Native American Council offers amnesty to 220 million undocumented whites

https://www.minds.com/blog/view/554721997607673856

Truth?Mar 10, 2016, 6:47:10 PM

A council of Native American leaders has offered partial amnesty to the estimated 220 million illegal white immigrants living in the United States. The "white" problem has been a topic of much debate in the Native American community for centuries, and community leaders have decided the time has come to properly address it.*

Daily Currant reports, "At a meeting of the Native Peoples Council (NPC) in Albuquerque, New Mexico yesterday, Native American leaders considered several proposals on the future of this continent's large, unauthorized European population. The elders ultimately decided to extend a pathway to citizenship for those without criminal backgrounds."

"We are prepared to offer White people the option of staying on this continent legally and applying for citizenship," explains Chief Wamsutta of the Wampanoag nation. "In return, they must pay any outstanding taxes and give back the land stolen from our ancestors.

"Any white person with a criminal record, however, will be deported in the next 90 days back to their ancestral homeland. Rush Limbaugh will be going to Germany. Justin Bieber will depart for Canada. And the entire cast of Jersey Shore will be returning to Italy."

Illegal white immigration has been rapidly increasing for nearly 400 years from the European countries of France, Spain and England.  These illegals have ravished the land and colonized areas occupied by the natives.

Some white supporters claim the immigrants are a blessing, arguing that they take all of the menial white-collar jobs that the natives don't even want.  'What native would want to have a cushy salary and a corner office as an accountant, or the excess of power as senator or fortune-500 CEO,?' they claim. 

Others are not so forgiving.  "Why can't we just deport all of the Whites back to Europe?" asks Ité Omácau of the Lakota people. "They're just a drain on our economy anyway. They came over here to steal our resources because they're too lazy to develop their own back home...  I can't believe we're just going to let them pay a fine. They should get to the back of the line like everybody else -- behind the Mexicans."

_{*For the offended... this is satire.}

Amassing the World’s Largest Digital Transgender Archive

http://hyperallergic.com/285786/amassing-the-worlds-largest-digital-transgender-archive/

Covers of 1961 and 1962 issues of ‘Letters from Female Impersonators’ (courtesy Digital Transgender Archive)

From letters written by female impersonators to illustrated guides to cross-dressing, material chronicling the experiences of transgender people is currently being digitized and catalogued online. The recently launched Digital Transgender Archive is the world’s largest of its kind, dedicated to collecting and preserving the printed matter of trans history. Spearheaded by K.J. Rawson, an assistant English professor at College of the Holy Cross, the project involves over 20 international institutions and private collections, including Harvard University’s Schlesinger Library, the San Francisco Public Library’s James C. Hormel Gay & Lesbian Center, the Center for Sex and Culture, Gender DynamiX, and University of Victoria’s Transgender Archives — the largest physical one in the world.

Portrait of Alison Laing (courtesy Joseph A. Labadie Collection, University of Michigan and Digital Transgender Archive) (click to enlarge)

Most of the material is hitting the web for the first time, making available to all many previously unseen documents, photographs, and illustrations. The endeavor grew out of Rawson’s personal frustrations as he struggled to find significant collections of trans-related material for his doctoral dissertation and realized “this was actually a pretty widespread problem,” as he told Hyperallergic.

“A lot of trans-related materials were held in dissipated collections, and it wasn’t really clear who had what, why they had it, how it related to other collections, and how it was accessible to researchers,” Rawson said. “Very few efforts like ours are made public, and what I think is a very rare thing that we have done is collaborate with so many different institutions. So partly the power of our project is in the collaboration — we have so many people on board and excited to contribute materials.”

Dominating the database, which is searchable by keyword, collection, institution, and even location, are newsletters and magazines, all uploaded in their entirety. Peruse old issues of Fanfare, for instance, a South African quarterly published in the ’80s that focused on subjects from self-acceptance to familial relationships. Or flip through Letters from Female Impersonators, a ’60s periodical that printed open letters accompanied by often risqué portraits of their male writers in feminine attire. There’s also material on the history of transgender activism, including Rawson’s own favorites, the Tiffany Club Documents, from a Boston-based club for cross-dressers and their allies. The collection includes documents related to the club’s establishment, its founder’s outreach letters, and a draft of its constitution.

