For Anita Hill,

the Clarence Thomas hearings

haven’t really ended

(JOHN DURICKA/ASSOCIATED PRESS) - Anita Hill testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court on Oct. 11, 1991.

By Krissah Thompson, Published: October 6

Twenty years ago, when Anita Hill returned home from the contentious Senate hearings during which she accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment, people told her not to worry — her name would be forgotten in a matter of months.

But two things have become clear this week as she has re-entered the debate: The raw tensions over race, gender and politics raised by the hearings have not been forgotten. And Anita Hill is acting like a woman who wants her name remembered.

She is stepping back into the news by choice, giving a series of interviews about a book she released this week on issues of gender and race called “Reimagining Equality.” And she is attending seminars focused on the anniversary of the Thomas hearings, having become over the years a minor political celebrity.

For many, Hill embodies the fight against sexual harassment and gender discrimination, even as she triggers vitriol from others who dismiss her testimony as a partisan attack against Thomas.

“The hearing had for me an unexpected consequence,” Hill said in an interview. “I just didn’t have any sense that it was going to resonate in the way that it did. It has been kind of difficult for me.”

While Thomas went on to the Supreme Court, where he has become a consistent conservative voice, Hill has led a relatively quiet life in Massachusetts. She teaches social policy, law and women’s studies at Brandeis University, delivers lectures on sexual harassment and now has written two books. The first book, “Speaking Truth to Power,” was published in 1998 and dealt with her experience during the hearings.

Now, she is likely to be returning to Washington often after joining the District-based law firm Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll as an adviser to its civil rights and employment practice group. She also will soon become the special counsel to the provost at Brandeis.

The enduring tensions over the hearings became clear to Hill last October when she received a voice-mail message from Thomas’s wife, Virginia, requesting an apology for Hill’s testimony in those 1991 hearings. After Hill reported the call to her employers and it broke in the news, she received a slew of e-mails and phone calls from supporters and opponents.

“People are really still feeling this,” said Hill, who rejected the call for an apology, saying she initially thought the message was a prank. “That gut reaction [people felt] in 1991 still has not gone away.”

In October of that year, Hill was a 35-year-old lawyer who had worked for Thomas at the Education Department and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. As a key witness at his nomination hearings, she brought graphic accusations against him before a Senate panel, detailing lurid and harassing sexual statements, which Thomas vehemently denied. The controversy gripped the country.

The hearings also changed the trajectory of Hill’s life. The questioning by the Senate Judiciary Committee, then a panel of white men, was “hurtful,” she said, and she does not believe a white woman would have met the same reception. But she also said she does not regret her involvement.

“My concern was that I had information about the fitness of an individual who was going to sit on the highest court of the land,” Hill said.

After Thomas’s confirmation, she stepped away from Washington, but the hearings have been a constant shadow. Thomas wrote in his 2007 memoir, “My Grandfather’s Son,” that Hill was a “combative left-winger” who was “touchy” and prone to overreacting to “slights.” She has denied his accusations and said she does not closely follow his work on the Supreme Court.

For years after the hearings, Hill focused her scholarly work on issues of sexual harrassment, saying she felt compelled to raise the matter. Looking back, she and others believe the hearings were something of a turning point on gender.

“Sexual harassment was something women didn’t even want to speak about,” said Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), one of the speakers at a day-long event Thursday at Georgetown Law Center titled “Context and Consequences: The Hill-Thomas Hearings Twenty Years Later.”

“They felt cornered by it. They felt trapped by it,” Norton said. “Something had to be done. We had to talk about it.”

The conference at Georgetown Law drew young feminists and academics, including Hannah Gordon, a 22-year-old intern at the Feminist Majority Foundation, who said she grew up learning about Hill and the hearings.

“For my generation, it’s a very different circumstance,” said Gordon, who circulated the room requesting signatures for a petition asking the Justice Department to do away with the term “forcible rape,” which the group considers outdated. “I was taught you shouldn’t take sexual harassment,” she said.

Norton, one of seven women in Congress who publicly demanded that the Senate hear from Hill, said the “most important” result of the hearings was the large number of women elected to Congress in 1992.

