Get Hip and Get Some Black Women's Art in Your Life


Women on Wednesdays: Arts and Culture Series
Curated by Ebony Noelle Golden and Nina Angela Mercer


Description

Women on Wednesdays (WoW)is a month-long series that highlight the arts and cultural practices of girls and women of the African diaspora. Co-curated by Betty’s Daughter Arts Collaborative and Ocean Ana Rising, WoW features work of emerging and seasoned artists and cultural workers in the fields of theater, music, film, dance, literature, and scholarship. The series culminates in a day long teach-in as we explore activism through creative arts; a reception will follow. There is a suggested donation for all WoW events, and no one is turned away. Events take place at Brecht Forum located in the West Village at 7pm on each Wednesday of the month.

Artistic Manifesta


Culture

I guess that waltzes
Do not move me.
I have no sympathy
For symphonies.
I guess I hummed the blues too early
And spent too many midnights
Out wailing to the rain.

-Assata Shakur


"Magic, Everyday"


In "The Quilt: Towards a Twenty-First Century Black Feminist Ethnography" Renee Alexander Craft offers, “African/black women have all too often been imagined, defined, labeled and packaged in ways that are at odds with who we are and understand ourselves to be” (56). Craft's ideas highlight media representations of the mythic Black woman. Craft acknowledges that Black women's identities, (re)productive potential, and labor/work have been high-jacked by dominant media outlets. Women on Wednesdays Arts and Culture Series (WoW) grew out of a similar acknowledgement. WoW's organizers recognize the intersecting oppressions of race, sex, and gender that marginalize Black women's cultural and artistic labor. We affirm the pressing need to collaborate with Black women artists who are expanding conversations about what it means to be Black, woman, artist, cultural worker, and scholar. As a Black women-led project, we recognize the radical practice of providing an uncensored and economically-supported platform for WoW's participants to articulate identity, art, and cultural practice as a personal evolutionary process and negotiation of violent landscapes founded in doctrines of silence and erasure.

When we harness artistic and cultural practices in the tradition of our fore mothers, we quilt a brilliant narrative that shifts and balances the rhythm of this universe. WoW honors the art women make on the porch, at the kitchen table, in the studio, classroom, street and beyond. This series affirms the movement, stories, melodies, theories, and meditations and laments, placing women's voices at the center of narratives about our shared and unique experiences. Women's artistic practices are not only tools for survival but tools for activating an aesthetics of radical imagination that conjures liberation for the artist and our communities. Utilizing art and culture, women conflate the personal and the political, the intimate and the communal, the artistic and the academic to not only honor our collective legacies but inform and imagine the world we want to live in today and tomorrow.

February 3

Body: Word, Move, Perform
"Body: Word, Move, Perform", is an exploration of the body through word, movement, and performance. The night features literary readings, choreographic works and short performance pieces and ends with a round table discussion about how Black women use dance, performance, and literary art to explore the individual in relationship to surrounding political, environmental, and social landscapes. Talk-back moderated by Ebony Noelle Golden

February 10
She Got a Fierce Up-Rock: Women in Hip Hop
Featuring a screening of the film "Say My Name" and a performance by Kymbali Craig, "She Got a Fierce Up-Rock" provides a space to explore Black women in Hip Hop. From politics of production, to juggling motherhood and career, the panel discussion promises to be a vibrant and necessary conversation. Talk-back moderated Brandy Monk-Payton and Kymbali Craig.

February 17
Daughters of Shange
Featuring a staged reading of "I Am a Drum" by Sybil Roberts, "Daughters of Shange" features short experimental performance works that trouble and conflate traditional categories of theatrical performance. Talk-back moderated by Nina Angela Mercer.

February 21

"Teach the Teacher" harnesses the power of communal learning and knowledge sharing. Featuring workshops, discussion, and performances, "Teach the Teacher" is day-long teach-in for those who are interested in utilizing art and culture for awareness and social justice

February 24
Ñañakuna K’uychimanta (sisters of the rainbow) is a musical, literary and dance performance that will explore the artistic expressions of women from the African Diaspora. The evening employs a reinterpretation of "round robin sessions" where each artist will share with their fellow performers, writers and musicians, their work to generate a discussion at the end of the performance. This event will feature the talents of The Mimi Jones Band; poets Tara Betts, LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs and, Tonya Foster; and choreographer dancer Paloma McGregor.
This event is curated and moderated by LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs.

Harriet Alston on the Salsa Soul Sisters: January 30th Durham, NC

Saturday, January 30th, 1pm@ the Inspiration Station

POTLUCK BRUNCH
Black Feminism Lives in Durham!
(featuring Harriet Alston, founding member of the Salsa Soul Sisters)

For Each Other: the Salsa Soul Sisters from Alexis Gumbs on Vimeo.

Watch this video to learn more about the Salsa Soul Sisters and come to the potluck ready to ask great questions and benefit from Harriet's wisdom and experience!

Revolutionary Vehicle: Help Lex and Julia Find a Free RV

Hey loved ones!
Check out this video of Julia and I exploring the wide world of RV's. I think Julia might be a reality TV star waiting to happen!

