A note on “sanctuary”
Commentary by Chitown Kev
ἐλῶσι γάρ σε καὶ δι᾽ ἠπείρου μακρᾶς
βιβῶντ᾽ ἀν᾽ αἰεὶ τὴν πλανοστιβῆ χθόνα
ὑπέρ τε πόντον καὶ περιῤῥύτας πόλεις.
καὶ μὴ πρόκαμνε τόνδε βουκολούμενος
πόνον· μολὼν δὲ Παλλάδος ποτὶ πτόλιν
Aeschylus, Eumenides (lines 75-79)
(A translation of these lines can be found here. I think.)
Today, I’d hoped to have a full book review of Onaje X.O. Woodbine’s Black Gods of the Asphalt: Religion, Hip-Hop, and Street Basketball but I’m still in the final stages of reading the book.
I will say, for now, that one of the more moving features of Woodbine’s ethnographic accounts of “street” basketball in Boston’s impoverished and gang-ridden neighborhoods is the extent to which the asphalt courts (primarily of the Roxbury section of Boston) are nothing more and nothing less than sanctuaries for those that play on them.
Furthermore, these asphalt sanctuaries don’t have much of a resemblance to popularly known public sanctuaries like a church or a temple or a garden or even a more personal or private sanctuary like one’s own library or a room of one’s own.
The human need for times and places of sanctuary long predate Christianity, of course (as the quote by the ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus attests). It is striking to me that like, Orestes, the street ballers depicted by Mr. Woodbine seek an escape from ever-increasing levels of violence both from without and from within themselves; a violence that even, at times, follows them into their sanctuary (much as the Furies followed Orestes into the Temple of Apollo).
[Of course, in the case of the street ballers of Roxbury, the “furies” are not the latest manifestation of an ancient curse of the gods but of a multi-generational curse of poverty and racism justified, by many, as divine. but is actually the creation of human beings.]
I am a religious agnostic, so I don’t, at an intellectual level, subscribe to the notion of “sin.”
I do have to say that, though, that I simply can’t imagine a greater “sin” than to attack, maim, and even kill a person, a group, or a community in an area designated (formally or informally) as a sanctuary.
It does not matter whether said attack is state-sanctioned or extra-legal.
It does not matter to me what the larger society deems a proper and/or “respected” sanctuary; that is for the individual, group, or community to decide according to their own specific circumstances.
The need for “sanctuary” is not a black, white, LGBT, male, or female “thing,” it is a “human” thing (I suspect that this may even be true for other species on this planet that we inhabit).
The need for “sanctuary” is universal and can only be diminished by the most vile actions. It’s manifestations may be specific but it’s something that we all do because it’s who and what we are.
In the most general of senses, there are no distinctions to be made here.
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Outside the walls of the Zoma Contemporary Art Center, the distinct chaotic clatter of Addis Ababa — goats bleating at a nearby market, cars kicking up dust on the dirt road — fills the air.
Yet inside the compound that houses the center is a haven of calm. Birds chirp in the trees that surround the courtyard, which is paved in flagstones decorated with images of turtles and lizards.
“It’s a space that hugs you,” Meskerem Assegued, the center’s co-founder and director, said in an interview in late January as she sat at an outdoor table having coffee, and pointing out some of the artworks created by her co-founder, the artist Elias Sime.
“The whole place is a sculpture,” Ms. Assegued said, describing the architectural space of the center and its programming. “It is not a place where one plus one equals two, but where one plus one equals three.”
Trying to add up what Zoma does is indeed challenging, as the physical space is a work of stunning vernacular architecture and art, while the programming is grounded in Addis Ababa and focused on an international stage.
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Three literary giants, representing nearly a half-century of racial justice-concerned literature between them, sat down Wednesday night (June 15) for an epic conversation on art and social change.
Sonia Sanchez, Toni Morrison and Ta-Nehisi Coates appeared at New York City's Ambassador Theatre for "Arts and Social Justice," an event presented by the Stella Adler Studio of Acting. Each writer also received the studio's Marlon Brando Award in honor of their joint artistic and social justice commmittments.
The authors addressed sevearl topics, including the Pulse massacre and police brutality. In absence of video (besides this one of Morrison's final remarks), Vox compiled some of each writer's statements.
