was very coordinated and organised. The issues pertaining to Kashmir have been internationalised in Pakistan and indirectly supported by Chineses sponsored global media.”For the last 30 years or more, Pakistan’s engagement with global media has been done at the level of Foreign Ministry, economic level, strategic level, with a focus on reportage lobby on global issues. We have not chosen to take the issue in an explicit way to take Pakistan to an international level. Pakistan has acted otherwise. Pak has an edge over global media in the misinformation campaign over Kashmir and surrounding areas. “I was surprised by the lack of knowledge and misinformation that senior journalists from the West had on Kashmir as a result of misinformation.”Zarabi mentioned three points on non-military action on PoK and CoK. “Firstly, as the GoI and all of us realised in 2019, that post 5 Aug, there was a barrage of misinformation and ignorance all over the world. Quality information needs to be uploaded over the web, detailed write-ups need to come up, if required- paid advertisements, knowledge-sharing events across knowledge capitals of the world, TV documentaries are a couple of things that are need of the hour. Secondly, supplementing the efforts of disinformation by diplomatic entities is required. Messages should be sent that PoK and Cok should be brought in front of the world. Thirdly, a 24*7 researched-based streaming platform should be set up by Prasar Bharati that could work on tackling disinformation on Jammu and Kashmir issue and Punjab- Khalistan issue. The DD should work on the plan of 2016 - to create a 24*7 internet streaming portal by MIB and MEA.“He concluded by arguing that the primary focus of India in non-military ways should be to work on winning information warfare. from Economic Times https://ift.tt/2ZS0pLx

[shirlleycoyle]

Stop Asking People of Color to Get Arrested to Protest Climate Change

Indigenous peoples and people of color are disproportionately affected by our global climate crisis. But in the mainstream green movement and in the media, they are often forgotten or excluded. This is Tipping Point, a new VICE series that covers environmental justice stories about and, where possible, written by people in the communities experiencing the stark reality of our changing planet.

Tatiana Garavito is a Colombian organizer working with racialized communities in the U.K. She also works with activist groups leading climate justice campaigns in Colombia and is part of the Wretched of the Earth.

Nathan Thanki is a human ecologist, writer, and activist who works in support of the global movements for climate justice, including within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Back in April, London was rocked by Extinction Rebellion (XR) protests, with more than a thousand people arrested during weeklong occupations of Marble Arch, Waterloo Bridge, and other notable landmarks. Since then, XR has garnered tons of media attention—and even celebrity endorsements from the likes of Radiohead—for its acts of civil disobedience. But for those of us whose immigration status is still questioned even after becoming citizens, getting arrested was not an option.

XR was founded in 2018 by a small group of British academics interested in civil disobedience, and since then has painted itself as a decentralized, “apolitical” group outside the mainstream environmental movement. It says it has no leaders, and uses non-violent direct action to call attention to climate change and biodiversity loss. XR aims for the widest appeal possible, and promotes local chapters in countries outside of Western Europe, though it lacks a base outside the U.K.

As people active in climate change politics, we have witnessed what American activist Van Jones described as the “unbearable whiteness of green” for a long time in the mainstream environmental movement. For all its apparent novelty, XR embodies the same problems: It overwhelmingly reflects the concerns, priorities, and ideas of middle-class white people in rich countries of the global north. By doing so, it ends up silencing the stories of our communities, who for hundreds of years, have been resisting the root causes of climate change.

These biases are inherent in XR’s core demands: that governments “tell the truth” and reduce emissions to “net zero” by 2025.

But whose truth? As we wrote in an open letter to XR as the Wretched of the Earth, a grassroots environmental justice collective for Indigenous, people of colour, and diaspora groups in the U.K., “The economic structures that dominate us were brought about by colonial projects whose sole purpose is the pursuit of domination and profit. For centuries, racism, sexism, and classism have been necessary for this system to be upheld, and have shaped the conditions we find ourselves in.”

We understand climate violence not as a threat of a future apocalypse but as the wind that fans the flames of existing injustices. It is already here—in the Cyclone Idais, Typhoon Haiyans, Hurricane Katrinas, and other, slower disasters that beset communities in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East (the global south) and marginalized people in the global north.

We don’t need to read the latest scientific reports to know that those least responsible for causing the climate crisis are usually the most vulnerable to its effects, including displacement. And that those people are overwhelmingly poor, Black or brown, and in the global south.

