Interview with

Arundhati Roy

Issue 445

 

Arundhati Roy is probably the most ‘do something’ public intellectual of our time. In her interview with New Internationalist she offers her take on market-friendly democracy, people power and the wealth that is fed by people’s lives.

Arundhati Roy > Stuart Freedman/Panos

 

 

Your writings have grappled with ruthless state violence which is often at the behest of corporate interests. Much of the corporate-owned media in India shies away from covering the civil war-like conditions in many parts of the country. The establishment tends to brand anyone who attempts to present the other side’s points of view as having seditious intent. Where is the democratic space?

You’ve partially answered your own question – newspapers and television channels do not make their money from subscriptions or viewership; in fact, corporate advertisements actually subsidize TV viewership and newspaper and magazine readership, so in effect, the mass media is run with corporate money. Some media houses are directly owned by corporations, some indirectly by majority share-holdings. Some media houses in, say, Central India, have a direct interest in mining and infrastructure projects, so they have a vested interest in the push to displace people in the huge, ongoing land-grab in which land and resources are forcibly taken from the poor and given to the rich – a process which goes by the name of ‘development’. It would be foolish to expect objective reporting: not because the journalists are bad people, but because of the economic structure of the organizations they work for. In fact, what is surprising is that despite all of this, occasionally there is some very good reporting. But overall we either have silence, or a completely distorted picture, in which those resisting their impoverishment are being labelled ‘terrorists’ – and these are not just the Maoist rebels who have taken to arms, but others who are involved in unarmed, but militant, struggles against the government. A climate has been created which criminalizes dissent of all kinds.

There are hundreds, maybe even thousands of the poorest people in jails across the country under charges of sedition and waging war against the state. Many others are just charged under the common criminal penal code. There are the other ‘seditionists’ too, of course – those who have been fighting for self-determination after being inducted into the Union of India without their consent, when the British left in 1947. I refer to Kashmir, Manipur, Nagaland… in these places, tens of thousands have been killed, hundreds of thousands tortured in the nightmarish interrogation centres and army camps all around the country. And now, the Indian army is migrating to the heart of the country – to fight the adivasi people whose lands the corporations covet. They say Pakistan is a military dictatorship, but I don’t think the Pakistani army has been actively deployed against its ‘own’ people the way the Indian army has been: Kashmir, Manipur, Nagaland, Hyderabad, Goa, Telengana, Punjab and now, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa…

Anti-corruption campaigning has been at the forefront of media-reported news in India. Meanwhile, the relative silence on civil war conditions continues. How does one explain this gap in what makes the news?

I have mixed feelings about the anti-corruption campaign. It gathered momentum after a series of huge scams hit the headlines. The most scandalous of them was what has come to be known as the ‘2G scam’ in which the government sold telecom spectrum for mobile phones (a public asset) to private companies at ridiculously low prices. The companies went on to sell them at huge profits to other companies, robbing the public exchequer of billions of rupees. Leaked phone taps showed how everybody, from the judiciary to politicians to high profile journalists and low profit hit-men, were in on the manoeuvring. The transcripts were like an MRI scan that confirmed a diagnosis that had been made years ago by many of us.

The 2G scam enraged the Indian middle classes, who saw it as a betrayal, as a moral problem, not a systemic or a structural one. Somehow, the fact that the government has signed hundreds of secret Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs) privatizing water, minerals and infrastructure, and signing over forests, mountains and rivers to private corporations, does not seem to generate the same outrage. Unlike in the 2G scam, these secret MOUs do not have just a monetary cost, but human and environmental costs that are devastating. They displace millions of people and wreck whole ecosystems. The mining corporations pay the government just a tiny royalty and rake in huge profits. Yet the people who are fighting these battles are being called terrorists and terrorist sympathizers. Even if there were no corruption and everything were above board on these deals, it would be daylight robbery on an unimaginable scale.

On the whole, when a political movement is mobilized using the language of ‘anti-corruption’, it has an apolitical ‘catch-all’ appeal which could result in a hugely unfair system being strengthened by a sort of moral police force which has authoritarian instincts. So you have ‘Team Anna’: a sort of oligarchy of ‘concerned citizens’ – some of them very fine people – led by the old Gandhian Anna Hazare, who talks about amputating the limbs of thieves and hanging people and who has praised Gujarat’s Chief Minister Narendra Modi, who presided over the public massacre of thousands of Muslims in broad daylight. On the other hand, to shun the anti-corruption movement and set your eyes on a long-term political goal lets the corporate looters and their henchmen in the media, parliament and judiciary off the hook. So it’s a bit of a dilemma.

Recent Indian government legislation permits web content to be shut down for a variety of reasons. Film censorship is still widely used. Why does the state take such a paternalistic role towards what its citizens have to say?

I think overt censorship is slated to become a big problem in the near future. Internet censorship, surveillance, the project of the electronic UID (Unique Identity card)… ominous. Imagine a government that cannot provide food or water to its people, a government whose policies have created a population of 800 million people who live on less than 20 rupees [about 45 US cents] a day, a country which has the largest number of malnourished children in the world, which has, as a major priority, the desire to distribute UID cards to all of its citizens.

