Trayvon Martin- what is the situation?

Christopher Booker, an SIUC political science student, is posting a series of videos in which he follows through the bureaucratic tangles of law and justice to learn more about what happened to Trayvon Martin. Martin was a 17 year old African American male who was killed, unarmed, in Sanford, Florida last month.

'MERICA USA! USA! USA!

State of Silence *(video by Husni Ashiku)

ACT UP links

AIDS in the Media, The Early Years
Larry Kramer on the beginning of ACT-UP
Gran Fury art
Gran Fury art, part 2
ACT UP - A documentary in progress

Other links

ACT UP website
DIVA TV (ACT UP's video group)
ACT UP oral history project

WEEK of March 8: additional resources on queer, aids and identity politics histories

A Call and an Offering; on Pilot TV Chicago - a four-day d.i.y. television studio built in October 2004.(Bordowitz at 12:40)

Greg Bordowitz Interview


CHRISTIANSEN AND HANSEN: COMEDY AS CURE FOR TRAGEDY:
ACT UP AND THE RHETORIC OF AIDS
Essay about Act UP. available as pdf here

New York Times: When Political Art Mattered


A couple more suggested readings by fellow students:


WITTIG, Monique. One is not Born a Woman
Linked:

McINTOSH: White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Backpack

Gran Fury was a major part of the AIDS awareness movement, especially as the “propaganda” wing of legendary activist group ACT UP. A collective of artists, filmmakers and other visual types — including my former prof and mentor, director Tom Kalin! Shout out to Tom! — they first got famous for their incendiary, subversive posters, using the strategies of mass media and advertising to spread a message of tolerance, knowledge and anti-bigotry, all in an attempt to demystify and derail the prejudice and ignorance surrounding AIDS and HIV that came out of the 80s. Their work wasn’t obtuse or complicated, but still managed to touch upon the complexities of issues without flattening them. They, along with efforts of other major AIDS activist organizations, turned what many initially regarded as a marginal health concern into a major political issue that intersected queer and gay rights, public health, corporate greed, political indifference, sexuality and other taboos. It made AIDS an issue for everyone and took down a lot of homophobia at the same time.from: this website

Compelling Photo-Journalism from Syria.  Text below from NYT:


February 23, 2012, 4:12 PM

Photographer’s Video From Homs Shows Urban Warfare in Vivid Detail

By ROBERT MACKEY

Updated | 4:49 p.m. Using footage recorded by a French photographer who was in Homs this month, Britain’s Channel 4 News has produced a remarkable portrait of urban warfare in the Syrian city, between government forces and the lightly armed fighters of the Free Syrian Army.

The 11-minute video report broadcast on Wednesday night features scenes of everyday life in the city divided along sectarian lines, and shows a battle between the rebels and government snipers for control of a local headquarters of the mukhabarat, or secret police.

The photographer, who uses the assumed name Mani to shield his identity and make it possible for him to return to Syria to work again, was present when the current assault on districts of Homs under rebel control began on Feb. 3.

As Jonathan Miller of Channel 4 News observed, “While the world has become used to grainy shaky and gruesome footage and images from Homs fed through whatever Internet connection is available, Mani’s crystal clear and incredible footage gives perhaps the clearest and most frightening account of what Homs has been like for the past three weeks.”

The new portrait of life inside Homs offers a closer look at the activities of the army defectors and guerrilla fighters who are battling government forces in the city than most of the video posted online by opposition activists.

One brief piece of video posted online by activists on Thursday, does seem to show that the rebels in Homs have acquired at least some heavy weaponry.

In a recent analysis of the widening gyre in Syria, the International Crisis Group wrote that while “the regime strove to deny the existence of a deep-seated popular protest movement,” at first, choosing instead to claim it was battling foreign-backed armed gangs, “now that it faces an emerging insurgency coupled with a broad international coalition bent on its demise, it appears wholly unprepared to cope with the very enemy it initially fantasized and which its short-sighted behavior largely helped bring to life.”

Found this on the Facebook grapevine, thought it was worth a share.