Yet XR, in its attempts to gain widespread appeal, is abandoning the people of the global majority. In Europe we already face frenzied anti-migrant rants from senior politicians and media figures. Now these attitudes are being further legitimized with the brush of environmentalism: We’ve both heard old white “climate activists” saying that we have to stop climate change so that crowds of poor brown people don’t come looking for shelter in Fortress Britain.

It hurt when, in a recent video, XR activist Ronan Harrington encouraged others in the movement to learn from xenophobic politicians and avoid taking “lefty liberal” positions such as “no borders” to not alienate potential right-wing allies. If the comment section is anything to go by, his notions have widespread support, including from XR co-founder Roger Hallam.

Hallam sees our anti-racist, feminist, and global justice politics as “chronically overcritical, radical, and hard left”—a strategic flaw and a barrier to success. Instead he advocates putting “scientific fact” before political ideology in shaping XR’s strategy. But this itself is an ideological position. What kinds of people do you think get to set the strategic priorities? Why aren’t they people like us?

XR’s primary tactic—mass arrests—has also left other activists baffled. Many of us already live with the risk of arrest and criminalization by virtue of our background. As we said in the open letter, XR’s strategy “needs to be underlined by an ongoing analysis of privilege as well as the reality of police and state violence.”

White people in XR, however, assume that if they are polite and reasonable, the government will listen to them and protect them. Racialized communities and marginalized people know better.

XR’s lack of accountability to communities in the global south and those without access to power is a tactical and moral failing. Despite having an “international solidarity” working group, XR never echoes our key climate justice demand: that rich countries do their “fair share” of a collective global effort to keep temperature rise below 1.5 C.

Asking the U.K., U.S., and other rich countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2025, as XR does, is not enough to avert further climate catastrophe. According to the Climate Equity Reference Calculator developed by nonprofits Stockholm Environment Institute and Ecoquity, the U.K. would have to reduce its emissions 202 percent below 1990 levels by 2030 to do its fair share. To date, all rich countries’ pledges fall way short of the mark.

What’s more, without reparations in the form of huge financial and technology transfers, countries in the global south simply won’t be able to make sufficient reductions, nor will they be able to help their people adapt to the already-severe and worsening effects of climate breakdown. Developing countries are estimated to need around $4.4 trillion just to fulfill their contributions to the Paris Agreement. XR has ignored these facts in favor of what they deem to be simpler and more palatable messages.

If XR had listened to the many movements rising in the global south for decades, it would have adopted the politics of anti-racism, feminism, and global justice not only as a matter of morality, but as a matter of strategy.

When we challenged XR about its overwhelmingly white base and problematic demands and tactics, Ronan McNern, a spokesperson for XR, insisted that it is “trying to directly ensure a more diverse movement.” He mentioned a voluntary living expenses initiative, so that it isn’t just people with money who can actively take part in actions, and a two-day decolonization training in July.

“We aren’t perfect but we are trying—and we welcome the engagement with those with different experiences and knowledge,” he said.

However, as far as we can see, this effort has not advanced much beyond cold-calling people of color to ask them to publicly endorse the “rebellion.”

Many in XR agree that we need to tackle white supremacy and build an environmental movement that avoids replicating the same power imbalances that led to the crisis in the first place. But that requires active listening, not just tick-box exercises that pretend to take our concerns on board. The good folks in XR should remember that its “left-wing” critics are not its enemies. This is the fight for all of our lives, and we need to do it right.

Follow Tatiana Garavito and Nathan Thanki on Twitter.

Have a story for Tipping Point? Email TippingPoint@vice.com

Stop Asking People of Color to Get Arrested to Protest Climate Change syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[her-culture]

How Sudan Created the Blueprint For the 21st Century Revolution

June 30th marked the day Sudanese people rewrote their history. 

On the thirtieth anniversary of the coup installing dictator Omar al-Bashir, Sudanese activists renewed their calls for a civilian-led government. An estimated hundreds of thousands of protesters marched through the country, demonstrating that--despite internet blackouts and violent crackdowns, Sudan will not be silenced. 

“June 30th reaffirmed all I personally know and believe about this revolution,” Sudanese humanist Dimah Mahmoud said to Her Culture. “It’s emboldened why I believe in this revolution more than anything else in this life.” 

Many Sudanese gathered in what they called a “Millions March” to demand a transfer of power from the current ruler—the Transitional Military Council (TMC)—to the civilians. This followed a successful coup that deposed al-Bashir in April and left military rule in his place. It was the first large-scale protest since the violent massacre of the opposition that occurred on June 3, which left over 118 dead. 

