New York - The Israeli legal advocacy group Gisha has set up a web-based game that explains the maddening bureaucracy that restricts Palestinian freedom of movement and is driving a wedge between the West Bank and Gaza.
The Flash animation game is called Safe Passage is a sort of ‘choose your own adventure’ in navigating Israeli legal-military bureaucracy. The player can choose to from three characters: a businessman from Gaza who wants to open a factory in the West Bank, a Gazan student accepted to a university in the West Bank, and a Gazan father of a seven-year-old living in the West Bank who is expelled to Gaza and wants to reunite with his family.
You can apply for a permit or petition the supreme court, but, no matter what route you choose, your legitimate request to leave Gaza is likely to be denied, often on “security” grounds.
Furthermore the characters in the game are composites of real people. The student is based in part on the story of Berlanty Azzam, the 22-year-old Bethlehem University student from Gaza who was seized by Israeli soldiers and removed to Gaza just two months before completing her degree.
The game can be played in English, Arabic, and Hebrew. Gisha says the game “shows the effects of the severance of the two parts of the Palestinian territory on the people who live there and for Palestinian society in general: prolonged separation from family members, lost opportunities for higher education, severe damage to trade and business, and the suffocation of civil society.”
this is actually really fucking sad and full on. it doesn’t take long to play, and you will probably learn something.
June 2010
22 posts
I HAVE BEEN DYING TO READ THIS
First published in 1981, This Bridge Called My Back has been out of print since the expiration of its contract with Third Woman Press in 2008. Hopefully the digital copy will find its way to those who will circulate it and possibly build up pressure to have it printed again.
URL Set:
Introduction: http://www.mediafire.com/?e2taou2lzzl
Children Passing In the Streets: http://www.mediafire.com/?metyjnzwmji
Entering the Lives of Others: http://www.mediafire.com/?immkmkzzyzz
And When You Leave, Take Your Pictures With You: http://www.mediafire.com/?hn4fuom1q1b
Between The Lines: http://www.mediafire.com/?wn3x3zl4zau
Speaking In Tongues: http://www.mediafire.com/?zgtlrycmjyn
El Mundo Zurdo: http://www.mediafire.com/?mwdd2wz2oyh
Biographies: http://www.mediafire.com/?j5mymwunezy
Front/Back Cover: http://www.mediafire.com/?zumnmytgkgt
enjoy,
chris
OMG! Is this really all the chapters for download??? What a goldmine!
our head of state is now a woman.
It only took a hundred years or so since getting the vote…
When in 2007 she first stepped in as acting prime minister when Rudd was overseas, Gillard said: “The important thing is really for Australian girls growing up in this society -
I think if there’s one girl who looks at the TV screen over the next fewdays and says ‘Gee, I might like todo that in the future’, well that’s a good thing.”
is pretty much her only value, really.
Since, after all:
Her indication at yesterday’s news conference that she might pursue a tougher line on border control than Rudd will do nothing to appease voters drifting to the Greens.
By the same token, while her role as the first female prime minister will make her a hero to many women, it is her actions that will keep her as one. Just being a woman in power is not enough. There will be questions - and rightly so - from women across the feminist spectrum.
Will she, as prime minister, improve the lot of women and make their paths to equality easier?
Or, indeed, immigrant women?
It kind of troubles me that the only real value I see in Gillard at the helm is that she’s (a) female, and (b) more charismatic than Rudd was, so (c) is more likely to make sure that ridiculous Abbott is kept out of the top job.
Then again, someone is more likely to get the top spot if they’re conservative and willing to play with the right than if they’re female. Not sure that equal opportunity to fuck others over was really the point of feminism.
But at the same time, those girls and women who look at the news and think it might be them one day… part of the empowerment of oppressed people is belief in yourself. Or at least just enough to fake it till you make it. And if this helps, so be it.
We’ll see what the sacrifices are as they come along.
