This rare documentary was broadcasted for the first time in 1981 by the BBC.
It's is about the 1980/1981 USA tour by Stevie Wonder looking at his musical insight and his preparation for a concert, and his appearance at a Washington Rally to celebrate the birthday of Martin Luther King. (thanks to GenesisKnights for the update info)
Music Break
The video for the “Joburg [Johannesburg] Mix” from Australian video and sound artist Pogo’s new World ReMix Project. For his new project, Pogo–better known more for his video remixes of films and TV shows–travels the world “capturing sights, sounds, voices and chords, and use them to compose and shoot a track and video for each major culture of the world.”
H/T: Elke Zuern
Announcing
The Florida Review
2011 Editors’ Prizes in fiction, nonfiction,
and poetry $1000 Award and publication
Submit a group of 3-5 poems, one story, or one essay with a $15 reading fee (which includes a year’s subscription), payable to UCF/Florida Review.
For each entry, include a cover letter with your name, address, phone number, email address, and the title(s) of submitted work. Manuscripts must include the title of the work on each page, but no identifying information about the writer (name, email address, etc.). This is a blind read.
Writers may enter in more than one genre, but each additional submission requires a separate envelope and entry fee.
Simultaneous submissions to other journals are permissible, but please notify us if the work is accepted elsewhere.
All submissions will be considered for publication. Winners will be announced in summer 2010. For notification, include a SASE.
Postmark DEADLINE: February 28, 2011
Submit to: The Editors’ Award (Indicate Genre) The Florida Review Department of English MFA Program PO Box 161346 University of Central Florida Orlando, Florida 32816-1346
Please visit our website at: www.flreview.com
New Deadlines for TNQ Writing Contests in 2011
We are now accepting submissions for our 2011 contest deadline. Watch for our 2010 winners (and a few others we couldn't resist) in our Fall issue!
The Nick Blatchford Occasional Verse Contest
1,000 dollars for one glorious poem
Sponsored by TNQ editor Kim Jernigan and family in celebration of the man who sparked their love of poetry, this contest is for poems written in response to an occasion, personal or public-poems of gratitude or grief, poems that celebrate or berate, poems that make of something an occasion or simply mark one. We are interested in light verse and in verse more sober, in the whole spectrum of tones and occasions. One of Nick's own poems, which we think captures the broadness of his (and our) sense of 'occasion', is pictured at left. For a bit lengthier background on the genre, you can also turn to Amanda Jernigan's funny and thoughtful essay on poems and occasions, linked below. Both originally appeared in Issue 100 of TNQ.
We will award a grand prize of $1,000 to the poem judged most worthy. Another $1,000 in prize money will be distributed as the judges fancy. However the prize money falls, the best of what we see will be published in The New Quarterly, at our usual rates, and posted on our website.
Entry fee: $40 for up to 2 unpublished poems, $5 each for additional poems. Submissions include a one-year Canadian subscription (or subscription extension) to The New Quarterly, and may be accompanied by a brief paragraph describing the event that occasioned the poem.
Eligiblity: Entrants must be Canadian or currently residing in Canada. Entries may not be previously published, accepted, or submitted for publication elsewhere. There are no restrictions on length or number of entries, so long as the appropriate fees are paid. Entrants anonymity will be carefully preserved throughout the judging process. Every entrant will receive notification via email that his or her entry has been received. The decisions will by made by August 31; winner(s) and finalists will receive notification by letter.
Deadline: Postmarked Feb 28, 2011
Jelly Bucket [jel-ee buhk-it]
-noun
1. archaic slang for a lunch pail, formerly used by coal miners and other laborers residing in Appalachia.
2. EKU's annual graduate student–produced literary journal.Reading period EXPANDED! Opens January 1 and ends June 1
Jelly Bucket is published annually by the MFA in Creative Writing Program at Eastern Kentucky University. Founded in 2009, Jelly Bucket features established and new writers. We accept works of fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction from anywhere in the world. At least one eight-page color insert in each issue is dedicated to visual art that incorporates text and/or features an aspect of the book arts.
Purchase a Copy By Check
To order by mail, please send a check made payable to EKU Dept. of English for $12 to: Jelly Bucket, 467 Case Annex, 521 Lancaster Ave., Richmond, KY 40475. Please do not send cash.
Submitting Your Work
We now only accept electronic submissions via our submissions portal:Jelly Bucket submission manager. ---> Submit to Jelly Bucket
Only one submission per person per reading period. Simultaneous submissions are fine, but please let us know immediately if your submitted work is accepted elsewhere. All hard copy submissions will be recycled and will not be returned. No previously published work, please. We define previously published work as a piece published in another journal, either paper or electronic in a book or chapbook—even a self-published one—or one that is currently online in a public blog or within a public forum.
