Read to feel.
Feel to read.
Read. Reading matters. Read slowly. Read to feel. Feel to read. It all begins with reading your own breath. How are you reading your own body? Learn to read beyond the printed word. Read to connect what portals you to other ways of knowing. The act of reading, beyond what you touch and see, transforms creatively worlds with possibilities. Clelia O. RodriguezReading Series - May 2024
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My Son Runs in Riots
for Oscar Grant & other warriors
7/8/10 by Christy NaMee Eriksen
I don’t use playpens,
my son runs in riots.
He took his first steps towards burning buildings
and he carried a molotov cocktail in his right,
draggin his blankie in the left gripped tight,
half brushed cotton, half tear-stained satin,
he lets the tail gather the dirt and screams of the street,
he can’t sleep without it.
When I sing lullabies
we are often running
and he keeps up cause
he loves the sound of twinkle twinkle
little star
to fire alarms.
He think ashes are diamonds in the sky.
I breast-fed for a year,
as recommended,
and weaned him to household chemicals.
We are only as strong as the bomb we mix
and my son’s lungs glisten.
Listen:
A brown mother’s love is her biggest protest.
I take my son to the picket line.
I tell him he is worth the peaceful world,
the clear sky,
the songs free people sing.
My son full of beauty
and dangerous
thoughts
stands up,
sucks on a switchblade and takes off.
He met men with gray hearts and silver badges
and he has
bullets in his back,
he has
bullets in his front,
he has 56 baton blows, six kicks in his ribs and
when you watch the video
it’s tough to tell whose son it is.
They wanna wipe away our tear gas
But they won’t let us cry.
Revolutionary Mothering : Love on the Front Lines, edited by Alexis Pauline Gumbs, et al., PM Press, 2016.
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When I started the physics Ph.D. program I was so excited about, I realized I was one of the few Black graduate students in the department and the only Black woman. I wasn’t surprised. I already knew Black women made up less than 1 percent of the physics doctorates in the U.S., but nevertheless, I soon started feeling isolated.
These feelings became even harder to navigate by the end of my first year, which coincided with the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement. Many people around me were silent and seemed unaffected by the force of its revelations, which were so meaningful to my life and identity. Alone in this silence, I felt I didn’t matter to my peers and that I had to minimize my identity as a Black woman if I wanted to fit in as a graduate student.
Continue reading ——— Here.
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Dear President Nemat Minouche Shafik,
As a former Columbia University faculty member and father of a Columbia graduate (PhD ’21), I am quite frankly appalled by your draconian, unethical, illegal, and dishonest actions toward your own students and faculty.
In the name of keeping students safe, you bring the NYPD on campus to break up a peaceful encampment, thereby endangering hundreds of student protesters—many of whom are Jewish students and students of color—and the campus community at large. Given the NYPD’s racist record, the fact that you would subject Black, Latinx, Arab and South Asian students to police repression suggests that you are either unaware or indifferent to the trauma our communities have experienced with the police. And your administration’s decision to evict students from their dorms, strip them of their meal cards, and have them charged with trespassing is nothing less than vindictive. After taking their tuition and fees, you render them houseless and potentially food insecure. How does this make students safe? As president, you must be well aware of the number of financially vulnerable students enrolled at Columbia.
Continue reding ——- > Here.
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i. The body of the condemned
On 2 March 1757 Damiens the regicide was condemned ‘to make
the amende honorable before the main door of the Church of Paris*,
where he was to be ‘taken and conveyed in a cart, wearing nothing
but a shirt, holding a torch of burning wax weighing two pounds’;
then, ‘in the said cart, to the Place de Gr£ve, where, on a scaffold
that will be erected there, the flesh will be tom from his breasts,
arms, thighs and calves with red-hot pincers, his right hand, holding
the knife with which he committed the said parricide, burnt with
sulphur, and, on those places where the flesh will be torn away,
poured molten lead, boiling oil, burning resin, wax and sulphur
melted together and then his body drawn and quartered by four
horses and his limbs and body consumed by fire, reduced to ashes
and his ashes thrown to the winds' {Pieces originales . .3 7 2 - 4 ) .
