TEENAGE DEMOCRACY
ISSUE THREE
FEATURING INTERVIEW WITH POLITICAL ACTIVIST, HUMANIST, ARTIST-NEW YORK’S MOLLY CRABAPPLE
Editor’s Note We all have a view on life, whether it’s music, politics, the atmosphere or what you dreamt about last night. It all counts. The whole idea behind Teenage Democracy is to create awareness on topics that yes, might be a little wacky or left wing, but they’ll get you thinking. We have to get our ideas and beliefs from somewhere right? It just seems that a lot of everyday conversation is related toward what we hear on mainstream media, but why? I mean, it’s nice to know what the weather is like on BBC news. But how informative are their stories in the global scheme and why are so many topic areas left out? Anyway, shifting back to this magazine; it’s ultimately a student run organisation to platform unconventional expressions, beliefs, news, projects and events. So, here it is, the first issue, I hope you enjoy… Brigitte de Valk
CONTENTS
Students For Palestine (pg 3-6)
No Sunlight In Solitary (pg 7-9) Rebelling Against The Intolerable Bourgeoisie (pg 11-13) Bohemian Figures (pg 15-16) The Molly Crabapple Interview (pg 17-22) War On Terror; The Irony (pg 23-24) Prominent Women In The Civil Rights Movement (pg 25-26) Malala Yousafzai (pg 27-28) Pussy Riot All Over The Globe (pg 29-32) 28 Songs You Really Should Listen To (pg 33) The Babylonian Marriage Market ( pg 34-35) Youth Activist of The Issue (pg 36)
Across the country and throughout the world, students are uniting in the belief of one cause: justice. Students for Palestine (Southampton), is a nonprofit organisation (with members and activists from different countries), which stands firm against all forms of racism and discrimination. As a group, their primary focus is to raise awareness of the Palestinian issue while supporting Palestinians in their struggle for self-determination and justice. The full complexity of the Palestinian apartheid cannot be summarised in a few simple sentences. For over three score years, (66), conflict had ensued over the Zionist ambition to achieve a purely Jewish state in which Arab citizens are not welcome. Extensive casualties have arisen on both sides. Mass evacuation occurred (70,000 Palestinians fled their homes in fear of persec ution before fullscale
military activity began in March 1948); alongside the catastrophe of Al Nakba (villages of innocent civilians were eradicated). For further details of the process of ethnic cleansing and of the conflict pre-1949 and the country’s contemporary disposition, please go to the Students for Palestine website (sotonpal.org). However, to introduce you to the struggle, Teenage Democracy interviewed Juman A.J, a Palestinian born woman who is currently involved in campaigning on the issue of Palestine at the University of Southampton. She co-founded Students for Palestine (Southampton) in 2012 and has been active in Jordan working in the Jerash refugee camp. Brigitte Cross de Valk
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…The Interview -What personally prompted you into campaigning for the Palestinian people and why do you feel it’s so important for the youth to have such an active role in this issue? So, the main reason I got involved in Palestine is because Palestine is an issue of humanity. It’s an issue that concerns the fundamental questions of any person and oppressor. This is the main question that bothered me when I was young. It’s when you walk in the streets and you see poverty, you see exploitation, you see all these questions that are not Palestine specific but are general injustice and it triggers something in you. I think that the closest part for me personally campaigning is being a Palestinian born refugee, and realising that you have been systematically precluded from returning to the land that was stolen from my family. So in terms of Palestine, this is why I got involved and its important, as I mentioned in the talk, that students and youth are always the forefront of social and political change. If it’s not us who are going to act? We’re not going to expect the much younger generation to act because they can’t, they’re too young to act, and the older generation, they’re too depressed to act, unfortunately. So, youth have always been at the forefront of political and social change. -Would you be able to recount
a little of what you discovered from your experiences in working in the Jerash refugee camp?
It was very unfortunat e, the situation in camp is terrible. The Jerash camp was reported to be literally the worst camp statistically in Jordan. You walk on the streets where they don’t have waste recycling system or any kind of drainage, so you walk and waste is in open tubes in the floor, and people just have to cross over it . realised two things. First how lucky we are to not be living in such circumstances, and how we don’t actually realise how privileged we are and what other people are going through. And also the fact that people out there, they’re waiting for something, they’re waiting for change and something that we can offer.
-Why do you feel it is necessary to have people from all backgrounds and beliefs join Students for Palestine? So, we started Students for Palestine in 2012 and we, the people who started it, were myself and another friend alongside two others, an Italian girl and a Polish guy. So you can see from the beginning that it was a multi-national kind of initiative. I think it’s important because the international community is what is going to pressure Israel into ending its apartheid practises and as you
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mentioned, it was a collective international call against governments and against the apartheid South Africa that helped the apartheid South Africa to come to an end. We hope that the same will happen with the Israeli apartheid and of course, going back again to the root of the problem which is that the issue of Palestine is an issue of humanity, threats of injustice anywhere is an injustice to everywhere. So regardless of what background you are, you have a moral duty for humanity, for the sake of being a human, to actually stand up against injustice.