The UID is a corporate scam which funnels billions of dollars into the IT sector. To me, it is one of the most serious transgressions that is on the cards. It is nothing more than an administrative tool in the hands of a police state. But coming back to censorship: since the US government has pissed on its Holy Cow (Free Speech – or whatever little was left of it) with its vituperative reaction to Wikileaks, now everybody will jump on the bandwagon. (Just like every country had its own version of the ‘war on terror’ to settle scores.) Having said this, India is certainly not the worst place in the world on the Free Speech issue: the anarchy of different kinds of media, the fact that it’s such an unmanageable country and, though institutions of democracy have been eroded, there is a militant spirit of democracy among the people… it will be hard to shut us all up. Impossible, I’d say.

You have pointed out that nonviolent positions are difficult to hold on to when there is no audience to witness them, and when the opposing force does not blink at the moral challenge and responds with murder. Why do you think pointing that out caused such an uproar?

I have written at some length about this. I do not say that nonviolent satyagraha is an obsolete tool of resistance, not at all. It can be extremely effective; but has to be carried out in the public eye, in front of TV cameras, and for demands – like ‘anti-corruption’– which appeal to the sympathies of the middle class. However, I do believe that preaching ‘nonviolence at any cost’ from a safe distance to adivasi people who live in remote forest villages and have watched hundreds of security forces arrive, surround their villages, burn their homes and kill and rape their people, can also be pretty immoral. If the middle class were to join the battle, then of course nonviolent satyagraha would be an option. But of course it won’t. It can’t. That would be a political oxymoron.

Why does pointing this out cause an uproar, you ask? I think because of the fear that once those millions of people who have been so cruelly dispossessed of all they have in order to fire India’s ‘growth’ suddenly unshackle their imaginations and realize that they are not so defenceless after all, the Beautiful People know that no power on earth will be able to protect them. Sure, there may not be a perfect, synchronized revolution in which the masses will overthrow the ruling classes. Instead, there will be a messy insurrection, when all manner of brutality will occur. The poor may not win, but the rich will certainly lose. The feast will end. That’s why the uproar.

Are we talking about the narratives we like to make up and then believe in, regardless of the reality of the situation? What is your take on the narratives, especially those of the Western media, around the Arab uprisings?

Well, when the mainstream media begins to report enthusiastically about a series of uprisings – when they described the Arab uprisings as the Arab ‘spring’ – and when you know how loaded the reporting around the Israeli Occupation of Palestine is, then if you have your wits about you, you have to be on your guard, a little wary of swallowing the reports hook, line and sinker. If you follow what happened over the last three summers in Kashmir, for example, when tens of thousands of unarmed people faced down Indian security forces with as much courage and determination as the people of Egypt, Tunisia, Syria and Yemen, you can’t help but wonder why the Western media switches on the lights to cover some uprisings, and blacks out others. I found it a little disconcerting how enthusiastically the 19-day ‘revolution’ in Tahrir Square was being reported, how excited [New York Times foreign affairs columnist] Thomas Friedman was about it – but only a few months ago reports seemed to suggest that Hosni Mubarak was sick and dying… Then you had headlines like ‘Egypt free, army takes charge’ and you know that the army is intricately entwined with the US. I worry that the anger and energy of people who have been repressed for years by puppet dictators is being siphoned off, carefully defused, while the West jockeys to retain the status quo one way or another and replace the old despots with a more streamlined, less obvious form of despotism. The last I heard, people were beginning to gather in Tahrir Square again…

Surges of people power, as in Tunisia and Egypt, and earlier in the Philippines, are capable of forcing climactic moments and sudden change. But the aftermath often sees a return to old systems and old corruptions. Why is human social organization so resistant to the change we yearn for?

While people in these countries lived under repressive regimes and yearned for democracy, perhaps they didn’t know that real democracy has been taken into the workshop and replaced by the market-friendly version, which is a far more sophisticated form of despotism, not easy for beginners to decode. It might take a little time for people to realize they’ve been sold the wrong model. But meanwhile they have fought heroic street battles, faced down tanks, celebrated victory. They’ve been applauded all the way, while they let off steam. For them to build up that head of steam again isn’t easy. It’ll take years. Human society isn’t resistant to change: it wants change; but sometimes it isn’t smart enough to get what it wants.

Another world is possible. What are the ways in which we can make it likely?

To work out the complex ways in which we are being conned and corralled into being ‘good’. To realize we’re on our own. Help won’t come. We have to conserve energy, know how and where and when to deploy it. We have to fight our own battles. Ask the Sri Lankan Tamils what it feels like when the chips are down and the ‘international community’ slinks away while your people are slaughtered and then returns to cluck and commiserate in hollow ways.

Read more on Anna Hazare and India’s anti-corruption campaign

More about Arundhati Roy: Arundhati Roy - princess to pariah (New Internationalist issue 436)

Interview by Dinyar Godrej

This first appeared in our award-winning magazine - to read more, subscribe from just £7

 

Sister Fa

Watch Trailer for “Sarabah”

About Senegalese

Rapper/Singer/Activist

Sister Fa

The film Documentary Sarabah will be featured at the 2011 Heartland Film Festival, which runs from Oct 13th through Oct 22nd. The 60-min documentary by Gloria Bremer and Maria Luisa Gambale centers around Senegalese rapper/singer/activist Fatou Mandiang Diatta AKA Sister Fa and her music and activism against “Female Genital Cutting” of girls in Senegal.

Full storyline:

Rapper, singer and activist, Sister Fa is a hero to young women in Senegal and an unstoppable force for social change. A childhood victim of female genital cutting (FGC), she tackled the issue by starting a grassroots campaign, “Education Without Excision,” which uses her music and persuasive powers to end the practice.