Read and re-read ——- > Here.
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13 Moons 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 by Daniele Denichaud
Menstrual cycles in 364 days
Unlucky - the missing floor
The card of death
An auspicious day
The 13th constellation I was born under - have you heard of
the serpent bearer, Ophiuchus?
The day of my birth
Watch the embodiment of this pedagogy of liberation —-> Here
Watch the digital pedagogy of liberation presented at the DH Festival 2024 —-> Here
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The title of this essay inverts a common phrase, ‘the Palestine exception to free speech,’ first used by civil rights attorney Michael Ratner (2013) and later popularized by Maria LaHood of the Center for Constitutional Rights.1While it is true that free speech protections often fail to accommodate criticism of Israel in various Western countries, the phrase assumes that the failure is out of character. An alternate view would suggest that the exclusion of Palestine results from the limitations of free speech itself. As is often the case, the issue of Palestine exposes hypocrisy, myth, or deceit in the US’s exceptional self-image.
Finish your reading —— > Here.
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Un/found/ed
Un/found/ed
Unfounded. The word out of context means simply “without foundation;
not based on fact, realistic considerations, or the like” and “not established;
not founded”.1
Unfounded can also mean to fail to ft. To found means to
“lay the basis of, establish”, to “found, establish; set, place; fashion, make”
and “to lay the bottom or foundation”.2
Over the last several years, I have
come to understand this term much more deeply within the contextual confnes of the academy. What I have come to learn is that, as an Indigenous
woman, I have no basis here. Not just that my concerns, my knowledge, my
stories, my experiences, and my voice have no basis here, but my actual physical being, too. I have come to this knowledge through a series of lived experiences and frustrations during my time in the academy, though I have been
told time and again that my experiences are not based on fact, that there was
no evidence to support my grievances, and ultimately that what I had experienced did not actually happen to me at all. The word unfounded, like many
in English, has come to mean an erasure of the lived and felt experiences of
Indigenous peoples in settler colonial institutions and social constructs.
Complete your reading HERE
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Book Talk, Beyond Racial Capitalism: Co-operatives in the African Diaspora - Watch it HERE
with Caroline Shenaz Hossein, Sharon D. Wright Austin, Kevin Edmonds, Salewa Olawoye-Mann and Silvane Silva
Description
Knowledge-making in the field of alternative economies has limited the inclusion of Black and racialized people's experience. In Beyond Racial Capitalism the goal is close that gap in development through a detailed analysis of cases in about a dozen countries where Black people live and turn to co-operatives to manage systemic exclusion. Most cases focus on how people use group methodology for social finance. However, financing is not the sole objective for many of the Black people who engage in collective business forms; it is about the collective and the making of a Black social economy. Systemic racism and anti-Black exclusion create an environment where pooling resources, in kind and money, becomes a way to cope and to resist an oppressive system. This book examines co-operatives in the context of racial capitalism-a concept of political scientist Cedric J. Robinson's that has meaning for the African diaspora who must navigate, often secretly and in groups, the landmines in business and society. Understanding business exclusion in the various cases enables appreciation of the civic contributions carried out by excluded racial minorities. These social innovations by Black people living outside of Africa who build co-operative economies go largely unnoticed. If they are noted, they are demoted to an “informal” activity and rationalized as having limited potential to bring about social change. The sheer determination of Black diaspora people to organize and build co-operatives that are explicitly anti-racist and rooted in mutual aid and the collective is an important lesson in making business ethical and inclusive.