Ethnic cleansing is a horrific reoccurrence across the centuries, how do you think religious belief in certain cases, motivate such violence? I think religion is used as a scarecrow to justify the pursuit of certain interests. I don’t think religious belief per say would incite violence unless it is used, as I mention in the talk, by one group in order to further its political motives. And of course we’ve seen this happen over the course of history in the medieval church in Europe, the fundamentalists in Islam, the Zionist movement with Judaism. So we’re always see the reoccurring use in abusing religion in order to further personal ,political and economic motives. -How effective do you think
the events of Israel Apartheid week are and why do you feel that promoting Palestine history and culture is so important?
effective. It is still growing. The first Israel apartheid week too place 10 years ago, and this year 2014, was the 10th annual apartheid week. It started with only a few universities, and only last year in 2013 there were over 200 cities hosting Israeli apartheid week so within a short period of time, 10 years , it witnessed huge growth. The aim of Israeli apartheid week is to raise awareness on how the Palestine issue of being apartheid is no longer an issue of two forces fighting each other. First of all, it’s not two militaries and two countries that are in conflict with one another, it is a state that established itself by force on the indigenous population which has created this apartheid; an apartheid which needs to be responded to by boycotting. So, this is the second aim. to actually, encourage
boycott campaigns and try to expand the reach of these campaigns. It is important to promote Palestine history and culture because it is what keeps Palestinians alive. It makes them hold on to their identity, because even though we’ve lost our land, and we were expelled from our homes which were demolished, we still hold on to our identity which will forever be part of us and we will never let go of our identity. -Lastly, do you have hope for a
I think the Israel apartheid initiative is really important and it has been somewhat
solution to be agreed upon
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and for the future Palestinian rights?
of
Yes, I have hope. I think hope is the elixir of life, you can’t live without it. I also think that this is one of the other problems that led to, as I mentioned earlier, how the older generation don’t really engage in anymore because they’ve tried and they failed, because the conflict has been going on for 66 years.
They get up to a point where they give up hope, but us, we still have hope. And Palestinians, even those political prisoners who went on hunger strike, whose children who, because they cannot go to school, end up having their lesson by the check point, they still have hope. And they will continue to have hope because that’s all that’s left for Palestinians
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No sunlight in solitary Solitary confinement in the industrial prison complex. How to define confinement behind a solid steel door for 23 hours a day? Torture. The U.N. Convention Against Torture defines torture as any state-sanctioned act ‘by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person’. So I guess it’s a befitting definition. Solitary confinement is a violation against human rights. Here’s why it exists. Prisoners can be placed in solitary units for many reasons: as punishment while under investigation, as a mechanism for behaviour modification, when suspected of gang involvement, as retribution for political activism or to fill expensive, empty beds, to name but a few. Although conditions vary from different institutions, systematic policies and conditions of control and oppression used in isolation all include: -Limited contact with other human beings –Grossly inadequate medical and mental health treatment –Mental torture such as sensory deprivation, permanent bright lighting, extreme temperatures and forced insomnia –Extremely limited access to rehabilitative or educational programming.
Prisons in general are supposed to have four major purposes: retribution, incapacitation, deterrence and rehabilitation. With the inhumane use of solitary confinement, rehabilitation for certain prisoners is an unfathomable myth. It is not possible for an inhabitant of solitary confinement to be re-educated and re-acclimatised to society when, according to numerous psychological studies held by the University of Colorado, uncontrollable feelings of rage, fear and paranoia are heightened within solitary inhabitants. If a prisoner is not mentally ill when entering an isolation unit, by the time they are released, their mental health will be severely compromised.
However, many of the general population in the USA were shocked when the prison guard campaign against solitary confinement claimed that ‘solitary confinement makes prisoners more violent’, initialised in Texas. Perhaps then, the deeper issue of solitary confinement lies within public perception of the
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industrial prison complex and its inhabitants. Angela Davis, worldrenowned author, activist and scholar has been one of the most influential activists against the current prison system with her views recently published in a book entitled Are Prisons Obsolete? Davis argues that it is extremely important to recognize that focus cannot solely be on those deemed as ‘innocent or people who seem, according to propaganda, less dangerous, but we have to look at the damage that prison does, not only to those who are inside, but those on the outside, when people are kept behind bars for decades and decades’. Her argument questions the morality of contemporary society in allowing the unjust torture of solitary confinement to preside in countries considered democratic. There are always horrific examples to evidence cases against torturous state and government legislation and solitary confinement is no different. Albert Woodfox, a former Black Panther has recently been ordered to be freed after he spent more than 40 years in solitary confinement, longer that any prisoner in the United States. Woodfox and the late Herman Wallace, another prisoner of the ‘Angola 3’, were convicted of murdering a guard at Angola Prison. The Angola 3 and supporters say they were framed for their political activism. A federal judge ruled last year that Woodfox should be set free on the basis of racial discrimination in his retrial. This case is the epitome of racial and political hatred that certain prison wardens and members of the jury and
public hold toward black prisoners. Humans are not born with hate, they are taught it. With sadistic punishments such as solitary confinement in place, these punishments are heavily exploited by those who wish to abuse their positions of authority and power toward inhabitants on the basis of discrimination. Mark DeFriest is another prime example where the brutal method of solitary confinement is further exacerbated. In 1979, DeFriest’s father died and left him a set of tools. He picked them up before they were probated. The then teenager was arrested for stealing and sentenced to four years in prison, despite evidence that he was mental unstable. Thirty-four years later he is still there, having spent 27 of those years in solitary. He spent much of it in the notorious ‘X-wing’ of Florida State Prison, where he went for years without seeing the sun. It appears, from an independent investigation held in 2006, that as many as 64 percent of prisoners in Special Housing Unit Systems (solitary confinement), were mentally ill. Contrary to the perception that control house units house ‘the worst of the worst’, it is often the most vulnerable prisoners, (like Mark DeFriest), not the most violent, who end up in extended isolation. What then, can justify the continued practise of solitary confinement, if it continually abuses the weak, amplifies anger and aggression and leaves no room for rehabilitation? Is solitary confinement, as Davis suggests ‘a microcosm of the whole system? Solitary confinement within a prison. The prison is solitary
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confinement within the society. In this light ‘there is a strong argument for the abolition of imprisonment as the dominant mode of punishment’. Retribution in the form of solitary confinement is not only torture, but wholly ineffective in rehabilitation and is a dark stain in a supposedly democratic society. Take away the sun and you are left with hell.
Brigitte de Valk
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TEENAGE DEMOCRACY TeenageDemocracy@facebook.com
Rebelling against the intolerable Bourgeoisie; The Bohemian Counter Culture (n) Gypsy. Wanderer. A person
musician, artist or writer who lives a free spirited life and believes in truth, freedom and love
Revolution. Revolution. Revolution.