But until 2010 there’s one place she had never brought her message - back home to her own village of Thionck Essyl, where she fears rejection. Sarabah follows Sister Fa on this challenging journey, where she speaks out passionately to female elders and students alike, and stages a rousing concert that brings the community to its feet. A portrait of an artist as activist, Sarabah shows the extraordinary resilience, passion and creativity of a woman who boldly challenges gender and cultural norms. It’s an inspiring story of courage, hope and change.

For festival ticket information, click HERE.

Watch the trailer below.

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Vanessa Martinez posted

Female veterans tormented

by combat and sexual trauma

GO HERE TO VIEW VIDEO REPORT

By Laura Trevelyan BBC News, New York

Nearly one in six members of the US military on active duty is a woman. Coming to terms with what they experience, especially when they come home, can take a terrible toll.

Women in the US military have come a long way since a WWII recruiting poster urged them to Free a Marine to Fight by joining up in support roles.

Today 14.5% of active duty members of the US military are women.

And even though they're not strictly in combat roles, women are experiencing warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan just like the men do.

Women, too, are suffering from post traumatic stress disorder as a result of the horrors they've seen. Coping with that, and with being a mother, poses problems of its own.

Take June Moss, a mother of two who was a staff sergeant in the US army shortly after the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Mental illness

Ms Moss left her children, Jacob and Briona, with relatives while she served in Iraq as a mechanic and a driver.

 

 

++++++++++++++++++++++

A survivor's story: Yolanda

Yolanda Jones came back from Iraq feeling out of place. She worried excessively about her daughter. "She was uncomfortable with me standing over her, so I went into my room and cried," she says. "From that point on she locked her bedroom door."

Yolanda, who had been raped before she joined the military and then endured a difficult marriage, felt desperate. "I didn't know how to start over, so I took some of my pills to end my life. I was so angry when I woke up, I couldn't even do that right. As I saw my therapist, I decided there must be a reason why I lived - to advocate for people who'd experienced what I went through."

++++++++++++++++++

 

 

"I experienced fear on a daily basis," says Ms Moss, who drove a sergeant major into Baghdad for meetings each day in the turbulent period after the invasion.

"There were explosions all the time, shootings overhead," she says. "We were travelling with tanks while they cleared the road of bombs.

"Every time we pulled over, we had to guard the perimeter. Snipers were there trying to blow our heads off.

"The sniper doesn't say, 'that's a man, that's a woman.' How's that 'not combat'?"

Jo Rusin, who was the US Army's most senior female commander in the 1990 Gulf War, observes that women have been involved with the US military going back to the revolutionary war of 1776.

Then, women were nurses. Now, she says: "They're flying planes and helicopters, and they're on every ship except submarines.

"A woman can't be a rifleman or a tanker - but pretty much everything else.

"And in Afghanistan and Iraq, the enemy determines where combat is going to be - you can drive a truck and be in combat."

Battle on home front

You can experience combat inside an army base too.

Yolanda Jones, a logistics specialist in the US army reserve, found her base in Taji, Iraq, was repeatedly hit by mortars and grenades.

 

 

 

Meghan Wood describes how she grew tired of feeling ''like a show dog'' and the lingering effects of her military service

 

 

"We couldn't walk anywhere without thinking we might be hit by IEDs [improvised explosive devices]," says Ms Jones, a single mother who has written a book about her war experiences called Scarred But Not Broken.

"Day in, day out, I was escaping death."

Ms Moss, Ms Jones and thousands of other women have returned from war zones to resume their roles as mothers, while suffering from PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder).

Research with US veterans (male and female) from the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan suggests that 19-42% have mental health conditions.

For many women, the contrast between the battlefield and the home front is especially stark. They must reconcile their military role with a mothering one.

Dr Natara Garovoy, head psychiatrist at a pioneering mental health clinic for women veterans in Palo Alto, California, says motherhood be a source of more stress in what's already a stressful situation.

"As primary caregivers, women battle to prioritise themselves," she says.

The growth in the numbers of women serving in the US military has been enormous over the past 10 years. There are now 1.8 million women veterans.

Seeing dead people

The percentage growth has outpaced that of the male veteran population, and the number of female veterans continues to increase.

The healthcare system run by the US Department of Veterans Affairs has had to respond as a result.

+++++++++++++++++++++

A survivor's story: Meghan

Meghan Wood is being treated in Palo Alto following her experience of Military Sexual Trauma in Bosnia, where she was repeatedly harassed, culminating in a soldier letting himself into her room one night.

"You can either be a bitch or a whore in the military, and if you're having lunch with someone, you're sleeping with them and if you won't talk then you're a stuck-up bitch," she says.

++++++++++++++++++++++

 

 

 

Dr Garavoy encourages women veterans to seek help if they're experiencing flashbacks and not sleeping.

"We understand PTSD as an issue of recovery," she says.

"Someone can recover by processing what happened, and overcoming the often common belief that what happened was their fault.

"By sitting down with a patient, we can take a look at what happened."

Dr Garovoy finds that the anxiety which patients with PTSD have often generalises itself and appears in apparently normal situations.

She had one patient who had worked in a morgue during her service. "She had seen lots of dead bodies," says Dr Garovoy.

"Whenever she went running, she went past faces of people and they would remind her of the faces of the fallen angels she had seen in the morgue."

Ms Moss has learned to avoid war movies, which trigger memories of what she saw in Iraq.

