Gloria Steinem and "NO! The Rape Documentary"

September 23, 2011
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Gloria Steinem and "NO! The Rape Documentary"

By Aishah Shahidah Simmons Gloria Steinem is a Second Wave White Feminist pioneer who, for over 40 years and counting, has been at the forefront and often a spokesperson for women’s rights in the United States and globally. Since the late 1960s, Steinem has either founded or co-founded several women-led organizations, which have impacted the lives of millions of women across this country and internationally. These organizations include the...
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A Message from the Editors Concerning the Execution of Troy Anthony Davis

September 21, 2011
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A Message from the Editors Concerning the Execution of Troy Anthony Davis

We join millions of Americans in expressing our profound sorrow tonight that despite recantations and substantial doubt concerning his guilt, the state of Georgia has proceeded with the execution of Troy Anthony Davis. But we must also wonder what amount of damage has been done to the idea of justice and freedom, both for the individual and in the abstract, when the Supreme Court of the United States is...
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Dunham in the Air: A Reflection on Radical Choreographies and Programming Social Justice

September 21, 2011
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Dunham in the Air: A Reflection on Radical Choreographies and Programming Social Justice

By Aimee Meredith Cox, Ph.D. Retrograde I was on my way to Santa Fe last summer marveling at the technology that allowed me to be online in flight. I slept through the first leg from JFK to Minneapolis, struggling with how to finish the piece I was writing on the esteemed anthropologist, choreographer, and bad-ass Black woman, Katherine Dunham. Dunham was in my dreams. I woke up as the...
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The Women in Tahrir Square

September 19, 2011
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The Women in Tahrir Square

Editor’s Note:  In light of the most recent examples of resistance and protest in Egypt, we offer this reminder and analysis of events earlier in the year.  Let us keep in mind as much of the larger picture as possible. By Zillah Eisenstein A fresh wind blows from North Africa.  People across the globe await the full expression of this Arab spring. After the toppling of Mubarak the people of Egypt voted in a...
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The Myth of “Gay Marriage,” The Reality of Gay Hate: Dispatches from New York and North Carolina

September 16, 2011
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The Myth of “Gay Marriage,” The Reality of Gay Hate: Dispatches from New York and North Carolina

The recent ruling in favor of gays and lesbians in New York has had unintended consequences. And I don’t mean that the global wellbeing of gay New Yorkers is demonstrably greater or that sales of nuptial paraphernalia have increased, though to be sure New York’s Marriage Equality Act has produced both effects. I’m referring to an entirely different set of outcomes resulting from the extension of “marriage rights” to...
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Featured Poet: Anne Marie Rooney

September 14, 2011
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Featured Poet: Anne Marie Rooney

Elegy in which the film degrades —————————1 She has seen the angle a man shudders into. / The slab of haunch a promise. This woman / whose face opens like a butchers’ knot. / “Both my daughters know how to grieve,” / she says, but something beats against / this. Past the window, a blind of rain and dirtier. / If tonight I flatten to a list. “Shabby and hot” / is what she called...
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Fables for Our Time

September 12, 2011
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Fables for Our Time

I should have been grading papers yesterday. In fact, I missed my own assignments, watching coverage that I know nearly as well as the digits on my hands and feet; ten years ago, I woke up on that Tuesday morning—a teaching day most of my career—and, contrary to hundreds of days exactly like it, did not turn over in the early morning and reach for the on button of...
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Message from The Editors: In Commemoration of 9/11

September 11, 2011
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Message from The Editors: In Commemoration of 9/11

We wish to express our sincere sympathies for all of the victims of September 11, 2001, now ten years ago.  The tragedy of that day still resounds throughout the United States, and we still bear the wound. Yet, let us not forget, today, the people who lost their lives, responded with bravery, and have sealed forever in their memory first-hand accounts of those painful events. -The Editors _________________________________________________________________ Where...
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Making the Left TRANSPARENT; An Anti-Racist Feminist Friendly Critique, Again

September 9, 2011
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Making the Left TRANSPARENT; An Anti-Racist Feminist Friendly Critique, Again

By Zillah Eisenstein These are strange times.  Rupert Murdoch and his media empire are finally exposed for hacking and deception and there is some accounting to be done.  Yet, the final exposure of those who have formerly done the exposing seems a bit cheap to me.  After all, the revelations of wrong-doing remain contained while much of this illegal activity was known before it was officially exposed.  Strangely, the...
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A Review: Dreams Deferred: The Sakia Gunn Film Project by Charles “Chas” Brack

September 7, 2011
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A Review: Dreams Deferred: The Sakia Gunn Film Project by Charles “Chas” Brack

By Darnell Moore “Sakia Latona Gunn: We Will Remember Her Name” (2008). Charles B. Brack (Producer) and Co-Produced with Third World Newsreel. Color; 58 minutes; US; English. Fifteen year-old Sakia Latona Gunn was stabbed to death by an adult male perpetrator on Newark’s busiest intersection. Since Sakia’s murder in 2003, activists within Newark—and beyond—have worked to ensure that her name and story be remembered despite mass media’s invariable disavowal...
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Music Feature: Diallo Hall on Sudanese "Girls’ Music" and Artist Alsarah

September 7, 2011
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Music Feature: Diallo Hall on Sudanese "Girls’ Music" and Artist Alsarah

In one of my favorite songs by Afro Beat progenitor Fela Kuti, he exclaims: If you call woman African woman no go ‘gree She go say I be Lady o Fela is recounting the age-old resistance by African women to their circumscribed roles in traditional societies. This resistance is an often ignored, but very essential, chapter in African women’s “her-story.” In Sudan, resistance to patriarchy, tradition, and narrowly defined...
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Palin, Bachmann and the Political Feminism of the Right

September 5, 2011
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Palin, Bachmann and the Political Feminism of the Right

As the 2012 Presidential election draws nearer, political observers and frontrunners alike are sure to begin reconstructing new and old partisan paradigms, with hopes of appealing to even the most cooperative of political enthusiasts.  To be sure, many grammars of political principle and reason are already underway.  Of particular interest are those structured around women, namely, who and how women are or ought to be, and what women want...
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Fitting In, In Beijing

September 2, 2011
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Fitting In, In Beijing

My decision to go to Beijing, China for a summer literature institute provoked a variety of responses in those with whom I shared my plans.  My family, adviser, and a sprinkling of friends enthusiastically congratulated me, and collectively foresaw a trip filled with adventure and experiences to reshape me.  Others furrowed their brows and searched their memories for words of not-too-discouragement.  “Isn’t it polluted, there?” “Will you be able...
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Arts & Culture

  • Featured Poet: Aditi Raorao self def

    By Aditi Rao Dear Mr. Yadav, I too am an Indian Woman   “Referring to the recent ‘Slut Walk’ held in the Capital, Mr. Lalu Prasad Yadav said we had naked women walking down the streets with tattoos on their cheeks, whereas Indian women did not even look up while [...]

  • A is for Asylum12

    Assata do not dry like dissipated plums under castro’s bronzing sun you mural fortress you live memorial spirited artifice rouged sea salt that marinates america’s wound   Assata you like stripped bone road unaware of which exit is free birth  brown coagulated rhythm redefined reborn rumba queen Assata dusk breath [...]

  • “Affirmation” by Assata Shakur945073_361887813911202_1619329964_n

    “Affirmation” by Assata Shakur* ___ I believe in living. I believe in the spectrum of Beta days and Gamma people. I believe in sunshine. In windmills and waterfalls, tricycles and rocking chairs. And i believe that seeds grow into sprouts. And sprouts grow into trees. I believe in the magic [...]