Portrait of Duanna Johnson

(1968-2008) 

 

by Mark Weber 

One of the stories in the book [Queer (In)justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States] that I think is particularly powerful is that of Duanna Johnson, a Black transgender woman who was arrested for a prostitution-related offense in Memphis, Tennessee, whose brutal beating by a police officer in the local jail was caught on videotape, and whose murder less than a year later, the third in as many years of a Black transgender woman in Memphis, remains unsolved.

The reason it is so compelling is because it raises so many central themes – the grinding discrimination transgender people face in virtually every aspect of life - employment, housing,  access to drug treatment,  homeless shelters, and other supportive services - the pervasive profiling and policing of transgender people, and particularly transgender women of color, as being engaged in sex-related offenses, the viciousness and impunity of police violence against LGBT people of color, and the endemic violence and lack of police protection LGBT people of color face in our communities.

It also highlights the relative invisibility of these experiences – Johnson’s case, despite the existence of a “smoking gun” video of the police beating, did not garner national attention or generate widespread outrage among mainstream racial justice, anti-police brutality, and civil rights organizations as Rodney King’s did. Her murder did not draw the nationwide calls for justice Matthew Shepard’s did. Local organizers’ valiant and thoughtful efforts to do justice by her experiences and her memory went largely unsupported by national organizations of all stripes beyond a sound bite here and there, usually in service of their larger agenda of advancing “hate crimes” laws – which have done nothing to protect Johnson from either form of “hate violence” she experienced. And ultimately, while the officer who beat her was ultimately prosecuted under federal civil rights laws, Johnson was not able to achieve justice through the legal system in her lifetime for the multiple forms of violence and criminalization she endured.

Duanna bravely confronted the Memphis Police Department officers who brutalized her while she was in police custody. At great personal cost, Duanna was the public face of our community’s campaign against racism, homophobia, and transphobia. There was no justice for Duanna Johnson in life.

 

Pioneer Ladies [of the Evening]

Photos of incarcerated women are transformed

by Amanda McCuaig on June 12, 2012

An exhibition at PLATFORM Centre for Photographic + Digital Arts in Winnipeg is testing the sexualized and gendered boundaries of our Canadian history. Curator Dr. Laurie K. Bertram has taken archival mugshots of Western Canadian female sex trade workers, taken from the Winnipeg Police Museum Archive, and reworked them into a new commemorative landscape for the Canadian west. Tailored in a way typically reserved for heroes, legends, and (primarily) men, the exhibition begs the question: “What challenges does the sex trade pose to Canada’s commemorative landscape?” – in other words, what is it about this history that our current culture has pushed aside?

I snagged an interview with Laurie via email to find out more about how historians shape the way we view ourselves (particularly in a country obsessed with identity), and how significant these pioneering women were to the establishment of our Western cities.

 

Laurie has thoughtfully used her curation to take portraits and flesh them into complete lives, which engage us in a discussion on the gender boundaries of history, while allowing the viewer to imagine new histories that, as Laurie says “acknowledge the remarkable pasts of marginalized and incarcerated women.”

What was the original inspiration or instigating material object that inspired you to do this show?

The whole show is about putting the remarkable lives of women on the margins at the centre of our historical imagination, so it is largely about the thousands of women who have been murdered or gone missing in the past century and what we have lost with them. Two specific historical women inspired the show, both of who had some degree of sex-trade involvement.

I finished a PhD in history at University of Toronto in 2010 and encountered the first woman in the show when I was researching my dissertation on Icelandic-Canadian history (there is a large Icelandic community in Manitoba, where I’m from.) This Icelandic immigrant woman had been hauled up in front of a judge for assault causing bodily harm in 1878. I was intrigued and started investigating her.

Like a lot of other immigrant women in Winnipeg during this period she earned money working as a domestic. She found herself a well-paid job working for a woman named Alice Hamilton. This was also around the time that Winnipeg’s red-light district was booming. Madams would sometimes hire girls for laundry or cleaning work in their brothels (sometimes without telling them what the houses were for) and then would push them into sex work through bribery or the withholding of wages. Sometimes this worked, but when Alice Hamilton tried to withhold wages from this young Icelandic woman, she grabbed a broom and beat the tar out of the madam and marched off to the police station.

I was amazed at her ferocity, particularly since during this period of time there was so much silence and shame surrounding the sex trade and women working outside of the home generally. “Fallen” women often appeared as tragic victims, but this woman was firmly in charge of her own destiny in spite of incredible pressure. I admired that.

I went to the Winnipeg Police Archives to see if I could find a picture of her, but she was arrested before they started taking mug shots. That’s when I encountered the fabulous turn-of-the-century fashionista madams of Winnipeg, including 22-year old Edna Floyd. I thought she deserved a place in Canadian history for her outfit alone. She is so defiant and so magnificent in spite of being busted in the middle of the night. I was inspired by her defiant pose and amazing sense of style. Fashion can tell us about women’s personal identities. We fashion our public identities through clothing, hair and style, and historical women were no exception, even when they were staring down the lens of a police camera.

 

Other than Edna, who are the women portrayed in the show?

The women are from across Western Canada and were arrested for a variety of offenses between 1878 and 1916. These included theft, running a bawdy house, assault, aiding fugitives, and “making obscene images” (pornography). Their images all circulated through the Winnipeg Police Department at some point either because they were known in Winnipeg or because other police departments were circulating their images around Canada. Everyone got a pseudonym as part of the condition of my using images from the archive. Otherwise, all of the research on each woman in the show is real. I tried to make their new names reflect the originals as closely as possible. The mug shots are also reproduced in large-scale form but I asked Mandy Malazdrewich, a specialist in historical photographs and photographic processes, to help me reframe the edges of each photograph to make it look like an oval portrait instead of a square mug shot.

It was amazing how simple framing and enlarging can really alter the meaning of an image!

