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“Take a shower. Boil pasta. Wash your clothes. Now imagine that the water from your tap is so poisonous as to cause rashes, sickness, neurological damage for you and generations to come. Imagine if your city's unelected Emergency Manager is responsible for policy changes that led to this disaster. That the Governor who installed this manager is only, just now, after years of red flags and protest beginning to act with efficacy. But that's still a maybe.Now imagine that you're being charged top dollar for this poisoned water, and the Governor has said nothing about billing relief or refunds. That you're forced toprotest in front of city hall for a shutoff moratorium, that even outsiders felt compelled to start and share a Change.org petition imploring the Governor to stop this criminality.These are just a few of the dire circumstances Flint resident and founder of Water You Fighting For Melissa Mays contends with every day. I corresponded with Melissa via email to find out more about her experience and what she's been doing on the ground to fight for clean water. Melissa is one of the heroes of this struggle, long fighting for justice, and not giving up despite many times feeling alone and unheard as the powerful tried to silence the truth.”

#Flint JusticeForFlint FlintWaterCrisis MelissaMays WaterYouFighingFor

Let’s talk about girls. Girls dancing, girls dancing so good. Girls that inspire hit songs. Girls scrambling on stage. Girls getting in the way. Girls only good for a night, maybe longer. Girls yearning hard for you, when you want it, when you don’t. So much sex-drenched promise when you’re the rock star, even when you’re the girl, touching God. Talking about the time you touched God. And yes, the imagery of trashed hotel rooms, incinerated guitars. Wreckage. Lots of wreckage when the band comes through town. I listen to David Lee Roth growl “not talking about love” and I sing along, always the fucker, not the fucked. Singing with a rock God who is upfront, tells you his love is “rotten to the core” and I don’t want to believe it, I don’t want to think the God, the man, could hurt me, even when he tells me exactly what he will do. When someone shows you who they are, believe them says Maya Angelou but my God that’s hard when it hurts. How I know that if someone came to murder me I would ask that most useless question: why? How I’m sure I’d say you don’t have to do this as he keeps doing it. Try to use my words, all of these words, to tell him no, I matter, love me instead.

http://curamag.com/issues/2015/12/4/hear-him-whip-the-women

#Girls HearHimWhipTheWomen RollingStones CuraMag AmericanHistory Music RocknRoll

I appreciated #TheFem reposting my essay “Hear Him Whip the Women” and making this graphic. Thank you!

To read full essay: https://thefemlitmagazine.wordpress.com/2016/01/06/hear-him-whip-the-women-stacy-parker-le-melle/

#AmericanHistory #BlackWomen #RollingStones #BrownSugar #rocknroll

Honored to participate. Join us this Friday.

#Hurricane Katrina #Unnatural Disaster #Graduate Center CUNY #Tanya Foster #Nicole Cooley #ClimbingPoeTree #Kalamu ya Salaam

To finish the work for Katrina and arrive at a final number will take not only resources, but also courage, Le Melle said. “I believe we fear responsibility,” she said. “When we declare the reasons of death, then suddenly, someone may be liable. … So I understand a resistance to a broad definition of Katrina death. But I think most victims, and families of victims, want to be acknowledged. They want the truth. They don’t want to feel ignored. They don’t want to feel swept out to sea.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/we-still-dont-know-how-many-people-died-because-of-katrina/?ex_cid=story-facebook

This thing we call civilization is delicate. Like skin. Demagogues use words like knives. They use knives, too.

Still thinking of Donald Trump kicking out Jorge Ramos, how all I could think is that this is exactly what he wants to do millions of people in our society.

#Jorge Ramos #Donald Trump #America #Vote Democratic

Today, I want to share with you two clips - a recording of New Orleans vocalist John Boutte and his band performing Annie Lenox’s “Why?” and a portion of an oral history taken with him in 2007. Boutte has been performing “Why?” since the first months after the Katrina catastrophe. And each time I hear it, I have to stop, and sit, and feel, and think. I highly recommend this version that you can purchase on itunes.

I am deeply grateful for the chance I had to interview Boutte for The Katrina Experience. Below is a clip of the interview that was posted in 2007.

Much love and peace to all reading this - especially those will healing.

