‣ An impartial, Michigan-based journal by and for lesbians marks its fiftieth anniversary this yr, and reporter Sydney Boles tells the story of its inception and evolution for Autostraddle:
To name the early years of Lesbian Connection a shoestring operation is an understatement. Of their second situation in December of 1974, in an act of pretty radical monetary transparency, LC printed their very first price range for the upcoming yr. Their whole price range was $865.80, or about $5,251 at present. They mentioned that as much as that time, they’d spent about $95 {dollars}, together with $8.10 for a put up workplace field rental, $12.00 for the printing of flyers, and, quaintly, $3 on miscellaneous workplace provides.
They saved some cash as a result of volunteers introduced reams of paper to donate to the trigger. With no typewriter of their very own, they snuck into numerous workplaces at evening to kind up what individuals had despatched in.
A lesbian printer in Grand Rapids volunteered to print a couple of points, after which the Iowa Metropolis Girls’s Press printed it for some years. It was about eight or 10 hours every approach, cardboard bins filled with magazines weighing down a Toyota station wagon that had been donated by two girls from Detroit who known as themselves the Pink Dykes. They held collating events; they stapled every journal by hand.
‣ I’ve little or no religion in Netflix’s capacity to do justice to August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson, however the film is drumming up curiosity in an art work that impressed the unique play. Gregory Wakeman writes in Smithsonian Journal:
Wilson’s subsequent Pulitzer-winning play drew on an surprising supply of inspiration: a 1983 print by American artist Romare Bearden. The art work, known as The Piano Lesson (Homage to Mary Lou), depicts a music trainer standing over her pupil in a Southern parlor. It was impressed, in flip, by French Modernist Henri Matisse, who in 1916 and 1917 created two work with related titles. All through his profession, Bearden combined quite a lot of kinds, together with Cubism and Dada, whereas drawing on his personal distinctive collage method and his private experiences as a Black man from the South. Bearden, who was born in North Carolina however grew up in New York and Pittsburgh after the Nice Migration introduced his household north, was additionally a songwriter and creator.
The Piano Lesson didn’t mark the primary time that Wilson was immediately impressed by Bearden’s work. His 1984 play Joe Turner’s Come and Gone was initially named Mill Hand’s Lunch Bucket, mirroring the title of a 1978 Bearden collage. Claude Purdy, the co-founder of St. Paul’s Penumbra Theater, the place quite a lot of Wilson’s performs premiered, launched the playwright to Bearden’s work within the fall of 1977.
‣ Scholar and Deaf rights activist Sara Nović writes within the Baffler concerning the commodification of signal language, providing an necessary perspective on a brand new British program which will have detrimental results on college students:
So what’s it concerning the Makaton programming that makes it so “unique?” The key ingredient dates again to 1972, when Margaret Walker, the senior speech therapist at Botley’s Park Hospital in Surrey, launched a choice of 145 British Signal Language phrases to deaf-disabled sufferers and workers to facilitate communication between the 2 teams. It was additionally a chance for Walker to gather knowledge on language acquisition, and her research “revealed” that the deaf sufferers realized signed language simply and communicated successfully utilizing the BSL vocabulary. No shit.
Right here’s the place it will get actually wild: quite than educate the deaf-disabled sufferers extra BSL, usher in deaf mentors who might present strong language entry, or share knowledge concerning the potential worth of visible language for intellectually disabled individuals with specialists within the area, Walker, together with two colleagues, Kathy Johnston and Tony Cornforth, expanded their BSL vocabulary record to about 350 indicators. Then, utilizing the primary letters of their names—Ma, Ka, Ton—they trademarked it. The true innovation behind Makaton is the gall to trademark one other group’s language. In Walker’s listening to palms, BSL instantly grew to become a commodity.
‣ Practically two years into the Sudanese civil conflict and displacement of over 11 million individuals, Amnesty Worldwide discovered that the RSF paramilitary group will get lots of its weapons from a French producer through the UAE. Fatma Khaled experiences for AP:
“Our research shows that weaponry designed and manufactured in France is in active use on the battlefield in Sudan,” mentioned Agnès Callamard, Amnesty Worldwide’s Secretary Basic.
“The Galix System is being deployed by the RSF in this conflict, and any use in Darfur would be a clear breach of the U.N. arms embargo,” she mentioned. “The French government must ensure that Lacroix Defense and KNDS France immediately stop the supply of this system to the UAE.”
‣ The military-industrial advanced can also be alive and nicely within the US, the place Immigration and Customs Enforcement started mobilizing its surveillance community as quickly as Trump gained the presidential election. Caroline Haskins explains for Wired:
ICE’s latest discover asks firms to ship particular particulars about how they might retailer location knowledge and private info, the place their workplace areas can be, how they might workers brokers, and what know-how they’ve for distant surveillance, amongst different particulars. At the moment, ICE makes use of a mix of ankle screens and GPS-enabled smartwatches and smartphone apps to remotely monitor individuals. It additionally makes use of apps with facial recognition for “biometric” check-ins.
The discover says firms will need to have amenities with “suitably large intake rooms” for individuals being enrolled in ICE surveillance. In addition they will need to have the “ability to perform mass-scale intakes as required by unforeseeable events.”
The Onion bought Infowars’ belongings with the assist of the households in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, who sued Jones for spreading lies concerning the victims of the 2012 capturing at Sandy Hook Elementary College. Jones was ordered to pay greater than $1 billion in 2022 and filed for chapter later that yr. In September, a decide permitted auctions to liquidate Jones’ belongings, together with Infowars.
‣ I extremely suggest creator Maya Schenwar’s new essay in Truthout, a shifting meditation on jail abolition, her sister’s incarceration and overdose, and the creativeness youngsters wield as gasoline for a greater world:
The various tentacles of the punitive state — jail, jail, probation, household policing, coercive mandated drug “treatment” — had wrapped themselves round Keeley, they usually had been squeezing. In the meantime, I used to be straining my creativeness as exhausting as I might, attempting, in my writing and enhancing and activism and direct assist for Keeley, to dream past the partitions that stored her from us.
However I typically felt caught, and at these instances, child Okay. — born throughout Keeley’s seventh incarceration, having heard her sing to them in utero via the telephone — helped. She obtained a jail tattoo of their title on her forearm earlier than they had been even born. They repeated “Aunt Keeley” amongst their first phrases, adorning it with hopeful babbles.
In late 2019, once we discovered Keeley was pregnant once more, I advised 18-month-old Okay., “You’re getting a cousin.” They responded dreamily, “A cousin, a giraffe?” and commenced to sing a protracted thread of nonsense syllables, punctuated by “Aunt Keeley” and “cousin” — a sunny melody, a ballad of their future collectively.
‣ Māori representatives in New Zealand’s parliament disrupted a vote on a brand new invoice that will doubtlessly roll again Indigenous rights by ripping up the textual content and performing a haka. Merely iconic. Watch it right here:
‣ I could also be a canine individual, however these bodega cat movies are a salve for the soul:
‣ Talking of which:
‣ Coming to a espresso store close to you in 100–200 years!
Required Studying is printed each Thursday afternoon, and it’s comprised of a brief record of art-related hyperlinks to long-form articles, movies, weblog posts, or photograph essays value a re-assessment.