Other digitized objects are more personal, such as the photographs of Alison Laing, a transgender woman who co-founded the Renaissance Transgender Association and directed Fantasia Fair — the longest-running annual conference in the transgender community. Intimate snapshots show Laing dolled up on the beach, posing for a photo-booth camera, and performing at the Fantasia Fair. Another notable photo album comes from the California Cuties, the self-described “World’s Funniest Softball Team,” who published playful pictures of the cross-dressing team members, complete with accompanying short profiles.

Pages from the California Cuties’ 1970 ‘Official Picture Album and Souvenir Program: The Twenty-Second Season’ (courtesy Digital Transgender Archive) (click to enlarge)

The archive also features a number of creative works, including poetry and art published in zines such as Vanguard, which was put together by LGBTQ youth in San Francisco and features some neat psychedelic covers. Turnabout Publications also published art, reviews, photographs, and fiction in its magazines, and released books dedicated to stories of transvestism. Below, a sampling from Nan Gilbert’s 1967 “Miniskirted Male,” a tale of an aunt who dresses teenager Johnny as a young girl as a form of punishment:

Ordered before the full-length mirror to view himself, Johnny stared once more in disbelief at the vision of girlishly attired loveliness which peered back at him from the glassy depths. But he did not let his face reflect the horror this vision instilled in him. He even managed a wan smile.

Months passed during which Johnny’s feminization progressed to an alarming degree under the watchful eyes of his aunt and Suzanne.

He was taught proper mannerisms and gestures and to speak in a softly modulated tone. Everything was done to erase the masculine past from his mind and his body. Figure training reduced his waist to feminine slimness without further need of restriction, and the corsetting also rounded out his hips and buttocks to more girlish contours. The pressures of the corset, along with massage, created surplus flesh on his chest which gave the promise of girlish breasts. His hair was allowed to grow out to a length where almost any coiffure was possible, although it was usually arranged in ringlets with bangs over the forehead.

Cover of Turnabout publications from the 1960s (courtesy Digital Transgender Archive)

Cover of Turnabout publications from the 1960s (courtesy Digital Transgender Archive)

Fourteen of the partnering institutions already have their material online, and Rawson expects the database to hit 1,000 items within the next two months, as research assistants work on uploading archives from the remaining organizations. With an open call out to anyone who might have relevant contributions, however, the Digital Transgender Archive will grow continuously as a rich and varied resource.

“I’m hoping that because it’s a public resource, freely available online, that it will help people to see that people have been transitioning gender for a very long time and in many different ways and throughout the world,” Rawson said. “I think anytime a major public figure comes out — particularly in the US — there’s this cultural amnesia where people seem to forget and act like this is the first time it’s ever happened.

“So this is an effort to help elevate our cultural understanding of transgender practices.”

Cover of ‘Art & Illusion: A Guide to Crossdressing, Vol. 2’ (2000) (courtesy Transgender Archives, University of Victoria and Digital Transgender Archive)

Pages from a 1962 issue of ‘Letters from Female Impersonators’ (courtesy Digital Transgender Archive)

Pages from a 1962 issue of ‘Letters from Female Impersonators’ (courtesy Digital Transgender Archive) (click to enlarge)

Alison Laing lying on a bed (Joseph A. Labadie Collection, University of Michigan and Digital Transgender Archive)

Photos from Alison Laing’s early photo album (courtesy Joseph A. Labadie Collection, University of Michigan and Digital Transgender Archive)

Alison Laing and Lynnette Perform at Fantasia Fair Follies (courtesy Joseph A. Labadie Collection, University of Michigan)

A 1996 cover of ‘Chrysalis Quarterly,’ featuring sexologist Harry Benjamin and transgender activist Virginia Prince in a rendition of Grant Wood’s ‘American Gothic’ (courtesy Joseph A. Labadie Collection, University of Michigan and Digital Transgender Archive)

Cover of November 1987 issue of ‘Fanfare Magazine’ (courtesy Gender DynamiX and Digital Transgender Archive)