 

What kinds of artifacts do you use to tell their story?                                          

I specialize in the history of objects and I wanted to make these women’s lives really three-dimensional and accessible. I think people connect more to the past when there is something tangible in front of them.

There were a lot of objects that helped me do that. The Manitoba Museum lent me several amazing dresses and coats that represent each woman’s personal style as well as their class background. Another local institution, Dalnavert, loaned the show several beautiful, old Persian rugs to help convey a sense of warmth, richness and interior wealth that I wanted to surround each woman. The Strathclair Museum, where my 92-year old Amma (Grandmother) has been working as a volunteer and curator for 30 years, loaned the gallery numerous working-class artifacts that have been carefully preserved by people in the community, including old patched bloomers and lace gloves and purses that belonged to peoples’ mothers, grandmothers and great-grandmothers. Some local women also offered me numerous irreplaceable pieces from their own personal collections that they wanted to be included in the show. I found that very touching.

I wanted to use the objects not just as historical props, but as messages about love and sentiment that disrupt the tradition of devaluing women on the margins. I think people often overlook the radical potential of family love, too often it is associated with conservative and nationalist ideas that are limited to “family values.” Yet, it has largely been the family members of missing and murdered women that are the most powerful voices of protest against entrenched racist and sexist violence in the Canadian West. Family ideas about value and national ideas about value are not inherently compatible. Fragile but enduring family heirlooms from this period helped represent the private emotional lives and connections of marginalized woman as well as the role of family love in resisting dehumanization and systemic violence.

Objects in the original mug shots also inspired the material landscape in the show. All of the women seemingly came from working class or poor backgrounds but had interesting relationships to material wealth. One of the women was a chambermaid known as “Lil’ Ava” who was arrested for harbouring bank robbers in an apartment off East Hastings in Vancouver in 1911. Her mug shot description says she had five gold teeth. I thought about what she was trying to say about herself in choosing to get gold dental work even though she was on the bottom of the rung of Vancouver’s economy. Her clothes, her defiant pose and the golden smile you don’t see in her mug shot offer important hints about how she saw herself, how she wanted others to see her and what she wanted from life.

 

Why do their story, or stories like theirs, ‘need’ to be tell, particularly when most of the history we know is… well.. “his” story?

I started the project by following the women in the images in front of me through archival records and they took me down a path that I didn’t quite imagine at first. Each dimension of the show taught me something new about the past.

The exhibit tries to upend the idea of the “pioneer” as an embodiment of law and order and wholesome values. Whether in parks, on TV, or in school projects, pioneers still appear as the most important figures in Canadian Western popular history. Yet, people so often forget that “pioneer times” and colonialism were the same thing. Moreover, “pioneers” were very complicated people and dominated the arrest records for most crimes in turn-of-the-century Western Canada. They also ran and patronized booming red-light districts across the West until around WWI.

It’s a fascinating history, but it also made me aware that I am living in a historical period in which marginalization and violence might look natural or inevitable, but isn’t. Currently in Manitoba, Aboriginal women make up between 80-90% of the prison population, but only around 15% of the outside population. This is a really huge shift from the way things were 100 years ago. I literally only saw one Aboriginal woman, a young Métis maid accused of theft, in the mug shot collection at the Winnipeg Police Museum. They very seldom appeared in front of the police cameras. So, in many respects, the criminalization of Aboriginal woman in the West is a relatively new development. It is part of our current historical period — one that has a recent beginning and one that will certainly have an end. I think that being aware of that history and the courage of women that live through it teaches us about the possibilities we can inherit when we value their remarkable lives.

 

One of the points you brought up in a previous conversation was the relationship between heritage and dehumanization, can you elaborate?

Absolutely. I grew up in Winnipeg where the disappearance and deaths of women and trans people on the margins (or those perceived to be on the margins) was often depicted as an unfortunate, but essentially normal, or “natural”, part of city life and history. Young,vibrant, beautiful women and trans people would disappear and be found dead but the larger public attitude was that this was somehow inevitable or a historical trend — almost traditional.

As I show in the exhibit, this is an illusion, especially when it comes to sex trade workers. Violence against sex trade workers and exploitation happened but dehumanization was absolutely not the norm in the earlier history of Winnipeg’s red-light districts. Madams were powerful and influential and, as historian Rhonda Hinther shows, the police protected red-light districts for most of the city’s history until WWI.

I started to think a lot about how illusions about the history of women on the margins and in the sex trade have contributed to a situation in which certain kinds of violence and murder are seen as normal (Agamben calls this the “state of exception”).

I was walking down East Hastings for the first time in February on my way to the Vancouver Police Museum. One of the women in my show, “Lil’ Ava,” was arrested in a bank robber hideout just off East Hastings. I was stunned to see that on this stretch of the street, “ground zero for missing and murdered women in Western Canada,” the largest, well-maintained monument to the loss of human life was devoted to WWI and WWII soldiers. Lil’ Ava’s hideout had seemingly become a parking lot and I passed a demolition site where the remains of another big building lay in a big heap.

I thought about how history and heritage campaigns try to tell us who to value and who to grieve. I looked at the neat maintenance on the soldiers’ monument and the powerful emotional statements carved into the stone that were meant to make you feel emotional like “all ye who pass by” and “is it nothing to you?” These parking lots and demolition sites were the opposite. They were anti-monuments had the opposite effect, the erasing of memory and the devaluing of certain histories. These gaps in our everyday historical landscape tell us what lives not to mourn and commemorate. Heritage campaigns shape what lives we value in the present.

 

Many pioneer women were, as the title indicates, ladies of the night – as some of the only women in towns full of men, how significant has their contribution been to the development of our cities? (eg. Lou Graham, a Madam who lived in Seattle, was so wealthy that some tours tout her as the second largest donor EVER to the city, just after Bill Gates. She basically funded the entire school system!).

