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Politics

Fashion Statements

I was barely 13 years old when I was shipped off to boarding school in Heidelberg, a small but sophisticated university town known to Americans more for its castle ruins and romantic ambience than anything else, I believe. Among other attractions, it sports the longest car-free shopping street in Europe, where consumerism runs unchecked.

Coming from a rural village I was singularly unprepared for what awaited me at the all-(rich)-girls school: a beehive of communication via fashion items, be they certain clothes brands, certain kinds of shoes, (preferably horse bit loafers,) headscarves (the kind of silk squares worn by the Queen of England were all the rage in 1965,) hand bags and watches (the latter having a whole language of status levels of its own.)

It took a crash course to understand the code – and a code it was, opaque to anything but insiders and for them a language expressed with precision. Items signaled (economic or social) class hierarchy, family background (think signet rings) or even geography (certain things were worn by northern aristocracy, others by southern multimillionaires.) People like me could learn that language by being thrown into that environment, but might as well have embroidered outsider on every piece of my clothing for lack of the relevant outfits.

It brings a blush of shame to my cheeks even now to think how I longed to have some of these things, begging my mum for those shoes and saving up to get the imitation version, which made me an object of ridicule by the in-crowd before I could even wear them in. Longing to own equaled longing to belong. To my eternal relief that belonging never happened – I am shuddering to think what it would have meant to be a classist, or part of an exploitative class, or a potential supporter of right wing policies.

What remains is a desire to dress in ways that are all but associated with the uniform of an elite, instead expressing my individual taste, one which isn’t tied to any other “class” either.

All this came to mind when I came across the riveting essay attached below. Coded fashion statements are back – although they probably have never disappeared, I’ve just grown oblivious. I strongly recommend reading the piece, because it reveals how much the lack of historical knowledge about the language of fascism prohibits us from understanding the full force that is unleashed.

Call me a fascist: from Melania Trump to Ayelet Shaked

Clothes items can tell the world about your beliefs, as we know from MAGA hats and, as we saw during Trump’s speech at the Republican Jewish coalition last weekend, certain kippot.

Coded fashion items signal not just membership in a class, a group, or an organization, but they can serve as dog whistles.

For the far right industry in Europe sales of coded items, many of which valorize violence, also provide the funds fueling their political activism. https://newrepublic.com/article/153161/far-rights-secret-weapon-fascist-fashion.

Some of them are forbidden to wear in Germany in certain public places because they use Nazi symbols – which makes them all the more desirable to certain populations. “Using style to express and conspicuously display group identity and to make a political statement is integral to subcultures,” says Molnar, a sociologist at the New School. What’s more, she adds, because members of far-right groups are often only infrequently connected face-to-face, with much of their interaction online, “their like-mindedness and shared values can be (visibly) expressed and experienced through consumption.”

There might be no direct link between the message on someone’s T-shirt and actual extremist violence. But as a gateway to enter a supremacist universe these fashion statements should be taken seriously. (Photo below was taken day before yesterday in NYC, posted on Twitter.)

https://www.salon.com/2018/04/21/the-rise-of-fascist-fashion-clothing-helps-the-far-right-sell-their-violent-message/

And, equally importantly, we should familiarize ourselves with what the more nuanced codes mean: Mealnia Trump’s I really don’t care logo on a coat worn during a visit of incarcerated children at the US border was, after all, a fascist motto.  

It is an English version of the Italian me ne frego (tonally closer to “I don’t give a damn”)  which became a fascist call for arms since the end of WW1. Italian writer and translator Giovanni Tiso describes the history of the use of the phrase, from the time it was chanted by Italian special forces to signify that they didn’t care if they should lose their lives in battle, through Mussolini’s elevation of the slogan to “the philosophy of his regime”, signifying an acceptance of violence and, later, a detached moral autocracy. The phrase has survived as a marker of ideological nostalgia, and can be found nowadays on t-shirts and other neofascist merchandise. (Cited from the article at the top of the blog.)

