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elizabethrobertajones · 5 years

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14x07 watching notes

In Which It Is Now Completely Apparent Which Of Buck And Leming Are Writing A Scene At Any Given Time

A Tale Of Lizbob Being Tormented By Toddlers

Hello it is 3:32am and I am awake from a dream of what the episode might have been (plus side: overt Destiel motel room sharing, downside: Jack accidentally killed Dean) because my tantruming toddler neighbour who just moved into the haunted house next door was screaming, and threw something at our adjoining wall. At 3am. So I'm not exactly well-rested and I'm kinda pissed, which isn't the best combo for a Buckleming episode, but when you wake up with a scream and a thump, you aren't going back to sleep for a lil while :P

Kudos to the rest of the writing team, we're 7 episodes in and I've thoroughly forgotten Nick exists. I've just been assuming he was caught, featured on a true crime program, and is already gone and locked up for the new murder and likely solving of a cold case.

Ahahahaaaa the opening of the recap is "when it comes to killing you, I'll be the one to do it" so that's ominous. As you might tell, my psyche is utterly wrapped around this whole Shakespearean tragedy of Jack vs Dean, and perhaps they're not gonna murder each other today but the constant reminders they're living in a murder or get murdered delicate thematic plot balance is exactly the sort of thing that we need to have hanging over their dynamic, as well of course as being the start point of their relationship to show how far they've come and how much they've changed and now love each other and how just last episode Dean got in his "fine i have a son now" episode a season or two later than everyone else and just in time for it to be "so now you bonded with him of course he's caught Doom because you can't have nice things for literally a single episode and this is your fault for bonding with him, Dean"

This recap is designed to wound me, a Jack fan and lover of how TFW loves their son

Ew, it's Nick. The first time in my life I've been tempted to skip at least a lil of the recap.

Imagine how tight it would have been to just do a 10 second "here's Jack" recap and cut to the action

and the action includes an episode without Nick stealing time from the boy

You know i spend exactly 0 time speculating on how Eugenie might write her personal fave bits of the episodes but if you had to throw together "nick is now a serial killer ritually murdering priests on a satanic bender" then that would have been a pretty close thing to what I could have come up with as distilled Buckleming essence. (gross)

There's a vague continued overlap of the human!Cas arc with the parallel to the open of 9x03 and the general aesthetic of season 11's Lucifer's satanic rampage bender thrown together but you know what that's more meta than this arc deserves and my boy is sick

OH NO CAS IS THE ONE WATCHING OVER HIM ABORT ABORT

His grace looks pathetic. Maybe he's trying not to wake Jack up. Maybe he doesn't have a whole lot left.

That's not helping, Cas

ANXIOUS PARENTS OUTSIDE HIS ROOM

I bet Cas sent them away because they were hovering

Dean this is not what happens to kids, stop trying to kid yourself that this is like having a regular demonic toddler

Man am I glad I do not have kids right now both because I don't have to worry about them and also because they scream and throw stuff at the walls at 3am

Dean angry at Cas cuz he's worried about Jack oh no oh no oh no look at these stressed parents. Cas is forced into the doctor role because he magic but he is just as stressed as they are and tensions are high, and then the boy starts convulsing

Oh my god they snapped, they are actually bringing Jack to an emergency room. This is horrifying and kind of a trip to imagine what they're going to tell any authority figures about who this guy is and what their relationship is to him.

Do they remember that he has barcode fingerprints and probably is gonna be Medically Weird just as default?

(Alex is 29 like me and Misha is early 40s and Jimmy is canonically a year older than Misha for some reason, so at a push Cas could be his dad and have made some very early mistakes but the boy is biologically only like 10 years younger than them on average... JACK looks another half that at times but this is a hospital so idk if "smiles like a toddler" "early teenage adorableness" is a good measure of age)

(I'm stress-typing)

"His full name, please"

All 3 dads look at each other baffled.

Sam goes with Jack Kline, which, a season and a bit later, is the first canonical use of it as Jack's surname

They're cautious about using Winchester, understandably, but it's a nice reminder that Kelly is family too and as the dead parent, naming Jack in tribute to her should have been something they were doing all along (like, season 13 all along), especially as he even visited the Klines earlier this season. Sam being the one who thinks to do this is nice because he's the most dad-aligned to Jack in a traditional sense when it's come to raising him (Cas got the pre-birth role as the traditional father role) and Cas obviously had the strongest connection to Kelly before that but this isn't a moment about her so much as these 3 stressed dads.

LOL Date of birth. Sam wins another point for knowing it, while Dean makes back and forth guesses on '99/2000, making Jack 19 or 20, which would at least mean any one of them could have fathered him and chopping 10 years off Alex's age to compromise between look and feel.

Given Jack's symptoms the nurse should have been a lil more concerned asking about trips to West Africa or other likely Ebola places lately. (This may be poor timing on the show's part but isn't there a fresh outbreak right now?)

(Oof I googled it and there's "Congo Ebola outbreak 2nd worst in history" articles dated 6 hours ago... Maybe a bad year to write haemorraghic diseases for fun and also how comes no one is talking about this in the news and it's all blah blah brexit... Have we just stopped fearing it now a few outbreaks have shown it mostly stays contained in African countries so now they can just suffer it on their own? I'm making a 4am donation to relief efforts)

*returns from the doctors without borders website* anyway back to the fictional sick white boy

And his very stressed dads

I have no idea how much of this is medically accurate but I feel like this is particularly dramatised to match hospital visits people have experienced which did not involve bringing in a stumbling, feverish, person who is having seizures and coughing blood

it's still objectively sad to see TFW lined up all stressed out and Cas and Dean holding hands while they stare through the giant window

The doctors aren't wearing masks even though he has been COUGHING BLOOD

sheesh this entire hospital is in quarantine now

Nick saying he was "getting hammered" the night of the murder isn't super subtle

Cas aggressively still trying to watch over Jack even though they won't let him in the room. Dean paces and talks about ghouls in the middle of the hospital to let off stress.

Cas goes to watch over him in person while Sam and Dean have a personal chat. This is awful D:

I appreciate the sentiment of busting Jack out before they pay the hospital bills because they're running out of medical options and need to turn to magic ones, a la every dramatic event ever in their lives except that one time Dean broke his leg and Sam was too out of it with the Hallucifers to sell his soul to make it better, but if Jack's in system shutdown wouldn't at least keeping him with state of the art equipment mean things like transfusion and machines that keep him propped up?

Mind you his bloodtype is probably, like, X evil negative or something Bucklemingy

It's in his DNA... He might be cute but he's still born of their episodes and wacky non con ideas... It was gonna catch up to him eventually D: You can't outrun it forever!!

I accidentally hit a button and 8x02 started playing on VLC

"DEEEAN" Cas shoves him through the portal out of purgatory, credits roll, this was officially the weirdest episode ever.

(No I didn't watch the whole thing, I was literally paused on the last shot from where I was about to gif it last night when I fell asleep)

Sam already called Rowena... Smart cookie

obligatory yell at Cas shedding the coat to put on Jack so they don't walk him out in a hospital gown

Oh my god Jack's so sick he's white as a sheet and being carried out by 2 of his dads and he still has a lil well of snark to be like "fine we're leaving" to the doctor.

"There's just no talking to him when he gets like this"

We're at the promo scene and I'm still not 100% sure after sleeping on it that Rowena definitely did not have the Book of the Damned, and that she hadn't been able to make off with it at the end of season 11, never for it to be seen again, because she was very much in the process of stealing the Black Grimoire in 13x22, but this does, I guess, make sense in regards to which book would serve Jack better, and Mittens tried her best to convince me that Rowena plausibly did not have it because the Winchesters did... I'm still suspicious because I really did just assume that she took it and the implication was we didn't see it because SHE had hidden it, and from a line in a Buckleming episode as well. And either way around her showing up with it makes sense that she had it but I'd have occam's razor'd it that she stole the obvious books at the obvious times and not that 13x22 became a BotD heist on top of everything else :P

Jack is up and about!!

He's using a more gravelly voice and it's actually a really hot voice and for literally the first time the Alex/Jack divide (gulf) in my head that one is my age and hot and the other is a 12 year old is a bit shaken. I mean Jack's canonically now supposed to be around 19-20? Which explains why he has a "wooo spring break" attitude when we see in the promo he snaps and wants to go to Vegas.

They grow up so fast.

Anyway considering he was in total organ shutdown a lil while ago it seems a night's rest has done him well if he's wandering around the bunker

Can't tell if we swapped writers or what... well, it seems like it's possible given Jack's fluctuating sickness, which of course could just be a plot thing but also a mark of the inconsistencies in Buckleming episodes. It's still odd to me that in the filming process it didn't occur to them that Jack might not at least sway on the spot at little, but he's really standing there like a little trooper, upright and talking confidently.

And betraying to Rowena that his dads like her and say nice things about her behind her back, which is catastrophic for them. How dare. You're damaging the foundations of their relationship.

*cough cough*

"Bollocks"

Yep, her heart has softened, Jack won her over in record time, and she's just thinking about that time she adopted a wee Polish lad and loved him as her own because Jack is genetically engineered to be a blank slate son version of a Mary Sue. You take one look at him and he is Your Son in whatever way will most harm you.

Good grief I wish Crowley was still around to see what HILARIOUS overlap with Gavin we'd have wrung out of Jack's main superpower.

Cas offering his grace to stabilise Jack on the spot. Halp. It's more important to him that his son lives by miles, that this isn't even an internal debate for him. In a way, obvious that Cas would be like this as a parent, in another, Cas just offered to give up his grace live on TV

Rowena shoots down the obvious solution (oh and thank god that for once the show actually even references obvious solutions) and starts talking about how we need archangel grace and as soon as she says that I think "oh, Michael" and Dean starts to come over weird with a wooziness that makes me wonder if that was timed for the audience "oh there's one out there right now" and why would DEAN be personally affected right thiiiiiis second..............................

When they go on spring break together we're getting right to the murderin

I mean SOMETHING is up and Dean's right now having his own weird moment as Rowena talks about how Jack will now have a fluctuating set of symptoms for the sake of the plot so

It's possible this is just his internal POV emotional reaction to bad news because this is what happens to me when I hear it but I suspect Dean is a lil more healthy than me in the first place so doesn't verge on passing out whenever a catastrophe happens regularly. And also Sam and Cas aren't similarly struck with physical symptoms at the news their son is dying.

Ya know, Buckleming, or probably Eugenie specifically which makes it all the worse, writing this woman taking a call in a dark alleyway, then not being terrified to be approached by a weird man and on top of that stopping and turning to invite him to join her in the club... this is the kind of thing where they're writing someone going against all natural instinct that it's bad characterisation for someone we've literally never met before just to put her in danger.

I mean at least they didn't make Nick stab a random woman (and a black woman at that to add to their overall awful stats)

I like how Jack's just decided Vegas or Tahiti are places you just kinda go to die... I mean I don't know what he's learned about them but it all has to be absorbed through the media in his most innocent way. I feel like there's something very sweet about whatever he thinks you do in these places of reputed sin and blaze of glory live fast die young lifestyles, but also utterly tragic. Consumptive tragic hero but with a twist of the reckless and dangerous later tropes of... It's 5am and I can't think but like. Vegas. Drugs and gambling high life style tropey films and books from the American tradition.

And of course it's Dean (who utterly fits into this trope and even has yearly Vegas trips with Sam since discovering his psychic powers back in season 1 and also lives a blaze of glory mindset) who brings him the deadly glass of milk (film trope about innocence but also like, people dying) and a sandwich loaded with salami. Dean went all out to make that for Jack - a couple of episodes after sending a woman off to "make him a sandwich" and regretting it as he spoke, we see the yank the cloth away reveal of Dean's nurturing side where he is the caregiver who shows affection through food and will go to the trouble of making his boy a delicious sandwich.

"Nice." See? He's Dean's son and Dean approves his choice of places to die. "You sure this is the best time?"

"Pretty sure it is," Jack says, backpack on, already almost out the door. He's found a brown corduroy jacket which is both unlike his beige jackets and suits from the rest of his life aside from the blue apocalypse world one, and also very very much like Sam's iconic season 1-2 brown corduroy jacket that he mostly stopped wearing although I think was the one Dean wore in 4x01 as one of its sporadic dwindling appearances, if I'm not wrong.

I probably am but either way, it's a change to darker colours, something Sam-associated to fit the gap of this smol dangerous dying kid Dean has to deal with, and puts Jack in thick earthier tones, thicker clothes to ward against the cold of death, and dressed more like TFW than normal as he usually has quite a distinct child-like version of their clothes.

Jack's concept of life and mortality is fucked, possibly because he was a functioning being after a day or two of gathering his thoughts and starting to come to terms with asking deep philosophical questions about himself, so in a way discovering he only has a couple more weeks to live is hardly anything. He's a fucking mayfly.

Ugh it's now solidly 5am and I am clearly not going back to sleep so I give up, I'm finally getting coffee. The rest of the notes will be maybe a wee bit more coherent :P

Anyway kettle thought: due to Jack and Dean's murder or be murdered relationship (lordy how is this the only way you relate to fatherhood, my guy?) I kinda suspect that Dean's about to abscond with Jack without even telling dad 1 or dad 2, because he is dad 3 and that's totally cool and he's a responsible adult, but, you know, woozy and doomed while Jack is also consumptive and doomed. BAD COMBO.

I charge you with grounds of diminished responsibility due to mutual murder narrative doom

"I'm done being special. Before my life is over, I want to live it"

Okay remember in season 1 episode 14 where Dean was like "LOL WE SHOULD GO TO VEGAS BECAUSE YOU ARE PSYCHIC"? and I referenced that like 5 minutes ago so you should, obviously I've only ever been able to headcanon the reveal of Vegas Week in season 7 (Dabb episode, take a shot) dates back to that and is one of their between episode activities which makes sense that since they only started travelling as adults together in the canon of the show (and Sam 1 year older than drinking age) that it might as well have been when they started the tradition?

Well Jack here is reacting like Dean would have if HE were the one in Sam's shoes in 1x14, and being the fun lil brother who actually would be like fuck it let's go to Vegas and see how psychic I am in the casinos! In the context of season 1 Sam is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too angsty and tragic to do anything other than come across as a stick in the mud who thinks Dean is joking and they're gonna carry on being tragic and hunting monsters instead. Dean in season 2, episode 9, also wanted to fuck off and go have fun when Sam's scary destiny got too much for him to carry, and that was when he was locked in the murder or save him vow from John's last words, which is a similar burden to the narrative bind he's in with Jack.

Jack, all of his fathers' son, finally shows up as the god damn first person to take his doom sensibly and actually want to fuck off to Vegas, and that's demon!Dean levels of fuck it.

Incidentally I half-suspect that Crowley, who has billions of dollars and once bid the moon in an auction (hi I watched 99% of 8x02 yesterday and 1% of it just now) probably was steering demon!Dean waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay carefully around the thought of wait a minute I have an extremely rich and powerful sugar daddy and no responsibilities... VEGAAAAAAAS.

Like, any time Dean started to form the thought, bam, naked triplets show up in their room.

Anyway Jack's busy being tragic, talking about wanting to get a tan (Beach now linked to something to do before death) or see a hockey game (oh shit we forgot Adam) or get a parking ticket (oh so that's why Dean murders him)

"And when it's all over... die."

Dean looks over his shoulder, mind made up to abduct the boy and take him joyriding

"So that's your plan, huh?"

"I don't want to waste time arguing"

"Did I say I disagree"

jack, this is Fun Dad

I know, the concept is completely radical and you've never seen Dean be fun but trust me.

Even with your very, very limited options, Sam has literally had 3 episodes about how he's Scrooge, and Cas is... Cas. But Dean is legitimately fun dad when you get him on a good day. Trust me.

No one's speaking to Rowena??? How wild.

Poor thing is never going to get her mega coven

Dean (who has rocked up already wearing his jacket) spaces out as Sam starts blahing on about the culturally appropriative shaman Ketch has located.

Same, buddy

At least Dean isn't lying to them about stealing Jack. Somewhat. Not the whole Vegas plan.

Jack smiles at Sam and Cas in a kind of way that somehow conveys in its entirety "this may be the last time you see me but I'm cool with you NOT seeing me die of coughing my lungs up and fun dad has this covered and we've always had a weird death cult about our relationship anyway so I'm okay with it and you guys were the best dads but now fun dad is going to take me out back and shoot me where you can't see and I love you bye"

"Why don't you drive?"

Jack is like ?!?!?!?!? D:

EVEN ON HIS DEATHBED he hadn't figured this would ever happen

It's the make a wish foundation :')

This is, of course, the ultimate sign of Dean loving you and caring for you in Dean's own special way of not telling you he does but showing it with a gesture of absolute confidence and letting you in, and in the vast annuls of the show dates back to the second ever episode where Dean let Sam drive at the end for all of 1 shot (seriously, they've swapped back by the long shot at the end of 1x02 where you can't see them in the car but the prop drivers are definitely doing a generic Sam in the passenger seat Dean driving routine for stock footage :P)

Anyway Dean loves Jack enough that he's letting a kid who does not know how to drive learn to drive in the Impala, like he and Sam did.

I can see Alex sweating bullets about being seated next to Jensen in the beloved Impala and having to mess up turning it on... never mind the fact that both Jensen AND Dean will murder him if he harms the car, and being murdered on both levels at once is spiritually unsettling and he will probably end up an unquiet ghost.

And yet, the glee at being behind the wheel of this legendary gal

TRAGIC NYOOOOOM

"It's like I'm you! :D"

"No, it's not! :D (but with implied murder)"

"THIS IS THE BEST DAY EVER"

Look if he survives this, you're creating a speed demon who will want his own classic car

And then you'll have to teach him how to maintain it

oh god

But yeah, non-toxic parenting in the John Winchester As He Could Have Been style.

At least as long as Dean is in the Make A Wish mode and not back to tragic murder mode

And that wooziness that he may or may not be associating with no sleep and too much stress suggests this isn't going to last as a Fun Day Trip For The Boy

"Cas are you sure you want to handle this alone?"

NO HE NEEDS A HUG HIS SON IS DYING

Sam, go hug him, you need a hug and your son is dying.

Also, of course, you mutually need each other in this instance and Sam is reaching out to Cas with presumably the intent that he wants to be in on it but is asking as if just concerned about Cas

Cas, being Cas, has somehow deduced that Dean is "taking this particularly hard" despite the fact all three of them are Concerned Dads and CAS WHAT THE FUCK are you doing being selflessly concerned about DEAN and sizing up his emotional state when all three of you are wrecked and your son is dying?

You literally have 3x the sitting at his bedside holding his hand moments of any of them and montaged the heck out of the concern at the start of the episode

I remember way back someone wankily made a chart of how often people talked to Dean about stuff and other people talked to each other about Dean, and Sam is now crying about Dean beating himself up over being mean to Jack at the start of season 13 and regretting it, so this entire conversation is Sam and Cas man paining at each other about how much man pain Dean is in.