Wow. I just love that. Yes, in terms of the “pioneer ladies” reference, it is important to remember that non-Indigenous women, often Americans, totally dominated the early history of Manitoba’s sex trade. I think that fact really unsettles the wholesome image of the pioneer lady and uncovers the complex and problematic nature of this often mythologized figure. In terms of their role in development and communities, I have seen similar references in the work of other historians that I was reading in preparation for the show.

Becki Ross writes about Vancouver exotic dancers holding Christmas charity events to raise money for toys for poor children. They called it “Tits for Tots.” Also, Rhonda Hinther has done a lot of work on the Point Douglas red-light district in Winnipeg and just co-wrote a new documentary called “The Oldest Profession in Winnipeg.” She argues that when the Winnipeg Police decided to establish a new red-light district in 1909 they decided to involve real estate agents who then marked up the prices on all of the houses. A lot of madams had very powerful connections and money that most women couldn’t even dream of, it was literally the most lucrative job a woman could get in those days, but it involved a lot of both risks and guts. I think their histories can teach us all so much, regardless of our backgrounds.

Because the show had quite a bit of sex trade history in it, I decided that it was important to involve experiential women, those who had an up close understanding of that economy. I learned so much from one woman in particular who is an outstanding advocate in the city. Having her and other experiential women come in and say that they liked the show felt like the best feedback in the world. It was so important for me as an academic historian and curator to make my research accessible to people that would find the lives of the women in the show familiar and meaningful.

Working in a gallery space was essential to making that happen for this project. In Winnipeg there are a series of streets that have women’s names and the longstanding rumour in the city is that these were the favourite working girls of city officials and planners. There is quite a bit of debate about this. I certainly don’t know the answer, but one of the streets is named “Lulu.” This was a popular name that working girls adopted at the end of the 1800s. I heard that women who are sex-trade involved now also know about this story and that it is still popular. The story really speaks to the wealth and influence that these working women once enjoyed as well as the empowering possibilities of history in the present. Most people are inclined to tell stories about history that helps them make sense of their present and I liked hearing that this story was still circulating throughout the city. I wanted to create an accompanying landscape that they would also enjoy and find relevant.

 

Anything else you’d like to add?

This is a travelling show and the next stop is Edmonton at the Human Ecology Gallery at the University of Alberta (opening September 13, 2012!) I am working on other venues across Canada and the show will differ slightly in each incarnation.

I will always be drawing from different local collections for the show’s wardrobe and commemorative landscape. Wherever it goes I want people to see their own community- and their own regional ancestors reflected in the show in dresses and artifacts. U of A has an amazing textile collection and I am really looking forward to using parts of it in the next show. Plans are in the works to feature an infamous Edmonton madam there: Big Nellie Webb. Big Nellie was acquitted of shooting a Mountie in the leg in 1888. James Grey writes about the case extensively in his well-known book Red Lights on the Prairies. The mountie was drunk and tried to force his way into her “house of ill-fame” after she locked the door. She refused to let him enter and when he kicked in the door she shot him in the leg. It caused a huge scandal in the North West Mounted Police (now the RCMP) and Big Nellie was found not guilty of wounding with intent to kill and released. I think this really illustrates the ultimately better standing of women in the sex trade with law enforcement in those days. As the Chief of Police in Lethbridge in 1903 argued: “a skirt is a skirt and must be respected as such”.

Jazz Flutist

Nicole Mitchell

20Mar2012 

Author: drjelks

Nicole Margaret Mitchell has been noted as “a compelling improviser of wit, determination, positivity, and tremendous talent…on her way to becoming one of the greatest living flutists in jazz,” (Peter Margasak, Chicago Reader). A creative flutist, composer and bandleader, Mitchell has been named “Top Flutist 2010″ by Downbeat Magazine’s Critic’s Polls and also placed first as Downbeat magazine’s “Rising Star Flutist 2005-2010. She was awarded “Jazz Flutist of the Year 2010″by the Jazz Journalist Association and ““Chicagoan of the Year 2006” by the Chicago Tribune. The founder of the critically acclaimed Black Earth Ensemble and Black Earth Strings, Mitchell’s compositions reach across sound worlds, integrating new ideas with moments in the legacy of jazz, gospel, pop, and African percussion to create a fascinating synthesis of “postmodern jazz.” With her ensembles, as a featured flutist, and as a music educator, Mitchell has been a highlight at art venues, festivals throughout Europe, the U.S. and Canada. Mitchell has performed with creative luminaries including George Lewis, Miya Masaoka, Lori Freedman, James Newton, Bill Dixon and Muhal Richard Abrams. She also works on ongoing projects with Anthony Braxton, Ed Wilkerson, David Boykin, Rob Mazurek, Hamid Drake and Arveeayl Ra. The first woman president of Chicago’s groundbreaking Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), Mitchell works to raise respect and integrity for the improvised flute, to contribute her innovative voice to the jazz legacy, and to continue the bold and exciting directions that the AACM has charted for decades. Mitchell is thankful to mentors and teachers including: Jimmy Cheatham, Donald Byrd, Brenda Jones, Roscoe Mitchell, James Newton, George Lewis, John Eaton, Fred Anderson, Ernest Dawkins, John Fonville, Susan Levitin, Mary Stolper, John Sebastian Winston and Edward Wilkerson.

Source: Chicago News Cooperative

In recent years, Nicole Mitchell, an enterprising jazz flutist, modernist composer and leader of several inventive ensembles, has been a celebrated success story in Chicago music.

Last spring, she received an Alpert Award, worth $75,000, from the California Institute of the Arts. Her albums regularly appear on critics’ year-end lists; she earned Flutist of the Year honors from the Jazz Journalists Association three of the last five years; and she won the Downbeat Critics Poll in 2010 and 2011.

In 2010, she performed premieres of several works as artist-in-residence at the Chicago Jazz Festival. Her “Black Earth” ensembles, ranging from a quartet with strings to an 18-piece band, have made her a familiar presence throughout the United States and in Europe.

But Mitchell has been absent from the local scene lately. Her performances of her composition “Harambee: Road to Victory” with the Chicago Sinfonietta at Wentz Concert Hall in Naperville on Jan. 15 and at Symphony Center on Jan. 16, will be two of only a handful of appearances on local stages since July.

