Bookvine calls for submissions from young novelists.
Bookvine, the book publishing imprint of Vine Media Services, is currently accepting submissions from young emerging novelists of African origin seeking publishing deals.
Authors (and agents) are advised to submit only exceptional manuscripts of full length novels for consideration. Manuscripts must also be original and previously unpublished.
Submissions should be sent via email with the subject SUBMISSION to bookvine@vinemediang.com along with a brief biography of the author, contact details, a synopsis of the work and the manuscript.
Please note that only authors of considered manuscripts will be contacted within a maximum of three months from the date of submission.
Bookvine is looking to invest in an emerging young novelist of African origin with exceptional talent as the emerging publishing house is currently home to a short story writer and a few non-fiction writers.
The 2012 Gulf Coast Contests, awarding publication and $1,500 each in Poetry, Fiction, and Nonfiction, are now open. Honorable mentions in each category will receive a $250 prize.
The Postmark/Online Entry deadline is March 15th, 2012. Winners and Honorable Mentions will be announced in May.
Judges:
Fiction: Victor LaValle. Victor's most recent novel, Big Machine, won the Ernest J. Gaines Award and the Shirley Jackson Award, among others. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow and been given the Key to Southeast Queens. He teaches at Columbia University's MFA program. His next novel, The Devil in Silver, will be released in August.
Nonfiction: Jenny Boully. Jenny is the author of four books, most recently not merely because of the unknown that was stalking toward them (Tarpaulin Sky Press). Her other books include The Books of Beginnings and Endings (Sarabande Books), [one love affair]* (Tarpaulin Sky Press), and The Body: An Essay (Essay Press, first published by Slope Editions). Her work has been anthologized in The Best American Poetry, The Next American Essay, Great American Prose Poems: From Poe to the Present, and other places. Born in Thailand, she was reared in Texas by parents who farm and fish. She lives in Chicago, Illinois with her husband and daughter and teaches at Columbia College Chicago.
Poetry: Joyelle McSweeney. Joyelle is the author of the poetry books The Red Bird, The Commandrine and Other Poems, and the upcoming Percussion Grenade: Poems and Plays, all from Fence. She is also the author of two lyric novels, Flet (Fence, 2008) and Nylund, the Sarcographer (Tarpaulin Sky, 2007), with a collection of short stories, Salamandrine, 8 Gothics, forthcoming from Tarpaulin Sky in Fall 2012. In 2010, she published an artist's book, The Necropastoral, featuring poems and essays by McSweeney and collages by Andrew Shuta, from Spork Press. McSweeney is a co-founder of Action Books and Action, Yes, a press and web-quarterly dedicated to international writing and hybrid forms. She teaches in the MFA program at the University of Notre Dame.
Guidelines:
To enter online (preferred), visit the online submissions manager and be sure to choose "CONTEST: Fiction," "CONTEST: Poetry," or "CONTEST: Nonfiction/Lyric Essay" as your genre.
Upload one previously unpublished story or essay (25 double-spaced pages max) or up to five previously unpublished poems (10 pages max). Do not include a cover letter, your name, or contact info of any kind in your uploaded document; please put this information in the "comments" field.
Once you've clicked "submit," you will be redirected to PayPal to authorize your $23 online reading fee, which also gets you a one-year subscription. You won't need a PayPal account, only a credit card. Multiple submissions are acceptable, but you must pay the fee for each entry. We'll contact you if there are any problems with your payment; please do not email us to confirm whether payment was received.
To enter by mail, send one previously unpublished story or essay (25 double-spaced pages max) or up to five previously unpublished poems (10 pages max) to the address below. Indicate your genre on the outer envelope. Your name and address should appear on the cover letter only. Include a SASE for results. Your $20 postal reading fee, payable to "Gulf Coast," will include a one-year subscription. Manuscripts will not be returned.