“June 30 was [and] is the amplifier to our resilience showing how we, in the most effective and beautiful way, activated the human agent and fought their Internet blackout by word of mouth, met their torture with healing memories of peace, and faced their live ammunition with open arms,” Mahmoud said. “Not to welcome the bullets, but [to] welcome the only two options we know we have at this point: freedom or joining our martyrs.”

Seven were reported killed and over 180 wounded in the Millions March protest.

Sudan has been under a total internet blackout for over a month now, but still managed to organize the march without use of social media, which has been a crucial tool in propelling the uprising. Sudanese abroad used social media to organize global protests in solidarity and raised awareness with the hashtag #WatchSudanOnJune30. 

It’s clear that the world should have watched Sudan before June 30, and there are several reasons it should still hold our attention: it is a revolution led by women in a country that enforces laws limiting their agency. It is a revolution led by young working professionals, who, in many cases, have known nothing but al-Bashir’s rule. It marks the toppling of one of Africa’s most notorious dictators, who has been charged by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes, human rights violations, and genocide in the Darfur region. But mostly because in weaponizing social media, uniting under a common message, and holding their government accountable through peaceful protest, Sudan has created a blueprint for the modern revolution.

“There has been a miracle happening on our soil and within our diaspora since December in the name of freedom, peace, and justice,” Mahmoud said. “There has been pure magic coming out of our nonviolent resistance, millions getting on the streets, and people around the world have no idea. Why? Because who really cares about Africa? Because politics trumps people and interest overshadows right.” 

The Sudanese broadcasted much of their revolution to a scant audience while Western media cycled news about Donald Trump, the race for the 2020 U.S. presidency, and continued progress for Brexit.

“For the last 6 months, almost every single day of the Sudanese uprising has been meticulously documented on social media,” Sudanese writer Sara Elhassan said in an article she penned for Okay Africa, “We made sure of it--more so for the world, we did it for ourselves, and for the millions of Sudanese scattered across the globe thanks to this regime.” 

The country’s unrest first began in December of 2018 after Bashir’s government imposed austerity measures in an attempt to avoid economic collapse. Declining living standards and cuts to bread and fuel subsidies resulted in protests that began in the east and quickly spread to the capital city, Khartoum. As four months of protests gained traction, the demands of the people expanded to the removal of al-Bashir’s government and an end to his 30-year reign. 

Their common message was that they wanted freedom, peace and justice—a message that reached all Sudanese, regardless of their ethnic background. In an attempt to create division among the protesters, the Sudanese government initially accused Darfurian student activists of inciting violence. 

“Sudanese protesters rejected that claim in what they saw as an age-old method to use ethnicity to deflect attention from real problems,” The Atlantic reported. “‘You Arrogant Racist, We Are All Darfur!’ became a rallying cry in the capital, Khartoum, a city whose residents had long looked down on people from the conflict-wracked region.” 

Sudanese also took note from their country’s history of successful civic resistance, with civilian-led movements in 1964 and 1985 ending military rule. Strikes have been cornerstones of today’s protests, bringing the country to an economic standstill as people have heeded the WhatsApp messages and widespread calls to demonstrate in the street. 

SKY News correspondent Stuart Ramsey recently reflected on his time in Sudan. For his team and for him, it wasn’t an issue of audience disinterest that hindered the delivery of the news. It was instead the difficulty in gaining access to the country while the uprising was occurring. 

“Every moment that we had almost got [SIC] visas to go to the country, security would intervene and to [SIC] say no,” Ramsey said. “The best you could hope for was social media.” 

Though the government blocked most major social media sites within the country in hopes of extinguishing the protests, citizens were able to circumvent that measure by use of virtual private networks (VPNs). By February, Buzzfeed News reported that women who once used Facebook as a way to discuss their crushes were now using it to dox national security officers who beat activists.

“Changing the government can’t be achieved by using WhatsApp or Facebook,” al-Bashir told his supporters in a televised conference. 

He was ousted in a military-led coup three months later. 

And while al-Bashir’s arrest in April marked a milestone for the pro-democracy opposition, their cause was not fully realized. The TMC, which took control after al-Bashir was arrested, delayed its transfer of power to civilians, leading to renewed protests and increased pressure from the opposition. This culminated in a large-scale sit-in in Khartoum during Ramadan. 

But on the morning of June 3, their sit-in and chants for civilian rule were met with a hail of bullets.  

According to residents, the attack on the protesters that left over a hundred dead and nearly 400 wounded was carried out by the paramilitary group, Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in conjunction with the TMC. Amnesty International notes that the RSF is a rebranded version of Janjaweed, the same militia that committed genocidal atrocities in Darfur. 

