People are posting a brief video clip excerpted from a mid-nineties film on educator Jane Elliott’s work. The clip shows her addressing a large audience, predominantly white people: I want every white person in this room who would be happy to be treated as this society in general treats our citizens, our black citizens—if you …
There’s been a big discussion about “burnout” among activists lately. The people I’ve been hearing from use that word to mean many different things: physical maladies of overwork; depression, a sense of futility—or at least a pervading doubt that one’s efforts matter. Exhaustion, emotional and intellectual. Some of the discussants are immersed in high-pressure races …
If I asked you to name a prodigiously talented, extravagantly flamboyant, African American, sexually fluid musician with a body like an exclamation point and a taste for the rococo whose premature death left the world a little grayer, of course you’d say “Prince,” and you’d be right. Or half-right. Every since Prince’s April 21st death …
At the Indiegogo site for The Boys Who Said NO!, a film-in-progress directed by my old friend Judith Ehrlich, you can read producer Chris Jones’ 1967 letter from his draft board in San Jose, warning him of the penalty for refusing to register with the Selective Service System. A week before, Jones had sent this …
In a debate in Flint, MI, on Sunday, Bernie Sanders, asked to describe his “racial blind spots,” said this: “When you’re white, you don’t know what it’s like to be living in a ghetto—you don’t know what it’s like to be poor. You don’t know what it’s like to be hassled when you walk down …
You have to tell the story of how it happened, how you didn’t ask permission and it was okay. Because we have become a people who almost have to ask permission to do anything. And that is folly, because the people you are asking permission from have no right to grant you permission. Winona LaDuke …
It’s simple! Open a blank email, write a story from your experience that illuminates the state of our union, add your name and location, and email it to psotu2016@ctznapp.com. Read on to learn why. The People’s State of the Union has another week to go, and we already have some amazing stories to share. All …
I sat down to write about John Trudell’s music, thinking to write the second in a series I’m calling “A Life in Art.” Back in November, I described the blogs in this series as “turning on a work of art—painting, sculpture, music, poetry, film, maybe even cooking—that has sustained me in a moment that yearned …
Note: This is the second of two parts on Arlene Goldbard’s visit to cultural development projects in Medellín, Colombia, in early December; you’ll find the first here. Ana Cecilia Restrepo, the director of La Red de Escuelas de Musica de Medellín—that Colombian city’s network of music schools that are much more than schools, as you …
There’s a scandal swirling around progressive organizing circles right now. An impressively large number of women have come forward to accuse Trevor FitzGibbon, principal of a large and widely respected public relations firm employed by countless movement organizations, of sexual harrassment and sexual assault. Find the story on Vox and elsewhere. The FitzGibbon charges have …