John Boutte

On returning to New Orleans after the hurricane and levee failures:

I guess I was in denial. You know? It can't be that bad. But believe me. We got back to New Orleans on about the 16th of October. When we were coming back from Asheville the first time, we were coming through Mississippi, and I saw those pine trees broken like toothpicks. Across the Lake itself, there was not a wave in the lake. You know. It was hot hot hot. We had one bird that 24 mile section. Just looking for something to eat or whatever. Nothing out there. The stillness was like, I don't know, like I was about to go to a wake or a funeral. Then when I saw the city...

My first image was the water line. This black line, like someone took a big marker and wrote across the whole city with a paintbrush. A line. A nasty city dirty muddy shit that they just wrote on everybody's house everywhere. That's it. Cars upside down. Trees. Shit where it wasn't supposed to be. Things where they weren't supposed to be. It was just horrible. Everything was brown. There was not a speck of green in the city. Everything was brown. The whole city was brown. It was like a bad UPS commercial.

It was almost like Calcutta, because of the flies and the bugs and the filth and the stench. There was no place to go get anything to eat. The Red Cross was there, giving out water and food rations. The military--these young boys were carrying M-16s riding around the city. The flies. Flies everywhere. Crows. All the scavengers. Some of the animals that made it through, that were emaciated. It was like a third, or a fifth world country. And everyday all these assholes are on the TV promising what they were going to do, posing, and not doing shit. And they're still not doing shit.

I was afraid to leave the city again. I was afraid that if I'd ever leave I wouldn't be able to get back again. I went straight back to work. Somehow we worked it out. We were the first musicians back on the scene.

It Was Like Church

When we had a gig, it was like church. That was the kind of reaction. People love what we do. They come like a little kid who was afraid to get away from their mom. They always begged me not to [leave New Orleans for outside gigs]. But I got to go because I got to make money. Some things didn't change. That's the financial situation of musicians in New Orleans.

The first gig I did was at Café Brazil on Frenchmen. A club that I first started doing music at. This was in October. It was incredible. It was absolutely incredible. The electricity was still on and off. We were doing it almost acoustically. In this little club. And it was packed. People were amazed that somebody was doing music. It was packed. They were singing along. And musicians--the ones that I knew who were there--I just invited up on stage. We started doing a weekly thing there. Not for any money. I think somebody videoed some of that stuff. I've got some video of that somewhere around. Right after the storm. Very, very very intense.

It was like church. I got everybody--you know, it's hard to get people to participate, sometimes, to sing along, whatever. When I'd open up, the first thing I'd do is, I'd make everybody stand up and I'd say, now I want you all to do me a favor, I want everybody to scream as loud as you can. Whatever you wanted to do, just scream. It's very therapeutic. People would just get up and aaaaaahhhhhhhh! It was like this enormous roar. Get up and do it again. They'd scream again.

We'd start doing some of the old gospel tunes. New Orleans gospel tunes. It was incredible. Just a Little While to Stay Here, Down By the Riverside, Over the Gloryland, You Never Walk Alone.

What was the crowd like? The crowd was funky. Everybody was dirty, man. Nobody was dressed up. You never dressed up a lot in New Orleans anyway, but people were dirty. Nobody was like in suits, coats, ties. Nothing like that. It was kind of like a lack of a place to wash your behind. It was real funky, but it was real. It was really real. The people who have stayed throughout, they were special. They were people who had bonded together. Like never before. They really appreciated the fact that we were back and doing the music.

#John Boutte #New Orleans #Hurricane Katrina #Katrina +10 #Music #Annie Lenox #Why

If you've wanted to hear directly from Afghan women, unfiltered by journalists and uncensored by male relatives, and do so in English, the best place to go since 2009 has been the Afghan Women's Writing Project (AWWP) online magazine.

#Afghanistan #Afghan Women #Afghan Women's Writing Project #Huffington Post #Stacy Parker Le Melle #Pari #Marzia #M

#photograph #James Baldwin #for colored girls #Kara Walker #collage #Stacy Parker Le Melle

I wrote this for 2 reasons:1) the flag matters; and 2) I want to share an example of profound human decency as written about by Gloria Nixon-John in her "novel based on memory" *Learning from Lady Chatterley* which I encourage all of you to buy and read. Just a beautiful coming of age story--this one in 1958 Detroit.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stacy-parker-aab/-defiance-confederate-fla_b_7656016.html

#confederate flag #Take It Down #Detroit #American History #American Now #Gloria Nixon-John #Learning from Lady Chatterley #Neverland Publishing

Adriana McClain Kimberly Plugge Regina Smith Timothy VanDyke Trey Hamilton A digital humanities group project designed to allow blogging about the many faces of Maya Angelou.

