[newyorker]

David Remnick profiles the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, and speaks with Barack Obama about the breadth of her enduring influence:

“Nobody embodies more fully the connection between the African-American spiritual, the blues, R.&B., rock and roll—the way that hardship and sorrow were transformed into something full of beauty and vitality and hope,” Obama tells Remnick. “American history wells up when Aretha sings.” 

Read more.

Photograph by Richard Avedon

[libbyvanderploeg]

Strong women lift each other up! Happy International Women’s Day, ladies. Thanks to all the amazing women who motivate, challenge, and inspire me to be a stronger, smarter ladyboss everyday.

[socinnovation]

International Women’s Day

Alicia Garza

Black Lives Matter

International Women’s Day 2016

[socinnovation]

[socinnovation]

From the series The Moroccans

Alaoui Leila

1982-2016

http://www.bjp-online.com/2016/01/amnesty-photographer-leila-alaoui-killed-in-burkina-faso-al-qaeda-attack/

[socinnovation]

I have decided to stick with Love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 

[theeconomist]

Meet the Indian doctor transforming thousands of lives. Dr Devi Shetty’s pioneering methods are bringing world-class heart surgery to the masses.

And watch the full film here: http://econ.st/1n0A1b9

[socinnovation]

A model of Health Without Wealth through frugal innovation at scale.

“If a solution is not affordable, it is not a solution”

[socinnovation]

Big Dreams:  Life Built on Gold

Image by: Nii Obodai Provencal

Notes from the Field, Ghana

“Trust doesn’t come easily in the gold mines. To have people allow me into their fragile and desperate lives demands a reconsideration of the photographer’s role.

So often I have been asked why I want to photograph them and what will I do with the pictures. They often assume that I am taking their images for profit, to grow rich. To ease things and to give back in a way that allows our often brief encounters to resonate into the future, I have started using a Polaroid Land 320 Automatic camera loaded with Fuji FP 100c, in addition to my usual Leica M6. With Ghana’s power supply becoming more unstable everyday, instant film is re-emerging.

I began to use this camera to make portraits of the people that Yiting Sun, my journalist collaborator, and I wanted to talk to. It helps break the ice when they find out that I can give them a photograph that will be theirs to keep. Individuals who were first aggressive to my presence would begin to demand that I also photograph them.”

This exchange is not a one-sided emotional experience, it also leaves me feeling as if I am not justing taking from them but also giving back. The sense of gratitude flows both ways.”

Big Dreams:  Life Built on Gold

[socinnovation]

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ninL7CmqBqg)

A short animation from Human Rights Watch digital campaign to end Iran’s discriminatory ban on women attending volleyball matches between men’s teams. Watch4Women calls on the International Volleyball Federation (FIVB) to use its power to influence Iran, so that women can exercise their basic right to enter sports stadiums.

[guardian]

US police killed 1,126 people so far this year. Will 2016 be any different?

[socinnovation]

“There is no denying the wild horse in us.” 

Virginia Woolf

Bibliophilia:  Literary Postcards

2015 Obvious State Studio 

[socinnovation]

Steve Jobs, son of an immigrant from Syria, rendered by graffiti artist Banksy on a wall by a refugee camp in Calais, France. 

We are often led to believe that migration is a drain on a country’s resources. Apple is the world’s most profitable company, it pays over $7 billion a year in taxes -- and it only exists because a young man from Homs was allowed to enter the United States. 

[socinnovation]

The Power of Parity:  How Advancing Women’s Equality Can Add $12 Trillion to Global Growth

McKinsey Global Institute

2015 

[socinnovation]

Slavery to Mass Incarceration

Equal Justice Initiative 

An animation video illustrates how slavery tied to race evolved to an ideology of white supremacy, systemic segregation, and racist laws to the mass incarceration of people of color.  

[nprfreshair]

In 1996, Reginald Dwayne Betts — a 16-year-old honor student with braces — used a pistol to carjack a man who had been sleeping in his vehicle. Shortly thereafter, he was caught, sentenced as an adult and sent to an adult prison, where he served more than eight years, including one year in solitary at a supermax facility.

“I was 5 feet, 5 inches and 120 pounds. I went to prison with grown men, and I went into what people readily acknowledge as a treacherous and a wild place,” Betts tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross. “My judge, when he sentenced me, he said, ‘I am under no illusion that sending you to prison will help, but you could get something out of it if you choose to.’ ”

As it turns out, the time he spent behind bars helped shape Betts’ future as a poet. He had always loved to read, but in prison, books — and writing — became a mental escape. One day, when he was in solitary confinement, a fellow prisoner slipped an anthology called The Black Poets under his cell door.

“That’s the book that changed my life,” Betts says. “It introduced me to Etheridge Knight, to Rob Hayden, Lucille Clifton, Sonia Sanchez and so many countless black writers and black poets that really shaped who it is that I wanted to be in the world.”

Betts completed his GED while in prison. After his release in 2005, he continued his education and is now a law student at Yale University. He is also a poet and author. His most recent book is a collection of poems called Bastards of the Reagan Era.

Betts says the name of the book holds double meaning: “First is that it’s this idea of being fatherless, but the other idea is … this notion that whole sort of generation of young people were bastards of an era, of the Reagan era. I think about my own life, I think about the life of people that’s close to me, and I just recognize that we were … we were just lost — lost in time, we were lost in space, and we were struggling to find, I think, a sense of who we were.”

In 'Bastards Of The Reagan Era’ A Poet Says His Generation Was 'Just Lost’

[socinnovation]

COP21, Paris

Image by Souvid Datta of East Beijing coal factory pasted on avenue Jean Juares, Paris 

Magnum Foundation and #Dysturb are placing 25 images by photographers from around the world onto public facing buildings and facades in the city of Paris. The #reframeclimate project brings compelling, documentary images into the everyday lives of people who do not sit at the climate negotiating table.

Each poster presents fact on climate resilience, environmental justice, and urban governance.  A passerby can listen to the voice of the photographer tell the story behind the image through SMS.  Each site integrates image, voice and fact to engage the public. 

In a cultural hub like Paris, images from the world pasted in the streets, remind us of how powerful we are together. We, and the nimble factories of ideas, technologies, and cultural expressions that we live in, offer solutions to the issues our planet is facing.

[aljazeeraamerica-blog]

Planned Parenthood a longtime target for attacks