There are even guides now to the different dress codes for different right wing organizations …https://www.topic.com/decoding-the-language-of-extremist-clothing

Here’s an example…..

Let’s hope Woody’s prediction bears out.

And here’s more resistance music from the world capital of fashion, France. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2WdCgAEXDA

Images today are gathered from the web.


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Housecleaning?

Today is the day of the Knesset election. From everything I’ve read, Netanyahu will likely win with the help of right-wing, orthodox splinter parties. Benny Gantz, his opponent, a general who was once appointed by Netanyahu as military chief of staff, does not have that kind of support.

Nor does he and his Blue & White Party have the machinery of the American president at his disposal, who did everything he could to give his buddy Netanyahu a leg up in the election campaign. In fact, Gantz has been subject to character assassination and leaked claims that his phone was hacked by Iran. “How can he protect the country when he can’t protect his own phone?”

Gantz is not a progressive, and has shown no opposition to Netanyahu’s threats to annex the West bank, international law be damned. He knows full well that more than 40% of Israelis favor some form of annexation. He has also failed to provide any suggestions as to how he would approach solving the Palestinian question. In other words, since there are no left-leaning parties in the running, the choice is between right wing (G) and far right wing (N), with the latter being favored by potential coalitions.

5 million Palestinians, to be ruled by the new government, are denied the vote. In the West Bank, they will face a military closure. In Gaza, where 2 million are already segregated, crossings will shut. Jewish settlers in the West Bank will vote today while their Palestinian neighbors — whose land they are living on — can’t.

All this despite the fact that Netanyahu faces charges for bribery, fraud and more. Since I am no expert on Israeli politics and/or the implication of this election, for American Jews as well, I thought I’d compile a reading list of articles that caught my attention as pertaining to the topic. Given that we have to ration the daily amount of bad news, you might prefer to skip any one of them. No offense taken if you do.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/04/israeli-election-netanyahu-gantz-west-bank-palestinian-peace.html

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/04/israel-votes-as-american-jews-and-netanyahu-grow-apart/586705/

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/04/07/donald-trump-jewish-vote-2020-1260172

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/elections/.premium-how-netanyahu-defanged-social-media-regulation-ahead-of-election-1.7105621

https://theintercept.com/2019/04/08/netanyahu-thanks-trump-sanctioning-iran-request-eve-israeli-election/

For my German readers: http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/israel-knappes-rennen-zwischen-benjamin-netanyahu-und-benny-gantz-bei-der-wahl-a-1261760.html

For music I chose the Israeli Youth Philharmonic playing Schubert’s unfinished symphony. Lots of unfinished business ahead of them, regardless of the outcome of the election.

Photographs are self explanatory…

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Campaign Memorabilia

This weekend we were invited to dinner at a friend’s house. Still dreaming of the pasta carbonara…. the second attraction was a guided tour to the host’s collection of buttons given out by political campaigns.

It never ceases to amaze me what people collect. Can’t help but roll my eyes at many collections given my hesitancy to amass objects, but not this one – this one scored. I think it has to do with the continuity between what these buttons represent and the rest of the owner’s life, a life in large parts devoted to political activism.

It also links to lived history – my Beloved got unusually animated when discovering buttons that were part of his own youth, worn during presidential campaigns, and largely forgotten for decades.

It is educational – your’s truly got a lecture in two voices about her ignorance of the difference between Eugene McCarthy and McCarthyism… and certainly a crash course in Presidential campaigns before my arrival on US shores.



And last but not least the collection was displayed in ways that were artistically designed and often gripping.

Collector Carl Wolfson was the host of “Carl in the Morning” on AM 620 KPOJ and FM 107.1 KXRY, Portland, Oregon’s progressive talk stations, for almost a decade until 2016. The show and his many other radio appearances were devoted to the issues he cared about: healthcare, social and economic justice, foreign policy. These topics were also a large part of his routines as a comedian, a fixture on national television, appearing on Showtime’s Comedy Club Network, VH-1 Stand-Up Spotlight, An Evening at the Improv, and The Joan Rivers Show.

