#you are welcome in the circle this is primarily a queer space

[gothicashworld]

To all of those who have come back from Transformers: One and have discovered they are robot/alien-fuckers: welcome welcome! Grab a seat, get "cringe", and get ready for a LOT of learn-as-you-go anatomical terminology that changes based on the headcanon.

[todayisafridaynight]

A Little Late and the way you already picked up on it despite not really hardcore seeking out ninkyo (yakuza-genre) media says enough, but I wanted to second that it is absolutely true queer appeal is inextricable from ninkyo as a whole. That's why RGG is the way it is!

If Nakano and Motomiya--both incredibly prolific ninkyo actors, with Motomiya producing+writing for+leading the biggest series out there right now, Nihon Touitsu/Unification of Japan--can sit down to talk, describe ninkyo as a genre about men falling in love with men, the "ultimate BL," and carry on without missing a beat, I think that speaks for itself. And like, they're not wrong at all--even if it was a little tongue-in-cheek and even if the subtext is rarely intentional, many if not most ninkyo stories are fundamentally about love.

Why that matters is because ninkyo specifically portrays the idealized version of the yakuza--"ninkyo" translates to "chivalry." There's very little that could be considered ideal about being a yakuza nowadays; that much is explored in non-ninkyo yakuza media. Of course there are the universal ninkyo themes of being able to make something of yourself from nothing, of defending the defenseless, of fighting back against injustice from the wrong side of the law when the "right side" isn't serving you, but at the core of many of these stories, there's one thing in particular that makes it worth it to be a yakuza.

Ninkyo depicts a world of extremes--often unthinkable to an ordinary person--which the characters are willing to bear so long as they can keep the only people who truly recognize them in their lives, and so long as they can have it reciprocated. To trust others and to be trusted in return, as Mine says. For them to go to those lengths for a fundamental human desire resonates with queer people in a world that asks for so much resilience from them just for existing. I think this is also why the stated reason Mine fell in love with Daigo was simply because he saw him as a man.

It's not always as clear-cut what kind of love it is as with Mine, but I don't think it's done cynically like you see in actual queerbait. I'd say it comes from an earnest place, raw and without self-consciousness. I think the blurred lines and openness to interpretation are also a big part of the appeal. Not just in the obvious sense of being presented with these intense bonds that are open to interpretation, but I can imagine there's also comfort to be found in the depiction of love that's hard to define in exact terms and in recognizing it doesn't always need to be defined in and of itself.

To some degree, within the history of ninkyo, I think RGG and Nihon Touitsu genuinely revolutionized how openly these topics are discussed. Ninkyo has always primarily been a genre of film, and even with Nihon Touitsu being a direct-to-video series, if you're queer or a woman or both, it's common to feel like you don't belong in the ninkyo space. Going to theaters or renting tapes or DVDs without feeling judged--or apprehensive about the content's depiction of queerness and/or women--has often been trickier than it had to be.

It's specifically the accessibility and culture around video games and online streaming, as well as the relative privacy and ability to curate your circles, that has allowed for these series to reach fans like that--so much so there's even a term for women who got into ninkyo via interpreting it through a queer lens, ninkyo joshi. Nihon Touitsu is actually what popularized that phenomenon in recent years.

There's also something to be said about RGG and Nihon Touitsu as media and the people behind them being more welcoming towards queer and/or female fans than a lot of ninkyo is in general. You won't ever catch me saying RGG doesn't have a history of queerphobia and misogyny, but at the same time, I think demonstrating they could handle characters like that respectfully went a long way, in addition to RGGS having a pretty good track record as a workplace. Similar deal with Nihon Touitsu and Motomiya doing his best to gear the series more towards a general audience and his commentary on multiple occasions agreeing his and Yamaguchi's characters' relationship reads as a BL. Even if that's as far as it goes, it does mean something to be acknowledged.

Anyways uhhh do you think Mine was an OG ninkyo danshi... like A Ninkyo Joshi But A Guy... I feel like if you're living in Japan, especially in an area with a lot of actual yakuza activity like Minato as Mine does, you'd only really come away with the romanticized ideals about the bonds between men Mine has from ninkyo... personally I just think it'd be super funny if he was an OG ninkyo joshi who transitioned into a ninkyo danshi, like when gay trans guys have a "fujoshi phase"... the call was coming from inside the house etc etc...

thank you for the history lesson on the yakuza genre, its relationship with queerness and people being able to acknowledge those undertones, and jp society's relationship with the genre. its great that big names in the genre are making it more socially accessible to everyone and not making it feel limited to a certain group of people :)

bout mine being a fan of the genre before. Being A Part Of The Genre so to speak tho, i think its a fair assumption to say he was a fan. if he wasn't beforehand, then seein them blokes sacrifice themselves for daigo def made him one lmao

[historicalfightingguide]

“ Hi there guys, gals, and non-binary pals! HAPPY NATIONAL COMING OUT DAY

6 years ago today, I made one of the hardest decisions of my life by sharing my authentic self with the world and came out as gay. In what has now been a full circle moment, I am proud to announce a special pre-order dropping today of the new Bigotry Free Jiu Jitsu rashguards

There have been far too many intolerant martial artists doubling down on expressing sentiments that are against human rights, and we simply we not stand by and allow those within the martial arts community to exclude, diminish, or disrespect the validity of anyone’s right to be treated equally

This collaborative effort could not have been possible without the support, allyship & love of my friends at @suckerfreejiujitsu , the original artwork render of the logo done by @roobeeo , artistic talents of my boyfriend @n.p.art.gallery in reworking this design to incorporate the new, all inclusive Pride flag, and our manufacturer Usman, who was able to quickly put together this beautiful rashguard which features the colors of the Trans flag

All profits from this project will be donated 50/50 to The Black Trans Advocacy Coalition & to The Center for Black Equity. “

You can find them here via suckerfreejiujitsu with other great designs as well.

Found here via  QT HEMA 

From there description:

“Welcome to QTH, the first and only group for queer and trans people in HEMA! This is a safe space for discussion, support, advice, etc. We are currently a closed group for privacy reasons only, membership is open to everyone.There are no formal rules at this time, but if you are an asshole I will ban you. Sometime soon (a week or so) formal rules will be established. For now, just be nice.

---------------------------------------------------------------

If you are not queer OR trans: Welcome! Because this is a space for a marginalized group, here are some guidelines for participating in our space.This space is open to everyone, but please understand that it is primarily a space for queer and trans people. This means that no one here is obligated to educate you, or explain things to you. It also means that if you say something hurtful or talk over queer and trans voices, you will be asked to rephrase your comments or take a step back. At some point, someone will say something along the lines of "straight people do this and it's bad" or "cis people do this and it's bad". Resist the urge to defend yourself personally! If you are here, it is very likely that they don't mean you. “

While there’s other queer-friendly HEMA groups this is the only one meant primarily for LGBTQ folks.

Do not forget to check out the QT HEMA fb page or their great patches.

Jiu-jitsu as such isn’t really HEMA but is a related grappling art to those found in HEMA, HAMA, HCMA, HPMA etc.

So folks wanted to study historical grappling arts may still find it useful and it’s always cool to help stand against bigotry.

Ringen discussiongroup! is a good place to check out if you’re interested in historical wrestling variants, as are  HEMA Grapplers  and Scholars of Fiore dei Liberi.

The first group focuses on ringen, the second is about more general historical wrestling types,the third on armizare, the wrestling portion of which is called abrazare.

If you’re interested in learning about historical forms of boxing or as it was often called pugilism check out  HEMA pugilists

If you are interested in more modern forms of unarmed combat do check out  Southpaw's Mixed Mutual Arts Club

Remember to check out  A Guide to Starting a Liberation Martial Arts Gym

Consider getting some patches of this sort to show support for good causes.

And stay safe

[caveartfair]

The Rise and Fall of Internet Art Communities

Today, sharing art on social media is like running on a treadmill forever. At least, that’s how illustrator Lois van Baarle describes it. “You have to post constantly,” Van Baarle, who got her start in the early aughts on DeviantArt, explained. “Otherwise, the algorithm decides you’re not interesting, and will not show your posts to your followers.”

Before big tech shepherded the vast number of online users onto a handful of sleek websites, there was a scrappier internet—where offbeat chat rooms and eccentric niche websites reigned, and carefully crafted “away statuses” were a kind of personal branding—back when you could be away from the internet. Until attention spans became a commodity, the internet was dreamed of as a “bastian for people to direct their own education,” as Charles Broskoski, co-founder of internet bookmarking site are.na, remembers.

Artists, too, forged communities in the spirit of collaboration and learning. From the gothic underworlds of Breed and Abnormis, to hyper-specific pixel art sites, to larger communities like DeviantArt, the internet presented a breadth of opportunity for all kinds of artists—often of marginalized identities or with artistic interests unrecognized by institutions.

Wolfgang Staehle et. al., The Thing, 1991–95. Bulletin board system. Courtesy of Wolfgang Staehle and the New Museum.

