Tara Betts

The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex

admin — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 14:15:00 +0000

Edited by INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence

The Color of Violence: The INCITE! Anthology was the first publication that documented some of the concerns and challenges addressed at the Color of Violence Conference, which began at University of California-Santa Cruz in 2000. Since then, there have been two more conferences, organizing campaigns and the SISTERFIRE tour of radical women artists. Now, this collective of women activists and their allies has released The Revolution Will Not Be Funded as their second anthology. This second collection of critical analysis and reflections offers a probing focus on the Non-Profit Industrial Complex (NPIC) and the foundations that determine the agendas of many organizations and movements today.

The book begins by talking about the history of foundations, how foundations often act as tax shelters for wealthy founders and do not necessarily spend a significant amount of their budgets on funding organizations and how the money offered always comes with constraints. These constraints include adhering to a corporate model that starts not only to shift the political agenda of organizations away from research, education and self-empowerment, but these same constraints displace people who are working within these movements because they have not specialized in getting credentials or getting to know people in dominant power structures.

Non-profit organizations—also referred to as non-government organizations (NGOs) here—rely on more and more people who act as liaisons and trained organizers whose motives can be questionable. In spite of all the problems that foundation funding entails, there is a variety of perspectives here that explain what it means to limit accepted funding, to find alternatives to foundation funding and break away from the increasingly professionalized model of activism that relies more heavily on public relations, jargon and social services than addressing the roots of dilemmas rising out of a specific community.

The contributors are thorough in documenting their own experiences with non-profits. Some of them depart from the NPIC structure entirely. Some notable essays include the return to a volunteer staff by Sista ii Sista and how the young women in the organization determined the needs of the group, Madonna Thunder Hawk’s essay on organizing with AIM (American Indian Movement) during the Red Movement and Paul Kivel’s thought-provoking questions in “Social Service or Social Change?” Far from being anti-academic, The Revolution Will Not Be Funded is a well-thought out approach to finding alternatives to a funding system that, in many ways, reinforces the dominant paradigms of class, race, sexism, homophobia and international exploitation. Community activists should read this and ask themselves hard questions and rethink strategic planning.

Written by: Tara Betts, June 19th 2007

Black Women’s Intellectual Traditions: Speaking their Minds

admin — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 23:58:00 +0000

Edited by Kristin Waters, Carol B. Conaway

University of Vermont Press

While reading this collection, I recalled when I was in a debate with a male writer about where were the intellectuals and poets from the Black Arts Movement. I named Mari Evans and was dismissed. Never mind that Cheryl Clarke, June Jordan and Audre Lorde could have also been a part of that list. Conversations like those compel me to search for the narratives, the histories and the primary sources that preserve, document and celebrate the creative and intellectual legacies of women of color. Black Women’s Intellectual Traditions is one of many books working to fill an earlier gap than the Black Arts Movement to reveal a continuum of Black literary, critical and analytical thought. In nineteen essays and excerpts from larger texts, the book offers background and delves into the lives and work nineteenth and early twentieth century activists and speakers - like radical essayist Maria W. Stewart, Sojourner Truth, slave narrative author Harriet Jacob/Linda Brent, novelist and poet Frances E.W. Harper, scholar and educator Anna Julia Cooper and journalist Ida B. Wells.

Waters addresses each of the women chronologically and then concludes with a survey of issues addressed and organizing and rhetorical strategies used by women then and today to articulate their feminism/womanism on their own terms - rather than according to the irrelevant social constructs of the True Womanhood movement, which pertained more to notions of pure white femininity than the dual struggles of being black and woman. There is also some talk of the “Lift As We Climb” movement based in the Colored Women’s Club Movement and the tenets of hard work, upright living and service to one’s community. My suggestion for two books with excellent timelines to support this book’s claims and analysis would include When and Where I Enter by Paula Giddings and Too Heavy A Load by Dorothy Gray White. These books and many other scholars as well are cited in this thorough analysis.

Many of the essays hinge upon the critical work by Patricia Hill Collins, particularly her text Black Feminist Thought. Since there is a range of contributors (work by a number of other scholars such as Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Angela Y. Davis, bell hooks, Gerda Lerner, Akasha Hull and Barbara Smith are cited), I found myself wondering how using ideas by these women might have changed the overall direction of the book. Readers may want to start with Hill Collins’ chapter to get a better grasp of the book’s overall intent.

