Kwanzaa, Kwanzaa, Kwanzaa, Kwanzaa

My kids danced to the cutest Kwanzaa video all last week when we learned about Kwanzaa...they loved it! I just had to share it:



And I read them this description of Africa:

Africa is a huge, beautiful mass of land called a “continent.” Kwanzaa celebrates cooperation, but it also celebrates the land known as Africa. People who came from Africa a really long time ago live all over the world now. They live in places like the United States of America, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Guyana, Barbados, Mexico, and the Bahamas. All of the Africans who live all over the world now make up the African Diaspora. Some of these people moved out of Africa on their own; many others were stolen from their homeland long ago and sold into slavery. Many people in the African Diaspora still show the greatness of Africa, no matter where in the world they are located. They show it by the music they play, the dances they dance, and the foods they eat. They show it by cooperating with other people!


I mentioned places like the Dominican Republic and Guyana because lots of my kids are of Caribbean descent, and I hoped I could give them info on the Black-Latino connection early on, before they even had time to consider the other BS that they will learn from society...


Speaking of Kwanzaa, look where I'mma be! (From facebook)

Join Us As We Celebrate
The 21st Annual LGBT Community KWANZAA

Saturday Dec 27th 2008

African Market 12:00 pm – 10:00 pm
Cultural Program 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Karamu (Community Feast) 8:00 pm – 10:00 pm
(Vegetarian selections also available)

Featuring:

Akoben Drumming Circle and various musical and spoken word artists.

PRESENTED BY:

ADODI/New York
African Ancestral Lesbians United for Societal Change (AALUSC)
The Audre Lorde Project (ALP)
The Black Men’s Exchange – New York
Circle of Voices, Inc. (COV Inc.)
FIERCE
Freedom Train Productions
None on Record: Stories of Queer Africa
Rehoboth Temple CCC
Sistahs in Search of Truth, Alliance & Harmony (SiSTAH)
Sistas of Caribbean Ancestry (SOCA)
The Inner Child Experience (ICE)
-------------------------------------------------------
Tickets $10 (Suggested donation)
No one will be turned away - Tickets will be available at the door.

FOR EVENT INFO: lgbtkwanzaa@gmail.com

VENDORS WANTED: lgbtkwanzaavendors@gmail.com

VOLUNTEERS WANTED: lgbtkwanzaavolunteers@gmail.com

OMG/WTF

The Real World to Ruin Brooklyn this Summer

Entering its 21st season, MTV's The Real World returns to New York for a third time...but for the first time it's headed to an outer-borough. That's right, the seven generic, good-looking roommates will be heading to Brooklyn.

Shooting begins this summer, and will result in 12 hour-long episodes. In the press release we received, Jon Murray, co-creator of the show, says "The Brooklyn season, like the Hollywood season, will focus on what people loved about 'The Real World' when it launched in 1992 - genuine people, meaningful conflict and powerful stories." Really Jon? We're sort of betting it'll be more about the cast taking over bars, fighting with locals, getting drunk and sleeping with roommates -- all as they take their amazingly overpriced living quarters for granted.

The big question now is: Which part of Brooklyn will have the distinct pleasure of welcoming the new residents? Our guess is they'll be taking over a few luxury condo units in Williamsburg. Perhaps this will unite the hipsters and anti-hipsters of the 'nabe? Either way, get ready to see the production taking over McCarren Pool Parties this summer.

Original Post

AfroPunks!

It's AfroPunk Week in Brooklyn and let me just say that I am truly enjoying the festivities! I <3 AfroPunk. I first attended the festival three years ago with a couple of my friends. It's a festival that at the time was in it's second year and was spawned from a documentary of the same name and directed by James Spooner, a self-proclaimed Afro Punk. It's about race in punk rock, and specifically about Black people who are punk (and have been punk since punk was). It's now in it's fourth year and it draws Afro Punks and Afro Punk enthusiasts from around NYC, the tri-state area, and probably the country. It generates such amazing energy because there is such radical race pride and self-acceptance floating in the air during the festival alongside pure rock and roll, pure music, pure incredible intense love and rebellion and defiance. There are no apologies, no "yea I'm Black but I'm punk" or "I'm not white but I do like punk."

But there are lots of...

"Hell yea I'm punk and hell yea I'm Black! What other way is there to be?"
"Shit yea punk is the Blackest thing on god's green earth, you ain't know?"
"Where the fuck do you think the punk counterculture got it's inspiration from? This is pure Black nationalism...the piercings, the tats, the dreds, the 'hawks...that's Africa babe!"





You see folks with Black power buttons, and tee shirts with messages like "I'm Black...please don't shoot," and golden Africa medallions...

annnd lip rings annnd nostril rings annnd industrials annnd artistically shaved heads annnd ear plugs annnd hair color annnd skateboards

and the space that this festival creates to be all of that and more is so refreshing and empowering and affirming and celebratory and sexy and addictive as hell, and so COMPLETELY necessary.

But that's just a background. This year's festival has so far been amazing, and last night I saw two incredible film selections with friends.