Thank you for this mini-review of my *Callaloo* in memoriam piece for Maya Angelou!

#Maya Angelou #Callaloo #The Many Faces of Maya

Anice Gi made a short film about community reaction to ATLAH Missionary Church’s constant display of hate speech at the corner of 123rd and Lenox in Harlem. I’m in the film talking about our “No Time for Hate” community response - raising money for the Ali Forney Center - in attempts to make something good out of something terrible. But you may want to watch just to see Rev. Manning in action. He minces no words.

#Harlem #ATLAH #LGBTQ #Anice Gi #@Ali Forney Center #Homophobia #Transphobia #LoveNotHate #NoTimeForHate

south carolina at war

And just Because we have a right, my grandfather tells us--

we are sitting at his feet and the story tonight is

why people are marching all over the South--

to walk and sit and dream wherever we want.

First they brought us here.

Then we worked for free. Then it was 1863,

and we were supposed to be free but we weren’t.

And that’s why people are so mad.

And it’s true, we can’t turn on the radio

without hearing about the marching.

We can’t go to downtown Greenville without

seeing the teenagers walking into stores, sitting

where brown people still aren’t allowed to sit

and getting carried out, their bodies limp,

their faces calm.

This is the way brown people have to fight,

my grandfather says.

You can’t just put your fist up. You have to insist

on something

gently. Walk toward a thing

slowly.

But be ready to die,

my grandfather says,

for what is right.

Be ready to die, my grandfather says,

for everything you believe in.

And none of us can imagine death

but we try to imagine it anyway.

Even my mother joins the fight.

When she thinks our grandmother

isn’t watching she sneaks out

to meet the cousins downtown, but just as

she’s stepping through the door,

her good dress and gloves on, my grandmother says,

Now don’t go getting arrested.

And Mama sounds like a little girl when she says,

I won’t.

More than a hundred years, my grandfather says,

and we’re still fighting for the free life

we’re supposed to be living.

So there’s a war going on in South Carolina

and even as we play

and plant and preach and sleep, we are a part of it.

Because you’re colored, my grandfather says

And just as good and bright and beautiful and free

as anybody.

And nobody colored in the South is stopping,

my grandfather says,

until everybody knows what’s true.

-from Jacqueline Woodson’s brown girl dreaming

#jacqueline woodson #brown girl dreaming #South Carolina #Charleston Massacre #American History #Greenville #YA #Poetry #Literature #race #justice #grace

As we begin National Poetry Month in the United States, we offer this powerful piece from Stacy Parker Le Melle, who shares the poignant work of poets from the Afghan Women’s Writing Project (AWWP), a program that helps women and girls write about their lives and dreams. When Stacy responded to our request to share the latest poetry from AWWP poets, she said the recent brutal murder of Farkhunda, a young Afghan woman, was "so on our minds, hearts, tongues...I couldn't write about anything else."

In March 2015, a young Afghan woman named Farkhunda was accused of burning the Qur’an and was beaten, run over by a car, thrown from a rooftop, and set afire by young men in the Kabul streets. She pleaded her innocence but this meant nothing to the mob that assaulted her and took her life....

#AWWP #justiceforfarkhunda #Farkhunda #Afghanistan #Fetzer Institute #poetry #resistance

An honor+ to be in Callaloo Journal next to Jamaal May.

#Callaloo #Harlem #show some love for the world famous apollo kids #Apollo Theater #Jamaal May #essays

awwproject

Read what the women of Afghan Women’s Writing Project have to say: http://awwproject.org/2015/03/burning-farkhunda-burning-our-beliefs/

http://awwproject.org/2015/03/seeking-justice-for-farkhunda/

#JusticeForFarkhunda

#JusticeForFarkhunda #Afghanistan #AWWP

“I hope to continue creative work that fights invisibility – one story at a time,” she said. “I wish to keep writing and teaching. Both are serious crafts [and] if you want to be any good, you have to keep at it. I hope to always be fighting the silence that kills.” - SPL

#GW Hatchet #GWU #SMPA #WhiteHouse #AWWP #TheKatrinaExperience

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