You know that there is a lot of great art happening these days, but you should move something to check out the short entitled “G-trification” by Karra Duncan screening today at the Harlem International Film Festival. G-Trification takes on the issue of gentrification, something all too common to those uptown, but takes it to another level by involving issues of race, morality and age to pull viewers into the complicated choices our community often has to make.
The short recently screened to rave reviews at the Pan African Film Festival, San Diego Black Film Festival and continues to make waves and ripples on its tour around the country. Let’s welcome Karra and G-Trification back uptown with some love. Check out the trailer here. It screens for free at 5:30pm at the Harlem School of the Arts (645 St. Nicholas @ 141st)
Tomorrow, Wednesday evening, the City College of New York will host an important panel discussion on the No Child Left Behind Act. The panel is entitled, “Has No Child Left Behind Failed High Poverty Urban Schools?” was organized by Tiffany O’Neal a CCNY student and New York Life Fellow. I will be moderating the panel which features Christopher Edmin of Teacher’s College, Winthrop Holder teacher and author of Classroom Calypso, and Marcus Winters of the Manhattan Institute. More information on panelist is available here.
The panel will occur from 5 to 7pm in Shepard Hall Room 250.
The conversation promises to be lively and insightful.
I just penned a libation for Brother Malcolm X, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, Omowale at There Is No Spoon. Here is an excerpt, it’s a short one, so please read, reflect and comment.
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44 years ago to the day, Malcolm X also known as El Hajj Malik El Shabazz and Omowale, was ushered into the ancestors by assassins bullets. There are many ways to honor an ancestor but I thought it important that I honor the legacy of Brother Malcolm by calling on some of his most important lessons in the names of three recent ancestors lost: Oscar Grant, Adolph Grimes, and Robbie Tolan who were all recently assassinated.
So apparently there’s a real movement in the streets (not the type of movement your favorite rapper likes to call his p.r. stunts) to replace the n-word with president. A president can dream, can’t he?
Shout out to www.presidentplease.com and H/T to the lightskinned Obamaniac @GaTech
Yesterday, the NY Post ran an incendiary political cartoon by Delonas. In response NY City Council Rep Charles Baron and others have called for an in-person action against the Post. The action will take place today at noon, details below:
Thursday, February 19, 2008 at 12 Noon
New York Post Offices
1211 Avenue of the Americas (between 47th & 48th Sts)
New York, NY
Second, I am absolutely impressed and empowered by the amount of student activism I’ve seen bubbling up nationally and in New York in particular over the past few months. While contemporary college students are often discussed as “disconnected” from social struggles or suffering from “apathy”, at a least a cadre of students have been pushing for greater social justice. A few months ago students at the New School took-over a building and received their demands, last night at about 10pm a coalition of students at New York University, occupied the marketplace of the Kimmel Center. Find out more about their demands, principled take-over, and recent details go here.
This is the point where you use your super politically savvy mind to explain to me why this political cartoon from the NY Post is not racially motivated or racist in the least bit … please begin! I think I need alternative explanations.
Jewel Woods, in a piece on Alternet offers an insightful and challenging analysis of why Sarah Palin was such a hit among men … and it’s not what you’re thinking!!!
What is the enduring legacy of Sarah Palin for men after the 2008 presidential elections? It seems like a reasonable question to ask, given how important men were to the success of Palin.
According to CNN, more men than women believed that the Alaska governor was qualified to be president, and more men than women felt like questions raised about the governor’s experiences were unfair. In fact, contrary to the enormous media attention directed at Palin’s likely impact on women voters — what became commonly referred to as the “Palin Effect” — we now know that it was the positive reaction among men within the electorate that drove the governor’s initial popularity and propelled her to the superstar status that she enjoys today!
The truth is that Palin owes a lot to men. Men influenced her message, her method and certainly how she was marketed to the American public.
However, if you follow the media’s continuing coverage of Palin — which it is almost impossible not to, considering the legions of articles that are still being written about her — you probably would not know anything about how men’s reactions to her signal important demographic and cultural changes occurring in men’s lives.
So what followed? An outcry from the community against the devastation that domestic violence causes in all of our lives? A denunciation of Brown’s heinous acts and calls to boycott his music? Or even… a small expression of concern for the health and safety of this young woman?
This past week, renowned Psychologist Richard Nisbett published an opinion piece in the New York Times entitled, “Education Is All in the Mind.” While I’ve come to respect Nisbett for his research and advocacy against polemics such as The Bell Curve, his recent piece misses the mark. The central issue is that Nisbett privileges psychological factors over other factors and leaves the reader to think what it takes to repair schools essentially are “mind games.” This is not to suggest that there is not validity to some of the claims that he makes. However, I argue that the work he cites speaks to improving psychological processes which can have an impact on test performance, but these tell us little about what is necessary for educational reform. Nisbett’s argument and logic is one that is shared by a number of people advocating change in policy towards education that concentrates on “the mind”, but overlooks the schools, neighborhoods, and families that kids are nested in. Transforming educational opportunity takes both psychological effort but also in-depth systematic reform in schools and communities.
The short recently screened to rave reviews at the Pan African Film Festival, San Diego Black Film Festival and continues to make waves and ripples on its tour around the country. Let’s welcome Karra and G-Trification back uptown with some love. Check out the trailer here. It screens for free at 5:30pm at the Harlem School of the Arts (645 St. Nicholas @ 141st)
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