Written by: Tara Betts, June 15th 2007

The Secret Lives of Punctuations, Volume I

admin — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 01:02:00 +0000

By Eileen Tabios

XPress(ed)

Eilenn Tabios’ volume The Secret Lives of Punctuations shows how these modest marks deviate from their standard grammatical expectations to slow the reader down and make them notice the power of words. Poets like Alice Notley and Barbara Jane Reyes (an emerging poet cited by Tabios as inspiration) have visited this terrain before. Instead, Tabios offers poems that use the colon, semi-colon, the strike through, parentheses and question marks to create a sort of sonic acrobatics.

Some of the results are unexpected analogies, metaphors, riddles and homonyms, while others are elaborate found quatrains taken from the poet Jukka-Pekka Kervinenen’s text cornucopia. While Kervinen’s text is generated by a computer’s statistical distribution from John Locke’s “The Essay of Toleration” and Antonio Gramsci’s Letters from Prison, Tabios wants the words to express their inherent sound and spirit. In a way, The Secret Lives of Punctuations represents the organic potential of a found poem removed by two degrees from its original texts.

This book becomes more intriguing when Tabios offers her insights on this process. In addition to her interaction with Kervinen’s text, she refers to Spirits in Stone: Zimbabwe Shona Sculpture. The sculptors’ philosophy adheres to the practice of carving the spirit of what is already present in the wood, instead of trying to force what one may desire upon the wood being carved. So, these poems could also be seen as another illustration of the conflict between nature and the constraints of civilization, which her postcard art in the book intimates the impropriety of punctuations having secret trysts in a hotel.

All of this is compounded by a sharp assessment of Tabios’ project by Leny Mendoza Strobel and Eve Aschheim’s work that mirrors parentheses, dashes, pauses and space. In Strobel’s statement, she notes more than the space created by zazen breathing. She outlines how Tabios departs from the narrative of racism and Other-ness that traps post-colonial people to identify themselves, and their writing, in limited ways:

De-familiarize the familiar. Dis-entangle ourselves from the old narratives. Withdraw our consent from the empire’s attempt to continue fanning the fires of racism and xenophobia in the name of protecting the empire’s image of its glorious past. Face the reality of the traumatic consequences of colonial conquests. Could it be that one way of doing that is to begin to look at the greatest tool of the empire of the 19th and 20th century: the English language and its grammar rules? In a way, I see Eileen de-familiarizing punctuations in these poems.

Although it takes time to work through these statements and get to the prose that further illuminates what Tabios is doing, she is offering another possibility beyond narrative and the lyric in poetry.

Written by: Tara Betts, March 14th 2007

The Abortion Diaries

admin — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 12:28:00 +0000

Directed by Penny Lane

In this 30-minute documentary short, director Penny Lane gathers a group of women around a kitchen table to share women’s stories about an experience that still does not get discussed openly: abortion. The interviews, interspersed with excerpts from Lane’s own diary about her abortion, are conversation snippets with twelve women who are Lane’s dinner party guests and other individual women lounging on couches and sitting in their yards. Each woman discusses the facts and feelings surrounding their choice to abort.

Some of the reasons are economic, cultural and career-based, and some women discuss what it has been like to have children. One talks about how she wishes she could have children because of an illegal abortion that made her unable to have children and the need for safe abortions. One woman breaks away from the idea that women are supposed to have a child to fulfill their role as a complete woman, while other women look at their abortion as a chance to plan for a new start in relationships and to accomplish what they choose. Some of the men involved in the pregnancies avoided talking about a mutual decision on birth control or evaded even being supportive of their partner in the relationship, pointing to impregnating partners as an attempt to wield control over another person’s life.

Of course, there is the trauma, and there should be places to work out all the challenging feelings and stigmas around abortion. This film opens the book to such a dialogue in a straightforward fashion. How do we talk about this as an opportunity to change a woman’s life and potentially provide more stable, realistic families with the potential for multiple incomes in the present harsh political climate? Why is it still considered a badge of shame that families and others pin on women for choosing to postpone or forego motherhood? How does a woman move forward? This film is going in the right direction, and it seems to be a modest start in rethinking gender role expectations, the influences of faith and family, and how men and women can be more forthright with each other. Sometimes, simply sharing the story is enough, and the understanding about an issue like abortion will deepen.