“The RSF raped and gang raped women, men, young, old, dead and alive. No one was or is safe,” Mahmoud said. “They’ve dumped over 118 bodies into the Nile so we don’t know how many of us they killed. They weighed the bodies down with cement blocks. They’ve burned homes, hearts and souls. They’ve painted over our murals of the Sudan we want and those honoring our martyrs. Then, [they] cut off the internet saying, it was a national security threat. The threat, of course, is that the world knows and that humanity wakes up and banishes them into oblivion.”

The U.S. and the United Kingdom both condemned the attack officially. And instead of silencing the protesters, the RSF’s crackdown amplified their message. Sudanese abroad in the diaspora demanded accountability, urging their followers to pay attention and spread the word with the hashtags #IAmTheSudanRevolution. Campaigns like #BlueForSudan permeated social media. News reached celebrities like Rihanna, George Clooney, and Demi Lovato, who used their platforms to raise awareness for the revolution. 

“I’d say this is the point in our revolution that woke humanity up and it resented and rejected any effort to silence it, to silence its pain and silence its truth in being violated,” Mahmoud said. “Social media is proving that our revolution isn’t just waking Africa up; it’s waking up humanity itself. There is a thirst for knowledge and people have started asking questions.” 

The awareness led to action. The United States has appointed a special envoy to Sudan, and the African Union banned Sudan until the TMC transferred power to civilians. 

“Those people [the RSF] should not be negotiated with, only overthrown,” Sudanese artist and illustrator Alaa Satir wrote for Vogue UK, “At first, we were thinking that the government would have a mix of military and civilian representation, but now we just want to take our country back. We want a government that represents us without military representation, and we want to see them prosecuted.”

Elhassan notes in her Okay Africa piece that there is a danger in something as fragile and complex as a country’s revolution “going viral.” Social media loans itself mostly to surface-level stories and clickbait, leaving little room for political context and the deep understanding needed to relay a clear, correct narrative.  

“Worldwide, celebrities, activists and people from all walks of life were raising awareness about Sudan,” Elhassan wrote. “But without much of an understanding of Sudan, awareness turned into misinformation. For most people, the June 3rd attack was not only the focal point, it was the only point of reference. Just like a great game of telephone, the story morphed from ‘massacre’ to ‘humanitarian crisis’ to ‘feed the children of Sudan,’ and what started off as an opportunity for the revolution to gain global recognition and worldwide support quickly devolved into a scramble to keep the narrative of the movement from derailing completely (and keep clout chasers from hijacking the wave—@sudanmealproject is a scam).” 

Though Sudan’s revolution seems far from over, the TMC and the opposition alliance reached a power-sharing agreement on July 5 that will put into place a sovereign council for three years composed of 5 military leaders and 5 civilian leaders and one civilian-elected leader who will be agreed upon by both sides.

Still, for all the yet-to-be answered questions about the political future of the country, there seems to be a constant: the spirit of the resilience and revolution hums through the Sudanese soil. 

“I have never in my life been prouder to say I am Sudanese and my connection, my culture and my purpose is that #IAmTheSudanRevolution,” Mahmoud said. “This revolution will not be silenced and will not rest and will not stop. This is the revolution that keeps going and we are the people that will wake up everyday for the rest of our lives saying #IAmTheSudanRevolution.”

[theconservativebrief]

For many Jews, this Hanukkah will be a particularly charged time of reflection.

The “festival of lights” is often celebrated by contemporary American families as a child-centric seasonal holiday. In modern times, it’s often been framed in popular media as Judaism’s answer to Christmas. But in the wake of October’s shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, in which an avowed anti-Semite is accused of killing 11 Jewish worshippers, the holiday’s message and meaning are taking on a more defiant turn.

In an America where anti-Semitic incidents are at an all-time high, according to both the FBI and the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish advocacy group, Hanukkah has become a more loaded holiday. A time of year that has become synonymous with family and domesticity is becoming a time to reflect on what it means to be Jewish.

Numerous rabbis and community leaders have reported feeling that Hanukkah’s meaning as a holiday about Jewish survival in a diverse religious landscape is more vital in America in 2018 than ever.

“The great strength of America is diversity,” Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman of Brith Sholom Synagogue in Erie, Pennsylvania, told me. “And that’s part of the message of the Hanukkah story. It plays in every year. And it plays in this year even more so.”

