Sunday, December 27, 2009
Friday, December 18, 2009
Grace Paley Quote Shirt from Code Pink!
From Code Pink:
Even after all the disappointments of this year, the items on the list and our own strength and persistence give me immense hope in the possibilities to come as we greet the New Year. As visionary activist and writer Grace Paley said, "The ONLY recognizable feature of HOPE is ACTION" - so ACT today and support CODEPINK with a donation and get your Grace Paley t-shirt, designed by Phillip Niemeyer in our store!
For the tank top version:
https://codepink.myshopify.com/products/hope-grace-paley-tank-top
Or for a long sleeve version
https://codepink.myshopify.com/products/hope-grace-paley-3-4-sleeve
Or for a regular classic tee:
https://codepink.myshopify.com/products/hope-grace-paley-tee
Even after all the disappointments of this year, the items on the list and our own strength and persistence give me immense hope in the possibilities to come as we greet the New Year. As visionary activist and writer Grace Paley said, "The ONLY recognizable feature of HOPE is ACTION" - so ACT today and support CODEPINK with a donation and get your Grace Paley t-shirt, designed by Phillip Niemeyer in our store!
For the tank top version:
https://codepink.myshopify.com/products/hope-grace-paley-tank-topOr for a long sleeve version
https://codepink.myshopify.com/products/hope-grace-paley-3-4-sleeveOr for a regular classic tee:
https://codepink.myshopify.com/products/hope-grace-paley-tee
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Speaking Truth to Power: Grace Paley
This is a recording of the event held at Barnard College in celebration of Grace Paley's birthfay.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Grace Paley Celebration at Barnard! TODAY
Grace Paley: Speaking Truth to Power
with Yvette Christiansë, Ynestra King, Nancy Kricorian, and Amy Swerdlow
A Panel Discussion: Friday, 12/11, 6:30 PM
James Room, 4th Floor Barnard Hall, Barnard College, 3009 Broadway, NYC
On Grace Paley's birthday, we present a conversation exploring how imagination, truthtelling, and courageous action flow out of Paley's life and work. A prolific writer, Paley's fiction highlights them everyday struggles of women, what she calls "a history of everyday life." In addition to her writing, Paley was also a committed activist, passionate about numerous issues, including women's rights, the Vietnam War, nuclear non-proliferation, and most recently, the war in Iraq. Her death in 2007 was a great loss, but her work continues to inspire.
Speakers, coming from a range of generations, will include politically engaged writers, artists, and activists in such causes as immigration rights, housing, human rights, gay and lesbian issues, foreclosure actions, anti-militarism and other important struggles. The speakers have all drawn inspiration from Paley's work and life and demonstrate various affinities to the amazing woman, artist and thinker who described herself as a "combative pacifist and cooperative anarchist."
Speakers will include:
Lucila Silva, a member of The Center for Immigrant Families Collective--The Center for Immigrant Families (CIF) is an inter-generational, collectively-run organization of low-income immigrant women of color
and community members in Manhattan Valley. CIF’s mission is to address the inter-connected challenges facing our communities by linking our personal/psychological well-being, health, and development to sustained organizing that transforms the root causes of the injustices we confront and their multi-layered impact on our lives and communities.
Yvette Christiansë, a poet, novelist and scholar, teaches African American, African and African Diasporic literatures at Fordham University. Her novel Unconfessed was a finalist in the 2007 Hemingway/PEN Prize and shortlisted for the 2008 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Her first book of poems Castaway (1999), was
nominated for the 2001 PEN International Prize and her latest book of poetry, Imprendehora was published in South Africa by Kwela Books/Snail Press in 2009.
Ynestra King, ecofeminist activist and educator, is the author of Ecofeminism: The Reenchantment of Nature (Boston: Beacon Press, 1991); and editor of Dangerous Intersections: Feminist Perspectives on
Population, Environment, and Development with Jael Miriam Silliman; and Rocking the Ship of State : Toward a Feminist Peace Politics with Adrienne Harris. Her classes in Ecofeminism at the Institute for Social Ecology in the late 70's were among the first in the country.