Poetry
Please send us no more than five poems at a time. One poem per page. Format poems on the page as you would have them printed. .Non-fiction
Non-Fiction pieces of up to 10,000 words are welcome. Please double-space all entries..Fiction
Please limit word count to 10,000. For short fiction (less than 1,000 words), up to 3 pieces may be submitted.Text as Art
Each issue features a text-as-art/book arts project. Project images can involve any media, but must incorporate text or font design, calligraphy, tattoos, book design, crossword puzzles, or other aspects of text as art or the book arts. You may query first, send us a CD, direct us to a web site to review your work, or submit low-res samples of your project through the submissions portal. To inquire by email: art@jellybucket.org.
Books of The Times
What Africa Brought to the Table
By DWIGHT GARNER
Published: January 24, 2011
“You hear a lot of jazz about soul food,” Eldridge Cleaver wrote in “Soul on Ice,” his 1968 prison memoir. Cleaver didn’t want that stuff on his plate every night. “The people in the ghetto want steaks. Beef steaks. I wish I had the power to see to it that the bourgeoisie really did have to make it on soul food.”
Kristy May
Jessica B. Harris
HIGH ON THE HOG
A Culinary Journey from Africa to America
By Jessica B. Harris
Illustrated. 291 pages. Bloomsbury. $26.
Related
Excerpt: ‘High on the Hog’ (January 24, 2011)
From the book, "High on the Hog" by Jessica B. Harris (Bloomsbury)
A traditional market in Dakar, Senegal.
Frances Benjamin Johnston/Library of Congress
A cooking class at the Hampton Institute in Hampton, Va., around 1899.
From "High on the Hog" by Jessica B. Harris (Bloomsbury)
A dinner at the home of the author of “High on the Hog,” Jessica B. Harris, in Oak Bluffs, on Martha’s Vineyard.
Cleaver’s lines came back to me recently while I was sitting in Red Rooster, the new Harlem neo-soul restaurant owned by the Ethiopian-born celebrity chef Marcus Samuelsson. The menu at Red Rooster — after the collard greens, the shrimp and grits, and the “fried yard bird” — ends with this showstopper: a $32 “uptown steak frites” with truffle béarnaise. Cleaver, who died in 1998, would have enjoyed this.
I thought about Cleaver’s lines, too, while reading Jessica B. Harris’s absorbing new book, “High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America.” Ms. Harris zeroes in on what she sees as the two divergent strands of African-American cooking. The first reveres homey staples like corn pone, fried chicken and chitterlings (a pig’s small intestines), and embraces those cooks who can, as she writes, “put a hurtin’ on a mess of greens.”
The second strand is aspirational and omnivorous. Historically, it includes recipes from, she says, “Big House cooks who prepared lavish banquets, caterers who created a culinary cooperative in Philadelphia in the 19th century, a legion of black hoteliers and culinary moguls and a growing black middle and upper class.”
Ms. Harris belongs, firmly, to that black upper class. She’s a respected cookbook writer — her many books include “The Africa Cookbook” (1998) — who divides her time, according to the book’s dust jacket, among New York City, Martha’s Vineyard and New Orleans.
In “High on the Hog” she branches out into narrative nonfiction, with mostly toothsome results. Her plain, gently simmering prose will not make you forget Michael Pollan’s. But Ms. Harris has an eye for detail and an inquisitive manner on the page, qualities that take any writer a long way.
“High on the Hog” covers a lot of territory in terms of African-American eating habits. (Ms. Harris refers to those eating habits, widely construed, as “foodways,” and I wish she wouldn’t. It’s a vaguely sanctimonious term that’s caught on among food historians, especially Southern ones, in recent years. I await the books on sexways and toiletways.)
Ms. Harris examines West African staple foods in the centuries before slavery; she details the grim slop captives were fed during the terrors of the Middle Passage. She explores the life of George Washington’s revered black cook at Mount Vernon, Hercules, and Thomas Jefferson’s talented cook, James Hemings, the brother of Jefferson’s slave, Sally Hemings, who some historians believe was Jefferson’s mistress. She dilates on black cowboys and Pullman porters and the authors of the earliest black cookbooks. Her true topic is, as she puts it, “the Africanizing of the Southern palate,” and ultimately of the American one.