One reason is financial. It proved to be a challenge for even so accomplished a jazz artist to make a living at her craft here, so she moved 2,000 miles away, to Long Beach, Calif., to take a “dream job” and earn a steady paycheck.

In August Mitchell, 44, became assistant professor in a relatively new program integrating composition, improvisation and technology at the University of California, Irvine. “It’s always been important to me to have that role, as a teacher, because I feel really fortunate for the mentorships I’ve had,” she said.

But bound up with the desire to teach was the lure of financial security and benefits provided by a full-time faculty position, after 10 years as an adjunct teacher at various Chicago-area colleges. Since 1992 she had lived in the city, where she evolved from a flutist in others’ bands to an internationally recognized composer and performer.

It is perhaps surprising that she would have trouble making ends meet. But when Mitchell’s top-of-the-line flute was stolen in Italy 15 months ago, she had no insurance to cover the cost of replacing it. And winning the Alpert Award inspired not vacation plans, but rather relief at the prospect of paying off debts that included $50,000 in student loans.

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<p>Nicole Mitchell: Harriet Tubman - Flight to Freedom from Floyd Webb on Vimeo.</p>

Barbara Mandigo Kelly

Peace Poetry Awards

The Barbara Mandigo Kelly Peace Poetry Awards are an annual series of awards to encourage poets to explore and illuminate positive visions of peace and the human spirit. The Poetry Awards include three age categories: Adult, Youth 13-18, and Youth 12 & Under. The deadline for submissions is July 1, 2012. Past Award Winners 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008 2007 2006 | 2005 | 2004 2003| 2002 | 2001 | 2000 1999| 1998 | 1997 | 1996

This book contains the winning poems for the first seven years of the Barbara Mandigo Kelly Peace Poetry Awards. You can order a copy here.

2012 Peace Poetry Awards Guidelines (A PDF Version of the following is available here.) Awards: Adults - $1,000 Youth (13 to 18) - $200 Youth (12 and under) - $200 We award Honorable Mentions in each category. Eligibility: The contest is open to people worldwide. Poems must be original, unpublished and in English. Deadlines: All entries must be postmarked by July 1, 2012. Procedures: Send 2 copies of up to 3 typed unpublished poems. Maximum of 30 lines per poem. Include name, address, email, telephone number, and age (if youth) in upper right hand corner of one copy of each poem. Title each poem. Do not staple individual poems together. Please keep copies of all poems as we will be unable to return them. Any entry that does not adhere to ALL of the contest rules will not be considered for a prize. Fee: $15 for up to three poems for Adult entries. $5 for up to three poems for Youth (13-18) entries. No fee for Youth (12 and under) entries. Judging: Judging will be done by a committee of poets selected by the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. Winners: Winners will be announced by October 1, 2012. Winners and Honorable Mentions will be notified by mail. The award is open to people worldwide. All poems must be the original work of the poet, unpublished, and in English. The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation reserves the right to publish and distribute the award winning poems, including honorable mentions. Copies of the winning poems from the 2012 Awards will be posted on the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation website after October 1, 2012. Copies of the winning poems from previous years are posted on our website at: www.wagingpeace.org/menu/programs/awards-&-contests/bmk-contest. Send Entries To: Nuclear Age Peace Foundation Barbara Mandigo Kelly Peace Poetry Awards PMB 121 1187 Coast Village Road, Suite 1 Santa Barbara, CA 93108-2794 805-965-3443 • fax: 805-568-0466

William Soutar Short Story

Writing Prize 2012

(£750 worth of prizes

| worldwide)

Deadline: 18 June 2012

(Note: The competition is free to enter and open to anyone in the world over the age of 16.)

The 2012 William Soutar Writing Prize has been launched and this year the competition is open to short story writers. This is the tenth year of the prize which awards poets and short story writers in alternate years and is run by Perth & Kinross Council's Libraries and Information Services in memory of Perth's most famous poet.

The first prize is a week's writing course at one of the prestigious Arvon writers' centres, worth around £600 and there is a second prize of £100. There will also be a special local award of £50 for the best short story by a resident of Perth and Kinross. Entries this year will be judged by writer and broadcaster Billy Kay.

GUIDELINES

This is an annual competition now in its tenth year, alternating between poetry and short stories. For 2012, short stories may be entered. Entry is free and open to anyone in the world over the age of 16, but you are limited to two short stories.

JUDGE: Billy Kay

PRIZES

• First Prize A writing course at Moniack Mhor, the Arvon Centre in Scotland (for which the normal fee would be approximately £600), or another of the UK Arvon Centres. The winner will be announced on Writers’ Day, Saturday 25 August 2012

• Second Prize £100 Book Tokens

• Local Prize £50 of Book Tokens will also be awarded for the best work from a resident of Perth and Kinross

THE COMPETITION RULES

• The deadline for all entries is Monday 18 June 2012

• All entrants must be 16 years of age or over

• Stories must not exceed 2000 words

• A maximum of two stories may be submitted

• All entries must be typed or word processed, on one side of the paper only

• Two copies of each sort story submitted must be provided

• Entries may be in English or Scots

• The competition is open to anyone throughout and outside the United Kingdom

• All entries are judged anonymously and the name of the writer must not appear on the manuscript

• Stories must not have been previously published

• Competition entries cannot be returned - please do not include a pre-paid envelope

• The Judge’s decision is final and no correspondence can be entered into

• Alterations cannot be made to stories once they have been submitted

• Entries must be accompanied by an entry form

• There is no entry fee for this competition

• Local entries (writers living in Perth & Kinross at time of entry) can also be additionally entered for the local Soutar prize. They should tick the LOCAL box on the entry form

• It is the entrant’s responsibility to ensure that the above rules are adhered to

Failure to comply with the above rules will result in disqualification from the competition. The winner(s) will be notified a few days before the formal announcement on 25 August 2012. Unsuccessful entrants will not be individually notified. If a local entrant wins one of the main prizes, they will not also be eligible for the local prize.

