Nev Nnaji’s “Reflections Unheard: Black Women in Civil Rights” reflects upon the marginalization of black women in the Black Power and Feminist movements and raises awareness of the intersectionality of race and gender oppression. Documenting Civil Rights through the voices of women of the movement, “Reflections Unheard” considers the issues of the 1960s and 70s which echo for black women, even today. Director Nev Nnaji has been working diligently on the film the past year, despite resource challenges. The clip, below, demonstrates the importance of this work-in-progress, and the urgency for the full realization of this film. Learn more about the project and support the film’s completion on Director Nev Nnaji’s Indiegogo campaign.
Nev Nnaji is a film student at Boston University, and the founder of her independent film production company, Yello Kat Productions.
“Reflections Unheard: Black Women in Civil Rights” is her first feature-length documentary, and has offset her mission to create media that is relevant to the black female experience in America. Her interests include Racio-misogyny studies and the cessation of sexual, emotional and spiritual violence against women. Prior to her University education, Nev lived in a Nigerian boarding school for two years, during which she found her voice. You can follow her work on twitter, connect with her on facebook, or visit her website. For the last year, Nev has diligently worked on “Reflections Unheard” outside of her course of study. At thit time, the film is urgently in need of funding. You may find out more and help support this important project at Nev’s Indiegogo campaign.
In this feature-length documentary, Marilyn Waring demystifies the language of economics by defining it as a value system in which all goods and activities are related only to their monetary value. As a result, unpaid work (usually performed by women) is unrecognized while activities that may be environmentally and socially detrimental are deemed productive. Waring maps out an alternative vision based on the idea of time as the new currency.
Here's something to boggle the mind: the Democratic Republic of Congo's mineral resources are estimated at $24tn USD. This is more than the combined GDP of Europe and America! You read that right.
Unfortunately, right now, the ones benefiting the most from those mineral resources are companies who manufacture mobile phones, laptops, mp3 players and games consoles, and the militia groups who control some of the mines and who've been fighting each other in eastern Congo for over a decade.
The main part of minerals used to produce cell phones (and laptops, mp3 players, etc.) come from the mines in the eastern Congo. The western world buys these minerals, thereby partially funding the conflict, and uses them in the manufacture of phones which are them sold all over the world.
The minerals aren't the cause of the conflict, but because the militia groups are connected to most of the mines — according to Dominique Bibaka, the director of Strong Roots, an environmental charity that works with miners to improve their conditions, 98% of east Congo's mines have some involvement with one militia or another — their sale is fuelling the conflict.
If you ask the phone companies where their suppliers get minerals from, not one of them can guarantee that they aren’t buying conflict minerals from the Congo (see Jobs: "No way to be sure" iPhone minerals are conflict-free). Thus, you and me and everyone we know with a mobile phone is potentially implicated. But if our connection to the conflict is inadvertent, what about the mobile phone companies? Do they really not know or do they just not want to know because their profits would be significantly affected if they made the connection and had to act on it?
This is part of what director Frank Piasecki Poulsen set out to find out, the result of which is Blood in the Mobile, a documentary that has just gone on general release in the UK, America and Canada, after picking up a bunch of awards on the festival circuit. (Screening schedule here and here; US residents can also watch it online here; and if it's not screening anywhere near you, you can buy the DVD).
After visiting the mines, Poulsen tries to get Nokia, the world's largest phone company, to give him a guarantee that they are not buying conflict minerals. They can't.
SO WHAT NOW? Here's where it gets complicated: since we all, with our mobile phones, have no idea one way or the other if our particular phone (or laptop, mp3 player, or games console) contains conflict minerals, what are we to do? Stop using mobile phones altogether? Do a Google search for conflict-free phones and you'll find articles like the one you're reading right now, but you won't find any actual products. There's a Dutch initiative to create the world's first fair mobile phone, the FairPhone, but it's still at the prototype development stage. We hope it looks pretty decent when it hits the market, 'cos nothing will make the moral choice starker than an unattractive brick. Not being cynical, just realistic. But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
FairPhone people
In the meantime, what's to be done? Your first thought might be for legislation that requires electronics companies to declare the source of the minerals they use. A US law was put in place last year for just this purpose, but:
1. don't expect it to stop the fighting; minerals weren't the cause of the fighting in the first place (that would be land rights and the status of the refugees and militias from neighboring Rwanda who flooded into eastern Congo in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide in 1994).