Here is a link to the video on VIMEO: http://vimeo.com/8639900


We know that somewhere in our beloved community there is a pre-loved RV that is waiting to be transformed or an awesome RV dealer/maker who totally gets it! Please help us out by sharing the video with everyone you can think of! Sharing is caring!

Or feel free to send an online donation of any amount! We are so proud for our project to be directly supported by and accountable to our brilliant loving community!

We are grateful to SONG (Southerners of New Ground) for supporting our grassroots fundraising. Your tax-deductible donation of $50 or more will directly support the work of the Mobilehomecoming. Check Payable to: SONG Note MobileHomecoming in the subject line.

You can donate to our project with your credit card or paypal account.

1) Click DONATE.
2) Enter an Amount.
3) Click Continue.
(or login to your paypal account).
4) Follow instructions to finish your transaction. You're Done!

For a copy of our budget or any more information please email us at mobilehomecoming@gmail.com

Apply for the School of Our Lorde Poetics Unit by January 25th!: Available in Durham and the Diaspora!

The School of Our Lorde is comprised of 4 units of Thursday evening sessions that allow participants to deeply engage and build on the work of Audre Lorde as transmitted through the committed (obsessive) research of Alexis Pauline Gumbs on the poetics, teaching practices, political implications and publishing interventions of Audre Lorde’s work (and to enjoy delicious local desserts together) on Thursday evenings. Participants will also get coursepacks with some exclusive and unpublished materials on/by Lorde. Participants can choose to participate in one 3 week semester or the entire 4 month process. Engaging, interactive poetic childcare will be provided at every session with amazing activities imagined with and implemented by Beth Bruch!!!! No one who completes an application and can attend will be turned away.

February 2010: Poetics ****Applications Due January 25th 2010****

Poetics: Audre Lorde is best known as a warrior poet. In February, School of Our Lorde participants will get a change to deeply engage Lorde’s poetry (with the benefit of Lex’s archival research on her revisions) and write their own poetry. We will meet over dessert on Thursday February 4th, 11th and 18th (Audre’s b-day!!!!) and the poets will perform their own new or transformed work at a community reading on Saturday February 20th.

Apply for the poetics course here: School of Our Lorde Poetics Application (pdf version)

School of Our Lorde Poetics Application

email applications to brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com or drop them off at the Inspiration Station (email for directions)

Distance Learning

For those of you who are not lucky enough to live in Durham, NC right now...don't worry. Audre Lorde and I both believe in long-distance love.

You can participate in the School of Our Lorde long-distance in 3 ways:

Host Your Own Satellite Campus!:

Why not have School of Our Lorde at your organization or in YOUR living room!? If you can gather 5 or more people to participate in any unit you can get a course packet with the course readings and worksheets to guide you through each session. You can also participate (along with other satellite campuses) in a monthly interactive BrightTalk session and office hours on LiveStream.

Our vision is that each Satellite Campus will be able to make a sliding scale contribution of $75-200 per unit. No group will be turned away.

To become a host, email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com with what session you'd like to host and your vision!

Independent Study:

Let us know how the School of Our Lorde poetics, pedagogy, politics of publishing process can support something you are working on with/for your community. You will get a course packet and worksheets. You can also participate (along with other satellite campuses) in a monthly interactive BrightTalk session and office hours on LiveStream.

Fill out the application for the appropriate unit here: http://summerofourlorde.wordpress.com/registration/

and get 7 people to financially support your participation. Our hope is that each independent student will raise between $50-150 to contribute to the School of Our Lorde. No one will be turned away!

Lorde as Our Witness:

You can participate in the School of our Lorde through this blog. There will be weekly video blog updates and reflections from the local participants and you can always post comments and questions here and I'll respond. Feel free to spread the good news in your community so one day you can host a School of Our Lorde institute where you live!

Happy Birthday Joseph Beam!: Podcast Celebrating Black Queer Men Transforming and Sustaining Our Communities

December 30th is Joseph Beam's Birthday...in honor of this brilliant Black Gay literary genius ancestor and and the fact that both In the Life and Brother to Brother are back in print thanks to RedBone Press this podcast includes readings and reflections from Lisa Moore of RedBone Press, La Marr Jurelle, Darnell Moore, Justin Smith and a round the kitchen table conversation with some of Durham's most inspiring Black queer visionary men: Ashon Crawley, Sendolo Diaminah, Thaddeaus Edwards and Justin Robinson. (Plus music, love and archival goodies from an ancestor obsessed devotee who you know much too well :) ENJOY!!!!

http://brokenbeautiful.wordpress.com/files/2009/12/in-the-life-podcast-final.mp3

June Jordan Saturday Survival School and School of Our Lorde!

BrokenBeautiful Press is SO proud to announce the June Jordan Saturday Survival School and the School of Our Lorde both jumping off in February at the inspiration station. These are intensive educational experiences for the whole family so be sure to get on board. (Honoring someone with a named scholarship makes an awesome holiday gift by the way!)

love,

lex

We were never meant to survive. We were never meant to find each other love each other transform each other across generations. Or were we?