As Dara Lind wrote for Vox last year, Hanukkah began as a relatively minor holiday in the Jewish tradition, at least compared to the High Holy Days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. It commemorates an incident that occurred in the Second Temple period of Jerusalem, during the second century BC. During that time, Jerusalem was under the control of a Persian king from the Seleucid dynasty, who pressured his subjects to universally worship the Greek pantheon. The Jews of Jerusalem revolted against the Seleucids — ultimately driving them out of the city — and rededicated their Temple, the holiest place in the city. Although they had very little oil with which to keep the temple candles burning, the fires remained in place for eight nights.

Hanukkah only became a major holiday in the 19th and 20th centuries, primarily among American Jews, many of whom actively sought to find within the Jewish tradition an analogue to more popular “mainstream” holidays like Christmas. In part because it’s primarily celebrated at home, rather than in a synagogue, it’s become more associated with spending time with family, or with selecting presents for children, than with its original historical significance.

But this year, many rabbis say, Hanukkah’s original message — a celebration of Jewish resilience and Jewish identity in a troubled time — is all the more important. Goodman told me, “The thing that I say every year about Hanukkah has more resonance this year than most years.”

Goodman said he interpreted the Hannukah story “as about a minority group that was different than the majority in the dominant culture. And the dominant majority culture said, ‘We’d like you to fit in better or go away.’ And the Jews said, ‘No, that’s not how we roll.’”

In other words, Hanukkah is about both Jewish survival and Jewish individuality: a celebration of Jews’ refusal to surrender their identity and values.

Rabbi Hara Person, the chief strategy officer at the Central Conference of American Rabbis, likewise highlighted the extent to which she saw Hanukkah as a vital symbolic affirmation of Jewish resilience.

After the Tree of Life shooting, Person said, “those themes are particularly resonant. … There is more of a determination to really celebrate our distinctiveness as Jews and our identity as a people. We have to really be proud of who we are as Jews and affirm that loudly and clearly and not be cowed or scared to be Jewish.”

Tammy Hepps, a leader of the Pittsburgh chapter of the Jewish progressive nonprofit Bend the Arc, agreed. Referring to the menorah — the traditional eight-pronged candelabra Jews traditionally light in windows during the holiday — Hepps told me it doubles as a symbol of Jewish visibility.

“It’s not just something that we display in our homes for ourselves,” she said, “but something we light so that passersby can see. For us, this year that feels like an act of resistance. … We’re also showing we’re not afraid; even with what has happened, we’re not afraid to put that symbol in the window and let people know in the boldest way possible that we’re still here.”

Both Person and Goodman highlighted the degree to which being Jewish also meant affirming what they described as a specifically Jewish focus on social justice. Person noted how the Pittsburgh shooter had made numerous public condemnations of Jewish support for more relaxed immigration policies (including the false conspiracy theory that Jewish billionaire George Soros helped fund the Honduran migrant caravan). Now, she argues, it’s more important than ever for Jews to take a moral stance on issues of social concern.

“On the one hand there’s a sense of, let us affirm and celebrate and own our distinctiveness as Jews,” she said. “There’s also an affirmation of our values, our Jewish values: loving the stranger, helping the stranger caring for the vulnerable. That we won’t be scared into submission or scared to go against the values that we hold dear to us, like supporting immigrants.”

After all, Person pointed out, referring to the numerous Jewish diasporas around the world, “We were immigrants; we were refugees.”

Goodman likewise highlighted that point, saying that several members of his congregation saw the aftermath of the Pittsburgh shootings as a “double down moment”: a clarion call to action on the part of the Jewish community to stand by its progressive values. “If you were pissed off that we were supportive of immigrants and refugees before,” he characterizes those members as saying, “you’re really not going to like us now.”

For most Jewish families across America, Hanukkah may not look very different than it does any other year. While all of the Jewish leaders I spoke to said they’d seen increased security surrounding synagogues, Jewish schools, and other Jewish institutions since the Pittsburgh shootings, few anticipated massive changes to the celebration of the holiday itself.

Rather, all highlighted how Hanukkah’s original message seemed to be the one Jews needed to hear most right now.

Person told me her holiday plans — though on the surface similar to those she carried out every year — have taken on a newly political meaning.

“It’s really over the last two years or so — there is an increased sense that I have of fighting back against the darkness, which is one of the themes of Hanukkah,” she said. “That’s how I’ve been framing my Hanukkah parties: Let’s come together and bring some light into the darkness and bring some love and some joy into times that are otherwise bleak.”

Original Source -> Why Hanukkah’s message of Jewish resilience matters so much after Pittsburgh

via The Conservative Brief