As digital imaging advanced, the internet expanded into the multimedia universe we have today, and, perhaps paradoxically, its art communities dwindled. Users traded dedicated artist communities for major social networks, leaving links to their new Instagram and Facebook accounts on their abandoned profiles. In the 2010s, users asked on forums if their beloved communities were indeed dead. DeviantArt—though it remains active—has lost its culture. And more recently, Tumblr, formerly a haven for LGBTQ+ artists, issued a major crackdown on adult content—alienating many creators who found refuge in its sex-positive, queer-friendly environment.

There are a myriad of reasons people leave platforms—an unfriendly interface; outdated design; increased spam—but the shift away from tight-knit spaces for collective creativity marks more than just a natural fall in popularity. As the internet consolidated, it moved toward homogeneity and passivity, and the internet’s once-vibrant art communities became casualties in social media’s rapid, obliterative rise.

Art in the wild, early internet

Screenshot of the DeviantArt interface, 2019. Used with permission from DeviantArt.

Before advanced search engines, information floated on databases like a string of scattered islands. Communities formed out of necessity to help early users surf the boundless web.

Art discussions even appeared in the primordial text-based internet on Usenet newsgroups, bulletin board systems (BBS), and email listservs. In 1991, two years before the first digital image was uploaded to the web, Wolfgang Staehle, an early net artist, started The Thing as a BBS about art and criticism; members traded links, shared gallery announcements, and debated creative and cultural theory. In 1995, Nettime—a listserv for “cultural producers”—followed, as well as Rhizome in 1996; in one particularly zany “cyberdawg ramble” on Nettime in 1998, Jon Lebkowsky declared that the internet was there to stay, “like rock ‘n roll.”

The first publicly available browser, Mosaic, came in 1993. It allowed images and text to load in a single window, and the masses joined in navigating the wild early web. GeoCities launched soon after, introducing in 1995 the ability to organize personal sites by interest into “neighborhoods” and “suburbs.” Computer sites could be found in “Silicon Valley,” shopping sites on “Rodeo Drive,” and so on. In November 1995, GeoCities added the “Soho and Lofts” neighborhood for the arts.

Before social-media profiles, artists primarily cultivated digital identities through clunky personal websites. Broskoski, of are.na, who was involved in net art communities in the 1990s, remembered making a site called “Welcometohell.com,” which listed links to other websites—a common practice at the time. “You were sort of making or creating who you were by pointing at the other things that you liked,” he explained.

Visiting early personal sites felt like stopping by someone’s house, with quaint greetings like “Hello visitor” or “Welcome to this homepage!” And if artists’ personal pages were their homes, their social outings took place on forums. The Thing was followed by more open art communities like Sijun and Eatpoo: The former was known for its young, vibrant culture; the latter for its lively and—as its name suggests—often uncouth atmosphere.

Ellen Formby’s 2018 artwork, ellen.gif’s Wayback Machine (video clip), which incorporates screenshots (extracted via The Wayback Machine’s archive) of her websites constructed on Matmice, an Australian webpage builder that offered free webpage development similar to Geocities, c. 2007–08. Courtesy of the artist.

Another forum, WetCanvas, greeted users with a cropped picture of Vincent van Gogh next to the line: “If the web would have been around during his time, we could have done wonders for his career.” Scott Burkett, an Atlanta-based software developer, launched the site in 1998 after developing an interest in oil painting. He often had to spread the word the old-fashioned way, inviting artists to join over the phone. The early site had forums for traditional art mediums, and each night, at 9:30 p.m., members hung out in a chat room called “Café Guerbois,” named after the famous Parisian café that Édouard Manet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir frequented.

The rise of platforms

Screenshot of the Conceptart.org interface, 2019. Used with permission from Conceptart.org.

Around the same time WetCanvas launched, a then-16-year-old Matt Stephens had art ambitions, a computer, and a pirated copy of Photoshop. He founded WastedYouth, a website where he posted over 500 tutorials on art that included lessons on creating desktop art, or “skinning.”

The first type of art made on computers was art made for computers, and in the 2000s, the more customized desktop, the better. Like true “internet kids,” the three DeviantArt founders—Stephens, Scott Jarkoff, and Angelo Sotira—met in a chat room and connected over a shared interest in skinning. (In even truer internet fashion, to this day, Stephens and Jarkoff have not met in person.)

When “Deliciously Deviant Deviant Art!” went live in August 2000, it focused on wallpapers and webskins, though it eventually branched out into more digital and traditional art, becoming the first large-scale online art community. Like “deviating” your desktop, artworks are known as “deviations.” Arts education is “very much about deviation,” Sotira noted, adding that artists learn from riffing off of one anothers’ work.

Unlike the quantifiable interactions such as “likes” and “reactions” that pass for interactivity in 2019, there was genuine engagement on DeviantArt.

From the outset, the DeviantArt founders envisioned a community-oriented space. For the first six months, they commented on every single post on the website with constructive criticism. On the side of each page, a “shoutbox” had a constant stream of conversation. “Our mentality back then was [to] allow people to interact wherever we can,” Stephens recalled. “We were inventing a lot of the stuff as we went.”

In doing so, DeviantArt created templates for later social sites, rolling out the ability to create avatars and write on each other’s profiles, the latter of which would eventually be adopted by Myspace and Facebook. In addition, “[DeviantArt] had the ability to follow people long before that ever became an idea,” Jarkoff explained.

Maja Wronska, a Polish artist who makes watercolor cityscapes, was particularly sensitive to DeviantArt’s design and atmosphere when she joined a decade ago. She had been on Poland’s “wannabe DeviantArt,” but found the environment hostile—owing in part to a feature where users rated artworks on a scale of 1–5. Wronska said that some users even made fake accounts to downvote her work and elevate their own. In contrast, DeviantArt was warm and welcoming.

Screenshot of Maja Wronska’s gallery page on DeviantArt, 2019. Used with permission from DeviantArt.

Unlike the quantifiable interactions that pass for interactivity in 2019, such as “likes” and “reactions,” there was genuine engagement in DeviantArt’s chat rooms and forums. “A culture developed on DeviantArt where comments simply saying things like ‘cool!’ and ‘nice!’ were frowned upon,” Van Baarle explained. “People wanted in-depth comments and feedback, with constructive criticism.” Today, she added, the quality of conversation is “disappearing on the big social-media platforms like Instagram.”

Such meaningful interactions were not limited to DeviantArt. In 2001, artist Jason Manley announced plans to launch Conceptart.org, which he founded with Justin Kaufman and Andrew Jones under a similar premise: to educate and connect artists. Inspired by Shamus Culhane, a Disney animator, Manley built the site in the spirit of Culhane’s advice for aspiring artists: “Find your circle.”

The internet presented a breadth of opportunity for all kinds of artists—often of marginalized identities or with artistic interests unrecognized by institutions.

The online community soon translated to real-world meet-ups. At the first one in Amsterdam, Kaufman remembers looking around, awestruck at artists from around the world drawing in each others’ sketchbooks. At art school, he explained, “you’re around other artists, but you’re geographically limited. The thing that was amazing about Conceptart.org was the fact that it was worldwide.”

This transnational nature of the internet spurred creativity in and of itself. Burkett recalled a collaboration between WetCanvas users that borrowed from the collaborative mail art of the 1960s: One artist painted a home that represented the style of architecture in their country, rolled it up, and sent it to another artist in another country, who would add to the painting, and so on.

WetCanvas members around the world pose with a collaborative painting featuring architectural scenes from different countries represented in the online community, c. 2004. Courtesy of Scott Burkett.

But internet art communities didn’t just facilitate unlikely friendships—they also launched careers. Domee Shi, who won an Oscar this year for her short film Bao (2018), recently credited DeviantArt for helping her find like-minded creatives. And Emmanuel Laflamme, a Montreal-based artist whose work blends the art-historical canon with digital iconography—the Mona Lisa with emojis; Renaissance figures holding tablets—said that DeviantArt gave him “the push [he] needed when [he] started.”

On Conceptart.org, Kaufman recalled watching “hundreds of kids grow into working artists.” Likewise, Manley said that nearly anyone who works in entertainment art today has some tie to Conceptart.org. Among them is one of Marvel’s most esteemed comics, Marko Djurdjević, who painted the cover art for comic titles like The Amazing Spider-Man (2007) and Black Panther (2009).

Emmanuel Laflamme, La Persistance de la Mémoire Vive, 2012. Courtesy of the artist.

Emmanuel Laflamme, Adoration of the Golden Apple, 2012. Courtesy of the artist.

Monawesome, 2011. Emmanuel Laflamme Vintage Deluxe

Emmanuel Laflamme, The Rage, 2011. Courtesy of the artist.

Emmanuel Laflamme, Jesus Saves, 2014. Courtesy of the artist.

Emmanuel Laflamme, Adoration, 2011. Courtesy of the artist.

Along the way, there were challenges: finding space to store all of the data; managing digital platforms the size of cities; and dealing with the effects of the dot-com bust that bottomed out in 2003. But ultimately, these early platforms lost their ethos as a changing internet made it impossible to sustain what originally made them so stimulating: community.

The era of big tech

Screenshot of the Tumblr interface, 2019. Used with permission from Tumblr.

In 2005, broadband surpassed dial-up in popularity in the U.S., allowing the flow of faster and larger amounts of data, and facilitating the rise of visually oriented sites like YouTube and Facebook. Meanwhile, digital cameras had become more accessible and affordable in the early aughts, spurring the birth of photo-sharing sites like Flickr and Photobucket.