Survival School is based on the premise that we need each other to survive. This series of intergenerational educational experiences based on research on the definitions and practices and survival developed by June Jordan, Audre Lorde and the members of the Combahee River Collective is designed for the whole family and is an experiment in the sustainability of community based Black feminist education for diverse communities.

June Jordan Saturday Survival School!: February 6th and 13th

Based on June Jordan's unpublished lectures "Survival Literature for Afrikan Children" and "The Creative Spirit and Children's Literature" and the guidelines for her Voices of the Children poetry program, the June Jordan Saturday Survival School is a 2-Saturday program that allows families to interact with June Jordan's theory of children's literature as a literature of survival by engaging June Jordan's out of print children's books and to create their own all-ages illustrated stories.

Apply for the June Jordan Saturday Survival School here: June Jordan Saturday Survival School Application Final (pdf version)

or here: June Jordan Saturday Survival School Application (doc version)

email completed application to brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com or drop them off at the Inspiration Station (send an email if you need directions)

(note: Every family that completes the application gets to participate. Every group of people connected through love is acknowledged as a family, Donations not due until the Survival School starts. No one will be turned away!)

Believe in intergenerational Black Feminist community education and want all sorts of great ancestral blessings and kisses? Name a sliding scale scholarship ($70-150) after someone you love! Email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com to make it happen!

School of Our Lorde: Poetics, Pedagogy and Political Practice

The School of Our Lorde is comprised of weekly evening sessions that allow participants to deeply engage and build on the work of Audre Lorde as transmitted through the committed (obsessive) research of Alexis Pauline Gumbs on the poetics, teaching practices and political implications of Audre Lorde's work (and to enjoy delicious local desserts together) on Thursday evenings. Participants will also get coursepacks with some exclusive and unpublished materials on/by Lorde. Participants can choose to participate in one 3 week semester or the entire 3 month process. No one who completes an application and can attend will be turned away. Engaging, interactive poetic childcare will be provided at every session with amazing activities imagined with and implemented by Beth Bruch!!!!

February-

Poetics: Audre Lorde is best known as a warrior poet. In February, School of Our Lorde participants will get a change to deeply engage Lorde's poetry (with the benefit of Lex's archival research on her revisions) and write their own poetry. We will meet over dessert on Thursday February 4th, 11th and 18th (Audre's b-day!!!!) and the poets will perform their own new or transformed work at a community reading on Saturday February 20th.

Apply for the poetics course here: School of Our Lorde Poetics Application (pdf version)

School of Our Lorde Poetics Application

email applications to brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com or drop them off at the Inspiration Station (email for directions)

March-

Pedagogy: Not everyone knows that Audre Lorde was breaking down the masters house by being a master teacher and librarian. Do you teach students armed and ready to text message? Well Audre Lorde taught John Jay College of Criminal Justice students who wore loaded guns to class as part of their uniform!!! Participants in this session will get to see Audre Lorde's syllabi, and course evaluations, practice their own interpretations of her teaching methods and transform the meaning of education. Participants also get to help design and facilitate the Audre Lorde Survival School. We will meet over dessert on Thursday March 4, 11, and 18th.

Apply for the pedagogy course here:School of Our Lorde Pedagogy Application (pdf version)

School of Our Lorde Pedagogy Application (doc version)

email applications to brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com or drop them off at the Inspiration Station (email for directions)

April-

Politics: With a strong emphasis on Lordeian Economics (that's right!) this unit will allow participants to examine the creative power of difference in practice in community. Participants will learn about Lorde's diasporic politics of solidarity, and her critical perspective on Black feminist socialist organizing in 1980's. Participants will witness and process the impact of the Safe in Our Streets Durham events of April 16th created by SpiritHouse and the Durham Harm Free Zone and design action plans.

Apply for the politics course here: School of Our Lorde Politics Application (pdf version)

School of Our Lorde Politics Application (doc version)

email applications to brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com or drop them off at the Inspiration Station (email for directions)

Believe in intergenerational Black Feminist community education and want all sorts of great ancestral blessings and kisses? Donate dessert or name a sliding scale scholarship ($150-200 for a particular unit or $400-500 for the whole curriculum) after someone you love! Email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com to make it happen!

WHAT RACE ARE YOU RUNNING? SUBMIT YOUR LO-PHY PERFORMANCES/LO-TECH PHOTOS ebonygolden@bettysdaughterarts.com to contribute to our web installation project debunking POST-RACIAL HYPNOSIS!!!!!! GO HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION: http://www.bettysdaughterarts.com/a-poetics-of-progressive-pedagogy.php

Best Gift Ever: Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind DVDs.

Watch, share, enjoy, repost! If you'd like to order a DVD with these videos and more to use in your classroom (and to support the MobileHomeComing Community Documentation and Education Project) make a donation of $15 or more to the MobileHomeComing Project!