Send Postal Entries to: Gulf Coast Prize in [Genre] Department of English University of Houston Houston, TX 77204-3013
International Conference on Nollywood, Women, and Cultural Identity
May 8th – 11th 2012 at the Benue State University Theatre Arts Complex, Makurdi, Nigeria
The Nigerian movie industry is fast growing and its global reach is quite phenomenal. It is speculated that Nollywood has become the third largest movie industry in the world after Hollywood and Bollywood. Despite this reach and growth, this growing and vibrant industry is inundated with challenges, some of which are presumed to be technological, professional, ethical, and cultural among others. Intersecting these challenges is the critical question of the place and representation of women. Nollywood and its films may have short-changed women, thereby creating not only a lopsided picture of the human resource, but the limitation of women’s participation and contribution to national identity and development. In this regard, the movie industry has a major role in reversing the hitherto challenging issues of exclusive practices, negative portrayal, cultural, and gender stereotypes. With Nigeria’s 50th Independence Anniversary, the current wave of the rebranding project, the clamour for 35% affirmative action for women, as well as the concerted efforts at achieving the targets of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), it has become necessary to create a critical forum to discuss issues relating to the status and role of women in one of the nations most productive spheres. To negotiate these challenges and problematic, this conference is designed to afford scholars, researchers, professionals, and stakeholders the opportunity to cross-pollinate ideas. Possible themes to consider for your individual or panel presentation include, but not limited to, the following:
• Women and the Nollywood Industry • Women Directors in Nollywood • Women Producers in Nollywood • Female Stars in Nollywood • Women and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) • Gender and Interculturalism in Nollywood • Women, Cultural and Religious Taboos in Nollywood Films • Nollywood, Women and Globalization • Motherhood in Nollywood Films • Gendered Language Codes in Nollywood Films • Gender and Cultural Identity • Women and Violence in Nollywood • Gender and Politics in Nollywood Films • Gender and Film Genres in Nollywood Films • Gender and Performance in Nollywood Films • Gender and Race in Nollywood Films • Queer Nollywood • Gender and Fashion in Nollywood Films • Sexuality in Nollywood Films
Keynote Presenter: Professor Maureen Eke, of Central Michigan University
Please send a titled abstract between 200-250 words (for a 20-minute paper presentation), your technical needs, and a brief bio to bsunollywomen@gmail.com by March 30, 2012.
Registration Fee: $125 for international participants, N15,000 for local participants and $50 for international graduate students, and N5,000 for local post grad students.
Set in Nairobi, Kenya, and back for a hotly anticipated second series, Shuga is a hard-hitting drama that follows the lives, loves and ambitions of a group of young people whose bright lives and fabulous futures are balanced on a knife edge due to their love of living dangerously.
Esi Edugyan's novel "Half-Blood Blues" is a portrayal of jazz musicians in Nazi Germany.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
"Half-Blood Blues" captures end of jazz age in 1930s Germany in characters' staccato slang
Novel conveys the paranoia leading up to start of World War II and racial tension of the time
As Canadian-born daughter of Ghanaian immigrants, "I grew up between worlds," novelist says
Esi Edugyan says a sense of uprootedness "lies at the heart of this novel"
(CNN) -- Imagine a smoke-filled jazz club, dark and crowded. The sounds of a trumpet solo echo on stage, while a piano, bass and drums pound out a finger-snapping groove. You can almost smell the cigarette smoke, taste the cheap booze being served. This is Berlin, 1939 -- the eve of World War II. These are the Hot Time Swingers, the imagined jazz band at the center of Esi Edugyan's "Half-Blood Blues." The novel was a finalist for Britain's prestigious Man Booker prize in 2011 and reaches U.S. bookstores this week.
The story is told through the eyes of the Swingers' bass player, Sid Griffiths, in alternating takes between events in Paris and Berlin in 1939 and Baltimore and Berlin in 1992. The novel captures the end of the jazz age in Germany perfectly in the characters' staccato slang, sounding much like jazz music imagined as dialogue. Offstage, the story captures the paranoia and fear of the days leading up to the start of the war, and the racial tension of the time period.
Sid narrates, but the band's brilliant young trumpet player, Hieronymus "Hiero" Falk, is the linchpin of the story, a German who happens to be black. Hiero's prodigy-like talent brings the band success, love and rivalries among its members. After being banned by the Nazis as "degenerate" music, the Swingers escape to Paris, where they meet Louis Armstrong. But then war breaks out, and the Gestapo arrests Hiero in a café. He is never heard from again.
Jump ahead 50 years. Falk has become a cult hero among jazz fans. He's now the subject of a documentary film. Sid and the only other surviving band member, Chip Jones, are invited to the film's premiere in Berlin. As they return to celebrate their long-lost friend, Sid, the only witness to Hiero's disappearance, is forced to reveal a decades-old secret.
"Half-Blood Blues" is the second novel from Edugyan, an author with a bit of a globe-hopping past. She was born and raised in Canada, the daughter of immigrant parents from Ghana. She has studied and lived in the United States and across Europe, including stops in Iceland, Spain and Germany.Now married and mother to an infant daughter, Edugyan lives in Victoria, British Columbia.
CNN recently asked her about the novel in a phone interview and via e-mail. The following is an edited transcript:
CNN: What was the spark behind your book?
Edugyan: I was living in Germany at the time, acutely aware of my difference -- being a black woman from Canada. At the same time I'd been reading about the so-called "Rhineland Bastards" -- the half-black children of France's colonial soldiers from Africa stationed in the Rhineland after the close of the first World War. I began imagining their lives in Germany, as both outsiders and insiders, and this naturally led to my wondering what must have happened to them during the 1930s, with the rise of Nazism. This is where my interest in the novel came from. But the book itself more rightly begins with Sid's voice, his character, the perplexing problems of loyalty and betrayal in any artistic life.