Where has all the la blague gone? This means cynicism, for those who didn’t struggle through A-level French. Resounding contentment, I would contend, is the sweeping dilemma of the Twenty-first century. As such, the majority of people are head down, tapping aimlessly at cracked I-phones with utter indifference at their individual influence on society. However, a cursory view into history reveals that short bursts of collective social defiance can demonstrably shift and alter the course of public opinion, attitudes and behaviour. Paris in the 19th century is a beautiful example of a defiant counter culture.
La vie de Boheme lay between 1830-
1914; an era born from political disappointments and Romantic ideals. In an age devoid of major wars, distinction could be achieved through intellect and art and it was not long before the freedom of a non-conformist lifestyle serenaded the daily imagination: blossoming into the golden age of Bohemia.
The Bohemian movement offered a way to defy the French establishment in protest of a social structure based on money, uniformity and drabness, all of which threatened to suffocate individualistic creative expression. This incited the vagabond lifestyle of the 19th century Bohemian where the image of the impoverished artist became the epitome of rebellion. The Bohemian family consisted of those seeking to escape the ubiquity of social conventions, people who valued creativity far higher than materialistic wants and desires. This included Henry Murger, a prominent author of the times, responsible for popularising the avant-garde attitude through penning ‘La Vie de Boheme’ (published in 1845) and subsequently romanticising Bohemian life through literature. Charles Baudelair; commonly known as ‘The Prince of the Clouds’, is renowned for his poems in the publication ‘Les Fleurs du Mal’ which feature themes of eroticism and decadence. The first edition published was put on trial in 1857 over perverse imagery and offence to religion, resulting in a fine for ‘outrage a la morale publique’.
It sounds so simple, a life of beauty and unease, roaming the streets of Paris to haunt the stimulating wine bars and literacy Café’s such as Brasseire de Martyrs, where minds combined in a cacophony of unorthodox dreaming. However, this way of liberal breathing and thinking is never allowed to prosper due to the continual promotion of 11
consumerism, capitalism and the need to ridicule those who try to stand for something more spiritually substantial. It’s a catch 22 syndrome, where the sane realisation that it is mad to covet the hierarchal class system and its insinuation of inequality, is labelled as insane.
‘I think we’re being run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we’re being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I’m liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That’s what’s insane about it’. John Lennon. The Bohemia in Paris faded with the onset of The First World War; a war which emphasized the seriousness of life. For the first time since 1815, France was consumed in vast campaigns, in heroic actions and brave sacrifices which held Bohemian recklessness in contempt. The movement had begun as a reaction to the severe Napoleonic age, as a means of realising fragile dreams of love and beauty, but the clamour of war tore those dreams apart, replacing them with constructed lust for glory on the battlefield. Perpetual war is the ultimate tool in oppressing new innovative, unconformist ideas. It does not take reading Orwell to understand this concept. War is a machine, a business, a maddening kaleidoscope of unity in hate. However, it appears that certain wars, such as the horrific Vietnam War (1959-1975) are responsible in propelling Bohemian counter cultures. The 1960’s is commonly referred to as the ‘hippie revolution’ where flower power (a phrase coined by Allen Ginsberg) fought peacefully against the
oppressive nature of war, police brutality, discrimination and the previous generations in their set mannerisms of social conformity. The similarities to the 19th century are numerous. Jack Kerouac’s novel ‘On the Road’ was proclaimed as the defining of a new beat generation, while Allen Ginsberg’s poem ‘Howl’ faced a court case due to obscene references, much the same as ‘Les fleurs du mal’ and ‘La Vie de Boheme’. The festival of Woodstock in 1969 is a prime example of peaceful cohabitation without the need for the presence of authorities with lethal weapons. Its popularised exposition of ‘3 Days of Music and Peace’ foreshadowed the calm rainy weekend with an attendance of 400,000 people. As a further affront to the bourgeois attitude of money and high couture, the festival ended up being free due to its popularity. It was free and it was beautiful. This highlights why counter cultures are vital, as alternative ideas and expressions are given a higher level of consideration when more support is given. Lone voices and
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actions are far more vulnerable of being torn apart by the vultures of plutocracy. This leads to the question of whether or not the romantic ideals of bohemia are all that far away? The twenty-first of June saw protests against war, cuts and overbearing conservatism. This march on austerity included 50,000 people marching through London’s high street in pursuit of change chanting ‘Stop shopping, save the NHS’. In 2012 the SOPA bill was defeated (Stop Online Piracy Act) through the resilience of the late Aaron Swartz and the overwhelming public response to a bill which undermined the existence of internet freedom. There is an ongoing tide of shock at the revelations of Edward Snowden on the NSA alongside the Occupy Wall street movement in 2011 protesting the unlimited powers of the 1%. There are countless other examples where the bitter truth has resulted in action after action of sweet resistance. A new counter culture is coming.
The vagabond lifestyle of the 19th century Bohemian citizen of Paris was the epitome of rebellion in conforming to a social structure based on money. It still is. Protesting against the bourgeois is a basic necessity in the never ending struggle for nonfantastical democracy. So lift your head from the lure of indifference and join the Bohemian mantra of truth, freedom and love.
Brigitte de Valk
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LA VIE DE BOHEME PROMINENT FIGUURES Louis-Henri Murger, (27 March 1822 – 28 January 1861) was a French novelist and poet.He is chiefly distinguished as the author of Scènes de la vie de bohème Henri de Toulouse- 24 November 1864 – 9 September 1901) was a French painter, printmaker, draught sman and illustrator whose immersion in the colourful and theatrical life of Paris in the late 1800s yielded a collection of exciting, elegant and provocative images of the modern and sometimes decadent life of those times.