1) Click DONATE.
2) Enter an Amount and note that you are ordering the DVD.
3) Click Continue.
(or login to your paypal account).
4) Follow instructions to finish your transaction. You're Done!

For a copy of our budget or any more information please email us at mobilehomecoming@gmail.com

Here is the listing!

And to watch some previews check out: http://blackfeministmind.wordpress.com/2009/08/12/eternal-summer-of-the-black-feminist-mind-educational-videos/!

love,
lex

Call for art, spoken word, music- Sex worker rights are Human rights!

In conjunction with International Human Rights Day on December 10th, a coalition of New York-based sex worker rights, anti-violence and decriminalization advocates are hosting a Human Rights Speak-Out and Arts Evening. You are encouraged to submit your work!

We are looking for:
- pieces that connect to or highlight themes in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (see http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/ and the examples below); and to the idea that criminalization of sex work leads ultimately to human rights violations.
- visual art; and short (2 to 7 minutes) spoken word or poetry pieces, musical pieces, theater shorts, films, etc.
- current/ former sex workers, and folks who are otherwise in communities that are heavily impacted by criminalization and policing of sex work are especially encouraged to submit

Submit to : kmdadamo@gmail.com and belltoweroverflo@hotmail.com
For spoken word and performance, please email written copies if possible. For film, either mail a copy or send an online link to view. For visual art, please either send JPG images (no more than 2) or otherwise call to make arrangements to submit.

Submit by: November 25th

Be sure to keep Dec. 10th on your schedule! Travel stipends for local NYC area travel to the event on the evening of December 10th may be available for submitting artists. Please keep in mind that the event will be promoted to media outlets in order to try to bring a sex worker rights and human rights message to a wider audience.

Here are some examples of conditions faced by sex workers and articles of the UDHR that correlate:

Sex workers and people profiled as sex workers are often ignored when they report violence, rape, or other crimes against them, and even presumed to have brought the violence on themselves. Frequently, they face violence, including sexual violence and extortion, at the hands of the police.

Article 3.

* Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

Article 5.

* No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Article 7.

* All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.

People, particularly transgender folks and people of color are often profiled as sex workers and arrested. For example in Washington, DC, officers can arrest people they “presume to be prostitutes” in so-called Prostitution Free Zones.

Article 9 of the Declaration says:

* No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.

Article 20.

* (1) Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.

Criminalization and stigmatization create enormous obstacles to sex workers organizing for labor rights, and sex workers sometimes face discrimination when they seek different work.

Article 23.

* (1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.
* (2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.
* (3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.
* (4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

Article 25.

* (1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

Be Bold Be Re(a)d: The Podcast

3 years ago women of color came together and transformed what it meant to transform terror on Halloween, declaring October 31st Be Bold Be Red Day, a day for women of color and allies to speak out against violence against women. And 30 years ago women of color came together to respond to violence in the same critical and poetic spirit.

Towards the world the we all deserve, fully transformed from the misogyny and internalized racism we face in popular music to the frightening expendability of the lives and bodies of women of color this podcast places the brave voices of women telling the truth about gendered violence over the remixed sounds of Miles Davis. This year we take every sound back, starting with our own voices and the background that seeks to silence them.

Listen with your community, your class, your friends, your study group, your church, your crew, pass the link on or listen by yourself and see, hear and wear red.

listen here

[audio http://brokenbeautiful.wordpress.com/files/2009/10/real-be-bold-be-red-podcast.mp3]

or download here: http://brokenbeautiful.wordpress.com/files/2009/10/real-be-bold-be-red-podcast.mp3

Stand in Solidarity with Gumbo YaYa!
www.iamnotaproject.wordpress.com





Greetings community,

Gumbo YaYa wants you to stand in support of healing and creative expression for African American girls and women. Most of you know I help sustain a community-based sister circle called Gumbo YaYa: Creative Expression and Healing for African American Girls and Women. Well soon the project will expand to communities in South Africa and Kenya and continue in Durham, NC.

We want you to stand in solidarity with us! If you believe in our mission and our work email your name and the organization you represent to be listed on our community support page!

Gumbo YaYa is a holistic, arts-based program that directly addresses reproductive justice, awareness, and empowerment of African American girls and women. Established in 2007, Gumbo YaYa draws on the cultural practices of knowledge-sharing, political action, art-making, and community- building created and sustained by African American girls and women.

Gumbo YaYa’s mission is to affirm the health, wellness, and vitality of African American girls and women through creative and expressive healing.

To date, Gumbo YaYa has worked with over 100 women and girls in New York, North Carolina, and New Orleans. We have staged three community performances, and held one community forum.

We have collaborated with a host of like minded individuals who firmly believe in our mission and our work. We have been funded by New York University- ism project grant, New York University- Department of Multi-cultural Programs, Health Medical Research Foundation, The Imperial Court of the Daughters of Isis, Billings & Martin and several private sponsors. We have successfully entered our fall giving season, and raised over 2,000 for our international initiatives.




Here is what coming up...