I certainly hope Judith Butler’s refusal of the civil courage award will act as a catalyst for more discussion about the impact of racism, even within groups that are considered to be progressive. The assumption that.. somehow people from the Global South, people of colour are more homophobic, is a racist assumption. .. If you consider the extent to which the ideological structures of homophobia, of transphobia, or heteropatriarchy are embedded in a our institutions, the assumption that one group of people is going to be more homophobic than another group of people misses the mark. Because we not only have to address issues of attitudes, but we have to address the institutions that perpetuate those attitudes and that cause, that inflict real violence on human beings. And I was going to say in answer to the last question about the urgency of the late 60s, is that had people not acted with that urgency, that we would not perhaps have the expanded notion of social justice that we have, that we wouldn’t perhaps have the vocabulary, and there’s always been a struggle over language, over vocabulary. And I’ve come to believe that when we win victories in movements, struggles, that what we do is change the whole terrain of struggle. So we don’t simply add on. We don’t add on women to black people, we don’t add on LGBT people to women and to black people, we don’t add on trans people, and so forth. Each time we win a significant victory, it requires us to revisit the whole terrain of struggle. And so therefore we have to ask questions about the impact of racism in gay and lesbian movements, we have to ask questions about the impact of racism in the women’s movements, we have to ask questions about the impact of sexism or misogyny in black communities, we have to ask questions about the influence of homophobia in black communities or communities of colour. This notion of intersecting or crosspatched or overlaying categories of oppression is one that has come to us thanks to the work of women of colour feminists.
Press Release by SUSPECT on the events of the 19th June, 2010As Berlin Queer and Trans Activists of Colour and Allies we welcome Judith Butler’s decision to turn down the Zivilcourage Prize awarded by Berlin Pride. We are delighted that a renowned theorist has used her celebrity status to honour queer of colour critiques against racism, war, borders, police violence and apartheid. We especially value her bravery in openly critiquing and scandalising the organisers’ closeness to homonationalist organisations - a concept which was coined by Jasbir Puar’s book Terrorist Assemblages. Her courageous speech is a testimony to her openness for new ideas, and her readiness to engage with our long activist and academic work, which all too often happens under conditions of isolation, precariousness, appropriation and instrumentalisation.Sadly this is happening once again, for the people of colour organisations who according to Butler should have deserved the award more than her are not mentioned once in the press reports to date. Butler offered the prize to GLADT (www.gladt.de), LesMigraS (www.lesmigras.de), SUSPECT and ReachOut (www.reachoutberlin.de), yet the one political space mentioned in the reports is the Transgenial Christopher Street Day, a white-dominated alternative Pride event. Instead of racism, the press focuses on a simple critique of commercialisation. This even though Butler herself was quite clear: ‘I must distance myself from complicity with racism, including anti-Muslim racism.’ She notes that not just homosexuals, but also ‘bi, trans and queer people can be used by those who want to wage war.’The CSD, via Renate Künast of the Green Party (who appeared to have difficulties pronouncing the award winner’s name and grasping basic aspects of her writings) introduced Butler as a determined critic. Five minutes later, the same critical determination caused the faces of presenters to drop. Rather than engage with the speech in any way, Jan Salloch und Ole Lehmann could think of nothing better than blanketly refuse any charge of racism and attack the ca. 50 queers of colour and allies who had come out in Butler’s support: ‘You can scream all you like. You are not the majority. That’s enough.’ The finale was an imperialist fantasy matched by the backdrop of the Brandenburger Tor: ‘Pride will just continue in its programme… No matter what… Worldwide and here in Berlin… This is how it’s always been and will always be.’In the past years, racism has indeed been the red thread of international Pride events, from Toronto to Berlin, as well as of the wider gay landscape (see queer of colour theorists’ Jasbir Puar’s and Amit Rai’s early critique of this in their 2002 article ‘Monster Terrorist Fag’). In 2008, the Berlin Pride motto was ‘Hass du was dagegen?’, which might translate as ‘You go’ a problem or wha’?’ (with ‘Hass’ a wordplay on ‘hate’). Homophobia and Transphobia are redefined as the problems of youth of colour who apparently don’t speak proper German, whose Germanness is always questioned, and who simply don’t belong. 