Coates invoked both Pulse and Ferguson when talking about analyses of events rooted in racism:
When something catastrophic happens, we like to analyze it at the point of conflict. Take Orlando right now. What we're saying is, "assault weapons ban"; that's where we're at right now. Things that really are insufficient measures to correct the problem begin to seem like radical steps. An assault weapons ban would not be enough; it wouldn't even be close to enough.
In a situation like Ferguson, you get bogged down into this place: What happened with the officer and Mike Brown? And all of the analysis happens right there. None of the analysis goes into, what is the relationship between the police department, historically, and this community? Why are the cops there in the first place? Why are folks so hostile to the police in the first place?... We're so bogged down in the initial confrontations because they seem so exciting, they seem so shocking.
Sanchez, who moderated the conversation, offered a perspective on Muhammad Ali's appeal:
I would never watch boxing. I was a baseball fan. But my father said to me one night, "You must watch Sugar Ray Robinson. He's an artist. He's not just hitting people. He dances, he moves. You like that poetry. He's like a poet in the ring." So I sat down and I would watch Sugar Ray fight. And then along comes Muhammad Ali, and I said, "I don't watch boxing, it's cruel." And my father said to me, "You need to watch Muhammad Ali, because he's like Sugar Ray Robinson. He is this dancer. He is this poet. He is clever. He's a clever boxer." And so I watched him and fell in love with him, what he did. Because, you see, not only was he boxing for himself, he was boxing for all of us.
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The Department of Housing and Urban Development proposed new rules this week that would allow tens of thousands of families to use federal housing assistance to rent more expensive apartments in nicer neighborhoods. It has the potential to change the makeup of the American city, facilitating mobility for poor residents and decreasing residential segregation.
In 31 of the nation’s largest cities, the rule would revise the concept of Fair Market Rent, or FMR, a regional value that determines the subsidy available to the 2.2 million households that receive federal housing (or Section 8) vouchers. Here’s how it works now: A voucher-holder finds an apartment, pays 30 percent of his or her income toward rent, and Washington pays the rest—up to the FMR.
Having just one FMR (varied by apartment size) for a whole region means that expensive neighborhoods wind up with virtually no Section 8 tenants, while poor neighborhoods tend to be full of them. The Housing Choice Voucher Program, aka Section 8, was supposed to be an antidote to the concentrated misery of public housing projects, spreading low-income residents across whole cities; in reality, it hasn’t done much to distribute the geography of poverty. (Rampant discrimination against voucher-holders doesn’t help.)
Under the new rules, FMR will instead be set by ZIP code, so Section 8 will spend more money putting poor families in expensive neighborhoods. That reflects a growing consensus that getting poor families into good neighborhoods may be among the best anti-poverty tools we have.
“It is all part of a grand scheme to forcibly desegregate inner cities and integrate the outer suburbs,” the New York Post wrote last month about the changes. Sounds about right, except for the "forcibly" part. The plan's success depends on poor families finding new apartments in new and unfamiliar neighborhoods.
A version of this policy has been underway in a handful of American cities, including Chicago, which has enabled hundreds of Section 8 households to move into wealthy neighborhoods—even a handful on Lake Shore Drive. Those account for less than 2 percent of the Chicago Housing Authority’s voucher recipients. But the idea of subsidizing the poor's move into wealthy neighborhoods using “supervouchers,” as they’re known in Chicago, has unsurprisingly drawn “Welfare Queen” comments and some unscrupulous “watchdog” journalism.
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Johnson Publishing announced the end of its decades-long ownership of the iconic Ebony and Jet magazines on Tuesday (June 14).
"This is the next chapter in retaining the legacy that my father, John H. Johnson, built to ensure the celebration of African Americans," Johnson Publishing chairwoman Linda Johnson Rice said in a statement cited by the Chicago Tribune. The company published Ebony magazine for nearly 71 years.
Johnson Publishing sold Ebony and partner publication Jet to Clear View Group, an Austin, Texas-based and Black-owned equity firm, for an undisclosed amount. "We made this purchase because this is an iconic brand—it's the most-recognized brand in the African-American community," said Clear View Group's co-founder and chairman, Michael Gibson.