I especially enjoyed the chapters that cover the second half of the 20th century and beyond. She quotes Ralph Ellison, in “Invisible Man,” describing a food cart “from which a stove pipe reeled off a thin spiral of smoke that drifted the odor of baking yams slowly to me, bringing a stab of swift nostalgia.” Ms. Harris loves this sentence. Yet she gently reproves Ellison, letting us know that he was almost certainly describing not yams, but sweet potatoes.
She lists the restaurants where important players in the civil rights movement liked to eat big. She detours into the dietary strictures of Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam, who urged his followers to get off the “slave diet.”
Muhammad wrote: “Just stop eating the swine flesh, and your life will be expanded. Stay off that grandmother’s old-fashioned corn bread and black-eyed peas, and those quick 15-minute biscuits made with baking powder.” So what did Muhammad eat? A lot of bean pies, Ms. Harris writes.
She is outraged at the “culinary apartheid” she found in some urban neighborhoods in America. “We were getting stuck with overprocessed foods, low-quality meats and second- or third-rate produce,” she writes. “It is a lesson I will not forget.”
She casts an appraising eye at the recent crop of black culinary trailblazers. She mourns the early death, in 1998 at 42, of Patrick Clark, a black chef who made his name at Manhattan restaurants like Odeon, Cafe Luxembourg and Tavern on the Green. She explores the careers of Edna Lewis, Sylvia Woods — the owner of Sylvia’s, the popular Harlem restaurant — and the New Orleans Creole cook Leah Chase.
Ms. Harris flips on the TV and discusses, excellently, Pat and Gina Neely, the lively hosts of the Food Network show “Down Home with the Neelys.” This couple, she writes, “have become arguably the best-known African-American cooks in the country,” and thus worthy taking seriously.
Ms. Harris seems to approve of the Neelys, sort of, though there were bumps along the way. “At the show’s inception, most viewers were outraged by everything from the dishes prepared on the air to the dialogue,” she writes. “A strawberry cake prepared with cake mix, Jell-O, strawberries and whipped cream came under particular fire, as did the family’s ‘loud and boisterous’ manner.”
She goes on about the Neelys: “The level of sexual innuendo in the couple’s banter and the personal style of Gina Neely were other points of dismay. African-American viewers were particularly concerned that the show not be a throwback to behavior considered stereotypical and not a representation of the diversity and sophistication of African-American lifestyle and cooking.” She concludes, “Changes were made.”
Black cuisine is still too often viewed as “unhealthy, inelegant and hopelessly out of sync with the culinary canons that define healthy eating today,” Ms. Harris writes. She notes that most black families restrict those artery-clogging meals to Sundays, holidays and family reunions. And she declares, wistfully and yet with optimism, “The cooking of Africa has yet to have its moment on the foodie radar.”
#ADANairobi11
Thursday January 20th 2011, African Digital Art held its first ever event. The #ADANairobi11 meet-up was a culmination of design professionals, creatives and students with a diverse range of talent and abilities.
The ADANairobi11 become the loud and resounding declaration that creativity is important in Africa! Creativity is an important component when it comes to innovation, technology, the economy and for social good.
The digital arena is growing and soon the demand to generate local digital content will push forward the industry as whole. How will we as creative professionals rise to the challenge? The #ADANairobi11 celebrated and challenged creative professionals to pursue their passion with vigilance, professionalism and respect.
Norman, a Kenyan student learning in Malaysia, noted the importance of a good design education. Strapping on a camera (film or photo) doesn’t mean your a director. He noted we have a culture of storytelling (writing, drawing & word of mouth) and now technology through animation & film have helped fuse / marry these platforms together. Normal also made not of supporting each other. The importance of getting together, knowing each other lies more importantly in encouraging each other.
Fady, creative director of the Ark, A Kenyan based creative interactive agency, gave a much needed talk on how Africa would define “what is good design”. Fady enthusiastically challenged Kenyan creatives to become even more professional fighting for credibility in your professional status. He added that its important for us to change the meaning of designer in Africa. Fady’s message was clear and simple “Do Good Work.. Don’t Let your Ideas expire.”
Hawa Essuman, Filmmaker and Director of the incredible film Soul Boy, shared how she worked with some impressive collaborators to achieve her goals.She noted she didn’t want someone else to tell her story and also how to use culture that’s relevant to you. Soul Child was a story shot in Kibera and uses Swahili. For a feature film it would seem limiting to use a language spoken by just a few people but her defense for this was Swahili suited that story much better. Hawa also challenged us to stop making excuses and waiting for others to produce good work, she encouraged us to be brave enough to pursue what we know to be right for us creatively.