Oscar Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. Today he is remembered for his epigrams, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, his plays, and the circumstances of his imprisonment and early death.
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ACROSS THE CENTRURIES Jack Kerouac (March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969) was an American novelist and poet. He is considered a literary iconoclast pio neer of the Beat Generation. Author of the renowned ‘On the Road’.
Buffy Sainte-Marie, OC (born February 20, 1941) is a CanadianAmericanCree singer-songwriter, musician, composer, visual artist,[1] educator, pacifist, and social activist. Wrote the song ‘Universal Soldier’.
Amantine-LucileAurore Dupin[1] (1 July 1804 – 8 June 1876), best known by her pseudonym George Sand was a French novelist and memoirist
Allen Ginsberg (/June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet and one of the leading figures of both the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the counterculture that soon would follow. He vigorously opposed militarism, eco nomic materialism and sexual repression. Ginsberg is best known for his epic poem "Howl”.
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MOLLY CRABAPPLE Molly Crabapple: Artsit, Activist and Writer currently living in New York is renowned for her involvement in Occupy Wallstreet movement, the Shell Game Exhibition and for her fearless reporting and illustrating for Vice Magazine. Taking time out of her busy schedule, Molly discusses the impotency of creative expression, the internet, student activism and revolution‌
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The Molly Crabapple Interview I would like to begin the interview by talking of your involvement in the occupy Wall Street movement in 2011. Was there a specific part in the movement which prompted your participation and were you surprised by the subsequent reaction to your art? So I’ve always been a political person, but I hadn’t really been very publicly political since the complete failure of the Iraq war demonstrations. When I was 18 I basically spent so much of myself, like so many did, on the demonstrations and they just failed. They were a bit like theatre and so after that I became like quietly political and I used my art to raise money for stuff that I believed in. I didn’t really be vocal and I also thought that I didn’t deserve to be, like it was a too big a topic for me as I just did art with pretty girls. And then when occupy happened, I saw the incredible brutal police reaction to it and I felt that this was a moment where people should take sides and people, if they agree with occupy, should be out about it so that occupy wasn’t isolated and slandered the way that it was and that’s what I did. And then I just kept doing more and more art for it and I was really honoured that people involved in occupy liked my work a lot and eventually the work that I did ended up being pasted all around the country and it ended up being very very associated with occupy and was a great honour.
Do you feel that creative expression is a crucial tool in readdressing issues which many fear to talk about? Do I think creative expression is a crucial tool- well I think that in America especially the media has really slandered and turned people away from a lot of political action, it’s sort of stereotyped it as something for dirty hippies or something that is ineffectual and scary and no decent serious person would be involved in. And I think the arts can have a crucial role in introducing people and teaching people that yes this is important, yes this is something vital to you. That’s how I try to use my own art work around political movements. The decade of the 60’s saw a rise of revolutionary acts and opinions heavily articulated by the populist music at the time. Do you think that this can reoccur through populist art? I think that it can reoccur through all forms of creative expression, although I think it’s very important that we not fetishize the 60’s. That we not think of aesthetic decisions that were totally creative and bright for the 60’s are the only way that we can articulate our political work. I mean I love Bob Dylan so much, but Bob Dylan is not the only political singer in the world. I think we need to make sure that the art forms that we are using to express our deeply held beliefs are ones that are authentic to our own time. I feel like artistic oppression has been recurrent throughout the last few decades, from the obscenity court case
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over Allen Ginsberg’s poem ‘Howl’ to the threat of prosecution over John Lennon’s gallery of art, were you at all apprehensive over facing any kind of ostracism over your exhibition The Shell Game and could you talk a little bit of the meaning behind The Shell Game? So I’ve never been part of the real art world until very very recently. I’ve always been someone people viewed as an illustrator which is seen as grubby and mercantile and not considered fancy fine art. I was never ostracized for my work. I don’t feel like the art that I’ve done has been some great Ai Weiwei style act of courage, if anything I’ve been celebrated for my political work. But why did I do Shell Game, well I wanted to. I don’t know, I fucking loved Diego Rivera, I wanted to do something big and ambitious that was about the sort of love that had dominated my life for the last two years, and especially as I was seeing these populist uprisings crumble, I wanted to do something to memorialise it, I wanted to make these big giant motifs to remember. In being one of only three artists in the last decade to have drawn images of Guantanamo bay alongside your amazing reporting from Guantanamo and places like Istanbul, when did you first begin combining illustrations with your reporting and do you think this makes your journalism more effective in conveying its message?