A new publishing entity, Ebony Media Operations, will now publish the magazines. The Tribune reports that the new company will maintain Ebony's Chicago and New York offices, as well as most of the staff. Johnson Publishing will retain both the Fashion Fair Cosmetics business and Ebony's up-for-sale photo archives, and Ebony's editor-in-chief Kierna Mayo is moving to Interactive One, where she will serve as SVP for content and brands.
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Fifty years ago this Thursday, the call for “black power” by Stokely Carmichael in Greenwood, Miss., transformed the black freedom struggle.
Frightening white citizens while transforming black identity, the black power movement’s call for radical political self-determination challenged liberal frameworks for racial equality in profound ways that continue to reverberate to this day. Black power took us beyond civil rights protests and challenged the structural nature of race, class and gender inequality, and in the process galvanized domestic and international struggles for liberation.
Just as today’s Black Lives Matter activists have recognized the criminal-justice system as a gateway to multifaceted systems of racial oppression, black power activists identified the Vietnam War, Jim Crow racism and poverty as panoramic threats against racial equality and economic justice.
Under Carmichael’s leadership, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, or SNCC (pronounced “snick”), turned “black power” into a clarion call, a phrase that identified an already existing movement for black liberation that had been led by the indefatigable Malcolm X.
But Malcolm’s ideas of black solidarity, the cultural politics of race, anti-colonialism and human rights flourished past his assassination.
Carmichael, a Trinidadian immigrant-turned-brash New Yorker activist, became the black power movement’s most well-known and charismatic spokesperson, publicly repudiating racism, war and white supremacy while vowing to fight for freedom by any means necessary.
“It is a call for black people in this country to unite, to recognize their heritage, to build a sense of community,” Carmichael said. “It is a call for black people to define their own goals, to lead their own organizations.”
The most famous group to heed Carmichael’s call to action was the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. Founded in Oakland, Calif., in October 1966, the Panthers derived their name from black sharecroppers in Lowndes County, Ala., but were inspired by Malcolm X. Maverick black nationalists, budding socialists and unconventional Marxists, the Panthers organized around ending police brutality, the tip of the spear in an expansive revolutionary program that called for “land, peace, bread and justice” for the black community.
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Voices and Soul
by
Justice Putnam
Black Kos Poetry Editor
Since Light and Sound are mostly waves in interstellar space, I've often argued that Sound preceded Light in the microseconds after that galactic expansion that resonates across the Cosmos. In time, maybe after billions of years, we can hear the pangs of our own original birth.
It is a low hum that rises and falls. Almost like an echo.
"I know the planet Earth is ’bout to explode.
Kind of hope that no one saves it.
We only grow from anguish."
— Mac Miller
In the likely event of galactic calamity —
our sun’s hydrogen reserves fused through,
the star-turned-red-giant bloating
as do our corpses — you will require flames.
Between the solar shockwave and Earth’s
rattling — an opaque interval — you must
stare, but we people prior will have left
no crude fluid for ignition, for light,
having tapped this rock to gorge
our bellies to petroleum ache.
Perhaps you will have evolved — blood
supplemented with Edison and Tesla’s
currents, half your body fed by generators
that slow-cure your biomass or waste.
Maybe you will be self-luminous.
But if you are still — like we,
like me — a mere meat-pod fated to watch
Mercury and Venus engulfed, surely
you hold designs for an interplanetary ark.
Anticipate humanity’s years spent
adrift in the dark liquor of space — lost
within hibernation and missing mother-
planet, further estranged from all
revelation of how we came to be.
From this unproven vantage point (inside
our history with no solid alpha), I claim to pity
your inherited task — to catalog the last
telluric pulse, close the case of man as now
known. But beneath my softened hide,
I’m envious. All of our missteps as shepherds,
all the graffiti eclipsing our souls, all of it
will cinder and you will view this erasure
from your Mars-bound barge. You will know
the phenomenon that is judgment, see it real-time
as prophets allegedly witnessed. Man will never
have beheld a clearer beacon to be reborn —
-- Kyle Dargan
"Dear Echo"
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WELCOME TO THE TUESDAY’S PORCH