We invited a diverse group of panelists all from a spectrum of disciplines to discuss key points.
Panelists
Mbithi Masya : Film Maker / Editor
Jim Chuchu : Photographer / Film Maker
Fady Rostom : Creative Director / Photographer
Kiboko Njoroge : Freelance Illustrator
Emmanuel Nyakwada aka Point Blank : Illustrator & Animator
Charles Ndungu: Designer & Animator
Hawa Essuman : Filmmaker
Rachel Gichinga : Media Activist/Filmmaker
Topics of Discussion
Design Education and Culture
Self Initiated Projects
Online Portfolios,
Collaboration
Funding for the Arts
Design/Film for Social good
The atmosphere was electric as the panel shared their experiences in the creative industry. Self taught designers postured some of their challenges as well as those who had formal training in design. Jim Chuchu and Mbithi shared their experience making the Kenyan viral sensation, Makmende as Kiboko shared how their work influenced his illustrations. There was a shared sentiment to foster better collaboration by supporting the creative community.
Rachel Gichinga passionately evoked the need for social responsibility amongst the creative community. She reminded us the importance of using our talents for collective good by sharing the example of her passion project, Kuweni Serious.
All in all the night set the tone for the rest of the year for the creative community in Kenya urging creatives to Connect, Share and Collaborate.
The conversation and discussion still continues join the newly formed Nairobi creative group – Sanaa Republic @sanaarepublic. Join Nairobi creatives on February 1st for the first design critique session where we urge you to bring your work for critical review. Every 1st Tuesday of the month Sanaa Republic will host a critique session and Every 3rd Tuesday of the Month it will host a meet up.
See you there.
The Inspiration of Listening
Eugene Richards has always been an inspiration.It's not just his pictures that inspire me, but it's
his access to intimacy.His work is a beacon - it's a symbol of what I strive
to achieve.I've read his book, Cocaine True, Cocaine Blue
dozens of times, but only recently did I pay acute
attention to the writing.It looks as if he's interviewing the people he photographs,
and I wondered if there was a tie between the act of
interviewing and access.I decided to try something similar with a subject
the next time the appropriate opportunity arose.When I met this woman, I thought I would try.
One of our military reporters was working on a story
about this woman, whose son served in Iraq. Her son
suffers from PTSD as a result of his combat experience,
and he tried to kill his wife.He's now in jail.
His mother asserts his time in Iraq caused his breakdown.
"The Army broke my son. They broke him, and then they
threw him away," she said.Instead of taking the ubiquitous picture of her standing
by a window holding a picture of her son, I wanted to
make an image that reflected her pain.I asked her if it would be OK to interview her and have
her talk about her son, while I photographed her.We both knew it would be emotionally tough for her,
but she trusted me. I emphasized that my goal was to
show the pain she was suffering, and she agreed.You can see her pain in this progression of images.
I hope it touches people deeper than a traditional
superficial image.
We started talking about her feelings.
We probed deeper into her emotional state, and while it
was difficult, it's important to remember this was an agreed
action by both of us.
The more we talked about her son, the more she opened up.
She began to trust me more, and I could feel I was beginning
to make an image that was a more honest portrayal of her experience.It was intense, and profoundly sad.
As she cried, so did I. I couldn't prevent myself.
It was all just too damn sad.
During the interview, I reminded her that though I was
holding up a camera between us, I was still listening.I think it helped her in trusting me, even though
we didn't have constant eye contact.
After almost an hour, we came to this point in the interview. It
seemed a release for her, this moment in time.
I'm very grateful for her in trusting me, and for
her being open to sharing her emotion with me
and our readers. We don't always get such an
opportunity.Afterwards she was exhausted, and very emotional.
I think it's worth mentioning though, that she
thanked me for listening, and for asking her
the questions that led to that moment.She told me no one had listened to her
to this extent.I think the lesson learned is to give the
people you photograph space. Give them the chance
to reveal their emotions.Don't only depend on writers to interview -
you may miss out on a chance to better understand someone.
Egypt: Too soon to analyze, so here’s my outbox
Protesters stop for prayer during January 28th demonstrations in Cairo (possibly 6th October Bridge.) Twitpic posted by @ollywainwright
Like many people, I’ve spent the day glued to Al Jazeera English’s coverage of the protests that have taken place all across Egypt. Egyptian friends had made it clear to me that today would be pivotal – the day the revolution took place, or failed to catch fire. I’m stunned by the bravery of the people who took to the streets, knowing they’d face police willing to use tear gas and rubber bullets to drive them back. I’m fascinated at how effectively protesters mobilized with communications (not just internet, but mobile phone and SMS) cut. And I’m deeply moved by the photos that show protesters praying in the middle of demonstrations, sometimes with police joining them, sometimes, as above, with water cannons trying to disperse them while they pray.