He is certainly a funny man, something we cherish. Passion takes over, however, when the subject comes to American Political Items, the category these button belong to. The study of campaign memorabilia is serious business as any historian can tell you. The collection by now contains some 20.000 buttons, displayed on over 200 canvas boards, put together in pop-art-like grids. Most of them, alas, in storage, since there is not enough space to hang them all. The prognosis calls for about 600 boards when all is pinned and done – time to explore public venues!

https://carlwolfson.com/collector

The progression through time of these buttons is in itself fascinating – what began as a simple identifier soon morphed to slogans, was elaborated, became strategic tool and followed the roots of all other persuasive mechanisms, advertisement included. Some of it barbed, but none of it in the slime pits of contemporary discourse of the Trumpian universe. They also provide glimpses in the kinds of civic organizations actively involved in the political process, and windows into the role of women as flattering by-products of electoral choices (or not….)

A museum is called for, if there was only a funding angel to be found…. in the meantime I wonder what large space in our area would be feasible for hosting a temporary exhibition. It would be a blockbuster, I am sure. Hive mind, get to work!

Music today can be chosen by yourself from this play list: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/playlist-election-day

My pick was this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSwzjD0L4co

(The album it comes from, “My Name is Buddy,” recounts the early-twentieth-century history of big labor and leftist politics using a cat, Buddy, as a protagonist.)


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Until the Flood

This is one of the rare mornings where I write directly before I post. I had to give yesterday’s experience, today’s topic, some time to sink in. Some 12 hours later I am still reverberating.

I went to see Until the Flood at the Armory last night, a play written and performed by Dael Olandersmith, directed by Neel Keller, with sets by Takeshi Kata (see today’s photographs.) The play immerses you into the minds of the people of Ferguson, Missouri after the Michael Brown shooting. It opens with the audiotapes of the dispatcher calling police patrol on an apparent theft of cigars from a convenient store and you eventually hear the shots from the gun of police officer Darren Wilson – too many for me to count, six of which hit Michael Brown fatally.

Olandersmith morphs across the 70 minute, uninterrupted, brilliant performance into 8 or 9 different personae, telling their story about the interaction of past and present in a place deeply affected by racism, poverty and race relations. Place plays a dominant role, many of the characters repeatedly name locations, both those to which they are chained and those to which they dream to escape. It made the characters more real but it also was a useful tool to make the audience feel how distant we are from all this, not just geographically, but separated from the, in this case, Southern experience in our safe, little White cocoon.

That experience itself, of course, varies, as Olandersmith brings intensely across. Being White or Black, old or young, educated or not, shifts your perspective. Shifts your judgement. Shifts your feelings. In ways I still try to wrap my mind around, the playwright and actress manages to infuse each and every character with humanity, or glimpses thereof, even when the most abhorrent White nationalist, supremacist or gun loving characters are portrayed. Without patronizing she is able to show how the White sickness affects Whites themselves, although the focus is of course on the devastation it reeks on the lives of the Black community – a devastation that goes beyond the immediate danger of being killed, faced by young Black males, extending into the internalization of stereotypes of inferiority and lives lived within boundaries set by the power of others.

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The characters, a retired Black school teacher, a White retired cop, a young enraged Black male, a young “good liberal” White schoolteacher, an older Black barber, a White supremacist fantasizing about lining Blacks up and shooting them to make Ferguson white again, a frightened Black high schooler, and a Black bi-sexual minister are composites that the playwright created after interviewing many people in Ferguson. How she was able to face some of those used as models for her monologue, spewing hatred or justification for state-sanctioned violence is beyond me.