Nancy Kricorian is a New York-based writer and activist. Author of the novels Zabelle and Dreams of Bread and Fire, her poetry has been published in PARNASSUS, MISSISSIPPI REVIEW and ARARAT. She is
currently dividing her time between writing her third novel and working as the New York City coordinator for CODEPINK WOMEN FOR PEACE, a women-initiated grassroots peace & social movement known for its use of direct action and street theater.
Amy Swerdlow is Professor Emerita, Sarah Lawrence College where she directed the MA Program in Women's History and the Women's Studies Program. Swerdlow is a co-founding member of Women Strike for Peace and author of Women Strike for Peace: Traditional Motherhood and Radical Politics in the 1960s and numerous articles on radical reform movements from the abolitionists in the 19th century to the peace movements of the late 20th century.
contact:
Lucy Trainor
Program Manager
Barnard Center for Research on Women
p (212) 854-2067
f (212) 854-8294
http://www.barnard.edu/bcrw
with Yvette Christiansë, Ynestra King, Nancy Kricorian, and Amy Swerdlow
A Panel Discussion: Friday, 12/11, 6:30 PM
James Room, 4th Floor Barnard Hall, Barnard College, 3009 Broadway, NYC
On Grace Paley's birthday, we present a conversation exploring how imagination, truthtelling, and courageous action flow out of Paley's life and work. A prolific writer, Paley's fiction highlights them everyday struggles of women, what she calls "a history of everyday life." In addition to her writing, Paley was also a committed activist, passionate about numerous issues, including women's rights, the Vietnam War, nuclear non-proliferation, and most recently, the war in Iraq. Her death in 2007 was a great loss, but her work continues to inspire.
Speakers, coming from a range of generations, will include politically engaged writers, artists, and activists in such causes as immigration rights, housing, human rights, gay and lesbian issues, foreclosure actions, anti-militarism and other important struggles. The speakers have all drawn inspiration from Paley's work and life and demonstrate various affinities to the amazing woman, artist and thinker who described herself as a "combative pacifist and cooperative anarchist."
Speakers will include:
Lucila Silva, a member of The Center for Immigrant Families Collective--The Center for Immigrant Families (CIF) is an inter-generational, collectively-run organization of low-income immigrant women of color
and community members in Manhattan Valley. CIF’s mission is to address the inter-connected challenges facing our communities by linking our personal/psychological well-being, health, and development to sustained organizing that transforms the root causes of the injustices we confront and their multi-layered impact on our lives and communities.
Yvette Christiansë, a poet, novelist and scholar, teaches African American, African and African Diasporic literatures at Fordham University. Her novel Unconfessed was a finalist in the 2007 Hemingway/PEN Prize and shortlisted for the 2008 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Her first book of poems Castaway (1999), was
nominated for the 2001 PEN International Prize and her latest book of poetry, Imprendehora was published in South Africa by Kwela Books/Snail Press in 2009.
Ynestra King, ecofeminist activist and educator, is the author of Ecofeminism: The Reenchantment of Nature (Boston: Beacon Press, 1991); and editor of Dangerous Intersections: Feminist Perspectives on
Population, Environment, and Development with Jael Miriam Silliman; and Rocking the Ship of State : Toward a Feminist Peace Politics with Adrienne Harris. Her classes in Ecofeminism at the Institute for Social Ecology in the late 70's were among the first in the country.
Nancy Kricorian is a New York-based writer and activist. Author of the novels Zabelle and Dreams of Bread and Fire, her poetry has been published in PARNASSUS, MISSISSIPPI REVIEW and ARARAT. She is
currently dividing her time between writing her third novel and working as the New York City coordinator for CODEPINK WOMEN FOR PEACE, a women-initiated grassroots peace & social movement known for its use of direct action and street theater.
