Re: [siarapb] Fwd:The Native and the Refugee: Thurs. 10/29

[Jason Harris]

Interesting... 

Personally and at the same time, I'm fed up with OUR very human struggle, the struggles of people I love and care about, being the 'subject' of study (an art project) for SOME and a daily, brutal, hard, crushing inescapable way of life for OTHERS. Its centuries now.

Sometimes I feel like there's an Away Team from the USS Enterprise (Star Trek) visiting my neighborhood - examining, for a new book or video project, what IS killing my neighbors. Reporting or making people 'aware" understood automatically as a caring, act.

The phrase "In the world but NOT of it" comes to mind. Like some believe they are, can or should be observers. Observing from a place of safety or up high, disconnected, as if by doing these "projects" it fulfills their responsibility... Observing and reporting...

Thoughts?

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Saadia Toor <toor...@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Oct 26, 2015 at 2:00 PM
Subject: [siarapb] Fwd:The Native and the Refugee: Thurs. 10/29
To: sia...@lists.riseup.net

This looks amazing. I wish I could go - unfortunately I teach at that time.

Warmly,

Saadia

Sent on the go

Begin forwarded message:

The Native and the Refugee

with speaker Sara Scalenghe
Associate Professor, History
Loyola University, Maryland
Author of Disability in the Ottoman Arab World, 1500-1800 (2014)

Thursday Oct. 29, 7:00pm
World Room, 3rd Floor Pulitzer Hall, Journalism School
2950 Broadway at 116th Street

The Center for Palestine Studies is proud to present an evening with The Native and the Refugee project, as part of its new film series, Palestine Cuts. Filmmakers and producers Matt Peterson and Malek Rasamny present an original and powerful multi-media project that brings together the spaces of the Indian reservation and Palestinian refugee camp, from Pine Ridge and Akwesane to Ain al-Hilweh and Aida. Using archival material, short-films and interviews, the project explores the centrality of these spaces for Native and Palestinian struggles in ways that illuminate how people organize politically around questions of land and territory in relation to communal conceptions of autonomy.

Moderated by Frances Negron-Muntaner, filmmaker and Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Director, Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race, Columbia University.

With special guests, Audra Simpson, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Columbia University and Nidal Bitari, founder of the Palestinian Association of Human Rights in Syria.

Director/Producer, Matt Peterson's films and videos have screened at Anthology Film Archives, Eyebeam, the Film Society of Lincoln Center, International House Philadelphia, Millennium Film Workshop, MoMA PS1, and at scattered microcinemas and universities across North America and Europe. In 2014 he completed feature film on the Tunisian insurrection, Scenes from a Revolt Sustained, with a production grant from the Doha Film Institute. His writings on film have appeared in the Brooklyn Rail, Death+Taxes, Evergreen Review, Idiom, The L, and New York Press. He co-edited, with Barney Rosset & Ed Halter, From the Third Eye: The Evergreen Review Film Reader (Seven Stories Press, 2016). He was a member of the collectives Red Channels and the 16 Beaver Group, and is currently part of a commune in New York called Woodbine.

Director/Producer, Malek Rasamny is a researcher and artist based in both New York and Beirut. He has worked at the Maysles Documentary Center in Harlem, New York, and was a founding member of the Red Channels film collective, the Ground Floor Collective, and the LERFE space in Harlem, where he collaborated with New York based artists at the intersection of urban youth culture, transnational activism, and collective experimentation. His writings on film have been featured in the Daily Star, the largest English language daily newspaper in the Middle East, and he was interviewed by the Canadian arts magazine FUSE about his work in Red Channels.

Dr.Frances Negron-Muntaner is an award-winning filmmaker, writer, curator, and scholar. Her career spans multiple disciplines and practices; including cinema, literature, cultural criticism, and politics.

Dr. Audra Simpson, whose latest book is the acclaimed Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life Across the Borders of Settler States was published by Duke Uiversity Press in 2014. Simpson presented the Keynote address at the 7th International Conference of Critical Geography in Ramallah, Palestine in July 2015.

