I’m starting, with several fellow graduate students at CUNY, a Working Group on Philanthropy and Civil Society. We come from the fields of sociology, political science, social welfare, and other disciplines which, we argue, do not speak to each other nearly enough and share learning and language around the core questions we must face as…
The struggle to define who is worthy: mass incarceration and mass deportation
I just finished watching an interview with Susan Burton, author of “Becoming Ms. Burton” and founder of A New Way of Life, a re-entry program for women of color who are adjusting to their new lives after prison, and Michelle Alexander, author of “The New Jim Crow,” on Democracy Now!. Alexander wrote the introduction to Burton’s book, in…
“Who are you?”: Art as disruptor, generator of public space
At a graduate student conference called Radical Democracy at The New School a couple of weeks ago, I attended a panel in which several students discussed art and artists who sought to disrupt the status quo about how information is shared and important social issues are discussed among the people of any society. Institutionalized processes of dissemination…
Hip hop dance as rupture, aesthetic rising
I’ve been obsessed with hip hop videos since 2014, when I discovered Tricia Miranda, LA-based choreographer for stars including Beyoncé, Rihanna, and Missy Elliott. I took one hip hop dance class in Boston and can barely shake it in salsa or bachata outings (#cudjatellimwhite), but that doesn’t seem to matter when I tune in on the newest…
Migration is natural
On May 11th, PBS featured a fascinating story for its “Brief but Spectacular” segment that inspires thinking around (im)migration and identity. Jess X. Snow, a young first-generation Chinese-American artist illuminates her experiences as an immigrant, a child of immigrants, with force and insight: Imagination is daring to love what is not in front of us. So what then,…