Amy Swerdlow is Professor Emerita, Sarah Lawrence College where she directed the MA Program in Women's History and the Women's Studies Program. Swerdlow is a co-founding member of Women Strike for Peace and author of Women Strike for Peace: Traditional Motherhood and Radical Politics in the 1960s and numerous articles on radical reform movements from the abolitionists in the 19th century to the peace movements of the late 20th century.
contact:
Lucy Trainor
Program Manager
Barnard Center for Research on Women
p (212) 854-2067
f (212) 854-8294
http://www.barnard.edu/bcrw
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Celebration of Grace's Birthday in Boston
REMEMBERING GRACE PALEY: DECEMBER 2009
Thursday, 10 December 2009 7-9PM
Friends Meeting House, 5 Longfellow Park (off Brattle Street), Cambridge, MA
With the holiday season fast approaching the William Joiner Center for the Study of War and Social Consequences will once again celebrate the life and work of writer and activist Grace Paley. The Grace Paley Tribute Reading, which will be held at Friends Meeting at Cambridge on Thursday, December 10th, 7-9 pm, will feature local activists reading from Grace’s work.
This year we are pleased to welcome students from UMass Boston who received special recognition through the 2009 Grace Paley Award for their community involvement. They are Son-ca Lam, Stephanie Fail and Heather Turner. Joining them will be Bob Nicols, Nora Paley, Bob Glassman, Bob Zevin, Trudi Cohen, Tom Goodkind, Michael Ansara, Wayne Smith, Barbara Lewis and many other activists, teachers and community organizers.
A potluck reception will follow the reading – please let us know if you’d like to contribute! You can email us at joinercenter@umb.edu. Copies of Grace’s books will be available at the reception.
The Joiner Center is also pleased to announce Tru Grace: Holiday Memoirs, a special production of Grace Paley’s short story “The Loudest Voice” by the Underground Railway Theater. Adapted by Wes Savick of Suffolk University’s Theatre Department, the play premieres on Thursday, November 19th and runs through Sunday, December 27th along with Truman Capote’s “A Christmas Memory.” These whimsical tales will be playing at Central Square Theater. For reservations check
www.centralsquaretheater.org, or by call the box office at 866-811-4111.
The Underground Railway Theater would also like to extend an invitation the Joiner Center community to participate in the sharing of anecdotes and/or the reading of a piece by Grace on December 6th, directly after the 2 pm matinee, when they will be hosting a celebration of Grace's life
Thursday, 10 December 2009 7-9PM
Friends Meeting House, 5 Longfellow Park (off Brattle Street), Cambridge, MA
With the holiday season fast approaching the William Joiner Center for the Study of War and Social Consequences will once again celebrate the life and work of writer and activist Grace Paley. The Grace Paley Tribute Reading, which will be held at Friends Meeting at Cambridge on Thursday, December 10th, 7-9 pm, will feature local activists reading from Grace’s work.
This year we are pleased to welcome students from UMass Boston who received special recognition through the 2009 Grace Paley Award for their community involvement. They are Son-ca Lam, Stephanie Fail and Heather Turner. Joining them will be Bob Nicols, Nora Paley, Bob Glassman, Bob Zevin, Trudi Cohen, Tom Goodkind, Michael Ansara, Wayne Smith, Barbara Lewis and many other activists, teachers and community organizers.
A potluck reception will follow the reading – please let us know if you’d like to contribute! You can email us at joinercenter@umb.edu. Copies of Grace’s books will be available at the reception.
The Joiner Center is also pleased to announce Tru Grace: Holiday Memoirs, a special production of Grace Paley’s short story “The Loudest Voice” by the Underground Railway Theater. Adapted by Wes Savick of Suffolk University’s Theatre Department, the play premieres on Thursday, November 19th and runs through Sunday, December 27th along with Truman Capote’s “A Christmas Memory.” These whimsical tales will be playing at Central Square Theater. For reservations check
www.centralsquaretheater.org, or by call the box office at 866-811-4111.
The Underground Railway Theater would also like to extend an invitation the Joiner Center community to participate in the sharing of anecdotes and/or the reading of a piece by Grace on December 6th, directly after the 2 pm matinee, when they will be hosting a celebration of Grace's life
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Aminetu Haidar: In Spite of Everything. Saharawi on Hunger Strike
by ATENEA AVECEDO
Aminetu Haidar was arrested at the El Aaiun Airport (former capital of Western Sahara, a country under Moroccan military occupation since 1975) because in filling out the corresponding entry form she wrote "Western Sahara" as her country of origin instead of "Morocco". The Moroccan authorities confiscated her passport and forced her aboard another aircraft bound to Lanzarote, Canary Islands, Spain). The Spanish authorities refuse to let her fly back to El Aaiun, where her children are, because she does not have the necessary papers. What might seem a mere red tape issue reveals, on one hand, the toughening of Moroccan policies against Saharawi human rights activists -being Saharawi and refusing to assume one's nationality as Moroccan is considered high treason by the Moroccan regime- and, on the other, the complicity between the Spanish and the Moroccan States. Aminetu Haidar initiated a hunger strike on 15 November as a protest against her current status.