Lane notes that this film was funded by Puffin Foundation and the Abortion Conversation Project, and I found myself wanting to know the sources of the statistics that Lane cites, even though they are credible. It would further validate the normalcy of women having to make decisions about sexuality, motherhood and family. The film's website also has more information about the film and portrayals of abortion in the media and film.

Written by: Tara Betts, March 6th 2007

SAW Land and Globalization Poster Series / Siere Del Cartel De Tierra Y Globalizacion

admin — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 15:11:00 +0000

By Justseeds Artists' Cooperative, Street Art Workers

Josh MacPhee and many other artists have been placing poster art for various political causes - such as anti-militarism, the Hands Off Assata movement and the prison industrial complex - throughout Chicago. Now Street Art Workers, an international network of artists affiliated with MacPhee, have started a newsprint political poster arts series. This first collection features posters by artists on the theme of corporate globalization, connecting the economic oppression of several countries simultaneously. Each poster is reminiscent of some of the Cuban poster art with its blue, black and white prints.

Some of the pieces are woodcuts and stencils, while other focus on the text as part of the illustration. One notable poster by Andalusia features one half as a piece written from the perspective of a Jewish American describing his right to live in Israel and the other half is a Palestinian’s words about losing his homeland framed by blue keys. Ally Reeves’ poster describes the privatization of land in Burma, Indonesia and Thailand; the text is interspersed with images of people in agrarian scenes. Although these posters are thought-provoking, some of the posters that rely on images are more arresting. Poland-based artists Lena Szczesna and Filip Berendt rendered a mouth in the shape of the African continent that reads: “Feed Africa.” A piece by London’s Jonathon Baker reinterprets Joe Rosenthal’s recognizable 1945 photograph “Raising the Flag at Iwo Jima” by having the soldiers raise a flag with a barcode instead of Old Glory.

Most of the artwork does not feature women, but the issues (homelessness, the NAFTA Superhighway and genetically altered foods) affect everyone. There’s also a significant number of female artists contributing to the publication. Hopefully there will be more women and more work from more Asian, Latin American, African and Native contributors since the issues reflected in the posters concern them too. Claude Moller’s poster to stop the Shasta Dam in California that would displace the Winnemem Wintu tribe from their sacred sites near McCloud River is a poster that features Native American people. What if the subjects of the art created their own art? In any case, this work makes its viewers think, and the pieces might be worth framing or, at least, posting in a window to catch the attention of those passing by.

Written by: Tara Betts, January 4th 2007

Baghdad Burning II: More Girl Blog From Iraq

admin — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 13:23:00 +0000

By Riverbend

The Feminist Press

Some people are covering the war in the Middle East from a distance. Riverbend is blogging directly from Baghdad. This second print installment of Riverbend’s blog offers her entries from late 2004 to the beginning of 2006. There are humorous moments when she offers a Christmas list requesting blast-proof windows, landmine detectors and running water. Her hilarious version of the 2006 Oscars dubbed the Sayid Awards nominates George W. Bush as one of the Best Actors for convincingly portraying “the world’s first mentally challenged president," but she also indicts several Islamic leaders who act unaware of the political climate.

Riverbend is writing with limited access to the world at large yet, she offers a probing perspective. She analyzes media sources, television shows and various drafts of the pending Iraqi constitution. This is an accessible book that introduces the human side of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians impacted by the war in Iraq. The treatment of women is noted. Some of the glaring inequities include being turned away for service in a public place for being improperly covered, when ballots must indicate the sex of the voter, when the grocer says the policy will not change him running his store and Riverbend remembers she cannot work. The abstractions of war and confounded policy in Iraq become concrete in such moments.

Other entries describe the effects of bombing where people still live, celebrate birthdays, shake silt out of the rugs creeping into their homes from dust storms and hope for less than sporadic electricity and water. Riverbend introduces Elin, a translator for the kidnapped U.S. journalist Jill Carroll. Elin was killed before Carroll’s abduction, but Iraqis like Riverbend knew him for his record store where people could find refuge in music and conversation before bombings closed the store. Abu Ammar runs the local produce market where the prices for and types of produce available tell people about the conditions in other parts of the country.

Such characters and her analysis sparks offers another voice speaking on the issues that continue to emerge from this Middle Eastern conflict going into its fourth year. Baghdad Burning II gives insights from a person who is experiencing and not just observing. Her ongoing commentary is still being posted at http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/.

Written by: Tara Betts, January 3rd 2007