Sotira said that as the internet grew, DeviantArt lost the portion of its users who were using the site primarily to host images or chat with people. “We aren’t a photo-dumping site and we aren’t a social network—we are an art community,” he said. Though there is a case to be made that that DeviantArt is still a popular platform—it’s still one of the top 200 websites in the world—many artists feel that in 2019, the site is not the same.

“What I liked most about [DeviantArt] then was the intimate feel of the network because the audience was relatively small,” artist Aaron Jasinski, who joined the site in 2002, said. “That’s a hard thing to scale.” And Van Baarle, who has since migrated to Instagram, commented that “the user base is way less vibrant, young, aspirational, and motivated compared to before.…DeviantArt is sort of a dinosaur or living fossil in the internet world.” Kaufman had similar things to say about Conceptart.org, calling the site “an empty husk.”

Screenshot of Aaron Jasinski’s gallery page on DeviantArt, 2019. Used with permission from DeviantArt.

The founders of DeviantArt foresaw the fracturing of the community early on. “There were probably 100 of us in the original community, and that was already a lot of people trying to have a conversation,” Stephens said. “What happens when that chat room is now 500 people? Or 1,000 people? All of a sudden, it’s a concert venue.” And the very concept of “scaling a community” seems oxymoronic. It is a problem that plagues the internet today: How do you make a now-sweeping internet feel smaller?

As tech began consolidating around the big five—Amazon, Google, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft— the experience of the internet shifted away from the wacky and creative and became more streamlined. Broskoski likened it to everyone living in seven skyscrapers, when “there’s actually this huge weird landscape [where] we could be building” eclectic homes or “other small villages.”

As the internet moved toward homogeneity and passivity, once-vibrant art communities became casualties in social media’s rapid, obliterative rise.

However, in the mid-2000s, smaller villages still thrived, cropping up around internet “surf clubs”—sites where artists mused about internet culture and aesthetics. Nasty Nets, founded in 2006, looked like a throwback to a classic, cluttered GeoCities page, and featured 39 different artists during its tenure. Co-founder Marisa Olson recounted their influences in an email: “We were very inspired by Del.icio.us, a social bookmarking site, and a culture of surfing, sharing, and remixing material found on the web in an era that pre-dated Tumblr.”

When Tumblr did launch in 2007, some surf clubs set up shop there, such as the extant Computers Club, which focuses on digital renderings and illustrations; and R-U-IN?S, which is known for its distinct futuristic aesthetic. Larger blogs that centered around art also fostered community on Tumblr—Jogging featured posts by 1,000 different authors.

Uninhibited by the austerity of banal Facebook profiles, Tumblr is a bridge between the internet of yesteryear and today. Pages are customizable, meant to be an extension of your personality; and the platform’s reblog feature echoes the link sharing of communities like Deli.cio.us, a favorite hangout of net artists.

Don’t Be So Sensitive , 2016. Molly Soda Annka Kultys Gallery

Molly Soda, an artist who uses the internet as a medium and a platform, commented: “Tumblr was really the first space that allowed me to connect with other people who were thinking about similar things artistically.” A self-described “hoarder” of images and files (such as sexy dancing girl GIFs), Soda began “obsessively” posting them on Tumblr in 2009 and submitting to Tumblr zines, like Beth Siveyer’s Girls Get Busy. She connected with other artists like Signe Pierce, Maisie Cousins, and Grace Miceli through the platform, and even met Arvida Byström, her co-editor on the 2017 book Pics or It Didn’t Happen: Images Banned From Instagram, on Tumblr. Soda also noted Tumblr’s strong influence in contemporary visual culture—pastel colors in “millennial aesthetics” can be traced back to Tumblr movements like pastel goth and soft grunge.

Then, in the 2010s, Instagram capitalized on the mass adoption of smartphones, and Facebook grew into a site larger than any country in the world. And while artists have made their mark on all of the major social-media networks, these new, bigger sites have changed the way we communicate and consume. Algorithms steer us back to similar content in echo chambers that inhibit both critical and creative thinking. Platforms incentivized to keep users scrolling discourage long-looking and render users as passive consumers, rather than active seekers of inspiration. They aren’t a space for productive feedback, either: Art takes on a different tone when it’s surrounded by dog GIFs, political memes, and your cousin’s baby photos.

Lois van Baarle, ImagineFX issue 150, 2017. Courtesy of the artist.

Lois van Baarle, Various sketches, 2016. Courtesy of the artist.

Lois van Baarle, Ariel, 2006/2011/2015. Courtesy of the artist.

Lois van Baarle, Moon, 2018. Courtesy of the artist.

Lois van Baarle, Sour, 2017. Courtesy of the artist.

Van Baarle, who has 1.5 million followers on Instagram, expresses exasperation at the platform. “It’s about posting bite-sized content as frequently as possible,” she said, in order to game the algorithms that choose what followers see and reward frequency with more visibility. She also noted that it is tempting to post simpler artworks to Instagram. “Most social-media platforms don’t reward the extra time and effort that goes into [detailed digital paintings] anymore.”

Even Tumblr’s influence has waned: In July of last year, one writer called it “a joyless black hole,” citing rampant harassment on the platform. And following the platform’s decision to ban adult content this past December, media outlets and Twitter users have all but predicted its death.

Adult content has been a hot issue on open platforms since the early days of DeviantArt. The founders penned the first policy: If it could hang in a museum, it could stay on the site.

With Tumblr’s new puritanical ethos, artists might just retreat to the aughts icon, which is in the process of rolling out a new redesign. Or they could move to other newcomers, like Ello or Pillowfort, the latter of which received a flurry of attention after Tumblr’s NSFW ban. Either way, users will have to carve out new communities in an increasingly monopolized cyberspace.

Art takes on a different tone when it’s surrounded by your cousin’s baby photos, dog GIFs, and political memes.

Many sites vying for artists’ attention—such as Dribbble, Behance, and ArtStation—are more suited for professional artists building a portfolio of work. While they are valuable tools, they don’t leave space for the same kind of learning, open brainstorming, and wild experimentation seen in earlier art communities. Today’s communities “aren’t quite the same,” Stephens noted. “I was really lucky that there was that platform for me to learn from other designers in a collaborative and safe environment.”

Ultimately, today’s internet is full of contradictions. There are more people to connect with than ever, and yet less room for the exploration and creativity that cultivates strong artistic communities.

If in the early days, we “surfed” the internet, today we are submerged in it. But in the wake of data breaches, election scandals, and studies that social-media sites are taking more than just our time, another shift may be taking shape. Interest in digital wellness and a “slow web” is rising as users are looking for ways to spend their time online more meaningfully.

Some relics and rituals of the early internet are probably better left dead—the acronym “TTFN,” the dial-up modem tune, the wait for images to load line by line—but the collaborative, creative culture it fostered is bound for a revival.

from Artsy News

[revlatte]

Sanctuary: Pre-Launch Thoughts

It’s Sunday morning here in the Land of the Sky. I sit in front of a computer screen, alone down a very long drive way. There’s tea brewing in the kitchen. Jill Scott is playing on my Spotify. The track is currently “He Loves Me.” I’m in winter socks, plaid boxers, and a University of Tennessee Center for Leadership & Service long-sleeve shirt I received as a gift for participating on an alumni panel. My plaid pants are laying on the bed next to me with a pair of long johns inside. The heater is set to “4″. I have no clue what temperature that is but it’s warm enough. The curtains are still drawn because I’m a Pisces and love lurking in the dark, even in the day light. I am about to light 3 candles to be obedient to my partner’s ancestors. 

Admittedly, my brain is not firing as strongly as it used too. This gives me great pause and reason for concern. It’s almost as if my brain reached it’s peak a decade ago when I was working, involved in ministry as a youth pastor, and in graduate school at Wesley Theological Seminary. I’ve spent the last decade searching for my people, my family, my home, my faith community, myself. Perhaps with the Sanctuary Movement, I’m a bit closer. 

3 Thoughts for Today: Hidden Figures, #wearenotinvisible & brewing, Black Star Line Brewing. 

Hidden Figures

One of my good friends here in Asheville and I went to the pre-release to see Hidden Figures on Thursday. I was so proud of Taraji P. Henderson. She is a true come up! From Hustle & Flow to Hidden Figures with Kevin Costner. As a Black American, I understand the significance of this and how Taraji is maturing as an actress who is commanding respect in Hollywood circles. I may not respect all of her choices in movies but I see her value as an actress and role model. Heck, she inspired me. 

Throughout the movie, there is a common narrative that we as Black women are familiar with. The asshole bosses who lack any emotional intelligence and create hostile work environments and don’t give two shits about how their egoism, patriarchy, heteronormativity, cis-gendered male privilege, misogyny impacts everyone one else. There’s the narrative of having to work harder than everyone else though you’re more qualified and have more experience. The experience of being paid less because of what’s between your legs and the color of your skin. The narrative of others knowing the discrimination you are facing is real but THEY DO NOTHING! They want to protect their safety, their freedom, their privilege. They watch as you face oppression, hatred, bigotry and become ostracized. And, there’s the one person who can see through this shit and validate and affirm our experiences. We, as Black women, so often, play critical roles in the development of institutions, organizations, companies and receive no accreditation. We are written out of history and convinced that we can be nothing more than subservient slaves to capitalism and white supremacy. Hidden Figures broke that narrative. 