Hosted by Rafael Grohmann
DigiLabour Initiative
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Listen HERE
¿Nacemos rebeldes? "El sistema nos empuja a ser rebeldes." "Nacimos en la panza de la bestia..." Hay infinitas expresiones para señalar lo mismo: el sistema es desigual y dependiendo del lado de la desigualdad en que naces es donde radica el deseo de ser libre. Hay personas que nacen en cuna de oro y son rebeldes, o sea, no quieren encajar en los moldes del sistema... pero ese no es el caso de Omar y Emil. Vienen de abajo y vienen haciendo arte como la semilla... echando raíces y rascando el cielo.
En el caso de Omar y @proyectovereda la rebeldía está rescatando y sembrando tierra... .... y porque los rebeldes deben juntarse, El Hijo de Borikén respondió al llamado de apoyar a este proyecto ocupa.
El video muestra parte de la yuca que hay sembrada en la ocupación y con el quita y pon del sombrero viajamos la isla hasta otro terreno donde sale Emil cantando. Estamos sumamente agradecidxs de haber podido filmar parte de esta pieza en Pueblo Nuevo Ciales, una finca familiar comprometida con la soberanía de abajo pa'arriba.
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Listen —-> HERE
Episode 6: Global Solidarity, with Clelia O. Rodríguez + Thenjiwe McHarris.
From the crisis facing women in Afghanistan to the abortion ban in Texas, many of us may be wondering: how did we get here, and where do we go from here?
In our new Feminist Futures series, we won’t just answer those questions, but chart a path forward. We’ll learn from the struggles and choices of everyday feminists throughout history who’ve navigated similar waters, and we’ll look inwards at ourselves as we build the hard skills to create the feminist future we need.
Reading Series - April 2024
How to Spell Abolition by Adebe DeRango-Adem
A fifty-foot sculpture that now stands in South Dakota. The name is Dignity. The artist is Dale Lamphere and it was done to honor the women of the Sioux Nation.
“I Was Born into the Arms of Five Virgin Marys” by Chanel Pepino
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This question is beyond an academic exercise to tickle mind for a treadmill journey to “critical thinking.”
This political seed is not interested in intersecting with broken wires and cables leading to no life. Read the question horizontally since learning how to crawl is how breathing happens inside a movement that is not captured by no filters. Clelia O. Rodriguez.
Listen. ——— > Here.
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Archana Ashok Chaure has given her life to sugar.
Last winter, she did what thousands of women here are pressured to do when faced with painful periods or routine ailments: She got a hysterectomy, and got back to work.
This keeps sugar flowing to companies like Coke and Pepsi.
The two soft-drink makers have helped turn the state of Maharashtra into a sugar-producing powerhouse. But a New York Times and Fuller Project investigation has found that these brands have also profited from a brutal system of labor that exploits children and leads to the unnecessary sterilization of working-age women.
Read ——— > Here.
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We are a collective of Black feminists who have been meeting together since 1974. [1] During that time we have been involved in the process of defining and clarifying our politics, while at the same time doing political work within our own group and in coalition with other progressive organizations and movements. The most general statement of our politics at the present time would be that we are actively committed to struggling against racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression, and see as our particular task the development of integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking. The synthesis of these oppressions creates the conditions of our lives. As Black women we see Black feminism as the logical political movement to combat the manifold and simultaneous oppressions that all women of color face.
Continue reading ——— Here.
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Poetry evokes emotions. Perhaps when the world turns a blind eye to the horrors in Palestine, it is crucial to read poems.
In these crazy times, there is nothing like poetry to remind ourselves of humanity. And we all need some poetry right now to feel for Palestinians, their children who are bombed by the Israeli forces—and whose memories are forever etched in the tragedies of today.
Continue reding ——- > Here.
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In recent years, Twitter has been awash with researchers and lecturers announcing their departure from academia. Earlier this year, it was my turn.
For 13 years, I was part of what my employer called its “family” (a dazzling red flag), and therefore part of an academic system riddled with inequity. It is like a never-ending treadmill, with the speed and incline increasing as you climb the seniority ladder.
Continue reading —— > Here.