It has been 5 years this August since Brown was killed. It has been 2 years since documentaries came out questioning how the events were described in the official reckoning. Wilson was never indicted, although he had been previously accused of racial discrimination and use of excessive force. The link below is to a 2017 documentary Stranger Fruits discussing the issues.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbdW2H0caMs

The recent deaths of 6 men tied to the Ferguson protests gives rise to more speculation.

Deaths Of Six Men Tied To Ferguson Protests Prompt Fear Of Sinister Connection


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Last night’s play pivoted on flow. The flow experienced in people’s lives, cultivated in their language. Flow oscillating between anger, resignation, and questioning one’s faith for the Black teacher; flow of tears of frustration for the White one who simply didn’t get it – why did race relations destroy her friendships? Gushing accolades towards the right of “self-defense” with guns. Small streams of humor and pride in one’s existence. Flowing sexual identities, flowing hand movements, cleansing prayer. Hatred, condescension, homophobic streams of associations. A deluge of supremacist rantings. Waves of fright, down to trembling physical movements for some, trickles of anger merging into suicidal, flowing rage for others. Until the flood.

Attached below a terrific professional review: /https://www.orartswatch.org/two-tales-in-black-white/

Music today tied to the Black Lives Matter movement:

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In so many words

This was the upshot of yesterday’s Brexit episode in Brussels:

They don’t leave on 3/29

They potentially leave on 4/12

They potentially leave on 5/22

Perhaps they leave at some later point.

Perhaps they don’t leave at all.

Theresa May had to have dinner all by herself, being asked to give the room to the grown-ups. This was after “90 minutes of nothing” as one listener described her speech to The Guardian.

How she’ll manage to get her parliament to agree to a plan after the last two failures is a mystery.

We’ve read a lot about – and I have previously discussed here – the debilitating political and economic consequences of the Brexit deal, no matter in what form it will eventually be accepted, short of a new vote that might reverse direction.

Today I want to point to a tangential effect that affects music aficionados. (Much of it learned from an article here, alas in German:)

https://www.zeit.de/2019/12/jazz-szene-grossbritannien-brexit-folgen

Britain has a burgeoning Jazz scene, recently recognized by the US and many other European countries who constantly book acts for diverse festivals. If Visas become an issue in Europe (time, effort, and particularly costs) it will be much more difficult to travel for British bands.

It is also expected that a hard Brexit will raise the cost of daily living, which will hit hard given the already precarious existence of musicians who live by their live gigs, not necessarily records sales. If these gigs disappear with Visa requirements it will have existential consequences.

The Brexit debate’s poisonous increase in xenophobia, anti-immigrant sentiment and expressed racism is also affecting the Jazz scene which has much more racial diversity than many other musical genres in GB. Afroeuropeans, Black Brits, or musicians with Caribbean roots might have been labeled world citizens before May stereotyped them as Citizens from Nowhere as a concerted insult. Westminster is clearly hostile to immigration – just remember last year’s Windrush-scandal, where Caribbean immigrants whose families had lived and worked in GB since the 1940s were expatriated to pacify the far Right. Here was the musical response:

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/nov/18/windrush-a-celebration-review-barbican-anthony-joseph

And here is the current pick of the scene:

Your Queen is a reptile by sons of Kemet, an astounding album.

Kevin Le Gendre’s review: “Your Queen Is a Reptilemay reflect Hutching’s desire for political provocation, but it is first and foremost the music that inspires the imagination with its astute rewriting of key elements of jazz history and Caribbean folk. With a tuba and two drums in addition to Hutching’s tenor saxophone, the Sons of Kemet have a rough, nervous, polyrhythmically charged sound that explodes on stage. Their bass-heavy rumble hits the nerve of a younger audience that has grown up with hip-hop, dub and dance music, but also the older listener, who appreciate the abstract avant-garde character. What the 35-year-old Londoner also conveys is a full pride in his Barbadian roots – a pride he observes among many of his Afro-Caribbean colleagues. “We say: this is our vision of music.”

And still we have no clue how it all ends. Not well, I’m afraid.