The first was also directed by James Spooner, a "scripted documentary" about a man who rejects his Black self while exploring the punk world, since conventional, white dominated punk outlets don't typically have space for a strong Black consciousness. No, he doesn't conveniently "discover" the AfroPunk scene near the film's end but he does eventually discover himself. Brilliant film, highly recommended.



The second was a hilARious romantic comedy called "I'm Through With White Girls." For me it was an extremely refreshing take on/celebration of Black love amidst the problematic history of race relations in the U.S., but it's one of those films that everyone is bound to take something different yet powerfully affirming from. While some small aspects of it rubbed up against my politics (and lead to a spirited phone conversation with one of my friends until 3:00 am about the biological/socially constructed nature of desire, the troubled history of race and the present manifestation of racism in a colonized world, standards of beauty and desirability that are decidedly anti-Black and anti "real people," and the politics of interracial relationships and skin color in the U.S.), overall it was just such a provocative, intriguing, entertaining, funny, well-acted, relate-able movie. And I'm not even one to really sit through and enjoy movies that don't have a documentary kind of feel to them. But this movie definitely WILL be in my collection when it's released on DVD Aug. 12th. Without a doubt. It was that good, and if you get a chance, you should really check it out.

Past present future Hampton NYC Cali hmm

I just came out of Whipple Barn, the building at Hampton where you clear your student account and access your grades and transcripts. It's the first day for seniors to get their academic and financial clearance cards. The building officially opened at 9am. I got there at 8:45 to a short line and open doors--I guess they opened a bit earlier for crowd control. And...my grades weren't ready. So I'll be back. At noon. To a crazy long ass line I'm sure.

On the other hand...

I realize...

I really dooo love the Bay area, CA. Like, I miss it. ALOT. I was there this summer for an internship. It's such an amazing mix of nature and civilization. I Loooove NYC, but I'm not so sure it's my *home.* I feel crazy admitting it. And I'm totally glad I grew up in NYC--I feel like the exposure a city kid gets to so many different things in life is unparalleled. And I'm really looking forward to working in BK and getting to see what NYC is like for a 20-something. But there simply aren't enough trees and mountains there. I'm a sucker for trees and mountains. Like, I can literally be transported (internally) to a place of ecstacy when I'm just IN nature. Which is one reason why I like to garden. (Have I mentioned that before? I do. Watch me have a friggin farm in my apt :oD)

I'm listening to Waiting in the Weeds by the Eagles and I Will by the Beatles. And Wolf at the Door, by Radiohead. Youtube. The shizz.

I know very little about cultural and spiritual traditions of Native Americans. I have a lot of reading and traveling to do. But the little bit I do know inspires me to no end. I am often brought nearly to tears by its simplicity, at the reverence for nature that is so ever present in the traditions that I know a little something about.

Sidebar: In the last few centuries, we've witnessed and participated in humanity's darkest depths...when will we see our highest highs? When will we create our highest highs? Is it just around the bend, are we almost there...

"They keep us uneducated sick and depressed...with no choices there's no hope for us..." (e. badu)


There are many, many reasons why I love Clarissa Pinkola Estes:

"The craft of questions, the craft of stories, the craft of the hands - all these are the making of something, and that something is soul. Anytime we feed soul, it guarantees increase."

"The creation Mother is always also the Death Mother and vice versa. Because of this dual nature, or double-tasking, the great work before us is to learn to understand what around and about us and what within us must live, and what must die. Our work is to apprehend the timing of both; to allow what must die to die, and what must live to live."

"In a single human being there are many other beings, all with their own values, motives, and devices. Some psychological technologies suggest we arrest these beings, count them, name them, force them into harness till they shuffle along like vanquished slaves. But to do this would halt the dance of wildish lights in a woman's eyes; it would halt her heat lightning and arrest all throwing of sparks. Rather than corrupt her natural beauty, our work is to build for all these beings a wildish countryside wherein the artists among them can make, the lovers love, the healers heal."

"If you are surrounded by people who cross their eyes and look with disgust up at the ceiling when you are in the room, when you speak, when you act and react, then you are with the people who douse passions - yours and probably their own as well. These are not the people who care about you, your work, your life."

"What must I give more death to today, in order to generate more life? What do I know should die, but am hesitant to allow to do so? What must die in me in order for me to love? What not-beauty do I fear? Of what use is the power of the not-beautiful to me today? What should die today? What should live? What life am I afraid to give birth to? If not now, when?"

"If you want to create, you have to sacrifice superficiality, some security, and often your desire to be liked, to draw up your most intense insights, your most far-reaching visions."

"The original abandonment, the original abuse, the original horror has some reason and meaning in it. It is not senseless. It is not like being run down like a dog on the highway. Its meaning most often is the development of tremendous strength, tremendous power, tremendous intuition. And I will tell you frankly that most of the people who are the greatest healers living on the face of this earth are unmothered children. One of the great gifts of the unmothered child - and also the healer, and the writer and the musician and all those in the arts who live so close with their ear against the heartbeat of the archetypal unconscious - one of their strongest aspects is intuition."

"Be proud of your scars. They have everything to do with your strength, and what you've endured. They're a treasure map to the deep self."

"At bottom is the best soil to sow and grow something new again. In that sense, hitting bottom, while extremely painful, is also the sowing ground."