“It is very hard to think of any legal proceedings that had the effect of the Anita Hill hearings in the sense that women clearly went to the polls with the notion in mind that you had to have more women in Congress.”

Speaking Thursday at the gathering, Hill sounded almost celebratory.

“I could not be happier than I am right now because I know that testimony, no matter what anyone said and no matter who sits on the bench today, I know that testimony was not in vain,” she said as she closed the conference. “I have lived with the issues of the hearings for 20 years now. I know the work that is being done and as I hear it I am encouraged.”

John Rudolf john.rudolf@huffingtonpost.com

Troy Davis' Last Words

Released By Georgia

Department Of Corrections

  (AUDIO)

 

 First  Posted: 10/7/11 05:05 PM ET 

 

 Updated: 10/7/11 05:40 PM ET

 

The Georgia Department of Corrections this week released an audio recording of the last words of Troy Davis, executed on Sept. 21 for the murder of Mark MacPhail, an off-duty Savannah police officer shot to death in 1989. Davis steadfastly maintained his innocence until the end and blamed another man for the killing.

More than 1,000 people attended Davis' funeral on Oct. 1 in Savannah.

The almost minute-and-a-half recording was provided in response to an open records request from the Associated Press. In a calm, clear voice, Davis first addressed the brother and son of MacPhail -- the only family members of the murdered man attending the execution -- asking them to "look deeper into this case, so that you really will finally see the truth."

Davis then asked his friends and family to "continue to fight this fight."

The recording ends with Davis addressing the prison employees carrying out the execution.

"For those about to take my life, my God have mercy on all of your souls. God bless you all," he said.

Complete transcript of the recording:

Well, first of all I'd like to address the MacPhail family. I'd like to let you all know that despite the situation -- I know all of you still are convinced that I'm the person that killed your father, your son and your brother, but I am innocent. The incidents that happened that night was not my fault. I did not have a gun that night. I did not shoot your family member.

But I am so sorry for your loss. I really am -- sincerely.

All that I can ask is that each of you look deeper into this case, so that you really will finally see the truth.

I ask to my family and friends that you all continue to pray, that you all continue to forgive. Continue to fight this fight.

For those about to take my life, may God have mercy on all of your souls. God bless you all.

Troy Anthony Davis on the witness stand in this August 27, 1991, file photo.
Copyright Savannah Morning News

 

 

 

__________________________

California Prison Hunger Strike 

Resumes as Sides Dig In

By IAN LOVETT

Published: October 7, 2011

“I’m ready to take this all the way,” J. Angel Martinez, one of the strike leaders at Pelican Bay State Prison, said in a message conveyed through a lawyer this week. “We are sick and tired of living like this and willing to die if that’s what it takes.”

This time, though, both sides have shown less inclination to compromise, and no negotiations between the strike leaders and the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation have taken place since the strike resumed.

An internal memo from George J. Giurbino, director of the Division of Adult Institutions for the department, outlined new, more aggressive processes for dealing with mass hunger strikes.

The new protocols seek to isolate inmates participating in the strike from those in the general population and potentially subject them to disciplinary measures, while prisoners identified as strike leaders could potentially be denied contact with visitors and even lawyers.

In addition, two lawyers who had helped mediate talks were temporarily barred from state prisons last week because “their presence in the institution/facility presents a security threat.”

The animosity goes both ways, suggesting no easy resolution to a situation in which inmates are protesting being kept in isolation in excess of 22 hours a day, part of an attempt to hamper gangs.

In late July, inmates ended their initial strike after officials agreed to concessions for prisoners in security housing units, including allowing them wall calendars, hobby items like drawing paper and a comprehensive review of how inmates are placed in these isolation units.

The new hunger strike drew 4,000 people last week across the state. But that number had drifted to fewer than 800 by Friday, according to corrections officials, as the department has moved to isolate participants from the general prison population.

Terry Thornton, a department spokeswoman, said that the promised reforms were continuing as promised, and officials remained willing to negotiate, but that leaders had not approached them with a new list of demands.

“Everything we said we were going to do, we did,” Ms. Thornton said. “We are kind of puzzled about why this action was taken again. The review takes time, but we are on track.”

