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EDITORIAL: It's been a really long hot summer, so let's be "cool"
CHECK OUT OUR Peoples' Archives
Museums of Knowledge BELOW THIS SUMMER/FALL 2023 WHILE INSIDE
It's "cool" to be well schooled!
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Hollywood Guilds Team Up With LA Labor Unions for a ‘Hot Strike Summer’
By Jeremy Fuster
portside.org
Hollywood writers and actors aren’t the only unionized workers picketing in Los Angeles right now. In a show of force for the labor movement, the WGA and SAG-AFTRA are teaming up with workers across the city to march in solidarity for better wages and working conditions.
Hospitality workers union Unite Here 11, which has been on strike since June 30, staged a solidarity rally in Hollywood Friday that saw hundreds of its members join up with entertainment industry workers to march from the W Hotel on Hollywood Boulevard past the famous intersection of Hollywood and Vine and on to the Netflix offices at Sunset Bronson Studios, where they were met with cheers by writers and actors on the daily picket lines.
“Unite Here Local 11, we are so happy to have you here!” yelled a WGA picket chant leader into a bullhorn. “L.A. is a union town, and this is going to be a hot strike summer!”
As the strike began, UH11 members led the march and were joined by members of the WGA and IATSE Local B-192, which represents employees at Universal Studios Hollywood. On the way to the Netflix offices, the march passed by a SAG-AFTRA picket line at the nearby Sunset Gower Studios, where some of the actors union members joined the march while others swapped signs with Unite Here members.
Susan Minato, co-president of Unite Here 11, noted that her union is connected to Hollywood labor by more than just their simultaneous strikes, as some members of UH11 are also members of WGA and SAG-AFTRA
“We have all heard the story of the waiter or the bartender who got discovered by talent agencies,” she said. “It is true that our relationship with entertainment labor has deep roots because many people have been members of both unions.” Read more here.
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THE MISTRESS’S TOOLS: MY WOMANIST TAKE ON THE “BARBIE” FILM
by Nkechi Taifa
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My Barbie Dream House was my classroom in an African-centered school in Washington, D.C. half a lifetime ago. I wore my signature African headwrap gele, oozed Kiswahili words and reveled in the dismantling of white supremacy inch by inch, day by day. I believed in what our sister Audre Lorde said, “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” Back in my day, I strived to create the world we wanted — the stories to put in the books so they could enter the mind freely. Yes, we were in mental competition with Mattel and all the other distractions, but we were winning because it was a winning time.
Now I’m drowning in a Hollywood-created pink that is straining to be inclusive.
Yup, I went to see Barbie with my daughter and her friends. I was four years old when Barbie came on the 1959 pop-culture scene. White Barbie. White Ken. White everything. Decades later when my daughter was born, she never had a white Barbie, or white any other type of doll. Thankfully, by that time, Black dolls and Black children’s books had begun to fill the shelves. But that beginning image in today’s Barbie movie — the 2001 Space Odyssey homage — of a looming white, blond woman — was reminiscent of the pale mannequins once so prevalent in every white magazine, department store or shop window.
But that aside, the Barbie movie dripped buzz words, concepts and images I loved: “sexualized capitalism,” Issa Rae as Barbieland president and a barrage of multi-racial Barbies representing all genres of professions, an all-female Supreme Court, discussion of the dangers of patriarchy, and the piece de la resistance — a young girl of color calling Barbie, portrayed with great joy and gusto by Margot Robbie, a fascist to her European blond face!
While the film displays the power of women, I nevertheless grimaced at the film’s overemphasis on gender which, while critical, fails to address the importance of ideology — i.e., I would not like a high court packed with women with ideologies akin to right-wing hardliners such as Clarence Thomas or Amy Coney Barrett! Legendary author/activist Amiri Baraka once exposed that “the only whitey was capitalism and that the devil was the person who did de-evil.” A white woman director, Greta Gerwig, meant well with Barbie but fell into the white feminist us-versus-them tired trope, the trap of replacing patriarchy with female-dominated repression. She and Robbie used the wrong, worn-out, binary, Eurocentric tools.
And while I loved Issa Rae, couldn’t she at least have rocked a natural hairstyle as opposed to the Stereotypical Barbie’s strung-out tresses?
In the real world that Barbie and Ken fled to, Florida and other states are today trying to pull Black and other oppressed people of color and LGBTQ folks back to the all-white-Barbie-and-Ken-days. Like Robbie’s Barbie character being pursued by that Mattel exec, played by Will Ferrell, we’re likewise trying to be put back into a box that no longer fits. Indeed, my books for Black children highlighting freedom-fighting Black heroes and heroines, were banned by the Central York, Pa. school district during the height of the backlash to George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, adding me to a very prestigious list of the truth-tellers whose books burned white library shelves. Books and dolls crushed to the earth will rise again. Read more here.
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AUGUST 2023 CALENDAR OF EVENTS | |
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Tuesday, August 1; NC Chapter-National Conference of Black Lawyers Meeting, "Legal Arm of Liberating Social Justice Struggles in our Communities" ...join us as we share our work. If interested call Greg Moss /leave a message with your name and mobile number at (919) 876-7187 or email us at the FOLWC Center.