I left that movie theater inspired and proud. I left with a fire in my belly that we, the Sistahs of Sanctuary, could do anything. We already are. 

#wearenotinvisible & brewing

When I first came to Asheville and arrived at my home on Lamar Avenue, I declared my new home as sanctuary and a place to land. I told my girlfriend at the time that I wanted to fly under the radar, keep my nose down, not get involved with organizing, and take some space to process and heal. I needed a low-key, “normal” life. That was my desire. 

Within just a few short months, all of that had turned on its head. I was working at the progressive UCC in town. It was a great experience and also really damn difficult. I had the same degree as the co-pastors, comparable experience in many ways, and was in a position of assistant. My options for employment were limited so $14 an hour for 14 hours a week (as it started) was stable and kept the lights on. Additionally, I had some outside contracting work and residuals, so it was all good. While there, I realized my brain was working the same and was too afraid to say anything to anyone. I imagine the pastors could tell something was off. Perhaps none of us wanted to say anything. I was a shell of a person. Through it all, I waited for the moment when they would ask me to preach on a Sunday. Or help with the Eucharist (which I believe is the most sacred and holy of acts in faith communities.) Or do a reading. I waited for an invitation to be a part of the community. Rarely, if ever, did that come. My engagement with the community was structured around ways I was showing up as a staff. This was sad in many ways and I received a sense of home, place, community through it all. Until...

The week before Valentine’s Day 2016. My partner was certain she was going to loose the baby. I was not surprised. Stress, shitty ass nutrition, and a diet of many beers, mixed with older age. This was sad and devastating for me, as their partner. We had dreamed of the baby, names, colors for the walls. The plan was that I would be transitioning to her house to live. All of us, as a family. 

I received a call from the doctor that whatever was growing on and inside of my uterus was growing. Surgery had to be scheduled immediately for that upcoming Tuesday, the 11th. 

Long story short - an emergency hysterectomy for me while simultaneously, my girlfriend was having a miscarriage. Devastation. 

I was out of work from the church and my girlfriend did not want any support or visits. I couldn’t understand but wanted to respect our relationship boundaries. Less than a week later, a white, older, lesbian, wealthy Board member came in to my home and unleashed her white rage on to me and broke a really dear item to me, at my dining room table. In the weeks that followed, the #wearenotinvisible movement was launched to address anti-Black bias in the workplace, primarily in gay/queer organizations. The fall out was shitty. As per usual, folks took the side of the oppressed, did everything in their power to discredit me, and engaged in a long and multi-tiered level of victim-blaming. It was humiliating and devastating. In fact, to this day, the organization has comments on their website about the #wearenotinvisble movement. As SHE said, it’s painful and it hurts. 

Through that advocacy and raising issues around transparency, I was blackballed. Eventually, I had to leave my job at the church. My relationship with my partner was falling apart. And I was in this new damn town, isolated, alone, afraid, unemployed and not employable. I sought Sanctuary. I had to go inward. Once inside, I couldn’t make my way through the mountains, rivers, valleys, and streams of consciousness and trauma. I was alone. 

Over the next year, I would watch friends come and go. Hot and cold. Close and far. It was as if I was walking around town with the Mark of the Beast. In each conversation, I had to give a disclaimer of who I was and what I was about. It fucking sucked. I just wanted to live.... until I didn’t because I couldn’t take it anymore. 

So what does this have to do with brewing? The #wearenotinvisible movement got hijacked and all around town I saw people wearing the shirts that I paid for (for half of them at least), and not knowing the history. It was clear that they knew this one person and bought a shirt to be a part of a movement. 

To be a part of something bigger than yourself. That’s what the Sanctuary Movement is all about. That’s what we are striving to achieve. Collective working, unity, healing, and liberation. To embody the principles of Kwanzaa. 

Well, as I think about the craft brewing industry, to be blunt: it’s fully of really privileged, white, cis-gendered males with a lot of access to cash. If they have enough cash, they can work hard enough (or make others work for them at a fraction of their worth), and amass a great living, if not millions, in just a matter of years. There’s no one in the industry that looks like me. A thick, Black, masculine of center, queer, woman. I know we exist and are excited and interested in beer. We are the under-served, un-tapped market. I know the secret to our success and healing. #wearenotinvisible and yes I can see the Hidden Figures. 

Black Star Line Brewing

Again, you are probably reading this wondering what the hell I’m talking about and how it all comes together and if it’s remotely related to the Sanctuary Movement. The answer is YES!

Sanctuary will initially house 4 Black, queer womyn and their children in the month of January 2016. We will host rituals. Healing circles. Visioning sessions. And begin to create the world we have envisioned. Challenging supremacy, capitalism, and individualism. We are welcoming each other home. To Sanctuary. 

AND, that comes at a cost. Rent is $1200. Utilities will probably average about $200. Water about $100. Internet is $60. Food for all of us around $400. Other items (such as toilet paper, paper towels, etc.), are estimated around $150 a month. If we have a shared car, estimated payment around $350/month. Insurance estimated at $200/month. Total baseline for the household: $1620. Add food and miscellaneous items: That’s $2170. Then, if we’re able to secure a car and insurance for such, we’re looking at $2,720. For the sake of round numbers, let’s say it cost $2800 per month to support 4 Black women and 3 children. That’s it. 

However, we are all coming to the space because we need, desire, and crave Sanctuary and community. Our collective and individual capacities to “work” in the system, to make someone else richer, and to have our worth evaluated at $10/hour at best, is not an option. There needs to be soul-affirming work with dignity, pride, and honor. 

To that end, we’ve asked folks who can see the Hidden Figure and those that know are lives matter, that #wearenotinvisible, to donate to the Sanctuary Movement. To donate in recurring donations, single donations, donate food, cars, whatever and however they are able. We are not a non-profit (because we do not believe in that hierarchy and oppressive structure). We are Sistahs of Sanctuary who are doing the work of healing and starting where it matters the most, with ourselves. 

We have most of the brewing equipment we need to get started. But not the funds for the rest of the materials or equipment. If we are able to brew and partner with our friends at breweries around town, we can make beer, mead, cider, etc. as a viable stream of income to support the community. We can break through the color and gender barrier in the industry and really show strength in self-sufficiency. This could be a model we could replicate and break free from the chains of traditional employment that is exploitative. It is a pathway to our liberation. 

We have the land and space to grow hops and really distinguish ourselves.

As we heal, we will see the launch of Black Star Line Brewing as a testimony to our individual and collective healing and liberation. As a form of resistance and renewal. As a form of Sanctuary in a bottle. 

Alone. Down the long driveway. Over a mason jar of tea. I dream of the tomorrow that is almost here. I dream of Sanctuary. Of our collective brilliance. Of being at the precipice of healing - individual and collective. I dream of the story that our children and grand children will tell about us being bad-ass, radical women who blazed the trail in the craft brewing industry, in commercial cleaning, healing, at life. 

I think of my Sistahs and give thanks. Because of them, I have the will to live. The fight in my belly. Because of them, I can come home. Because of them I am home and have finally found Sanctuary. 

[newyorktheater]

The choices below are personal favorites; the ranking is somewhat arbitrary.

Paddy Considine as Quinn Carney (center, standing) and the company of The Ferryman

Guillaume Gallienne as the scheming Friedrich Bruckmann and Elsa Lepoivre as the ambitious widow Baronne Sophie Von Essenbeck in Ivo van Hove’s The Damned, after Sophie’s son as tar and feathered her.

Lucas Hedges and Elaine May in The Waverly Gallery by Kenneth Lonergan, directed by Lila Neugebauer.

Glenda Jackson

: Steven Skybell and Male Ensemble in “To Life” (“Lekhayim” ל ‘חיים)

Noah Robbins and Edmund Donovan in Clarkston

In the Body of the World

Dance Nation

In a political atmosphere that is at the very least fractured, and has often felt just a few steps away from something even worse, I am grateful for theater in 2018 in a way that transcends any strictly aesthetic assessment. I am grateful for: …the many shows confronting New York theatergoers with the issue of police shooting unarmed black, ranging from “Black, White & Blue” a ten-minute play by William Watkins at the Fire This Time Festival to Scraps, Geraldine Inoa’s playwriting debut Off-Off Broadway, to Christopher Demos-Brown’s American Son on Broadway …the welcome revivals of gay plays to remind us how far we’ve come and how much we could lose, especially Angels in America, Boys in the Band and Torch Song; and such Broadway entertainments as The Prom and especially Head Over Heels , which though primarily giddy musicals, seamlessly endorse of love and acceptance in all its contemporary forms, especially gay/queer/gender-fluid. …the plays and musicals that offer a glimpse into the culture, struggles and humanity of individual immigrants and immigrant communities, including Miss You Like Hell, An Ordinary Muslim, Pale India Ale, queens.