So the first piece that I’ve ever written really written professionally was after I was arrested. I was very very angry and I wrote about the experience. I drew my own jail cell that was in October 2012, and I had always, I had wanted to be a writer when I was younger, I just wasn’t I don’t
know, I wasn’t very good at it. I even wrote a novel when I was in school, it’s really bad, it’s not like a published novel, but then I started hanging out with all these really inspiring writers and started reading all their work and I started being In such awe of them. When I got a chance to write myself first for CNN about my arrest and then later vice gave me a column, you know I worked really really really hard at it and I started to develop a voice. The first reporting I did was I went to Madrid for their general strike there, where I visited squatters that were taking over buildings to deal with austerity, and I drew what I saw there and I interviewed them. I’m interested in Hunter S Thomson and Ralph Steadman and I like the idea of trying to fuse that in one. People, they don’t care about art the same way they care about writing, so I wanted to do something where I both took my art,
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which you know is my fucking blood, it’s my skill, and use my words to talk and I think that this thing creates a really interesting and powerful cocktail, especially in places that are very visually censored, like Guantanamo bay is. Linking back to the premise of occupy, the future of internet freedom is a critical discussion in a technologically advancing world although with new rules stating fast lane access for fees, do you think the internet is slowly being fitted into a hierarchal class system which repeatedly favours the one percent? And how does this affect your work? God, internet freedom is a fucking fascinating thing! So I was just in Abu Dhabi working on a piece about migrant workers there, and Abu Dhabi is a country that’s very very surveilled, its very censored and it buys a lot of the technology that it uses to spy on its citizens for the US. And so I was interviewing a taxi driver about how members of a religious minority were being systematically deported from Abu Dhabi based on their names. And I’m talking to him on WhatsApp and then midway through he’s like, I’m worried this conversation is being surveilled and I’ll get fired and I have a mom at home that I
have to support, so I’m sorry I just can’t talk to you. And that’s sort of the thing, the internet sort of creates in some ways the perfect way for a government to spy on its citizens because you’re able to cash everything, order everything, you’re able to identify and track everything, and this is fucking terrifying. It creates in some ways this tool of immense freedom and connection for us and also creates the perfect system of censorship and oppression. Linking to contemporary feminism, I recently read your article on female victims of conflict and the focus drawn ton to what was done to them and not to what they stood for, however with rising awareness of the courage of Malala Yousafzai and yourself, do you think the future holds a more promising outlook for female activist recognition? I think we’re actually living in an amazing time for the recognition of female activists, I just think that there’s something about the photography of conflict, the way that these images are taken and then endlessly endlessly endlessly reproduced and decontextualized to the point where frequently on my twitter feed I have an image from a protest and someone will say this is in turkey right now, and then someone else will pop up and say no actually that’s Bahrein five years ago. There’s this real sense of these images just becoming this decontextualized surface motives of pain which is what I was writing about, but we’re paradoxically living in this time where people can talk and be more visible in a way that they
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never would have been able to before. There’s a very famous essay, the title is ‘Is the internet bad or good?’ Yes. And I tend to agree with that.
Following from Malala, I recently watched a film recounting the fearless acts of the young student Sophie Scholl, against the oppressive Nazi regime in the white rose movement, have you seen this and how significant do you feel youth and student activism is for the future? I haven’t seen that film, but in terms of student activism oh my fucking god it’s vital. One of those tragic things about America right now is the way that student debt works. It makes it so that most people begin their lives in thirty-forty thousand dollars of debt and so they’re not able to have those few years of freedom. They begin their lives already indentured and already knowing maybe I can’t do activism, maybe I can’t do the job that I love because I have this huge huge debt that I have to pay off that is never ever dischargeable. I think the activism of young people, students and also you know
young working class people, who are doing jobs is vital and so fucking crucial. Could you talk a little more of your experiences in Abu Dhabi and some of the people who you met there? Yes sure, I’d be delighted to. So I recently spent eight days in Abu Dhabi and a day in Dubai working on a piece about the migrant workers who are building these giant museums on Saadiyat Island. The Louvre, the British museum as well as NYU are all building wings on Saadiyat and the idea is to make this island a cultural beacon for the region. However, migrant workers in Abu Dhabi make less than 300 dollars a month, they have their passports confiscated, and they have no right to strike or to unionise. If they try to strike they will be deported back home. In order to get their jobs they have to pay a year’s salary to a local recruiter just to work these brutal construction jobs, and so I was really interested on how high culture has always been built on the backs of poor people, and that why I decided to do this piece. For the piece I went to a number of migrant labour camps and also tenements that the workers live in in the city. I interviewed people, people are actually very willing and eager to speak about the conditions of their labour, I think because they feel very ignored, they feel like they’ve not had a chance to speak about this and basically the happy claims of institutions like NYU about how the labours are treated are complete lies. I repeated some of the claims back to the workers and they laughed, they thought it was ludicrous. Meanwhile while I was in Abu Dhabi I saw a real visceral
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atmosphere of fear and oppression, where people from every aspect of society, from members of the ruling class right down to taxi drivers were scared to speak frankly on the record about the government. And you know while I think that it’s very dangerous, we create this lens where we’re like the west good, the east bad when it’s simply not true. I mean we’re very oppressive in our own way here and also we enable oppression over there by selling certain technologies and so I think it’s very dangerous to exceptionalise them. I also think that it’s important for these institutions to know that Abu Dhabi is not a free country. It is not a country that in any way treats its blue collar migrant workers fairly. I read about how you spoke to the Donald Trump guy. That was really brave. Thank you so much. Well the final question, I recently found a quote of yours which reads ‘I don’t think pleasing powers should be a perquisite for making art and doing what you love’. What would your advice be to young artists wanting to pursue a career in art and creative expression? God, I would say work hard make friends and don’t give up. I think we live in a really interesting moment for artists right now, where simultaneously the barriers are very low and very high, they’re very low because major institutions and major media companies aren’t the people who dominate discourse anymore. You can fund your own projects, you can speak on a creative platform on the internet, but the barriers are high because entry level
jobs that people used to use to break into things are dead. I look at Hellen Thomas, the journalist who, she’s such a hero, she’s one of the real people to speak truths to power, she got like an entry level job as a secretary at a news company and then was able to Segway to a journalist. That wouldn’t happen now, a working class girl wouldn’t be able to do that now, you would have had to be like an intern and work for free for years and then have the appropriate degree and kiss ass and move up that way. So what I would advise young artists is to be intensely idealistic about your dreams and what you want to do and then intensely mercenary and cynical about how to get there. I would advise you to always look at the actual financial mechanisms behind things, whether its behind galleries or behind media companies and when those people are like ‘oh be a team player, work for free, sacrifice this or that’, I would advise you to be intensely cynical and always look out primarily for your own interests not for those of larger institutions and companies. By doing that you’ll put yourself in a place of freedom where you can do the work that’s meaningful to you
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and that you believe in Brigitte de Valk
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War on Terror: The Irony It’s a phrase so over-worn by a parade of US government officials that many perhaps, even mouth this idiom during sleep. It’s an excuse for undisciplined violence and a fragile one at that. The phrase ‘War on Terror’ makes no sense, as the act of war itself constitutes terror. Therefore, by attempting to battle this emotion, it can be argued that further conflict is created. Welcome to the logic of America. One form of war that sits comfortably under this predisposed banner, is the targeted killing programme, more commonly known as ‘Drone Attacks’. Deadly (and arguably futile) missions constructed as a means to dispose of ‘enemy’ military personnel connected to al-Qaeda. These missions are, as quoted by President Obama ‘accurate and legitimate’. However, most of these excursions have resulted in the annihilation and destruction of untold innocent civilians and communities. It is an experience of turmoil and fear or many small villages in Pakistan and Yemen whose inhabitants no longer look to the sky without trepidation. It is common in places such as Pakistan, to glance up at not only clouds but at the gleaming underside of remotecontrolled drones, which hover overhead in pursuit of human targets.