The winning names will be posted on our website. The writers of the winning short stories grant Perth & Kinross Libraries and Information Services the right to use the stories in publicity material for one year from 25 August 2012. The copyright of each story remains with the author.

Download: entry form

CONTACT INFORMATION:

For submissions: return your completed form and two copies of each submission to Jill Mackintosh, AK Bell Library, York Place, Perth PH2 8EP, UK

Website: http://www.pkc.gov.uk/

 

MySpur Essay Competition

June Edition (Nigeria)

Deadline: 16 June 2012

Are you passionate about writing? Then it is time to pick up your pen and start writing as Nigeria Spur Magazine announces the MySpur Essay Competition for the month of June. This will be the third of the series of the MySpur Essay Competitions. This series is geared towards discussing issues that affect the Nigerian learning community and leadership. This month we are looking considering the effect of Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, BB etc.) on the lives and academic performance of students.

TITLE: Social media and Students – Friends or Foe?

GUIDELINE:

1. The essay competition is open to all.

2. All entry should be between 750-850 words.

3. The deadline for the submission of the entries is June 16, 2012.

4. All entries should be sent electronically to info@spurmag.com

5. All entries should be in Microsoft word format (PDF format are not allowed)

6. All entries should contain the following information:

• Full Name
• Phone Number
• Email Address
• Current Status (Student or Worker)
• How you heard about the essay competition?

NB: The information should be below your entry in one document.

THE FINAL WINNER WILL BE ANNOUNCED IN JULY

• The prize for the winner is N5,000 worth of airtime.
• Prize for the first runner up is N3,000 worth of airtime.
• Prize for the second runner up is N1,500 worth of airtime.
• The winning Essay will also been published in the July Edition of Nigeria Spur magazine.

CONTACT INFORMATION:

For queries/ submissions: info@spurmag.com

Website: http://spurmag.com/

 

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<p style="font-size:11px; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: #999; margin-top: 5px; background: transparent; text-align: center; width: 420px;">Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy</p>

<p style="font-size:11px; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: #999; margin-top: 5px; background: transparent; text-align: center; width: 420px;">Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy</p>

<p style="font-size:11px; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: #999; margin-top: 5px; background: transparent; text-align: center; width: 420px;">Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy</p>

How black hair matters

Actress Nicole Ari Parker of Broadway's Streetcar Named Desire, University of Pennsylvania professor Anthea Butler, cultural critic Joan Morgan, and CurlyNikki.com founder Nikki Walton, sit down with Melissa Harris-Perry to talk about the political messages behind hairstyles.

__________________________

Strong Hair

by c’babi bayoc

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Why I Think Natural Hair

Is Indeed

A Political Statement

June 5th, 2012 - By Charing Ball

Cheryl Clarke:

The Never-Ending Resource

that is Black Queerness

 

Posted on 06. Jul, 2011

 

by Darnell L. Moore 

“There is queer activism in the African diaspora and wherever that movement is, there is always cultural production.”

I was introduced to the iconic Cheryl Clarke while organizing a conference on spirituality and sexuality with writer and scholar Ashon T. Crawley for the Newark Pride Alliance in Newark, NJ in 2008. Ashon and I marveled for days over the fact that we had engaged in a few contentious planning meetings with Clarke, and survived! Our meeting spurred an instant love affair with the black queer literary luminary whose voice, work, and life has continued to make space for our own. Since 2008, Clarke and I have been involved in several projects and after each I end by asking myself: “Why have we—black folk, queer folk, feminist folk, and other folk—yet to fully recognize this genius among us?” This is my second interview with Clarke. The first was a conversation captured between Clarke and Amiri Baraka in Newark, NJ. In many ways, this is my way of turning attention to a black queer artist whose work deserves increased attention.

Clarke was born in 1947 in Washington, DC. She received a B.A. from Howard University and an M.A., M.S.W. and Ph. D. from Rutgers—the State University of New Jersey. She is the author of several books including her collection of prose and poetry, The Days of Good Looks, and her critical work, “After Mecca”: Women Poets and the Black Arts Movement.  Clarke’s “After Mecca” is the first scholarly work investigating the role of black women poets/writers situated within the ten-year period of 1968-78, a decade encompassing the Black Arts Movement (BAM). BAM was a political, aesthetical movement that was spurred as a result of the Black consciousness/Black Power movement as a means to further the development and transmission of black expressive culture towards the end of radical communal change. Clarke’s work demonstrates that women (including lesbian-identified women) made important feminist interventions in a staunchly sexist (and heterosexist) aesthetical space and used some of BAM’s tactics to advance their own movement.

Since 2009, Clarke has been the Dean of Students for Livingston Campus at Rutgers. Prior to that position, she was the Director of the Office of Social Justice Education and LGBT Communities at Rutgers.

Moore: In your book, “After Mecca”: Women Poets and the Black Arts Movement, you claim Black Arts Movement (BAM) tutelage and “blackness” as that which awakened you to poetry in the 1960s and feminism and lesbianism in the 70s. Can you say a bit more about both as modes of inspiration and preparation for your work?