And like everyone else, I’m waiting to hear Mubarak speak… or to hear the news that he’s disappeared and that the military has taken charge of the country. It’s too early for analysis, of how the protests managed to be so massive, of the role (or lack of role) of social media, of implications for the broader region. Or maybe it’s the right time for more nimble pundits than me. All I can do is share my outbox with you – here’s some email I’ve sent to friends and colleagues answering questions that have come in today:
In response to a reporter’s question about the importance of Internet to the movements in Egypt and Tunisia, and whether internet access is a human right:
Both Tunisia and Egypt have experienced broad-based popular revolutions. The people who’ve taken to the streets aren’t just the elites using social media – they’re a broad swath of society, heavy on young people, but including a wide range of ages, incomes and political ideologies. It’s a mistake to link the protests too tightly to factors like Facebook, Twitter, Wikileaks – at the root, these protests are about economics, demographics and decades of autocratic rule.
But because they’re popular movements, it’s very much worth asking how they’ve been organized, and what’s convinced people to take to the streets. In both Tunisia and Egypt, it’s pretty clear that these protests have not been organized by existing political parties. (The Brotherhood in Egypt helped turn people out for the protests today in Egypt, but they are not the core organizers, and have been very careful not to claim leadership.) What motivates tens of thousands of people to take to the streets, knowing that they’re going to face severe reactions from security forces.
Media plays a role here. In Tunisia, protests started with the immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi, and initially were confined to Sidi Bouzid, a small and relatively disconnected city. The protests got attention across the country and throughout the Arab world via Al Jazeera, which aggressively covered the protests, despite the fact that the network’s reporters had been banned from the country. Al J leaned heavily on social media, reproducing images and video from Facebook, which is widely used (19%+ percent of Tunisian population uses Facebook) in the country. Al Jazeera is widely watched in Tunisia, and images of people taking to the streets in Sidi Bouzid helped spark the protests that spread throughout the country and eventually to Tunis, where they toppled the government. I don’t think social media was the prime actor, but social media amplified by broadcast helped tell Tunisians that their fellow citizens were taking
to the streets.The success of Tunisia’s revolution (and let’s pause to point out that, while they removed a hated dictator, it’s still not clear what comes next) has inspired people throughout the region, in ways that are good an bad. There’s been a rash of immolations, people following in the footsteps of Bouazizi, which is truly tragic. But there’s also a pervasive sense that change is afoot throughout the region. The success in Tunisia mobilized existing activist groups in Egypt, like
the April 6 Youth movement, Kefaya and the Brotherhood, who used a wide variety of tactics to bring people to the streets on the 25th and now on the 28th. Everyone knows that Egypt is not Tunisia – the Egyptian security forces are a much nastier beast, in no small part because they’re well trained and well armed, with extensive US support. But the possibility of victory in Tunisia, heavily amplified on Al Jazeera and other international media, has helped people decide to take to the streets.It’s clear that social media had at least some impact in organizing the Egyptian protests – we saw tens of thousands of people signing up to participate on Facebook groups used to organize protests. It wasn’t the chief medium used to plan protests – SMS and even paper flyers were likely more important – but it did give people outside the region a chance to see what was coming. On 1/23, we were reporting about the forthcoming 1/25 protests in Cairo – that’s why it was so surprising to see much of international media, including Al Jazeera, caught flatfooted that day. By 1/28, plans had been widely disseminated, online and offline. When Mubarak ordered mobile phone networks and the internet shut off late last night, it was too late – people knew where they were going, what they were going to do and the interruption in
comms wasn’t sufficient to stop the protests.The shutdown is significant because it means the pictures we’re getting of events on the ground are coming largely via journalists – i.e., our picture of the protests today are very much a pre-internet form of reporting. As I hang out on Twitter, my friends are doing what I’m doing – listening intently to Al Jazeera English and discussing what we see. The implications of this shutdown, long term, are pretty massive. Cutting a nation of 80m off the internet is a pretty clear
admission of fear and panic from the Mubarak government. The main implication, I think, is that it’s going to be very hard for things to return to “normal” in Egypt. The internet shutdown is a small, but telling, part of a larger picture: nothing will be the same tomorrow morning.Is access to the internet a human right? The right to speak, to be heard, to organize, to air grievances are all rights protected under the universal declaration of human rights. When we defend those rights nowadays, we defend them online as well as offline, because the public sphere includes the digital as well as the physical. I think the notion of an internet shutdown is viscerally uncomfortable to US audiences because it suggests a thuggish government willing to silence all dissent if possible. But human rights are being much more enthusiastically violated by the riot police beating demonstrators, dragging them into vans and leaving them by roadsides in the desert. If an internet shutdown is what it took to get Americans to realize that Egypt – a nation we support with $1.3b of military aid a year – has a serious human rights problem, then we just aren’t paying attention.