A harrowing case recently brought to public attention is the death of sixtyeight year old grandmother Mammana Bibi, deemed a ‘human target’. Her body was mutilated by a drone. This attack was a meticulous copy of the standard drone strike procedure where the initial strike is closely followed by another, targeted toward those who seek to aid. It is this second progression, (of directing missiles toward helpers), which the UN states to be a war crime. Although as Obama is adamant that these attacks are necessary due to his foreign policy and global war-making, responsibility has not been claimed by the US. Reluctance to US accountability was further demonstrated by the low number of congress members who attended the Rafiq family testimony on the death of their family member, Mammana Bibi. Five. Five solitary congress members felt the case important enough to turn up. The rest, well, I’m sure they were too
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the
“Indistinguishable, human bodies amongst the carcasses of animals”
The first US authorised attack was documented December 17th 2009, Yemen. It is on this date when a small Bedouin village in Majalah became the victim of an event so sickening, that the US attempt of holding the Yemen government responsible, crumbled in its wake. Forty six people, fourteen women and twenty one children were massacred by a drone strike. However, not a drop of discrepancy can be found in any mass media outlet. A fact further worsened after the Yemen government claimed that this was a ‘successful air-force strike against an al- Qaeda training camp’.
A recent quote from on-the-ground witnesses to the carnage.
preoccupied with American flag.
ironing
In response to enquiries such as why these ‘trainees’ were not just arrested, the rapid retort was that the village could not be ‘easily reached.’ The village was two kilometres from the tarmac road. A fact brought to attention by Salen Bin Fareed, one of the first people to bear witness to the devastated village. Sharing his experience on the alternative news program Democracy Now, his encounter can be summed up in a few of his sentences. ‘What I have seen, I have not seen I my life, and I don’t think I will ever see, even if it is like a third World War. Those people were living in a small valley, and honestly, we could only find very, very few whom we could recognise, bodies and blood mixed with hundreds of sheep and goats.’
Has the value of human life really stooped so low? Reconsideration, at this present moment, is dire, vital to the world’s morality and to our own conscience. Is the distance between our country and the next so great that the barrier between different ethnicities becomes ‘us’ and ‘them’? To some, however, this is only a matter of contention, for action is being taken by people to attain transparency on these issues. Resistance is growing. Last week five anti-drone activists were arrested in upstate New York for protesting outside the Air National Guard Base near Syracuse. It has also been stated that Obama has been personally challenged by young activist Malala Yousafzai on the effect of drone strikes. People are standing up and speaking out, to shed fair clarity not only the drone war but the whole concept of abused power. This is a movement that faces many challenges, but like any anti-war movement, it has dignity in the pursuit of justice on its side.
Brigitte de Valk
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(November 11, 1914 – November 4, 1999) Daisy Bates was an American
civil rights activist, publisher, journalist, and lecturer who played a leading role in the Little Rock Integration Crisis of 1957 and who was one of the only women to speak during the march on Washington. Little Rock Nine were a group of African American students enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957.
Daisy Bates BORN: 1898
BORN: 1903
BORN: 1917
BORN: 1914
(October 6, 1917 – March 14, 1977) Fannie Lou Harper was an American
voting rights activist and civil rights leader. She was instrumental in organizing Mississippi Freedom Summer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
Septima Poinsette Clark
Ella Baker
(May 3 1898–December 15, 1987),Septima
(December 13, 1903 – December 13, 1986)
was an American educator and civil rights activist. Clark developed the literacy and citizenship workshops that played an important role in the drive for voting rights and civil rights for African Americans in the American Civil Rights Movement. Clark's argument for her position in the civil rights movement was one that claimed "knowledge could empower marginalized groups in ways that formal legal equality couldn't’.
