Profs. George Belliveau and Marvin Westwood on 'A Smoke Behind the Rope'
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/08/16
*Sky Theatre Group YouTube video interivew uploaded.*
Professor George Belliveau specializes in Theatre Education where he integrates theatre as a form of research and artistic expression across multiple disciplines. He is an international leader in research-based…
do you have "treatment resistant depression" or are you just fundamentally living a life that would make anyone depressed?
are you just dealing with abuse, poverty, and oppression? are you just dealing with a lifetime of trauma? do we just live in a society where peoples basic needs are neglected, and the completely understanble response to that is pathologized? on purpose? so that it's just an individual problem and people arent Trying Enough... so nothing about the system has to change?
...do you have "treatment resistant depression," or do you just need real community, support, resources, and protection?
Something that I need people to understand, especially on this hellsite. Is that oppression does not depend on who you actually are.
It depends on how the world sees you.
If the world sees you as X identity. They will treat you as X identity, whether you are or not. If the world sees that you are not X identity, but they can use the oppression of X identity as a cudgel to make you act the way they want you to? They will use it.
Oppression is NOT dependent on who you actually are. It depends on how the world sees you. It depends on how people see you and what they decide to put on you because of that.
Oh. And when someone experiences a form of oppression that is NOT based in the reality of who they are? It's still that kind of oppression. It's not "misdirected"- it is still that kind of oppression being leveraged to maintain the current social climate.
I didn’t sit here for years tryna stay calm and silent while listening to your bad takes on gale (who grew up oppressed, in poverty and then witnessed his entire district getting wiped out then rightly went to fight in the rebellion because it was his inlg chance of tearing down the system the wanted him and his family dead) being a “terrorist war criminal who is single handedly responsible for killing innocent people including prim and who is the REAL villain of the hunger games” just for y’all to turn and start stanning and defending actual facist dictator and child trafficker Coriolanus Snow because you saw a young hot version of him.
like i said before, i don't mess with shaun king like that, but that being said, many things about one thing can be true at the same time. it is very clear that there is a wave of censorship happening across social media against pro-palestinian content in favor of israeli propaganda. so whether or not you like shaun or not, it is very clear what is happening and why. there is clearly a genocide happening in gaza that is being perpetuated by colonizing power. a genocide against an indigenous population for land, resources, and power. basically the same thing america did to the natives here. had it not been for people like shaun king (flawed as he may be), many people would not be aware of the heinous acts of israel against the palestinian people right now. so even as someone who is not a shaun king fan, i am not so myopic in my view of things to not realize that he served a positive purpose when it comes to the israeli genocide of palestinians.
on a much larger scale, whenever a platform or a power attacks someone popular, one of the goals is to send a message to everyone else that they are not safe and that they should back off. it's like a football coach picking on and cursing out their hall of fame quarterback. when everyone else who isn't as popular or powerful sees that on the team, they immediately realize that they must fall in line or worse can happen to them. that's the goal of banning shaun king from ig. however as a black man who understands how connected all oppressive systems are, we cannot slow down. may i remind all my brothers and sisters that israel is where police forces like the nypd go and train in abusive violent tactics, which they then come back to america and overwhelmingly exercise on black and brown bodies. so if you think this does not affect you, you are sadly and deeply mistaken. additionally, this kind of censorship is going to spread. if we don't fight back, it won't be long before you will be arrested for speaking out against israel. this is what israel wants, and they have the money and political power to make it happen. you can either sit back and let it happen or you can fight back. however, make no mistake, it's coming, and this is the first major blow that the enemy has struck in their offensive against our free speech.
jennifer lawrence is a middle school drop out raised in the imperial core who always talked about the hunger games being about “one person standing up for what they believe in” which is….not what it was about ever at all. of course she has terrible politics. katniss would probably look at her with pity like a little dumb capitol pet.
also remember that no form of resistance is ever acceptable to the colonizer. and that includes non-violent resistance (the great march of return) + non-violence is only successful against a force that has a conscience. but if your opponent had a conscience, he would not be oppressing you in the first place.