2. due to the risk of minerals being smuggled out of the Congo via one of the surrounding countries in order to obfuscate their origin, the legislation requires companies that find they are using minerals from the Congo, or from any of the nine surrounding countries, to determine "with the greatest possible specificity" the specific source mine. (Even the UN is implicated in this mess. According to The Guardian, only recently, a UN truck carrying a tonne of cassiterite was stopped by the Congolese authorities trying to cross the border from Congo to Rwanda. The UN is currently investigating the matter.)
3. since companies are in the business of maximising profits, there's the risk that they might simply choose to avoid buying any minerals at all from the region (the same minerals are available in Brazil and Australia). But if all companies do this, it would be a major problem since some mines are legitimate; and even the mines with militia connections provide a dependable livelihood for many in the region (some estimates put the number of people dependent on the mining industry in eastern Congo at 1 million).
Poulsen's solution, a clear, published supply chain, from minerals’ first extraction to the mobiles, is the right one, but we wish it were the complete solution.
What is? No idea, but if you have one, don't hesitate to send it to Enough!, the project set up to created to end genocide and crimes against humanity, and to Dominique Bibaka.
A day after police fired tear gas and projectiles at Occupy Oakland protestors, I turned my camera on those who gathered again at Frank Ogawa plaza. For more of our Occupy Wall Street coverage, click here.
From the West Coast's answer to #hipstercop to an intense photog-police showdown, here are the must-see images from this week's #occupyoakland crackdown.
On Tuesday, Oakland Tribune staff photographer Karl Mondon snapped this shot of his colleague Ray Chavez covering Tuesday's mayhem. But the real story, as Chavez related to his Facebook friends, is what happened next:
"Another cop grabbed my camera from the flash, broke it and threw it somewhere on the ground. Fortunately, I was able to find it in bad shape. But before I found it, I was hit with rubber bullets or tear gas canisters on my torso, where I have three bruises from that—I'm not crying, it's just for your info—May be the cop who was aiming down with the rifle shot me from a distance while I was taking other photos of the protesters being pushed back. What a crazy day/night! I'm glad I'm safe home now."
2. #HipsterCop, Meet #Navyman
Amidst the fog of teargas and flash-bang grenades, an inspiring figure in uniform appeared to be everywhere on Tuesday night:
Local news site The Bay Citizen got the best shots of #Navyman, as he was quickly dubbed on Twitter, and ID'd him as six-year Navy veteran Joshua Sheperd, who carried a copy of the U.S. constitution and a Veterans for Peace flag. (More great protest pics from The Bay Citizen here.)
The Oakland Police Department may have violated its own crowd-control policy by firing bean-bag rounds at protesters. As MoJo's Gavin Aronsen reports, OPD can direct these painful projectiles only at individual targets posing serious threat of harm to police or others. But that's not what he and other saw Tuesday night.
Heartbreaking pictures of 24-year-old Iraq war veteran Scott Olsen. It's still not clear what type of police-fired projectile struck him in the head, but Oakland mayor Jean Quan visited Olsen in the hospital on Thursday and apologized, taking responsibility for his injury. Olsen's condition has been downgraded to fair from critical, and is now awake and lucid.
What became of a temporary fence erected around the former site of #occupyoakland's tent city after Tuesday morning's raid on the campsite. Protesters tore down the fence Wednesday night, with no police interference.
There's plenty more we could have included--Oakland Riot Kitty, tear-gas canister droppings, day-after bruises. Share your must-see pics from this ceaselessly intense week in Oakland in the comments.