To a group of political scientists who study politics and internet, looking for realtime coverage and analysis of what’s taking place in Egypt:
It’s been a pretty extraordinary couple of weeks. The events in Tunisia were a stunning surprise – it took a very long time for the protests in Sidi Bouzid to turn into a nationwide movement, and it wasn’t clear that the unrest would spread from that small, disconnected city to the whole nation. Now, it feels a bit more like watching an avalanche – there’s incredible instability and power, and it seems very clear that Egypt cannot return to business as usual
after today’s events.My friends and I are staying glued to AJE, which is doing an excellent job of streaming coverage from Cairo, especially impressive as there’s been such a strong government crackdown on communications, and because it’s clear that the police have been targeting journalists.
Twitter was hugely useful in following the protests on January 25, but it’s much less useful today, as the internet is mostly shut down, and mobile phone networks are disabled in most areas where protests are taking case. Still, it’s worth paying attention to Alaa Abdel Fateh, an Egyptian dissident living in South Africa, who’s acting as an aggregator and router for reports from the ground. One of the most interesting initiatives is a project designed to get reports out via landline phone and onto Twitter – someone is literally taking phonecalls, translating and posting on @Jan25voices. I’m also getting some very
interesting news from friends who work for Jazeera, who’ve often got the best news from the ground – Mohamed Nanabhay (@mohamed), Abulrahman Warsarme (@abdu)AJE’s liveblog is excellent -
Guardian and NYTimes also doing the same, but I haven’t found them as helpful.As for deeper reporting and more context, I think Foreign Policy has done the best work thus far, especially on their Mideast Channel. I trust Marc Lynch’s analysis – he’s incredibly smart about both the region and the power of traditional and social media. Foreign Policy has been one of the main places we’ve argued about issues of media influence – here was my contribution to that debate, and a very smart reaction to that piece from Zeynep Tufekci.
Of course, Global Voices has been all over the story – we were able to predict the Jan 25 protests on Jan 23 based on what we were hearing in social media. Here’s the link to our Egypt coverage.
I’ll hope to take some of our upcoming meeting to talk through some of the theoretical issues these events raise. Some very quick thoughts on the relationship between new media, old media and mobilization:
- Understanding how protests spread from Sidi Bouzid through Tunisia probably means analyzing the relationship between social media and Al Jazeera. Jazeera covered the protests intensely and in detail, but as they’d had their bureau in Tunis shut down, and as the country prevented reporters from going to Sidi Bouzid, they leaned heavily on social media for footage of the protests. By broadcasting those protests via AlJ, which has very wide viewership, Tunisians got the
message that they could take to the streets – that it was risky, but could happen across the country. It certainly wasn’t a media led revolution, but it’s quite possible that social media plus broadcast helped reinforce the impulse to protest.- There’s been a strong role for social media in planning protests in Egypt. It’s clearly not the only, or even main, tool for mobilizing, but we saw tens of thousands of people committing to the January 25 and 28 protests via Facebook groups, and the April 6 Youth movement, a Facebook-based movement, seems to be one of the prime actors.
- Censorship is the sincerest form of flattery. While Ben Ali lifted restrictions on the internet shortly before his government fell, Mubarak has gone in the other direction, and effected a pretty thorough internet shutdown late last night. Too late – the 28th protests were very well planned and couldn’t be stopped by shutting
down comms. But fascinating to think about the implications of taking the largest nation in the region offline.Lots to think about, lots to analyze, but for now, just fascinated watching this unfold.
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Ethan Zuckerman's musings on Africa, international development
and hacking the media.
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This post also available in:| Français | · Egypte : deux vidéos qui ont réussi à franchir le blocage d'Internet |
| 繁體中文 | · 埃及：民眾影片突破網路封鎖 |
| 简体中文 | · 埃及：民众影片突破網絡封锁 |
| Italiano | · Egitto: i citizen video superano la censura di Internet |
| Deutsch | · Ägypten: Videos umgehen Blockade |
This post is part of our special coverage of Egypt Protests 2011.