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Good Writing

I might be a year older, but I haven’t gone soft quite yet. Proof positive are the odd results of yesterday’s photo excursion at the Oregon Zoo for lack of a real safari. Not soft (hopefully) puts me in the company of two women whose writing I greatly admire. You know the stories floating around about people on their deathbed not willing to let go until they see the Mueller Report? I feel like I want to hang on for many more years to see these young women in their full power.

The first is Jia Tolentina whose articles I have introduced here before. Her wit has the precision of a sharpshooter, frequently with similarly devastating results. Her essays are often deeply personal, or at least suffused with personal bits and pieces which allows the reader to relate on more than an intellectual level. Associations to her Peace Corps service in Kyrgyzstan resurface regularly, making me think that it was either a formative or a memorable time, probably both.

Snack Time

Not surprisingly, given my own predilections, I find her eclecticism in choice of topics particularly attractive. Although the bulk of her work is focussed on, loosely speaking, issues of gender, she does introduce a remarkable range of themes. The latest example can be found in the New Yorker, where she is staff writer.

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/stepping-into-the-uncanny-unsettling-world-of-shen-yun

It is a piece about Shen Yun, the traveling dance troupe(s) of Falun Dafa (aka Falun Gong) a Chinese organization deemed a cult by the Chinese government and not clearly definable by the rest of us. The essay excels in description, vividly capturing the experience of being at one of the performances and laying out what knowledge could be gained about the formation and ideology of Falun Data. Their claim to fame in public consciousness has been the accusation of organ harvesting of its imprisoned members by the Chinese authorities – a claim that remains largely unproven.

Semi-headless giraffe
Who peed for an inordinately long time. Running commentary by the gaggle of fourth graders surrounding me eventually morphed into awed silence.

Less strong here is an underlying analysis of this strange phenomenon Falun Dafa – they attract millions of adherents despite disclaiming evolution, disavowing homosexuality and promiscuity and predicting a strict separation of races in the there-after; and they are a real target of state persecution. Acknowledging the limits of fact-based interpretation is a welcome honesty, though.

“The fact that both Falun Gong and the Communist Party communicate via propaganda makes it almost impossible to understand what’s really happening; a decade ago, the journalist Joseph Kahn, in the Times, described the rise of Falun Gong as “probably the most mysterious chapter in the history of China over the last 30 years.” Falun Gong members are genuinely persecuted in China, but stories about this have petered out in the press. And, in China, state censorship of dissent is growing. Under these circumstances, Shen Yun can be seen as a baroque and surreal last-resort call for help and attention.”

Flamingo ridiculing my recent attempts at Pilates


and getting into a fight with the wrong opponent.

Analysis, on the other hand, is a particularly strong suit in the article of Keeanga Yamahtta Taylor who teaches African-American studies at Princeton.

http://bostonreview.net/race/keeanga-yamahtta-taylor-succeeding-while-black

If looks could kill

Her piece in the Boston Review takes apart Michelle Obama’s autobiography Becoming with laser-sharp observations. Willing to give praise where deserved, her criticism nonetheless forces the reader to stop avoiding important implications. Here are key passages that encapsulate what’s written across the essay:

Becoming, after all, is an exquisite lesson in creating ideology. As a political insider with broad pop culture appeal, Obama wields enormous influence in shaping discourse and opinion on critical issues concerning race, gender, public policy, and how we define progress in general………Obama, then, is not just telling stories; she is shaping our understanding of the world we live in, which is why it is so critical that we, as a public, interrogate her ideology. When we do, we might see that her story is not in search of the collective experience but is a celebration of personal fulfillment—the kind of self-involved, “live your truth”-inspired homilies that middle-class and rich women tell each other. Becoming normalizes power and the status quo while sending the message that the rest of us only need to find our place in the existing social hierarchy to be happy. This is unfortunate because personal narratives—including Obama’s—do have power. When stitched together and told honestly, they can create a map of shared experience that raises the possibility of collective action as a way to transform the individual circumstance. This is certainly true of poor and working-class black women whose personal stories expose the racism, sexism, and general inequality of U.S. society. These stories relentlessly pierce the treacherous idea that the United States is free, democratic, and just, and they prove the axiom of black feminism that the personal is political.