I say with no wank in my heart, just sheer horrified amusement at this data point if they still are hate-watching the show and being horrified about how Sam never gets stuff for himself etc (I mean. He and Cas both have had extended chunks of seasons about them parenting Jack and this is Dean's time to come belatedly to what the two of them already had)

Cas finally says "son" a season and change after Jack was wandering around calling him "father" and Sam doesn't seem inclined to disagree that this is how it feels for all 3 of them.

Obviously he's crying about Jack and it was just the context above that made it look like he was crying about Dean and I always knew that, I'm not a monster, I'm just deflecting because owwwwwwwww this hurts

HUG EACH OTHER YOU DUMB FUCKS SO I FEEL BETTER

Cas walks off instead and Sam finally after 1000 years discovers how Dean feels when Cas does that when he was angling to come along and they miscommunicated and didn't say what they meant. Except Sam wanted to come out of mutual Dad Angst comfort while Dean normally wants to go with Cas places so he can hold his hand.

Jack's so proud of himself for being able to drive.

"Born with a wheel in your hand"

He literally stole the Impala from you when he was 7 months in the womb

Dean is like, we could get you laid? And Jack is like. Nah. I have a better idea.

No idea what right now but he still doesn't wanna bang anyone

Ugh a Nick scene. Tag yourself I'm the old tyre in the foreground

Is this the house from Family Remains aka the self-admitted worst episode of the show by Kripke and Carver's explicit design

I am going to puke Jack wanted to go on a fishing trip with his dad

There were spoilers about them doing this but I repressed it the fuck down and lied to myself that Jensen was randomly teaching Alex to fish on set because I didn't want to think about Dean doing this with Jack because oh my god someone has taken my heart and gouged it out with a rusty spoon.

Also: someone design Jack a t-shirt with a witty slogan about fishing rather than hook ups. Like, dude bro fishing culture but in a world where you're as likely to get dumb slogans about not wanting sex as you are for it making you a babe magnet

"I'd rather be fishin" is a thing people get on mugs for the workplace but we could start with this sentiment and play

ALSO AS I MENTIONED I WATCHED 8x02 IN THE LAST 24 HOURS AND DEAN NEAR RIVERS SUCKS. We also have 10x01 and Daniel the fishing angel (who was the pizza man from Monster Movie, see above: slogans about fishing, pizza man innuendo, we got a thing going here) who was happy on Earth just fishing and enjoying the planet and not wanting to go back to Heaven, in a very heavy metaphor for Cas to deal with, as the angel who once compared free will to teaching poetry to fish. Lots and lots to unpack here, when we turn this into a Dean and Jack father son bonding moment and throw in Dean's peaceful dream of fishing in 4x20 that Cas interrupted. Fishing is about peace and idyll and comes as a temporary respite in this show. Traditionally, also, of course it's a sport of patience, and a classic father son bonding activity as the long stillness allows for both manly silence and sharing beers in peace, but also talk if they want to open up a conversation.

For Jack, it's an overlap of both Cas and Dean parental stuff, Cas's issues with angelic nature, where he wants to be, WHO he wants to be (just OFFERING to give up his grace to save Jack) and then with Dean we have more classic human cultural tropes but none less painful for Jack's nature and relationships. Especially throwing in that this was his choice and Dean is indulging him completely here.

John may or may not have taught them to fish but I feel like it may have had a "so you are dying in the woods" aspect to it rather than for peace and bonding. BOBBY taught Sam and Dean some basic woodsmanship so he was more likely to be the father figure teaching them to fish if anyone did.

Okay so obviously I typed that just after clutching my heart at the reveal and hitting pause, as Jack immediately goes on to say that John DID teach Dean how to fish and that it was his happiest memory of him - and it comes as a surprise for the expectations (like, that the above paragraph now stands as what I would expect of canon if I was only taking from it and not as an actual writer of the show being allowed to insert new details in which challenge us about the characters, which is where I find the line between fan fic and original fiction really is when it comes to characterisation... Anything out of left-field and you have to tag it as an AU version or explain why instead of just writing it as taken for granted).

And it's unexpected in the sense that it is such a peaceful thing and above all I think the message is that Jack intuited from whatever Dean said about it that it WAS a happy peaceful memory of John which stood so much at odds with the rest of his life. Filed under as well the thing where Mary started talking about how nice John was to Sam and Sam recoiled in confusion until Mary clarfied it was her John, not theirs. Good memories of a gentle soft John are alarming, and yet perhaps this is a way to really confront and exorcise his ghost more than anything - the sort of funeral servive memorialising of the good with the bad and working through it to come to peace in a different sort of way that lets the wounds heal and the anger leave those scars.

"It was how you said it. I could tell." He's such a smart cookie and I think that often takes Dean by surprise in the sense that Jack has been very shrewdly watching him and learning from him and absorbing anything and everything he does, which unfortunately gives him the ability to cold read Dean like very few people do, seeing past the layers and bluffs and into Dean's core.

Jack just murdered Dean by saying if he doesn't make it he wouldn't miss Tahiti or the Taj Mahal or implied going to seedy bars and hooking up, he'd miss more time with Dean.

I mean that's not a literal way to kill someone but you should see Dean's face. He's been shot.

And again, it's a metaphor for what you want from life for DEAN to absorb, the prompt that his family is right here and he doesn't need to chase pleasure outside of them, that hook up bar nearby their home base where he never strikes out, that's irrelevant to the family he has built and it's been put in the subtext of what Dean goes after that's empty pleasure when he has this core family unit around him, by the way Jack has also rejected it and is explaining to Dean the real meaning of Christmas.

Of course, this all gets a bit weird unless you account for the fact he has an angel wearing a trenchcoat made of husband material waiting back at the Bunker because the chronic singleton life otherwise probably ought to account for an outlet for Dean like a hook up bar if his happy ending is a platonic family bond so, you know, end the show 10 minutes from now with everyone happy and alive and not dying, and all Dean's learned is they're 3 dads, one son, a mom and her AUBobby, but he still has unused romantic potential and for seasons and seasons they've been trying to close the door on him seeking out random hook ups in the subtext of what Dean WANTS vs what he thinks he can have. This frank conversation about what Jack wants from life before it's all over is once again ignoring fleeting human connection for the family bonds he values above everything.

"I've had a good life, Dean" the other reason they're having this sentimental conversation by a river is because Jack is a fucking mayfly and I hate this

@ Dabb please never make me see Cas driving this car ever again

Why are you irritating Cas like this. First boring holy fire oh it must be thursday followed by the indignity of making him sit on a pouffe? Listen, when Cas gets irritated he gets snarky and then people die because he snarked them to death. I saw it he did it to the Empty. And Lucifer in 13x12. And Kip.

I just feel sorry for Cas. Why can't he go on fishing trips with the boy. Oh no he has to sit on a squishy pouffe that won't let him be intimidating so that he can cure the boy even though Jack's already decided he's gonna die and will probably Ophelia himself into the river at the end of the fishing trip.

Sergei is basically like "Have you tried turning it off and on again"

Nephilim have a reboot button on the back of their neck, if you get a paperclip and poke it in there.

At least Sergei is so... whatever he is... I can't even tell who he is supposed to be offensive towards :P I guess with the name, I lean Russian, and then he has world esoterica and occult nonsense in his caravan...

The real question is how does he know anything about Nephilim and why hasn't Cas asked that already.

LOL he has a vial of Gabriel grace just lying around. Of course, because Gabriel was just offering it up to everyone.

Considering how he was exploited for it by Asmodeus there's a weird tinge of retconning his own abuse by saying he was going around giving it to everyone before Asmodeus ever bought him and started stealing it on the regular.

Still, it IS awfully tempting a fix to have Uncle Gabriel help Jack out from beyond.

/distantly: "I'm not dead!"

sometimes I can still hear his voice.

It's way more likely Shit Goes Down and this is lost but then Cas has learned what to do with archangel grace to fix Jack just so long as they can pin down Michael and grab his instead.

But I guess in that circumstance at least once again Gabriel gave them part of the answer from beyond the grave as he did in season 5.

("Still not dead!!")

shush Gabriel. The show wants us to think you're dead and my complete disbelief in that doesn't change anything for now.

Except that maybe Gabriel came back, is fine, but has been removing his grace and selling it in the here and now while claiming not to be Gabriel and that he just haaaappens to have it and because he has no grace he could just be any old guy who happens to have an endless renewable resource of archangel grace secretly on tap to sell to fund his life of laying low. Sergei even says HE got it as part of keeping Gabriel hidden.

I'm kind of assuming Sergei isn't Gabriel unless he offers Cas kielbasa

I mean unless later I get a bonus cookie for immediately assuming Sergei is Gabriel based on the holy fire he just happened to have prepared and how similar it looked to Gabriel being trapped in 5x08.

On the other hand this may be the first time this season but pointing at literally everyone and going, that's probably Gabriel, will get old and also dock me cookie points the more wrong guesses I throw out there. Still, this one has pretty strong evidence, from messing with Cas to making him say "Porn stars"

To, um, having Gabriel's grace

Okay so Sergei gives Cas all of this out of the goodness of his heart and a "you owe me" and I AM wondering if that's a Buckleming special because remember in 8x19 where they were like hi we need to go to Hell immediately, and Ajay was like sure, I will take you to Hell and this episode is even titled after me so clearly I am an important character who *stab stab reaper dying noises* wow look I guess we don't have a bargain after all despite me saying you owe me but then Crowley just maaaaagically made it so you never had to find out what a reaper would want in exchange for taking you to Hell off the books.

Also fuck you I never got to finish my pizza

While I've been typing some random ass justice for Ajay screed, Nick has revealed a flashback to 14x02 where it turns out his neighbour said it was a cop who he saw coming out of the house. I literally went back and checked the episode and that wasn't in it, so perhaps it's a new flashback for here, fleshing out that conversation and revealing more for us, and changing the narrative of what Nick's up to, but honestly who cares enough about all this... I was double zoned out for flashbacks I'd already seen for a side story i don't care about

Wow, Nick, demons killed ya family. Could have told you that.

Aw, Dean brought Jack home. No dying out in the wilderness for you, clearly Cas phoned up before Jack could work out his plan to fling himself into the river.

Also Nick has taken up too much of this episode so there's no room for complicated twists and turns, if Buckleming are banned from introducing too many of them.

It's incredible how subdividing them so Eugenie writes all the Nick stuff and Brad writes the rest has elevated the parts of the story we care about to pretty much passable, give or take whatever Sergei was and who he was offensive to aside from the whole concept of calling yourself a shaman because you travelled the world collecting occult stuff in a sort of Aleister Crowley way.

'cept you can't namedrop Aleister on this show because both Alastair and Crowley have stolen too much from him.

So you get a knock off Sergei instead.

Jack hasn't been having as many of the supposed fainting fits that had everyone dogpiling him as I thought - maybe that's next episode too. Could have had one at the start but that doesn't seem enough to be a repeated annoyance of Alex's life :P

Anyway I was just going to comment on his sweater but that thought hopped in there first wondering if the spell was about to knock him flat, as he's sitting on a chair instead of safely in bed.

All the more dramatic for flinging yourself around if the spell messes you up

(honestly if the spells don't work, and they took him out of the hospital, how much of a bizarre commentary is this on trusting modern medicine and vaccinating your nephilims?)

It's 7:20 and my neighbours are yelling again

At least being awake since 3 meant I got a bit more peace and quiet than normal. I feel gross but I may go to yoga just to not be stuck in this room with such awful screeching on both sides of me >.>

Oh I can tell Sergei is Gabriel, he put the grace in a gold container instead of the silver ones

I'm sorry for the expenses, Zerbe

I wonder if they use her products on the show and I'm gonna go on my dash and find her beaming about a specially commissioned shiny gold grace that she made for them :P

"Here, hold this bottle of your uncle's essence"

".... okay I understand how weird that sounded on hindsight"

I love the idea of Jack's grace now being fuelled by Nice Uncle Gabriel who felt kindly towards him, even if this can't be a permanent fix, it changes his internal make up just a bit so that he symbolically has his grace stolen by his shitty bio father but the power only came from him in the first place and there was all the hoo ha about if Lucifer as his father made him inherently evil. Now whatever happens to Jack, he's had a grace transplant from a suitable donor, very much like a parallel of say he needed a kidney transplant and his 2 viable donors were his shitty deadbeat dad who gave him the kidney condition in the first place and his nice dead uncle who happened to have been an organ donor and was the only other one with the same type (if Lucifer's was X evil negative, then I guess Gabriel's is like X tricksy negative which has enough receptors to be a compatible transfusion, while Cas has like, Z dumbass positive grace and no compatibility)

And Gabriel is a beloved character who proved his kind feeling towards Jack even if they had very little bonding overall, he clearly cared and there was an immediate sort of uncle-y kindness about him in relation to Jack (just the comment alone about identifying that Jack liked shiny things and magic tricks is very much how uncles view small children who they may watch and entertain but not in the end have parental responsibility for), which is hilarious to me because Gabriel deeply reminds me of all 3 of my uncles on my mum's side, who are all 3 different shades of trickster god in their own right, and he always has reminded me of them, and now the show has sort of made Uncle Gabriel his new legacy.

I mean. I love it to bits.

It's not a sacrifice FOR Jack like Cas would have given up his grace, but it's still a part of him passed on to Jack.

I am very very aware that like me running my mouth about John (ironically the name of one of my uncles) while hitting pause, I've stopped while Jack is looking up with glowing eyes and he's almost certainly about to spew a fountain of blood across the room and fall on the floor. But I like that the grace even interacted with him and lit up his eyes and unless he physically barfs out the grace to I'm sticking by that ramble.

Cas smiled!! That's the once per season and we already hit it at episode 7, woe betide us

This does look, however, like the scene where they were all looking on from the door so... blood spew in 5 4 3 2 1...

DOGPILE THE BOY

Er, I mean, help him

God I would not want Jared to dogpile me, the man weighs literally as much as an actual moose

Uhoh Sergei made Cas mad

I mean

he made him sit on a pouffe, this was always coming

What do you mean Eugenie can't let Lucifer go wow what a shock

*kicks a pebble*

Ah, here's the concerned dads scene. I'm just going to let that be a balm to my soul while Dean laments ever taking Jack out to have fun.

"You made him happy. You did more for him than any of us"

1 dude you tried, 2 you took him on hunting trips and had fun already this season so he got his Cas Time before he died like he wanted 3 just fucking abduct him wrapped in a duvet and go fishing in the dead of night if you have to, trust me, he'd love it and your family is such a mess he wouldn't even think it's weird.

I mean you've literally absconded illegally with him before, what's a trip up to that beach where he was born and some fishing gear really going to cost you with annoyance from Dean

"What can we do?" "Watch over him," Rowena says with Cas in the background, and continues to carve me out with a rusty spoon

"As he dies"

Nah he'll be fine shut up Rowena D:

*whimper*

Well that was a very good episode if you act like me and pretend that none of the Nick stuff happened at all.

#14x07 #season 14 spoilers #my stuff

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yasbxxgie · 6 years

Photo

The photograph is one of the standout images of the 1970s black liberation struggle. An African American man, his hair in dreadlocks, chest bare, stands with arms outstretched as though emulating Jesus on the cross. A white police officer is jabbing a shotgun at him with the muzzle inches from his throat. Another officer clasps a police helmet in his right hand as if preparing to whack him over the head with it.

Forty years almost to the day after that photo was taken, the same black man described how he came to be standing there on a sidewalk, half-naked and surrounded by angry police. His account was almost too graphic to grasp, sounding more like something out of a movie than the recollection of what really happened in the heart of one of America’s major cities.

It was 8 August 1978 and he had just emerged from the basement of the house in Philadelphia that his black revolutionary group, Move, used as a communal home. In an attempt to evict them from the property, hundreds of officers had just stormed the building, pummeling it with water cannons and gunfire, and in the maelstrom a police officer had been killed and several other first responders injured.

“As I emerged from the basement I had the presence of mind to let them see I was unarmed, so I took my shirt off,” the black man said. “That’s when I put my arms out wide.”

The black man is Delbert Orr Africa, Del for short. When I went to meet him he was wearing a burgundy one-piece with a white T-shirt and blue shoes. Everyone else around him was wearing the same uniform of Dallas maximum-security prison in Pennsylvania that he has worn every day since appearing in that photograph 40 years ago.

I had come to interview him as part of a two-year project in which I made contact with eight black liberationists who have all experienced long prison sentences. They each agreed to embark on an ongoing conversation with me about their political beliefs today and their battle to secure their own freedom.

Del Africa, 72, and I talked for three hours in the prison visitors’ room. He spoke rapidly and intensely, as though he needed to get it all out, relating how he had joined the Black Panther party in Chicago and then switched to the Move organisation after relocating to Philadelphia.

He also told me what happened the second after that photo was taken, as though he were narrating the next few frames of a news reel. As it turns out, that police officer really had been about to whack him.

“A cop hit me with his helmet,” he said. “Smashed my eye. Another cop swung his shotgun and broke my jaw. I went down, and after that I don’t remember anything ’til I came to and a dude was dragging me by my hair and cops started kicking me in the head.”

Del Africa is one of the Move 9, the group of five men and four women, all African American, who were arrested 40 years ago this August during the 1978 police siege of their headquarters in Powelton Village, Philadelphia. They were charged as a nine-person unit with the murder of the police officer who died in the melee, James Ramp. Each was sentenced to 30 years to life, though to this day they protest their innocence.

The ranks of the Move 9 have slowly been depleted over the years. Two have died in prison. In June, the first of the nine to win parole, Debbie Africa, was released from a Pennsylvania women’s prison.

As the 40th anniversary approaches, six of the Move 9 are still behind bars, Del Africa included. They are among a total of 19 black radicals who remain locked up in penitentiaries across America having been convicted of violent acts committed in the name of black power between the late 1960s and early 1980s.

Along with former Black Panthers and Black Liberation Army members, they amount to the unfinished business of the black liberation struggle. Many of them remain strikingly passionate about the cause, even as they strive for release in some cases half a century into their sentences.

In the case of Move members, their politics are a strange fusion of black power and flower power. The group that formed in the early 1970s melded the revolutionary ideology of the Black Panthers with the nature- and animal-loving communalism of 1960s hippies. You might characterise them as black liberationists-cum-eco warriors.

That sense of passion for the cause leaps out from the first email that Del Africa sent to me from Dallas in September 2016, after I’d contacted him asking to talk.

“ON THE MOVE! LONG LIVE FREEDOM’S STRUGGLE!” he proclaimed in capital letters at the top of the message. “Warm Revolutionary greetings, Ed!”