CNN: You really captured the feel, the language and the tone of the late 1930s European jazz scene. Did you research this period extensively before you started writing?
Edugyan: Thank you, that's kind of you to say. I researched assiduously, both before and during the writing, to capture the feel of that world. But Sid's voice is so very particular to Sid himself that I would never want it to stand in as some sort of "representative" voice from that time. It's an approximation of the kind of hybrid language he and his band mates were speaking at the time. But it's important to remember, too, that Sid is a man straddling two eras -- 1930s Europe and 1990s Baltimore -- and the shifts in his rhythms, diction, syntax hopefully capture some of that flavor.
CNN: I pictured you listening to a lot of jazz from this time period while you were writing. Did you and were there any jazz artists in particular that inspired you?
Edugyan: It's interesting to hear you say so. The music was my constant companion, even more than books. Not only as a way to lead me back into the novel after each break but also as a kind of consolation. There was a strength and faith and promise in it that I think I needed at the time. What's fascinating to me now is to think back on who I was listening to at various points in the novel and read the book with that in mind. Not only the language itself, but the speed and emotion under the prose finds a corollary in the music. Or so it seems to me in retrospect. Among the artists I listened to most often were Sidney Bechet, Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong.
CNN: Your novel focuses on the Nazi persecution of the Afro-German community. What drew you to this little known chapter of pre-World War II history?
Edugyan: As the Canadian-born daughter of Ghanaian immigrants, I grew up between worlds, in a sense, aware both of my differences and kinships. Loyalties were always mixed, and the world inside the walls of my home was significantly different from the world beyond it.
I did my graduate work at Johns Hopkins, living in Baltimore for a short time, which reinforced this complicated sense of identity. And in the years since, I lived on and off in Europe, where, as ever, I had periods of feeling profoundly at home and periods of total estrangement. I think that sense of uprootedness, that quiet seeking after identity and self, lies at the heart of this novel.
... In the writing itself, you're not thinking about such things. You just know that there's a story there, one you want told. And you run with it.
CNN: While Sid narrates the novel, this really felt like Hiero's story to me. He's such a compelling character but remains something of an enigma. I assume this was by design?
Edugyan: Absolutely. That unknowability lies at the core of the novel. It seemed it would have been an act of extraordinary presumption to take Hiero's voice, to speak for him, to fill that silence. And, too, a way of diminishing the sadness of what he (and his real-life counterparts) suffered.
CNN: You come from such an interesting background, the child of Ghanaian émigré parents, born and raised in Canada. You've studied in a number of countries, including the U.S. and Europe. You now live in British Columbia. How has all that world travel influenced you as an artist and a person?
Edugyan: ... There can be something liberating ... for the fiction writer who finds herself caught between worlds. An opportunity to observe and inhabit the skins of others. I know, for myself, that all of that traveling has impacted the kinds of stories I am drawn to.
CNN: You're also the mother of a young child. Has that changed your approach to writing?
Edugyan: Oh, it's still so early to tell -- our daughter is only 6 months old. But that, too, is turning out to be a different kind of journey.
CNN: What's next for you?
Edugyan: I find myself staring out the windows an awful lot these days, dreaming up the next book. But our daughter fills up the immediate hours of the day.
For centuries, Africans in the New World have drawn sustenance from biblical stories detailing the exodus of the Jews from slavery in Egypt. In mid-20th-century America, many Jews supported civil rights by marching alongside black demonstrators. Recent decades, however, have sometimes found these two peoples at odds, arguing over who has had it worse. It is a bewildering contest to say the least, for there has always been more than enough evil to go around.
Half-Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan, Thomas Allen, 309 pages, $24.95
Victoria writer Esi Edugyan reconciles these two haunted histories in a stunningly original work about black experience in Nazi Germany which was this week short-listed for the Man Booker Prize and long-listed for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. It's a second novel for Edugyan that, like her first, The Second Life of Samuel Tyne, taps a rich, little-known vein of black history.
Set in Baltimore, Berlin and Paris, Half-Blood Blues spans from just after the Great War to the 1990s, but centres on the months leading up to the occupation of Paris. It chronicles the increasingly deadly trials of an interracial jazz band in which the lead musician, a German of African descent, is arrested by the Nazis.
Half-Blood Blues can be compared to a jazz symphony with discrete movements, shifting moods and a complex chorus of human and instrumental voices: It swings between present and past, North and South, East and West, black and white, art and violence, war and peace.