A page from a September 1986 issue of ‘Fanfare Magazine’ (courtesy Gender DynamiX )

Cover of ‘Vanguard Magazine Vol. 1 No. 9’ (1967) (courtesy GLBT Historical Society and Digital Transgender Archive)

Cover of the ‘Journal of Gender Studies Vol. XV #2 & XVI #1’ (summer 1993–spring 1994) (courtesy Digital Transgender Archive)

Cover of May 1995 issue of ‘Cross-Talk’ (courtesy Lili Elbe Archive and Digital Transgender Archive)

Building the Digital Transgender Archive

http://digital-frontiers.org/news/building-digital-transgender-archive-digital-frontiers-webinar-k-j-rawson

Building the Digital Transgender Archive | A Digital Frontiers Webinar with K. J. Rawson

We are pleased to announce a Digital Frontiers Webinar with K. J. Rawson: Building the Digital Transgender Archive

Friday, April 1, 2016 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM CDT

Abstract:

Many archives collect transgender-related historical materials; however, these materials are notoriously difficult to access since transgender materials are rarely described as such, very little information about these collections is digitized, archives that collect these materials are largely disconnected, and archives employ varying organizational systems. This project, “Building the Digital Transgender Archive,” will dramatically improve access to transgender history by creating a website that functions as a centralized hub for transgender historical materials.

K.J. Rawson is Assistant Professor in the English Department at the College of the Holy Cross. K.J.'s research and teaching interests include composition, rhetoric, digital media, and LGBT studies. In support of this work, K.J. was awarded an ACLS Digital Innovation Fellowship for the 2015–2016 academic year.

Please register at:
https://attendee.gototraining.com/r/6505789783915648001
After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

Violence & Learning

Violence & Learning

Open test session 

Location: White room

Similar to the way the police prepare themselves for crowd control not only by talking it through, but also setting up and playing out scenarios, we can prepare ourselves physically for a discussion about political means and ends. We want to consider the embodied knowledge of a certain action, situation or in a larger context the tacit knowledge of a political practice or a social movement. The possibility to move from the role of a bystander to a participator is the possibility to take a critical position on action itself, it is also possible to focus on a theoretical discussion about practice at a wider level.

This is an ongoing research project which aims to develop a form of pedagogical performance method inspired by Bertolt Brecht’s early theories about the Lehrstück and a theatre that is to be played rather than watched.

The project is inspired by Die Maßnahme, a play about politics and radicalism which still today is considered to be one of the most controversial texts in the German post-war era.

Our take is to examine the current militant social movements in Europe in scenarios which are loosely based on real events, reenacted with actors and a live audience. A major part of our source material comes from interviews with militant activists, focusing on their own experiences.

More info:

www.violenceandlearning.com

Credits

Sound design: Jonas Åkesson

Light design: Kerstin Weimers

Actors: Oskar Stenström, Sanne Ahlqvist Boltes, Sofia

Snahr, Olof Mårtensson

Producer: Samira Aridad

Concept, text and directing: Henrik Bromander och John Hanse

Event dates

9 March, 19:00

Thousands of Boston Students Just Walked Out of Class to Save Their Schools

http://usuncut.com/resistance/boston-public-schools-walkout/

Thousands of Boston high school students have descended onto the Boston Common and the Massachusetts State House in an unprecedented citywide walkout. Students are demanding the city rescind a controversial property tax break to General Electric and cease all budget cuts.

The Boston Public School District (BPS) is facing a budget deficit ranging from anywhere between $10 and $50 million for 2016. BPS students are calling out Mayor Marty Walsh for granting huge corporate tax giveaways while forcing schools to cut important curriculum and lay off faculty and staff. BPS Superintendent Tommy Chang estimates the budget deficit is approximately $50 million, but Mayor Walsh estimates the figure to be $10 million.

$18.6 million of the budget deficit comes from the district being forced to pay for charter schools that enroll BPS students. While the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is supposed to reimburse BPS for the charter school costs, it didn’t even cover half of the expenses last year.