He then launched into a long deliberation about the “plight of political prisoners here in ameriKKKa!”. Move members are still imprisoned, he wrote, “just because we steadfastly refused to abandon our Belief in the Revolutionary Teachings of Move’s Founder” and because of “our refusal to bow down to this murderous, racist, sexist rotten-ass system”. He ended with the quip: “But, hey, I don’t wanna burn you out the first time I reply to your email.”

There was a similar robustness to the first response I received in December 2016 after reaching out to Janine Phillips Africa, one of the four women among the Move 9. Unlike Del Africa’s email, she wrote to me by hand, sending the letter by mail as she has continued to do over the ensuing 18 months.

“Me and my sisters are doing good, staying strong,” was the first sentence she wrote to me. That was remarkable in itself coming from a woman who is not only approaching the 40th anniversary of her incarceration but has had two of her children killed in confrontations with police.

“Everybody knows how strong Move men are. We’re showing the world how strong Move women are. That’s how it’s been since our arrest in 1978,” she said.

In the course of that first letter, Janine Africa, who was 22 when she was arrested and is now 62, took me deep into the “torture chamber”, the cruel solitary confinement wing where she spent the first three years of her sentence.

“There were no windows, just a section of the wall with frosted panes. You couldn’t tell when it was night or day, they kept the lights on 24/7. They were ordered to break us but it didn’t work – no matter what they did, they were not going to break us.”

Over the months, I came to learn about the double tragedy in Janine Africa’s life. In 1976, Philadelphia police officers turned up at the Move house in Powelton Village having been called out to a disturbance. Scuffling ensued between some Move residents and police. Janine was shoved and her baby, whom she had named Life, was knocked out of her arms to the ground. His skull appears to have been crushed, and he died later that day in her arms. He was three weeks old.

Then on 13 May 1985, seven years after Janine Africa was imprisoned, she received further terrible news. Philadelphia police had dropped a bomb from a helicopter onto a Move house on Osage Avenue in the west of Philadelphia in an attempt to force the black radicals to evacuate the premises after long-running battles with the authorities. The bomb ignited a fire in the Move house that turned into an inferno.

Janine’s 12-year-old son, Little Phil, was being cared for in that house by other Move adults while she was in custody. The then mayor of Philadelphia, Wilson Goode, notoriously gave the go-ahead for the bombing, and the fire that ensued was allowed to rage, the blaze spreading across the black neighborhood and razing 61 homes to the ground.

Little Phil and four other children burned to death. So too did six adults including Move’s founder, John Africa, AKA Vincent Leaphart.

I asked Janine Africa how she coped with losing two young sons during clashes with law enforcement. She was reticent. “I don’t like talking about the night Life was killed,” she wrote in April. “There are times when I think about Life and my son Phil, but I don’t keep those thoughts in my mind long because they hurt.”

In that same letter she said she had turned grief into what she contests is a force for good: deeper commitment to the struggle. “The murder of my children, my family, will always affect me, but not in a bad way. When I think about what this system has done to me and my family, it makes me even more committed to my belief,” she said.

Del Africa also heard bad news on 13 May 1985. His 13-year-old daughter Delisha was also living in the Move house. She too died in the fire. When I asked him how he dealt with being told his daughter had been killed in an inferno that had been ignited by the actions of the city authorities, he wasn’t as sanguine as Janine.

“I just cried,” he said during my prison visit. “I wanted to strike out. I wanted to wreak as much havoc as I could until they put me down. That anger, it brought such a feeling of helplessness. Like, dang! What to do now? Dark times …”

Mayor Goode made a formal apology for the disaster the following year. But a grand jury cleared all officials of criminal liability for the 1985 bombing that killed 11 people, including five children.

The only adult Move member to escape the inferno alive, Ramona Africa, was imprisoned for seven years.

All Move members take the last name “Africa” to denote their commitment to race equality and their strong bond to what they regard as their Move “family”. “A family of revolutionaries” is how Del Africa once described it to me. Unlike the Black Panther party which formally dissolved in 1982, Move is still a living entity.

“We exposed the crimes of government officials on every level,” Janine Africa wrote to me. “We demonstrated against puppy mills, zoos, circuses, any form of enslavement of animals. We demonstrated against Three Mile Island [nuclear power plant] and industrial pollution. We demonstrated against police brutality. And we did so uncompromisingly. Slavery never ended, it was just disguised.”

Deeply committed as they were to each other, the Move “family” undoubtedly had the ability to incense those around them. They liked to project their revolutionary message at high volume from a bullhorn at all hours of night and day. Passersby were accosted with a torrent of expletives.

Then there were the dogs. When the 1978 siege happened, there were 12 adults and 11 children in the Move house in Powelton Village – and 48 dogs. Most of the animals were strays taken in by the group as part of its philosophy of caring for the vulnerable. Black liberation, animal liberation – the two are as one with Move. John Africa was known as the “dog man”, as he was rarely seen without one.

The unconventional nature of the Move community which drove some neighbors to despair in turn led to demands for their eviction, and ultimately to the fatal siege. Over time relations grew more belligerent. Months before the siege Move members made visible their threat to resist attempts to remove them from the neighborhood – they stood on a platform they had built at the front of the house dressed in fatigues and brandishing rifles.

On its side, the city was led at that time by the Frank Rizzo, Goode’s predecessor as Philadelphia mayor, a former police commissioner who liked to talk tough and was fond of dog-whistle politics. He once said of the Move radicals: “You are dealing with criminals, barbarians, you are safer in the jungle!” Another Rizzo classic was: “Break their heads is right. They try to break yours, you break theirs first.”

When Move refused to vacate the premises having been issued with an eviction order, Rizzo said he would impose a blockade on the house so tight “even a fly wouldn’t get in”. He was not kidding. For 56 days before the siege, a ring of steel was erected around the house, no food was permitted into the compound and the water supply was cut off. Rizzo bragged he would “show them more firepower than they’ve ever seen”.

At about 6am on 8 August 1978 the action started. Move members were battered by water cannon as they took refuge in the basement of the building. Tear gas was propelled into the house. At 8.15am shots rang out and a thunderstorm of gunfire erupted that is captured on police footage of the incident. Police and fire officers are seen scattering in all directions as bullets whistle overhead seemingly in all directions. It looked like a war zone.

Soon after Move adults and naked children began emerging from the smoke-ridden basement. Janine Africa can be heard in the police footage screaming. Next, Del Africa appears, his hands outstretched in that Jesus pose. The camera pans in on him as he lies on the street after he was hit with the police helmet. Two police officers begin kicking him on his head which bounces between them like a ball. Three officers later faced disciplinary measures but a judge dismissed the charges.

Prosecutors accused the Move 9 of collaboratively killing Ramp, even though he died from one bullet. They said the shooting had been started when gunfire erupted from the basement where the Move members were gathered, a theory supported by some eyewitnesses.

Move’s attorney gathered other witness evidence suggesting the fatal shot had come from the opposite direction – in other words, it was accidental “friendly fire”. At trial no forensic evidence was presented that connected the Move 9 to the weapon that caused the fatality. For the women in particular the prosecution did not even argue the four had handled firearms or had been involved in the actual shooting of Ramp.

Del Africa insisted when I interviewed him that though Move had guns in the house, none of them were operative. “There was no shooting from our side,” he told me. “No one in the house had any gunshot residue, none of us had fingerprints on any of the weapons they claim came out of the house.”

The Philadelphia Fraternal Order of Police has a plaque for Ramp on its memorial site. I reached out to the order many times in the course of a month to hear their reflection on his death and Move’s role in it, but they did not respond.

You can get a sense of the depth of feeling by reading the comments under Ramp’s page on the Philadelphia Officer Down Memorial website. Several commentators, some of whom vividly recalled the 1978 siege, sent blessings to the deceased police officer and his family.

Others expressed anger at the lack of justice for Ramp, though they didn’t specify what they meant. One woman, whose late husband was on duty at both the siege and the 1985 bombing, was more direct. She said of Ramp: “I was so sad to hear of your passing. I felt, and still do feel so badly for your family. Move were scum and cowards, hiding as they shot. You were SO brave. Never forgotten. RIP.”

As they approach the 40th anniversary of the siege and of their subsequent captivity, Del and Janine Africa described to me how they’ve coped for so long doing time for a crime they insist they did not commit. They each have their own survival methods.

Janine Africa told me she avoids thinking about time itself. Birthdays, holidays, the new year mean nothing to her. “The years are not my focus, I keep my mind on my health and the things I need to do day by day.”

Del Africa thinks of the eons behind bars not as “prison time” but as “revolutionary prison activity”. “I keep saying to myself: ‘I will not fall apart. I will not give in.’”

They’ve both experienced long stretches in solitary confinement, a brand of punishment that the UN has decried as a form of torture. In 1983, Del Africa was put into the “hole” – an isolation cell – because he refused to have his dreadlocks cut.

He stayed in the hole for six years. He relieved the stress and boredom by organizing black history quizzes for other inmates held in the isolation wing. Russell Shoaltz, a former Black Panther, helped him devise the questions, and shout them out down the line of solitary cells. Questions such as: when was the Brown v Board of Education ruling in the US supreme court? What year was the Black Panther party founded? Who was Dred Scott? For what is John Brown remembered?

Eventually Del Africa won the right to keep his dreads. When I visited him in Dallas there they hung, salt-and-peppered now, proudly down to his hips.

Throughout, the Move prisoners have drawn strength from companionship with other members of the nine. Janine shared a cell with two other surviving Move women – Debbie Africa and Janet Holloway Africa – in Cambridge Springs women’s prison in Pennsylvania. They called each other “sisters” and did everything together. “We read, we play cards, we watch TV. We laugh a lot together, we’re sisters through and through,” she wrote in a letter in February.

There was one other member of their gang: fittingly given the history of the organization, a dog called Chevy. The prison authorities let them keep the dog kenneled in their cell as part of a program in which they train the animal for later use as a service dogs for disabled people.

Life went on like this for years, and had acquired its own normality, almost a certain tranquility. Until last month when Debbie Africa was granted parole and set free. Her departure came as a jolt.

“It’s strange not having Deb here,” Janine said. “I keep expecting her to walk in from work. They snuck her out at 5.[:]00 in the morning. We only got to hug her briefly and watch her leave. Chevy misses her, he keeps sniffing her bed.”

In June, Janine and Janet Africa also went before the same parole board as Debbie and made essentially the same case that they had earned their freedom. The board asked Janine whether she would be a risk to the public were she to be let out, and she referred them to her pristine prison record: the last time she had any disciplinary rap was 26 years ago. “The way I’m in here is the way I’ll be outside, there is no risk factor,” she told them.

While Debbie was set free, both Janine and Janet had their parole denied. The board said they showed “lack of remorse” for the death of Ramp in the 1978 siege.

Janine Africa wrote to me a few days after she learnt of the denial, speculating that games were being played with her mind. The contrast of Debbie’s release with her denial was “either to make us resent Deb or make me feel hopeless and break us down. Whatever their tactic, it isn’t working!”

Debbie’s release also made a profound impact on Del Africa. “I feel overjoyed that Debbie is out,” he wrote to me. “Her release is a breakthrough! I see it finally opening the door a crack.”

Del Africa also hasn’t had a misconduct report in prison for more than 20 years. Yet he too was turned down for parole last year and must wait another four years before his next chance to convince the parole board that he can safely be returned to society.

Like many of the 19 black liberationists still behind bars, Del Africa is caught in a trap attached to the crime for which he was convicted. He knows he will only be paroled if he expresses heartfelt remorse. But says he cannot do that.

“How can I have any remorse for something I never did?” he said. “I had nothing to do with killing a cop in 1978. Have they shown any remorse for what happened to my daughter in 1985?”

Would he show remorse to the parole board if he felt it would secure his release?

“No, never going to do that,” he said. “That would be akin to making them right. They are the ones who were wrong.” [x]

Photograph:

The arrest of Delbert Africa of Move on 8 August 1978

Debbie Africa was released in June after 40 years in prison

Members of Move gather in front of their house. They were arrested 40 years ago during a police siege.

Janine Africa preaching to the crowd in front of the barricaded Move house in the Powelton Village section of Philadelphia

Move members hold sawed-off shotguns and automatic weapons as they stand in front of their barricaded headquarters

Debbie Africa and her son, Mike Africa, whom she gave birth to in her prison cell a month into her incarceration. She was released last June.

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the-master-cylinder · 4 years

Text

SUMMARY The story centers on Diana “Sugar” Hill (Bey), a photographer in Houston whose boyfriend, nightclub owner Langston (Larry D. Johnson), has been killed by mob boss Morgan (Robert Quarry) and his men when he refused to sell the club to Morgan. Sugar seeks the help of a former voodoo queen named Mama Maitresse (Zara Cully) to take revenge on Morgan and his thugs. Mama summons the voodoo lord of the dead, Baron Samedi (Don Pedro Colley), who enlists his army of zombies to destroy the men who killed Langston and now want the club. Investigating the killings is Sugar’s former boyfriend, police Lt. Valentine (Richard Lawson).

DEVELOPMENT/PRODUCTION The film, budgeted at $350,000, was shot on location in Houston at such locations as the Heights branch of the Houston Public Library (a historical landmark), used in the film as a “Voodoo Institute”. Sugar Hill was the last film Quarry did for AIP, after a run that included the Count Yorga movies. Also appearing in the film was Cully, who played Mama Jefferson on the TV show The Jeffersons. Charles P. Robinson, known for his role as Mac Robinson on NBC’s Night Court, portrayed the character of Fabulous. Hank Edds created the makeup effects for the zombies in the film.

Actress Marki Bey “researched her part among various voodoo cults in and around the L.A. environs; thereby acquiring the proper authoritative menace to make her role as a voodoo high priestess believable.”

Rumor has it that the afro-style hairdo worn by the character Diana Hill during the zombie attack sequences was because Marki Bey didn’t look “black enough” while wearing her hair flat and relaxed.

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Actor Don Pedro Colley also did extensive research in the voodoo practices from Haiti for his role as Baron Samedi. According to Colley, “This character was based more or less on the actual voodoo character that comes from Haiti…Papa Legre, who is all powerful, all omnipotent. Throughout the voodoo culture Papa Legre is the one single heavyweight dude.”

I’m supposed to be playing a voodoo god rising from the grave with an army of zombies. So I said, “Well, let me go back into my old theater bag of tricks here and do what I’m supposed to do. Let me do a lot of research.’ So I got several books from the library. One was written by two anthropologists that had studied voodoo religions around the world and another was written by a practitioner of voodoo from Haiti. This character was based more or less on the actual voodoo character that comes from Haiti. The Haitian characters name is Papa Legre, who is all powerful, all omnipotent. Throughout the voodoo culture Papa Legre is the one single heavyweight dude. My character’s name was Baron Samedi. It went through how the rituals of voodoo work. For those who believe in it, things can actually happen, good or bad. A woman hates her old man so she goes through a voodoo priestess who puts a hex on him and he ends up dying of a horrible disease or a heart attack or a car crash. By filling a glass with alcohol and burning chicken feathers and spiders and lighting incense and doing chants on a daily basis. The two scientists related voodoo rituals to others rituals that take place in other religions, such as the Catholic religion, the burning of the incense, the drinking of the blood, the wafer, the bread of God. These are rituals that are really taken right out of voodoo rituals. And relating the singing from the Baptist or Episcopalian or Presbyterian religions, even the Muslims and the Sikhs, all of the rituals all had a basis in the early African voodoo tribal religion that came west from the tribes of Africa when the slaves were brought. So I said, ‘I’ve now got all this information. I’m going to make Baron Samedi scary, boy is he going to be scary.””

Robert Quarry reflects on making “Sugar Hill”. The producer and the director Paul Maslansky were both white, and, of course, it was an all-black movie. They had a black actor set for the part, but they got rid of him, and Sam sent me in to take the part. So I walked in as ‘Mr. Whitey’ to play the head of the Mafia in Houston, which is where they shot it. I didn’t give a shit. They paid me. And during the shoot, my rich white friends in Houston wouldn’t call me because they thought I’d bring somebody black to lunch with me. The racism was that subtle. And, of course, they hired so many blacks for the movie, and here I was saying things like ‘nigger’ and ‘jig’ and ‘jungle bunny.’ The extras who weren’t actors were going to kill me because they thought I was a big racist. But I won them over eventually. And we all laughed so hard. I’d tell them all on the set, ‘Okay, easy fellas, get ready because I’m going to say the ‘n’ word again.” One of the locations was this mansion that looked like it had been abandoned for a hundred years. It even had an elevator in it. It had been abandoned for ten or fifteen years. The place was full of cobwebs and dust, it was really quite neat. The only thing I objected to is, here I am starring in this movie and I’m being treated like a peon. Here they are paying me 750 dollars a week and I’m starring in this bloody mess. Union law states that when the performers travel, they travel first class and they stay in a first class hotel and when they work on the set they have a first class dressing room. In Houston, I didn’t have any dressing room. It was like 95% humidity. It was 95 degrees every day. They were talking about having me stand behind a car in the street to change clothes. Forget it! So I went out and rented a forty foot motor home and I drove it to the set and the producer went bugo, he went off – ‘You can’t do that! You can’t drive that here! We have to put a union driver on that. We have to pay the union drivers a thousand a week and…’ And I said, ‘Wait a minute. Are you telling me that a driver of my motor home makes more money a week than I do and I’m starring in this piece of shit!?” I said, ‘I’m going to keep this until you provide me with a dressing room and in the mean time I’m calling the union and letting them know exactly what you people are doing down here.’ That’s what they did at American International. They exploited everybody.

The performers playing the zombies in Sugar Hill wore ping pong balls cut in half over their eyes, creating the cartoonish, yet eerie effect. Other sources say the eyes were created with broken-off spoon halves.

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SCORE/SOUNDTRACK

youtube

Supernatural Voodoo Woman Written by Dino Fekaris & Nick Zesses Sung by The Originals

CAST/CREW Directed Paul Maslansky

Produced Elliot Schick

Written Tim Kelly

Marki Bey as Diana Hill Robert Quarry as Morgan Don Pedro Colley as Baron Samedi Betty Anne Rees as Celeste Richard Lawson as Valentine Zara Cully as Mama Maitresse Charles P. Robinson as Fabulous Larry D. Johnson as Langston Rick Hagood as Tank Watson Ed Geldart as O’Brien Albert J. Baker as George Raymond E. Simpson, III as King Thomas C. Carroll as Baker Big Walter Price as Preacher

CREDITS/REFERENCES/SOURCES/BIBLIOGRAPHY Fangoria#64 Psychotronic Video#31 Psychotronic Video#33 TCM

Sugar Hill (1974) Retrospective SUMMARY The story centers on Diana "Sugar" Hill (Bey), a photographer in Houston whose boyfriend, nightclub owner Langston (Larry D.

#70sFilms #AIP

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Women's Studies

ALL WE'VE GOT

By Alexis Clements

ALL WE'VE GOT is a personal exploration of LGBTQI women's communities, cultures, and social justice work through the lens of the physical spaces they create, from bars to bookstores to arts and political hubs.