Let that sink in!

Music today is an homage to strong girls:

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There’s Hope

Perhaps revolutions are not the train ride, but the human race grabbing for the emergency brake. Walter Benjamin

I want to think nothing but optimistic thoughts today, so the pride of place goes to the kids who organized #FridaysforFuture, #climatestrike.

These Photos of Kids Protesting Climate Change All Over the World Will Give You Hope for the Future


I skipped “school” last Friday as well and went for an extended walk through bird territory, grateful for nature as we can still experience it.

Kestrel
Jay

Another reason for hope: The government of New Zealand is contemplating further and forceful restrictions in their gun laws after the Christchurch mosque massacre last Friday. https://www.vox.com/2019/3/15/18267093/new-zealand-gun-control-laws-christchurch-mosque-shooting

And finally: time travel exists, after all!!!

Well, sort of. In music. Or our understanding of music across time….. listen to Jeremy Denk’s newest album that covers 7 centuries of classical music, from c.1300-c.2000…….

The interview linked to below gives a glimpse into fascinating insights of how music evolved.

https://www.npr.org/sections/deceptivecadence/2019/03/16/703799425/jeremy-denks-musical-odyssey-through-7-centuries-of-music

Harrier Hawk

Red Tail

Here you can listen to one of my favorite Brahms’s intermezzos:

https://www.nonesuch.com/journal/listen-jeremy-denk-brahms-piece-forthcoming-album-c-1300-c-2000-2018-01-08

and a wonderfully annotated rendition of 2 Goldberg variations:

I know, today’s offerings are all over the map, but they all made me feel better. As did that walk on Friday at the Steigerwald Nature Preserve, with photographs to show for….

And birds who tried not to show at all..

Brown Creeper
Hairy Woodpecker
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Contrasts

Today is the birthday of Grover Cleveland, the nation’s 22nd president from 1885 to 1889 and its 24th president from 1893 to 1897, who was born in 1837 in Caldwell, N.J.

Among all US presidents he scored high, if not highest, in integrity, honesty and independence. As a democrat he fought against corruption and protectionist trade policies. He is supposed to have said this:

“I would rather the man who presents something for my consideration subject me to a zephyr of truth and a gentle breeze of responsibility rather than blow me down with a curtain of hot wind.”

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/03/18/this-day-in-politics-march-18-1223872

On my hike yesterday, out and up in the Eastern Gorge there were plenty of mild breezes. The hot air emanated somewhere else in Washington DC. But that was not the only contrast that came to mind.

Here I was, amidst indescribable beauty, strong enough to tackle a considerable climb, some of it in snow, accompanied by one of my most cherished persons on earth, discovering the first wildflowers

Yellow Bells: Fritillaria pudica
Columbia Desert Parsley: Lomatium columbianum


Grass Widows: Olsynium douglasii 

and digging into a sumptuous sandwich during a picnic on a sunny if cold meadow.

All this while others are too afraid to eat anything that is not coming out of a vending machine for fear of poisoning, put behind bars, harassed and violated by people out for revenge. I am specifically referring to Ramsey Orta, a friend of Eric Garner, who filmed and later posted a cell phone video of how Garner died in a police chokehold. Orta has been in prison since 2016, and is fearing for his life in retribution of showing police brutality. I cannot independently assess the validity of the claims, but the article has taken hold in my head since I read it last week.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/13/18253848/eric-garner-footage-ramsey-orta-police-brutality-killing-safety

On March 3rd, 2015, Orta’s cell block was served a meal of corn, cabbage, bread, juice, and meatloaf. He didn’t touch it. He’d fallen ill a few times after eating the food at Rikers and was convinced he was being targeted and poisoned.“Eat, inmate,” a CO commanded, banging Orta’s cell with a baton. The guards were all standing too close, watching too intently as the others ate. This kind of attention was unusual. He saw others from his cell block staring down into their meatloaf, forks frozen in midair.

