VV Brown

She is a brilliant high              energy British singer currently signed to Universal Island Records, check out her new singles :

LEAVE

Crying Blood

Rep. John Lewis -

“We cannot stand by, watch and wait,” he said. “Almost 10 years ago, my hometown of Atlanta welcomed some of the Lost Boys, refugees of the civil war in the Sudan. These young men stole our hearts. … how many more have to pay this heavy price?

Lewis joined the Freedom Rides in 1961 challenging Jim Crow laws at interstate bus terminals.  He and other riders received death threats and were severely beaten by angry mobs. He had been arrested 24 times as a result of his activism. At the age of 23 in 1963, Lewis helped plan and took part in the March on Washington and was a keynote speaker. He led 525 marchers in 1965 across the Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. State troopers attacked resulting in what became known as “Bloody Sunday.” In 1981, Lewis was elected to his first official government office as an Atlanta City Council member. In 1986, he was elected to Congress, where he is still currently serving. Today he was arrested while joining protesters at a Save Darfur Coalition rally in front of the Sudanese Embassy in Washington D.C.

Wangari Maathai

Wangari Maathai is a 2004 Nobel Peace Prize Winner and founder of the Green Belt Movement, which she started in Kenya and expanded internationally. I recommend her memoir Unbowed. You can listen to her speak here.

Pick Fros Not Fights.

Frolab : Frolab is an integrated creative and production resource based around the concept of “frolaboration”. We provide an outlet for urbanites thirsting for authentic experiences that embrace hip hop, art & design. In addition to keeping the blog updated, our services include design, photography & videography, and event production.

Robot in Washington Sq.

Kacie Kinzer : http://www.tweenbots.com/

In New York, we are very occupied with getting from one place to another. I wondered: could a human-like object traverse sidewalks and streets along with us, and in so doing, create a narrative about our relationship to space and our willingness to interact with what we find in it? More importantly, how could our actions be seen within a larger context of human connection that emerges from the complexity of the city itself? To answer these questions, I built robots…(read on here)

Project by Kacie Kinzer, via tweenbots.com

Springs

a little r&r Jumper, via Cuffs

Prints and Portraiture

Photo by Malick Sidibe, via We Are the Market

Wave

Michelle Obama waves to well-wishers as she leaves Palais Rohan in Strasbourg, France 03 April 2009. Image via the New York Times.

—Sorting out the Past

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written by Herself by Harriet Jacobs under the pen-name Linda Brent, was first partly serialized in the New York Tribune. The series however was stopped because it was considered too shocking to suggest that she was a victim of sexual assault by her owner Dr. Flint. In 1861 it was published in book form. Harriet Jacobs was born in 1842 in Edenton, South Carolina and her escape to the northern cities such as Rochester and Boston provided a pathway to travel abroad and a role as an author and an international activist during the Civil War and Reconstruction. (Fagan Yellin, 1-3)[3] First-hand accounts from Jacobs and her daughter were published in the reform press outlets such as Freeman in New York, and Freedman in London and the Anti-Slavery Reporter. Today her narrative can be found in print beyond US borders—in Brazil, Germany and Japan. (Fagan Yellin, 15)

“The narrative covers the account of how she earned the food to keep herself and her children alive.” (Nichols, 448) Child of the Dark: The Diary of Carolina Maria De Jesus is a poetic narrative written by a black woman with few years of formal education living for fourteen years in the favela Canindé of São Paulo, Brazil starting at the age of thirty-four. She makes her living by picking up paper and selling it. During the 1960’s Audalio Dantas was inspired by her story and helped her publish it as Quarto de Despejo, which translates to the Garbage Room.  “A brief flurry of publicity in 1969 about her fallen condition prompted a slight improvement in her circumstances, but she was quickly forgotten again. Carolina died in 1977, on the verge of indigence. Her complete life story has never been told, and most Brazilians today are unaware that a black favelada in the 1960s became the symbol (to foreigners at least) of the struggle to rise above poverty.” (Levine, 55)

Aperture

Last Friday I went to the Aperture Gallery to see Intended Consequences Rwandan Children Born of Rape.  It is very moving. The photojournalist Jonathan Torgovnik  is doing a panel discussion there on  Wednesday, April 29 at 6: 30 PM.

I learned about the photographer Stephen Shames from a catalogue I picked up there. From 1967-1973 he had amazing access to the Black Panther Movement and documented them in public and private.  This is such a lovely photo. I think they are brilliant, and it looks as if it could have been taken today :

New Haven, May 1970, Stephen Shames