“There’s a very famous phrase in the Captain America comics. It’s the ‘No, you move’ quote. And it’s more relevant today than I think ever before. And it’s basically about the one premise that is most important to this nation and that is to stand up for what you believe no matter the odds or consequences. So when the whole world tells you that something wrong is something right, you tell the whole world no you move.”
Kristin James, Arlignton, Va.
“My sign says legalize love because I think we really need love in a time, state like this. We need to all come together and love each other, love the universe, love our planet, the sun. We are all here in this together. And we need to just bring out the god in each other and uplift each other and be the people that we were here to be. The people that god wants us to be, ultimately. And the root of that is love and not hate, and we can move forward.”
Melissa de Rueyes, Chicago
“I’m here because I’m not afraid and I’m here to support the women’s march. I’m a woman and human rights are also undocumented rights.”
Soumeya Benghanem, Fairfax, Va.
“The struggle we have today, we’ve had before, so that’s what my sign is about. 'We the resilient have been here before.’”
In 17th century Rome, painter Artemisia Gentileschi fought to get her rapist convicted.
She was “one of the most remarkable women in the history of western art,” says Richard Savino, a professor at Sacramento State University and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.
Born in Rome in 1593, she led an epic and often tragic life during an age when the city was trying to become the liveliest in Europe, says Savino, also a musician, who has recorded songs from Gentileschi’s time.
During her life she faced repeated tragedy, including rape. “Her life consisted of a series of battles. Battles with authoritative figures regarding the rape. Battles with the rapist. Battles with the bureaucracy of Rome. And then battles with the different groups of artists that dominated the working environment for the different cities within which she lived,” Savino explains.
But Gentileschi, the daughter of painter Orazio Gentileschi, lived an incredible life. She traveled extensively — which was rather extraordinary for a female painter in that time.
Savino says after her rapist was convicted, “she basically decided and was given, more-or-less, permission to travel and take commissions. From Rome she went up to Florence, where she became a sort of integral part of the Medici court.”
She went on to Venice, Naples and as far as London. It’s believed she died in Naples during a plague that swept through the city.
Savino was inspired by Gentileschi’s travels in leading his musical ensemble, El Mundo, which recorded music written when she was alive.
Learn more about this ~*Baroque kween*~ and hear the music she inspired, here.
So today I walk into my history class. My teacher then proceeds to tell us that he had to show a video to his first class and it had taken up the whole period so in order to keep all of his classes at the same pace he was giving his other periods an off day. However, he said that the previous class was too rowdy so he decided that we would play a game together instead. He asked for suggestions and eventually someone said Simon Says and he agreed.
He started off by giving us easy instructions like ‘put your hand on your head” or “jump once”. Some people messed up but he told them that they were still in.
Then he told us to all put our phones on top of the projector. We thought that it was a bit odd, but this teacher had been known to do odd things so we all went along with it. He then had us take out a pencil and paper and had the girls go to one side of the class and the boys on the other. He then told us to make eye contact with someone across the room. The girls were then supposed to write something mean about the person they were looking at on their paper and crumple it up and throw it at the boy. A lot of the girls didn’t want to be mean to the person, however they followed the instructions and wrote the mean comment and threw it at them.
He then had the boys write something nice about the girl they made eye contact with and present to the girl nicely. This of course made the girls feel bad but nobody apologized to the boys. After all, they were just doing it because we were playing Simon Says.
Next, all the boys had to get in a line from tallest to shortest. He then told all of them to sit down except for the four shortest boys. One of the boys was then instructed to put all the mean comments the girls wrote in the trash while another one was told to grab his backpack.
My teacher then had the four boys stand in the middle of the class and called up one of the girls. She was then instructed to dump the contents of the boy’s backpack on the ground, turn his backpack inside out, and then put his stuff back into backpack. The class was shocked, but my teacher said “Simon Says” and that’s the rule of the game so the girl followed what our teacher told he to do.
He then called up another person in the class and told one of the boys to take off their shoes and hand it to them. After that, he then instructed the person to completely unlace his shoes. The class was shocked yet again, but our teacher said “Simon says” so the shoes were unlaced.
Another kid was called up. This time, the kid who had picked up all of the trash earlier was instructed to sit in a desk that was in the middle of the class. The kid who had been called up was then instructed to take the trash can that the boy had filled earlier and dump it over the boys head. They followed the orders without question like the others and dumped it over him (luckily there was only paper in there.)
Finally, four other kids were called up. The last of the original four boys was told to stand at the front of the class and the four new people were told to form a line in front of him. My teacher then handed them some of the crumpled pieces of paper from earlier and told them to throw it at the boy with all their strength. The boy was then pelted with wadded up balls of paper and my teacher told us to all go and sit back down and that the game was over.
Now, we had all agreed that this was the strangest game of Simon Says any of had ever played and like I said, my teacher was known for doing crazy things. He then asked us why we did everything that he told us to do. We replied that it was part of the game and we didn’t want to get out. My teacher then pointed out that people who didn’t follow everything he said at the start didn’t get out. We did some pretty horrible things to each other for a game of “Simon Say” in a high school history class, but why?