Mistrust of the department is fervent among strike leaders, according to Anne Weills, a lawyer who met with four of them at Pelican Bay. Prisoner rights advocates have also accused the department of low-balling the number of prisoners involved in the strike, arguing that as many as 12,000 inmates had participated.

Ms. Thornton confirmed that 15 inmates at Pelican Bay had been moved to an administrative housing unit because they were identified as coercing other inmates into participation. She also said that all the strike leaders at Pelican Bay were confirmed gang members, and that four of the 11 leaders had ended their strikes.

But Ms. Weills said other prisoners told her that those four did so because they could no longer endure conditions at the administrative housing unit where they had been moved.

“We’re freezing,” Ronald Yandell, one of the strike leaders, said to Ms. Weills this week. “The air-conditioner is blowing. It’s like arctic air coming through, blowing at top speed. It’s torture. They’re trying to break us.”

Oscar Hidalgo, a spokesman for the corrections department, said he did not know why the four leaders had ended their strike.

Sharon Dolovich, a professor of prison law at the University of California, Los Angeles, said the department’s response to the second strike reflected court cases in the last 25 years that had given officials more discretion to clamp down on inmate rights.

“Before, they didn’t want to seem inhumane, and now they’re in damage control mode,” she said. “They’re demonstrating that they’re willing to use the full scope of legal discretion to shut it down.”

>via: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/08/us/hunger-strike-resumes-in-california-pris...

 

__________________________

 

Prisoners being frozen

to break hunger strike;

some quit, some willing to die

for their rights

 

October 8, 2011

by Deborah Dupre, Human Rights Examiner

Families and other supporters of the hunger strikers came from around the state to rally at the headquarters of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation on Oct. 5. – Photo: Bill Hackwell

On Day 12 of the resumed historic peaceful Pelican Bay Prison hunger strike, it has become apparent to human rights  advocates with the major group supporting the inmates interviewed by CNN that the numbers of strikers began dropping this week from the 12,000 refusing food a few days ago, after the CDCR intensifiedretaliation against them, such as air conditioning the small concrete cells at 50 degrees. The hunger strike representatives at Pelican Bay who had been kept in D Corridor of the Security Housing Unit were moved to Administrative Segregation at Pelican Bay, while at least one inmate on strike who was denied medications has suffered a heart attack.

“We are hoping that this widespread participation will push (prison officials) to negotiate and honor the basic demands of the people locked behind those walls,” said Isaac Ontiveros, a spokesman for Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity told CNN Tuesday afternoon.

“You have people in there that have been in solitary confinement for 20 years. They just want to change their conditions.”

Lawyers finally able to have one visit last week, after some lawyers of the prisoners’ mediation team have been banned, report that California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) has the air conditioning on high in 50 degree weather.

Advocates have significant concerns about some of the measures that the CDCR is implementing in response to the strike. “Prisoners are being denied both family and legal visits, they are receiving serious rules violations and their mail is being stopped,” says Carol Strickman, a legal representative of the Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity Coalition.

“CDCR is clearly trying to further isolate the hunger strikers in the hopes of breaking the strike,” she said.

“The CDCR’s numbers appear to be low due to guards falsifying records of hunger strikers,” according toPrisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity. “At Calipatria, for instance, hunger strikers report they were finally given their liquids after filing medical requests – even though they were still denied liquids for the first several days of the strike. Now, however, guards have been delivering liquids on the prisoners’ food trays. Once strikers take the liquids off of the trays, the guards record they are not striking. CDCR counts strikers based on who touches the state-issued food trays and who doesn’t.”

According to advocates for the prisoners, the hunger strike representatives continue to be willing to risk their lives to win their five core demands, each of which reflects a basic human right.

“CDCR is clearly trying to further isolate the hunger strikers in the hopes of breaking the strike,” said attorney Carol Strickman.

Medical conditions are worsening for strikers throughout the state.

“We’ve received reports that after 12 days of no food, prisoners are once again losing severe weight and fainting. One hunger striker at Pelican Bay was denied his medication and consequently suffered a heart attack and is now is an outside hospital in Oregon,” stated an advocate, refraining from identification on the Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity website.