Social groups rely on physical spaces to meet and build connections, step outside oppressive social structures, avoid policing and violence, share information, provide support, and organize politically. Yet, in the past decade, more than 100 bars, bookstores, art and community spaces where LGBTQI women gather have closed. In ALL WE'VE GOT, filmmaker Alexis Clements travels the country to explore the factors driving the loss of these spaces, understand why some are able to endure, and to search for community among the ones that remain. From a lesbian bar in Oklahoma; to the Esperanza Peace & Justice Center in San Antonio run by queer Latinas; to the WOW Cafe Theatre in New York; to the public gatherings organized by the Trans Ladies Picnics around the US and beyond; to the Lesbian Herstory Archives in Brooklyn, the film takes us into diverse LGBTQI spaces and shines a light on why having a place to gather matters. Ultimately, ALL WE'VE GOT is a celebration of the history and resilience of the LGBTQI community and the inclusive spaces they make, as well as a call to action to continue building stronger futures for all communities.

DVD (Color) / 2019 / 67 minutes

I AM THE REVOLUTION

By Benedetta Argentieri

I AM THE REVOLUTION is an empowering portrait of three determined women in the Middle East who are leading the fight for gender equality and freedom. Politician Selay Ghaffar is one of the most wanted people in the world by the Taliban and yet she still travels through Afghanistan to educate other women about their rights. Rojda Felat is a commander of the Syrian Democratic Army, leading 60,000 troops to defeat ISIS, including freeing their hold on Raqqa and rescuing its people. And Yanar Mohammed, named by the BBC as one of 100 most influential women in the world in 2018, pushes for parliamentary reform in Iraq while running shelters for abused women. Despite battling seemingly overwhelming obstacles, all three women display resilience, bravery and compassion. I AM THE REVOLUTION challenges the images of veiled, silent women in the Middle East and instead reveals the extraordinary strength of women rising up on the front lines to claim their voice and their rights.

DVD (English, Arabic, Kurdish, Pashtun, Color) / 2019 / 72 minutes

93QUEEN

By Paula Eiselt

93QUEEN follows Rachel "Ruchie" Freier, a no-nonsense Hasidic lawyer and mother of six who is determined to shake up the boys club in her Hasidic community by creating Ezras Nashim, the first all-female ambulance corps in NYC.

In the Hasidic enclave of Borough Park, Brooklyn, EMS corps have long been the province of men. Though the neighborhood is home to the largest volunteer ambulance corps in the world known as Hatzolah, that organization has steadfastly banned women from its ranks. Now Ruchie and an engaging cast of dogged Hasidic women are risking their reputations, and the futures of their children, by taking matters into their own hands to provide dignified emergency medical care to the Hasidic women and girls of Borough Park. In a society where most women don't drive-and a few minutes can mean the difference between life and death-how do female EMTs transport themselves to the scene of an emergency? And how does Ezras Nashim combat a behemoth like Hatzolah, which possesses political clout throughout New York City?

With unprecedented and exclusive access, 93QUEEN follows the formation and launch of Ezras Nashim through the organization's first year on the ground. We witness the highs and lows of creating an organization against incredible odds, as well as the women's struggles to "have it all" as wives and mothers. And in the midst of this already ground-breaking endeavor, Ruchie announces that she had decided to take her burgeoning feminism even further when she enters the race for civil court judge in Brooklyn's 5th Municipal Court District. Through it all, we see Ruchie and the other women grappling to balance their faith with their nascent feminism, even as they are confronted by the patriarchal attitudes that so dominate Hasidic society. As Ruchie observes, while making dinner at 3 a.m., "I sometimes wonder why God created me a woman. If I'd have been born a Hasidic man, I don't think I would have half the problems I have."

DVD (Color) / 2018 / 90 minutes

AMA

Directed by Lorna Tucker

The untold story of the involuntary sterilization of Native American women by the Indian Health Service well into the 1970s.

Ama tells an important and untold story: the abuses committed against Native American women by the US Government during the 1960s and 70s. The women were removed from their families and sent to boarding schools. They were subjected to forced relocation away from their traditional lands and, perhaps worst of all, they were subjected to involuntary sterilization.

The result of nine years painstaking and sensitive work by filmmaker Lorna Tucker, the film features the testimony of many Native Americans, including three remarkable women who tell their stories - Jean Whitehorse, Yvonne Swan and Charon Asetoyer - as well as a revealing and rare interview with Dr. Reimert Ravenholt whose population control ideas were the framework for some of the government policies directed at Native American women.

It is estimated over a twenty-year period between 1960 and 1980 that tens of thousands of Native American women were sterilized without their knowledge or consent. Due to poor record keeping during this era the number may in fact be much higher. Many of these women went to their graves having suffered this incredible abuse of power.

The film ends with a call to action - to back a campaign to get a formal apology from the US government, which would then open the door for the women to bring a lawsuit.

DVD / 2018 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adult) / 74 minutes

CANCER JOURNALS REVISITED, THE

By Lana Lin

THE CANCER JOURNALS REVISITED is prompted by the question of what it means to re-visit and re-vision Black lesbian feminist poet Audre Lorde's classic 1980 memoir of her breast cancer experience today. At the invitation of filmmaker Lana Lin, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2010, twenty-seven writers, artists, activists, health care advocates, and current and former patients recite Lorde's manifesto aloud on camera, collectively dramatizing it and producing an oration for the screen. The film is both a critical commentary and a poetic reflection upon the precarious conditions of survival within the intimate and politicized public sphere of illness.

DVD (Color, Closed Captioned) / 2018 / 98 minutes

CHEZ JOLIE COIFFURE

Directed by Rosine Mbakam

Sabine attaches a hair weave and gets to work. Her hands move quickly and precisely, as she tightly braids the hair in front of the sign in her salon promising African, European, and American-style coiffure. Sabine is a larger than-life personality crammed into a tiny, glassed-in shop in the largely immigrant Brussels district of Matonge. Here, she and her employees fit extensions and glue on lashes while watching soaps, dishing romantic advice, sharing rumors about government programs to legalize migrants, and talking about people back home in West Africa.

At the start of CHEZ JOLIE COIFFURE, filmmaker Rosine Mbakam stands outside the salon, filming. Sabine calls her in, warning her it's unsafe out in hallway of the cramped urban mall. Mbakam sets up in the shop-and stays, filming over the course of a year, becoming a regular fixture and presence. This cinematic "chamber piece" takes place entirely inside the tiny salon, seemingly not much larger than a take-out stand, making skillful use of its many mirrors.

More than a place for women to get their hair done, Jolie Coiffure serves as a community hub for West African women-many from Cameroon, like Sabine. Fueled by endless cans of soda and cups of McDonald's coffee, she recruits for a tontine-an investment scheme paying each member a yearly annuity, organizes accommodation for a pregnant woman who lacks immigration papers, and, in quieter, more introspective moments, tells her own harrowing journey to Belgium after working as a domestic under terrible conditions in Lebanon.

Though she has created a home in her own space, Sabine remains an outsider in Belgium. Students and tourist groups made up only of white people walk past, pausing at the window and gawking. (At one point, Sabine urges Mbakam to turn her camera on them so they'll go away; the director obliges.) When word has it that the immigration police are coming through, she hurriedly turns off all the lights and quickly vanishes out the door.

CHEZ JOLIE COIFFURE is a highly revealing documentary, capturing the day-to-day lives and concerns of immigrant West African women in a space they can call their own.

DVD (French with English Subtitles, Color) / 2018 / 70 minutes

CITY DREAMERS

Director: Joseph Hillel

Phyllis Lambert, Blanche Lemco van Ginkel, Cornelia Hahn Oberlander, Denise Scott Brown - four trailblazers who became accustomed to being the only woman in the room. Each has an extensive list of accomplishments in architecture, planning and landscape architecture dating back 60+ years and has taught, mentored and inspired generations of professionals. Since the 1950's, they have worked for and collaborated with some of the leading figures in architecture, from Le Corbusier to Louis Kahn and Mies van der Rohe, while finding their own voices in the male-dominated world of architecture. How have they envisioned our cities?

Through original interviews, archival material and stunning cinematography, filmmaker Joseph Hillel uncovers how each of these independent thinkers has been working, observing and thinking about the transformations shaping the city of today and tomorrow. As the world becomes increasingly urbanized, the insights of these forward-looking women who have built social and environmental values into their work seem more relevant now than ever.

DVD (English & French w/ English subtitles) / 2018 / 81 minutes

COUNCILWOMAN

By Margo Guernsey

COUNCILWOMAN is the inspiring story of Carmen Castillo, an immigrant Dominican housekeeper in a Providence hotel who wins a seat in City Council, taking her advocacy for low-income workers from the margins to city politics.

The film follows Castillo's first term as she balances her full-time day job as a housekeeper with her family life and the demands of public office. She faces skeptics who say she doesn't have the education to govern, the power of corporate interests who take a stand against her fight for a $15 hourly wage, and a tough re-election against two contenders. As Castillo battles personal setbacks and deep-rooted notions of who is qualified to run for political office, she fiercely defends her vision of a society in which all people can earn enough to support themselves and their families.

An eye-opening look at entrenched power in American democracy, COUNCILWOMAN is essential viewing for Latinx, Immigrant, Political Science and Labor Studies courses.

DVD (English, Spanish, Color) / 2018 / 57 minutes

MARCELINE. A WOMAN. A CENTURY

By Cordelia Dvorak

MARCELINE. A WOMAN. A CENTURY is a fascinating portrait of the persevering French filmmaker, writer, and Holocaust survivor Marceline Loridan-Ivens (1928-2018).

Marceline was only 15 when both she and her father, a Polish Jew from Lodz, were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. She survived but her father didn't, and Marceline had to find radical and unconventional ways to heal after the tragedies of the war. In 1961, she appeared in Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin's landmark film Chronicle of a Summer, which gave birth to the term cinema verite. Later she married the legendary Dutch documentary director Joris Ivens, traveled with him to Vietnam, and co-directed films such as 17th Parallel: Vietnam in War (1968) and How Yukong Moved the Mountains (1976).

Filmed as she was nearing 90 years old and living in Paris, MARCELINE. A WOMAN. A CENTURY spans the broad arc of her life from Holocaust survivor to political activist to combatively critical filmmaker. Looking back on the momentous events she experienced and filmed such as the Algerian and Vietnam Wars and the Chinese Cultural Revolution, MARCELINE is a thought-provoking chronicle of a remarkable witness of the 20th century.

DVD (French, Color, Closed Captioned) / 2018 / 58 minutes

PRIMAS

By Laura Bari

PRIMAS is an evocative and poetic portrait of two Argentine teenage cousins who come of age together as they overcome the heinous acts of violence that interrupted their childhoods.

When Rocio was 10 years old, she was dragged from her bike by a stranger, raped, set on fire and left for dead. Now a teenager, she still grapples with memories of the nightmarish assault that left her body scarred. Together with her cousin Aldana, who was sexually abused for years by her own father, she lives, laughs and shares her story. Traveling through Argentina and Montreal, the two cousins embark upon a program of theater, dance, and circus that helps them process complex emotions. Little by little, they manage to rebuild the lives that were so brutally stolen from them and free themselves from the shadows of their past.

A humanistic exploration of familial love, creativity, and courage in the wake of sexual violence, PRIMAS is a moving tribute to the deep strength of resilient women.

DVD (Color, Spanish) / 2018 / 95 minutes

REST I MAKE UP, THE

By Michelle Memran

The visionary Cuban-American dramatist and educator Maria Irene Fornes spent her career constructing astonishing worlds onstage and teaching countless students how to connect with their imaginations. When she gradually stops writing due to dementia, an unexpected friendship with filmmaker Michelle Memran reignites her spontaneous creative spirit and triggers a decade-long collaboration that picks up where the pen left off.

The duo travels from New York to Havana, Miami to Seattle, exploring the playwright's remembered past and their shared present. Theater luminaries such as Edward Albee, Ellen Stewart, Lanford Wilson, and others weigh in on Fornes's important contributions. What began as an accidental collaboration becomes a story of love, creativity, and connection that persists even in the face of forgetting.

DVD (Color) / 2018 / 79 minutes

THOUSAND GIRLS LIKE ME, A

By Sahra Mani

A THOUSAND GIRLS LIKE ME is an awe-inspiring verite documentary that tells the story of a young Afghan woman's fight for justice after experiencing years of physical and sexual abuse at the hands of her father.

Khatera Golzad was brutally raped by her father for thirteen years, resulting in numerous pregnancies, most of which ended in forced abortions. But two reached full term. Despite her many attempts to file charges, neither the Afghan police nor the legal system helped her. In 2014, she appeared on national television to publicly accuse her father, finally succeeding in bringing her case to court despite threats from male relatives and judges who labelled her a liar.

A THOUSAND GIRLS LIKE ME sheds light on the broken Afghan judicial system and the women it seldom protects. In a country where the systematic abuse of girls is rarely discussed, Afghan filmmaker Sahra Mani presents a story of one woman's battle against cultural, familial, and legal pressures as she embarks on a mission to set a positive example for her daughter and other girls like her.

DVD (Color) / 2018 / 52 minutes

ASHTON HARRISON: ROAD TO 24

By Ron Small

How can a pink roll cage change the course of destiny for one young woman?

The Road to 24 is an inspirational story of how one young lady has succeeded against the odds and broken through the proverbial "glass ceiling".

Ashton Harrison is a Georgia girl. She loves her family, has a soft spot for rescue dogs and oh, yes...she's also a professional race car driver routinely hitting wicked speeds.

Join Ashton as she negotiates the male-dominated world of professional auto racing with her signature pink roll cage.

In a fusion of Mazda racing history and the persistence of one driver, The Road to 24 takes you from Ashton's first taste at Bondurant Racing School to her time trials at Barber Motorsports Park, to racing at Sebring, Road Atlanta, Road America, Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca and Atlanta Motorsports Park. Ashton is on a mission to become one of the top drivers in what she hopes to be the Mazda Prototype, one of professional racing's most coveted positions. This is her inspirational story.

DVD / 2017 / 58 minutes

BREAST ARCHIVES, THE

Director: Meagan Murphy

Real women reveal their breasts and uncover personal truths in this gently provocative documentary exploring embodiment, womanhood, and the power of being seen.

The Breast Archives features nine women's personal stories of empowerment. Baring their breasts and their hearts, the women share the unique journeys they've made with their bodies, from their formative years of hiding, shame, and disconnection to adulthood and the discovery of what it means to be a powerful woman. As the women slowly reconnect with their body-based stories they find a reservoir of strength and wisdom that lies within their breasts.

DVD / 2017 / 57 minutes

FEMINISTA: A JOURNEY TO THE HEART OF FEMINISM IN EUROPE

By Myriam Fougere

FEMINISTA is a lively and inspiring feminist road movie that explores the largely unrecognized yet hugely vibrant pan European feminist movement. Filmmaker Myriam Fougere joined an international group of young feminists who were traveling across twenty countries - from Turkey to Portugal, by the way of the Balkans, to Italy, Spain and Portugal - to make connections and unite forces with other women. She witnessed these determined activists participating in political gatherings, supporting homegrown local feminist struggles, exchanging strategies, and inventing new ways to resist and fight for change. Revealing how feminism is transmitted from one generation to another, FEMINISTA provides a rare glimpse into a widespread feminist groundswell movement, possibly one of the largest and unrecognized mass political movements that is very much alive and well throughout Europe today.

DVD (Color) / 2017 / 60 minutes

MY LOVE AFFAIR WITH THE BRAIN: THE LIFE & SCIENCE OF DR. MARIAN DIAMOND

Directed by Catherine Ryan, Gary Weimberg

Looks at the life and work of Dr. Marian Diamond, one of the founders of modern neuroscience, and an inspirational teacher to thousands at UC Berkeley and to millions on YouTube.

Meet Dr. Marian Diamond as she pulls a human brain out of a hatbox and lovingly enumerates its astonishing qualities. MY LOVE AFFAIR WITH THE BRAIN follows this remarkable woman over a 5-year period and introduces the viewer to both her many scientific accomplishments and the warm, funny, and thoroughly charming woman herself, who describes her 60-year career researching the human brain as "pure joy."

As one of the founders of modern neuroscience, Dr. Diamond challenged orthodoxy and changed our understanding of the brain--its plasticity, its response to enrichment and to experiences that shape both development and aging. Her groundbreaking work is all the more remarkable because it began during an era when so few women entered science at all. Shouted at from the back of the conference hall by noteworthy male academics as she presented her research, and disparaged in the scientific journals, Dr. Diamond simply did the work and followed where her curiosity led her, bringing about a paradigm shift in the process. As she points out, in order to get to the answers that matter, you have to start by asking the right questions.

DVD / 2017 / (Grades 9-12, College, Adults) / 57 minutes

NOTHING WITHOUT US: THE WOMEN WHO WILL END AIDS

By Harriet Hirshorn

NOTHING WITHOUT US tells the inspiring story of the vital role that women have played - and continue to play - in the global fight against HIV/AIDS. Combining archival footage and interviews with female activists, scientists and scholars in the US and Africa, Nothing Without Us reveals how women not only shaped grassroots groups like ACT-UP in the U.S., but have also played an essential part in HIV prevention and treatment access throughout sub-Saharan Africa. From beauty parlors in Baton Rouge to the first HIV clinic in Burundi, this film looks boldly at the unaddressed dynamics that keep women around the world at high-risk for HIV, while introducing the remarkable women who have the answers to ending this 30-year old pandemic. As the history of AIDS activism is being written, women, particularly women of color, are being written out of it. This documentary will be a step in restoring women's crucial role in the history and present-day activism around HIV as well as bolstering the work of women everywhere still fighting for their lives.

DVD (Color) / 2017 / 67 minutes

TRACKING EDITH

Director: Peter Stephan Jungk

When she wasn't working as a Soviet agent, she was taking photos of workers and street children in Vienna and London, documenting poverty and social deprivation. Being a secret agent doesn't seem to have come naturally to the photographer Edith Tudor-Hart. But she did manage to recruit Kim Philby, and act as one of the architects of the Cambridge Five, the Soviet Union's most successful spy ring in Great Britain.

Edith was director Peter Stephan Jungk's great aunt, his mother's cousin; in Tracking Edith he tries to unravel the truth about his great aunt's life - a spy with a conscience and hidden family secrets.

DVD / 2017 / 92 minutes

CATCHING SIGHT OF THELMA & LOUISE

Directed by Jennifer Townsend

Explores the same women's and men's reactions to the groundbreaking film, "Thelma & Louise", 25 years ago and today.