Our senses, habituated to a never innocent violence – normalized through lingering media bombardment – only react when the scandalous aspect of news reaches the border between reality and fiction. Once in a while, almost always later than sooner, the violence that mercilessly strikes women appears in mass media headlines: women retained in Serbian rape camps, young working women slaughtered in Ciudad Juárez, women murdered by either romantic or sexual partners. Less frequently, a specific face repeats itself on the television screens and a name struggles to conquer a corner of our memory. Today such a face belongs to Saharawi activist Aminetu Haidar, a peaceful defender of human rights and international humanitarian rights whose case began to filter out through tiny snippets of information and now expands like a pool of uncontainable blood.
Aminetu – a former detainee in Moroccan secret jails, where she “disappeared” for years – has the willpower that we usually find in those who have lived and suffered enough to thoroughly know both the strength and fragility of the human spirit. The old and vile complicity between the governments of Spain and Morocco, a complicity that impedes Aminetu’s return to Western Sahara, her motherland – under military occupation since 1975 – and that has forced her to start a hunger strike against it, is the same that historically marks all perverse pacts signed to the detriment of people everywhere. Now it is the turn of the Saharawi people, affected for 34 years now by such complicity and surely even more as a former Spanish colony whose national identity was modified and resources exploited until the commercial alliances were consolidated that today define the inexcusable continuance of a shameful conflict.
Now, while Spanish government officials turn a deaf ear to a hunger strike in its second week, it’s useless to give an account of Spain’s violations of Aminetu’s demand to return to El Aaiun. Better to unmask the lie which is being repeated a thousand times to make it into a truth. But even more useful is to point out that what is happening in Aminetu’s case unveils the still concealed factual ins and outs of a political system that claims to be democratic and mistakenly acknowledges: 1) that democracy is simply dictatorship’s antonym, and 2) that societies are satisfied with periodic elections and spaces where they can shout their dissatisfaction even if nothing changes in the real world. Is this the harbor to which the globally celebrated “Spanish transition” has arrived after those very same 34 years? Or is it that the transition process is unfinished and one of its steps consists of a combination of handwashing and complicity with the current occupying power in its former colony?
A democratic government is based upon popular expression at the polls and assumes the commitment to represent the interests of majorities while listening to minorities, but it also acknowledges that democracy is a social construction process that involves the decision of not riding roughshod over the rights of other people beyond its borders. As well, it also consists on keeping a retrospective view motivated by the learning and amending of any errors in its own history. The Spanish government’s attitude in Western Sahara adds to so many other aspects of its foreign policy, that make evident an embarrassing desire to continue looking down on the South with contempt and neo-colonial thirst, both in Africa and Latin America.
In the face of such a devastating scene, people of Spanish descent who, coming from the most human solidarity transcend what they learned in their childhood textbooks full of omissions, set an example and remind us that people and government are not the same thing. In our countries, on this side of the Atlantic Ocean, it is disappointing to see rebellious societies with servile governments that don’t know how or don’t want to abandon their role as mental and economic colonizers.
This is Aminetu’s scene of resistance. Those who have experienced the horror of torture affirm that the only refuge against its cruelty is the mind, a place that people feel to be their own, a place where the repressor cannot enter, the haven that saves one from madness. On the other hand, in the black night of the prison without walls that is forced exile or life under military occupation, the body can become the last resource to call for justice. A woman appropriates her body and transforms it into a vehicle of transgression and denunciation. That gesture, both real and symbolic, not only means to appropriate her own life (we don’t get the accounts wrong: in these circumstances her latent death will continue being the responsibility of both the Spanish and Moroccan governments and of international indifference), but above all, to appropriate her own body, a body that has already been disappeared, forced, beaten and forcefully transformed into an instrument of terror at the hands of her torturer occupant.
