Category: Art as Resistance

The E-Dictionary

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Art as ResistanceLeave a comment

ethelbert millerFrom literary activist E. Ethelbert Miller, the board chairperson of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), a board member of The Writer’s Center and editor of Poet Lore magazine (a recommendation of Rose Berger):

It’s my belief that in order to usher in a better society a new language and vocabulary will need to be created. I’ve slowly started developing my own personal new dictionary. This creation I feel will help add clarify to my understanding of the things taking place around me. Many of the words and terms I’ve coined or have “borrowed” from others can be linked to our technology changing how we live. In my essays and public conversations I try to use these words as often as possible. So far I have 14 entries in my dictionary. Here they are.
Continue reading “The E-Dictionary” →

Sacred Jazz As Spiritual Midwifery by Joshua Grace

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Art as Resistance, Cloud of Witnesses1 Comment

warren cooper…moving forward on the journey of being organized agents for transformation…from the inside out.
Warren Cooper (photo right)

During a wonderfully painful & hopeful confluence of the #BlackLivesMatter and #ICantBreathe spotlights on systemic racism and the release of the film Selma, Philadelphia joined many other US cities in the effort to reclaim the MLK holiday as a day of disrupting the status quo. Our church, Circle of Hope, has been making some concerted efforts this month to be shaped deeper by the legacy of Dr. King as well as open our sails wide to the winds of the Spirit.
Continue reading “Sacred Jazz As Spiritual Midwifery by Joshua Grace” →

Selma: The Wait Ain’t Over

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Art as ResistanceLeave a comment

selma-bridgeBy Tommy Airey

Who murdered Jimmie Lee Jackson? Every white lawman who abuses the law to terrorize. Every white politician who feeds on prejudice and hatred. Every white preacher who preaches the bible and stays silent before his white congregation.
Martin Luther King in Selma (1965…2015)

There’s a chilling scene in the just-released Selma where Lyndon Johnson (Tom Wilkinson) peppers George Wallace (Tim Roth) over why he won’t ensure that black Americans have full protection to vote in his state. The notorious governor of Alabama assures the President that he doesn’t really have the power to do anything even if he wanted to: that’s up to counties and cities. And besides, if black folks get the full power of the vote (as enshrined in the Constitution a century earlier), then they will move on to more “demands:” for jobs, housing, health care and more.
Continue reading “Selma: The Wait Ain’t Over” →

Against Silence

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Art as Resistance, RaceLeave a comment

JessFrom Tyehimba Jess, whose first book of poetry, leadbelly, was a winner of the 2004 National Poetry Series. Wave Books will publish his next book, Olio, in 2016. He is an Associate Professor of English at the College of Staten Island.

My name is Tyehimba Jess. I am a black poet. I have a silence to be rightened. I have a silence after each shooting. I remain a nation unsilenced. I am a poet murdering silence. My name is Eric. My name is Bell. My name is Eleanor. My name is nation. My rights fit any murder description. My remains remained on the asphalt for
Continue reading “Against Silence” →

A Dedication to the Children of Palestine

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Art as Resistance1 Comment

palestinePoetry by Shahin Shabanian
Artwork by Ibrahim Ozdabak

I know you, child
I have seen your face full of fears
And your eyes full of tears.

Your fears are real as they were then:
When you were abused in ghettos of Europe,
And in the concentration camps, without a hope.
Gassed and burned in the ovens: a damned consternation,
The instigating brutes called it the “Final Solution.”
Continue reading “A Dedication to the Children of Palestine” →

Yield

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Art as Resistance, Biography as TheologyLeave a comment

kate foranWritten by Kate Foran. Kate Foran appreciates her three season CSA share and thinks it’s worth noting how the liturgical calendar builds in a lean time during the last weeks of winter and first weeks of spring.

“That Wilderness should turn a mart”
quoted in  Changes in the Land by William Cronon

In this troubled area of the world known as
my shoulders, my roving fingers dig for what
must be buried there—gold doubloons
or taut and humming harpsichord strings
and I wonder about all that stored energy,
the tension I’m saving, always vigilant
for some fight or flight that never comes, Continue reading “Yield” →

O Holy Nightmare: Incarnation and Apocalypse

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Art as ResistanceLeave a comment

nativityBy Bill Wylie-Kellermann

Fritz Eichenberg, the artist so long associated with the Catholic Worker, published a wonderful and disturbing depiction of the Nativity. In the center foreground lies the babe on hay and in swaddling clothes. Nestled round are an adoring donkey and a cow. Through the crossbeams above, a star points down from the heavens. Hallmark, you would think, would snatch up the print for a comforting and conventional Christmas card. Continue reading “O Holy Nightmare: Incarnation and Apocalypse” →

Art As Resistance: The Die-In

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Art as ResistanceLeave a comment

Die InIn recent weeks, organized die-ins have spread through cities all over the world, in protest of the decades long epidemic of police brutalities and fatalities. On Friday, over 100 Legal Aid attorneys walked out of Brooklyn Criminal Court Tuesday morning to protest the grand jury outcome in Eric Garner’s case.

“Mr. Garner was our client and we wanted to show solidarity with our clients,” said attorney Rebecca Kavanagh.

Bina Ahmed is a public defender on Staten Island.

“We see a lot of police brutality,” she explained. “We see a lot of charges of resisting arrest when people are beaten to a pulp by the NYPD, to justify the brutality”
Continue reading “Art As Resistance: The Die-In” →

A Feature of the Unjust System

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Art as ResistanceLeave a comment

Molly CrabappleArt as Resistance from Molly Crabapple:

In America, the justice system is anything but just. Courts are conduits for the caging of (mostly black or brown) humans. The police feed people into the courts, and if they sometimes kill those they are arresting it’s regarded as a cost barely worth mentioning. And though they kill a lot of people—in Utah, police shootings are the second most common type of h​omicide—they are rarely punished. From the fellow officers who write reports and testify on the behalf of killers to the prosecutors who seem determined to let murderers get away, the very system that claims to monitor the police protects them. Police kill. They get away with it. They kill again. Eventually, you realize that this process is not a bug in the system, it’s a feature.