Powerful, authentic, and timely, CATCHING SIGHT OF THELMA & LOUISE dives off the edge into the truth of women's experience in the world. It revisits the journey of Thelma & Louise through the lens of viewers who saw that iconic film in 1991 and shared intimate, personal, stories at that time. The same women and men were tracked down 25 years later. Are their responses different now? Has anything changed in the way women are treated?

Interview commentary mixes with clips from "Thelma & Louise" to reveal why this cinema classic continues to resonate with millions of viewers, the world over. Christopher McDonald, who played Thelma's husband, and Marco St. John, who played the truck driver, offer an insider's viewpoint.

DVD / 2016 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adults) / 86 minutes

GIRL FROM GOD'S COUNTRY: THE HISTORY OF WOMEN IN FILM AND OTHER WAR STORIES

By Karen Day

GIRL FROM GOD'S COUNTRY is the untold story of the first female independent filmmaker and action-adventure heroine, Nell Shipman (1892-1970), who left Hollywood to make her films in Idaho. An unadulterated, undiscovered adventure tale of a pioneering woman who rewrote the rules of filmmaking, and, in so doing, paved the way for independent voices-especially prominent female voices in today's film industry. Her storylines of self-reliant women overcoming physical challenges in the wilderness and often, rescuing the male lead, shattered the predictable cinematic formulas of large studio productions. Featuring rare archival footage by early pioneers, including minority filmmakers, Zora Neale Hurston and Miriam Wong, the first Chinese-American filmmaker in 1914 and present day interviews with Geena Davis and the Director of Women in Film, GIRL FROM GOD'S COUNTRY discuss how gender-inequities that Shipman and her counterparts faced perpetuate in today's film industry. Emblematic of an entire lost generation of female producers and directors in silent film, Nell Shipman's legacy has remained a buried treasure in film history for nearly 100 years.

DVD (Color) / 2016 / 66 minutes

GREAT UNSUNG WOMEN OF COMPUTING: THE COMPUTERS, THE CODERS AND THE FUTURE MAKERS

By Kathy Kleiman, Jon Palfreman and Kate McMahon

In the United States, women are vastly underrepresented in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Math) fields, holding under 25% of STEM jobs and a disproportionately low share of STEM undergraduate degrees. Great Unsung Women of Computing is a series of three remarkable documentary films that show how women revolutionized the computing and Internet technology we use today, inspiring female students to believe that programming careers lie within their grasp.

The Computers features the extraordinary story of the ENIAC Programmers, six young women who programmed the world's first modern, programmable computer, ENIAC, as part of a secret WWII project. They programmed ENIAC without programming language (for none existed), and harnessed its power to perform advanced military calculations at lighting speeds. However, when the ENIAC was unveiled in 1946, the Programmers were never introduced and they became invisible. This stunning documentary features rare footage and never-before-seen interviews with the ENIAC Programmers. 70 years later, this is their story.

The Coders tells the story of two extraordinary women, Sarah Allen and Pavni Diwanji whose technologies revolutionized the Internet: Sarah co-invented Flash, the first multimedia platform supporting video, graphics, games and animation for the internet, while Pavni invented the Java servlet to allow web applications to respond quickly to requests from users everywhere.

In The Future Makers, Andrea Colaco, a young MIT PhD, shares her dream of a world in which we interact with our smart devices using natural hand gestures, not static keyboards or touchpads. She invented 3D "gestural recognition technology" and co-founded 3dim to develop and market it. In 2013, 3dim won MIT's $100K Entrepreneurship Prize and launched Andrea towards her dream of innovation and changing the world.

DVD (Color) / 2016 / 48 minutes

MRS. B., A NORTH KOREAN WOMAN

By Jero Yun

"There are five kinds of families that buy us," says Mrs. B over dinner and drinks with fellow North Korean exiles living in China. "The first type, either the father or the mother is missing and the son can't get married. Then there are the very poor families, like my husband's. In the third type, the man is handicapped... mentally handicapped too. They're all poor. We're sold to families like that."

Mrs. B (we don't learn her real name) is something of an expert when it comes to the trafficking of North Koreans. In 2003, at age 37, she left her husband and two sons behind in North Korea, crossed the icy Tumen River into China, and was sold into marriage. When we meet her a decade later, she's running a robust trafficking business from her home on a small farm in northern China. While her husband fixes equipment and brings in the harvest, she's on her cellphone negotiating with people smugglers, bringing in karaoke girls, and advising newly smuggled clients on how to avoid detection and deportation.

MRS. B, A NORTH KOREAN WOMAN is a closely observed verite portrait of a world-weary woman who finds herself between countries, between worlds, and between families. Unable to bring her North Korean family to China, Mrs. B eventually arranges to get them into South Korea (where her husband was originally held under suspicion of espionage). Now, she plans to return to Seoul herself, seek refugee status, see her Korean husband and sons again, and then send for her Chinese husband and his octogenarian parents.

Director Jero Yun runs considerable risks, jammed into the back of a car with Mrs B as she welcomes a newly smuggled young mother into the country, and joining her and a group of women as they travel all the way across China to Thailand - by bus and car, and on a long night-time trek through fields with a crying baby - seeking a better life.

By focusing so tightly on one person, Yun offers a powerful look at the mundane realities of life for both trafficker and trafficked, overturning cliched notions about a necessarily mysterious trade.

DVD (Color) / 2016 / 71 minutes

REVIVAL, THE: WOMEN AND THE WORD

By Sekiya Dorsett

THE REVIVAL: WOMEN AND THE WORD chronicles the US tour of a group of Black lesbian poets and musicians, who become present-day stewards of a historical movement to build community among queer women of color. Their journey to strengthen their community is enriched by insightful interviews with leading Black feminist thinkers and historians, including Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Nikki Finney, and Alexis Deveaux. As the group tours the country, the film reveals their aspirations and triumphs, as well as the unique identity challenges they face encompassing gender, race, and sexuality. This is a rarely seen look into a special sisterhood - one where marginalized voices are both heard and respected.

DVD (Color, Closed Captioned) / 2016 / 82 minutes

RICHMOND ROSIES, THE

Director: Ken Stewart

The Richmond Rosies were part of the vanguard of women during WWII who left their homes to take jobs that were once the exclusive domain of men. From 1942 to 1945, they helped build 747 Victory and Liberty ships at the Kaiser Shipyards in Richmond, CA, the largest shipyard in the world at that time.

The 5 featured women in the film became "Rosies"; short for Rosie the Riveter. They became journeyman welders, pipe welders, draftswomen, and electricians. And they built ships. Big ones... and lots of them. By the end of the war, women made up 60% of Kaiser's workforce which included the Oregon facility.

This film was made to honor the American women who helped to win a victory for their country as well as themselves. Individually and collectively they were part of a massive woman's movement and helped give birth to a new, and very independent American woman with their ambition, guts, skill, and fierce independence.

These are "The Richmond Rosies". These are the women who built ships.

DVD / 2016 / 44 minutes

SOLITARY STRENGTH: THE STORY OF CATTLEWOMAN DOROTHY STOVER HALL

By Trudy Duisenberg

At the height of the Great Depression Dorothy Stover Hall saved her paycheck and at the age of 26 bought a 130 acre ranch.

The American West, Sustainability and Women's History combine in a tale of the spirited determination of one working woman who spent her life going against the grain. Her legacy is one of confidence, integrity and self-contained dignity.

Dorothy Stover Hall, born in 1910 in the high country of the Sierra Nevada foothills of Northern California, was the grand child of legendary pioneer families who were among the first cattle ranching families of the West.

SOLITARY STRENGTH: The Story of Cattlewoman Dorothy Stover Hall is the tale of a very authentic working woman and her spirited determination.

This beautifully produced historical documentary will appeal to audiences that love stories of the American West, Women's Studies and Sustainability.

DVD (Color, Black and White) / 2016 / 51 minutes

TWO FACES OF A BAMILEKE WOMAN, THE

By Rosine Mbakam

Rosine Mbakam left Cameroon at 27 to live in Belgium. Seven years later-having studied film and married a European-she returns, accompanied by her son. Motivated by a desire to better understand her past and the place she grew up, Rosine is nonetheless surprised by the revelations her mother and other women make in startlingly intimate conversations.

THE TWO FACES OF A BAMILEKE WOMAN opens with Rosine making what she calls a journey into darkness-to the village of her birth, and later to the capital city of Yaounde, where her mother now lives most of the year. In the village of Tonga, her mother, Ma Breh, shares memories of the horrors of the war against French colonizers, and of daily life for a Cameroonian woman in an arranged marriage-a fate Rosine herself barely escaped, leaving the family of an angry ex-fiance behind.

Rosine accompanies her mother, aunts, and other women while they go about daily tasks: cooking fish, serving kokistew to a crowd, and selling goods at a thriving market stall. Like many immigrants, she finds herself distant from her home country, yet drawn to its rituals and memories. She goes through a dusty suitcase of her late father's documents, asks if she has damaged family traditions by marrying a white man, teaches her son to say "I love you grandma" in Bamikele, and asks her mother to do a traditional post-birth ritual several years after the fact.

As she spends more time with her mother and the women around her, Rosine reveals the strength of their solidarity and their ability to face adversity-whether hiding for their lives from French soldiers or being committed to a man for marriage at age eight. This world of women's work and women's struggles is one that surrounded her in her early years, but she couldn't recognize it-or its complexity-until she had been away from the social structures of her country.

THE TWO FACES OF A BAMILEKE WOMAN is a sharply observed, nuanced and powerful feature documentary debut that captures the relationship between a woman and her mother-and subtly expresses the dislocation of emigration.

DVD (French, Bamileke, With English Subtitles, Color) / 2016 / 76 minutes

VOICES OF MUSLIM WOMEN FROM THE US SOUTH

By Maha Marouan and Rachel Raimist

When one thinks of the American Deep South, the image of veiled Muslim students strolling the University of Alabama campus is the last thing that comes to mind. VOICES OF MUSLIM WOMEN FROM THE US SOUTH is a documentary that explores the Muslim culture through the lens of five University of Alabama Muslim students. The film tackles how Muslim women carve a space for self-expression in the Deep South and how they negotiate their identities in a predominantly Christian society that often has unflattering views about Islam and Muslims. Through interviews with students and faculty at Alabama, this film examines representations and issues of agency by asking: How do Muslim female students carve a space in a culture that thinks of Muslims as terrorists and Muslim women as backward?

DVD (Color) / 2015 / 32 minutes

WHAT'S THE T?

What "Paris is Burning" was to drag balls-"What's the T?" is to transgender life-a documentary that explores the challenges, successes and lives of five transgender women; a multi-character study and an introduction to the uninitiated.

"To understand the ladies of "What's the T?" is to love them," says San Francisco-based filmmaker, Cecilio Asuncion, recipient of the 2012 Outstanding Filipino-American award for LGBT advocacy. It is thanks to Asuncion's unique, tender and intimate friendships with the film's subjects that allows "What's the T?"-structured around a series of Asuncion's conversations with The Ladies-to be such a frank, engaging and memorable film.

The film is not only a loving crafted and empathetically handled documentary, but also a vivid snapshot of transgender life as it exists today-the terminology, the social realities, the successes and the heartbreak.

Over the last couple years, transgender characters and themes have jumped into mainstream consciousness, particularly through television and video-on-demand dramas like Netflix' "Orange is the New Black" and Amazon's "Transparent". Most recently and-perhaps most dramatically-"Orange is the new Black" star Laverne Cox, became the first trans person ever to be on the cover of TIME Magazine.

The exposure, discussion and timing of this welcome trans awareness has been both prescient and fortuitous for the release of "What's The T?"

"What's the T?" was an official selection at over ten major LGBT film festivals worldwide including: Frameline, 37 San Francisco, Rio Gay Film Festival, Transgender Kiel Germany, as well as the Portland, Pensacola, and the Soho International Film Festivals. Additionally, "What's the T?" won the festival favorite award at Cinema Diverse Palm Springs and is widely considered the best film of its kind to hit the festival circuit in years.

DVD / 2013 / 65 minutes

ENTRE NOS

Directed by Paola Mendoza and Gloria LaMorte

Entre Nos tells the true story of a woman's struggle to survive in New York City with her two children after being abandoned by her husband.

The main character, Mariana, totes her two children from the country and culture of Colombia to reunite with her husband in Queens, New York. Her life is devastatingly turned around when her husband abandons the family.

As a result, Mariana must struggle with unemployment, eviction letters, eviction notice forms, how to speak fluent English, and then experiences the early signs of pregnancy.

With no where to go Mariana is under extreme stress due to her misfortunes. She and her kids have to now survive living in a foreign country. As Mariana desperately searches for jobs in NYC, the story weaves along with the stress she lives with. In the end, Mariana resourcefully navigates a surprising way to make some money by using recycle containers to recycle for cash.

DVD (English and Spanish with English and Spanish Subtitles) / 2009 / 81 minutes

WOMEN WITHOUT MEN

Women Without Men, an adaptation of Shahrnush Parsipur's magic realist novel of the same name, is Iranian artist Shirin Neshat's first feature length film.

The story chronicles the intertwining lives of four Iranian women during the summer of 1953; a cataclysmic moment in Iranian history when an American led, British backed coup d'etat brought down the democratically elected Prime Minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, and reinstalled the Shah to power.

Over the course of several days, four disparate women from Iranian society are brought together against the backdrop of political and social turmoil. Fakhri, a middle aged woman trapped in a loveless marriage must contend with her feelings for an old flame who has just returned from America and walked back into her life. Zarin, a young prostitute, tries to escape the devastating realization that she can no longer see the faces of men. Munis, a politically awakened young woman, must resist the seclusion imposed on her by her religiously traditional brother, while her friend Faezeh remains oblivious to the turmoil in the streets and longs only to marry Munis' domineering brother.

As the political turmoil swells in the streets of Tehran, each woman seeks to be liberated from her predicament. Munis becomes an active part of the political struggle by following a young communist who she believes can restore her faith in the world. Fakhri frees herself from the chains of her stagnant marriage by leaving her husband and purchasing a mystical orchard in the outskirts of the city. Faezeh is taken to the orchard by Munis to face her own awakened self after her innocence is stolen, while Zarin attempts to find solace in her newfound communion with the land. But it is only a matter of time before the world outside the walls of the orchard seep into the lives of these four women as their country's history takes a tragic turn.

DVD (Persian with English Subtitles) / 2009 / 99 minutes

http://www.learningemall.com/News/Women_1910.html

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markwatkinsconsumerguide · 6 years

Photo

Consumer Guide / No.72 / Broadcaster & entrepreneur, Steve Crozier with Mark Watkins.

MW : Tell me about your background, and what did you want to do?

SC : I was born in Hertfordshire, England, and as a young child spent many summers with my grandparents in Henley, on the banks of the Thames.

When I was six, I remember my grandad always turning on the valve wireless to listen to the BBC Home service at 6pm, accompanied by a bottle of cider.

I remember hearing Frederic Mullaly read the bulletin, and was awestruck by his voice, and the power of disseminating world events.

After the news ended, Frederic would get into his car and drive from Broadcasting House to his home in Henley - very near to my grandparent’s riverside bungalow - and drink sherry with my grandpa and grandma!

I’d sit on the floor, just awestruck! That's when I knew what I wanted to do!

MW : How did you get into broadcasting?

SC : Via the back door of sales. At first, I didn’t make the cut for Reading’s Radio 210; at that time, in the mid 70s, I was in TV (ad) sales in London - which was well paid. Besides, that’s where I lived and I wasn’t experienced enough to work at LBC, or Capital Radio. I had my eyes firmly on the Reading ILR franchise which was awarded to Kennet Ltd (who then became Radio 210).

I made a tape at Roger Squires and mailed it to Kennets’ address, and made an appointment to meet with Neil ffrench Blake, who was Programme controller. We met in the Albermarle pub in Mayfair, London, and he referred me to Michael Moore, at The Sun, who was assembling 210’s sales department. News International, who owned The Sun, was part funding 210. Michael was a Murdoch Star, he hired me.

This new team started work about six months before launch in the Filberts building in Calcot row, which was the then HQ, while the ambulance shed next door was being attached and adapted for radio, and studio use. There were three of us: David Oldroyd from the local newspaper, Linda Brookes from Capital Radio and myself. We had a large area map on an easel into which we pushed glass top pins. It was like a War Room from an old movie!

As sales got underway, it was obvious that the actual radio spots had to be produced, so I moved to a production managers position, and we made hundreds of spots.

One week before our launch deadline, Neil ffrench Blake offered me an on-air job; Saturdays, 10am to 2pm. There was no shortage of live guests, and one of my first was David Cassidy! So, dear reader THAT’S how I got into radio!

MW : As a teenager, what records do you remember buying/collecting?

SC: As a teenager, I remember amongst the first records records I bought were Sgt Pepper, The Beatles White album, and some misc singles. They were expensive when ones only income was a newspaper round, and some occasional gardening work! An album was three pounds ten shillings, and a single was ten shillings or more.

MW : OK, let’s tune to 210...

SC : In the early days of 210, there was a huge shift in music tastes. Disco was giving way to mega rock bands (Eagles, Fleetwood Mac) and soul, R&B and funk were massive too. Soon, in the late 70’s Punk was to explode... actually, programmers and top-level DJ/ presenters (Bob Harris) hadn’t a good grasp of what was actually happening! Bob actually got into a fight with Sid Vicious at a club in London, and “called it a day” with Whistle Test.

Tastes and audiences were changing.

At 210, there was a calm sea of music policy, enforced by Neil. The 210 Top 40 was a slow moving list, not sales based, but tailored to fit a certain pre-determined ‘sound’ like many of the programmers in the States.

DJ tastes were being eroded.

During my time at 210, us youngsters were always on the lookout to expand. Mike Read, Steve Wright, myself and others picked up a lot of outside gigs, mostly local disco work.

Thanks to my documentary and talk experience I got more varied offers such as British Forces Broadcasting which paid very well (I subbed for Tommy Vance) and then BOOM!

I successfully applied to audition for Esther Rantzens’ ‘That’s Life’. What a step up that would be...

MW : ...‘That’s Life’ ?

SC : ...every couple of years or so, Esther’s reporter sidekicks would cycle-out, and replacements had to be found. To start the audition process, I spent a few weeks at BBC West London, picking out useable stories and building them into TV-worthy items. (The actual show was on summer break.) This culminated in a full TV studio recording WITH audience. Just like the real thing. There were about eight finalists (four pairs), and it was quite nerve wracking.

Sadly, I didn’t get the part; as seemed usual at the time, existing BBC reporters got the jobs... us outsiders were window dressing for this process, but it was super fun, a great experience. As a result, I became friends with the team, and often went up to TV centre to sit in on the tapings.

MW : Capital Radio 194 went to air the same year as LBC in 1973, but it was Capital Radio 604 in South Africa that you later joined. How did you get involved, and how did the two “ Capitals” compare?