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16 April 1963
My Dear Fellow Clergymen:
While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities "unwise and untimely." Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. If I sought to answer all the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would have little time for anything other than such correspondence in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work. But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.
I think I should indicate why I am here in Birmingham, since you have been influenced by the view which argues against "outsiders coming in." I have the honor of serving as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization operating in every southern state, with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. We have some eighty five affiliated organizations across the South, and one of them is the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. Frequently we share staff, educational and financial resources with our affiliates. Several months ago the affiliate here in Birmingham asked us to be on call to engage in a nonviolent direct action program if such were deemed necessary. We readily consented, and when the hour came we lived up to our promise. So I, along with several members of my staff, am here because I was invited here. I am here because I have organizational ties here.
Read and re-read ——- > Here.
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peyote meetings for $1,500, medicine drums for $300, weekend workshops and vision quests for $500, two do-it-yourself practitioners smothered in their own sweat lodge - the interest in American Indian spirituality only seems to grow and manifest itself in increasingly bizarre behavior - by both Indians and non-Indians. Manifestos have been issued, lists of people no longer welcome on the reservations have been compiled, and biographies of proven fraudulent medicine men have been publicized. Yet nothing seems to stem the tide of abuse and misuse of Indian ceremonies. Indeed, some sweat lodges in the suburbs at times seem like the opening move in a scenario of seduction of naive but beautiful women who are encouraged to ply the role of “Mothe Earth” in bogus ceremonies.
Finish the reading —— Here.
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The 1931 presidential contest in El Salvador is usually remembered for being the first competitive election in the country’s history. The triumph of Arturo Araujo, a prominent landowner, seemed to inaugurate an era of greater democratization. Until it didn’t: After only nine months, a military coup overthrew Araujo and brought El Salvador back to a path of strongmen and repression (including a shocking peasant massacre in 1932), all common features of Central American politics at the time.
However, the 1931 Salvadoran elections were also historic for another, less remembered reason: It was the first time in Latin American history that a woman, Prudencia Ayala, decided to run as a presidential candidate.
It is hard to exaggerate how muchAyala, a writer and one of the most innovative early feminists, was ahead of her time. Her bid for the presidency — which was eventually blocked by the Supreme Court — took place two decades before women were even allowed to vote in El Salvador. Ninety years later, only one other woman has ever run for the highest office in the country.
Finish your reading —— > Here.
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In honor of Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador, The Romero Collector's Edition film has been remastered and chronicles the amazing true transformation of an apolitical, complacent priest to a committed leader, who started a revolution without guns, without an army without fear. He fought with the only weapon he had: The truth. Starring Golden Globe winners Raul Julia (Kiss of The Spider Woman) and Richard Jordan (The Hunt For Red October).
Director: John Duigan
Starring: Raul Julia, Richard Jordan, Ana Alicia, Eddie Velez, Alejandro Bracho, Tony Plana
Watch it —— Here.
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I went to ask a teacher
if it was possible
for a world to exist
for me to be me
and not someone else
but I knew the answer
so I really went to ask the teacher
what it is we should do
for us to be as we are
and to love the beauty of our creator
I thought I needed
liberation from
being unsettled
while seeking impossibilities
of perfection
Read more ——- Here.
Listen more here —- > Here.
Reading Series - March 2024
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Not long ago, to say "radical love," "decolonizing the heart and mind," "equity," or to imply the integration of Land Acknowledgements in educational spaces gave many tachycardias, anxiety, sweaty palms and provided repulsa scenarios projected towards historically exploited people referring to work predating 1492 under grotesque-colonialist language such as barbarus. The naming us in terra nulius style hasn't stopped: not scholarly enough, passionate, as in illogical, and other tales you are all too familiarized with now that decolonial studies has been validated by institutions simultaneously. The "Quizás, quizás, quizás" waiting resonates from an episode from the British series Black Mirror (2011).