"I listen to gospel music, use my words - understanding your triggers and understanding you is part of the recovery," she says.

Rape by rank

Women serving in the armed forces also face the risk of military sexual trauma, or MST, which can lead to PTSD. MST is harassment or sexual assault, often by colleagues.

A study published in the American Journal of Public Health in 2010 found that 15% of women veterans had reported experiencing MST.

"There's the enemy within, not only the enemy without," says Dr Samina Iqbal, of the VA Women's Health Care facility in Palo Alto.

MST - which has affected men in the armed forces as well - is also known as Rape by Rank.

"Sexual assault is horrific - what makes it even more horrific in the military is if it's at the hands of your fellow colleagues," says Dr Garovoy.

"The betrayal of trust - particularly if this is your superior. In the military, your work is your home - where do you go, you can't get away from this person."

June Moss left her son and daughter (pictured) to serve in Iraq

 

 

Ms Jones experienced repeated sexual harassment.

Her job was to make sure vehicles and radios were ready for the troops to use.

A soldier from another unit would rub up against her, squeezing past her and pressing himself against her at every opportunity he got.

"It was like I was in a meat market," she says.

"I shaved my head because I didn't want the attention but that only gave me more attention.

"I wanted my fellow soldiers to see me as having their back, not as a woman. It was sickening."

Ms Jones and her female colleagues would go to the showers in pairs, fearful of being sexually assaulted by male colleagues if they ventured out alone.

As women serve in more prominent roles in the US military, they are experiencing the same combat trauma as men.

Yet for retired army commander Jo Rusin, the overall experience of women soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan is positive.

"The current wars are disproving so many of the myths that women can't handle it," says Ms Rusin.

"All of those preconceptions that women will fall apart are being disproved. Women will excel, and the culture of the military will undergo a shift."

For Yolanda Jones, that shift can't come too soon.

"I feel like the US military has a long way to go," she says.

"I don't feel like our voices are being heard. We have made a huge contribution and we're still not acknowledged."

Ethar El-Katatney

Ethar El-Katatney Speaks

On Charlie Rose

 

Insightful interview on Egypt's ongoing revolution, with journalist Ethar El-Kataney.

Posted by James Gundun

 

EGYPTIANS TAKE OVER

ISRAELI EMBASSY IN CAIRO

>> SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2011

Protesters celebrate as they demolish a concrete wall built around a building housing the Israeli embassy in Cairo September 9, 2011. Egyptian protesters threw documents belonging to the Israeli embassy in Cairo out of windows in the building housing the mission on Friday, Reuters witnesses said.

A protester holds an Egyptian national flag as a fire rages outside the building housing the Israeli embassy in Cairo, Egypt, Friday, Sept. 9, 2011. Hundreds of Egyptian protesters, some swinging hammers and others using their bare hands, tore down parts of a graffiti-covered security wall outside the embassy on Friday. Thousands elsewhere protested for the first time in a month against the country's military rulers.

Protesters tear down a concrete wall built in front of the Israeli embassy in CairoSeptember 9, 2011. Activists on Friday tore down the wall, built around a building housing the embassy in Cairo to protect it against demonstrators, witnesses said.

 Protesters tear down a concrete wall built in front of the Israeli embassy in CairoSeptember 9, 2011. Activists on Friday tore down a wall, built around a building housing the Israeli embassy in Cairo to protect it against demonstrators, witnesses said.

Riot police take position as protesters pull down a concrete wall built in front of theIsraeli embassy in Cairo September 9, 2011. Egyptian activists on Friday tore down a wall, built around a building housing the Israeli embassy in Cairo to protect it from demonstrators, witnesses said.

Egyptian activists burn a depiction of an Israeli flag as they demolish a concrete wallbuilt around a building housing the Israeli embassy in Cairo, Egypt, to protect it against demonstrators, Friday, Sept. 9, 2011. Hundreds of Egyptian protesters tore down parts of a graffiti-covered security wall that had recently been put up near the entrance of the Israeli Embassy in Cairo. Egyptian security forces did not intervene as crowds climbed the embassy security wall, pummeled it with hammers and tore away large sections of the barrier.

Egyptian activists celebrate as they demolish a concrete wall built around a building housing the Israeli embassy in Cairo, Egypt, to protect it against demonstrators Friday, Sept. 9, 2011. Hundreds of Egyptian protesters tore down parts of a graffiti-covered security wall that had recently been put up near the entrance of the Israeli Embassy in Cairo. Egyptian security forces did not intervene as crowds climbed the embassy security wall, pummeled it with hammers and tore away large sections of the barrier.

An elderly man runs past flaming vehicles outside the building housing the Israeli embassy in Cairo, Egypt, Friday, Sept. 9, 2011. A group of about 30 protesters broke into the embassy Friday and dumped hundreds of documents out of the windows after a day of demonstrations outside the building in which crowds swinging sledge hammers and using their bare hands tore apart the embassy's security wall. 

Protesters use a light pole to knock down a concrete wall built in front of the Israeli embassy in Cairo September 9, 2011. Activists on Friday tore down the wall, built to protect it from demonstrators, witnesses said.

Protesters hang a noose and wave their national flag while chanting slogans against the government and military rulers at Tahrir square in Cairo September 9, 2011. Thousands of Egyptian activists returned to Cairo's Tahrir Square Friday for a day of protests, demanding a clear road map to democracy and an end to military trials for civilians.