In 1939 Berlin, Sid Griffiths, an African-American bass player, and his friend, Chip Jones, belong to a popular jazz band. Composed of African-American and German musicians, the Hot Time Swingers play the city's clubs and cabarets. Eventually, Hieronymous Falk, a brilliant Afro-German trumpeter, joins the ensemble. He is the son of a French African soldier and a white German mother, a member of a despised population known as the Rhineland bastards. As the Nazi threat grows, Hiero's racial heritage places him in constant danger. To make matters worse, the Nazis label jazz the degenerate music of blacks and Jews.
After the band is involved in a fatal brawl, and the Nazis deport their Jewish piano player, Chip, Hiero and Sid flee to France. In Paris, where they believe they will be safe, they audition for Louis Armstrong. It is their dream come true. But French officials have already started rounding up Germans, and after the occupation, Nazis begin rounding up undesirables. Both developments place Hiero at risk.
Edugyan illustrates how the Germans treated blacks according to their nationality. African Americans – mainly artists and diplomats – could move about with the proper documents, while Hiero, a native of Germany, is considered a despicable outsider.
Canada exists far from the landscape of this novel, represented only by Delilah, from Montreal, with whom Sid falls in love. Nevertheless, key themes of black Canadian literature surface throughout, including the international nature of racism, the unpredictable treatment of blacks, the conundrum of biracial identity and the anxiety-inducing issue of passing.
Sid is a light-skinned black from Baltimore whose Virginia relatives have decided to pass for white. In Berlin, however, Sid's olive complexion makes him more suspect than the band's blond, blue-eyed pianist, who is Jewish. Still, Sid's light skin guarantees him greater privilege than either Chip or Hiero, both dark. Edugyan shuffles the race cards to illustrate the dizzying implications of various permutations of shade, nationality and ethnicity. At the same time, she subtly implies that the poignancy of Chip's and Hiero's racial experience informs their superior musical gifts.
The novel is narrated by Sid in a jazzy black vernacular full of bawdy wit and rough tenderness that may give some readers cause to quibble. Yet Edugyan's shaping of plot through voice and dialogue resembles a painter who models her subjects from whorls of colour. At times, Sid's voice feels limiting, for he is a slightly naive, moderately talented musician, full of insecurities and petty jealousies. Sid comes to resent Hiero for his extravagant gifts and for the special bond the young man shares with Delilah. His pettiness turns malevolent.
Edugyan's musically educated ear allows her to transpose notes into words and back again. Listen, then, to Hiero's duet with Armstrong: “It was the sound of the gods, all that brass. … Hiero thrown out note after shimmering note, like sunshine sliding all over the surface of a lake, Armstrong was the water, all depth and thought, not one wasted note. Hiero, he just reaching out, seeking the shore …”
Stranded in Paris, Hiero persuades Sid and Chip to record a song he calls Half-Blood Blues. Delilah finds them an ancient studio where they play take after glorious take. In a few days, Hiero would be captured by the Nazis. But “for that night at least,” Sid recalls, “we was free.”
Much of the power of this unforgettable novel comes from the way its racial themes echo. It is very difficult to perceive and articulate the twisted skein of emotion that is black experience – and yet that is just what Edugyan manages to do with this brilliantly conceived, gorgeously executed novel. It's a work that promises to lead black literature in a whole new direction.
Donna Bailey Nurse is the author of What's a Black Critic To Do? She is writing a literary memoir of the U.S. South.
Azizah translated means "My powerful beloved". Azizah looks at the lives or Black American Lesbians who were raised in Islam. This is a documentary currently in development.
On Feb. 25, 2012, the sun set on the life of Jean Ristil Jean-Baptiste. We lost a great warrior, courageous and committed. Jean Ristil suffered from chronic ill health, anxieties and stress, but for him, saying he was feeling fine was an automatic reflex, almost to the very end, even when it wasn’t true.
He wanted to live. He was only 31 years old. He spent months before his death in hiding because of the constant threats to his life from the Duvalierist retaking of Haiti behind U.S.-U.N. firepower and false NGO charity.
Jean Ristil gave his life, all his love, even his health for Haiti. His blood flowed for Haiti. He was a brave and consequential man. He was our true brother – Dessalines’ descendant. He never sold Haiti out to the foreigners. He knew it was the blood of the Ancestors which gave us our freedom. It was not a gift the whites made us.
Jean Ristil’s photographs are etched into our hearts. Here are some of our favorites that the Bay View has run over the years. This is his classic photo of the outpouring of love shown to former President Aristide and his family on March 18, 2011, the day they returned to Haiti for the first time since the Feb. 29, 2004, coup. They poured into the yard of his home, even onto the roof, to welcome him home at last. – Photo: Jean Ristil Jean Baptiste
Jean Ristil was born in Site Solèy (often spelled in French as Cité Soleil), Haiti, on Dec. 12, 1981. Jean lived his entire life in the city. Through good times and bad times, he was always there for the people of Haiti. He was thrown in jail under the Gerard Latortue regime. He was persecuted. They beat him many times for his work as a journalist and photojournalist. He fought hard to give voice to the voiceless.