Winter 09-10: Gumbo YaYa Cycle 3 Planning phase
Spring 2010: Gumbo YaYa Reproductive Justice, Now! begins
Community performance and forum
Summer 2010: Gumbo YaYa South Africa/ Kenya
Fall 2010: Gumbo YaYa documentary short film screening

We want you to stand in solidarity with us! If you believe in our mission and our work email your name and the organization you represent to be listed on our community support page!

Please feel free to share resources with us about grants, funding streams, donations, bartering/freecycling, people doing this work internationally, activities, and more.

We look forward to hearing from you.

In service and solidarity,

Ebony N. Golden

Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind Presents: Pauli Murray

Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind Presents:

pauli murray as "the imp!"pauli murray as "the imp!"

This November, in honor of the 99th birthday of Durham’s own Black Feminist, Civil Rights Lawyer, Radical Preacher Pauli Murray Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist, Southerners on New Ground and the Pauli Murray Project present:

Gendered Im(p)ossibility: A Conversation Through Photographs

Drawing on a number of photographs of Pauli Murray from the Schelsinger Library and featuring audio from an interview with Pauli Murray, this promises to be a rich conversation about gender presentation, identity and queer history and reclamation.

Please join us on Monday November 2nd

at 6pm

at Lex’s Inspiration Station

and please bring a dish to share!

See you there!

love,

Lex

Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind: Happy Bday Fannie Lou Hamer!

Greetings loved ones!

It's that time again! It's always that time! The Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind is ETERNAL! In honor of the birthday of amazing civil rights icon and black feminist mentor Fannie Lou Hamer this

October 6th at 6pm

at Lex's Inspiration Station

we will be reading this poem fannie lou june jordan which June Jordan published in the New York Times in honor of Fannie Lou Hamer's life. Did you know Fannie Lou Hamer was June Jordan's mentor? Couldn't you kind of tell? Fierceness gets passed along generations! We will also be looking at my special beloved copy of the children's book that June Jordan wrote about Fannie Lou.

AND because so many of us have the amazing blessing of fierce and fabulous mentors we will be talking about what mentorship means with in the context of black feminism and within our communities in general.

Please come thru with food to share and bring your kids, your mentors and your mentees if you can!

love always,

lex

3rd Annual In the People's Hands Arts and Activism Project

Community Writing Intensive

Poetry. Hip Hop. Performance. Instead of Prisons.



Contact Ebony Noelle Golden
inthepeopleshands@gmail.com
www.inthepeopleshands.synthasite.com
919.423.3780


Durham, NC—Oct. 1-4 artists from North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, New York, and beyond will gather for the third annual Community Writing Intensive in Durham, NC at the New Horizons School and The People's Channel. This year's theme, "to p.i.m.c. w/ love", is a satirical take on the lack of justice the prison system practices towards people of color and poor people. Visit http://www.inthepeopleshands.synthasite.com to register and see full schedule of events.

Participants will engage poetry, media, hip hop theater, and music as tools for critically and creatively engaging community wellness, prison reform, the school to prison pipeline, and decreasing violence in local communities.

Nia Wilson, Executive Director of SpiritHouse-NC said, "This program is absolutely necessary. Our path to freedom is informed by being able to articulate our stories, our visions, in our own words. SpiritHouse is dedicated to creating these intentional spaces for the entire community to dialogue, write, perform, and heal."

This year’s intensive features:

· Tuition-free workshops
· Workshops led by community poets and community organizers
· Travel Scholarships for commuters
· Youth-led workshops
· Writers-in-Residence
· Performance workshops
· Action-based community dialogue
. Manuscript workshops
. Open-Mic
. Virtual release of e-zine www.inthepeopleshands.synthasite.com
. Establishing a community board of artists and writers in the rooted in the south east

The In the People's Hands Arts and Activism Project is based on June Jordan's 15-year old "Poetry for the People" program. The program "continues to pursue Martin Luther King Jr.'s vision of a beloved community for all".

June Jordan crafted Poetry for the People with three guiding principles in mind:
1. That students will not take themselves seriously unless we who teach them, honor and respect them in every practical way that we can.
2. That words can change the world and save our lives.
3. That poetry is the highest art and the most exacting service devoted to our most serious, and our most imaginative, deployment of verbs and nouns on behalf of whatever and whoever we cherish.

For more information about June Jordan and Poetry for the People, visit www.poetryforthepeople.org.
This project is made possible by a grant from the North Carolina Humanities Council, a statewide nonprofit and affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, the We Shall Overcome Fund, The People's Channel, Betty's Daughter Arts Collaborative, and SpiritHouse-NC.

For more information about the intensive, to apply or to donate time, money, or services contact inthepeopleshands@gmail.com, or call Ebony Noelle Golden at 9194233780. To register for the intensive, visit http://inthepeopleshands.synthasite.com/registration.php.