None of these specific titles are in my top 10 list, a tradition that this year seems even hoarier than usual, but that I am nevertheless putting together because it’s a proven way of getting more attention to shows that deserve it. As of this writing, there are only nine on the list below. I’m looking forward to at least a couple of shows in December that, if any live up to their promise, will be added here. There are drawbacks in putting forward a list before the very end of the year. I wrote my top 10 in 2017 before seeing “A Room in India,” devised by Théâtre du Soleil and presented at the Park Avenue Armory, which was definitely one of my favorite of the year. But Thanksgiving weekend seems the most apt time to express one’s gratitude.

1. The Ferryman

By the time “The Ferryman” has ended, we have been treated to a breathtaking mix of revenge action thriller, romance, melodrama, family saga, and a feast of storytelling – ghost stories, fairy stories, stories of Irish history and politics, stories of longing and of loss. Jez Butterworth’s play about farmer Quinn Carney and his sprawling, colorful family is rich, sweeping entertainment — epic, tragic….and cinematic. climax of “The Ferryman.” But its underlying themes (such as the wages of hatred) also add heft to what seemed merely to be the most thrilling play of the Broadway season.

2. The Damned

“The Damned,” Ivo van Hove’s intense, extraordinary stage adaptation of Luchino Visconti’s 1969 film, offered pivotal turning points in the story of the corruption, perversion and destruction of the wealthy German industrialist family at its center. Van Hove directed a remarkable cast from the 338-year-old Comédie-Français, who perform in French with English subtitles in the cavernous Wade Thompson Drill Hall of the Park Avenue Armory. The real-life events dramatized from 1933 felt like lessons not just in the creep of fascism, but in stagecraft from the avant-garde Belgian director – stagecraft that is ferociously inventive, unrelenting, and unsurpassed.

3. The Waverly Gallery

Elaine May is back on a Broadway stage after more than 50 years, and making the most of it in The Waverly Gallery, Kenneth Lonergan’s meticulously observed, funny and sad play about a woman’s decline and its effect on her family. May is not alone. She is one of five stellar cast members, notably Lucas Hedges making a splendid Broadway debut. They turn this 18-year-old play into…if not required, certainly well-rewarded viewing.

4. Three Tall Women

It is hard to imagine a better production of Edward Albee’s humorous, caustic, secretly compassionate look at a life – and a death. It felt a fitting homage to the playwright, who died in 2016. Glenda Jackson returned to Broadway after an absence of three decades The play, which debuted in 1994 Off-Broadway and revived Albee’s reputation after 20 years of critical drubbing, had never been on a Broadway stage before.

5. Fiddler on the Roof, in Yiddish

The first Yiddish-language production of the hit 1964 musical was only supposed to run (at the Museum for Jewish Heritage) for two months. It kept on getting extended, and will now transfer Off-Broadway in January. This is surely proof that the production appeals to way more than just speakers of Yiddish. (Indeed, some fluent in Yiddish have commented that the pronunciation by some of the performers needs work.) It’s as entertaining as any Fiddler I’ve seen, and it’s something of a revelation as well. This makes sense: The musical, after all, is based on the 19th century short stories by Sholom Aleichem, who wrote in Yiddish about Tevye the Dairyman, his family and his neighbors.

6. Lewiston/Clarkston

“ Lewiston/Clarkston” are two powerfully affecting plays by Samuel D. Hunter about 21stcentury descendants of the 19thcentury North American explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. The plays are being presented one after the other in a single evening, separated by a communal dinner during the half-hour intermission, in a production at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater that one might consider an experiment in stagecraft. The theater has been completely reconfigured for the show, with the removal of its decades-old proscenium stage and of its raked stadium seating. Now, just 50 members of the audience sit in a row of folding chairs on either side of a plain playing space only 13 feet wide. As a result, the two dramas play out in close-up. The small playing space feels especially appropriate thematically, reflecting the circumscribed lives of the plays’ six characters, who reside in two nearby towns, named after Lewis and Clark, in what was once America’s wide-open frontier.

7. In the Body of the World

Perhaps you would have thought it chutzpah that in “In The Body of the World, Eve Ensler merged her story of her fight against uterine cancer with world crises such as mass rape in the Congo and the deadly oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Maybe you would have been squeamish at her graphic storytelling of her illness, treatment and recovery, during which she literally bared her physical scars, and exposed her emotional ones, which were more disturbing. You could well have disapproved of her self-defeating and dubious speculation about what might have caused her cancer – from tofu to Tab to bad reviews. You could grapple with all these reactions to Eve Ensler and her show – I certainly did at one time or another during its 90 minutes – and still have found “In The Body of the World” (as I did) eye-opening, entertaining, and one of the year’s most satisfying works of theater. Now a fan of Ensler’s, I rushed later in the year to see her play The Fruit Trilogy, which featured one of the most memorable performances I’ve ever witnessed in the theater.

8. Dance Nation

Like Sarah DeLappe’s The Wolves, and Annie Baker’s Circle Mirror Transformation, Clare Barron’s play was about something deeper than just a team of 13-year-old competitive dancers from Liverpool, Ohio aiming to win the Boogie Down Grand Prix in Tampa Bay. It was a funny, sharp and very blunt look at adolescent girls – portrayed by a terrific cast made up of actors as old as 60. For all the satirical touches, there are spot-on explorations of the sensitivities and insecurities but also boastfulness and bold curiosities of children who are developing into adults

9. The Mile Long Opera

The Mile-Long Opera: a biography of 7 o’clock,” featured 1,000 performers singing lyrics or reciting monologues along the entire 30 block length of the High Line. It was an astonishing, spectacular, moving, and deeply odd work of theater – the sort of the experiment for which you say, in wonder and in pride, “Only in New York.”

Top 10 New York Theater in 2018 to be Grateful For The choices below are personal favorites; the ranking is somewhat arbitrary. In a political atmosphere that is at the very least fractured, and has often felt just a few steps away from something even worse, I am grateful for theater in 2018 in a way that transcends any strictly aesthetic assessment.

[digital-strategy]

After Facebook announced its entry into the dating industry, some existing dating apps welcomed the tech giant — at least officially. Bumble said it was “thrilled” and could “explore ways to collaborate.” Joey Levin, chief executive at Match Group’s parent company IAC, said, “The water’s warm.”

Turns out, it may be a little too warm. Facebook’s entry into any space — just ask Snapchat — can spell doom for those already in the industry. With 2.2 billion people using Facebook’s main service every month, introducing a dating component stirs the question of how smaller apps, and even Tinder with its 50 million users, can survive. The move also introduces other issues, given that many dating apps have relied on Facebook for their marketing strategies.

Match’s stock dropped nearly 10 percent in the wake of Facebook’s news.

Dating apps’ relationship with Facebook: complicated For dating apps with a specific niche (arguably the only way to compete in the age of Tinder), Facebook is a key way for them to find people who fit their criteria. Recently launched dating app Tonight caters to people interested in spontaneous meetups, and Eve Peters, founder and CEO, said with the previous version of the app, called Whim, highly targeted ads on Facebook and Instagram worked the best. Tonight has bought ads in New York, one of its most popular markets, and targeted alums of the top five New York universities, for example.

Meanwhile, U.K.-based Toffee, which is limited to people who attended private high schools, uses Facebook to advertise to people who went to those schools and elsewhere.

“We’re trying to be clever in not chasing the more expensive filters. Rather than saying, ‘I want to address people of this age that went to these specific schools who live in the specific regions,’ we look at industries,” said Lydia Davis, founder and CEO of Toffee.

The Inner Circle, an invitation-only dating app, has run Facebook and Instagram campaigns targeted by age, gender and device, said founder and CEO David Vermeulen.

Facebook may help erase dating apps’ stigma Dating app founders said they still plan on paying for Facebook ads in the aftermath of its announcement and even after the feature launches. Perhaps, they said, Facebook’s entry will improve their success. It remains to be seen how much Facebook will emphasize its own dating feature within its products, though.

August 6 - 8, 2018

Vail, CO

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Bart Visser, director of brand marketing for Sparks Networks, parent of EliteSingles, said his company doesn’t feel threatened by Facebook’s announcement due to the social network’s past influence on online dating.

“People have been using Facebook for dating purposes already for a while, just not in this format,” said Visser, “and secondly, we view the move as a positive change, as it will expand the market even further and make online dating an accepted part of society.”

Davis agreed that Facebook’s entry may help lessen the stigma of online dating and added that Facebook’s typical reliance on advertising, rather than a subscription model, may affect its prospects. Toffee is purely subscription-based.

“People are getting increasingly suspicious of things that are free because nothing is free,” Davis said. “We’re upfront with saying, ‘[We’re] for the price of a relatively decent gin and tonic, and we’re not going to hassle you.'”

Yet for some dating services, Facebook has been a thorn in their side.

“You send the application, and you get a module that says, ‘Thanks. We’ll be in touch.’ We had to chase [Facebook representatives] down,” said Peters of Tonight. 

Ashley Madison, a site for people seeking affairs, last spoke with representatives of Facebook’s ads team in September and was told in an email seen by Digiday that the site was “not accepting applications for new dating advertisers at this time.”

A Facebook spokesperson said the social network accepts new advertising clients as long as they meet the company’s ad policies.