SC : In late 1978, a revolutionary radio station was being formed in London and Cape Town called Capital Radio. It had nothing to do whatsoever with either the South African government, or 194. Rather, it was to be based in an ‘Independent’ African State, called the Transkei. The aim was to broadcast uncensored news and music from the ‘Homeland’ of Transkei, south, and into South Africa, which was ruled by apartheid, and white supremacy.

604′s mission was to broadcast actual, real news, and play rock and pop which hadn’t been rejected by the SA government censors. Its transmitter was the “‘loudest” in the Southern Hemisphere, but the antenna system was misaligned, resulting in a poor AM signal to the intended audience. Short-wave and FM functioned to a point in Cape Town and to and extent, Johannesburg.

I was chosen to ship out to Port St. Johns, Transkei, and helped set up the broadcasting side. The main studio and staff base was located in a sleepy former fishing town called Port St. Johns, on the Indian Ocean. It was Paradise! It was also the first time I’d earned a five figure, untaxed salary! No outgoing except for high quality wine and spirits!

http://www.capital604.com/

MW : LBC celebrates its 45th anniversary this year - let’s look back at your time there...

SC : LBC is a book in itself! Suffice it to say that I joined as a jobbing freelance, doing late -night shifts and news, and then rapidly to traffic analyst (reporter) at Scotland Yard. This taught me London geography, almost like a black-cab driver. We then brought traffic in-house, when we added a small ‘plane sponsored by the Evening Standard, to view traffic congestion. As far as weekday presentation was concerned, I was usually co-anchoring with Philip Hodson, David Loyn etc.

My primary arc at LBC was news reading for Independent Radio News (IRN) and, for eight of my eleven years, I ran the syndicated travel programme ‘Time Off’. This was a way for us to showcase the many, varied press trip offers the station received. We were blessed with a huge audience, plus the central ability to satellite-out the components of the show, and also the entire one hour reel.

In the late eighties, when a lot of people went freelance (off staff) we worked through our own companies/ entities and I turned ‘Time Off’ into a cash machine, selling the sponsorships myself.

http://www.geofflumley.org.uk/lbc261/

MW : Melody Radio launched with the slogan 'At last - radio without the speakers' - as a launch presenter, what was it like?

SC : In 1990, Peter Black invited me to join Lord Hanson’s Melody Radio, which I did for four years. (A TV comedian at the time called it “Quiet FM”, orr was that Radio Two?!)

Nothing much happened here...apart from having the luxury of an actual producer for each show, including Roskos’ old producer Aidan Day, who was now scheduling easy listening!!

In 2005 off I went again... another adventure; this time to Nairobi and back to my TV roots to help redesign the Kenya Television Network (KTN) I was MD and CEO, and the re-shaping was drastic. In my early days there I bought first series of ‘ER’, ‘Fresh Prince of Bel Air’, ‘Days Of Our Lives’ etc... paying the super cheap “Third World” rate card price. And boy did we milk it until the reels had to be returned!

PC’s and WIndows ‘95 had just come out, so we were all good! Such systems, good sales and top TV presenters, staff, and shows took us rapidly to the most watched in the land. We also had exclusive use of CNN International for news inserts and over-night programming. I was also tasked with designing two FM stations for Nairobi (population 6.5 million) which were up and running after I left.

MW : What constitutes your life now?

SC : I met my Colorado born wife-to-be in Nairobi - who was on a sabbatical from Southern California, and a career in law.

In May 1996 we were married in Manhattan Beach, a suburb of Los Angeles, and soon moved to Santa Barbara where she continued a successful career in Law, and is now the Assistant City Attorney.

We have a daughter, now at Berkeley, and I continue with my own media and web projects and a movie and TV project in development.

0 notes

kidsviral-blog · 6 years

Text

Two Years After KONY 2012, Has Invisible Children Grown Up?

New Post has been published on https://kidsviral.info/two-years-after-kony-2012-has-invisible-children-grown-up/

Two Years After KONY 2012, Has Invisible Children Grown Up?

In March 2012, a human rights organization’s documentary about a central African despot became the most viral video of all time, and the ensuing furor resulted in its leader’s bizarre public meltdown. On the second anniversary of the phenomenon, everyone involved is still figuring out what it all means.

View this image ›

Jason Russell in his office in September. Photograph by Sam Hodgson for BuzzFeed

Jason Russell is tan. Genuinely and exotically tan, even for a lifelong Southern Californian. He almost immediately apologizes for it, explaining that he’s just come from a wedding in Turks and Caicos. Later that afternoon, he’ll walk through the Barrio Logan, San Diego, headquarters of his nonprofit Invisible Children, burnt and barefoot in a neon orange tank top and shorts, rain whipping the office’s industrial windows. The interns will giggle, fondly: “That’s a guy who takes his workout seriously.”

This is Jason Russell today — 35, training for an Ironman, home every night by 6 p.m., never away from his family for longer than five days a month. This is not the raving man of two years ago, stomping down a San Diego sidewalk, slapping the cement with his bare ass to the sky. But part of him is here too.

“Every day for two minutes, I will think, Oh my god, I had a naked meltdown,” Russell says, stretching and snapping a rubber band between his fingers on his glass desk. “I will think that and be like, how did that happen? How in the world is that a part of my story and history forever?”

Russell today is healthy, or says he is. He went to therapy. He was on Oprah’s Next Chapter. He’s still theatrical and jovial, still prone to hyperbole, still enthusiastically earnest in a way that’s completely inspiring to half the world and nails on a chalkboard to the other. But after Russell’s psychotic episode, he spent six months figuring out who he was going to be, how and when and whether he would return to the nonprofit he founded in 2004 and nearly brought down in 2012 with the release of “KONY 2012,” the most viral video of all time — an impassioned, idealistic call for American youth to make Joseph Kony, the leader of central Africa’s militant child-kidnapping group Lord’s Resistance Army, in Russell’s words, “famous.”

For a majority of the 100 million who viewed “KONY 2012,” it was the first time they’d heard of Invisible Children, then an eight-year-old organization with a website that couldn’t handle its new traffic. Information gathering was a free-for-all; here was Jason Russell, the video’s narrator, describing Invisible Children as “the Pixar of human rights stories” to the New York Times. There he was telling CNN, “We are not these other organizations that do amazing work on the ground. If you want to fund a cow or you want to help someone in a village in that component, you can do that. That’s a third of what we do.” Here was a fairly embarrassing musical promotional video for a 2006 event called the Global Night Commute. There was Russell describing his personality: “If Oprah, Steven Spielberg and Bono had a baby, I would be that baby.” Here was an appearance on The 700 Club, an interview at Liberty University, and an audio clip of Russell at a Christian conference describing Invisible Children as a “Trojan Horse in a sense, going into a secular realm.” And everywhere was the photo of Invisible Children’s founders posing with tough faces, guns, and members of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army.

The ammunition was boundless and critics ruthless. Counterprogramming was one thing, but character assassination was another, prompting Time magazine’s Alex Perry to describe much of the backlash as “malicious online ‘takedown,’ most of whose participants were utterly uninterested in truth but focused instead on a point-scoring, trashing and hurting, the digital pogrom of the unaccountable, anonymous Invisible Mob.”

“I think that’s what really made me lose it,” Russell says. “They were attacking me personally: my voice, my hair, my face, my family, my friends … I didn’t realize what 15 minutes of white-hot fame looks like. And I got to see it. And it is not pretty.

“It’s” — he knocks on his desk — “not” — knock — “good” — knock. “It’s so dark. I was obviously not sleeping and definitely kind of losing my mind, for sure, but I would seriously start crying when I thought about, like, Lindsay Lohan, or even Sarah Palin, or these people who’ve been in the spotlight and been ridiculed by everyone in the world. Most people will say out of their mouths, ‘Lindsay Lohan should die.’ And then I was reading that about myself.”

After 10 days, it was reportedly “extreme exhaustion, stress and dehydration” that drove Russell to that San Diego sidewalk, and later a hospital on a 5150 involuntary psychiatric hold order. A week later, his wife Danica announced the early diagnosis was “brief reactive psychosis.”

And then the conversation stopped — and with it, all the debate, conspiracy theories, and think pieces about Invisible Children’s methods and motivations. Some threads continued, of course, but it was as if the media saw Russell’s breakdown and slowly backed out of the room, switching off the lights before comically bolting away.

Russell was marked, even after his recovery tour. The organization was marked too. And yet they both have endured, largely off the millions KONY 2012 brought in, but also because of significant changes made in response to KONY 2012, and a desperately sustained belief that the LRA’s end is near — a belief motivated by the fear that if it’s not, theirs may come first.

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David Ocitti, a former child soldier from Uganda. Photograph by Sam Hodgson for BuzzFeed

Eight years before KONY 2012, there was Invisible Children: Rough Cut, the documentary Russell made after graduating from film school. Russell and his friends Laren Poole, then 19, and Bobby Bailey, then 20, spent months saving money and petitioning family and friends, and their floppy-haired origin story has been told and told again: “All we really wanted, more than anything, was a compelling story,” Russell says. They found one — plus a few bouts of malaria.

Rough Cut focuses on “night walkers,” or rural Northern Uganda children who used to walk into town each night to sleep in public and avoid capture by the LRA. It largely follows one former child soldier, Jacob Acaye, who watched his brother die after the boy tried to escape.

“We wanted to go to Sundance and be the documentary darlings. And Sundance shut us down,” Russell says. “In a way, we were like, ‘We don’t need no stinkin’ Sundance.’ I’ve been [there] enough times to know that even if there are great movies there, they often do not get seen by more than a couple thousand people. And we felt our story was powerful and important enough that we were going to, in a way, force people to watch it.”

And so they held screenings on the West Coast, forming a charity with a mission statement to “raise awareness and [educate] the U.S. about the atrocities, exploitation and abuse of invisible children throughout the world.” According to financial documents, Invisible Children brought in $331,783 in 2004, its first year. In 2005, as screenings ramped up, the organization made more than $3 million. The founders hired a CFO, Ben Keesey, a UCLA graduate who turned down a finance job at Deloitte & Touche after a post-finals trip to Africa. The money helped take Rough Cut on a national tour in 2006 and produce Global Night Commute, a concurrent rally in 130 cities, where an estimated 80,000 Americans walked to their city centers and slept outside.

As a newly IRS-certified nonprofit in 2006, Invisible Children continued to stage dramatic events, produce short films, and host thousands of screenings, raising money through donations and selling Ugandan-made goods. Celebrities began lending support; in 2007, Invisible Children had a storyline on The CW’s Veronica Mars, starring longtime supporter Kristen Bell (and Russell’s brother-in-law Ryan Hansen). In 2007, Fall Out Boy filmed a music video in Uganda, and Invisible Children joined Warped Tour.

On paper, business was good; revenue climbed from $7 million in mid-2007 to $8.25 million in mid-2010. Program expenses were divided into essentially two pots: one for U.S.-based events, film production, lobbying, and awareness tours, and another for programs in Uganda, including scholarships, teacher exchanges, and a seamstress program for former LRA abductees. (Generally, the U.S. pot was more full than the Uganda pot, by anywhere from $50,000 to $1.7 million.)

But internally, there were growing pains. “I remember going through a couple painful periods and having to let go of friends,” co-founder Bobby Bailey says. “During the summer months, we thought, There’s no way we were going to make payroll. We were never good at reaching out to high-level donors to pay for our overhead. Most of our money came from kids buying products.”

Bailey left Invisible Children in 2009 — an emotional, messy exit that began with The Rescue, a 100-city event during which participants “abducted themselves” in an attempt to get high-profile figures to voice public support for helping child soldiers. Bailey pushed for it and raised the money, and the event got Invisible Children on Oprah’s radar. But Bailey says he was overwhelmed by the planning and implementation of the event.

“These massive events that brought out 80,000 people almost crushed us and killed us, financially but also because we worked people so hard,” he says. “To be honest, I couldn’t do it. I was tired, I felt frustrated, I was just burnt, and I couldn’t figure out how to make the event happen. It was just a big blow to me and my ego.”

“It was difficult,” goes Russell’s version. “I mean, it was just a power struggle. That’s all. He’s an amazing filmmaker and so creative. But because we’re very entrepreneurial, a lot of his ideas wouldn’t get traction. And so he was super frustrated with feeling like people wouldn’t listen to him.”

The Rescue was a turning point for Invisible Children, not only because of Bailey’s exit. The organization received substantial media attention for the first time, but also attracted its first major wave of criticism.

“My initial reaction was that it was goofy and self-serving and a disturbing over-simplification of the issues,” says Kate Cronin-Furman of the international issues blog Wronging Rights. At the time of The Rescue, she wrote (with co-blogger Amanda Taub) that “choosing to simplistically define … Ugandan children as ‘The Abducted’ constrains our ability to think creatively about the problems they face, and work with them to combat these problems.”

“The cavalier first film did the trick,” wrote Chris Blattman, then an assistant professor in political science and economics at Yale. “Maybe now it’s time to start acting like grownups.”

To Blattman, the “idea of rescuing children or saving of Africa” was “inherently misleading, naive, maybe even dangerous … The savior attitude pervades too many aid failures, not to mention military interventions.”

Ben Keesey, who became Invisible Children’s CEO in 2007, calls this kind of criticism “low-hanging fruit.”

“Like, of course it’s detailed, nuanced, and complicated how you actually contribute responsibly to seeing an end to a conflict like the LRA,” he says. “But the statement that wherever you are in the world, however old you are, you have the ability to help end a war in Africa? I stand by that. And I think it’s the necessary statement to actually get a lot of people to do something.”

Invisible Children’s first legislative victory came in 2010, when President Obama signed the LRA Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act, leading to the deployment of 100 U.S. advisers in LRA-affected areas in 2011. That year, Laren Poole left Invisible Children to move to Uganda, fundraising and strategizing for the Bridgeway Foundation, which hires private military contractors to train Uganda’s army.

“We left the Oval Office after the bill was signed, and we stayed out much too late and were drinking dirty martinis and having the best time,” Russell says. “I brought up the question, ‘What’s the dream for your life?’ It’s something I always ask people, and Laren said, ‘I want to be a Navy SEAL.’ And then I started laughing, because we were like, ‘Dude, you’re always so sick. You’re already 29 years old. You’re not going to be a Navy SEAL.’ And Laren is the type of person that will say, ‘Watch me.’”

The move left Russell in full control of the organization’s creative direction, which he had always fought with Bailey and Poole over. And as 2011 ended, he was bringing together a campaign that would become bigger than he — a “lifelong dreamer,” disciple of Oprah, and permanent summer camp counselor — could have anticipated.

View this image ›

Photograph by Sam Hodgson for BuzzFeed

“KONY 2012” went live on Monday, March 5, 2012. Noelle West, Invisible Children’s director of communications, switched the YouTube video from private to public — a fairly insignificant moment she may actually remember for the rest of her life.

“I don’t know if you’ve been in a media shitstorm, but I’ve never been, none of us had ever been, and it was the most traumatic and overwhelming crisis-bringing thing that ever happened to any of us,” says West, a fast-talking, sporty 31-year-old with long waves of brown hair.

The KONY 2012 campaign wanted a youth uprising — through tweets, rallies, and late-night poster blitzes — that would encourage the U.S. government to increase efforts to help Ugandan forces find and capture Kony. The video was told from Russell’s perspective, as he explained Kony and the LRA’s tens of thousands child abductions to his wide-eyed blond son, Gavin Danger, then 5.

Between the versions of “KONY 2012” on Vimeo and YouTube, the 30-minute film received 100 million views in six days — surpassing Susan Boyle’s Britain’s Got Talent performance (which took nine days to reach 100 million) and Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance video (18 days), according to audience data service Visible Measures.

And for a minute there, it seemed to be incredibly well received, particularly if you had any Facebook friends in the 16–24 demographic. Rihanna, Justin Bieber, Ryan Seacrest, Nicole Richie, Diddy, and the Kardashian sisters all tweeted their support. In San Diego, one intern in Invisible Children’s fulfillment department had 500,000 orders of $30 “action kits” to process. One intern in public relations had 4,000 emails and counting incoming from media outlets. Russell flew across the country for TV interviews twice in 48 hours.

But as millions clicked beyond the video, Invisible Children’s website crashed. And the lack of information left an incredibly open opportunity for critics to offer counter narratives.

The controversy wasn’t a surprise, West says. “But it got too big for us to talk to people who were upset. We’ve always simplified the issue down to a very understandable, non-academic, non-complex issue, which is offensive to some academics because they think you’re trivializing it. But for us, that is just the entry point. We’re trying to attract people into this issue but make it accessible for them. ‘KONY 2012’ was not trying to be a very P.C., well rounded, in-depth piece.”

To academics, this simplification was still deceiving, relying more on emotion than facts. Wronging Rights’ three-year-old criticism of Invisible Children received nearly 500,000 views in one day. By Friday, a Tumblr called Visible Children had nearly 2.2 million views. The blog’s creator, Grant Oyston, wasn’t a qualified expert on African issues; he was a 19-year-old Canadian political science student who offered some commentary, but mostly linked out to others’ criticism of “KONY 2012.” His influence, however, warranted comment from Invisible Children’s newly hired New York PR firm Sunshine, Sachs & Associates, who told The Canadian Press that the “things he’s written are important but are a little misinformed and naive.”

“I thought that was strange. It had this air of, ‘You young people don’t understand,’ but their whole target was young people,” says Oyston, who eventually got a call from an “emotional” Russell, offering to fly him to California or even Uganda to see Invisible Children’s programs in person. (He declined.) But Oyston still takes issue with being labeled anti-Invisible Children, admitting the charity has done some good work, and finds himself criticizing the entire cycle of KONY 2012 — praise, backlash, and all.

“I found it troubling how quickly people read my criticism and other more informed critiques and responded by giving up and not caring,” Oyston says. “This video made them excited about helping victims and then they read something on a blog and they said, ‘Never mind.’ I found that disheartening. “

No one denied that Kony was a criminal who should be brought to justice, but many were critical of the call — from young, white Americans — to help Uganda address a problem already generally thought to be resolved in that country. Uganda’s government spokesman even issued a statement: “Misinterpretations of media content may lead some people to believe that the LRA is currently active in Uganda. It must be clarified that at present the LRA is not active in any part of Uganda. Successfully expelled by the Ugandan Peoples Defence Forces in mid-2006, the LRA has retreated to dense terrain within bordering countries in the Central Africa area. They are a diminished and weakened group with numbers not exceeding 300.”

Michael Wilkerson, a freelance writer and one of KONY 2012’s earliest critics, encouraged KONY 2012 supporters to consider the “potential collateral damage.”

“In previous offensives by the Ugandan military that didn’t quite catch Kony, what [happened] was the LRA ransacked and massacred vengefully as it fled, killing hundreds of civilians in the Congo in the winter of 2009,” he told NPR.