Clarke: I was studying literature at Howard University during this time (1965-1969) and saw first-hand how provocative words are as poems. I had also studied the Harlem Renaissance (which I continue to study) and had read of how instrumental writing, publishing, and public readings— “salons” then— were to shifting the notions people had of black people, especially white people’s notions but also black people’s. During the sixties, we spent quite a lot of air time critiquing the “New Negro Renaissance” as bourgeois; however, we used some of its tactics to once again build a movement of new writing. As I say in my book, the Black Arts Movement was not the first time black people “reinvented themselves ‘new.’” So—we, i.e., lesbian-feminists—black lesbian feminists, black gay feminists, as well as the gay liberation movement used the “voice” strategy to inspire changes of attitude, to teach, and to critique. During the Black Power Movement, young people calling themselves “Black” refused to stand upon the politics of black respectability and deference to white people. White people were called out for their racism, specifically for their Eurocentrism; and backsliding black people were called out too. We got “loud” on us if you know what I mean. I remember being in any number of conversations on campus and being corrected by well-read activists—men and women—on historical sources, on who was trustworthy and who was assimilationist or paternalistic. Anyway, education is always a chief factor in developing a movement, especially a movement around identity: Where have you been?  Where are you going? And what the hell are you doing presently? As Wahneema Lubiano says about Black Nationalism as common sense in her article in the edited volume (by Lubiano) The House That Race Built, that Black Nationalism gives us history. So, we used its tools to give us the awareness, history, and voice we needed to foster our movements for sexual and gender identity.

Moore: BAM was concerned with the politics and aesthetics of blackness. It was, at once,  a black literary and cultural expressive movement that provided space for the penning of prose and performing of the poetic. BAM also prompted the creation of Black theater groups and literary journals. In many ways, BAM represented the dismantling of barriers that tended to neatly separate poetry/prose and performance/written expression. What was the benefit of this intervention? How did it mess up, in good ways, the artistic landscape in the 1960s-70s? And, what are the implications for the work of the artist today?

Clarke: In a certain way BAM showed us that there are no neat separations of artistic forms, especially if we were to cast aside the Western lens. However, at the same time, nationalism insisted upon such purity of identity and polarities of political allegiance: “You are either with me or against me.”  Theater and poetry, particularly, coalesced. The poetry reading. The production of  someone’s play in a local venue. This was all possible in the early days (1965-1970). The re-use of old buildings as cultural spaces also as political spaces—spaces in which people organized to change the quality of life in their communities. In this way, the Black Power and Black Arts Movements were very much like Garvey’s United Negro Improvement Association, which touched so many local black communities throughout this country—and the world. But also, Black Power and Black Arts activists had been involved in the Southern movement and knew the potency of grass roots organizing. And so, in the era of gay, lesbian, feminist liberation, the tools of voice, first projected by Malcolm, then Black Arts, then Black Power, stood us in good stead.

Moore: Kalamu ya Salaam credits BAM for instigating the “multiculturalism movement” in America. He argues that BAM challenged “cultural sovereignty” and encouraged non-majority populations to do their “own thing.” Do you agree with his assessment?

Clarke: Yes, I agree. The challenge to “cultural sovereignty” is key. Always, because it rears its ugly head constantly. Address the West, a “grey hideous space,” as Baraka says. However, have these “non-majority movements” routed out their sexist, homophobic, and heterosexist prerogatives? Kalamu is a good man, however

Moore: It could be argued that BAM had a similar influence on the emergence of the queer artistic voice, black and non-black. For example, you connect the writerly and activist trajectory of black feminist lesbian poet Audre Lorde to BAM in “After Mecca.” Can you speak to similar genealogies among other queer artists?

Clarke: Probably. June Jordan. She had a similar trajectory as Lorde. Started out as a promoter of the Black Arts Movement. Edited a book of black arts poetry in the late 60s.  Called herself a feminist. Toni Cade Bambara and Alice Walker as well, though neither of them are lesbians, [Editor’s Note: Alice Walker discreetly revealed some of  her same gender loving relationships in the early aughts] but they both considered themselves more feminist than not.  I mean Alice Walker is a feminist. Toni Cade Bambara was more circumspect about what she called herself—other than “black woman.”  Interestingly, I can only think of women. I guess I count myself among those who had a similar trajectory, though I was not a Black Arts Movement activist. But I certainly was a witness. Samuel Delany has been writing since the 1950s, but he was not really a card-carrying member of the Black Arts Movement. But he has always been out as black and gay, even though it may have been easy for him to pass.

Moore: It is often noted that BAM allowed for the wide dissemination of Black Arts through the launching of independent publishing houses and nationally distributed periodicals that created new space for artists’ work. You even served as the editor of one such periodical, namely, Conditions. Are publishing spaces as readily available for the emerging political artist today? What challenges remain the same and what opportunities are present

Clarke: I served as a member of the editorial collective of Conditions Magazine from 1981 to 1990.  We were committed to an all-lesbian collective and a multiracial one at that. We were committed to the same diversity in our publishing of original work by writers, and we published some notable women:  Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde, Marilyn Hacker, Minnie Bruce Pratt, Dorothy Allison, Jewelle Gomez, Michelle Cliff, Margaret Randall, A.J. Verdelle, Sapphire, Frances Negrón-Muntaner, the late Terri Jewell, Melinda Goodman, Jackie Woodson, Cherríe Moraga, the late Paula Gunn Allen, the late Pat Parker, Barbara Smith, Shay Youngblood, Cherri Muhanji, Breena Clarke, and many more. Seventeen issues of Conditions were published between 1977 and 1990. We published two international issues and a retrospective. Feminists and lesbian feminists came to understand because of the example of Black Arts that a movement had to control its means of cultural production. And for a while lesbian feminists did—presses, newspapers, journals, and bookstores. No, publishing spaces are not as readily available as they once were because the ways in which people read and produce are very different. We have the Internet.  We produce work through it. But we still need the bricks and mortar and the material object, the book, in our hands. The challenge, as always, is to write, and get the writing out there. We have the opportunity to create new venues for our work. I think of Lisa Moore of Redbone Press, who produces so much of the work of black queer writers in the diaspora. I think of the work Steven Fullwood does at the Schomburg with the LGBT, In the Life, Same Gender Loving Archive. I think of the work the black lesbian poet, Arisa White, does through her program “Out of Necessity” in California with pairing beginning LGBT writers with experienced LGBT writers. Then the programming done by Fire and Ink, the queer black writers conference that has occurred twice since 2002. We have the opportunity to write about our writers—which is always my project, writing about black queer writers. Blackness and queerness are never-ending resources.