2008 is also the year that the hate crimes discourse enters more significantly into German sexual politics. Its rapid assimilation was aided by the fact that the hatefully criminal homophobe was already known: migrants, who are already criminalised, and are incarcerated and even deported with ever growing ease. This moral panic is made respectable by dubious media practices and so-called scientific studies: Where every case of violence that can be connected to a gay, bi or trans person (no matter if the apparent perpetrator is white or of Colour, and no matter if the basis is homophobia, transphobia or a traffic altercation) is circulated as the latest proof of what we all know already - that queers, especially white men it seems, are worst off of all, and that ‘the homophobic migrants’ are the main cause for this. This increasingly accepted truth is by no small measure the fruit of the work of homonationalist organizations like the Lesbian and Gay Federation Germany and the gay helpline Maneo, whose close collaboration with Pride ultimately caused Butler to reject the award. This work largely consists in media campaigns that repeatedly represent migrants as ‘archaic’, ‘patriarchal’, ‘homophobic’, violent, and unassimilable. Nevertheless, one of these organizations now ironically receives public funding in order to ‘protect’ people of colour from racism. The ‘Rainbow Protection Circle against Racism and Homophobia’ in the gaybourhood Schöneberg was spontaneously greeted by the district mayor with an increase in police patrols. As anti-racists, we sadly know what more police (LGBT or not) mean in an area where many people of colour also live – especially at times of ‘war on terror’ and ‘security, order and cleanliness.’It is this tendency of white gay politics, to replace a politics of solidarity, coalitions and radical transformation with one of criminalization, militarization and border enforcement, which Butler scandalizes, also in response to the critiques and writings of queers of colour. Unlike most white queers, she has stuck out her own neck for this. For us, this was a very courageous decision indeed.SUSPECT20 June, 2010.SUSPECT is a new group of queer and trans migrants, Black people, people of colour and allies. Our aim is to monitor the effects of hate crimes debates and to build communities which are free from violence in all its interpersonal and institutional forms
The Colour Blind Project has been created to showcase the diverse pool of multi-cultural talent that exists in Australia. It aims to be a world-class ensemble that challenges the stereotypes of what is perceived to be ‘Australian’ and bring the Australian Arts and Entertainment industry into the reality of the Australian society of the 21st Century. Through a collaborative environment, The Colour Blind Project unites artists of all backgrounds, particularly performers of multi-cultural backgrounds, and gives them the opportunity to create and perform work that will spark public dialogue about the cultural diversity within the Australian Arts and Entertainment industry.
The Colour Blind Project aims to nurture its talent and continue to create inclusive, innovative and provocative theatre for audiences across Australia.
The Colour Blind Project festival 2010 will feature nine new Australian short works directed by nine directors featuring an ensemble of 17 talented multicultural and indigenous performers at The Tap Gallery Theatre, Darlinghurst, 30th June - 10th July.
AIMS OF THE COLOUR BLIND PROJECT
To challenge and break traditional casting practices by casting performers of multicultural backgrounds in roles they wouldn’t necessarily be cast in within today’s White-centric Arts and Entertainment industry.
To show a performer’s cultural background will enrich a production and truthfully represent the contemporary Australian social landscape.
To encourage professional and emerging theatre practitioners and performers to work together to create new and innovative work that challenges Australian mainstream theatre.
To contribute to the Australian Arts Industry in a positive and dynamic way by creating work of quality and substance.
via ithiliana
By Tyrone D. Taborn
You may not have heard of Dr. Mark Dean. And you aren’t alone. But almost everything in your life has been affected by his work.
See, Dr. Mark Dean is a PhD from Stanford University. He is in the National Hall of Inventors. He has more than 30 patents pending. He is a vice president with IBM. Oh, yeah. And he is also the architect of the modern-day personal computer. Dr. Dean holds three of the original nine patents on the computer that all PCs are based upon. And, Dr. Mark Dean is an African American.
Makes me think we need a ‘Mark Dean Day’, like Ada Lovelace Day for people of colour & majority world people.
Note: this is in relation to intimate partner abuse; I would have different advice about other kinds of abuse. [an edited comment from the feminist LiveJournal commmunity]: I’m putting this behind a…
There has been some discussion around the traps lately about the term ‘people of colour,’ particularly from people outside the USA who aren’t white:…
don’t read the comments
ageist, ablist, and white-normative