-END-

Buried Treasure

Hey y'all. Last night I filled in for Nia and spoke at the annual meeting of a Rape Crisis Center in the next county. I was honored to do it and affirmed by the people in the room. Feel free to participate in the prompt at the end of the speech!
love,
lex

Grassroots Organizing Against Sexual Violence

For the annual meeting of the Orange County Rape Crisis Center

Good evening everyone! I stand here representing Nia Wilson, director of SpiritHouse and co-founder with me and others of UBUNTU, a women of color, survivor-led coalition committed, with all of you, to ending gendered and sexual violence completely by filling our communities with sustaining transformative love.

I am not Nia Wilson, but I am proud to call her my sister, mentor, comrade, loved one, and dear friend. And some would say that we “look alike” because we have a shared vision of a transformed world full of inspired communities. And by community we mean groups of people connected by geography and affinity that truly support each member in having their physical, spiritual and emotional needs met, and their amazing priceless unique gift to the world expressed.

I am also here tonight in the legacy of Audre Lorde, black lesbian feminist mother poet warrior who also used her poetry, her life and her example to stand against sexual violence. I will be using on of Audre Lorde’s lesser-known later poems, “On My Way Out I Passed Over You and the Verazzano Bridge” in her collection Our Dead Behind Us to frame my discussion about women of color survivor-led grassroots organizing. Because I strongly believe that (as our other speaker, a high school English teacher and igniter of Scene and Heard youth poetry collective will also speak to) poetry is a powerful context for transformation.

I was asked to speak specifically about what grassroots organzing looks like from the perspective of women of color, those among us who have long held the under-rewarded task of ORGANIZING EVERYTHING often in the face of slander and disrespect…the exact kind of slander and disrespect that makes sexual violence against women of color seem normal.

Audre Lorde speaks for many when she says:

History is not kind to us

we restitch it with living

past memory forward

into desire

into the panic articulation

of want without having

or even the promise of getting

And this is often the position of women of color led initiatives like ours which do not conform to the standard of non-profit organizing. Organizations like SpiritHouse, which focuses on the soul work of healing with/as those most impacted by racism, sexism and classism, and coalitons like UBUNTU, which acts on the belief that we must create whoel communities full of shared childcare, shared, music, shared meals, collective gardents, and definitely poetry in order to grow a world where people are truly accountable to each other and sexual violence is no more….groups like ours are not always legible to foundations that value social services and policy outcomes, but which often overlook the community building work, the love work. Love is sadly undervalued in the non-profit industrial complex, but we as women of color are learning to be fierce beacons of love and finding support for that work is like planting your heart in the ground you stand on, shining your faith light and tears into your community and welcoming whatever grows up. Grass. Roots.

Even the present is not kind. We restitch it with living, past memory, forward into desire.

We draw on the resources of the brilliant women of color who have come before us and who hold a light to our vision today. SpiritHouse and UBUNTU have actively used the poetic work of Audre Lorde, June Jordan, Ntozake Shange and asha bandele in our healing performances and independent publications and writing workshops.

We also ally with contemporary warriors like genius filmmaker Aishah Simmons who’s film NO! reminds us who we are and what we deserve and reminds men who are allies committed to ending sexual violence of their stake in the matter. Deconstructing male privilege means that men are not helping to end sexual violence on my behalf, they are not stopping rape from a property perspective to protect wives, mothers, daughters, etc. If you identify as a man ending rape, you are ending rape because it is not what you would want someone to do to YOU, Period.

SpiritHouse youth program which I have been involved in for the past 5 years works with some of the most criminalized members of our communities. Young black people, mostly male-identified, who have often been long-term suspended and exprelled from Durham public schools because of their involvement in gangs or street organizations. These are the people most likely to get pulled over if they drive anywhere, who have the hardest times finding jobs, who are often harassed just for walking down the street or hanging out. And no, they don’t always have the most PC gender language. We know from being accountable to and led by these young people that being treated like a criminal does not give anyone a healthier relationship to their own sexuality or anyone else’s body.

If the increased surveillance and criminalization is not the way to end sexual violence, and I strongly believe that it is not, as a survivor like most survivors of sexual violence that was enacted on me by someone in my circle of trust, how do we heal our communities?

In UBUNTU, a coalition of which SpiritHouse is a founding organizational member, we believe that when everyone’s needs are met, when we can look at each other eye to eye, when we can tell the truth about economic violence, agist silencing and sex in general, and when we can tell the even harder, rarer, riskier truth about love, we will treat each other well, we will love each other right.

The committees of UBUNTU have created poetic performances, writing groups, a community garden, a national day of truthtelling and monthly potluck dinners as investments in the belief that as Audre Lorde says:

And I dream of us coming together

encircled driven

not only by love

but by a lust for a working tomorrow

the flights of this journey

mapless uncertain

and necessary as water,

And the flights are maples. The tragic thing is that we do not know how to navigate life without violence, distrust and harmful silences. But Lorde offers us this poem:

I am writing these words as a route map

an artifact for survival

a chronicle of buried treasure

a mourning

for this place we are about to be leaving

And in the spirit of that buried treasure, that necessary digging. I have a poem that I would like you to interact with. Are you willing to interact?