>via: http://kickmugabeout.blogspot.com/2011/09/egyptians-take-over-israeli-embassy...

Ruby Bridges Hall

CONVERSATION    AIR DATE: Feb. 18, 1997

A Class of One

SUMMARY

In 1960, 6-year-old Ruby Bridges Hall became the first African American child to desegregate an elementary school. In honor of National Black History Month, Hall discusses her memories of the first day she entered her new school in New Orleans, her first year when she was in a class of one, and her efforts to improve education.

REALAUDIO

Transcript

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: On November 14, 1960, the nation watched as six-year-old Ruby Nell Bridges walked into William Frantz Elementary School and into history. A federal court ordered the New Orleans school system to desegregate, making Bridges the first African-American to attend the elementary school.

RUBY BRIDGES HALL: That first morning I remember mom saying as I got dressed in my new outfit, "Now, I want you to behave yourself today, Ruby, and don't be afraid. There might be a lot of people outside this new school, but I'll be with you." That conversation was the full extent of preparing me for what was to come.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Her walk inspired the 1964 Norman Rockwell painting "The Problem We All Live With," a small black girl escorted by four federal marshals walking to school beside a wall bearing a scrawled racial epithet and the letters KKK. Harvard psychiatry Professor Robert Coles witnessed the scene in New Orleans. He has written a children's book about Ruby Bridges' experience called "The Story of Ruby Bridges."

In the book Coles reminds children of the heroism of Bridges' action, showing her facing an empty classroom because angry parents kept their children home and all but one teacher refused to teach a black child. Today in Washington U.S. Marshals honored Ruby Bridges Hall at a ceremony celebrating Black History Month. One of the marshals who accompanied her 36 years ago remembered that day.

 

 

CHARLES BURKS, U.S. Marshal (Ret.): We expected a lot of trouble, but, as it turned out, it wasn't nearly as bad as we thought, even though Miss Bridges probably thought it was.

For a little girl six years old going into a strange school with four strange deputy marshals, a place she had never been before, she showed a lot of courage. 

She never cried. She didn't whimper. She just marched along like a little soldier. And we're all very proud of her. (applause)

 

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: And Ruby Bridges Hall, in turn, thanked the marshals.

RUBY BRIDGES HALL: I wish there were enough marshals to walk with every child as they faced the hatred and racism today, and to support, encourage them the way these federal marshals did for me.

I know there aren't enough of you, but I do hope that I have inspired some of you today to join me again by dedicating yourselves to not just protecting but uplifting those you touch because that will enable us to rise together as a people, as a nation, and as a world.

 

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Here with us now is Ruby Bridges Hall, and welcome. You were six years old when you went into that school. Did you have any idea at that age what you were getting into?

RUBY BRIDGES HALL: No, I really didn't. I remember that morning my mom saying to me, "Ruby, you're going to a new school today. I want you to behave." I remember the federal marshals driving up in the car and us being in the car driving to the school.

I also remember the conversation that was going on in the car. Federal marshals were explaining to us how we should get out of the car and how to walk once we arrived in front of the school.

 

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Did they tell you there'd be nasty people there, or--

RUBY BRIDGES HALL: Oh, no, not at all.

 

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Nobody prepared you for that?

RUBY BRIDGES HALL: No. And I kind of feel like that was a good thing because it's--it would have been very frightening for me as a six-year-old to hear what I might actually see once I got there.

 

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: It would loom large in your imagination.

RUBY BRIDGES HALL: Yes.

 

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: And yet when you confronted it and saw it, do you remember your reaction?

RUBY BRIDGES HALL: Driving up I could see the crowd, but living in New Orleans, I actually thought it was Mardi Gras. There was a large crowd of people outside of the school. They were throwing things and shouting, and that sort of goes on in New Orleans at Mardi Gras.

I really didn't realize until I got into the school that something else was going on. Angry parents at that point rushed in and took their kids out of school. And my mother and I sat in--

 

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: You mean, you sat there as they paraded the other kids out of the school. You saw that?

RUBY BRIDGES HALL: Yes. And I didn't quite understand what was going on, but they seemed very upset, and they were shouting, and pointing at us because we were sitting behind some glass doors.

 

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: You and your mother?

RUBY BRIDGES HALL: My mother and I in the principal's office. And we sat there all day because we were not able to go to class because all of this was going on. So I actually didn't attend class until the very next day.

 

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: And what happened then?

RUBY BRIDGES HALL: The very next day upon arriving at the school the federal marshals escorted me to my classroom, and once I got there, the teacher was there. There were all these desks and no kids. And I actually thought I was early that day.

 

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: You thought you were early.

RUBY BRIDGES HALL: I thought I was early.

 

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: You mean, you still hadn't grasped the enormity of this and what was going on?

RUBY BRIDGES HALL: Not at all. And actually what had happened is that all the kids were taken out of the school, and the school at that point was boycotted.

 

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: How long did it stay like that?

RUBY BRIDGES HALL: That lasted for over a year.

 

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: You went to school every day.

RUBY BRIDGES HALL: Yes.

 

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Tell me about that.

RUBY BRIDGES HALL: Every day I went to school. My teacher, who was actually from Boston, accepted that job not knowing that the schools were going to be integrated that day.

But she taught me, and every day I would arrive. She would greet me, take me to my classroom, and it was just her and I.

 

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: And she would teach you as if she were teaching a whole class?