Ella Baker was an African-American civil rights and human rights activist beginning in the 1930s. She was a behind-the-scenes activist, whose career spanned over five decades. She worked alongside and mentored some of the most famous civil rights leaders of the 20th century, including A. Philip Randolph, and Martin Luther King, Jr. 25
(Age 80), Myrilie is a civil rights activist and journalist who worked for over three decades to seek justice for the murder of her civil rights activist husband Medgar Evers in 1963
Myrilie Evers-Williams
Fannie Lou Hamer
BORN:1922
BORN: 1933
BORN: 1938
Diane Nash
(Age 75),Diane Nash, was a leader and strategist of the student wing of the 1960s Movement. Her efforts included the first successful civil rights campaign to integrate lunch counters BORN: 1944 Angela Davis
Gloria Richardson ( May 6, 1922) Gloria Richardson is best known as the leader of the Cambridge Movement, which fought to desegregate public institutions like schools and hospitals. While on the program for the March on Washington, when she stood to speak she only had a chance to say hello before the microphone was seized
Angela Davis (Age 70) is an American political activist, scholar, and author. She emerged as a nationally prominent counterculture activist and radical in the 1960s, as a leader of the Communist Party USA, and had close relations with the Black Panther Party through her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement despite never being an official member of the party. Prisoner rights have been among her continuing interests; she is the founder of Critical Resistance, an organization working to abolish the prison-industrial complex. 26
‘I raise my voice, not so that I can shout, but so those without a voice can be heard’ Malala Yousafzai. 27
Malala Yousafzai ‘16-year-old school girl shot by the Taliban’. In October 2012, headlines ricocheted this poignant statement across the world. It conveys the complete absence of morality; the innocence of youth silenced by the corrupt old. Although in this case, a voice as pure and daring as Malala’s could not be suppressed into silence. Malala Yousafzai is a Pakistani school girl born 12th July, 1997. At the age of eleven she drew inspiration from the courageous energy of her father to begin her own activism. Malala started a blog for the BBC focusing on the daily life of a young school girl living under the rule of the Taliban (a hostile militia). Through her writing, the importance Malala placed on her education was made clear. She recognised the power of knowledge and so could not stand for the prohibition of a woman’s education. Under abbreviated equality, Malala had a choice: to pick up her books and make the journey to school or to leave them in the corner to succumb to dust. Her decision to continue education embodies the decision all humans must make in the wake of a witnessed injustice. To protest against what is wrong, or to remain kneeled in constructed indifference. On the 9th October 2012, Malala Yousafzai was shot in the head and neck in an assassination attempt by Taliban gunmen while returning home on a school bus. The one question asked by the gunman, which ultimately led to Malala’s critical condition, was ‘which one of you is
Malala?’ Malala’s bold reply of asserting her identity resulted in her presence in the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, city of Birmingham. This is the same city where she currently lives with the hope of returning to her home country, Pakistan. One of Malala’s renowned quote’s reads: ‘I raise my voice, not so that I can shout, but so those without a voice can be heard’. This represents her use of the weapon that we all possess: the ability to speak our minds and share our thoughts. It is the capacity, to express ourselves, which stimulates and brings forth the real fear among any oppressive organisation. Fear of a female voice led to the scar over Malala’s left eye; the remains of the bullet wound and the evident truth of the 9th of October, 2012. The day inhumanity and indifference almost took the life of a young woman fighting for change. Brigitte de Valk
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Pussy Riot All Over The Globe Experimental art meet punk protest, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina are members of feminist punk rock protest group Pussy Riot, based in Moscow. Founded in August 2011, its membership includes a group of undeterred women who stage unauthorised provocative performances which are edited into music videos and posted on the internet. Lyrical themes include feminism, LGBT rights and opposition toward the policies of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian government. However, on February 21st 2012, five members of the group staged a punk prayer performance in Moscow’s cathedral which subsequently led to their arrest after the Orthodox Church called on the government to criminalise blasphemy. Nadezhda and Maria were charged with hooliganism, and after having served 21 months in brutal prison confinement, were released on December 23rd 2013 after the State Duma approved of amnesty.
Since their release, Nadezhda and Maria have travelled across the western hemisphere to talk of their experiences in Russian prison and what they stand for. Researching the pair, it’s clear that they maintain firm beliefs on the appalling state of oppressive Russian society in its disregard for positive change from its strict religious traditions and its mistreatment of prisoners. However, while watching and reading their
interviews in American and British media, it is hard to swallow the hypocritical nature of the common interview questions. Russian propaganda and its absurd messages is a topic frequented by many Western interviewers. Lies and deceit is an old habit by Russian media to incite hatred toward those who oppose its contemporary society whether through protest or by breaking its harsh homophobic rules. In a recent interview on the Guardian Live, Maria also commented on how ridiculing and criticising the West is also heavily propagated: ‘they don’t want to talk about Russia’s internal problems, it’s much simpler to talk about how evil the west is’. To which many interviewers shake their head in bewilderment at how low a government can stoop to enforce its totalitarian policies. It’s as though they have no concept on the identical tactics used by Western civilisations. Every second of Western online activity is heavily perpetrated by advertisements encouraging citizens to depart with money for materialistic and
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corporate purposes while Western mass media outlets, such as Fox News and the BBC, continuously fail to provide fair clarity on important social issues such as police brutality, Israel and the NSA’s mass collective data program. It is ironic, that most interviewers, instead of encompassing and comparing the issue in Russia and the West, questions tend to lead the conversation into how evil Russia is while ignoring the West’s internal problems.
Censorship is another topic repeatedly discussed. While protesting in Russia in brightly coloured balaclavas, Maria and Nadezhda were physically beaten by police for performing in public, this punishment, along with their prison sentence without bail temporarily cen transparency, to bring more sore d their alternative views. Due to abuses on their human right to free speech, Nadezhda stated after meeting the WikiLeaks founder at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, that they and Assange had a ‘huge amount of things in common’, particularly in relation to the Chelsea Manning case which they
consider ‘one of the most important cases in today’s world’. ‘Our goal is to make more transparency both to the Russian political system and to the Russian penitentiary system. And this is connected completely with everything we are doing right now.’ -Pussy Riot. Manning and Snowden, whistleblowers of supposed ‘state secrets’ effectively highlight the Western hypocritical claim that its citizens hold an untainted right to free speech. In relation to Snowden and the information he shared with Glenn Greenwald (former journalist of the Guardian), on NSA mass spying techniques, the Prime Minister of Britain, David Cameron, ordered Guardian offices to smash computers installed with this sensitive information. Snowden and Assange are being pursued by Western governments who wish to prosecute them for creating transparency. If this is not censorship in the West than what is? A recent quote by an interviewer ‘why don’t you leave Russia and lead a nice life in the west’ defines popular Western attitudes that as other parts of the globe appear overtly totalitarian, such as Russia, Britain and America are egalitarian paradises. As Pussy Riot stated ‘people don’t have time to think of politics, too preoccupied with their daily lifestyle and problems with money’. However, if ‘preoccupied’ ignorance was replaced with a desire to pay attention to the steady Western decline of democratic values due to
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corporate take-over, than assumptions of Western perfection would not occur.