The poem is called Dig (available as a PDF here: http://brokenbeautiful.wordpress.com/lexicon/dig/

And at the end of the poem (and for you reading in the comments) please respond to the prompt for your community, for yourself, or for any definition of “here” that you hold:

“If you dig here you will find ______________________”

(at the event each person stood and declared that we would find, “a poem” “love” “hope” “more digging to do” “dirt” “roots” “a proud father of three daughters” “peace” “a hundred dreams ready to be lived” “intertwining pathways” and more! And each person remained standing until the entire room was standing for the depth of healing that will truly end sexual violence. And I said…)

I was asked to speak about what grassroots organzing looks like from my perspective. I think this is what it looks like. Learning to stand against sexual violence with our whole selves. Thank you for your bravery.

3rd Annual In the People's Hands Arts and Activism Project

Community Writing Intensive

Poetry. Hip Hop. Performance. Instead of Prisons.




Contact

Ebony Noelle Golden For Immediate Release 919.423.3780 www.inthepeopleshands.synthasite.com
inthepeopleshands@gmail.com





Durham, NC—Oct. 1-4 artists from North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, New York, and beyond will gather for the third annual Community Writing Intensive in Durham, NC at the New Horizons School and The People's Channel.


This year's theme, "to p.i.m.c. w/ love", is a satirical take on the lack of justice the prison system practices towards people of color and poor people. The intensive will engage poetry, media, hip hop theater, and music as tools for critically and creatively engaging community wellness, prison reform, the school to prison pipeline, and decreasing violence in local communities.

Nia Wilson, Executive Director of SpiritHouse-NC said, "This program is so absolutely necessary. Our path to freedom is informed by being able to articulate our stories, our visions, in our own words. SpiritHouse is dedicated to creating these intentional spaces for the entire community to dialogue, write, perform, and heal."


This year’s intensive features:
· Tuition-free workshops
· Workshops led by community poets and community organizers
· Travel Scholarships for commuters
· Youth-led programs
· Writers-in-Residence
· Performance workshops
· Action-based community dialogue
. Manuscript workshops
. Open-Mic
. Virtual release of e-zine www.inthepeopleshands.synthasite.com
. Establishing a community board of artists and writers in the rooted in the south east


The In the People's Hands Arts and Activism Project is based on June Jordan's 15-year old "Poetry for the People" program. The program "continues to pursue Martin Luther King Jr.'s vision of a beloved community for all". June Jordan crafted Poetry for the People with three guiding principles in mind:

1. That students will not take themselves seriously unless we who teach them, honor and respect them in every practical way that we can.
2. That words can change the world and save our lives.
3. That poetry is the highest art and the most exacting service devoted to our most serious, and our most imaginative, deployment of verbs and nouns on behalf of whatever and whoever we cherish.

For more information about June Jordan and Poetry for the People, visit www.poetryforthepeople.org.

The Community Writing Intensive is sponsored by the We Shall Overcome Fund, The People's Channel, Betty's Daughter Arts Collaborative, SpiritHouse-NC, and the North Carolina Humanities Council.

For more information about the intensive, to apply or to donate time, money, or services contact inthepeopleshands@gmail.com, or call Ebony Golden at 9194233780. To register for the intensive, visit http://inthepeopleshands.synthasite.com/registration.php.


-END-

BrokenBeautiful: Fall in Love All Over Again!

Schools in! And your summer-lovin, nerdy quirky space for creation is exited to check out your new And you keep on keep on falling in love with the world we are making together! I know you are so ready to see what BrokenBeautiful Press is up to in this amazing season of transformation!

MobileHome Money!: Buy Lex and Julia this MobileHome for our traveling queer black intergenerational community documentation and education project! Read all about it and contribute via paypal if you can here! Also, all proceeds from the DVD and Lex's speaking circuit will go towards the sustainable media making love bug extreme!



Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind EVERYWHERE!!!: Spreading the gospel of black feminist possibility and legacy by every means necessary, the Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind project has a multi-media life of it's own! In addition to the in-person study group (see more details below) Eternal Summer stays portable and interactive with the new

Eternal Summer PODCAST Series with amazing music, poetry and information! Scroll down or click here to download or listen to 1979 and Meditations on the Rainbow. I just recently got word that sistas in Kenya are using the podcasts for discussion sessions. You should too!

Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist MIND TV!!!! If you have the great sense to live in Durham, North Carolina you can get black feminist goodness right in your living room on Channel 18 Monday nights at 9pm!

AND the videos!

Eternal Summer DVD of black feminist educational videos (available on a sliding scale fee for use in your community or classroom.) Paypal a donation between $11-25 to brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com for your copy. shipping included!)

AND the Black Feminist Poet/Speaker/Workshop Leader for hire!

This year Lex is using her best developed and most cherished skill-the art of the life-changing workshop-to raise funds to support her decision to spend the next year doing the MobileHomeComing an immersive intergenerational community documentation and education project based on her lust for back queer community! (It’s weird that somehow I have to be consistent with a choice to talk about myself in the third person here, but I want to interject in the first person to say that your support means everything to me and it is evidence of the fact that it is possible to be a community supported, community accountable scholar in the 21st Century. More details here!