Although the internet and mobile phone shutdown during the protests of the past few days have made it harder for people in Egypt to show the rest of the world what is happening at ground level during the protests, some citizen videos have made it through.
Both these videos show how the riot police back away from the protesters who clearly outnumber them. When added to the unexpected behavior from the army: who has taken the streets when ordered by the government, who didn't seem to enforce the declared curfew and were cheered by the protesters, it seems to imply that the armed forces are not against the people in this struggle.
First, a view of the Kasr Al Nil bridge in Cairo, as riot police and protesters meet head on in the middle of the bridge, and tear gas canisters are fired as the armed forces retreat:
And in this next video the same is seen in downtown Cairo at street level, as we get a first person perspective of the moment protesters and riot police clash and it turns into a rout.
Written by Juliana Rincón Parra
>via: http://globalvoicesonline.org/2011/01/28/egypt-citizen-videos-manage-to-bypas...
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We have come together to stop the looting of our country by this regime, writes Ahdaf Soueif in Cairo
A protester flashes a victory sign as a police truck burns in Cairo. Despite teargas, water cannon and the arrival of the army, the regime’s curfew showed no sign of being observed. Photograph: Mohammed Abed/AFP/Getty Images
This is the scene that took place in every district of every city in Egypttoday. The one I saw: we started off as about 20 activists, after Friday prayers in a small mosque in the interior of the popular Cairo district of Imbaba. "The people - demand – the fall of this regime!" Again and again the call went out. We started to walk: "Your security. Your police –killed our brothers in Suez."
The numbers grew. Every balcony was full of people: women smiling, waving, dangling babies to the tune of the chants: "Bread! Freedom! Social justice!" Old women called: "God give you victory."
For more than an hour the protest wound through the narrow lanes. Kids ran alongside. A woman picking through garbage and loading scraps into plastic bags paused and raised her hand in a salute. By the time we wound on to a flyover to head for downtown we were easily 3,000 people.
The government had closed the internet down in the whole country at 2am. By 9am, half the mobile phones were down. By 11, not a single mobile was working. Post offices said the international lines had been taken down. This is a regime fighting for its life. And fighting for its ability to carry on looting this country. As the protesters walk through Imbaba, we note the new emergency hospital where building has been stopped because of a government decision to turn it into a luxury block of flats. The latest scandal of this kind is the Madinti project. The chant goes up: "A pound of lentils for ten pounds – a Madinti share for 50p."
Now, as I write, the president has announced a curfew from an hour ago. And the army has started to deploy. If I were not writing this, I would still be out on the street. Every single person I know is out there; people who have never been on protests are wrapping scarves round their faces and learning that sniffing vinegar helps you get through teargas. Teargas! This is a gas that makes you feel the skin is peeling off your face. For several minutes I could not even open my eyes to see what was going on. And when I did, I saw that one of my nieces had stopped in the middle of the road, her eyes streaming. One of her shoes lost, she was holding out her arms: "I can't, I can't."
"You have to. Run." We all held arms and ran. This was on 6 October Bridge, just under the Rameses Hilton, and the air was thick with smoke. The thud of the guns was unceasing. We were trying to get to Tahrir Square, the main square of Cairo, the traditional destination of protests. But ahead of us was a wall of teargas. We ran down the slope of the bridge and straight into a line of central security soldiers. They were meant to block the way. We were three women, dishevelled, eyes streaming. We came right up to them and they made way. "Run," they urged us, "Run!"
"How can you do this?" I reproached them, eye to eye.
"What can we do? We want to take off this uniform and join you!"
We jumped into a boat and asked the boatman to take us closer to Qasr el-Nil bridge, which would bring us near Tahrir. From the river, you could see people running across the bridges. Some young men caught the gas canisters and threw them into the river, where they burned and fizzed on the water.
We scrambled on shore under Qasr el-Nil bridge and joined the massive protest that had broken the security cordon and was heading to Tahrir. I cannot tell how many thousands were there. People were handing out tissues to soak in vinegar for your nose, Pepsi to bathe your eyes. Water to drink. People were helping others who were hurt. The way ahead of us was invisible behind the smoke – except for bursts of flame. The great hotels had darkened their ground floors and locked their doors. The guns thudded continuously and there was a new rattling sound. The people would pause and then a great cry would go up and they would press on. We sang the national anthem.
