‣ An unbiased, Michigan-based journal by and for lesbians marks its fiftieth anniversary this 12 months, 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 subject in December of 1974, in an act of pretty radical monetary transparency, LC printed their very first finances for the upcoming 12 months. Their whole finances was $865.80, or about $5,251 at this time. They stated that as much as that time, they’d spent about $95 {dollars}, together with $8.10 for a submit 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 varied 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 Ladies’s Press printed it for some years. It was about eight or 10 hours every manner, cardboard packing containers filled with magazines weighing down a Toyota station wagon that had been donated by two ladies from Detroit who known as themselves the Crimson Dykes. They held collating events; they stapled every journal by hand.
‣ I’ve little or no religion in Netflix’s potential to do justice to August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson, however the film is drumming up curiosity in an paintings that impressed the unique play. Gregory Wakeman writes in Smithsonian Journal:
Wilson’s subsequent Pulitzer-winning play drew on an sudden supply of inspiration: a 1983 print by American artist Romare Bearden. The paintings, 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 a wide range of types, 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 straight 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 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 vital perspective on a brand new British program that 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 possibility for Walker to gather information on language acquisition, and her examine “revealed” that the deaf sufferers discovered signed language simply and communicated successfully utilizing the BSL vocabulary. No shit.
Right here’s the place it will get actually wild: somewhat than educate the deaf-disabled sufferers extra BSL, usher in deaf mentors who may present sturdy language entry, or share information 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 checklist 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 neighborhood’s language. In Walker’s listening to palms, BSL instantly turned 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 by way of the UAE. Fatma Khaled reviews for AP:
“Our research shows that weaponry designed and manufactured in France is in active use on the battlefield in Sudan,” stated Agnès Callamard, Amnesty Worldwide’s Secretary Normal.
“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 stated. “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 be alive and effectively 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 current discover asks corporations to ship particular particulars about how they’d retailer location information and private info, the place their workplace places could be, how they’d 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 displays 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 corporations should have amenities with “suitably large intake rooms” for individuals being enrolled in ICE surveillance. Additionally they should 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 taking pictures at Sandy Hook Elementary College. Jones was ordered to pay greater than $1 billion in 2022 and filed for chapter later that 12 months. In September, a choose accepted auctions to liquidate Jones’ belongings, together with Infowars.
‣ I extremely advocate creator Maya Schenwar’s new essay in Truthout, a transferring meditation on jail abolition, her sister’s incarceration and overdose, and the creativeness youngsters wield as gas 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, and so they had been squeezing. In the meantime, I used to be straining my creativeness as laborious as I may, attempting, in my writing and modifying and activism and direct assist for Keeley, to dream past the partitions that saved her from us.
However I typically felt caught, and at these occasions, child Ok. — born throughout Keeley’s seventh incarceration, having heard her sing to them in utero by means of the cellphone — helped. She bought a jail tattoo of their identify 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 came upon Keeley was pregnant once more, I advised 18-month-old Ok., “You’re getting a cousin.” They responded dreamily, “A cousin, a giraffe?” and started to sing an extended 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 probably 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 checklist of art-related hyperlinks to long-form articles, movies, weblog posts, or photograph essays price a re-examination.
