Daily Archives: April 4, 2022

Jon Batiste took the stage at the 2022 Grammys tonight. He played a brief piano interlude while dressed in a black cape before hopping center stage, ditching the robe to reveal a sparkling suit, and performing his hit song Freedom from his 2021 album We Are. Batiste enlisted a full band for the set, as well as backup dancers in colorful outfits. For the songs end, they walked into the crowd and Batiste climbed atop Billie Eilishs table while belting out the final chorus. Watch it all happen below.

Batiste won five of the 11 Grammys for which he was nominated at this years ceremony, the biggest of which was Album of the Year for We Are. Batiste also took home awards for Best Music Video (for Freedom), Best American Roots Performance (for Cry), Best American Roots Song (for Cry), and Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media (for Soul, which he won alongside Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross).

Follow all of Pitchforks coverage of the 2022 Grammys.

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Watch Jon Batiste Perform Freedom at the 2022 Grammys - Pitchfork

If youre a fan of Strictly Come Dancings Johannes Radebe, this first solo theatre outing is a must-see show. But even if youve never seen Strictly, its safe to say you will be a fan of Radebes by the end of the night. Its rare to see a show this personal, as if youre watching someone realising their dream right in front of you. South African Latin dance champion Radebe is a lovable personality and fierce performer who leaves it all on the floor. And from his arrival on stage, where the cast parts in two and Radebe majestically sweeps forward wearing ceremonial Zulu costume, its clear theres a star in our midst.

Freedom packs in everything meaningful to Radebe, from his township childhood, delving into South African dances kofifi and pantsula, to the clubs of Johannesburg, the snaking bodies of tango-like kizomba, mixing up Latin, club and various African styles, and then a whole Bob Fosse section. Not every dancer in the energetic young cast is expert in every style. They can dance it, but their bodies dont have that deep inculcation. Radebe, however, inhabits it all, with plenty of his own fabulous flair thrown in. Hes a dancer of speed and sass, and his tall frame is precise in its articulation; he really commands the stage.

Radebe also takes the mic and proves a charming MC, telling his story from post-apartheid Zamdela to 2020s London, thanking many of the people who helped get him here, and appealing for freedom for everyone to be able to be who they are, not just pointing out there are 70 countries in the world where homosexuality is still illegal, but then sweeping on stage in an outfit of gold shimmer with a flowing train made of flags from those countries. The politics is heartfelt, the delivery inspired.

The second half of the show relives some of Radebes favourite Strictly moments and then heads off into rousing and carnivalesque party territory. Its frequently OTT they must have bought up the citys entire sequin stock but performed with complete conviction, and there is simply unbridled joy in witnessing someone living their best life.

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Johannes Radebe: Freedom review Strictly star leaves it all on the floor - The Guardian

The wind was whipping, and the sun was still bright when Ken Johnston and Deborah Price started a 165-mile Walk to Freedom from the beach at Cape May, at the Sunset Pavilion Saturday afternoon.

They are walking to Burlington in a segment-walk over the next several weekends and expect to finish by May 8.

The goal is to resurrect the voices and memories of the people who history has forgotten, and to recognize the families that were separated and reunited by their love for each other and their quest for freedom, said Johnston, who lives in West Philadelphia, near Cobbs Creek.

Johnston, 60, has completed several long-distance walks over the last five years. His first walk in 2017 in Massachusetts where he once lived, was for health and personal reasons.

In 2018, he completed a 400-mile solo trip from Selma to Memphis, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. It was his first Walk to Freedom march.

In 2019, he walked 71 miles across Northern Ireland, from Belfast to Derry, commemorating the 1969 Peoples Democracy March.

And at Christmas 2019, he began an earlier walk following Harriet Tubmans journey from Maryland to Philadelphia. Because of COVID-19, he did not complete his walk to Harlem in New York until 2021.

Johnston embarked on the latest walk to honor Tubman because this year marks the bicentennial anniversary of her birth in March 1822.

They will follow the general routes of people who were freedom seekers, not runaway slaves, as most historians have called those fleeing from captivity.

But Johnston said he also wanted to call attention to the people whose names and stories are not remembered as much as Tubmans.

For instance, their walk will include stops by the Peter Mott House in Lawnside, where Mott, a free Black American preacher, and his wife, Eliza, gave shelter to freedom seekers.

They will also stop by Jacobs Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Mount Laurel, and at the historic Timbuctoo Village, where free and formerly enslaved people formed a Black settlement in 1826.

There will also be visits to sites in Salem and Elsinboro Township in Salem County and Greenwich, including Springtown, in Cumberland County.

Johnston said there were abolition activists, free Black men and women, Quakers and Native Americans who provided shelter and food to those escaping slavery.

People can keep up with the 165-journey by visiting Johnstons Our Walk to Freedom blog here.

There is evidence that freedom seekers from Maryland crossed the Delaware Bay and landed at the beach near Sunset Pavilion.

But there is no evidence that Harriet Tubman crossed the bay with them, said Cynthia Mullock, the executive director of the Harriet Tubman Museum in Cape May.

We do have evidence that she was working here in 1852 as a domestic worker and cook for families and hotels.

