“A Night at the Garden” is a short film that depicts a pro-Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City in 1939. Billed as a “pro-American” rally, the images of the columns of white, uniformed men from the ethnic German group called the German American Bund striking drums, carrying swastika-adorned banners, and displaying…
Is a conversation action?: bell hooks and theory for healing and liberation
A politically conscious and active friend of mine teaches in an early college program in Queens, where teenagers learn from him about U.S. history and great literature. This weekend, we chatted a bit about his work, how wonderful and inspiring it can be, as well as how uncertain in terms of greater consequences. My friend…
Educators as political participants, sanctuary as co-authored activity toward radical hope: Politico article about CUNY professors and our syllabi
On Wednesday, Politico published an article about the opening statement I and other professors use on their syllabi at City College, Hunter College, and other CUNY campuses in New York. The statement, which I adopted in January 2017 and have included for all of my classes since, reads: As an educator, I fully support the…
We ready, we comin’: the end of DACA and getting started
Hi Diana, I feel you, I know it’s scary… Tonight I took part in a phone call last night held by United We Dream, a national organization fighting for social justice run by and for immigrant youth. Apparently over 2,000 people from all over the country including Virginia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Oregon…
The question of community: climate change, DACA, and environmental racism
Hurricane Harvey is striking Houston and 50 other counties in Texas, pounding the region with enough water to fill the football stadiums of the NFL and all colleges across the country 100 times. Nearly impossible to imagine. At the same time, one-third of Bangladesh is under water in a monsoon season that has been strongly…
Speech, whistleblowing/leaking, and silence: languaging as a political force
Today’s news in many ways is not remarkable, in the sense that we’ve been submerged in a swampy mess of falsehoods and fictions that choke off our view of the world around us (see my recent post about Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation, which asserts that our definition of reality is served up to us, hot and…