Other reports indicate that striking prisoners are being moved.

“We don’t know if they are being removed from their cells to some other location or transferred. It’s really terrifying that your loved one could be taken away like that for participating in a peaceful protest,” said Irma Hedlin, who has family members in the Pelican Bay SHU.

Approximately 12,000 prisoners across California last week resumed the hunger strike they had started in July when 7,000 prisoners refused food, some for over a month, in America’s largest peaceful prisoner protest in history. The prisoners were protesting SHU (Security Housing Unit) solitary confinement conditions at Pelican Bay and other prisons, where several thousand prisoners are held in isolation, confined to windowless cells over 22 hours a day, with minimal human contact and no work, recreational or educational programs or rehabilitation.

These conditions cause mental illness, according to research.

Amnesty International is calling for swift implementation of reforms to California Security Housing Units as the Pelican Bay hunger strike continues:

“Amnesty International is concerned by reports that the California Corrections Department is treating the current hunger strike as an ‘organized disturbance’ and disciplining those who participate. Such disciplinary action reportedly includes removing prisoners in the general population who support the strike to solitary confinement in Administrative Segregation units. The organization has written to the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to urge that prisoners seeking humane conditions are not subjected to punitive measures.”

As previously reported, a federal court ordered California to move over 33,000 inmates out of its inhumane prisons that experts say are racist, with solitary confinement Security Housing Units (SHUs) typical of supermax prisons throughout the United States, the nation with the highest documented incarceration rate in the world, where torture is inflicted daily, often until death.

While mainstream media continues an almost complete blackout about the historic event of thousands of America’s so-called “worst of the worst” peacefully protesting against inhumane conditions, family and community members continue supporting the hunger strikers with rallies, community events, neighborhood candlelight vigils, publicizing the courageous action inside prison and building pressure on representatives to intervene in the CDCR’s handling of the strike.

A petition to the White House begins, “The United States is the only country that uses solitary confinement in prisons in the manner that it does.”

Irma Hedlin, mother of two hunger strikers at Pelican Bay, speaks at the Oct. 5 rally on being denied visits with her sons. – Photo: Bill Hackwell

Already, due to their peaceful protests, the California prisoners “aren’t allowed to speak or write letters to each other; those in the Pelican Bay SHU can’t send or receive mail that mentions the strike, their attorneys have been banned and this past weekend their families weren’t even allowed to visit them,” stated San Francisco Bay View associate editor JR Valrey.

According to an email I received on Wednesday, California prisoners particularly appreciate JR, one of the few reporters respecting them and their plight as newsworthy.

“You know that if the media don’t mention you and your issues, you’re nobody in the world today,” he wrote.

“You might as well be Dred Scott, who, when he sued for his freedom after his ‘owner’ wouldn’t let him buy himself, was told by the U.S. Supreme Court that he and all Black people are ‘so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.’ In California prisons – and much of the rest of the world – that’s still the rule.”

When JR started writing for the Bay View 10 years ago in 2001, he was already volunteering at KPFA, the nation’s first listener-supported radio station and founder of the Pacifica Radio Network. As controversial as JR is, due to his insistence that “what is important to Black people should be important enough to everybody to be reported as news,” it took what he called “all these years of pushing and prodding” KPFA for him to finally getregularly on the air just in the past couple of months.

Without media coverage, “You might as well be Dred Scott, who, when he sued for his freedom after his ‘owner’ wouldn’t let him buy himself, was told by the U.S. Supreme Court that he and all Black people are ‘so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.’ In California prisons – and much of the rest of the world – that’s still the rule.”

On the other hand, Los Angeles’ popular 102.7 KIIS FM is losing listener supporters over their management of the prison torture issue. On its 8:00 a.m. program Thursday morning according to some listeners, the two talk show hosts spoke about the California prisoner hunger strikers.

One commenter in the Pelican Bay-California Hunger Strike Solidarity group on Facebook called the show hosts’ commentary “awful and harsh” and “making fun of the inmates.”