A recent city-approved property tax break for General Electric is to blame for another $25 million that could’ve gone toward plugging the BPS budget gap. GE also receives an additional $151 million in city and state tax incentives. In return for all of these tax breaks, GE is only directly employing 600 people, which the commonwealth estimates will result in an additional 590 indirect jobs.

Boston city councilor Tito Jackson said the entire reason for GE choosing Boston’s workforce is due to its excellent schools, which are being sacrificed for corporate handouts.

“If we don’t invest in our talent and our talent pipeline, a company like GE will come and go and will not stay here,” Jackson told BostInno.

Boston students self-organized the walkout, handing out a flyer at their schools educating their fellow students about the budget cuts and encouraging them to join the walkout. 

These Brooklyn-Based Artists Are Building An Archive Of The Future For The African Diaspora

http://www.okayafrica.com/news/iyapo-repository-brooklyn-artists-archive-of-the-future/

Ayodamola Okunseinde (left) and Salome Asega (right) take the Iyapo Repository to the streets of Brooklyn. Photo courtesy of Ayodamola Okunseinde.

Spandex, tubing and motors come together to resemble an earthbound spacesuit. For Brooklyn-based new media artists Salome Asega and Ayodamola Okunseinde, creating the opportunity to invent a vision of the future that includes people of African descent is an urgent project. What looks like an Afro-centric astronaut is actually an artifact of much deeper spiritual and cultural meaning.

“We have [participants] play a card game where they choose a narrative, object and purpose of the invention,” Asega tells Okayafrica in a phone interview. “We had a woman, for example, who had to invent an object for a revolutionary that included a motor with a medicinal function. She drew a bodysuit made of spandex, tubing and motors on the arms and legs. She thought this object could be used for therapeutic purposes to help people who’ve experienced water trauma.”

According to Okunseinde, interpreting the purpose of the inventions helps the process to be reflective as much as it is technological.

“In this case,” he says, “this bodysuit will help somebody who had trauma with large bodies of water through the impact of the Atlantic Slave Trade. It becomes a way to deal with that cultural trauma. When we build this suit, we plan on incorporating vibrator motors that provide data on tidal waves in the Atlantic Ocean.”

In conjunction with their Eyebeam residencies in Brooklyn, Asega and Okunseinde developed the Iyapo Repository as a way for the community to begin thinking about futuristic artifacts. They consider the participants to be “archivists of a futuristic museum.” They’ve facilitated workshops and set up “research centers” for the public on the streets of Brooklyn for participants to interpret each object’s function as well as their role in a futuristic society. Asega and Okunseinde will then take the drawn or constructed prototypes and construct them into functional inventions.

The artists recently brought the design thinking workshop to Brooklyn’s Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (MoCADA) in conjunction with February’s Black Future month. Named after the character Lilith Iyapo, as an ode to African-American sci-fi author Octavia Butler, the project emphasizes the devices that add to the capability of having one see themselves in the future through technology.

“The future is given to us in in a top-down way,” Asega says. “We want our participants to feel a sense of ownership — that one can actually create one’s own future. When one starts thinking in that space, the future becomes even more possible.”

For Okunseinde and Asega, this project is about the plurality of futurism and for one to negotiate what hasn’t worked in the present.

“Ultimately we’d love to do this internationally — like in Brazil, Nigeria or a country in East Africa — to see if there’s a difference between locations,” Okunseinde says. “Their perception of the future may be different than ours when considering their language, experiences and environment.”

The artists hope to showcase the objects they are building from the Iyapo Repository at a show with Eyebeam in May. They are also in the process of looking at other residency programs and galleries to continue the project. Visit Iyapo Repository’s website for more information.

Photo courtesy of Ayodamola Okunseinde.

Photo courtesy of Ayodamola Okunseinde.

Photo taken at the Iyapo Repository workshop at Brooklyn’s MoCADA. Courtesy of Ayodamola Okunseinde.

How to Buy an Old Bank for $1 and Make It Into an Arts Palace

http://www.citylab.com/design/2015/10/how-to-buy-an-old-bank-for-1-and-make-it-into-an-arts-palace/410980/

The Chicago artist Theaster Gates’ Stony Island Art Bank is an artwork, not just an arts venue.