Court documents filed six days later alleged that the prisoners had suffered and continued to suffer from “nausea, vomiting, pain, dizziness, aches, headaches, stomach/intestinal pains, dehydration, diarrhea, nosebleeds, throwing up blood, diarrhea with blood, and/or an overwhelming sense of illness.” The symptoms were consistent with human consumption of rat poison, and when the tainted meatloaf was finally tested, the results found that the blue-green pellets visible in the meatloaf were brodifacoum, the active ingredient in rodenticide.

Not the kind of country Grover Cleveland envisioned. And one that seems just fine for those currently at the helm. As I said, contrasts.

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Playing Politics

Two days ago I jokingly called on people to visit a NY museum featuring dogs. Today I seriously regret that I did not alert people to a very different show, at SUNY on Long Island, which, alas, closed yesterday.

The topic of the exhibit is important enough, though, that it justifies mention, if only in the context of informing ourselves about current US museum “culture.”

The show announcement of Our Land read as follows:

Our Land, a new exhibition comprising photography and video by artists from the Middle East, North Africa, and their diaspora. Curated by Anthony Hamboussi, photographer and adjunct professor of Visual Arts at SUNY College at Old Westbury, the exhibition explores intersections of land, power, and politics to question dominant historical narratives and current Western perceptions of the MENA region. Interested in modes of self-representation, Our Land presents the work of Arab artists based in or having ancestral ties to the region, to consider landscapes of colonization and postcolonial reconstruction, indigenous land rights, ecological injustice, and war. Interrogating the darker histories of landscape photography and “development” in non-Western countries, the exhibition questions the neutrality of scholarly and scientific landscape image production, and the roles of said images and development in imperialism and domination of the region. The works in Our Land were selected for the ways in which they challenge simplistic representations of cultural identity. In turn, the exhibition compels us to reconsider our relationship to the land and its exploitation under advanced capitalism and environmental crisis.

The attached link displays some wonderful examples of the photography offered in the exhibition but also explains the relevant context: https://hyperallergic.com/489534/a-photography-exhibition-corrects-a-mainstream-museums-failure/

In 2016 the Brooklyn Museum of Art offered This Place, an exhibition on Israel and Palestine featuring works by 12 photographers including Josef Koudelka, Stephen Shore, and Rosalind Fox Solomon. It was quickly deemed by progressives as a propaganda project, “art washing” the Israeli occupation of Palestine territories, taking money from Zionist organizations and, importantly, neglecting to include any Palestinian or Arab photographers.

“Not so fast,” was the reply by Frédéric Brenner, who ran the show from its inception.” We did offer it to some local artists, midway, but no Palestinian accepted.”

The brilliant art historian, curator and activist Nina Felshin, someone I revere, took the argument apart:

In 2006, a large majority of Palestinian cultural workers called upon international artists and filmmakers to join them in the boycott against Israeli cultural and academic institutions that receive funding from the State of Israel — part of a larger movement known as Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS). The existence of the BDS movement might well explain Palestinian artists’ unwillingness to participate in an exhibition destined for the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, among other venues.

Another explanation for Palestinian artists’ refusal to participate in the project might be its impresario’s desire to exclude certain approaches to the subject:

“‘I knew one thing would disqualify a photographer — anger,’ he said. ‘It was important to look at Israel without complacency but with compassion. I believe art has a power to address questions that an ideological perspective cannot.’”

Seriously? Anger disqualifies art? And as it turns out, mention of occupied territories, illegal settlements, home demolitions, evictions, or human rights violations was deemed too ideological to be included in a depiction of the region’s history?