“The hosts asked why the prisoners complain about their food,” saying they get three state meals “and gosh, homeless people get nothing so why are they complaining?”

“The hosts were also laughing and joking around about how they don’t support inhumane treatment but they say ‘those men must have done some pretty awful things to have gotten into solitary confinement.’”

“So to everyone who were fans of 102.7 KIIS FM, this is what they were saying this morning without even asking any other opinions or looking into why they are in there. Ignorance … pure ignorance.”

“If anyone knew why these men are put into solitary confinement [it’s] not based on a crime but based on some other person dropping their name or art work or a tattoo by a correctional officer saying this is true and not based on their original conviction.”

One of America’s most pressing and well-hidden human rights abuses is the fact that over 100,000 people in the United States are held in small solitary confinement cells, some for life, a form of torture, while some experience even worse torture.

How we can help

Pressure Gov. Jerry Brown to tell CDCR to negotiate in good faith to meet the prisoners’ five core demands and cease all retaliation against the hunger strikers. Call (916) 445-2841, email him athttp://gov.ca.gov/m_contact.php and write to him: Governor Jerry Brown, State Capitol, Suite 1173, Sacramento, CA 95814. A sample script is posted here.

Attend or organize a Thursday-night vigil. Families of SHU prisoners are calling for supporters everywhere to hold mass vigils in support of the hunger strikers on Thursday nights. If you can organize a vigil in your community, email prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity@gmail.com. For a list of events, check out Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity’s events page here.

In the Bay Area, the Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity Coalition will hold a weekly support vigil throughout the hunger strike every Thursday evening 5-7 p.m. The Thursday night hunger strike support vigils will be at held at different locations in San Francisco and Oakland each week. The next two are

• Thursday, Oct. 13: 24th and Mission, San Francisco
• Thursday, Oct. 20: Fruitvale BART, Oakland

For more information on the weekly vigils, call Lisa Roellig at (415) 238-1801.

Sign the new petition to the White House on the White House website calling for an end to long-term solitary confinement.

Telephone KIIS Radio to lodge a complaint about their misguided disrespect for human rights of inmates by calling ‎(818) 559-2252 or (818) 566-4814.

Human Rights Examiner Deborah Dupre holds American and Australian science and education graduate degrees and has 30 years experience in human rights, environmental and peace activism. Email her atGdeborahdupre@gmail.com and visit her website, www.DeborahDupre.com. Bay View staff contributed to this story, which first appeared at Examiner.com, mainly by incorporating excerpts from other posts by Deborah Dupre.

Family members and supporters of hunger strikers rally in front of CDCR

by Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity

Family members and supporters of prisoners on strike throughout California held a spirited demonstration outside California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) headquarters in Sacramento on Oct. 5 as the strike entered its 10th day.

Over 1,200 prisoners continue to refuse food in an effort to force the CDCR to address their five core demands, in particular those related to long term solitary confinement, gang validation, debriefing and group punishment. Over the course of the last week, nearly 12,000 prisoners participated in the strike from 13 California prisons, as well as California prisoners housed out of state in Mississippi, Arizona and Oklahoma, making it one of the largest prisoner hunger strikes in U.S. history

Attorney Carol Strickman of Legal Services for Prisoners With Children and a member of the prisoner hunger strike legal and mediation team speaks at the Oct. 5 rally on CDCR retaliation against hunger strikers, which includes the banning her and fellow attorney Marilyn McMahon of California Prison Focus from contacting the hunger strikers. – Photo: Bill Hackwell

The main chant outside the CDCR building summarized the group’s position: “Prisoners are human beings! Meet the five demands!” The five core demands of prison hunger strikers are:

1. End administrative abuse and group punishment.

2. Abolish the debriefing policy and modify gang status criteria.

3. End long-term solitary confinement.

4. Provide adequate and nutritious food.

5. Expand and provide constructive programming and privileges.

Speakers provided updates on recent hunger strike developments, as the CDCR increases its repressive tactics in an attempt to break the historic strike. Attorney Carol Strickman described the CDCR’s retaliation against hunger strikers, including denying attorney visits and barring the prisoner’s legal and mediation team. The CDCR has targeted Strickman and attorney Marilyn McMahon.