Jean Ristil fearlessly, even recklessly faced the complexities and harsh realities of living in Site Solèy – the poorest, most destitute community in the Western Hemisphere. He was a living library of information which he extended to the world as a Haiti journalist, photographer, community leader, founder of Fondasyon Kole Zepòl Pou Sove Timoun Site Solèy and longtime member of the HLLN (Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network)-Ezili Dantò Witness Project.
When the rains came in June 2010, five months after the earthquake, these meager tents housing suvivors in Cite Soleil were surrounded by a lake. The tents, then new, are now tattered and torn but still home. – Photo: Jean Ristil Jean Baptiste
Jean Ristil was an information source for us at Ezili Dantò’s HLLN from 2004 to the present on what was going on in the populous neighborhoods under attack by the U.S.-U.N. occupation forces. A loyal friend, a soldier for justice, a respected leader in Site Solèy, an indomitable spirit.
Jean led with a quiet energy. You reached out, he was there, watching, already in the mix, listening intensely, ready to be of service, to share. He had stubborn determination. He hustled, he had game, he refused to be defeated. No matter the difficulty, he expected to come through it safely.
Jean Ristil worked closely with the beloved Father Gerard Jean-Juste. – Photo: Jean Ristil Jean Baptiste
He would take on a task, even when he had no idea how to get it done, but then he’d make a way. Jean frustrated you sometimes but you forgave him. What are you going to do? It wasn’t Jean Ristil’s fault that he scared you to death always facing danger so directly – going where angels fear to tread. Not his fault he had to feed and provide for so many who would otherwise go hungry in NGO-occupied Haiti.
It wasn’t Jean Ristil’s fault that he scared you to death always facing danger so directly – going where angels fear to tread. Not his fault he had to feed and provide for so many who would otherwise go hungry in NGO-occupied Haiti.
Jean Ristil was the real thing. He could not look away or betray his community – as the most educated, privileged and powerful in Haiti, in the world, at the U.N. Security Council do. Jean didn’t live to make a profit over people but to be of service.
When former President Aristide’s party, Lavalas, was banned from the April 19, 2009, ballot, Haitians boycotted the election. This photo of the nearly empty ballot box dramatically illustrates the success of the boycott. – Photo: Jean Ristil Jean Baptiste
We’ll miss Jean Ristil. So much. His work and courage remain to inspire us, to keep us going forward.
He spent all his time helping the children in Site Solèy – especially those without fathers, those without mothers. Everyone of consequence who knew him loved Jean Ristil, loved what this humble man did with his life.
He didn’t have much formal schooling, but he was a degreed professor in the university of life. He knew the real meaning of “honor and respect.” He educated us: His life showed us how a Haitian without material means fights on without rest for justice for the people. His life showed us the very meaning of being in the struggle for justice.
The coup that saw U.S. Marines pluck democratically elected President Aristide and his family out of Haiti and fly them to the Central African Republic occurred on leap year day, Feb. 29, 2004, perhaps, considering Haitians’ habit of marking anniversaries with huge marches, to foil commemorations. But they were held every year anyway, this one on the first leap year day following the coup, Feb. 29, 2008, in Port au Prince. – Photo: Jean Ristil Jean Baptiste
His life is testimony that a genuinely educated man is a man with empathy for those less privileged. Pale Fransé pa edikasyon (Speaking French doesn’t necessarily mean you’re educated.)
A great warrior, great warrior. Jean Ristil Jean-Baptiste, we wanted to save you. An avan, an avan for Jean Ristil, his children, family and all in need in Site Soley. We mourn our loss but rejoice in the memory of his ceaseless struggle for justice and equality. Nou pap bay legen (We will not give up).
When starvation looms in Haiti, a special clay containing calcium and other nutrients from near the town of Hinche in the Central Plateau is combined with salt and vegetable shortening to make cookies that are dried in the sun and eaten. As these children’s lethargy testifies, the cookies help to sustain life – barely. – Photo: Jean Ristil Jean Baptiste
He worked for justice, to bring life and health to Haiti. He kept his honor. Ayibobo pou ou Jean Ristil (All hail Jean Ristil). He was our genuine brother and, as Jean once wrote, “God will never forget those he loves.” Haitians with loving hearts will never forget you.
We are tired of death. Tired that so many of our warriors are dying, brave men like Jean Ristil Jean-Baptiste who work for social justice in Haiti but never live to see justice done for themselves nor for their children. He leaves the rest to us.