Actress Cicely Tyson and bluesman Taj Mahal talk about the movie Sounder, which starred Tyson and Mahal; Mahal also does some selections from his soundtrack to it. Exuma, a folksinger who uses some Bahamian rhythms, also performs. Hosted by Ellis Haizlip.
In 1933, 18-year-old Alan Lomax took a break from college to travel into the American South with his father, John Avery Lomax, on a quest to discover and record traditional folk songs for the Library of Congress. It was the beginning of a journey that would last the rest of his life.
With his father, and later on his own, Lomax traveled the back roads of Appalachia and the Mississippi Delta, from religious revival meetings to prison chain gangs, in pursuit of Southern folk music in all its forms. Along the way he discovered and recorded such singular artists as Mississippi Fred McDowell, Vera Hall and Lead Belly. Later, Lomax would widen his field of research to focus on European folk music, but in 1978 he went back to the Mississippi Delta with a camera crew to document a culture that was rapidly disappearing.
The result, The Land Where the Blues Began, is a fascinating look at traditional country blues in its native environment. Filmed in levee camps, churches, juke joints and on front porches across Mississippi, the documentary draws attention to musicians unknown outside the Delta. The Land Where the Blues Began is a must-see for blues fans, and is now part of our collection of Free Movies.
General submissions are closed. We are currently only accepting submissions for our Monthly Flash Contest. General submissions will reopen on May 1, 2012.
FLASH CONTEST GUIDELINES:
Each month SWITCHBACK will provide a prompt and we want you to send us your best work inspired by that prompt. The winning entry as decided by our editors will be featured on SWITCHBACK.
The October prompt is: "I do, always, what I must do because I cannot undo it."
• Contest submissions can be poetry, fiction, nonfiction, or even art. • Submissions must be 500 words or under. • Please send us only one submission per prompt. • Please submit only previously unpublished works. • We accept simultaneous submissions but please notify us immediately of acceptance elsewhere. • Make sure your name DOES NOT appear on the submission itself. • The deadline for submissions is the last day of the month.
SWITCHBACK does not accept email or hard copy submissions. Please submit using our online submission manager: SUBMISHMASH Online Submission System
If you experience any technical difficulties with uploading your submission, please contact us at: submissions@swback.com
20th Annual Graduate Student Conference in African Studies
CALL FOR PAPERS
Contesting Boundaries:
Emerging Scholarship on Africa
Boston University’s Graduate Student Conference in African Studies is pleased to mark its 20th anniversary. This year’s conference will feature the work of emerging graduate scholars engaging Africa from an array of disciplines.
The 2012 conference will be held at Boston University, March 30-31. The application deadline is February 1, 2012.
We invite rigorous graduate student papers that examine Africa’s past, present and future, exhibit methodological innovation or yield fresh interpretative insights.
Participation is commonly drawn from across the academic spectrum: Anthropology, Art History, Cultural Studies, Economics, Ecology and Environment, Geography, Global Health, History, International Relations, Law, Literature, Media Studies, Musicology, Policy, Political Science, Religion, and Sociology.
For twenty years, masters and doctoral students from across North America have made this conference a valuable opportunity to expand peer-to-peer academic networks and present ongoing research.
A $25 conference fee is payable upon on-site registration on March 30th.
Robert G. Lesman, Managing Editor P.O. Box 127 Millwood, VA 22646
Make checks payable to Sow's Ear Poetry Review.
September-October: POETRY COMPETITION
Award - $1000, publication, and the option of publication for approximately twenty finalists
Judge in 2011 is Scott Cairnes.
Poetry Competition Guidelines: Open to adults. Send unpublished poems to the address above. Please DO NOT put your name on poems. Include a separate sheet with poem titles, name, address, phone, and e-mail address if available. No length limit on poems. Simultaneous submission acceptable. (We will check with finalists before sending to final judge.) Send poems in September or October. Postmark deadline Nov. 1st. Include self-addressed stamped envelope (SASE) for notification, which we will try to send in January. Entries will not be returned. Entry fee is $27 for up to five poems. The reading fee includes a complimentary one-year subscription to the Review.