Our world, still patriarchal, insists on seeing women as part of the collective property of men who are the holders of a people’s identity. For that reason, invaders vent their anger by raping women as an act to tarnish the masculine pride of a nation. Even the left has not been able to cast off the idea of women as either public property (“to protect our mujeres”) or private property, acquired through the sexual act (“I introduce you to my mujer”)*. Aminetu knows that in spite of everything, she only belongs to herself, as we all do, and from that conscience she has been partner, friend and fighter. Indefatigable survivor and owner of herself, she grabs what is within reach of all human beings demanding the observance of a right: the right to her mind, her body and her unredeemed heart.
I will never understand mankind’s ease in cyclically losing with complete indifference its most valuable and gifted people, the very same ones who could rescue it from its miseries. I hope it doesn't happen again this time.
*Spanish for women/woman.
English translation by Manuel Talens, edited by Machetera. Atenea Acevedo, Manuel Talens and Machetera are members of Tlaxcala, the international network of translators for linguistic diversity. This translation may be reprinted as long as the content remains unaltered, and the source, author, translator and editor are cited.
For more information on the Saharawi struggle and Aminetu Haidar's hunger strike, check out the show aired by Democracy Now on 1 December 2009.
source: http://www.tlaxcala.es/detail_artistes.asp?lg=es&reference=374
Friday, December 4, 2009
Grace Paley Celebration at Barnard!
Grace Paley: Speaking Truth to Power
with Yvette Christiansë, Ynestra King, Nancy Kricorian, and Amy Swerdlow
A Panel Discussion: Friday, 12/11, 6:30 PM
James Room, 4th Floor Barnard Hall, Barnard College, 3009 Broadway, NYC
On Grace Paley's birthday, we present a conversation exploring how imagination, truthtelling, and courageous action flow out of Paley's life and work. A prolific writer, Paley's fiction highlights them everyday struggles of women, what she calls "a history of everyday life." In addition to her writing, Paley was also a committed activist, passionate about numerous issues, including women's rights, the Vietnam War, nuclear non-proliferation, and most recently, the war in Iraq. Her death in 2007 was a great loss, but her work continues to inspire.
Speakers, coming from a range of generations, will include politically engaged writers, artists, and activists in such causes as immigration rights, housing, human rights, gay and lesbian issues, foreclosure actions, anti-militarism and other important struggles. The speakers have all drawn inspiration from Paley's work and life and demonstrate various affinities to the amazing woman, artist and thinker who described herself as a "combative pacifist and cooperative anarchist."
Speakers will include:
Lucila Silva, a member of The Center for Immigrant Families Collective--The Center for Immigrant Families (CIF) is an inter-generational, collectively-run organization of low-income immigrant women of color
and community members in Manhattan Valley. CIF’s mission is to address the inter-connected challenges facing our communities by linking our personal/psychological well-being, health, and development to sustained organizing that transforms the root causes of the injustices we confront and their multi-layered impact on our lives and communities.
Yvette Christiansë, a poet, novelist and scholar, teaches African American, African and African Diasporic literatures at Fordham University. Her novel Unconfessed was a finalist in the 2007 Hemingway/PEN Prize and shortlisted for the 2008 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Her first book of poems Castaway (1999), was
nominated for the 2001 PEN International Prize and her latest book of poetry, Imprendehora was published in South Africa by Kwela Books/Snail Press in 2009.
Ynestra King, ecofeminist activist and educator, is the author of Ecofeminism: The Reenchantment of Nature (Boston: Beacon Press, 1991); and editor of Dangerous Intersections: Feminist Perspectives on
Population, Environment, and Development with Jael Miriam Silliman; and Rocking the Ship of State : Toward a Feminist Peace Politics with Adrienne Harris. Her classes in Ecofeminism at the Institute for Social Ecology in the late 70's were among the first in the country.
