Take Back the Tech is a campaign that started November 25 and ends December 10, which also happens to be Jane Addams Day. This is an effort to ask how to use information technologies to help prevent violence against women. But they also challenge ways that abusers use information technology–to track a woman, to harass […]
The Revolution Will Not Be Funded
Andrea Smith, an organizer of INCITE! Women of Color against Violence, did a post-doc at UIUC a couple of years ago. Someone introduced her as a scholar-activist and she began by discounting that label. She said, we don’t say florist-activist or dentist-activist, why do we say scholar-activist? What about scholarship necessitates adding the noun activist […]
The Inspired Disturbance of All Status Quos
One issue that came up several times during the Political Equator 2 tour was the tiresome question, “Why is this art?” I think Roberta Smith nailed a definition of art in her November 16, 2007, review of Lawrence Weiner ‘s show at the Whitney (“The Well-Shaped Phrase as Art,” New York Times , p. B33): […]
The Political Equator 2
Champaign, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Diego, Tijuana, and then back again. I was really tired when I got home. The idea of this event was truly fascinating: “an exploration of the intersection between sociopolitical and natural domains, foregrounding the notion of collective territory, but also a territory of collaboration that transgresses hemispheric boundaries. At the […]
Teddy, Tacos and Talk
One man after another, talking and talking. The tacos were fantastic and Teddy Cruz must be thirty times more tired than I am. What energy and passion that man puts out, bilingually and all over the map. At the start of our journey from LA, Teddy noted our tendency to “hide beneath weird complexity.” It […]
Indigeneity as a Category of Critical Analysis
Elizabeth Cook-Lynn was in Champaign in early November 2007 to speak in the series, “Indigeneity as a Category of Critical Analysis.” She was also promoting her latest book, New Indians Old Wars. She started out reading her tribute to Vine Deloria, Jr., called “November 19, 2005.” Deloria died two years ago tomorrow; Cook Lynn noted […]
Social Justice Activism and Technology
Prompted by an email from Karen Medina, I have been thinking about ways that people younger than I (today I turned 55) use mobile technology for social justice organizing. One activist older than I noted that young people don’t seem to come to monthly meetings anymore. Probably older people don’t either.) I know I am […]
Political Equator 2
The Tijuana-based artist ERRE (aka Marcos Ramirez) created this “Toy an Horse” in 1997. Its two heads faced north and south, with one set of wheeled legs in the US and the other set in Mexico. Ten years later, this border intervention seems no less apt.
Community Informatics
My friend, the artist Ryan Griffis, took this photograph of a telephone pole covered with staples and bits of paper from fliers, posters, and remnants of announcements past. With it, I am trying to capture the essence of community informatics–a phrase that brings a puzzled look to many a face. This is an image of […]
Publico transitorio
The website for the eight-day moving public event between Los Angeles, San Diego and Tijuana–Political Equator 2— is now online. It looks terrific and represents, in a phenomenal way, the collaborative possibilities of artists, scholars, and designers coming together around issues of common concern.