Moore: Do we have a contemporary movement that is opening space for black queer artists? If not, what could and should that space look like? And, how might it take form as a global movement?

Clarke: Yes, we do. We do have a contemporary global movement. There is queer activism in the African diaspora and wherever that movement is, there is always cultural production. I learned from my work with Conditions that we have been a global movement from the beginning of this phase of queer liberation. But this question is too difficult for me to answer in its entirety—if that is even possible.

Moore: You have worked within and without the academy. In what ways has this “border crossing” impacted your writing/activism?

Clarke: I stayed in the academy so that I could do my work outside of it. (I needed to pay my rent and later my mortgage.) During the 1980s my work in the academy was more of a “job.”  Something I did so that, as I said, I could do my writing, my work with Conditions, travel, serve on boards that needed commitment (e.g., New York Women Against Rape, New Jersey Women and AIDS Network, Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies, Astraea Foundation for Social Justice, and now the Newark Pride Alliance). So, Rutgers was not my primary identity for many, many years. For many, many years, it was the lesbian feminist work that kept me going. However, Rutgers was a good place to network, and I always liked and respected many of the people I worked with. And I always tried to have a progressive stance around issues of freedom of expression, that is standing up for my beliefs, job equity, disenfranchised students issues, public programming reflective of underrepresented concerns, teaching courses on black women’s writing, black queer writing, the black freedom movement, and introductory women’s and gender studies courses, establishing our social justice learning community, and for 17 years directing the office for services to LGBT students. So, Rutgers at once gave me a platform for my work as well as a place to be just an administrator. Being in the academy has enabled me to do my work for the most part, because I have never taken my place within the academy too seriously.  And believe me, I have had some setbacks there. Between 1998 and 2002 I worked for a very homophobic vice president and worked under the leadership of a very homophobic and conservative university president for 12 years. This was not fun. We had to deal with Republicans in Washington during the 1980s; and, at Rutgers, since everything comes to the academy later, we had to deal with Republicans at Rutgers in the 1990s. This was very impactful. During this whole time I, of course, continued to write, continued to study, and published my critical study of the Black Arts Movement, “After Mecca,” and my collected works The Days of Good Looks: Prose and Poetry, 1980-2005.  I received my doctorate in 2000, which made me very happy. I worked for it from 1991 to 2000 in the English Department at Rutgers, but actually, I started in 1969 and stopped in 1974. Those nine years of study during the 90s were some of my happiest times. So, really it took me 15 years to finish, but I like to say 30 years.  I think that’s somewhat of a record. But writing that dissertation gave me the opportunity to make a contribution to African-American literary criticism.

The hardest part about writing is, as you know, to keep doing it. I have just finished my last edit of my manuscript of poems, which I have been trying to publish since 1993—well, only some of the poems; I have written new ones. I hope to have another book of poetry published before I die. I also hope to have another critical study of black writing done before I die. With all the work we have to do for our communities, taking that space to think and write is difficult, but must be done for it satisfies the soul—not just my soul but other souls as well. I have a difficult enough time trying to prepare for my classes. And teaching is another commitment of mine which I wish I could perform better.

Moore: LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka is credited as the “progenitor” of BAM. I recently interviewed the two you. Was there anything said that opened up new understandings of BAM and its influence on your work? Was there anything left unsaid that you would like to note now, particularly as it relates to Baraka’s past sexist and heterosexist statements and present (presumed) silences on issues of homosexuality?

Clarke: Amiri is Baraka is LeRoi Jones is Chairman Baraka is Imamu Baraka. He is one of the most brilliant people alive. But also one of the most burdened and haunted. We can talk about his silences at another time. Meanwhile, let’s think about our own and how little they protect us. Thank you for the interview, Darnell. Always a pleasure to rap with you.

No Disrespect:

Erykah Badu Falls Victim

to “The Male Gaze”

Jun 08, 2012  

by Coffey

Last week an experimental music video (which has since been yanked from the web, per Erykah’s management folk) featuring a collaborative effort from singer/performance artist extraordinaire, Erykah Badu and alternative rock band, The Flaming Lips for their project “Western Esotericism”… was released on the internet.  The video, which featured Erykah’s sister Nayrok in all her full-frontal ‘nakeditity’, rubbing various substances— blood-like… stuff and a sticky white mixture that looked like male ejaculate— and glitter all over her body, drizzling the white stuff about her mouth and face, with occasional cut-away shots of Erykah (also naked in a tub of water) singing a staccato rendition of “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” while Wayne Coyne waved some… foil thing around.  The visuals stupefying to say the least, and even outdid Erykah’s other naked, controversial video for her song “Window Seat”… which appeared less opaque once she explained the social message she was trying to convey.

Her latest effort with The Flaming Lips however, left some fans scrambling for an explanation… while others were put off entirely, vowing never to watch it again. Some folks across the Twitter-verse and Facebook commended Erykah for being fearless and waxed poetic about what Nayrok’s sensual expression symbolized. Granted, some folks sounded as if they were blowing hot, putrid air, but boy did they speculate and try to tie it all together into a cohesive meaning. Erykah herself, commended her sister Nayrok for being a good sport for sacrificing her body in the name of artistic expression. While I didn’t even attempt to formulate my own interpretation of the video, I did find it interesting and chalked it up to Erykah and Nayrok embracing their bodies on their terms.  Those with a keener eye, saw it for what it was and didn’t buy it as art; and so refused to whip out their checkbooks to co-sign for the meat that was being sold. The video was deemed another exploitative piece of work showing Black female bodies on display for male profit and for the male gaze (a notion Black feminist Bell Hooks challenges in her essay “The Oppositional Gaze”). I left the video open to interpretation because I assumed Erykah would eventually offer an explanation.

According to Black cinema blog Shadow and Act, Erykah has since reached out to her fans via Twitter and asked what they thought about the video. After receiving a wide range of responses, Badu then posed another puzzling question: “What if the video has no meaning at all? Now how do u feel?” 