Ezili Danto, award winning playwright, performance poet, dancer, actor and activist attorney born in Port au Prince, Haiti, founded and chairs the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network (HLLN), supporting and working cooperatively with Haitian freedom fighters and grassroots organizations promoting the civil, human and cultural rights of Haitians at home and abroad. Visit her at www.ezilidanto.com or www.open.salon.com/blog/ezili_danto. This story was translated by the Haitian blogger.
This is Jean Ristil’s footage of the U.N. December 2006 massacre in Site Soley, Haiti. The U.N. lied, said they only shot “gangsters” on Dec. 22, 2006. Jean Ristil interviews those “gangsters” – innocent, unarmed civilians in Site Soley – as they lay dying from U.N. bullets. @haitiinfoproj
Jean Ristil’s footage of the July 2005 massacre in Site Soley is at the end of “Haiti: We Must Kill the Bandits.” @haitiinfoproj
by Kevin Pina I'm sure we all know someone that works tirelessly on behalf of their convictions never caring much about recognition as others around them receive the attention, credibility and accolades. Jean Ristil was exactly that kind of unique soul who cared less about his own recognition than what others were actually doing for his community and his people. Although Jean Ristil was no stranger to being marginalized by those who felt more entitled, it didn't matter to him because in the end talk was cheap and life was more precious. Growing up and living in Cite Soleil in Haiti, Jean knew never to judge anyone, Haitian or foreigner, by what they said or claimed but by what they actually did for others. Jean Ristil was a people's journalist, unafraid to take chances to show the world the truth about Haiti and Cite Soleil. During the dark days of repression and murder against Lavalas supporters between 2004-2006, we were part of a team that formed an underground network to collect and distribute information from the grassroots in Haiti to the rest of the world.Jean Ristil was one of the most courageous people I've ever known. When no one else would dare to report on police raids and indiscriminate killings in neighborhoods like Cite de Dieu, Cite Militaire and Bel Air, Jean Ristil would pack his camera and run, not walk, to get the photographic evidence. He knew that since the corporate media and human rights organizations had turned a blind eye to Haiti, in the end all the world would ever see was the photographic evidence we provided of the killings. Jean Ristil also watched my back on countless occasions while I was videotaping massive Lavalas protests during this period where the police would simply start shooting at people randomly to sow terror. When the US Marines or the UN troops moved against him I would intervene and when the Haitian police came against me he would come to my aid sometimes telling them I was a "stupid blan reporter who didn't know any better." I remember one time it was clear that one particular Haitian SWAT officer knew exactly who I was and what I was doing when Jean played the "stupid blan" card. The SWAT cop lifted his black ski mask to look closely at the press badges hanging from our necks then smiled and waved us on saying, "I know who you two are. Get out of here." To this day I like to think there was a begrudging tone of respect in that policeman's response for the loyalty Jean and I regularly showed each other in the field.Jean Ristil was an organic intellectual with nerves of steel. I remember a conversation Jean and I had in June 2005 one month before the UN massacre he documented in Cite Soleil. We were discussing what to do about the injured and dying shot by the UN and the Haitian police we were confronting on a daily basis. Was it better to help them if we could or to stay detached to document what was going on. It was a painful discussion with both of us changing sides and positions many times. In the end we decided that if we thought we could actually help save a life we would, but that if someone was clearly dying of their wounds we would be honoring them more if we documented their death. Our thinking was that no one would ever know these people in the poor neighborhoods of Haiti had ever lived save for our documenting their deaths for the world. A month later after the UN raid in his community of Cite Soleil on July 6, 2005, Jean would be put to the test. As Leonce Chery lay dying of a single shot to his jaw from a high-powered rifle, Jean stayed with him until the end. It took seven minutes for Leonce to bleed out and die and Jean captured every second of his excruciating death on camera. Yes, Jean Ristil was a courageous soul who didn't suffer from post traumatic stress syndrome but learned to live with acute traumatic stress in his everyday existence in Cite Soleil. His was a soul and personality of iron.