Others were offended by the portrayal of Uganda, down to the word “invisible,” including writer Dinaw Mengestu: “To claim [the children] were invisible because a group of college students traveling through Uganda happened to stumble upon a war they were too ignorant to have known of before going to the region is, to put it mildly, patronizing. By the time the organizers arrived in Uganda and created Invisible Children, northern villages such as Gulu were crowded with NGOs and aid workers and the largest humanitarian concern, by far, was the housing conditions of the more than one million people living in camps for the internally displaced.”

“That’s a tough one to talk about,” Keesey says today. “Of all the critiques that we got, it was the one that I never saw coming. Is Joseph Kony, who’s the world’s most prolific child abductor, worthy of a campaign to stop him? Is that a worthy pursuit? To see the LRA disarmed and to see these communities free from fear? That one took me off guard.”

Two weeks after “KONY 2012”’s release, Teju Cole wrote in The Atlantic about the “white savior” who “supports brutal policies in the morning, founds charities in the afternoon, and receives awards in the evening,” and those who financially support him — without considering U.S. foreign policy’s role in the conflicts that yield large aid movements, or the wishes of those receiving the aid.

“I disagree with the approach taken by Invisible Children in particular, and by the White Savior Industrial Complex in general, because there is much more to doing good work than ‘making a difference,’” Cole wrote. “There is the principle of first do no harm. There is the idea that those who are being helped ought to be consulted over the matters that concern them.”

Cole’s analysis was smart and personal without overt hostility — something other critics couldn’t resist, particularly when it came to Russell’s role in the film. It resonated, and when talking about the backlash today, Invisible Children staff still cite the phrase “white savior industrial complex.”

“Our biggest mistake,” West says, “was we should have had supplementary materials that showed how much we really know. We should have had that secondary video that has all of our regional staff who are in fact from the regions in which we operate. It’s not a bunch of white California kids out in the region. These are professionals who have lived through this conflict their whole lives. We should have had that stuff in front when people came looking, but we were just too underwater to even figure that out.”

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Photograph by Sam Hodgson for BuzzFeed

Russell says he still hasn’t grasped how many people saw the clip of his naked rant. (Somewhere around 4.5 million, only counting the most popular versions on YouTube.) But he’s distinctly aware of the mark it left on Invisible Children’s internal culture. On his office bookshelf, next to thick, beat-up journals from his first Africa trip, Russell has a blue binder, where dozens of cards and press clippings and notes from friends and strangers and co-workers are collaged together. On the cover of the binder is a cut-out headline from Entertainment Weekly: “This was the year that… EVERYONE GOT NAKED.” The article didn’t include Russell, but he thought it was funny anyway.

“Coming back to work,” Russell says, “I think it was strange to hear a lot of people be like, ‘I was gonna move on, I was gonna get another job, I was gonna stop the internship, but I’m here for you to make sure you’re OK. I’ve stayed here for a year to make sure you’re OK.’”

On his first day back, one of Invisible Children’s writers wrote him a letter, which he picked out of all of the notes to show me:

“Welcome home. I’ve literally had dreams about this day when I would see you for the first time in Noelle and Heather’s office — slow motion hug and tears — and now my literal dreams are literally coming true. A couple things I didn’t realize about you ‘til you weren’t in the office anymore: Your ideas and designs push the envelope, yet you have the key skill of getting people on the same page in spite of your ideas’ extremity. You break convention but somehow make peace and bring everybody together over it. I miss that.”

“She’s saying, ‘I dreamt of you coming back,’ and I’m not even like that good friends with her!” Russell laughs. “I just … Yeah. I feel most at home here, so I always felt like I would come back if they would have me.”

Was that a question?

“Obviously if someone does what I did, they’re getting advice from a lot of people saying distance yourself as much as you can, ‘cause he’s really the thing that took the campaign off the rails. So I think they had to really think about what my position would be like, get a lot of advice, and figure out if it could work.”

Russell and I spoke for an hour before he made any reference to his faith, and only when I asked. In the past, he’s talked openly about his evangelical upbringing and its influence on his life and work — Russell’s parents are the founders of the national chain Christian Youth Theater; he and Poole and Bailey are definitive Christian bros. But after several critics accused Invisible Children of being a secretly religious and even anti-gay organization — including an Atlantic story accusing Russell of “secretly pulling our consciences towards Jesus” — he has notably scaled back the God talk. In October, when he was at Catalyst, the annual church leadership conference, Russell says he turned away questions from a Christian Science Monitor reporter who approached him.

“I feel so manipulated by people who think, I’m gonna get the scoop because I think he’s secretly trying to do this spiritual thing. Like if we really were the illuminati, how much more exciting would your article be? If we’re working with Jay Z? We’re in a homeless neighborhood — give me a break, we’re not illuminati.”

Russell says he watches service on TV and goes to church once in a while, but not on a consistent basis.

“Maybe this is a cop-out, but if you want to know about my spirituality, I’ll totally tell you. I can talk about my faith. I’m not afraid of it. But Invisible Children is not a faith-based religious organization at all. People forget that something like 80% of Americans call themselves a believer in God … So to have like 30% or even half of our staff have some kind of faith is just a demographic. No one’s trying to push an agenda.”

Russell believes — of course — that everything happens for a reason. On his bulletin board is a printed-out email from Oprah (her email address blacked out, much to certain visitors’ chagrin). Russell wrote her last year after reading that she recognized the symptoms of her own nervous breakdown after interviewing him.

“Hi Jason, I received your beautiful letter,” he says, more performing her email than reading it out loud. “Isn’t it beautiful how we’re all angels for each other and messages to heal come in all forms? Thank you for taking such fine care and reaching out to me. I hold you in the light — exclamation point!”

“So you saved Oprah?” I ask.

“For me, it’s like, OK, my breakdown was a shitshow. We all know that. But I can’t tell you how many people have come up to me and said, ‘I’ve had a breakdown. I’m on this medicine.’ It’s this dark secret that we’re all struggling with our mental health, and I think we should be vulnerable and honest and tell the truth. If my next 10 years ends with having to do with mental health or encouraging a generation to be real and honest — it’s the only way you’re gonna get free — then the breakdown was probably necessary for me to become something of an expert.”

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Russell speaks to roadies and staff, kicking off a tour at San Diego’s Mt. Soledad Veterans Memorial on Sept. 17, 2013. Photograph by Sam Hodgson for BuzzFeed

Ben Keesey, a towering 30-year-old with slicked-back hair, likes conversation; he wants to know about your day, where you grew up, and what your job is like. But he bounces, sometimes ungracefully, between youthful energy and political pragmatism, stuck between a world of San Diego interns who end every sentence with “awesome,” and D.C. lawmakers who don’t. He is relentlessly idealistic, a trait he embraces despite how often it’s been used against him and Invisible Children.

After KONY 2012, Keesey would say during interviews, “How do I show you my sincerity? How do I just show people my actual heart? Can they just tap into it for 10 minutes, so they can see we really do care about the people we work for?”

“There are times when I get sad,” Keesey says. “Because a lot of the concerns or skepticisms that we weren’t able to overcome put a lot of people on the sidelines that I believe want to be involved. At times, I actually personally process it as feeling very responsible and saying, ‘What more could I have done? Did I fail? Did I fail this organization and this cause by not being able to properly justify our actions or our integrity?’ It’s a very heavy burden on my heart.”

In the controversy’s aftermath, Invisible Children had difficulty booking school tours for the first time in years. The money wasn’t there like it used to be, with young fundraisers experiencing resistance — “from their families, their friends, people spitting on them, people calling them liars, people calling them stupid, they don’t know what they’re talking about,” Russell says. “Before KONY 2012, our organization was predominantly seen as, Good job! You guys are inspiring, keep going, we believe in you. And all the sudden it flipped on its head — You guys are liars, you’re a scam factory, you’re fake, you’re embezzling the money, or whatever.”

By mid-2012, Invisible Children had nearly $26.5 million in revenue and $17 million in net assets. By mid-2013, the organization had $4.9 million in revenue (their lowest since 2005) and less than $6.6 million in assets. Sixty-five employees in the San Diego office became 29. Two floors of a building became one. About 130 staffers in Africa — 95% of them from the region — became 108.

And yet, KONY 2012 was objectively the organization’s most successful campaign ever, both in its mission — making Kony famous, even if on the other end of punch lines — and in policy.

On April 20, 2012, when KONY 2012 supporters were supposed to “cover the night,” a directive from the film to blanket city centers in posters and other anti-Kony propaganda, turnout was abysmal. But that month, President Obama announced the extension of a military advise-and-assist mission to central Africa. The European Union, as part of a declaration of support, established a Joint Operations Centre to assist central Africa’s counter-LRA regional task force. On Capitol Hill, Invisible Children’s reputation went from “very young film students” to issue experts invited to White House roundtables, according to The Enough Project, a policy-focused group that says it helped Invisible Children overcome “stumbling blocks” in its early lack of expertise. In January 2013, Congress passed the Rewards for Justice Bill, authorizing $5 million for information leading to Kony’s capture. It was at the bill’s signing in the Oval Office that Keesey asked Samantha Power, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, to speak at the 2013 Fourth Estate Summit, Invisible Children’s second-ever conference of more than 1,000 supporters. She accepted, starting the speech — her first since being appointed ambassador — with “O.M.G.”

“KONY 2012 created the most opportunity and movement around this issue more than all the eight years before it combined,” says Noelle West, who spent a not insignificant amount of her time immediately after KONY 2012 responding to critical comments on charity database GuideStar, Reddit, and social media networks. “To know that’s what happened and still feel punished for it is strange.”

“It was game changer for the profile of the issue and for the movement at the international level,” Keesey says. “It’s absolutely caused us gigantic organizational challenges, personal challenges, ones that we’re still working through. But I think on balance, net net net to the mission, it was helpful. And from that standpoint, I would do it again.”

There are regrets, of course, in how the backlash was handled. From all vantage points, Invisible Children didn’t know how to talk about itself. The messages — and messengers — weren’t consistent.

Grant Oyston (and many others) cited his fundamental problem with Invisible Children as “their relentless focus on advocacy over action,” a criticism heightened by Invisible Children’s director of ideology Jedediah Jenkins’ post-KONY 2012 comment that “we are not an aid organization, and we don’t intend to be. I think people think we’re over there delivering shoes or food. But we are an advocacy and awareness organization.” (Later in March, a video of Jenkins joking around and drinking — or pretending to drink — while celebrating Invisible Children’s $1 million grant from Chase Community Giving made it to TMZ. Jenkins has since taken a break from the organization to go on a bike trip from Oregon to Patagonia.)

“That comment is a bit of a half-representation of even who we were in 2012,” Keesey says. “But at the same time, this conversation in itself illuminates the challenge that we have describing who we are, because who we are has changed, and changes and will change.”

Still, accusations surrounding the organization’s financial integrity remain the stickiest: that so much of its money is spent on travel and film production, that so little is spent on overseas programs, that it kept money from the KONY 2012 action kits.

“We were very much accused of financial impropriety,” Keesey says. “The feeling of potentially being scammed is one of the worst feelings in the world. And it’s not possible to reach back out to the amount of people that heard that message in the wake of KONY 2012 for them to feel rock-solid confident that we do get our finances audited every year, and 100% of our audits have come back with an unqualified opinion. We’ve had no legitimate cases or even accusations of actual fraud. That doesn’t exist.”

COO Chris Carver says when Invisible Children tried to explain its finances, he wishes he had “put out not just the literal components, but how much we felt this strategy was important, this allocation of funds to domestic education versus international operations — how much we believe in that.”

And yet Invisible Children substantially reallocated funds last year, spending about $4 million in the U.S. on media and mobilization efforts and nearly $7.8 million on Uganda recovery and protection programs, according to its annual IRS filings. The only other year Invisible Children gave more money to Uganda than the U.S. was in fiscal year 2009, but the difference was just under $750,000. This reversal was Keesey’s direction, made with consultation from the staff in Africa.

According to independent evaluator Charity Navigator, Invisible Children has spent at least 80% on programs since 2009, contradicting a widely circulated 32% figure that one interpretation of their finances (which discounted U.S. educational programs) yielded during KONY 2012. But Charity Navigator’s accountability rating of Invisible Children in 2011 — two of four stars — was another reason the organization’s finances were called into question, and largely a result of Invisible Children not having enough independent voting board members at the time. The rating was restored to four stars in 2012, after more members were added. (Invisible Children was also questioned for not filing with the Better Business Bureau, another voluntary measure of nonprofit transparency. Carver says the “Better Business Bureau stamp was just something that we haven’t gotten around to doing, because it takes a lot of time.”)

Carver estimates this year’s revenue will continue to be lower than Invisible Children’s past highs. There can never be another surprise Susan Boyle performance, and there can never be another KONY 2012, which cost in total $2.8 million. The organization very simply doesn’t have the resources, financially or emotionally: “To fool ourselves into thinking that we’re gonna convince the world that this is different is not the best use of our time,” Carver says.

Invisible Children’s only fundraising campaign in 2013 was ZeroLRA, which Russell calls “the least inspired I have been and everyone around here has been, even though we worked our butt off to make it happen and inspire our fundraisers and supporters.”

The problem comes down to originality, Russell says. Invisible Children has been telling stories about the LRA’s abductions for 10 years, over 12 documentaries. “How many different ways can you cut the cake? How many different ways can you actually approach the conflict and keep it fresh and exciting?”

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Photograph by Sam Hodgson for BuzzFeed

The most important question, two years on: How did Invisible Children spend its KONY 2012 millions?

The answer: mostly on what it considers attack-prevention programs in known LRA activity regions, including one that uses helicopters to drop defection fliers — “truth campaigns to psychologically woo them,” as Keesey says, out of the jungle and to safe-reporting sites. Of last year’s 83 known defectors, 79% referenced the fliers, Invisible Children says. (In December, 19 LRA members defected together, the largest mass defection since 2008.)

Invisible Children has also been investing in data-gathering since 2010, when it launched the LRA Crisis Tracker, broadcasting LRA movements and attacks based on information relayed via 71 high-frequency radios. The community reports are vetted through regional experts and updated to the tracker twice daily. The tracker provides an email subscription service, which Invisible Children says is used by state and military officials in the U.S. and central Africa, local communities, and other NGOs, including those providing health services to rural communities.

Invisible Children’s community-improvement programs in Uganda — the “recovery” piece of the organization’s four-part model — have expanded and matured, too; there are now 401 students enrolled in its legacy scholarship program, up from the 135 in its inaugural class, and 4,025 adults enrolled in the village loans and adult literacy programs, up from 400 in its inception. (When asked for their opinions on these recent developments, many critics of “KONY 2012” told BuzzFeed they haven’t kept up with Invisible Children since the controversy two years ago.)

This year, Invisible Children will go after grants from government and philanthropy groups, like the U.S. Agency for International Development and the LRA Fund, a small group of foundations supporting projects in LRA-affected communities. Keesey says the organization needs about $6.2 million this year to continue its programs and keep the lights on. Some of that will come from Invisible Children’s 10,230 monthly donors (with help from interns who make hundreds of calls a week) but not enough. The staff has come to accept that.

“We don’t need the masses, the gigantic grassroots movement, as much as we have in the past,” says West. That may change from time to time — Invisible Children is pushing an upcoming Senate resolution encouraging Obama to “finish the job and not reduce the amount of resources or commitment until we see a full dismantling of the LRA,” and will ask supporters in key districts to call or write to their senators.

But the reality is that Invisible Children can’t survive off the masses anymore. There will be no films or campaigns or tours this year — no 10-week trips led by interns (or “roadies”) screening films and spreading the word of Invisible Children around the U.S. There will be no large-scale Fourth Estate Summit, either — the conference Russell once described as “a TED talk, mixed with a music festival and a film festival, all mixed in a Justin Bieber concert,” with an average attendee age of 16. That means no 1,315 kids in T-shirts and bracelets spending $325–495 each, and no “spectacular wink and a nod to showmanship,” as Bobby Bailey, who attended the summits in 2011 and 2013, puts it. (There will be a smaller version of the event this year, an Invisible Children spokeswoman told BuzzFeed after this article’s publication.) Maybe Invisible Children will never return to that kind of showmanship; maybe it will never be able to afford to.

This scaling back has brought a certain restlessness to San Diego. Russell hasn’t been to Africa in two years; “There hasn’t been a real need for me to go out,” he says, with dozens of workers already on the ground. His next trip will likely be when Kony is caught or killed and the LRA is disbanded. Then, Invisible Children will either close its doors or change into something else entirely, with a different mission and different players.

“We all want to go do other amazing things at some point in our life, and we don’t want to hold ourselves back from that,” Carver says.

In “Move,” Invisible Children’s first film after “KONY 2012,” West says she was afraid that the backlash and Russell’s breakdown was the “beginning of the end … What if all this time we spent, all these things we built, are just, done?” It was certainly an option in 2012, but despite all its losses, Invisible Children wants to “work to put itself out of a job,” or so goes its spin line.

“I would love to shut the doors,” says West, who’s transitioning from communications director to an in-house consultant for companies seeking advice on viral campaigns. “I would love for there to be a big black screen when you come to IC.com after Kony is caught and there’s a process in place for rehabilitating the region so the LRA can’t come back. I would love for IC to be turned off. Why do you need us anymore? That’s just me, though.”

West wants to build furniture. Keesey is mulling over going back to school for sociology or psychology. Russell’s future may lie in some form of mental health advocacy — a field that may be a little more sympathetic to his intuition to put himself in his stories.

The 10 years they’ve spent on this single issue, maintaining all that swaggering idealism, has left the staff in a state of constant anticipation. They firmly believe the LRA’s demise is within sight and that they get closer every day to someone, somewhere, spotting Kony. And with that expectation comes an even stronger hope for vindication.

“It would be such a big deal. And people would come back to the cause and say, ‘Yeah I’ve been supporting you all along. I wanted Kony to be captured too,’” Russell says. “We definitely know that we need that win, and that the future of Invisible Children and the cause and the work that we do is completely reliant on believing that the win will happen soon. If he’s captured or killed in 2024, I would have a hard time believing we could sustain the narrative for much longer.”

Russell says there’s only one film he’s working on, currently plotted out on his big office whiteboard: the one he’ll release when Kony is gone. Whenever that is.

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Photograph by Sam Hodgson for BuzzFeed

Corrections: An earlier version of this article misrepresented Invisible Children’s office layout. The article has also been updated to clarify the LRA Crisis Tracker was launched in 2010, and that according to an Invisible Children spokeswoman, there will be a Fourth Estate Summit this year, contrary to earlier comments made by the staff. (3/10/14)

Update: On Dec. 15, Invisible Children announced it will put in place a strategy to close by the end of 2015.