In a far more interesting chain of events, Erykah’s professional relationship with The Flaming Lips’ lead singer Wayne Coyne, publicly imploded due to what appeared to be a sinister example of exploitation. In an official statement, Coyne more or less admitted to releasing an unfinished and unedited version of the controversial video to the public, before getting the input of Erykah and her sister and before green-screening away the nudity like he allegedly promised to do, according to the singer. Erykah explained her agitation after Wayne aired her grievance on Twitter. He also released the following statement…

The video link that was erroneously posted on Pitchfork by the Flaming Lips of the Music Video ‘The First Time I Ever Saw Your Face’, which features Erykah Badu, is unedited and unapproved… Sorry!! We, the Flaming Lips, accept full responsibility for prematurely having Pitchfork post it. It has outraged and upset a segment of fans and we apologize if we offended any viewers!!! This is a Flaming Lips video which features Erykah Badu and her sister Nayrok and is not meant to be considered an Erykah Badu or Nayrok statement, creation, or approved version.

Erykah was none too pleased and fired off a litany of angry words of her own, expressing her dismay and regret for not listening to her initial feelings of apprehension about Wayne’s idea...

@waynecoyne then… perhaps, next time u get an occasion to work with an artist who respects your mind/art, you should send at least a ROUGh version of the video u PLAN to release b4 u manipulate or compromise the artist’s brand by desperately releasing a poor excuse for shock and nudity that sends a convoluted message that passes as art( to some).Even with Window Seat there was a method and thought process involved. I have not one need for publicity . I just love artistic dialogue . And just because an image is shocking does not make it art. You obviously have a misconception of who I am artistically. I don’t mind that but…By the way you are an ass. Yu did everything wrong from the on set .  First: You showed me a concept of beautiful tasteful imagery( by way of vid text messages) .  I trusted that. I was mistaken. Then u release an unedited, unapproved version within the next few days.  That all spells 1 thing , Self Serving . When asked what the concept meant after u explained it , u replied ,”it doesn’t mean anything , I just want to make a great video that everyone is going to watch. ” I understood , because as an artist we all desire that. But we don’t all do it at another artist’s expense . I attempted to resolve this respectfully by having conversations with u after the release but that too proved to be a poor excuse for art. From jump, You begged me to sit in a tub of that other shit and I said naw. I refused to sit in any liquid that was not water. But Out of RESPECT for you and the artist you ‘appear’ to be, I Didn’t wanna kill your concept , wanted u to at least get it out of your head . After all, u spent your dough on studio , trip to Dallas etc.. Sooo, I invited Nayrok , my lil sis and artist, who is much more liberal ,to be subject of those other disturbing (to me) scenes… Read the rest here

Needless to say, the video went against all the tenets of ‘Baduizm‘: it harbored no real meaning like people wanted it to, it wasn’t Erykah’s full vision like many of us assumed it to be, contrary to the usual proprietary authority Erykah has over her art, it appears as if she (and her sister) got bamboozled and used… which is unfortunate: “As a sociologist I understand your type. As your fellow artist I am uninspired. As a woman I feel violated and underestimated.”

And all yesterday-long (and today), much to Twitter followers’ exasperation and chagrin, Erykah Badu engaged in an exhausting, non-stop exchange with Wayne Coyne, who seemed to bask in taunting Badu and her followers with a series of antagonistic Tweets and Retweets on his timeline.

There are many lessons to be gleaned from these sorts of situations, particularly when you’re a Black woman trying to maintain ownership and respect over your image and body within the realm of the arts and media. And while Badu seems philosophical about the jarring experience…  “He’s got a record coming out, so you do what you do. But as artists we don’t do it at each other’s expense. I  adore his art. But not at my expense.”  

… I think Maya Angelou’s warning very concisely sums it all up: “The first time someone shows you who they are, believe them.”

Coffey

About the author

Tiff "Coffey" J is a freelance writer, short-story scribe, sporadic poet, intrepid Blogger, self-professed fire-starter, and coffee + wine lover. She has written features for print publications, has worked with professional theater company, HartBeat Ensemble, and is a contributor to other new media platforms. In short, Tiff J is just a woman who enjoys writing and drinking potent stuff. Much of her work can be found at www.coffeerhetoric.com. Follow her on Twitter: @Coffey0072

__________________________

Wayne Coyne

Is Not Going To Take

Erykah Badu's Criticisms

Lying Down

FIGHT! FIGHT! Erykah and Wayne are having a fight!

So in the ongoing heated discussion regarding that controversial Eryakah Badu and Flaming Lips music video where Ms. Badu shows off her chesticles and nether regions, front man for the Flaming Lips Wayne Coyne is not taking too kindly to her criticisms claiming that she and her sister Nayrok had been exploited by them, and that the version of the video released was a version not apporoved her.

Personally I think it is the version of the video she wanted to release, and when the reaction to it was overwhelmingly negative, she resorted to the same excuse Mary J. Blige used for her Burger King chicken wraps commercial that everyone hated. You know the "this is not the version of the video I approved of even though I was on the set for three days shooting" excuse.

Well, yesterday, Coyne tweeted a few responses to Badu's attack on him and the video.

First there was this tweet:

"Well yeah! We obviously barged into Erykah's house while she was taking a bath and made her sing the song while we filmed it!!! It was wrong."

Followed by this:

"And then went to her sister's house and did the same thing??? She had 3 tubs..A glitter, a blood and semen filled...We snuck in."

Followed by:

"She didn't know we, six white dudes with lights and camera, were there. While she played in a tub of semen we secretly filmed."

Then finally:

"Here's @fatbellybella and me. you can't see but I'm actually holding a gun to her head making her look at the camera."

And he incldued this still:

No response from Badu yet, but you know it's coming...

__________________________

All Undressed Up

with Nowhere to Go:

Reflections on the

E. Badu video

with Flaming Lips

- Àdisà

 by Ádìsá Ájámú on Tuesday, June 5, 2012  ·