Both lawyers have been barred from meeting with prisoners pending “investigation” under the absurd claim that they are inciting a “mass disturbance.” Family members, too, spoke of being denied visits to their loved ones, as the CDCR, in an effort to further isolate the hunger strikers, has now barred all family visits.

In addition to condemning the injustices at Pelican Bay and other CDCR facilities, speakers repeatedly emphasized the courage of the hunger strikers and the inspiration they are providing for people in and outside of the walls. The day ended with a brief assembly to discuss next steps in what promises to be an intense and protracted struggle against inhumane incarceration in particular and state repression overall.

Despite the CDCR’s retaliation on hunger strikers and their families, prisoners, their families and community members continue to struggle to win the prisoners’ demands.

To learn more and read the latest updates, frequently visit Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity athttp://www.prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com, call (510) 444-0484 or emailprisonerhungerstrikesolidarity@gmail.com.

Read the transcript of this interview with Amy Fettig, senior staff counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project. It was conducted by Scott Harris of Between the Lines, a nationally syndicated progressive news analysis radio show, for broadcast on Oct. 5.

American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) staff, board and partners discusses their work to support prisoners on strike at Pelican Bay, as well as others in solitary confinement.

Describing torture of prisoners for mind and behavior control, prisoner advocate Kendra Castenada, who produced this video, asks where is the “rehabilitation” in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation? She points out that in Calipatria State Prison, near the Mexican border, CDCR refuses to use air conditioning despite the oppressive heat. In contast, at Pelican Bay State Prison near the Oregon border, CDCR is freezing the prisoners on hunger strike by turning the air conditioning to 50 degrees.

Kendra Castaneda defends the rights of prisoners being tortured in California’s Calipatria Prison.

Amber from Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarit on Vimeo.

Amber, whose brother has been locked up in the Pelican Bay SHU for 10 years, describes the impact on her family at the legislative hearing in Sacramento on Aug. 23.

 

Lesotho’s Independence Day

October 4, 2011

By Ts’eliso Monaheng*

When I was growing up, Independence Day was quite a big deal in and around Maseru, Lesotho. Besides it being a public holiday, it carried with it the promise of festivities which usually occurred at our national stadium. A lot has changed since then, and some would claim for the worse. But instead of writing about another factory workers’ strike, yet another double-digit salary hike for ministers, or a former convict being appointed to public office, I would rather focus on other things — like music for instance. Music is central to our existence as Basotho, and even though we too are victims of the usual cacophony of western sounds dominating our airwaves (with a dip of Kwaito and house, courtesy of our South African neighbours), there are genres which have managed to fare well commercially. Below is a collection of videos sourced from youtube. Some of them are quite dated — our artists seem not to hold Internet presence in high regard at all.

Sankomota’s ‘Stop the war’. Arguably still the best musical export from Lesotho by far, even though most of the members are no more:

 

(Honorary mentions: Fatere, Budhaza and Qiloane.)

After a long time bubbling in Lesotho’s underground hip-hop scene, Dunamis managed to rise above and get some acclaim with the release of this video for ‘Mastered Seed’ which received wide rotation on Channel O and SABC1:

(Honorary mentions: Papa Zee, Kommanda Obbs, Stlofa and Skebza.)

Manka le Phallang are but one in a myriad of famo musicians. Along with the likes of Puseletso Seema, Tau ea Mats’ekha, and Apollo Ntabanyane, they were among the first to popularise the genre. This is their ‘Ea nyoloha khanyapa’:

(Honorary mentions: Famole (RIP), Mahlanya and Chakela.)

And to round up: Lefate. They’ve split, but not before releasing this video from their album Ha le lapa lea solla. They refer(ed) to their music as ‘Mokorotlo’, an ode to the Basotho hat which resembles the hill of Qiloane. Their ‘Life’s like a lie’:

(Honorary mentions: Manyofi and Mthibo.)

* You know Ts’eliso as Core Wreckah.