Across educational settings worldwide, these quoted words are a career trend filtering algorithms and spread like wild fires in alarming rates contaminating and destroying an already agonizing spirit. You know it and feel it. You see it and witness it.
I have an ancestral Responsibility, as in my ability to respond as a proud daughter and granddaughter of Maiz, Cacao, Morro, Ruda, Camohtli, and whisperer of the philosophical teachings of Tlahmaquetls, not to remain silent as I come from communities whose tongues were buried while screaming. I will not remove or walk away by clicking away requesting to be unsubscribed to be boxed-in under the pretense of Thomas Gray's poem "Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College" (1742): "Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise." The elephant in the room is double-heading: The Patriarchy & Whiteness. It's all happening in real time in Congo and Palestine - even if we pretend to be removed because it is above a "pay cheque," as a Speedy Gonzales response I have been told recently, the handheld latest iPhone or Samsung device bought from financial gains received in the name of said quoted words connect us all in the same web.
Dignity
Dignity is what we, who have the underprivilege of being in proximity of said patriarchal and whiteness held structures, continue to defend it because Integrity is not for sale in a world where almost everything is. It is not a utopia. It is an immensus essence that births innovation and creativity in horizontality and not in stagnated-fixated notions of ladder climbing. Boundless is the Latin translation. There is no potential in an orange that has been squeezed disregarding the origin, the history, the geography, the anatomy, and the relationship to the land of the seeds that are thrown away with turbidis rebus.
Dignity is absence in the Humanities because we, Humans, are more preoccupied with the maintenance of appearances instead of removing the layers of violence we uphold in chilly climates with convenient silences in micro levels that feed the real metastasis.
Dignity is missing.
Without Dignity there is no Humanity. Clelia O. Rodriguez
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This article centers around my work as a critical race feminista; an academic experiencing consistent attacks on the scholarship I produce while also being a tía (aunt), an active griever, and a godmother to my eldest nephew, Solano Garcia. This is the first time that my nephew and I will have shared our most private papelitos guardados (intimate guarded papers). In this article, we respond to the paucity of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color-centered death, grief, and well-being in academia. Using a critical race feminist epistolary methodology, we document our epistolary exchanges that contain dehumanizing attempts on our bodymindspirit matrices as active grievers of color confronting the premature death of my brother, who died at the age of 37 in the summer of 2021. Unlike the ‘western’ psychotherapeutic tradition of overcoming death and grief, we stake a claim, sit with it, and affirm it as an ongoing process. We argue that recognizing and affirming death and grief is a life-making process that creates spaces for healing through our epistolary offerings. This article aims to offer BIPOC faculty, staff, students, and their families life-affirming strategies towards radical self-care, love, and intergenerational collective healing within a sociopolitical context that operates as a surveillance mechanism.
Keywords: death; grief; critical race feminista epistolary methodology; academia well-being
Read it—— > Here.
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Who Are You Without Colonialism?: Pedagogies of Liberation
Edited by: Clelia O. Rodríguez, SEEDS for Change and University of Toronto and Josephine Gabi, Manchester Metropolitan University
A volume in the series: Curriculum and Pedagogy. Editor(s): The Curriculum and Pedagogy Group.
This is not a conventional book because the seed comes from the depth of the volcanic cauldron that awaits silently underneath the Lake Ilopango, the umbilical cord of our Humanity and yours. It is a scream, it is an offering, it is pain and it is love. It is a collective offering to those who are responding to a call of Liberation based on Indigenous Principles to protect and defend the land beyond theories, beyond rhetorical and metaphorical questions. This is a tiny-tiny glimpse into Lak'ech.
A living testament that today, there are people buried on sand, on water, on air, on blood, among carcasses of bodies eaten by vultures—literally and metaphorically—a living testament of open wounds that heal and are traumatized again and again because you, the reader, the listener, the writer, the transcriber, the colonizer, the upholder of patriarchy and caste and class, the translator and the guardian of the door of the Master's House refuse to listen politically.
Read the rest of the content —- here.