Once, a long time ago, my then young son, watching a young man run to help an old man who had dropped a bag in the middle of the street, said: "The thing about Egypt is that everyone is very individual, but also part of a great co-operative project." Today, we are doing what we do best, and what this regime has tried to destroy: we have come together, as individuals, in a great co-operative effort to reclaim our country.
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This post also available in:| Português | · Egito: Vídeos valem por mil palavras |
This post is part of our special coverage of Egypt Protests 2011.
In preparation for the fourth consecutive day of demonstrations, activists circulated pamphlets and shared videos via the internet, urging people to join Friday's planned protest. The government has reacted by blocking access to many social media platforms before shutting off the whole network very early on January 28. Loads of video montages are still available on YouTube. A quick roundup:
This clip from hadi15 went viral minutes after it was posted online. Featuring a song from the rock band Thirteen Senses, “Into the Fire,” the video retraces the last three days of street protests, highlighting the diversity among the marchers: young and old; men and women; Muslims, Christians, Atheists, all chant the same slogans; all for one cause.
Anonymous, a loose group of hacktivists advocating for freedom of information online, posted this video on YouTube (Anonymousworldwar3) asking the Egyptian government to cease its censorship activity or else:
sharek2011 posted this video titled Sharek, participate, calling upon people to join the marchers on Friday:
Another video montage from TowardsUnity highlighting the recent days of clashes:
The main Cairo plaza, Maydan El-Tahrir where this video was filmed by sarahngb, has been the rallying point of Cairene protesters:
Written by Hisham
Haitian presidential candidate Jude Célestin
resists pressure to withdraw
OAS report has suggested he should not be included in a runoff election
FILE - In this Dec. 3, 2010 file photo, Haiti's presidential candidate Jude Celestin waits for the start of the Provisional Electoral Council meeting in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Haiti's President Rene Preval's favored successor, Celestin, is dropping out of the country's disputed election, according to the ruling Unity party announced on Wednesday, Jan. 26, 2011, opening the door for a second-round runoff between former first lady Mirlande Manigat and popular singer Michel Martelly. No date has been set for the vote.By JACQUELINE CHARLES
jcharles@MiamiHerald.com
PORT-AU-PRINCE -- Haitian presidential candidate Jude Célestin is resisting pressure from his own political coalition to withdraw his candidacy and break an electoral impasse.
``Jude doesn't agree,'' Joseph Lambert, head of the INITE (UNITY) coalition told The Miami Herald. ``We asked him to remove himself and he said, `I am not made that way. It is not part of my mental fabric.'''
A report by an Organization of American States team, which was formed after allegations of massive fraud in the Nov. 28 presidential election, suggests that a runoff election should be between former first lady Mirlande Manigat, who finished first, and singer Michel ``Sweet Micky'' Martelly, who finished third.
It arrived at its conclusion after reviewing 234 tally sheets out of more than 900 from the disputed elections. The report shows 50,000 votes had to be cast aside as either fraudulent or ``irregular'' votes.
Preliminary results released by the Haitian government had Manigat first and Celestin, the hand-picked candidate of President René Préval, second, with Martelly trailing by only several thousand votes.
Lambert said INITE ``in principle'' has agreed to ask Celestin to withdraw but is still wrestling with the matter.
Celestin, however, wants his day in court where his lawyers are working to prove that he does indeed have a right to advance into the runoff despite the OAS findings, said Lambert.
Celestin and his lawyer argue that the OAS report is flawed.
The report has been a point of contention between Haitian officials, who disagree with the results and methodology, and the United States.
Susan Rice, the top U.S. diplomat to the United Nations, last week warned Haiti that it could lose international assistance if it does not accept the OAS recommendations. But even the OAS has said that its recommendations are not results, but rather calculations, and they cannot be adopted until a phase for disputes is completed. Disputes are expected to be heard late Wednesday or Thursday.
Préval has personally held several meetings with coalition members to try and persuade Célestin to withdraw. But the candidate has not attended any of the meetings.
Meanwhile, Haiti is in a wait-and-see mode, and some have started to question what they perceive as ``big-foot'' diplomacy on the part of the United States.
``Everyone sees the hands of the international community in these elections,'' said a frustrated Lambert. ``They have law, but we don't' have laws? We are not a country anymore?''
He feels such efforts could trigger unrest. ``They are inviting catastrophe after the departure of René Préval. Everytime we have a president leave office we have catastrophe,'' he said. ``And the people are the victims. My objective is to have a constitutional government replace this government in a ceremony. All of my efforts are to ensure President Préval finishes the end of his mandate.''