RUBY BRIDGES HALL: Exactly.

 

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Did you come to create a bond between the two of you?

RUBY BRIDGES HALL: We got to be very, very close. As a matter of fact, I met her again last year. I had not seen her since then, 35 years actually, and I met her, and she said, "You know, it's funny, I just realized that neither one of us ever missed a day of school." And I said, "You're right. I don't know what we would have done."

 

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: In Bob Coles' book, he writes of that teacher looking out the window, thinking that she saw you one day talking to this mob, but you weren't really. Tell me what was going on.

RUBY BRIDGES HALL: Well, the story is that I prayed. And I don't actually remember that, but it sort of comes from the fact that my mother said to me, "Ruby, if I'm not with you and you're afraid, then always say your prayers."

And that's something we were taught. I was raised that way. If I had a nightmare, I would go to her bed at night, and she'd say, "Well, did you say your prayers," and I would say, "No."

And she'd say, "Well, that's why you had the nightmare. Go back and get on your knees." And so she said, "If I'm not with you, then say your prayers."

 

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: So you used to say your prayers a few blocks away.

RUBY BRIDGES HALL: Yes.

 

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: But this day you forgot.

RUBY BRIDGES HALL: Yes.

 

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Until you got in the middle of the mob.

RUBY BRIDGES HALL: Right.

 

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: So you just stopped--

RUBY BRIDGES HALL: And said my prayers.

 

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: What did you say?

RUBY BRIDGES HALL: I don't actually remember the prayer.

 

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: It's in Bob's book.

RUBY BRIDGES HALL: But I prayed, yes.

 

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: It's quite beautiful.

RUBY BRIDGES HALL: I prayed for the people. That's what I did. And so that was actually--that tells me that I was really afraid because that's when I would say my prayers.

 

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: You prayed for those people who were being mean to you?

RUBY BRIDGES HALL: Yes.

 

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: That's pretty amazing. When, if ever, did things get better?

RUBY BRIDGES HALL: Not until much--well, actually better the next year because at that point the school was totally integrated.

 

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: So everybody came back?

RUBY BRIDGES HALL: Everybody came back. But later on, it's always important for me to point out that there were some families who actually felt like this was okay, white families, that their kids attend school with a black child.

But you have to keep in mind that they also had to cross a picket line to do that. And so there were very, very few people that had the nerve enough to do that, to subject their child to that.

 

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: And your own family paid a price, right?

RUBY BRIDGES HALL: Oh, definitely. My father was always against the idea. He felt like, you know, why subject me to that; just send me to the black school that I had been going to, I could get the same education there.

But my mother was very persistent, and she insisted on it and finally convinced him to go through with it.

 

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: But he lost his job.

RUBY BRIDGES HALL: He lost his job. He came home one night and said that his boss said that he could no longer keep him there working.

 

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Too much pressure.

RUBY BRIDGES HALL: Because there was too much pressure. Everybody knew that it was his daughter that was going to this white school, and so he had to fire him.

 

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Even your grandparents suffered.

RUBY BRIDGES HALL: My grandparents, who were sharecroppers in Mississippi at the time, had been living there for 25 years on this farm, and they had to leave Mississippi. They then moved to Louisiana, which is where they live now. But even the people that they sharecropped for said that, you know, everybody knows that it's your granddaughter that's in the school, and we're going to have to ask you to leave.

 

 

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: You talked about the three things that sustained you during that time: prayer, faith was one, your family, and friends.

RUBY BRIDGES HALL: Yes. That was very, very important. I don't think that my parents could have gone through what they did without the whole community coming together. We had friends that would come over and help dress me for school.

Even when I rode to school, there was people in the neighborhood that would walk behind the car. I actually didn't live that far from school, and so they would actually just come out and walk to school with me.

 

 

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: What impact did that experience have on your life?

RUBY BRIDGES HALL: It took me a while to really realize just how important that sacrifice was that my parents made. And having four kids myself, I--

 

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Four boys, right?

RUBY BRIDGES HALL: Four boys--I struggled quite a bit trying to raise them, and I soon found out that what I really wanted to do is to work with kids. And something happened in my family. I lost my brother a few years ago. He had four daughters that I took in and started to raise.

I then found out that they were sort of raising themselves, and it just hit me that we're not concerned about each other's children anymore.

 

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: So your focus today is totally on education?

RUBY BRIDGES HALL: Education, children, and family.

 

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: And has the school system changed that much in all those years? I mean, do you still grapple with some of the same problems?

RUBY BRIDGES HALL: Yes. Some of the same problems. The biggest problem, I think, is that parents are not as involved with their children's education as they used to be.

 

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: So it's not the racial aspect as much as it is--

RUBY BRIDGES HALL: I don't think so. I don't think so. I started the Ruby Bridges Foundation in the hopes of bringing parents back into the schools and taking a more active role in their kids' education.

I believe that if I can bring resources into the school that the public school system can do but ultimately what we want as parents is a good education for our kids. It doesn't matter who they sit next to.

 

 

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Well, Ruby Bridges, thank you for joining us, and Bob Coles' book, all the proceeds go to the Ruby Bridges Foundation.

RUBY BRIDGES HALL: Yes.

 

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: For that purpose.

RUBY BRIDGES HALL: Yes.

 

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Well, all the best.

RUBY BRIDGES HALL: Thank you.

Speech

 

 

 

A song about restoring the black family! Fight Back!