It was more likely that Tubman worked most closely with Philadelphia-based abolitionists, such as Stephen Smith, a wealthy lumber company owner, who had a summer house in the beach town, across the street from the current Harriet Tubman Museum, at 632 Lafayette St.

Mullock said that although Tubman may not have crossed the bay something that some historians have not ruled out it is more likely that Tubman and other abolitionists helped those who did land at Sunset Pavilion beach to make their way north through New Jersey and on to New York or Canada.

At the Harriet Tubman Museum, Johnston and Price were joined by two other walkers, Rebecca Perrone, a Willingboro City Council member and William Calvin, her fiance.

They left the museum by 6 p.m. Saturday for the hard part of the 15-mile journey to Cape May Court House.

An Inquirer reporter found them along Route 9 heading north about 8 p.m. It was dark and traffic whizzed by.

They didnt arrive in Cape May Court House until about 11:30 p.m. Saturday, Johnston said Sunday.

Johnston said the first leg of the 165-mile trip from Cape May is the only segment that was scheduled to be conducted at night.

We wanted to simulate the way the freedom seekers would have traveled, Johnston said. They would have traveled by night to avoid being captured.

Just three months ago, Johnston and Price, who lives in Willingboro, were strangers.

They met when Johnston, who works in human resources, visited the Underground Railroad Museum in Eastampton, near Mount Holly, to research his South Jersey walk.

Price, 65, who has worked as a bank examiner and regulator, volunteers at the Underground Railroad Museum.

Price was so intrigued as Johnston described his plans that he invited her to come along.

On Sunday morning, Price and Johnston started out from Cape May Court House with the sky overcast and a few sprinkles of rain. They were joined later by Perrone and Calvin, who caught up with them while they were stopping to talk to people along the way.

As they began walking Sunday, they decided to walk only eight miles to Dennisville, rather than the previously announced 15-mile destination to Delmont, N.J.

From the road, as they approached Route 47, Price said, This walk is becoming very therapeutic for me. We are looking at the environment, looking at the greenery thats out here. The color of the muddy waters.

Its been beautiful, she said. People have been supporting us by flashing their lights, or stopping to talk with Ken.

They met one woman picking dandelions who talked with them about the walk.

For Price, the walk meant reflecting on how the past, the meaning of the walk to freedom by people who had been enslaved, has meaning for news of today.

I found myself not only think about Harriet, but a lot of the folks who are on the same mission trying to get freedom today.

I thought about the Ukrainian women, carrying their children and trying to escape the war, I thought about the people in Mexico, trying to cross the border and the people in Haiti, all needing freedom. So many things cross your mind.

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To honor Harriet Tubman and others, this 165-mile Walk to Freedom traces South Jersey Underground Railroad routes - The Philadelphia Inquirer

Academic freedom has become a polarizing topic. Recent issues at the University of Ottawa expose ongoing challenges of balancing academic freedom with university community members rights to respectful and safe classroom and campus spaces.

In October 2021, the universitys Committee on Academic Freedom issued a report that examined academic freedom, freedom of expression, equity, diversity and inclusion and the legal aspects of these issues.

This work was set in motion after controversy surrounding a professor who used a derogatory word for Black people in class.

The committees report, and wider commentary about the University of Ottawa controversy, point to the need for greater public discussion to understand how academic freedom relates to responsibility.

As a PhD researcher who examines structural and systematic racism embedded in social institutions, including in education systems, I believe its critical to consider failures to understand academic freedom as an ethical concept, rather than simply a neutral objective standard.

At universities, faculty collective agreements and university policies spell out frameworks for academic freedom.

But as University of Ottawas Committee on Academic Freedom noted, universities definitions and policies vary, sometimes significantly, in the ways they spell out wider rights, responsibilities, obligations and limits or how academic freedom relates with equity, diversity or ethics.

The University of British Columbia distinguishes between freedom of expression protected in Canada under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and academic freedom in an FAQ about these issues on the university website:

Most significantly, academic freedom is not a legal right, but rather a right or a privilege bestowed by an institution of higher learning. It might best be construed as an ethical right, insofar as it serves good ends: the advancement and dissemination of knowledge.

When speakers seek to responsibly disseminate knowledge, they must be aware of who theyre speaking to, and how what theyre saying may resonate.

In October 2020, after the University of Ottawa classroom incident, Qubec Premier Franois Legault criticized the university for suspending the professor at the centre of the issue.

As a fully bilingual university close to the Qubec border, the University of Ottawa has close connections with the province.

At a news conference, the premier said, I dont think there should be banned words, and Its as if [the university] has censure police.

The premiers comments illustrated power and privilege. Their wider related effects, including discussion around Qubecs commission to study academic freedom, have added to the division among professors and students at the University of Ottawa.

In its report, the University of Ottawas Academic Freedom Committee made several recommendations, including:

further work to ensure the university community has a wider understanding of principles of academic freedom;

clear criteria and mechanisms are needed for making complaints;

university administration should establish an action plan to fight racism, discrimination and cyberbullying;

affirming the need to protect academic freedom and freedom of expression in fulfilment of its teaching and research mission. The committee said its against institutional or self-censorship that is apt to compromise the dissemination of knowledge or is motivated by fear of public repudiation.