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Chicago’s first-ever Architecture Biennial served as a staging ground for wild pavilions, exhibits, and installations. The fair also coincided with the debut of a major new artwork: the Stony Island Art Bank.
Theaster Gates bought the Prohibition-era Stony Island Trust & Savings Bank building from the city of Chicago for $1. Yes, there was a catch: The artist had to raise the $3.7 million it would take to rehabilitate the building and put it to new use. Gates did the thing that you’re never supposed to do with a historicbuilding: He started pulling it apart, piece by piece.

The Stony Island Art Bank, a venue and artwork by Theaster Gates for South Chicago. (Tom Harris/Hedrich Blessing; courtesy of Rebuild Foundation)

Since 2013, Gates has been pulling chunks of marble from the building. The artist cut these chunks into “bond certificates” stamped with his signature and the motto, “In ART We Trust.” As Gates told The New York Times back in 2013, he sold 100 marble tablets for $5,000 apiece, as well as some larger slabs that went for $50,000 each. Since they’re artworks whose value stands to appreciate, the marble chunks in fact do work like bonds.
All of Chicago’s South Side was invited to attend the opening of the Stony Island Art Bank earlier this month. (Chicago Architecture Biennial attendees, too.) The building is now an archive for community resources, among them the books and magazines of John H. Johnson, founder of Ebony and Jet and the vast record collection of Chicago’s Frankie Knuckles, the late Godfather of House Music.

 

“The concept floats across: this place is about access,” writes Ari Ephraim Feldman in South Side Weekly, noting that the opening was filled with Motown music and dancing as well as a cardboard installation by the Portuguese artist Carlos Bunga.

Tom Harris/Hedrich Blessing (courtesy of Rebuild Foundation)

Typical Gates. The artist is known for his work in a field called “social practice,”a genre that has no specific medium or form—only an ethos about working with communities or institutions. The lineage of this kind of work is long and distinguished, although in recent years, social practice has gained traction and visibility beyond the art world. Mel Chin, a sculptor, has made work directly engaging the plight of lead-soil contamination in New Orleans. Rick Lowe—who rejects the term—won a MacArthur Foundation genius grant for Project Row Houses, an incubator and community resource center in Houston comprising 22 formerly derelict properties. (Lowe refers to his work as “social sculpture,” for what it’s worth.)
Feldman’s writeup of opening night captures an important dynamic in Gates’ work. “I talked to people at the opening, and the general pattern was this: if you had a ticket you were inspired, and if you had a uniform on you were confused,” he writes. Feldman elaborates:

Ticket: “I love that he’s preserving this music for the younger generations to come and listen to it.” Uniform: “It’s unique. Different. Good for the neighborhood, I guess.” Ticket: “They’re taking depleted buildings in the community and returning them to the jewels they are.” Uniform: “All I know is that it used to be an abandoned building and now it’s not.” Ticket: “This space is multifunctional—it’s just a space waiting to activate.” Uniform: “I don’t know what […] this place is for.”

It’s an insightful observation. The decidedly different ways that people of different stripes relate to the project is what gives it its great dimensionality. It’s one factor that distinguishes the Stony Island Art Bank as an artwork, not just an arts venue. The same goes for the other South Side projects that Gates is creating through his Rebuild Foundation.
In a release, Gates described the project as “an institution of and for the South Side.” The New Yorker says that Gates is “is reshaping the South Side in his image.” That’s not quite right (I say, having never met the man). To my mind, Gates is just teeing up the South Side. It’s the people who complete his installations. The bonds he sold are an investment in them.

Tom Harris/Hedrich Blessing (courtesy of Rebuild Foundation)

Tom Harris/Hedrich Blessing (courtesy of Rebuild Foundation)

Tom Harris/Hedrich Blessing (courtesy of Rebuild Foundation)

Tom Harris/Hedrich Blessing (courtesy of Rebuild Foundation)

Tom Harris/Hedrich Blessing (courtesy of Rebuild Foundation)

Tom Harris/Hedrich Blessing (courtesy of Rebuild Foundation)