CURRENT QUARTERLY FEATURES
Summer 2020
Spoken Words: Black Lives Matter Features
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Featuring spoken works and poetry from Jewku Anyaegbuna, Tadi Chirongoma, Loveness Sola & Mazvitashe Ngoma.
Why You Should Be Afraid--Very Afraid: Sydney Charles
Increasingly, the public is developing a sense of anxiety about Climate Breakdown and Ecological Damage. But most citizens have a ‘non-existing level of knowledge’ about what actions their government has pledged that might pull us back from the brink. Most don’t know their government is pledging the minimum, whilst continuing to add to greenhouse gases. This inexorably warms the world, which disrupts weather patterns, which causes death and destruction.
Lives on the River: Rachel Jacobs
We’ve moved our narrowboat from our lockdown spot on Tottenham Marshes after a dramatic series of events. First, the government decided to ease the lockdown - despite the UK having the second highest virus death rate in the world. Then the Canal and River Trust told us we could no longer stay in place. So we have returned to moving every two weeks, up and down the river, finding moorings where we can.
More Artists Speak...
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Profiles of Activists: Black Lives Matter Features
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Featuring written and spoken words from Makayla Johansson, Hannah Moore, Tadi Chirongoma, Amanda Decker on being black in America.
"The hardest thing about being Black in America is feeling like I alway have to be on guard. I constantly feel I need to make adjustments to myself in order not to seem like I am “stirring up trouble” or even make others uncomfortable with my Blackness." - Makayla Johannson
Chalking it Up: Samara Rosen
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When COVID-19 hit Oakland, California, the first thing to go was toilet paper. Videos of shoppers fighting over the last rolls went viral. By the time I got to the store, nothing was left but napkins.
On my first pandemic grocery store visit , I walked around an entire block just to get in line to enter. 6 feet markers were spray-painted onto the pavement to assist shoppers in social distancing. For two hours, dozens, or perhaps hundreds, of impatient strangers stood in line, shifting back and forth and trying not to step in the accumulating gum on the sidewalk. We stooped over our phones. Headphones in. Shuffling up 6 feet at a time.
The Fire This Time: Josh Buchin
America is on fire. In truth, America has always been on fire. The fire has raged for 400 years. But now it feels as if people are finally looking out their windows and noticing the conflagration. While America burns, I’ve been thinking about privilege, one of the main reasons America is aflame. Some people have privilege and others are denied access to what advantage brings. Consider two kinds of ‘entitlements’: the privilege of ignorance and the privilege of choice. Combined, these two permit the larger indulgence of inaction.
See five visual arts features from Amanda Holiday, Lorell Harris, Jean Sugarbroad Keele, Chekai Madiridze, and Prav Menon-Johannson.
Just Between Us…..
We are facing many crises. Historically, the word crisis denotes something intense but short lived. In these times, we’re living in situations of profound threat which are now normalized. No end is in sight for the rise of rightwing populism; the corruption of national governments; income inequality; massive unemployment. These make for ongoing background noises, still clamouring to be heard and addressed. And in the UK, Brexit looms, severing this island nation from the European Union.
Front and centre is death delivering Covid 19, made worse by the stupidity at how it’s being managed. Black Lives Matter is gaining traction, articulating pent-up rage against degradation, distorted historical memory and murder of Black people. And the continually growing threat of climate destruction rumbles on. We have very little time to prevent massive catastrophic damage to the Earth’s life systems, and to preserve biodiversity. The response thus far has been denial, feeble half-measures, more denial, corporate and media lies and disinformation, social media distortion, government failure to live up to climate abatement promises, more lies and denial.
On Thursday, Oct. 1, at 6 pm GMT+1, we will have a Zoomcast conversation with Paulo Hartmann , a Brazilian activist, on the climate catastrophes and response to Covid-19 in Brazil.
To be part of the conversation, join us on Zoom at
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Best wishes in these challenging times,
Rose Levinson, Ph.D.
Founder and Managing Editor