Nidal Bitari is from the Palestinian refugee camp Yarmouk, the largest of all Palestinian refugee camps, outside Damascus. He earned his bachelor's and master's degrees in political sociology from Damascus University, but was forced to leave in the midst of the Syrian Civil War and the ensuing siege of Yarmouk. He is the founder of the Palestinian Association of Human Right in Syria,

Sponsored by the Center for Palestine Studies and Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race.

--

Jason M. Harris
347-393-7977 -c-

“I know there is strength in the differences between us. 

 I know there is comfort, where we overlap.”

― Ani DiFranco.

[Jason Harris]

I remember being around OWStreet and thinking,,, shoot,,, if half of the people who are here "documenting" (who now have books, films and went to do lecture tours) would put their best thinking and energy towards "the work",,, we would be getting somewhere. But I have said enough. I would LOVE to hear what others think...

On Mon, Oct 26, 2015 at 2:45 PM, Saadia Toor <toor...@gmail.com> wrote:

But these are people who are actually part of the struggles they are talking about and 'representing' so very different from the legitimate frustration you feel with other kinds of initiatives that do come directly out of a disconnect.

Saadia 

Sent on the go

[Jason Harris]

Well Harry. I think that what we've come to accept, to understand, what is common thought on the "left" in 2015, is not activism.... Not even close. Its certainly not radical idea, when radical ideas are what's needed now - what's needed, in these times... But change is coming.

The very suggestion that what's widely seen, viewed and understood as 'good', in status quo activism, is NOT good, sends interesting shock waves, a reaction through today's 'radical' activst social scene. I think that that is sad but none the less interesting. Maybe a good thing?

People's hardship and suffering has become others opportunity... A stock and trade. In the billions. A career. Builds fame. Notoriety. Its nuanced in todays world. A fine line, I guess. Not to me... Not at all. Its going to come to an end! Soon!

My guess is that, in the world I want to live in, in 100 yrs say, people will look back at examples of todays 'activism', this brand of activism, and say "what in God's name were they thinking...?" Ashamed for, us... Seen as cruel, lazy and unusually grotesque... I know I say it and feel that, now...

Perhaps in 100 yrs some will be generous enough to call what some are doing today "goodwill". I struggle with that kind of generosity already...

Does that help,,, Harry?

JMHarris
347.393.7977
   

On Oct 26, 2015 5:31 PM, "Harry Cason" <hca...@gmail.com> wrote:

Jason,

I am sympathetic to both your's and Saadia's position and would argue that a lack of agreement by people of goodwill on what is required to make the change we want to see (equal opportunity to contribute, partake and create our world) is what is holding us back.

Another World Is Possible: So what would that world look like?

If we cannot largely come together on this, then we will continue to be the irrelevants that we presently are.

Harry

On Mon, Oct 26, 2015 at 3:52 PM, Nadine <nadinee...@gmail.com> wrote:

Wow sounds like a great event ! I will definitely try my best to go on Thursday , I personally been to Aida refugee camp and it was life changing . I will make sure people from NYC SJP know about this event too , thanks so much prof. Saadia! I do want to learn more about the Native American community and the common struggles they have with Palestinians as displaced indigenous people. Thanks for informing me!

Nadine

Sent from my iPhone

On Oct 26, 2015, at 3:06 PM, Saadia Toor <toor...@gmail.com> wrote:

I hear you Jason but events like this are not an example of what you're legitimately frustrated by. Palestinians and Native peoples ARE engaged in struggle all the time - very violent struggle in fact, against two of the world's most powerful militarized states. This kind of event is PART of that struggle. It is not an example of people 'documenting' things so as to serve private agendas, or even well-meaning but misguided strategies. This is about understanding the terrain of culture as a part of a political struggle for self-determination. It is about humanizing people who are either demonized in popular mainstream media and intellectual circles (Palestinians) or invisibilised altogether (Native Americans). I hope that make sense.

Saadia

Sent on the go