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Hey, Everyone, Please take yourselves on down to Fair Haven and check out the gorgeous mural that this amazing community generated this past weekend in ongoing efforts to save the beautiful Strong School building. Just got this pic from Sarah Miller, one of the head organizers of the event (thankfully it doesn't show me dribbling paint onto the raccoon. Woops!) Thanks so much for including me in the party!

As we celebrate independence, Shell celebrates its dependence on greed and Esther Kiobel celebrates her husband - a protestor against Shell's destruction of the Niger Delta and its indigenous peoples who was killed through a mock trial conviction - by taking Shell to task.

Find it here: http://takeaction.amnesty.ca/ea-action/action?ea.client.id=1770&ea.campaign.id=73487&utm_campaign=%28not+set%29&utm_source=postaction_facebook&utm_medium=share

Really excited for this class tonight: We begin the first of six sessions at the Neighborhood Music School on the Grateful Dead and their cultural underpinnings and contributions, both historically and presently, as we play their music and discover their origins in the post-war Beat Generation, American folk music, and the psychadelic counter-culture of the era. The inaugural jam for our class "1955 - '66: Dawn of the Dead"? "Cream Puff War" off their debut album. Here we go...

"When the Music Played the Band: (Re)Discovering the Music of the Grateful Dead" tracks the band - and the United States-ian culture surrounding them - from the Beat Generation to well after the death of leader Jerry Garcia in 1995. Please don't hesitate to contact me with any questions about the course - like dropping by... And how about a concert? Maybe...just maybe...

A hard right, Chevy Nova skid-turn takes us to...

NMS Metal Lords!!!

With as many groups as will ride with us, we'll be forging the nether-regions of Heavy Metal - from its mysterious past to its petulant present to its furious future - Skyping with Metal Mayhem makers from around the world - Israel, Greece, the Ukraine - this class will play, listen to, and read the Metal Hinterland...and how its preserving Rock and Roll's function as a personal and social resister and renewer. Throw off your chains, roar free, and register below!

NMS Metal Lords

International Human Rights and Peace through Music. Metal, specifically, in this case!

RRRAAAWRRR!!! The NMS Metal Lords class had the great pleasure of hanging out with fierce musician, scholar, and music educator Gareth Dylan Smith via Skype from London, England earlier today. The Metal-riddled morning saw Gareth speaking with and checking out the unstoppable brother-band of Jackson (guitar, vocals) and Richard Taylor (drums) performing their new material. A great conversation ensued about combining (and forgetting) genres; putting it all on the table when you're writing and rehearsing; why practicing loud is appropriate (of course!); Metal around the world (talking to Greece and maybe Finland soon!); working with Bill Bruford; and the importance of listening to the body. So much more... Thanks, Gareth for your generous gift of time and attention to this group of warriors - its always good to find your people. Keep Hittin' Hard!

June 9, 1976 Boston, MA

Holy Dancing Bears, Batman! What an amazing night last night...

In our 4th week of When the Music Played the Band: Rediscovering the Grateful Dead, we were lucky enough to have Rock archivist and boundless rock historian Kevin Hall share his knowledge of The Tapers, taping culture, the Dead's relationship to The Tapers, important technical advancements because of Tapers, and some amazing archival audio of shows from each YEAR of the Grateful Dead. Nice.

Also, Yale Professor of Physics and Mathematics Dr. Greg Zuckerman continues to be an indispensable guest in our class as he ties our explorations to his direct experiences with the Dead in the Haight from 1965 through the present day. Our new best friend.

Come by! Mondays 7p - 8:30p

Last night's jam? Crazy Fingers!

An old TV news crew interview with San Francisco Assemblyman Willie Brown driving in his Porsche as well as store keepers, cops, stake holders, activists, st...

Yet another amazing Grateful Dead class last night - the musicians were fearless and we hit cultural context full on. '70 - '72: Kent State, The Black Panthers, The Young Lords, Earthday, Vietnam, George McGovern, the Festival Express, Europe '72...and the Beatles break up. Welcome to the 70's.

Most importantly, the Hippie ideal didn't die when the Haight was vacated after the onslaught. Check out the video below to see people from all walks of life come together to stave off gentrification and promote true community development. Collective Leadership people - it can be done. Get on the bus. And win.

Haight-Ashbury in the 1960s Part 3: The Human Be-In and the Summer of Love 1967. Scenes from the "Haight-Ashbury in the Sixties" CD-ROM released in 1996, fea...

Grateful Dead - Week 2: The Dead in Flight Tomorrow night is the second night of 6 weeks investigating the Grateful Dead through artwork, newsclippings, video, audio archives, literature, and - most importantly - playing their music (with our own improvisations!).

This week finds the Dead right smack dab in the middle of the cultural explosion of the years 1967 - '69. We begin with the Human Be-In, move through Monterey and Woodstock, and end, tragically, with Altamot. Manystops along the way - the peak of Vietnam, the San Francisco Oracle, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, the Hells Angels, and the imminent threat of the Cold War - just to name a few. The Universe was giving birth again - and it was everything birth is: the beauty, the blood, the transcendence, the reality check - and the expenses. Here's one video from our class Google Drive remembering a primary source... Have a great week.

A big, big THANK YOU to everyone at the Unitarian Universalist Society in New Haven for allowing us to use their beautiful space in order to run A New Heroism's bedrock initiative - A New Heroism: Tactical Human Rights - for twelve weeks. We covered an awful lot of ground during our Tactical Human Rights education course - I've included our syllabus outline below. Stay tuned for more!