Google ‘cheating wives’ Beyond paid ads, other apps use influencer marketing, primarily on Facebook and Instagram. Happn, which matches users with others they’ve crossed paths with, said it uses influencers. Her, a queer female dating app, initially grew through partnerships with “existing queer female digital influencers” on Tumblr, Instagram and YouTube, and it still pays for influencer marketing as well as social advertising on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, said Noa Gutterman, Her’s senior growth marketer.

Ashley Madison relies on Google, primarily search, and has also used Snapchat. The Snapchat campaigns have worked “really well” with a 92 percent return on the investment, said Ruben Buell, president and chief technology officer of Ashley Madison’s parent company Ruby Life.

“Keywords buys is probably 65 percent of the total marketing spend, sometimes even higher. We compete with traditional sites on some terms and then we also buy terms specifically for our product as well, like married dating, cheating wives,” Buell said.

Match Group, which owns Tinder and dozens of other dating sites, declined to comment on its strategies. It’s clear that Tinder pays for search ads on mobile app stores: Search for rival dating app Bumble in the Apple App Store, and Tinder shows up first.

Other services said they have focused their budgets on offline campaigns. EliteSingles’ marketing strategy “is and always has been a hybrid model of online and offline channels with a high focus on TV advertising,” Visser said.

Bumble started on college campuses, and it still relies on college ambassadors and city leads. The women-first app also pays for out-of-home advertising such as billboards on the highway from Los Angeles to Coachella and bins at airports.

via Digiday

[psotu19]

People's State of the Union Address Tuesday January 30th, 2018 Light Club Lamp Shop Burlington, Vermont

People’s State of the Union Address

Tuesday January 30th, 2018

Light Club Lamp Shop

Burlington, Vermont

  Share a story about an experience that gave you insight into the state of our union

Share a story about a time that you felt a sense of belonging, or the opposite, to this nation or your community

Share a story of an experience that gave you hope in the past year

  Hi everyone! Honestly, I’m so happy to be here with everybody today on such an important day. [1:56] My name is Devin Alejandro-Wilder. I’ve lived in Burlington for the past six years and attended at a local liberal arts college for four of those six years. I’m a working artist and I was born queer & disabled and i live in an independent co-op in the Old North End with seven other friends, two kitchens and 3 cats. In this past year, I was fortunate enough that my little sister raised the $5,000 needed to get myself a hearing aid, and it’s been extraordinarily helpful. Let me tell you, hearing footsteps and secrets and whispers has been something that I’ve never been able to experience before. [2:47] While the prosthetic that I use has a lot of faults, my friends certainly don’t, because they always help me keep track of it. It’s really small and black, and it’s meant to be invisible I guess, like myself… But, my buddies see me take it off, and they see me put it on, and turn up the volume and turn down the volume, and they never forget. They repeat questions, sentences, jokes, and punchlines and I don’t have to fake laughter so much anymore. I didn’t used to tell people that I had a disability because I firmly believe that we are told that we’re not supposed to tell people this. We’re just supposed to ‘pass’ and ‘make it work’. But when I did get my prosthetic, there was no more hiding what was going on, because people could see it pretty clearly. Even though it’s small and meant to be invisible, there’s nothing invisible about a piece of robotic technology attached to your my skull (especially when you have weird hair like mine). So, I just want to thank them, constantly, for their patience and understanding and seeming infinite kindness, because while I have employers who look at me differently for my disability, my friends don’t and that gives me hope every single day. Thank you [4:09]

  [4:32] Hi, I’m Max Engle-Strike. I moved to Burlington in May at age 29 to become a brewer, because Vermont beer is so good. I moved from across the country, which gave me a unique perspective on seeing anti-trump sentiment on all sides of the country. It also gave me an insight into the state of our union, which is that it is extremely scattered, and shattered, and torn and divided, in that not even people who are against Trump can agree on how to be against Trump. The story I want to share is about my brother, with whom I am extremely close but we disagree often, to the extent that we were talking about policies in the United States vs the Russia probe as it came down to letting Jeff Sessions being in place or getting expelled. He was in favor of making sure the Russian investigation was completed, those responsible are punished, and that Trump is held accountable for soliciting, confusing Facebook ads. I was extremely disturbed by the policies that the attorney general was putting in place, bringing back mandatory minimums, recriminalizing marijuana, bringing back racist and divisive rhetoric in a way that hasn’t been seen in decades (for good reason) [6:00]and it really scared me that to him, it’s more important to take down a figurehead than to remember that these policies are affecting thousands of Americans every day. So, in wondering how to proceed in the next three years, let’s not miss the forest for the trees: let’s not focus on just the figurehead, let’s focus on the community and each other [6:25] Sorry, Benny, but I’m not with you on this one. That’s my story.

  [6:47] My name is Jane, I’m a graduate student here in Burlington. I’ve been here for six years (I moved here from Boston) and I’m 23 years old. I think that, back in 2016, when everything changed in a really big way, I became very disheartened and sort of felt unempowered about being involved in politics. It wasn’t until really this year that I started looking for pieces of hope and wisdom in my local community, and recognizing that there’s tremendous potential for us to organize in really small ways. Really, the personal is political, the local is global, and so by us meeting here today and actually having these conversations, we are setting an example for people all over the country to do the same thing. [7:45] So, while the conversations that you have with your neighbors or in your classrooms or with your friends and family may feel insignificant, they are part of a greater dialogue, and we really do have the potential to change things. Thank you all for being here.

  I’m Hallie Berksengold. I’ve been in Burlington for almost nine years now. [8:28] I’m originally from the New York City area, and it’s actually kind of become a little joke in my identity about how I’m a Vermonter in a group of New Yorkers and a New Yorker in a group of Vermonters, and that dichotomy almost rules how I look at things and approach the world a lot of the time. So, I’ve been up here for a long time (oh, by the way, I’m 26). I grew up in a—I wouldn’t call it a super religious, but relatively, comparatively observant—Jewish household. I was raised not quite as religious as a lot of other New York Jews that I knew (and I know a lot), but we followed every major holiday, and every somewhat-major holiday. When I moved up to Vermont, I initially didn’t find any Jewish communities that really resonated with me, and I tapered off that a bit. [9:58] It’s been interesting because for a long time, that tapering off was kind of accidental, but then it became very intentional as I became way more disillusioned with Israeli politics over the coming years. Looking back on this now, it seemed really silly that I ever really thought this way, but I did, up until about a year ago, felt like I was literally the only Jewish person who was upset about how Palestinians and African Jews were being treated. None of my original Jewish circles that I had grown up with really either seemed to care or seemed to want to confront the hypocrisy between “healing the world”—"Tikkun olam"—and social justice, and yet there was this very glaring problem in our midst. I came across an organization (totally by accident) and this happened a little bit after the election in 2016, and it was totally by accident because by that point I had sworn off of any Jewish spaces, but this was one was one where young adult Jews primarily were coming together to oppose Israeli occupation. And I was floored; I was like “Wow, there’s a whole group of Jews specifically who do this!”. I was definitely really vocal about my opinions up here, because I felt this need to prove to other people who are predominantly not Jewish up here that, “Hey, guess what? Not all Jews support this”. So I went down to New York last year and went to a training and then, pretty shortly after that, we did a major action in D.C. against the American-Israel public affairs committee by shutting down and blockading the front and side doors. I did take appropriate time off work because this hit me in a rather personal way. I remember just locking down with other people and looking out at the giant crowd of all different kinds of people and feeling wildly at peace in that moment, whatever happened later. Thank you. [13:07]

  [13:14] My name is Ali, my pronouns are ‘they’ and ‘them’. I’m here from San Francisco—I’m on tour for a show—it’s my second night in Burlington, thanks for welcoming me. I live in San Francisco’s oldest housing cooperative. It was founded in 1957 by a group of beatniks, and we just celebrated our 60th anniversary. I grew up in a very conservative family, predominantly Trump supporters. I’ve been a community organizer and activist for 10+ years, ranging from "lets do nice sweet fundraisers” to really militant direct action, so quite a range there. My story is about the first prompt in the State of the Union: I’d been going to and showing up for racial justice meetings starting in September 2016. In San Francisco, the core organizing group fluctuated between like 10, 15 people, sometimes 20. The Bay Area chapter is a lot bigger, but the San Francisco one was just starting. I like to call Trump “Mussolini Kardashian” because I feel like that’s the best way to describe our fascist reality star, and in the meeting after Mussolini Kardashian was elected, we had like 100+ people there. People were there in this visceral state of panic almost, and it actually really pissed me off. I was so happy to see so many people and see people mobilized. We went around and did this big check-in, and people were so utterly panicked, and the reason it bothered me was this: Under President Obama, there were almost 2 million people deported. The U.S. was at war with eight different countries. The Dakota Access Pipeline all progressed under Obama. Michael Brown was killed under Obama. Kalief Browder hung himself under Obama. All of these things were happening in that era. There’s a way in which Trump’s particular brand of being heinous and viscious and brutal is so in-your-face, but then I look at George W. Bush and I look at the invasion of Iraq, and I look at Andrew Jackson and the Indian Removal Act, and I look at this historical amnesia that makes Trump into this exceptionalized boogey man, when the history of our country is genocide, theft, and slavery. There’s this aspect of the contemporary zeitgeist of panic around his behavior as if it’s different from the rest of America’s history, and I look at this too with some of the campaigns that target and attack the Confederate flag, and I’m like “what about the U.S. flag?!” Like, if we need a symbol of heinous, viscous, barbaric actions, that flag really wins the cake. So there’s this aspect for me of certain types and kinds of panic, and the reality star aspect of it for me is important because it’s this flashy, showy, outlandish in-your-face version, but the quiet and subtle aspects of white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchy has been going on and will continue to go on. I feel like there’s a fireworks to the current thing that really is blinding us, in a way, from the history of it all. Thanks. [16:53]

  My name is Laurie. I am 56 years old, and I was born and raised in Burlington, Vermont. I’m a Burlington, Vermont native. Well, I’ve got kind of mixed feelings about Donald Trump and his actions. Even during his campaign, I always felt that he’s gonna be contradicting, he’s gonna do a lot of firing, and hiring, and the one’s he’s hiring are not staying in, as far as the Senate is concerned. I’m afraid for our country. What I understand is that he’s got so much money, but he ain’t got no brains to use it, so that’s my perspective. I didn’t want him to be our president. I actually wanted Bernie Sanders to be our president. I figured he was more down to earth with us, and he was the better choice. Anyway, I just really was upset when Donald Trump was elected, and I still to this very day wonder, “why did all these people elect him?” My sense of hope in my community is that we can get Trump out, and get somebody else in who knows how to run the country a lot better than it is right now.