Here is Felshin’s 2016 review of the BAM exhibit, scathing and helpful to understand where Our Land, today, is coming from.

https://hyperallergic.com/298529/a-photo-exhibition-about-israel-and-the-west-bank-that-chooses-sides/ 

Let’s hope Our Land gets a chance to travel to the West Coast!

Music today comes from two sources: traditional Palestinian music

and Boiler Room featuring contemporary Palestinian techno DJ Sama. Boiler Room is a terrific concept: it is an independent music platform which offers international videos of current Club music performances with the goal of bringing people together. From House, techno, jungle, hip-hop to R&B, from Europe to the US to the Middle East and beyond, it covers what’s happening now.

https://boilerroom.tv

Photographs are from my (port) land.

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Infants, Incarcerated

Yesterday a friend who has volunteered with the Dilley Pro Bono Project forwarded an email to me. It reminded me of a question that is so often asked of Germans or by Germans themselves: How could you not know? How could people claim ignorance when so much horror was unfolding all around them in the 1930s and 40s? Without claiming direct parallels between horrors, I still think there is reason to question ourselves what we do and do not know right here and now.

The Dilley Pro Bono Project (DPBP), a local partner in the Immigration Justice Campaign, operates a non-traditional pro bono model of legal services that directly represents immigrant mothers and children detained at the 2,400-bed South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas.

DPBP basically have volunteers come for a week of service, assisting the lawyers who try to help the asylum seekers at the detention site. Volunteers need to be able to speak Spanish, since most clients are fleeing violence in South America. They also need to be able to face 12-15 hours a day of grueling physical and emotional labor. People with A, J or other visitor visas need not apply since ICE will not let them into the facility; people on DACA will only be allowed in if they have not so much as a parking ticket in their legal history.

Here is what came out of Dilley yesterday:

As I mentioned in last week’s dispatch, two weeks ago we saw something we have rarely seen in the STFRC: babies under the age of 1 year old detained. In total we have confirmed 16 cases of babies between the ages of 5 and 11 months, although we believe there were at least a few more. 
Every mother we spoke to reported that her baby was sick, either with gastrointestinal issues or severe congestion and cough. Some reported their child having difficulty breathing, including one who said her baby tried to cry and couldn’t. The families experienced delays in receiving formula, and were denied bottled water despite their concerns about the quality of the tap water they were mixing into their babies’ bottles. Baby food is unavailable, and one child’s pacifier was confiscated and not replaced. Mothers had difficulty exercising their right to the asylum process, caring for sick babies during legal consultations and having babies returned to them in the middle of credible fear interviews for having cried at the daycare.

In this moment, when we have more than doubled the number of volunteers, AND need to respond with new client service strategies in light of the Attorney General’s horrible asylum decision in Matter of AB, we urgently need more full-time legal staff on the ground at the Dilley Pro Bono Project to support this extra work. 

Please consider donating to the Dilley Pro Bono Project today to help us hire additional senior and junior staff attorneys. Share this link with all of your networks – and don’t forget to include your own stories of volunteering. Link to your op-eds and blog posts about your time OTG. Many of you on this listserv have been with us since the beginning of our fight to end family detention. No one can speak for the importance of this work more articulately, or more forcefully, than you. 

Now more than ever, we need your help to spread the word. Be our megaphone! Help us hire more staff. Thank you!! 

With love,

Shalyn Fluharty Managing Attorney Dilley Pro Bono Project

Attached is a link that has short reports by volunteers:

https://www.immigrationjustice.us/volunteeropportunities/volunteer-testimonials/dilley-snapshots

I obviously never volunteered there, but I do have a blog post and thought it is important information to share. Fittingly, this related article appeared in this morning’s NYT:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/05/us/border-patrol-deaths-migrant-children.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

Music today from Sofia Rei, her own music first, then a lullaby :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKSjxfYbxzc

Photographs are from a Mission near San Antonio, Texas – you’d think adherence to the gospel would make these kinds of cruelties impossible in a professed Christian state…..

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