Thursday, August 3; 3:30-5:30 PM; Raleigh City Workers Union UE Local 150 Meeting – new member orientation. Call Angaza for more info at (919) 231 2660; 5:30 -6:00 PM UE Local 150 meeting with City Council reps TBA
Saturday, August 12; 9:30-10:30 AM; Workin’ Beginner Fit with Nate – a Free Community Fitness Class; Our exercise classes in the parking lot are back!! Stretching, toning, aerobic, dance – we’ve got it all for participants who are beginners, may have limitations, or are advanced. Plus, we’ll have 10 minutes, “Livin’ More than Just Enough” Health talks about overcoming disparities and healthcare access in our communities. So, come out, bring your towel, mat and light dumbells. Be ready to get on the road to better fitness and to build healthier lifestyles in Black and Brown communities. Water and healthy snacks will be available. RSVP to Donnae or Nathanette at (919) 876-7187 or register at Eventbrite; search: Free Community Health Classes. Classes are free, but donations are greatly appreciated!
Saturday, August 12; 10:00 AM-2:00 PM; UE Local 150 NC Public Service Workers Union Executive Board Meeting. Contact us at ue150 eboad@google groups.com or (919) 876-7187 for more information.
Saturday, August 12; 12:00–2:00 PM; Write Revolution Vol 2 - Write Revolution is the 2nd in a poetry workshop series at the World Cultural Cafe centered around inspiring, challenging, and guiding participants through crafting their own evolution. Instructor, Hausson Bryd will teach the workshop. For any questions, comments, or concerns, contact Hausson at progressinked@gmail.com; Tickets can be purchased on a sliding scale of $5-$15 by Paying @ the Door, Cashapp, or Venmo.
Saturday, August 19; 10:00-11:00 AM; Biltmore Hills Neighborhood Association meeting at Biltmore Hills Recreation Center Meeting Room #1, 2615 Fitzgerald Dr., Raleigh, NC; National Conference of Black Lawyers /NC Chapter hosts a "Waiver/Deferred Property Tax Workshop" for veterans and elders, email BiltmoreHillsNA@gmail.com or contact Greg Moss.
Saturday, August 19; 10:30 -1:30 PM; Zeta Amicae of Morrisville Annual Auxiliary Retreat at the World Cultural Cafe at 4202 Lake Ridge unit
Saturday, August 19; 11:00 AM-1:30 PM; BASIC ORGANIZING 101 TRAINING with Cultural Artist Activists and YOUTH ORGANIZING FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE on the Outside Patio with music under our beautiful big RED UMBRELLAS
Saturday, August 19; 1:00-5:00 PM; Hotter Than July Social Justice Fish Fry & Black August Commemoration at FOLWCC Outside under the big umbrellas - Live music featuring special guests, games, prizes, DJ, poetry, community good news, and speak out—plates $12 and sandwiches $7. We suggest you pre-order at (919) 876-7187 or email fruitoflaborwcc@netscape.com because we’re guaranteed to sell out!
Sunday, August 20; 4:00-5:00 PM; Black Workers for Justice Women’s Commission Working Group hosts part 5 of a book review and discussion of What’s Love Got to Do With It - a book by Donna Franklin about the relationships between Black men and women. This will be an in-person, at the FOLWCC, and virtual discussion. Call or text Wille Roberts at (252) 640-0944 for more information and to register.
Sunday, August 20; 4:00-5:00 PM; FINANCIAL HEALTH WORKSHOP... Learn the 5 principles of credit/financial health and understand the dangerous pillars of today’s capitalist crisis that is impacting working-class people like us!
Saturday, August 22; 9:30-10:30 AM; Sculpt & Flex with Nykya; Bring your mat and towel. We have extra mats, if needed, Water and healthy snacks will be available. RSVP to Donnae at (919) 876-7187, email heydonnae@gmail.com. or register at Eventbrite; search: Free Community Health Classes. Classes are free, but donations are greatly appreciated!
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Reserve the Fruit of Labor World Cultural Center for your Special Event!
The Fruit of Labor World Cultural Center is the perfect beautiful venue for your special event. Contact us today for information about our very reasonable rates and availability. Call (919) 876-7187, 919-231-2660 or email fruitoflaborwcc@netscape.com.
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W. E. B. Du Bois, Souls of Black Folk: A Graphic Interpretation – A Review
by Patrick Delices
portside.org
Approximately 120 years after African American academic and activist W. E. B. Du Bois published one of the greatest scholarly works in the canon of world literature, The Souls of Black Folk, literary giants Paul Peart-Smith, Paul Buhle, and Herb Boyd provide the public and the world of academia with their masterful graphic adaptation and edited interpretation of Du Bois’s Souls of Black Folk. As Buhle and Boyd enabled and assisted Peart-Smith regarding this text, President Jonathan Scott Holloway of Rutgers University provides us with a sagacious and felicitous introduction by titling it – “The Souls of Black Folk: In Its Time…and Ours.”
This timely adaptation of Du Bois’s Souls of Black Folk is further enhanced by the intense and spectacular artistic graphics of Paul Peart-Smith where readers will strongly feel various emotions as they contemplate deeply Du Bois’s profound prophecy regarding race relations along with his pungent polemic regarding not necessarily the souls of Black folk, but essentially the soul of America. For it is the soul of America, not Black folk that created and still perpetuates the pernicious ordeal and reality of not only a double consciousness, but a dual and divided country: one Black, the other White where inequality, injustice, and white supremacy thrive and prevail as the lives of Black folk are not only exasperated, but almost extinguished.
Truth be told, it is the soul of America, not Black folk that created “this double consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity” (Peart-Smith, Buhle, and Boyd, 2023, p. 8). Yet, before the birth of the United States, it was Black folk, given their double consciousness, who fought alongside white folk during the American Revolution, and ultimately, in all of their wars for the sake of white liberty and acceptance. Read more here.
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MUSIC THAT IS HOTTER THAN JULY | | |
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Childish Gambino - This is America | | | | |