Queer Renaissance Film Screening/B-day Bash Fundraiser: BrokenBeautiful Press is partnering with Queer Renaissance to create the party of the fall! On Saturday September 19th in Atlanta, GA we'll be screening Julia Wallace's film "Until" two Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind videos, a fashion line, music dancing, ties and more beautiful madness. For more details look at the event page here! The event is a fundraiser for intergenerational technology classes that Julia will be conducting in under-served communities in Atlanta.

Love Harder: Women of Color Working it Out

This is a reading group specifically designed for women of color in different communities to respond to the complicated matrix of oppressions that face us by loving each other even harder, with more intention, focus and specificity. We will be reading, gathering locally and posting our insights at www.loveharder.wordpress.com every season. Fall 2009 we are reading Andrea Smith’s essay about the three pillars of white supremacy. Comment on the blog or email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com if you want to participate!

The Summer Recap:

How amazing was our Summer!!??? Check it out!

Black Feminism Lives...ALL SUMMER LONG!

Combahee Lives!: All summer long the Combahee Survival initiative has been sparking conversation on the Quirky Black Girls discussion forums and the Combahee Survival Blog invoking the brave brilliance of the 1977 Black Lesbian Feminist Socialist Combahee River Collective with contribution and statements from contemporary movement genuises! And it don't stop! Join Quirky Black Girls or email brokenbeautiful.wordpress.com if you want to get weekly discussion prompts!

Eternal Summer Study Groups: This summer Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist mind grew wide and deep. With intimate session on Lex's porch in Durham we discussed the poetry of Audre Lorde and Nikky Finney and we kicked of the Eternal Summer Warrior film series with a documentary about Ida B. Wells (which we screened in honor of her birthday!)



Sistas in D.C., Ethiopia, Chicago, etc, have been doing local Eternal Summer sessions. Stay posted at www.blackfeministmind.wordpress.com to see what's happening near you...or better yet...gather with folks in your own community and read along!

In MAY Lex spoke at the Caribbean Studies Association meeting in Kingston Jamaica and Lex and Julia of the BrokenBeautiful Press/Queer Renaissance MobileHomecoming Collabo attended the inaugural visioning session of the Caribbean Region component of the International Research Network, a clearing house for LGBTQQI activists, artists, scholars and community organizations in the Caribbean!



In JUNE the hotness of the annual Gemini Jam (replete with Gemini juice and love message posters and the sweet sounds of DJ Superfree) popped off in Atlanta.



And THEN Lex went to the AMAZING Furious Flower Poetry Center at James Madison University in Virginia and had the honor of celebrating Lucille Clifton's birthday and her amazing body of poetry with some amazing poets and teachers (including Nikky Finney and Akasha Hull! AND in a very BrokenBeautiful way...her chosen family and community paid for her to go! Here is a link to the thank you video!



In JULY BrokenBeautiful Press was all over the Allied Media Conference in Detroit!



Shawty got Skills2Share was a space created by our beloved Cyberquilting Crew that encouraged Women of Color to learn skills from each other, from digital social networking, to quilting to video livestreaming to urban foraging.



The Cyberquilting/SPEAK/INCITE: Radical Women of Color Media Strategy Session was the jumpoff of a year of collaborativeworld changing initiatives (like the above mentioned LOVE HARDER) about to pop off in your local and cyber community!

See more pics from the AMC (taken by Moya Bailey) here!

In AUGUST the education working group of Bull City (Durham) Affiliate of Southerners on New Ground and the Queer Collective took an idea from Lex's kitchen table to the streets and created a grassroots guerilla film festival focusing on Queer People of Color in just over a week! Imagine Born in Flames, Paris is Burning and Flag Wars projected large as life on a wall in downtown Durham y'all! The fest also featured Lex's short video "So You Know" about black queer publishing!



And just now over Labor Day Weekend was the delicious delectable Queerky Black Girls Cookout in the middle of the Black Pride Exuberance!



in short...BEST SUMMER EVER!!!!!

also feel free to share amazing videos and pictures from your transformative summer. Email links and pics to brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com and we'll post them here!

Happy to be falling in love with you all over again!

love,

lex

"Meditations on the Rainbow": Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind Podcast II

Filled with great music...rare and priceless poetry from Sapphire all presented in that quirky, interactive, meditative, writing workshop-esque Eternal Summer style!

(this is a photo of the brilliant Sapphire...but this time it's actually Lex reading Sapphire's juicy poetic set)

This podcast is dedicated to all of us, but especially to Tyli'a Nana Boo Mack, a black transwoman made early ancestor in a brutal act of violence in Washington DC.

Get your pen and your paintbrush and listen here:

Eternal Summer Podcast Two!!!!

(If you listen to the end you'll hear Lex singing the blues!)

*Sapphire is not a particularly PG poet so this podcast is for grown folks and the folks they can be accountable for sharing it with.