THIS IS BLACK HISTORY

(OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO)

Uploaded by Globalfaction on Oct 2, 2011

Buy NOW: http://thisisblackhistory.bandcamp.com/track/this-is-black-history
Produced by Last Resort Ft. Jody McIntyre, Logic, Big Ben, Jaja Soze, bigCAKES, Genesis Elijah, MC D, Cerose, Big Frizzle, Wordplay, Haze, USG, Rodney P, Akala.
Wall Art: Steaz an Coza
Big up Azita!

Overstand Music & Culture
Riddim Killa
Illastate Records
P.D.C.
U.S.G.
CodeRed
London Ent.

Graphic Short Story Prize

 

---

ARE YOU AN ASPIRING NOVELIST?

DO YOU HAVE AN ORIGINAL STORY TO TELL?

Jonathan Cape and Comica have got together with The Observer to offer you the chance to see your work in print and win £1,000.

Take this opportunity to get your work read by industry experts.

The judges are:
David Nicholls (best selling author of One Day) 
Bryan Talbot (graphic novelist)
Rachel Cooke (The Observer)
Dan Franklin (Publisher, Jonathan Cape)
Paul Gravett (Director, Comica Festival)
Suzanne Dean (Random House Creative Director)

The first prize is £1,000 and the publication of your 4 page story in The Observer Review.
The runner-up will receive £250 and your work will appear on www.guardian.co.uk. and the Vintage website

Deadline for entries: 14th October 2011

To download an entry form please click here

To see how your story will be laid out in The Observer please click here

To view last year's winners please click here

To listen to last year's winner, Stephen Collins in conversation with Comica Director, Paul Gravett, click here

 

Announcing Our 2012 One-Act Play Contest

The Festival is pleased to announce our 2012 One-Act Play Contest. We will be accepting submissions by mail and online from June 1, 2011—November 1, 2011. Have a question about one of our writing contests? Please send questions to: contests@tennesseewilliams.net. Grand Prize: $1,500 Staged reading at the 2012 Festival (March 21-25, 2012) Full production at the 2013 Festival VIP All-Access Festival pass for 2012 and 2013 ($1,000 value) Publication in Bayou Top Ten Finalists Names will appear on website. Finalists will also receive a panel pass ($75 value) to attend the 2012 Festival. Guidelines: The playwright's name should not appear in the script. Include two title pages: one with play title only and the other with play title and name, address, phone, and email of author. On the submission form (for online entries), you will be asked to provide the name of the file containing your One Act Play contest submission (e.g. "JohnDoe-OneActPlaySubmission1.doc"). There will be an upload button to select and upload your submission. To clarify: On the submission form, you will upload a single document. The first page of your document is your cover page and contains only a) the name of your play, and b) your name, address, phone and email.  The second page of your document should be a title page containing only the title of your play. Your play script should begin on the third page of that same document. The document should contain no identifying information about the author on any page except the initial cover page, which will be removed before the entries are judged. Plays should run no more than one hour in length. Plays must be typed. Please do not include professional resumes or biographies with your entry. Entries are judged anonymously; the judges only consider manuscript quality. Unlimited entries per person. Production criteria include scripts requiring minimal technical support for a 100-seat theater. Cast of characters must be small, and it is suggested that characters range in age from approximately 20 through 40 years old. Play content is NOT limited to Tennessee Williams or New Orleans-related themes. Eligibility: Plays must not have been previously produced, published or performed, including in a formal staged reading. "Workshopped" readings are accepted provided that the audience was limited to participants of that workshop. Students and faculty of the University of New Orleans FTCA and Creative Writing Workshop are ineligible. Plays that won this contest in previous years are ineligible; their authors remain eligible but must submit new work. Plays submitted to this contest in previous years that did not win are eligible. Plays that have won any other playwriting contest are ineligible. Simultaneous submissions accepted; please notify the Festival if your play is accepted elsewhere. Deadline: The deadline for digital and mailed-in submissions is November 1, 2011 (postmark). Winner will be announced by March 1, 2012. Entry Fee: $25 per entry. Unlimited entries per person. Submission fees are non-refundable. To enter online: Electronic submissions are preferred and must be in .doc, .rtf or PDF formats. If you are using the latest version of Microsoft Word, please save your submission as .doc and not a .docx file before sending it to us. We accept entry fees via Discover, MasterCard and Visa only. To enter by mail: Send your manuscript and check or money order for $25 (made out to the: Tennessee Williams Literary Festival) to: One-Act Play Contest Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival 938 Lafayette Street, Suite 514 New Orleans, LA 70113. Do not send submissions by certified mail or signature required delivery.   One-Act Contest Online Submission Step 1: Entry Fee To begin the One-Act Contest submission process by paying your $25 entry fee, click the button below. Once you've paid your entry fee, you'll be taken to the Entry Submission form to provide additional information and upload your contest entry. Read the contest eligibility rules and guidelines above BEFORE you begin the online submission process. Submission fees are non-refundable.