Read more: http://www.buzzfeed.com/jtes/two-years-after-kony-2012-has-invisible-children-grown-up

#Jason Russell #kony 2012

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yasbxxgie · 5 years

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My love for walking started in childhood, out of necessity. No thanks to a stepfather with heavy hands, I found every reason to stay away from home and was usually out—at some friend’s house or at a street party where no minor should be— until it was too late to get public transportation. So I walked. The streets of Kingston, Jamaica, in the 1980s were often terrifying—you could, for instance, get killed if a political henchman thought you came from the wrong neighborhood, or even if you wore the wrong color. Wearing orange showed affiliation with one political party and green with the other, and if you were neutral or traveling far from home you chose your colors well. The wrong color in the wrong neighborhood could mean your last day. No wonder, then, that my friends and the rare nocturnal passerby declared me crazy for my long late-night treks that traversed warring political zones. (And sometimes I did pretend to be crazy, shouting non sequiturs when I passed through especially dangerous spots, such as the place where thieves hid on the banks of a storm drain. Predators would ignore or laugh at the kid in his school uniform speaking nonsense.)

I made friends with strangers and went from being a very shy and awkward kid to being an extroverted, awkward one. The beggar, the vendor, the poor laborer—those were experienced wanderers, and they became my nighttime instructors; they knew the streets and delivered lessons on how to navigate and enjoy them. I imagined myself as a Jamaican Tom Sawyer, one moment sauntering down the streets to pick low-hanging mangoes that I could reach from the sidewalk, another moment hanging outside a street party with battling sound systems, each armed with speakers piled to create skyscrapers of heavy bass. These streets weren’t frightening. They were full of adventure when they weren’t serene. There I’d join forces with a band of merry walkers, who’d miss the last bus by mere minutes, our feet still moving as we put out our thumbs to hitchhike to spots nearer home, making jokes as vehicle after vehicle raced past us. Or I’d get lost in Mittyesque moments, my young mind imagining alternate futures. The streets had their own safety: Unlike at home, there I could be myself without fear of bodily harm. Walking became so regular and familiar that the way home became home.

The streets had their rules, and I loved the challenge of trying to master them. I learned how to be alert to surrounding dangers and nearby delights, and prided myself on recognizing telling details that my peers missed. Kingston was a map of complex, and often bizarre, cultural and political and social activity, and I appointed myself its nighttime cartographer. I’d know how to navigate away from a predatory pace, and to speed up to chat when the cadence of a gait announced friendliness. It was almost always men I saw. A lone woman walking in the middle of the night was as common a sight as Sasquatch; moonlight pedestrianism was too dangerous for her. Sometimes at night as I made my way down from hills above Kingston, I’d have the impression that the city was set on “pause” or in extreme slow motion, as that as I descended I was cutting across Jamaica’s deep social divisions. I’d make my way briskly past the mansions in the hills overlooking the city, now transformed into a carpet of dotted lights under a curtain of stars, saunter by middle-class subdivisions hidden behind high walls crowned with barbed wire, and zigzag through neighborhoods of zinc and wooden shacks crammed together and leaning like a tight-knit group of limbo dancers. With my descent came an increase in the vibrancy of street life—except when it didn’t; some poor neighborhoods had both the violent gunfights and the eerily deserted streets of the cinematic Wild West. I knew well enough to avoid those even at high noon.

I’d begun hoofing it after dark when I was 10 years old. By 13 I was rarely home before midnight, and some nights found me racing against dawn. My mother would often complain, “Mek yuh love street suh? Yuh born a hospital; yuh neva born a street.” (“Why do you love the streets so much? You were born in a hospital, not in the streets.”)

* * * *

I left Jamaica in 1996 to attend college in New Orleans, a city I’d heard called “the northernmost Caribbean city.” I wanted to discover—on foot, of course—what was Caribbean and what was American about it. Stately mansions on oak-lined streets with streetcars clanging by, and brightly colored houses that made entire blocks look festive; people in resplendent costumes dancing to funky brass bands in the middle of the street; cuisine—and aromas—that mashed up culinary traditions from Africa, Europe, Asia, and the American South; and a juxtaposition of worlds old and new, odd and familiar: Who wouldn’t want to explore this?

On my first day in the city, I went walking for a few hours to get a feel for the place and to buy supplies to transform my dormitory room from a prison bunker into a welcoming space. When some university staff members found out what I’d been up to, they warned me to restrict my walking to the places recommended as safe to tourists and the parents of freshmen. They trotted out statistics about New Orleans’s crime rate. But Kingston’s crime rate dwarfed those numbers, and I decided to ignore these well-meant cautions. A city was waiting to be discovered, and I wouldn’t let inconvenient facts get in the way. These American criminals are nothing on Kingston’s, I thought. They’re no real threat to me.

What no one had told me was that I was the one who would be considered a threat.

Within days I noticed that many people on the street seemed apprehensive of me: Some gave me a circumspect glance as they approached, and then crossed the street; others, ahead, would glance behind, register my presence, and then speed up; older white women clutched their bags; young white men nervously greeted me, as if exchanging a salutation for their safety: “What’s up, bro?” On one occasion, less than a month after my arrival, I tried to help a man whose wheelchair was stuck in the middle of a crosswalk; he threatened to shoot me in the face, then asked a white pedestrian for help.

I wasn’t prepared for any of this. I had come from a majority-black country in which no one was wary of me because of my skin color. Now I wasn’t sure who was afraid of me. I was especially unprepared for the cops. They regularly stopped and bullied me, asking questions that took my guilt for granted. I’d never received what many of my African American friends call “The Talk”: No parents had told me how to behave when I was stopped by the police, how to be as polite and cooperative as possible, no matter what they said or did to me. So I had to cobble together my own rules of engagement. Thicken my Jamaican accent. Quickly mention my college. “Accidentally” pull out my college identification card when asked for my driver’s license.

My survival tactics began well before I left my dorm. I got out of the shower with the police in my head, assembling a cop-proof wardrobe. Light-colored oxford shirt. V-neck sweater. Khaki pants. Chukkas. Sweatshirt or T-shirt with my university insignia. When I walked I regularly had my identity challenged, but I also found ways to assert it. (So I’d dress Ivy League style, but would, later on, add my Jamaican pedigree by wearing Clarks Desert Boots, the footwear of choice of Jamaican street culture.) Yet the all-American sartorial choice of white T-shirt and jeans, which many police officers see as the uniform of black troublemakers, was off limits to me—at least, if I wanted to have the freedom of movement I desired.

In this city of exuberant streets, walking became a complex and often oppressive negotiation. I would see a white woman walking toward me at night and cross the street to reassure her that she was safe. I would forget something at home but not immediately turn around if someone was behind me, because I discovered that a sudden backtrack could cause alarm. (I had a cardinal rule: Keep a wide perimeter from people who might consider me a danger. If not, danger might visit me.) New Orleans suddenly felt more dangerous than Jamaica. The sidewalk was a minefield, and every hesitation and self-censored compensation reduced my dignity. Despite my best efforts, the streets never felt comfortably safe. Even a simple salutation was suspect.

One night, returning to the house that, eight years after my arrival, I thought I’d earned the right to call my home, I waved to a cop driving by. Moments later, I was against his car in handcuffs. When I later asked him—sheepishly, of course; any other way would have asked for bruises—why he had detained me, he said my greeting had aroused his suspicion. “No one waves to the police,” he explained. When I told friends of his response, it was my behavior, not his, that they saw as absurd. “Now why would you do a dumb thing like that?” said one. “You know better than to make nice with police.”

* * * *

A few days after I left on a visit to Kingston, Hurricane Katrina slashed and pummeled New Orleans. I’d gone not because of the storm but because my adoptive grandmother, Pearl, was dying of cancer. I hadn’t wandered those streets in eight years, since my last visit, and I returned to them now mostly at night, the time I found best for thinking, praying, crying. I walked to feel less alienated—from myself, struggling with the pain of seeing my grandmother terminally ill; from my home in New Orleans, underwater and seemingly abandoned; from my home country, which now, precisely because of its childhood familiarity, felt foreign to me. I was surprised by how familiar those streets felt. Here was the corner where the fragrance of jerk chicken greeted me, along with the warm tenor and peace-and-love message of Half Pint’s “Greetings,” broadcast from a small but powerful speaker to at least a half-mile radius. It was as if I had walked into 1986, down to the soundtrack. And there was the wall of the neighborhood shop, adorned with the Rastafarian colors red, gold, and green along with images of local and international heroes Bob Marley, Marcus Garvey, and Haile Selassie. The crew of boys leaning against it and joshing each other were recognizable; different faces, similar stories.

I was astonished at how safe the streets felt to me, once again one black body among many, no longer having to anticipate the many ways my presence might instill fear and how to offer some reassuring body language. Passing police cars were once again merely passing police cars. Jamaican police could be pretty brutal, but they didn’t notice me the way American police did. I could be invisible in Jamaica in a way I can’t be invisible in the United States. Walking had returned to me a greater set of possibilities.

And why walk, if not to create a new set of possibilities? Following serendipity, I added new routes to the mental maps I had made from constant walking in that city from childhood to young adulthood, traced variations on the old pathways. Serendipity, a mentor once told me, is a secular way of speaking of grace; it’s unearned favor. Seen theologically, then, walking is an act of faith. Walking is, after all, interrupted falling. We see, we listen, we speak, and we trust that each step we take won’t be our last, but will lead us into a richer understanding of the self and the world.

In Jamaica, I felt once again as if the only identity that mattered was my own, not the constricted one that others had constructed for me. I strolled into my better self. I said, along with Kierkegaard, “I have walked myself into my best thoughts.”

* * * *

When I tried to return to New Orleans from Jamaica a month later, there were no flights. I thought about flying to Texas so I could make my way back to my neighborhood as soon as it opened for reoccupancy, but my adoptive aunt, Maxine, who hated the idea of me returning to a hurricane zone before the end of hurricane season, persuaded me to come to stay in New York City instead. (To strengthen her case she sent me an article about Texans who were buying up guns because they were afraid of the influx of black people from New Orleans.)

This wasn’t a hard sell: I wanted to be in a place where I could travel by foot and, more crucially, continue to reap the solace of walking at night. And I was eager to follow in the steps of the essayists, poets, and novelists who’d wandered that great city before me—Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Alfred Kazin, Elizabeth Hardwick. I had visited the city before, but each trip had felt like a tour in a sports car. I welcomed the chance to stroll. I wanted to walk alongside Whitman’s ghost and “descend to the pavements, merge with the crowd, and gaze with them.” So I left Kingston, the popular Jamaican farewell echoing in my mind: “Walk good!” Be safe on your journey, in other words, and all the best in your endeavors.

* * * *

I arrived in New York City, ready to lose myself in Whitman’s “Manhattan crowds, with their turbulent musical chorus!” I marveled at what Jane Jacobs praised as “the ballet of the good city sidewalk” in her old neighborhood, the West Village. I walked up past midtown skyscrapers, releasing their energy as lively people onto the streets, and on into the Upper West Side, with its regal Beaux Arts apartment buildings, stylish residents, and buzzing streets. Onward into Washington Heights, the sidewalks spilled over with an ebullient mix of young and old Jewish and Dominican American residents, past leafy Inwood, with parks whose grades rose to reveal beautiful views of the Hudson River, up to my home in Kingsbridge in the Bronx, with its rows of brick bungalows and apartment buildings nearby Broadway’s bustling sidewalks and the peaceful expanse of Van Cortlandt Park. I went to Jackson Heights in Queens to take in people socializing around garden courtyards in Urdu, Korean, Spanish, Russian, and Hindi. And when I wanted a taste of home, I headed to Brooklyn, in Crown Heights, for Jamaican food and music and humor mixed in with the flavor of New York City. The city was my playground.

I explored the city with friends, and then with a woman I’d begun dating. She walked around endlessly with me, taking in New York City’s many pleasures. Coffee shops open until predawn; verdant parks with nooks aplenty; food and music from across the globe; quirky neighborhoods with quirkier residents. My impressions of the city took shape during my walks with her.

As with the relationship, those first few months of urban exploration were all romance. The city was beguiling, exhilarating, vibrant. But it wasn’t long before reality reminded me I wasn’t invulnerable, especially when I walked alone.

One night in the East Village, I was running to dinner when a white man in front of me turned and punched me in the chest with such force that I thought my ribs had braided around my spine. I assumed he was drunk or had mistaken me for an old enemy, but found out soon enough that he’d merely assumed I was a criminal because of my race. When he discovered I wasn’t what he imagined, he went on to tell me that his assault was my own fault for running up behind him. I blew off this incident as an aberration, but the mutual distrust between me and the police was impossible to ignore. It felt elemental. They’d enter a subway platform; I’d notice them. (And I’d notice all the other black men registering their presence as well, while just about everyone else remained oblivious to them.) They’d glare. I’d get nervous and glance. They’d observe me steadily. I’d get uneasy. I’d observe them back, worrying that I looked suspicious. Their suspicions would increase. We’d continue the silent, uneasy dialogue until the subway arrived and separated us at last.

I returned to the old rules I’d set for myself in New Orleans, with elaboration. No running, especially at night; no sudden movements; no hoodies; no objects—especially shiny ones—in hand; no waiting for friends on street corners, lest I be mistaken for a drug dealer; no standing near a corner on the cell phone (same reason). As comfort set in, inevitably I began to break some of those rules, until a night encounter sent me zealously back to them, having learned that anything less than vigilance was carelessness.

After a sumptuous Italian dinner and drinks with friends, I was jogging to the subway at Columbus Circle—I was running late to meet another set of friends at a concert downtown. I heard someone shouting and I looked up to see a police officer approaching with his gun trained on me. “Against the car!” In no time, half a dozen cops were upon me, chucking me against the car and tightly handcuffing me. “Why were you running?” “Where are you going?” “Where are you coming from?” “I said, why were you running?!” Since I couldn’t answer everyone at once, I decided to respond first to the one who looked most likely to hit me. I was surrounded by a swarm and tried to focus on just one without inadvertently aggravating the others.

It didn’t work. As I answered that one, the others got frustrated that I wasn’t answering them fast enough and barked at me. One of them, digging through my already-emptied pockets, asked if I had any weapons, the question more an accusation. Another badgered me about where I was coming from, as if on the fifteenth round I’d decide to tell him the truth he imagined. Though I kept saying—calmly, of course, which meant trying to manage a tone that ignored my racing heart and their spittle-filled shouts in my face—that I had just left friends two blocks down the road, who were all still there and could vouch for me, to meet other friends whose text messages on my phone could verify that, yes, sir, yes, officer, of course, officer, it made no difference. For a black man, to assert your dignity before the police was to risk assault. In fact, the dignity of black people meant less to them, which was why I always felt safer being stopped in front of white witnesses than black witnesses. The cops had less regard for the witness and entreaties of black onlookers, whereas the concern of white witnesses usually registered on them. A black witness asking a question or politely raising an objection could quickly become a fellow detainee. Deference to the police, then, was sine qua non for a safe encounter.

The cops ignored my explanations and my suggestions and continued to snarl at me. All except one of them, a captain. He put his hand on my back, and said to no one in particular, “If he was running for a long time he would have been sweating.” He then instructed that the cuffs be removed. He told me that a black man had stabbed someone earlier two or three blocks away and they were searching for him. I noted that I had no blood on me and had told his fellow officers where I’d been and how to check my alibi—unaware that it was even an alibi, as no one had told me why I was being held, and of course, I hadn’t dared ask. From what I’d seen, anything beyond passivity would be interpreted as aggression.

The police captain said I could go. None of the cops who detained me thought an apology was necessary. Like the thug who punched me in the East Village, they seemed to think it was my own fault for running.

Humiliated, I tried not to make eye contact with the onlookers on the sidewalk, and I was reluctant to pass them to be on my way. The captain, maybe noticing my shame, offered to give me a ride to the subway station. When he dropped me off and I thanked him for his help, he said, “It’s because you were polite that we let you go. If you were acting up it would have been different.” I nodded and said nothing.

* * * *

I realized that what I least liked about walking in New York City wasn’t merely having to learn new rules of navigation and socialization—every city has its own. It was the arbitrariness of the circumstances that required them, an arbitrariness that made me feel like a child again, that infantilized me. When we first learn to walk, the world around us threatens to crash into us. Every step is risky. We train ourselves to walk without crashing by being attentive to our movements, and extra-attentive to the world around us. As adults we walk without thinking, really. But as a black adult I am often returned to that moment in childhood when I’m just learning to walk. I am once again on high alert, vigilant. Some days, when I am fed up with being considered a troublemaker upon sight, I joke that the last time a cop was happy to see a black male walking was when that male was a baby taking his first steps.

On many walks, I ask white friends to accompany me, just to avoid being treated like a threat. Walks in New York City, that is; in New Orleans, a white woman in my company sometimes attracted more hostility. (And it is not lost on me that my woman friends are those who best understand my plight; they have developed their own vigilance in an environment where they are constantly treated as targets of sexual attention.) Much of my walking is as my friend Rebecca once described it: A pantomime undertaken to avoid the choreography of criminality.

* * * *

Walking while black restricts the experience of walking, renders inaccessible the classic Romantic experience of walking alone. It forces me to be in constant relationship with others, unable to join the New York flâneurs I had read about and hoped to join. Instead of meandering aimlessly in the footsteps of Whitman, Melville, Kazin, and Vivian Gornick, more often I felt that I was tiptoeing in Baldwin’s—the Baldwin who wrote, way back in 1960, “Rare, indeed, is the Harlem citizen, from the most circumspect church member to the most shiftless adolescent, who does not have a long tale to tell of police incompetence, injustice, or brutality. I myself have witnessed and endured it more than once.”

Walking as a black man has made me feel simultaneously more removed from the city, in my awareness that I am perceived as suspect, and more closely connected to it, in the full attentiveness demanded by my vigilance. It has made me walk more purposefully in the city, becoming part of its flow, rather than observing, standing apart.

* * * *

But it also means that I’m still trying to arrive in a city that isn’t quite mine. One definition of home is that it’s somewhere we can most be ourselves. And when are we more ourselves but when walking, that natural state in which we repeat one of the first actions we learned? Walking—the simple, monotonous act of placing one foot before the other to prevent falling—turns out not to be so simple if you’re black. Walking alone has been anything but monotonous for me; monotony is a luxury.

A foot leaves, a foot lands, and our longing gives it momentum from rest to rest. We long to look, to think, to talk, to get away. But more than anything else, we long to be free. We want the freedom and pleasure of walking without fear—without others’ fear—wherever we choose. I’ve lived in New York City for almost a decade and have not stopped walking its fascinating streets. And I have not stopped longing to find the solace that I found as a kid on the streets of Kingston. Much as coming to know New York City’s streets has made it closer to home to me, the city also withholds itself from me via those very streets. I walk them, alternately invisible and too prominent. So I walk caught between memory and forgetting, between memory and forgiveness. [h/t]

#garnette cadogan #walking while black #while black #walking #literary hub #long reads #jamaica #kingston jamaica #new orleans #new york city #police brutality #police terrorism #racism #ruddy roye #boing boing

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