You see, if he started out by having us dump trash cans onto kids, we probably would have said that doing that was wrong and not have done it. But by starting out small and gradually making what we were doing more and more wrong, it got us used to obeying what he told us to do to the point where he threw crumpled up balls of paper at a kid without hesitation. At any point, one of us could have said “hey that’s mean lets not do that” but we didn’t, we just kept going along with what he said. If he hadn’t had stopped the game, how far would we have gone? Would we have slapped a kid across the face all because “Simon says”? Or instead of writing a mean comment, say it directly to their face?
When you look at history and see things like the Holocaust, you can’t help but wonder how so many people were roped into doing such heinous acts against other people. But by starting off small and building a pattern of obedience, you can tell a person to kill someone and they’ll do it without hesitation. Would the Holocaust still have happened if people stopped and looked at what they were being told to do and said “no that’s wrong I’m not going to do that”?
This doesn’t free you from responsibility though. The person who emptied out a kid’s backpack is still responsible for emptying out his backpack, playing “Simon Says” doesn’t change the fact that it was a huge invasion of privacy. Even if they say you won’t be held responsible for what you do, you’re still responsible for your actions. No one decides what you do but yourself.
So the moral of the story is: don’t fall into a pattern of obedience and blindly do whatever someone tells you to do. You always have the choice to say no and even if you’re the only person saying it, sometimes you’re the person who inspires everyone else to say no as well.
We’re delighted to be participating in these two great events about coops!
[Image Description: 2 Flyers. Flyer 1 describes an event happening on November 5th, 2015 called “Building DC’s Movement for Economic Democracy” hosted by Cooperation DC, The Black Worker’s Center and ONE DC. It is a discussion on the history and a basic overview of the current context for worker cooperatives. The event will take place from 6:30pm - 8:30pm at The African American Civil War Memorial, 1925 Vermont Ave NW.
Flyer 2 Announces “How to Start a Worker Cooperative” a workshop happening on November 7th, 2015 at 123 1-B Good Hope Road SE. The workshop will take people with a cooperative business idea through the process of starting and running a worker cooperative. The event requires a registration through the site tinyurl.com/dccooptraining]
Actress, activist, and author Marlee Matlin, best known for her roles in films and television series such as Children of a Lesser God,The L Word, and Switched at Birth, became the first deaf performer to receive the Academy Award for Best Actress. She was 21 years old when she received the award, and holds the record for being the youngest person to receive this prestigious award. This amazing actress is also Jewish, and here’s how we know:
-Marlee’s family is of Russian and Polish Jewish background, and Marlee grew up attending the Jewish Temple for the Deaf, Bene Shalom, in Skokie, Illinois. [x]
-Marlee had a bat mitzvah and was later interviewed about her bat mitzvah experience for the book Mazel Tov: Celebrities’ Bar and Bat Mitzvah Memories. [x]
-Marlee has said that her Jewish background has been part of the driving force for the large amount of charity work she has done, including her work for the Starkey Hearing Foundation, which gives free hearing aids to children who cannot afford them. [x]
-Marlee has participated in advertising for the Jewish Federations of North America, which does philanthropic work to benefit Jewish causes. [x]
Got a Jewish fave you want us to spotlight? Suggest it through our askorsubmit box!
British actor Jason Isaacs, best known for his role as Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter films as well as his work in the film The Patriot and the television series Brotherhood, is Jewish. Here’s how we know:
-Jason’s parents are Jews of Eastern European background, and raised him in a tight-knit Jewish community in Liverpool, England. His parents later made aliyah to Israel. [x]
-Jason describes himself as not particularly religious, but very Jewish. During his childhood, he attended a cheder twice-weekly and had very strong cultural Jewish influences. [x]
-After his family moved to London, Jason witnessed antisemitic attacks on their synagogue and a wave of violence in the 1970s caused by the antisemitic rhetoric of the National Front, a white supremacist, fascist political party. [x]
-On raising his two children, Jason has stated he intends for them to be proud of their Jewish background and with Jewish some observances and customs, while also giving them an environment that allows them to question teachings instead of accepting them blindly. [x]
Got a Jewish fave you want us to spotlight? Suggest it through our askorsubmit box!
See what undocumented immigrants carry across the border February 7, 2015
1. Carlos Gomez, 34, from Guatemala. He already had lived in Miami for 10 years until he was deported five months ago. He tried to go back to the U.S. but was deported again from Mexico. In his bag was a shirt, scissors, a pair of pants, razor blades, pills, shampoo, deodorant, a can of coke and a T-shirt.
2. Alfredo Núñez, 46, from El Salvador. He wants to go to the U.S. but he thinks it would be okay if he can reach the north of Mexico and find a job there. In his bag, he has a pair of shoes, a bible, toilet paper and a cell phone.
3. Delmis Helgar, 32, from Honduras. She is in a hurry to reach Houston where her little daughter is living with relatives, after her ex-husband was recently deported. In her bag was a make-up set, hand mirror, lip gloss, deodorant, a shirt, a small bible, face gel, a wallet, a cell phone, pills, a battery charger, hair band and two pantyliners.
4. Andres Sanchez, 42, from El Salvador. He lived and worked in Virginia. Two years ago he was caught during a normal police check when he was driving. He was deported. He’s trying to go back to Virginia. He’s traveling with no bag because he wants to look like a local.
Since I cannot physically join the protests, I’m making this artwork available to anyone who wants to use it in a non-profit way that advances civil rights, social justice or Black Lives Matter. PM me with your plan and I’ll hook you up with a hi-res version.