Nancy Kricorian is a New York-based writer and activist. Author of the novels Zabelle and Dreams of Bread and Fire, her poetry has been published in PARNASSUS, MISSISSIPPI REVIEW and ARARAT. She is
currently dividing her time between writing her third novel and working as the New York City coordinator for CODEPINK WOMEN FOR PEACE, a women-initiated grassroots peace & social movement known for its use of direct action and street theater.
Amy Swerdlow is Professor Emerita, Sarah Lawrence College where she directed the MA Program in Women's History and the Women's Studies Program. Swerdlow is a co-founding member of Women Strike for Peace and author of Women Strike for Peace: Traditional Motherhood and Radical Politics in the 1960s and numerous articles on radical reform movements from the abolitionists in the 19th century to the peace movements of the late 20th century.
contact:
Lucy Trainor
Program Manager
Barnard Center for Research on Women
p (212) 854-2067
f (212) 854-8294
http://www.barnard.edu/bcrw
with Yvette Christiansë, Ynestra King, Nancy Kricorian, and Amy Swerdlow
A Panel Discussion: Friday, 12/11, 6:30 PM
James Room, 4th Floor Barnard Hall, Barnard College, 3009 Broadway, NYC
On Grace Paley's birthday, we present a conversation exploring how imagination, truthtelling, and courageous action flow out of Paley's life and work. A prolific writer, Paley's fiction highlights them everyday struggles of women, what she calls "a history of everyday life." In addition to her writing, Paley was also a committed activist, passionate about numerous issues, including women's rights, the Vietnam War, nuclear non-proliferation, and most recently, the war in Iraq. Her death in 2007 was a great loss, but her work continues to inspire.
Speakers, coming from a range of generations, will include politically engaged writers, artists, and activists in such causes as immigration rights, housing, human rights, gay and lesbian issues, foreclosure actions, anti-militarism and other important struggles. The speakers have all drawn inspiration from Paley's work and life and demonstrate various affinities to the amazing woman, artist and thinker who described herself as a "combative pacifist and cooperative anarchist."
Speakers will include:
Lucila Silva, a member of The Center for Immigrant Families Collective--The Center for Immigrant Families (CIF) is an inter-generational, collectively-run organization of low-income immigrant women of color
and community members in Manhattan Valley. CIF’s mission is to address the inter-connected challenges facing our communities by linking our personal/psychological well-being, health, and development to sustained organizing that transforms the root causes of the injustices we confront and their multi-layered impact on our lives and communities.
Yvette Christiansë, a poet, novelist and scholar, teaches African American, African and African Diasporic literatures at Fordham University. Her novel Unconfessed was a finalist in the 2007 Hemingway/PEN Prize and shortlisted for the 2008 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Her first book of poems Castaway (1999), was
nominated for the 2001 PEN International Prize and her latest book of poetry, Imprendehora was published in South Africa by Kwela Books/Snail Press in 2009.
Ynestra King, ecofeminist activist and educator, is the author of Ecofeminism: The Reenchantment of Nature (Boston: Beacon Press, 1991); and editor of Dangerous Intersections: Feminist Perspectives on
Population, Environment, and Development with Jael Miriam Silliman; and Rocking the Ship of State : Toward a Feminist Peace Politics with Adrienne Harris. Her classes in Ecofeminism at the Institute for Social Ecology in the late 70's were among the first in the country.
Nancy Kricorian is a New York-based writer and activist. Author of the novels Zabelle and Dreams of Bread and Fire, her poetry has been published in PARNASSUS, MISSISSIPPI REVIEW and ARARAT. She is
currently dividing her time between writing her third novel and working as the New York City coordinator for CODEPINK WOMEN FOR PEACE, a women-initiated grassroots peace & social movement known for its use of direct action and street theater.
Amy Swerdlow is Professor Emerita, Sarah Lawrence College where she directed the MA Program in Women's History and the Women's Studies Program. Swerdlow is a co-founding member of Women Strike for Peace and author of Women Strike for Peace: Traditional Motherhood and Radical Politics in the 1960s and numerous articles on radical reform movements from the abolitionists in the 19th century to the peace movements of the late 20th century.
contact:
Lucy Trainor
Program Manager
Barnard Center for Research on Women
p (212) 854-2067
f (212) 854-8294
http://www.barnard.edu/bcrw
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