Pussy Riot in their fearless determination to fight for their basic
human rights, should be an example to every country. Stand up, march or howl a punk prayer to fight for justice, peace and free speech. As Pussy Riot urges ‘Open all the doors, take off you uniform, come and taste the freedom with us.’
Brigitte de Valk
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28 SONGS YOU REALLY SHOULD LISTEN TO….. *Starry Starry Night- Don McLean *Blowin’ In The Wind- Bob Dylan *Sound of Silence- Simon and Garfunkel *Who is he( And what is he to you) –Bill Withers *Imagine- John Lennon *Maybelline- Chck Berry *Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds- The Beatles *Universal Soldier- Buffy Sainte-Marie *Jennifer Juniper- Donovan *Heart attack and Vine- Tom Waits *Doom and Gloom- The Rolling Stones *House of the Rising Sun- The Animals *Let it be me- The Everly Brothers *Saffron- Jake Bugg *Whole Lotta Love- Led Zeppelin *Diamonds and Rust- Joan Baez *Riders of the Storm- The Doors *Castles made of sand –Jimi Hendrix *Tiny Dancer- Elton John *Library Pictures- Arctic Monkeys *Heart of Gold- Neil Young *Life On Mars- David Bowie *Waterloo Sunset- The Kinks *Walk on the Wild Side- Lou Reed *Pink Moon- Nick Drake *Walkin’ after midnights- Patsy Cline *Don’t mess with cupid- Otis Redding *One Inch Rock –T-Rex
Art by Samuel Bowser
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The Babylonian Marriage Market
It’s the silent keen that keeps us awake The abject longing to escape the pale delicacy Thrown upon us in our laden state of anxiety The song of freedom cut short Loss of youthful vitality As the jewels are crammed tight upon our bodies Though they weigh less than the lead inside Curdling the imagination we once knew Of dancing rivers, spectacular blue Weaker than the palest shade of tile That lines this room. Pieced together as fragile as my heart I see her in the reflection But more importantly I see them Like adornments of men we sit in docile rows Bartered, battered and abused It’s raucous in here, clamouring want Suffocating, enclosed in four walls Patiently waiting For the cold bruise of dawn and to be awakened Beside the perpetrator of our existence. There is no name for me Not here It’s lost in the fathomless cruel sea Of today and tomorrow’s plain orthodoxy She’s frightened of the certainty of unknown
Hunched girl beside me They are my eternal sisters of graceless sorrow Punished at birth for the sex they wear Confined to purity and the defilement of man Wilting in strained silence like dying heather Under the brutal, overbearing sun Seated high above us in contempt monarchy At the female litter of belittlement Cast aside in turbulent water By the dictator half-moon of mankind. Tattoo me then and slash my hope Brand me with your carnal breath Hunger after me I dare you It’s the only power I have left To invade your lust and taunt you with nothing While my gold chains crumble in rust At the slather of your indifference of me The soul inside of archaic beauty. Claw away this mash of femininity Taint my future with anything but this I want to dance Dance like the rising dust But wine red blood spills over the crimson meadows Of decaying fruit
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Ink stained caresses of contracts are signed By the black velvet of your eyes Violet tear drops of incandescent loss Slabs of stone the new bright sky Parasite in the gathered moss of oppression I sit and cry As harsh as the laugh of the gull Salivate over sensation-less salvation Beckoning from nowhere and none. A few of us wear circular bands As though we’re princesses of futility Creatures of lost fertility Ruled by the govern of gilded misogyny Drunken orange sunset of our last night Where the whispering was unbearable Excitement of naked naivety Relish the dark contours of your existence While they are still your own. My stance upon the podium is soon I can taste my time left Rotting sugar upon my tongue The girl on the stand throws one last beseeching look back At us Lethargic snowdrops in heady white gowns Suffering more than the dying rose Blow ash into my eyes As I weep for him and I weep for you While the grass withers under the too bright hue. Brigitte de Valk
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YOUTH ACTIVIST OF THE WEEK Sophie Scholl was born on May 9th 1921 in Forchtenberg in Bäden-Württemberg and was a member of the White Rose movement that was formed in Nazi Germany during World War Two. Sophie, along with a small group of others, was anti-Nazi and therefore by definition antiHitler. It was only a matter of time before the authorities knew the identities of those who were writing what was described as ‘subversive’ leaflets and Sophie was put on trial and found guilty. Sophie’s execution took place in Munich’s Stadelheim Prison a few hours after the trial had finished. She was beheaded by guillotine. Although no student revolt took place at the time, her courage to fight for justice in the face of adversary can be felt today through the brave actions of Edward Snowden, Aaron Swartz, Pussy Riot. The empowering act of standing up for peace will never stop inspiring.
Sophie and Hans took a bundle of this printed leaflet to Munich University on February 18th 1943 where both of them distributed what they could before attending a lecture. However, they did not have time to leave them all before their lecture started. After they left their lecture they made the fatal decision to leave the rest of the leaflets at the university as they were convinced that students would be very important in any uprising against Hitler. They decided not to waste the leaflets as a great deal of time had been put into illegally printing them. Both Hans and Sophie went to the university’s atrium where they left the remaining leaflets. However, they were seen by a caretaker called Jacob Schmid. He called the Gestapo and held Sophie and Hans until the secret police arrived. Their fate was sealed as the Gestapo had all the evidence they needed actually in the university.
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MANY PEOPLE CAN NAME BOB DYLAN AND JOHN LENNON IN THESE PHOTOS, BUT CAN YOU NAME THE WOMEN?
Myrlie Ever Williams, Born
FACT FILE
MARCH 17th, Civil rights activist.
The term “Arab” is not a racial term but rather a cultural and linguistic term. It refers to those who speak Arabic as their first language. Arabs share a culture and history, but “Arabs” are not a race
‘We have to talk about liberating minds as well as
A Hippo’s milk is pink.
Only 9 out of 52 winners of the National Book Award for Fiction are women.
liberating society’.
Angela Davis
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