  [18:56] My name is Chai Gang. I was born during a depression, and we had people sleeping on our floor every night, and nobody ever said the word homeless. They said, “I can’t find a job". “Homeless" was not a word yet. When I heard Trump talking about how he’s going to get everybody a job, and people voted for him for that reason, I have no respect for those people. I wouldn’t want a man running my country the way he runs this country because he promised me a job. When I was in the Occupy movement, I met a woman who had her mother living with her, and her mother babysat while she went to work. The mother was kicked out of the apartment because she wasn’t on the lease, and the woman lost her job because she didn’t have a babysitter anymore. I met another woman who had her grandfather living with her, and he was in a wheelchair, and he was kicked out because he wasn’t on the lease. So he was homeless. Well, in the old days, no landlord would kick anybody out if the rent was paid and if the place was being taken care of decently. So I’m disgusted and angry, and I feel Trump is supposed to be President, because it’s time for a change, and the change is going to be horrible. What can we hope for? I want to say ‘except that we die’… I don’t want to be here anymore, for what’s coming. And yet, when I think of dying, somebody has to fight. Somebody has to go against what’s coming, so maybe I’m one of them. [21:32]

  My name is David. I lived in Burlington and the Williston area for 56 years. I’m 56 years old now. 29 years ago, I started a career as a taxi driver, which I had for 25 years. I was pretty lucky because I did a lot of runs in Burlington, a lot of runs around Vermont, runs into Canada and all over the U.S. It used to be pretty mild conversations about “Yeah, things are going okay, my job is okay" and the longer I continued, the more I saw old problems just kinda got shoved under the rug, and the people that voted for Trump, there’s a lot of these issues that happened before Trump. Trump is just kind of a beacon of what had been going wrong for a very long time. About four years ago, I lost my house, and I lost my job, and so I ended up being homeless. Luckily, about four years ago, and I moved into a housing complex here for seniors and people with disabilities, both learning and other forms. I’ve learned in where I live that all our differences are making us stronger, and I think all this pressure from the top is finally getting to the point where we’re all starting to organize. More in the last year, we’re all starting to understand that we don’t want this anymore. Let’s go back to caring about each other, getting rid of the power and the money. Let us—the residents and the folks with jobs that are merely making a living—let us take over and head in the right direction. Thank you. [24:10]

  My name is Jen. I’ am a resident of Burlington for three and a half years. I’m a teacher, a community organizer and an artist, and.. I was the one who said that you wouldn’t not have a story, so I have an opening, we’ll see how it goes: So in 2008, when Obama was elected—it was right after the Bush years, which doesn’t seem quite as terrible anymore—I was at Nectar’s when the election results came in, and I was part of a crowd of hundreds and hundreds of people that literally took to the streets and flocked all over Burlington and celebrated this huge victory. It was the first and maybe the only time I’ve ever been that excited about a presidential election. That being said, shortly after that we went right back to the politics and it was kind of a similar but different national thing was happening in D.C., and a friend of mine was doing a local one, and it was this whole idea that we get hope from people, not from presidents. I was really happy to participate in this visual art event. So when I saw that this was happening, I got really excited because something that I always believe very strongly is that we are the power and we can make change. We are living in—I wouldn’t say an unprecedented time, because it’s happened before (before I was around, I think)—but how I’ve seen it affect my friends and my community in ways that I wasn’t expecting. But particularly, I remember—so, I teach college at CCV and up until this semester my classes have always been on Tuesdays—we were talking about the election, talking about it the whole semester, and so, we talked about it all day, told people “If you’re eligible to vote, go vote”, and I felt like we had covered all the bases about who was eligible and everything. So we left and I felt really, really confident that I was going to come into class the next day and I had already planned out how we would talk about what it meant to have our first female president. So I went out with my friends that night, I went down to Nectar’s and we watched, and we went to the OP and we watched, and then we came here, and I sat right there with my friend. As it was close to midnight, and it became clearer and clearer that things weren’t going in the direction that we thought they were going to go, we started losing words, we started having tears, and we started getting fearful. So, when I decided to do this event, we were brainstorming where to do it, and I thought, “let me call Lee, and see if the Lamp Shop is open”, and he said ��Yes!”. For me personally, how really hard it is to have this event with people talking about what’s going on, in the same exact place where I felt like I personally got this initial wound, it’s really important, and to be here with people tonight is super helpful. So, thanks for coming and for listening.

  [28:01] Alright, I got one for ya. My name is Luc Arseneau. The first thing about me I guess I tell everybody seems to be—I don’t know how people aren’t bored of it now—I had chronic night terrors since I was a little kid: sleep paralysis, all that shit, for years. I was told to draw them in order to get them to go out, and eventually I did, and eventually I got good at drawing, and then eventually went away. Now I’m a lucid dreamer, and I take those same drawings and I put them up in stories so I can put out something that isn’t taxing on me. So, there you go, there’s a lot of things out there. So, that being said, I got something that I think might be the third one, was it ‘hope’? Yeah, I’ve got ‘hope’ for ya. You can be the judge or whether or not it is, but I’ll leave that up to you. It was the summertime, it must’ve been two years ago maybe, and I was walking across the blue bridge. You know, you might not know but it’s called the blue bridge by anybody who walks across it, it’s railroad tracks. I was going down there, and I live now at the place I was crashing at then, so I had this big backpack, it was my grandfather’s, and I’d used duct taped on the strap on the side to keep it from falling off. So I go down, and I noticed one thing about the bridge was that somebody shot out the streetlights above it again, so I can’t see anything other than, you know, this one lone light, ‘cause the other ones are broken. So I go up to the edge of the bridge and I think I hear a sound, but I don’t stop, because I’m counting the next wooden beam that it takes to get across. I can’t see them, but I know they’re there, so I count them. One, two, three, four, five… and I go across. I hear a sound behind me but I still don’t turn, because I don’t want to break my pace. In the middle of the bridge, I decide to stop, because I hear footsteps. I turn around, and I see a tall figure walking towards me. So I turn forward and go. One thing I didn’t mention is, having night terrors (not that anybody would know) makes you very paranoid, for no logical reason, so you insert logic into it. So I figured, “oh, it’s just a guy going by”. My hand still goes into my pocket, to where my knife is, just there. I hear “hey, boy! Hey man! Hey yo! Slow down, hey hey!” Well, I keep going, and I hear “hey man! Yo yo yo! Stop stop stop!” So I said, “Hey, what dyou want?“ 'cause I’m an idiot. ‘Cause I’m curious. Being curious makes you an idiot. I’m full of idiocy (not as much as our President though, I’ll say that. I’m not curious about what happens there). So I turn around and I say, “Hey man, what dyou want?” and he says “Yo, yo, d’you got a light, man?” I make it clear that my hand’s in my pocket, jingling around the loose change that’s in there and say, “Yeah if all you want is a light”. I realized that for some reason, at that point, I had said something that was very important. I didn’t know why, but I had said something that changed the air. He stops, and he says, “Well yeah, you know”. I realize from the shadow of the light shining past him at me that he’s got his hand in his pocket too. So I said “Yeah, well, yeah, alright I’ve got a light” and I take out some matches, and I give them to him. Then I started talking with him. He was a kid, probably 19 or 18, had a Four Loko, flat brim hat, and we just start to talk. As we start getting into talking, one of the things I notice is that he’s as drunk as I am, he wasn’t certain, he was just trying to light his cigarette. As we’re getting into this conversation I realize he’s not that bad of a guy, and I was like, “I gotta tell you man, I had my hand on my knife in my pocket, ‘cause I thought you were gonna try and mug me” and he’s like, “Yo dude! I didn’t know who you were, I had my hand on my knife too!” And I was like, “Shit, well hey, d’you want some rum?“ ‘Cause it’s 3 in the morning, it’s dark, we’re alone on a bridge, of course I’m gonna, well, you know, who cares… And he goes “No, I’ve got my Four Loko!” and I was like “Oh I’m not touchin’ that”. So we sit down, and we get to talking for about 3 hours, and I learned about his life. He was from Somalia. He got shipped off somewhere else. He was a child soldier for about a year, and then he got free somehow (I don’t know, it was broken English). But one thing he told me, I remember, was talking about how, if you were caught with a beer in his hometown, they cut off one of your hands. I said “Fuck, I’ve heard stories about that, but I never knew…”, and he says “Well, now you know”. So I was like, “Well how nice is it to be in harmony, now, to be in peace?” and he said “What’s harmony, what’s peace?”. And I was like “you know, peace”. I tried to explain to him whats harmony is, and I realized, fuck. That’s the same thing as me asking him, “if all you want’s a light”: yeah, that’s what he asked for. But the thing that we’re not certain about is whether or not we say what we mean, and whether or not somebody understands what we mean when we say it. And that’s all I have to say. [34:08]