On September 9, 2005, Jean Ristil would once again jump into the breach. It was already a strange day when I received a frantic phone call from Jean saying that the police were searching Father Gerard Jean-Juste's residence at St. Claire's church in Ti Place Cazeau. Jean-Juste was being held in prison and Jean Ristil was convinced the police were going to try to plant guns in the church to justify his arrest. "Pina, you've got to come now!" he yelled over the telephone. Jean was waiting for me as I arrived and followed me as I jumped a fence and began filming the police searching Jean-Juste's bedroom. A judge accompanied by several large police wearing black ski masks grabbed my arm and tried to take my camera calling me a "White Lavalas Bandit!" I quickly spun to protect my camera yelling "I have the right to film!" as the judge's own momentum sent him flying to the floor in a heap. I told Jean to leave as the police rushed me. The judge, in a screaming and spitting fury, ordered me arrested on the spot. Jean Ristil was out in front of the church videotaping as they escorted me out in handcuffs. Suddenly the judge turns to one of the masked policemen and tells them, "Take this one too. He's with the blan" and now both of us are handcuffed and thrown into the back of a jeep. Jean Ristil spent two days in jail thinking they would keep him longer because he was Haitian and let me go because I had a US passport. When it turned out they let him go a day earlier and the judge ordered me to stay behind bars "until I decide your fate for disrespecting me," Jean Ristil said to me as he left the jail, "Don't worry. you're Haitian now, we'll make sure nothing happens to you."
Kevin Pina and Jean Ristil behind bars in Haiti on September 10, 2005.
For all of his time spent documenting suffering and death, Jean Ristil refused to let it define him. Jean celebrated life in the present and had a clear vision of the life he wanted for the children of Cite Soleil in the future. I remember when Jean Ristil founded the organization Kole Zepòl Sove Ti Moun, Cite Soleil to help orphaned children in his community. Jean said he didn't want foreigners to come in and take the children out of their community to put them on display in their orphanage to raise money for their projects. Neither did he want them to end up as part of the scandalous system of adoption in Haiti that he saw as tantamount to human trafficking. No, Jean Ristil's idea was far simpler and direct. If you really wanted to support Haiti and Cite Soleil than support local families to adopt the orphans in the community. Support them to improve their lives even as they open their arms and hearts to children in their community left parent-less largely due to structural and state-sponsored violence. It was a unique and creative approach that is an example of the way Jean Ristil approached problems in Cite Soleil and in Haiti, with a clear sense of history.Jean Ristil was that rare person that serves as a bridge between grassroots activism and journalism in the world. Yes, he was truly the people's journalist of Haiti but what others said or didn't say about his work didn't seem to matter as much to Jean Ristil as it does to others. In the end, the only thing that seemed to really matter to Jean was what he was going to do next for his community and for Haiti.
The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights was named after a largely unsung hero of the civil rights Freedom Movement who inspired and guided emerging leaders. Like her, we spark change by unlocking the power of people to make real change. We seek to honor Miss Baker’s legacy through our people-powered campaigns.
Ella Jo Baker was born on December 13, 1903, in Norfolk, Virginia. She developed a sense for social justice early in her life. As a girl growing up in North Carolina, Baker listened to her grandmother tell stories about slave revolts. As a slave, her grandmother had been whipped for refusing to marry a man chosen for her by the slave owner.
Baker studied at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina. As a student she challenged school policies that she thought were unfair. After graduating in 1927 as class valedictorian, she moved to New York City and began joining social activist organizations. In 1930, she joined the Young Negroes Cooperative League, whose purpose was to develop black economic power through collective planning. She also involved herself with several women's organizations. She was committed to economic justice for all people and once said, "People cannot be free until there is enough work in this land to give everybody a job."
Ella Baker began her involvement with the NAACP in 1940. She worked as a field secretary and then served as director of branches from 1943 until 1946. Inspired by the historic bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955, Baker co-founded the organization In Friendship to raise money to fight against Jim Crow Laws in the deep South. In 1957, Baker moved to Atlanta to help organize Martin Luther King's new organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). She also ran a voter registration campaign called the Crusade for Citizenship.
On February 1, 1960, a group of black college students from North Carolina A&T University refused to leave a Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina where they had been denied service. Baker left the SCLC after the Greensboro sit-ins. She wanted to assist the new student activists because she viewed young, emerging activists as a resource and an asset to the movement. Miss Baker organized a meeting at Shaw University for the student leaders of the sit-ins in April 1960. From that meeting, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee -- SNCC -- was born.
Adopting the Gandhian theory of nonviolent direct action, SNCC members joined with activists from the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) to organize in the 1961 Freedom Rides. In 1964 SNCC helped create Freedom Summer, an effort to focus national attention on Mississippi's racism and to register black voters. Miss Baker, and many of her contemporaries, believed that voting was one key to freedom. 50 years later, folks of color and low-income people still face barriers to voting. If we do not exercise our collective voice, we are unable to influence the policies and laws that impact our lives. To be counted, we must be heard. Our Soul of the City civic engagement work and participation with Oakland Rising builds on the Voting Rights work of the 60s.
With Ella Baker's guidance and encouragement, SNCC became one of the foremost advocates for human rights in the country. Ella Baker once said, "This may only be a dream of mine, but I think it can be made real." Her audacity to dream big is a cornerstone of our philosophy.