Posted on September 22, 2011

Taj Mahal

One Track Mind:

Taj Mahal, “Stagger Lee” (2011)

Posted by Nick DeRiso

The lyrics have changed over these many years, but the mythical journey of Stagger Lee — “that bad man, oh, cru-el Stagolee” who shot a card-playing companion over a five-dollar Stetson hat — remains this talismanic tale.

As retold with stunning clarity on a new recording by Taj Mahal, though, the song’s archetypical worship of the anti-hero is brilliantly turned on its ear. There’s little resemblance here, in fact, to the familiar early rock-era update, where a jubilant Lloyd Price eggs on the proceedings, shouting “Go, go! Go Staggerlee!” And of course none at all to subsequent versions that have spanned every important American musical genre.

 

Mahal, performing alone as part of the new Wynton Marsalis and Eric Clapton Play the Blues project on Reprise Records, joins a teetering pile that includes some 400 others who have remade “Staggerlee” since the track was first recorded in the early 1920s. (At that point, the story of William “Billy” Lyons’ murder by Stagger Lee Shelton had been legend through the lower Mississippi River for as long as a decade.) Over time, the tune become something of a landmark in modern music, having been reimagined in genres as diverse as ragtime, jazz, blues, country, Broadway, folk and 1950s rock, punk and metal — all before Staggerlee (or a similar kind of badass) became something of a seminal figure in hip hop.

Yet Mahal, in an oaken, brutally honest update of a tune he first did on 1969′s Giant Step/De Ole Folks at Home, finds a way to make it all sound dangerous and new once more. Chalk some of that up to the lasting mystery of the tune itself: “Staggerlee” has always been part cultural admission of an underlying fear of the African-American male, part subtle indictment of our fascination with outlaws. Most of all, perhaps, it’s a darkly fascinating narrative. This sharply drawn fable, after all, turn as a bullet goes through Billy and then through a bartender’s glass. At the same time, though, Mahal is to be credited for returning the song to its initial place as a cautionary tale, recalling ’20s-era versions by the likes of Mississippi John Hurt. In Mahal’s hands, this is no celebration of violence.

Now, you’ve got to dig deep into this new live program to find Mahal’s “Staggerlee,” past the audio CD and all the way to the end of the accompanying DVD. When you do, though, Mahal is all alone, and the crowd is seemingly struck dumb by the stark power of this song. He opens with a ruminative guitar interlude, sounding like playing cards flapping on bike spokes, then opens up into a series of crowing growls — recalling how Billy pleaded for his life, telling Staggerlee that he had two children and a wife back home, before ultimately being shot down anyway.

As he enters the heart of the lyric, Mahal’s playing continues along with a thrilling interpretive complexity, mimicking a midnight freight as it slows through town, then charging forward with a gun-barrel flash of ringing insistence. The culprit in this jarring moment of violence is never caught, even as barroom patrons continue walking through Billy’s long-dried blood. “Po-lice officers, how can it be,” Mahal sings, in a gruff indictment, “you done ‘rested everybody, but cru-el Stagolee!”

That voice, so full of ragged glory, is easily the best thing that’s happened to this stately old standard in quite some time.

Agricultural History Review

International Essay Competition

Deadline: 30 September 2011

To celebrate the publication of the sixtieth volume of Agricultural History Review in 2012, the Review announces an prize essay competition open to rural historians in Britain, Europe and internationally. Three prizes will be offered, one of £500 and two of £250. One prize will be reserved for an essay in the rural history of the world outside Britain and Ireland. It is intended that if arrangements can be made, the prize-winning essays will be read at the Society’s Spring Conference in 2013. The winning essays will be published in volume 60 of Agricultural History Review. It is a condition of entry that the essay has not been published elsewhere, is not under
consideration by another journal, nor forms part of a forthcoming book.

There is no restriction on the subject matter of the essays except that they should fall within the remit of the Review. Discussions of contemporary issues in agriculture or rural economies are acceptable provided they are strongly rooted in an historical perspective. Essays employing new methodologies, or exploring new areas of interest, will be especially welcomed.

The competition is open to rural historians at the beginning of their careers, defined as those who on 30 September 2011 have had no more than five years post-doctoral academic employment in one or more posts in a university, research institute, museum or NGO. Submissions from rural historians who do not hold (and have not held) an academic or professional post as a rural historian are also welcome. Such people may or may not have a higher qualification, but no age or time limit applies in these cases The essays will be judged by a panel appointed by the Executive Committee of the British Agricultural History Society and chaired by the editor of the Review, Professor Richard Hoyle, who will take specialist advice as appropriate. Queries about eligibility of applicants should be directed to him.

Essays should be no longer than 12,000 words including footnotes and any appendices. All submissions should be in English. Three copies of each essay should be sent to the Editor of the Review at the Department of History, University of Reading, Reading, rg6 6aa, UK. Submissions by email attachment are also acceptable (to r.w.hoyle@reading.ac.uk) but the accompanying email should make it clear that the submission is intended for the essay competition.

The author’s name should not be given on the essay but on a detachable cover sheet which should also include a short biographical paragraph (100 words) and a statement confirming that the author meets the criteria laid down above. The latest date for the submission of essays is 30 September 2011. The winning candidates will be notified in January 2012.

Contact Information:

For inquiries: r.w.hoyle@reading.ac.uk

For submissions: r.w.hoyle@reading.ac.uk

Website: http://www.bahs.org.uk

 

2011 DIAGRAM Essay Contest Guidelines

The Essay Contest deadline for 2011 is October 31, 2011. This is the deadline for receipt of submissions.

