"The No Papers, No Fear ride for justice.
Riders are undocumented people from all over the country, including students, mothers and fathers, children, people in deportation proceedings, day laborers, and others who continue to face deportation, harassment, and death while simply looking for a better life.
If you’ve spent a decent amount of time on Twitter, you’re probably familiar with the concept of K-pop fancams. The short clips of live performances, primarily by South Korean acts, often dominate replies on the app and are hated by many. This week, however, the social phenomenon has taken over in a different way: to fight for the rights of Black Lives Matter protesters seeking justice after the death of George Floyd.
Introduction: The Ambulatory Free States of Obsidia
The Ambulatory Free States of Obsidia is a tiny, Matriarchal, Micro-nation located at the confluence of feminism and geography.
Grand Marshal Yagjian's Great Vision for The Ambulatory Free States of Obsidia came in 2015 when its land claim was 'liberated' from a former lover’s house for a greater purpose.
At the age of just 30, Palesa Ngwenya is helping transform these areas through her position as development coordinator of Maboneng Township Arts Experience. “We turn homes in the townships into art galleries,” says the young South African woman, who grew up during apartheid. “It’s about showing people that you can use what you have to do things that can change your life."
As Black History Month commemorations start to wind down, one festival is just gearing up. Afropunk the Takeover — Harlem, running from Tuesday through Feb. 25, will celebrate black culture with music, art, film screenings, discussions and comedy.
“As an educator, I want people to have a sense of empowerment. I want them to have ownership of their own creative experience. It’s a very humane thing knowing we are inherently creative.”
In Louis Armstrong’s study in the Queens home he shared with his fourth wife, Lucille, bookshelves were filled with reel-to-reel recordings he made as a sort of audio diary. Those tapes and his letters — read by the rapper Nas — lay the foundation for the director Sacha Jenkins’s documentary “Louis Armstrong’s Black & Blues.”
Massimiliano Martigli Jiang was born in Wenzhou, China but moved with his parents to Italy when he was still a child. The 29 year-old grew up in Italy and considers himself as much Italian as Chinese.
The opening lines of this week’s Staff Pick Premiere, “Battleground,” by Kwesi Thomas and Mark Bone examine how skin color has become just that…a battleground. The short captures the particular discomfort of having to argue for one’s value in a society that should care instead of question. Kwesi, a Black man, powerfully conveys these feelings to his co-director Mark, a white man, in the wake of George Floyd’s death last May.
Artists: Cindy Maguire, Assistant Professor Art Education Adelphi University and Teaching Artist with Artistic Noise and girls ages 13-17 from the Brentwood Residential Center on Long Island.
The Brooklyn Anti-Gentrification Network is a grassroots movement and campaign to prevent the displacement of low-to-middle income people, elders, families and mom-and-pop businesses from Brooklyn. They say, “Not 1 more person displaced! Not 1 more luxury development, until we have affordable housing for all!”
Upon its original release on N.W.A.’s Straight Outta Compton LP in 1988, the song was safely titled “_ _ _ _ Tha Police (Fill in the Blanks),” and the album cover was among the first to feature the infamous “Parental Advisory” label, warning moms and dads about the album’s explicit lyrics. A censored version of the LP even omitted the song entirely.
Maryland Hall, in partnership with the Banneker Douglass Museum and Maryland Commission on African American History and Culture, invited Maryland-based Black artists, whose work encapsulates activism and social justice and using the creative process to educate their audiences about diversity, equity and inclusion to send proposals to take one of six 5 ft.
The signature angst of our time was profoundly expressed in the poems submitted for WOMAWORDS Literary Press June 2020 edition, Imaging Life After COVID-19, offering women poets an opportunity to write about their experience of the pandemic and their vision of or for the future. The universal trauma wrought by this virus, invisible and silent and pouncing with madness and mendacity, brings us to a place we’d like to forget but never will.
Grandmas diving for seafood while immigrants wrestle with identity. Scrambling for self-worth in the face of suicide. Rock music in the face of fear. A noir murder mystery. Musings on death.
With delicate composition, striking details and strong emotion, five editorial posters drawn by Wuheqilin have attracted some half million followers to his account on Sina Weibo, China's Twitter-like social media platform. His political views expressed in his art have led to some netizens dubbing him the "Wolf Worrier artist."
The federal DREAM Act is back. This week Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, the longtime champion of the bill, chaired the first ever Senate hearing on the narrow legalization effort that would allow a select population of undocumented youth a pathway toward citizenship.
At the same site where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech, we lit thousands of candles - one for each signature on our petition - to commemorate the legacy of brave freedom fighters Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Michael Schwerner and to stand up for the rights that are once again in peril.
"The Red Power Movement of the 1960s and 70s was a time of profound social change and progress for American Indians in the United States and Canada. In her outspokenness about the injustices facing Indigenous people, Buffy Sainte-Marie also sang for peace, the environment, women and children—believing that art can have impact and make a difference.
This series of protests began on the UCT campus in an effort to remove the bronze statute of Cecil Rhodes in the center of campus due to the belief that Rhodes represents the oppressive colonization of South Africa that eventually led to apartheid.
Tania Bruguera, in partnership with the Queens Museum of Art, began a long term art project in form of an artist initiated socio-political movement. Immigrant Movement International is an organization headquartered in the multinational neighborhood of Corona, Queens. The organization engages local, national and international audiences and focuses on the issues of immigration reform.