Her influence was reflected in the nickname she acquired: "Fundi," a Swahili word meaning a person who teaches a craft to the next generation. Baker continued to be a respected and influential leader in the fight for human and civil rights until her death on December 13, 1986, her 83rd birthday.
Wanting to celebrate Ella Jo Baker as an unsung hero of racial and economic justice and seeking to honor her legacy of leadership and movement building, our founders chose to name our Center for Ella Baker. Our Executive Director, Jakada Imani reflects, "Long before I would ever hear the name of Ella Jo Baker, I was living inside of the world her leadership help create. As a child of Oakland I grew up hearing about the role of young people as front line fighters for freedom in the Civil Rights Movement. I got my start in the movement in youth programs that were based on the work Ms. Baker had done with SNCC, leadership programs based in the idea that young folks had something special to contribute to the struggle for freedom. That's now part of my DNA and I take it everywhere I go."
“The major job was getting people to understand that they had something within their power that they could use, and it could only be used if they understood what was happening and how group action could counter violence…” - Ella Jo Baker
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Our four campaigns engage people in the work of building a brighter future where all people and communities can thrive: Books Not Bars fights to redirect California's resources away from youth incarceration and towards youth opportunities.
Miss Baker often asked, "What is the excuse for so much poverty in a country as rich as America?" Our Green Collar Job Campaignbuilds California's green economy to put the planet and people first.
Miss Baker said, "Oppressed people, whatever their level of formal education, have the ability to understand and interpret the world around them...to transform it." Soul of the City is our hands-on, hands-together campaign to create a vibrant and thriving Oakland. Heal the Streets, like SNCC, is built on Miss Baker's theory that young people are assets to the movement for freedom. This fellowship creates proactive youth voices in the fight for social change.
Bob Marley & the Wailers 7-21-1979 Live Full Show Announcer Intro. for Dick Gregory Dick Gregory Speech then he Introduces Bob Marley Positive Vibration Slave Driver Them Belly Full Runnin Away Crazy Baldhead The Heathen War No More Trouble Lively Up Yourself No Woman No Cry Jammin Get Up Stand Up Exodus Encore Appluase: Zimbabwe Wake Up & Live Band Intros by Junior Marvin - 1st performance of these 2 new songs. also during these 2 new songs bob marley made several short speeches which was unusual for bobBand Members Bob Marley - rhythm guitar & vocalsThe Wailers Carlton Barrett - drums Aston "Family Man Barrett - bass Junior Marvin - guitar Al Anderson - lead guitar Tyrone Downie - keyboards Earl "Wya"Lindo - organ & clavinet Alvin "Seeco" Patterson - percussionI Threes Rita Marley - backing vocals Judy Mowatt - backing vocals Marcia Griffiths - backing vocalsNotes: On July 21, 1979 Bob Marley and The Wailers, Dick Gregory, Olatunji, Eddie Palmieri, Jabula, the art of Black Dance and Patti Labelle came to Harvard Stadium in Boston for a concert to benefit the on-going struggles in Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa. The concert was called AMANDLA.: Festival of Unity. A benfit Concert for Relief and Humanitarian Aid to Southern Africa.25 years later in making this video of the performance of Bob Marley and the Wailers, we celebrate the triumph of these liberation struggles of the people of Southern Africa for equality, dignity and self determination.This videotape is dedicated in memory of Bob marley singer of songs of freedom and in memory of Kwame Olatunji who was responsible for recording this historic eventThis videotape is for the private non-commercial use of the Amandla Production Collective and Haymarket ConcertsSound Notes This is a sbd mix directly from the board (which means that what ever adjustments the soundman makes for the sound going through the PA speakers is what you get on your recording). If it was a patch from the sbd it has its own mix seperate from the house mix (which means the soundman adjustments are for the recording not the PA system, usually the mix is more balanced if the sound person has time to set this for the line out signal). Therefore these are the flaws on this recording In the beginning the bass was a liitle low. So from "No Woman No Cry" to the end of the show the sound engineer makes a change and adds more bass on the board feed.This is why you here a difference in sound. Unfortunatley ^ - the bass is a little to high on these 2 songs but then adjusted lower on the rest PLEASE NOTE This is a major upgrade in picture quality compared to the other source that is 3.13 gb and that does not include the speech. There is also another version with bonus material but that has a time code included. This does have a sbd adjustment where i indicated but that is the only flaw.This a must have for any Bob Marley fan
I am a big fan of Linton Kwesi Johnson. His Dread Beat and Blood was one of the most played piece of vinyl on my turntable back in the mid 80′s. This show from Stockholm captures Linton in his prime with the Dennis Bovell Dub Band. It was broadcast on the radio and I give thanks to those document and share rare unreleased roots like this show.
