#ruffneckrefugee

[frontpagewoman]

“Eventually I found out that I was on a watch list. … This is 2003 [or 2004]. … After the Patriot Act, I would always get my financial packages in the mail and they would just be opened. It was like, "What is going on here?”… On that watch list they would be like, “Yeah your name matches the name of a terrorist or someone that they’re watching.” I was like, “What terrorist is running around with a Hebrew first name and an Arabic last name? Who’s that guy?” NPR Fresh Air Mahershala Ali interview-2/16/17

[robertogreco]

The Story of the Watermelon, Khaled Hourani, 2007 (followed by Palestinian Flag, also by Khaled Hourani)

via Momtaza Mehri, quoting @africa on Twitter:

In the years after the 1967 Six Day War, the Israeli army arrested/harassed anyone displaying the Palestinian flag’s colors in Gaza and the West Bank. In response, many Palestinians in the region would carry sliced watermelons in a sign of subversive protest.

Similarly, prominent Palestinian artists have stated they risked imprisonment for simply painting depictions of watermelons, as well as other images (like poppy seed plants) that might have incorporated the national colors.

🍉

FREE PALESTINE

[tamsinhughes]

London, Saudi, Somalia, home?

[indieninja92]

[Image description: 4 images arranged vertically.

The first is a screenshot of a Tweet from Twitter user @RuffneckRefugee with the screen-name Momtaza Mehri. The tweet reads: “black people’s relationship to high art has always been antagonistic for a reason. see Essex Hemphill’s “Visiting Hours” & Fritz Henle’s “Cleaning Woman in the MOMA”

The second and third images are of the poem “Visiting Hours” by Essex Hemphill. They read:

“Visiting Hours

The government pays me nine thousand dollars a year to protect the East Wing. So I haunt it.

Visiting hours are over. The silent sentry is on duty. An electric eye patrols the premises. I'm just here putting mouth on the place.

Modigliani whispers to Matisse. Matisse whispers to Picasso. I kiss the Rose in my pocket and tip easy through this tomb of thieves.

I'm weighted down with keys, flashlight, walkie-talkie, a gun. I'm expected to die, if necessary, protecting European artwork that robbed color and movement from my life.

I'm the ghost in the Capitol. I did Vietnam. My head is rigged with land mines, but I keep cool, waiting on every other Friday, kissing the Rose, catching some trim.

I'm not protecting any more Europeans with my life. I'll give this shit in here away before I die for it. Fuck a Remb-randt!

And if I ever go off you'd better look out, Mona Lisa. I'll run through this gallery with a can of red enamel paint and spray everything in sight like a cat in heat.“

The fourth image is of a photograph taken by Fritz Henle in the 1950s titled ‘Cleaning Woman in MOMA’. It is a black and white photograph of a Black woman standing alone in an art gallery. She is standing side on to the camera and is wearing a floral dress and flat shoes. There are statues around her but there is space between her and them. She looks small in the space. She is holding a broom, and is looking straight ahead.

End image description]

fine af

[goodgutenbien-morning]

http://twitter.com/RuffneckRefugee/status/1391120177568301056

[timrileyauthor]

Favorited Tweet by RuffneckRefugee

nobody fears being replaced & invaded more than the descendants of genocidal settlers.

— momtaza mehri 💆🏾‍♀️ (@RuffneckRefugee) March 15, 2019

from http://twitter.com/RuffneckRefugee via IFTTT

[werecat]

Twitter user @/RuffneckRefugee: “the best poets are lucky to even get a month's rent & a bag of chips in advances so us collectively sitting out this conversation for our mental health is killing me!”

the way u don’t see any poets in the #PublishingPaidMe hashtag on twitter

[tattooedstanzas]

kindred - octavia butler

https://twitter.com/RuffneckRefugee/status/991833203735433217

[goodgutenbien-morning]

http://twitter.com/RuffneckRefugee/status/914893654057201666