  [Lee] As an American, I feel like there is enormous potential with the people that I share nationality with to take this country over. Living in Vermont, living in this little tiny city in this little tiny state has enormous influence to take this fucking country over, and the first thing we have to do is take over our city and start leading by this example. By being an example city, people look at Burlington, Vermont already, with 40,000 people, to lead. Because people like Bernie, and people like things that are happening here. Even though people are like “Oh fuck, they’re building a mall, oh fuck, they’re doing this”, it’s still a really fucking awesome city with a small population. Given the size of the population, we have the ability to take it over and rule this small city, to give an example to the state. People look to the State of Vermont for an example, and we can lead the world if we just take it over. I think Bernie should become the governor, and we should just be like— he has so much popularity, he could get sweeping agendas done. Vermont’s a little green splitting wedge pointing its way at Washington, D.C., and I totally believe that the revolution starts in this city, now. [35:36]

  [37:20] [Chai Gang] The two fantasies I have are: A hundred people marching down Church Street, and one fantasy is that they’re holding signs that say how they were evicted, or how somebody they knew was evicted; the other fantasy is everybody playing music and singing ‘What’s Going On?’, the Marvin Gaye song. Everything I try to get going never happens, so I’m putting this out there and hoping somebody will make it happen.

  Friendship and strength for us all [David]

  [38:20] Reset, ready… hope? Yeah, there’s hope, totally. Hope. [Jen]

  Vehemence, precognition, adverse, and doubting doubts [Luc]

  Invincible, in the sense that we break social, economic, racial, physical barriers, 'cause these are things that hold us together, instead of things that keep us apart. So I really hope that this movement breaks generations and bodies and spirits. I think there’s a lot more that we have in common than in difference, so, that’s cool. [Devin] [39:33]

  Confusion and kinship [Max]

  [40:24] [Phinn] Your story kind of resonated a little more, 'cause I do a lot of photography in my spare time, and it often leads me into very desolate places where I’m completely alone and not expecting to see other people. So basically, there’s this abandoned Cold War era radar base in eastern Vermont. It’s on the top of a mountain, it’s in the middle of nowhere, and it’s a place that I go to kind of be alone, ‘cause there’s no one around, and there’s no one up there, ever. A few months ago, I decided to go up there in the winter time. As I was walking up, I spotted someone ahead of me on the trail up. You know, I was a little hesitant, seeing this guy walking in front of me, but I just kept walking. I was walking significantly faster than him, so I eventually caught up. As I got closer, I could see he was holding onto something in front of him that looked like a gun, and so I got a little bit.. hesitant. As I got closer, I realized it definitely was a gun: he was walking with a gun on a hip and a rifle slung across his chest. So I was a little scared to be walking in the middle of the woods with no cell service past someone with a gun. I had no idea why he would also be up here, you know, out in the middle of nowhere. But, as I got closer—and I had a knife too on my chest and I had a knife on my side—I kind of just slid my hand down along my side as I walked past him, because I was just not sure what was gonna happen. As I walked past, I kind of turned and said “Hello”. He said it back, and then he asked me what I was doing up there. I explained I was taking pictures and he was like, “Oh, well I’m just going target shooting”. We began to talk, and I learned that his name was George and he had grown up in the area, and he was simply this guy going out for a hike, but I had had this heightened sense of urgency of there being any kind of issue with this person, because of an uncertainty of people. Something that I generally hadn’t been feeling, but it was because of the state of the environment that we were in. And now with the state of our country, there’s a little more uncertainty of other people, something I really haven’t felt before and hadn’t felt in Vermont especially, as a generally safe place, somewhere I’ve never really felt unsafe. But it was this moment of second-guessing this person, who also was just out there exploring this place. So I think that was something that really resonated with me, this kind of uncertainty. [43:22]

  [Phinn] Hope is a good one. It’s very wonderful to see everyone from a range of ages and occupations. The wide range is just very good to see. I really appreciate not seeing just a really select group of people talking.

  [Jane] Apprehension, and excitement. And gratitude!

  [Hallie] Improvisation, and connections, and empathy.

  [Ali] Pessimism, cynicism, and optimism.

  [Laurie] I am hopeful and I’m positive (or at least I try to stay positive!)

  [Chai] I’m happy to be here.

[leedsfreshers-blog]

10 alternative nights out at the Union.

1. Do something interesting with your evening.

Throw some shapes at one of Leeds’ first female centred, queer club nights. Scissors - yes, Scissors - is Leeds University Union’s first club night that looks to celebrate all women, non-binary and femmes in the LGBTQ+ community. All are welcome, but the all-female lineup and collaboration with Girls that Gig shows who this night is really all about.

Scissors, Pyramid, 01.02.17

2. Rock out to some alternative anthems.

Cyanide is a sanctuary from all commercial music and chirpy colours, blasting out only the best alternative tunes. It’s hosted by LUU’s Rock and Alternative Society, and invites live bands from Leeds’ diverse music scene onto the stage, as well as seasoned DJs who know their rock.

Cyanide, Pyramid, 04.02.17

3. Listen to some newly-signed tunes.

Coffee House Sessions supports freshly brewed music, bringing talented musicians from across the UK right here to LUU. Think up and coming, newly-signed acoustic artists in a stripped back, intimate atmosphere, who sound pretty damned great teamed with a good old Yorkshire brew.

Coffee House Sessions, Old Bar, 08.02.17

4. See what Kate Nash is up to these days.

So Kate Nash is back, but not as you know her. Forget ‘Foundations’ and her quirky, indie acoustic tunes - her new stuff has a pop-punk vibe with a more confrontational tone. She now identifies as artist, actress and activist, and her new music definitely reflects that. Give your ears a treat with her new track ‘My Little Alien’, written after Kate claims she saw her first UFO.

Kate Nash, Stylus, 08.02.17

5. Take part in a guided cacao ceremony.

If it’s the first you’ve heard of a hot chocolate drinking ceremony, you’re probably in the majority. The Afterglow, a yoga and massage company, is bringing a host of wellbeing activities to the Union, including this Ancient Mayan tradition. Cacao is believed to increase your connection with your inner self, and during the ceremony participants gather together in a circle and share a cup. There’ll also be massages and vegan food, so you’re on to a bit of a wellbeing winner with this one.

Afterglow Night Cafe, Pyramid, 11.02.17

6. Shake down in space.

Fruity goes futuristic! For one night and one night only, LUU’s famous Friday night party will be transformed into a space age setting complete with a live laser show. There’s three rooms of tunes covering everything from indie to hip hop and much more in between.

Planet Fruity, Stylus, Pyramid & Function, 17.02.17

7. Have a chortle with Mae Martin.

Writer and stand-up comedian Mae Martin originally trained in improvisation and sketch comedy in Toronto and gained recognition in the UK after storming audiences on Russell Howard’s Good News. Now she’s making her way to Leeds University Union as part of LGBTQ+ Month. And it’s great, because with her she brings Mawaan Rizwan and Avery Edison, who are both interested in intersectionality, our overall theme this year.

Live At The Riley, 21.02.17

8. Catch a film for free.

I, Daniel Blake received rave reviews when it hit the big screens last year. It follows a middle aged carpenter who needs state benefits after injuring himself. It’s been nominated for 4 BAFTA Film Awards, which isn’t a surprise really as it’s directed by a man responsible for a whole load of cinematic greats, the legend that is Ken Loach.

I, Daniel Blake, Pyramid & Function, 24.02.17

9. Discover what it’s like to be religious and LGBTQ+

It’s pretty tough living in a primarily hetrosexual world if you’re LGBTQ+, but what if your religion has complicated views of your sexuality too? This panel discussion hopes to flesh out some of these questions alongside representatives from The Diverse Church, Union of Jewish Students, Imman (a muslim LGBTQ+ organisation) and Marnjinder Singh Sidhu.

LGBTQ+ History Month Faith Panel Discussion, Function, 28.02.17

10. Feel cultured at a Humans of Leeds exhibition.

Humans of Leeds is an ongoing photography project featuring portraits and interviews collected on the streets of Leeds containing its diverse range of residents. As part of World Unite Festival, LUU will be collaborating with this project to bring Leeds an explorative range of photography, showcasing the different cultures in this cracking city.

WUFest Humans Of Leeds Exhibition, Pyramid, 28.02.17

Check out all upcoming events in February HERE!