A New Heroism: Tactical Human Rights

Syllabus

Week 1: Introduction

Week 2: The Chocolate Game An introduction to socio-political dynmics

Week 3: Economic Rights: The Weapon of Poverty

Week 4: Police Violence

Week 5: Environmental Rights

Week 6: Cultural Rights: Racism, Eugenics, & the Legacy of the Global South

Week 7: Refugee, Asylum, and Immigrant Rights

Week 8: Project Proposals & Presentations

Week 9: Gender Rights: Mysogyny and Misandry

Week 10: Animal Rights

Week 11: Human Rights as a Public Health Concern: The Epidemiology of Structural Violence, Mass Incarceration, & Gun Violence

Week 12: Human Rights as Public Health - Part II: Due Process Rights, Justice, & Mass Incarceration

Project Presentations & Crits

I'm off to teach our last class of A New Heroism: Tactical Human Rights Education for this semester. The course culminates tonight with Week 2 of Human Rights as Public Health concerns. Last week, we began the unit engaging the lens of epidemiology to look at the issue of Gun Violence - with the importance of social and trust networks and capital highlighted, we move into Week 2...

Tonight, we'll examine the issue of Systemic Violence - violences perpetuated, enabled, and/or encouraged by any system of governance - by looking sharply at the tragedy of Mass Incarceration in the United States, especially as levied against, though not limited to, black men and their communities.

Thank you so much to the Unitarian Universalist Society of Greater New Haven for opening their space to this class and allowing us to convene there. Yet another great Human Rights Education experience from the Spring Term! Hope to see you all this summer with some new Art Activist offerings! Details to follow!

A huge thank you to Katrina Goldburn, Dan Fitzmaurice and the rest of the wonderful community of CAW for getting behind my class Creating Future Memory: The Art of Memorials. We covered an awful lot of ground over the last 16 weeks- from the "Heroic Memory of Salvation" and Institutionalized Memory to "The Loss of Loss". From the Women of Ciudad Juarez to the Women of the Young Lords. From personal artifacts to the synthesis (and expulsion) of emblematic memory within a group. And our guest presenters were simply amazing. Thank you, John Kuo Wei Tchen , Siobhan Carter-David, Johanna Fernandez, Adonis Volanakis, and Katja Kolcio for bringing your energy, wonder, and insights into the learning space and back out. CAW and I will be meeting soon to review the semester to keep things growing as I prepare a new and improved version of Creating Future Memory for the '17 Fall Term in September. Thank you again, CAW, for this wonderful opportunity! Here's a little taste of goodbye from one of our last classes c/o Judith Butler.

A huge, huge thank you to the parents and students of this year's NMS Rocks! Program at the Neighborhood Music School. Exploring social issues (refugees, technology, power minorities) with the unique student voices of the program through original arrangements and student compositions, they gave a knock-down-drag-out show this past Saturday night at NMS.

Here's the set list:

The Queen is Dead - The Smiths Spirit in the Sky/La Grange - Norman Greenbaum/ZZ Topp Boys of Summer - Don Henley The Refugee - U2 Mr. Crowley - Ozzy Ozbourne The Illusion of Choice - Jackson & Richard Taylor Deus in Absentia/Icarus Dream Suite: Opus 4 - Ghost/Yngwie Malmsteen Nutshell - Alice in Chains Fade to Black - Metallica One Tree Hill - U2 Pretzel Logic - Steely Dan Just Ain't Easy - The Allman Bros. Band God Only Knows - The Beach Boys Heroes - David Bowie Kashmir - Led Zepplin

Another great class last night - Gender Rights - last night at the UU as part of A New Heroism: Tactical Human Rights Education. Most poignant? How the shame stemming from the fear of socially stigmatized, though natural, same-sex affection (homo-eros) from men as a promoted gender norm is transferred upon the female body as a violence, using the female body as a vessel for such vicarious "affection" acts, as well as defining woman as a disposable vessel to hold and eradicate shame. Men, we need to monitor ourselves - its cool to let your bro's feel loved by you (even if others think its not) and definitely cool to call other men out on misogyny. The only way we as a society are going to make it is through advocating universal care. All of us.

Hello! A reminder that Creating Future Memory: The Art of Memorial at New Haven's Creative Arts Workshop will be hosting Dr. John Kuo Wei Tchen at 7p tomorrow night as he Skypes in from his work leading the Museum of Chinese in America and the Asian-Pacific Islander Alliance at NYU.

Lead historian at MOCA, Dr. Tchen will be speaking on issues ranging from "silencing memory" to the trope of "The Model Minority" to "dumpster diving" in order to preserve cultural heritage, legitimate history, and ownership of historical experience. Please join us!

An enormous thank you to Dr. Siobhan Carter-David who presented her work on Black-American fashion in Post-Soul publications for our class Creating Future Memory: The Art of Memorial. An amazing conversation ensued, addressing issues ranging from cultural appropriation to cultural bricolage to the chicken-egg relationship between marketing and, especially, the treatment of youth sub-culture, both within that sub-culture's cultural community and beyond it. Thank you, Siobhan!

The Best of Us: Celebrating the Rights of the Child

Ages: Parents and their Children (Ages 5-13) 12 weeks

This super-fun, interesting, activity-based class celebrates the lives of children and the most important job in our world – raising them up. Designed to build relationships and trust within and between families while introducing the world of International Human Rights, The Best of Us honors and actively supports the well-being of kids, adults, and communities, alike. Using the International Convention on the Rights of the Child (ICRC) as our guide, parents and their children will actively explore the different themes of this wonderful, internationally recognized document through student-centered work, collaborative exercises, and accessible service-learning projects. By the end of our time in class together, kids and parents will have identified, researched, planned, and executed simple, effective projects championing the Rights of the Child and the life of dignity in our world.

When: Saturday mornings, 10a – 11:30a Dates: April 15th – July 8th Cost: $300/parent-child team

Space graciously provided by: The First Unitarian Universalist Society 608 Whitney Ave. New Haven, CT 06511

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