Monday October 3, 2011

Wyatt Cenac

 

The Amazing Racism -

Geographical Bigotry

Art in Exile

 

Iranian born Shirin Nashat speaks to art as voice

 

by Amanda McCuaig on October 7, 2011 

 

I recently came across this beautiful and moving talk by Shirin Nashat, an Iranian born artist who has lived most of her life in exile from her native country.

“Art is our weapon,” she says in the talk. “Culture is a form of resistance.”

Enjoy.

Left: Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times; center: Jane Hahn for The New York Times; right: Yahya Arhab/EPA

Left, Leymah Gbowee in September; center: Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the Liberian president, on Friday; right: Tawakkol Karman in Sana, Yemen, on Friday.

Friday, October 07, 2011

Congratulations to the

Nobel Peace Prize Winners

for 2011

 

Congratulations to the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize Winners:

Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf,

peace activist Leymah Gbowee, also from Liberia,

and democracy activist Tawakkul Karman of Yemen

 

A combination of three recent photos shows (from L) Yemen's Arab Spring activist Tawakkul Karman, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Liberian "peace warrior" Leymah Gbowee who won the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize the jury announced on October 7, 2011. The three prizewinners share the 2011 award "for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women's rights to full participation in peace-building work," Norwegian Nobel Committee president Thorbjoern Jagland said in his announcement.
----MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images

 

Nobel Peace Prize Awarded to

Three Activist Women

 

By ALAN COWELL

Published: October 7, 2011

The Nobel Peace Prize for 2011 was awarded on Friday to three campaigning women from Africa and the Arab world in acknowledgment of their nonviolent role in promoting peace, democracy and gender equality. The winners were Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf — Africa’s first elected female president — her compatriot, peace activist Leymah Gbowee and Tawakul Karman of Yemen, a pro-democracy campaigner.

They were the first women to win the prize since Kenya’s Wangari Maathai, who died last month, was named as the laureate in 2004. Most of the recipients in the award’s 110-year history have been men, and the award seemed designed to give impetus to the cause for women’s rights around the world.

“We cannot achieve democracy and lasting peace in the world unless women obtain the same opportunities as men to influence developments at all levels of society,” said the citation read to reporters by Thorbjorn Jagland, a former Norwegian prime minister who heads the Oslo-based Nobel committee that chooses the winner of the $1.5 million prize.

In a subsequent interview, he described the prize as “a very important signal to women all over the world.”

As the prize was announced, Bushuben Keita, a spokesman for Mrs. Johnson Sirleaf’s Unity Party, declared: “We are dancing. This is the thing that we have been saying, progress has been made in Liberia. We’ve come through 14 years of war and we have come to sustained peace. We’ve already started dancing.

“This is proof that she has been doing well, there’s no cheating in this, this comes from other people. She’s doing very, very well. Her progress has been confirmed by the international community.”

In Yemen, Ms. Karman, 32, sat in a tent where has been living since February as part of the sit-in organized to underscore demands for change. “This is the victory of our peaceful revolution,” she said. “I am so happy and I give this award to all of the youth and all of the women across the Arab world, in Egypt, in Tunisia.”

“We cannot build our country or any country in the world without peace,” she said.

 

NYSL: Leymah Gbowee on "Mighty Be Our Powers"

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf at Harvard Commencement

 

 

توكل كرمان - Tawakkul Karman - Nobel Peace Prize winner

 

Posted by rikyrah

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