DIAGRAM's yearly Essay Contest encourages submissions of essays—essays in an expansive sense, meaning essay as experiment, essay as heterogenous and sometimes strange beast. We will read your submissions of unpublished (in a serial/book or on a non-personal website—blogs etc. are fine) essays. (Unpublished means you must be able to give us, if your work is selected, first serial rights.)

To enter: Get us your unpublished essay (definition here is a bit hazy because we like lots of things) of up to 10,000 words with a $15 reading fee by Oct 31, 2011.

The prize is $1000 + publication. This contest is judged by Nicole Walker and Ander Monson. We'll shoot for publishing several of our finalists with the winner in DIAGRAM, as we have the last few years.

FAQ stuff:

• We prefer our entries electronic (if possible), with the manuscript itself anonymous. A removable cover page would be ideal if you send hardcopy. If you send electronically no cover page is necessary; just don't put your name on the manuscript.

• Anyone with more than a casual relationship with either of the judges is ineligible (though we're happy to read your work via regular submissions). Sorry lovers, former lovers, friends, students, mentors, and so on.

• Images are fine as long as you have or can get rights to print/reprint (or if they are in the public domain) if selected.

• We don't have any particular aesthetic biases for this contest other than the name: we are looking for works of nonfiction that essay interestingly--however you'd like to define. That's a pretty open definition, we admit.

• If you're sending something multimedia sometimes it's easier to send snail mail if the file is too big (or unwieldy). The submission manager system only accepts files less than 10 megabytes or so. (Remember when that was a crazy size for a file?)

• Multiple submissions are fine. Simultaneous submissions are fine as long as you notify us as soon if an essay is no longer available. In which case, congratulations on getting it published! Then you can withdraw your submission manually from the submissions manager if you sent it electronically, or email us below.

• We read everything for contests anonymously, ethically, and rigorously.

• We expect to notify finalists and winners in February 2012 or before. Thanks for entering! And good luck. Questions can go to nmp--atsymbol--thediagram--dot--com.

• Multiple authors are fine, if weird.

Then, here's how to submit:

Option 1, Electronic (much preferred but maybe a little awkward):

REQUIRED Step 1 of 2: Pay contest fee through Paypal by filling out the form with your last name and the essay title, then clicking on the Buy Now button just below this paragraph. You can use a credit card if you like (or a checking account etc.), or a Paypal account. No need to create an account: just click the don't have a paypal account button on the next page in that case. Once you complete step one and pay the entry fee, it will click through to a page with step two.

 

Last Name/Title of Entry

Note that the payment goes to New Michigan Press, which is the publisher of DIAGRAM.

__

Option 2, Snail mail, old school:

Step 1 and 2: Send entry and payment to DIAGRAM Essay Contest, c/o Ander Monson, Dept. of English, P.O. Box 210067, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721-0067. Make checks out to DIAGRAM for $15 or send cash. If you send Express Mail or Overnight, please check the box so it doesn't require a signature.

Or pay online with the paypal button above and make a note of that in your cover letter. Include a SASE if you'd like a response. Otherwise we will only contact you if you're a finalist or winner, and will post the results on the contests page here when the decision is made.

*

Keep in mind that we need to receive your submission by October 31, 2011.

Good luck, and thanks for entering the contest.

Questions can go to <nmp--at--thediagram.com>.

CIPE International Essay Contest

for Students and Young Professionals

Deadline: 14 November 2011

Who can participate: Students and young professionals aged 18-30.

Length and language: 2,000-3,000 words. All essays must be in English.

For winners: For each category, first, second, and third place authors will receive a $1,000 honorarium, and CIPE will publish 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place essays.

Categories

Democratic transitions:

Young people and the technology they used to share knowledge and coordinate action were at the core of movements for democracy in Tunisia and Egypt earlier this year. Meanwhile outside of the Middle East, in Southern Sudan, Nepal, and other countries, young people also have opportunities to help power new democracies.

How can youth play a significant role in newly-formed or emerging democracies? Do existing broad-based civil society groups or parties provide youth with opportunities to participate? How might youth in your country form their own groups and voice their concerns and needs as future leaders?

Economically-sustainable development:

One of the challenges facing democratic and economic development is making progress economically self-sustaining. Policies and practices that address the sources, not the symptoms, of underdevelopment ensure that momentum builds over time. For development programs to be sustainable on their own, they must have financial and political commitment from local stakeholders.

How can youth take ownership of the most pressing development issues and solutions in your country? What can the next generation do to build democratic and economic development that is self-sustainable for the long run? What can be done to make sure progress is locally-driven, effective, and not dependent on foreign aid?

Corruption:

Corruption undermines a fair and open business environment that can provide jobs, opportunities, and tax revenues for a healthy democracy. Often corruption occurs at multiple levels of society, thus making it difficult for businesses and policymakers to curtail it. Without reforming practices and incentives at the root of this problem, corruption hurts business and weakens confidence in political leaders.

How does corruption influence the way business is done in your country? How do nepotism, cronyism, and/or bribery make doing business difficult or more costly? What are some innovative, new initiatives that the next generation should take to address corruption (e.g.: are there ways to change the incentive structure to discourage such behavior)?

Contact Information:

For inquiries: essay@cipe.org

For submissions: online here

Website: http://www.cipe.org