Im specifically concerned about what this last point will mean, especially given that the reports recommendations dont address how professors need to demonstrate self-awareness of their own social positions in how they exercise responsibility.

More discussion is needed about how power shapes identities and access to learning. Communities also need to consider students who experience moral injury when people use irresponsible language and are unaccountable for their privilege.

In June 2021, the Black, Indigenous and People of Colour Professors & Librarians Caucus Working Group at the University of Ottawa made a submission to Committee on Academic Freedom. It stressed that notions of academic freedom cannot be divorced from respect for dignity and integrity in the classroom. This caucus also made ample suggestions about practical ways to urgently tackle systemic racism at the university. This is necessary for creating safer spaces for all community members.

Academics concerned about academic freedom and the quality of education note that academic freedom needs to be concerned with the quality of speech and the context in which its uttered.

As interdisciplinary scholar Farhana Sultana argues, some academics participate in the erosion of academic integrity when they apply scholarly veneer to hateful ideologies. She writes:

At a time when there are concerted efforts to decolonize academia, there is concurrent rise of colonial nostalgia and white supremacy among some academics, who are supported by and end up lending support to the escalating far-right movements.

To fully and freely engage in dialogue in the classrooms, professors must recognize different aspects of their identities such as race, gender, sexuality, language and consider how what they say may resonate among varied groups.

Educators seeking to balance the need for sincere and challenging dialogue and responsibility have explored the notion of moving from safe spaces to brave spaces.

Read more: 4 ways white people can be accountable for addressing anti-Black racism at universities

In the article, From Safe Spaces to Brave Spaces: A New Way to Frame Dialogue Around Diversity and Social Justice, student affairs educators Brian Arao and Kristi Clemens define safe space as a learning environment that allows students to engage with one another over controversial issues with honesty, sensitivity and respect. They also explore how the notion of safety can become conflated with comfort.

Arao and Clemens argue that education about difficult issues may be shocking and uncomfortable, but its possible to do so in respectful ways through social justice teaching practices that foster diversity and inclusion. Other researchers have developed these ideas further.

There is an ethical responsibility by professors to provide space for challenging discussions. This necessarily includes not perpetrating old structures that were built on casting out marginalized groups. Professors have a responsibility not to humiliate racialized students or use racist or discriminatory language.

Standards of ethical and professional behaviour have progressed, and the practice of academic freedom should adapt.

As anti-racist and feminist scholar bell hooks also argued, whats needed is learning how to teach students to transgress against racial and class boundaries that promote white supremacy or a hierarchy of human dignity.

I remain hopeful that with ongoing collaborative engagement from administrators and policy-makers, change will occur in our educational system.

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Academic freedom can't be separated from responsibility - The Conversation

Vietnamese seminarians line up during ceremonies at the Catholic Church of Hanoi in Vietnam. | Aaron Favila / AP

The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has put out its report for 2022. In it, the USCIRF attacks Vietnam, claiming religious freedom is not protected there. The USCIRF recommends labeling Vietnam as a country of particular concern, or CPC.

As Peoples Word reported last year, the repeated claims about the lack of religious freedom in Vietnam are baseless allegations used to vilify the socialist country. To better understand the situation and the gravity of USCIRFs suggestion, its important to understand the history of this commission and its makeup.

In 1998, seeing itself as the worlds hegemon, the United States government passed the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998, which created the USCIRF. The new body was empowered to research and report on the state of religious freedom in every country around the worldevery country, that is, except for the United States, the one country that the United States government actually has authority over.

The USCIRF issues a yearly report and recommends that the U.S. Secretary of State label countries it judges to be lacking religious freedom, as countries of particular concern. Such countries are then subject to sanctions of various sorts.

From its inception, the USCIRF has been criticized as a tool of cultural imperialism. It has also been repeatedly accused of spreading a Christian agenda and of holding a specifically anti-Muslim and anti-Hindu bias.

The USCIRF is made up of as many as 10 commissioners, although at the moment there are only nine. Among its current members are Nadine Maenza and Tony Perkins. Maenza is the president of Patriots Voice, a right-wing, conservative Christian non-profit group, founded by former Republican Sen. Rick Santorum. Perkins, a fundamentalist Christian, is head of the anti-LGBTQ hate group Family Research Council and has reportedly worked with David Duke, infamous for being a leader of the Ku Klux Klan.

This is the body the U.S. government claims has the right to evaluate and judge the religious freedoms of other countries.

In the USCIRFs report on Vietnam, it acknowledges that religious freedom is protected by the Constitution of Vietnam. However, it points to a clause in the constitution that allows certain freedoms to be suspended when national security is at risk, using it as a reason to claim that religious freedom is therefore not actually protected in Vietnam.

All countries on Earth have a right to protect their national security. In fact, the United States also suspends religious freedoms in the name of national security. If the Islamic State terror group tried to set up an institution in the United States and recruit new members, this would be deemed a threat to national security and its actions would not be protected as religious freedom.

Why is the United States holding Vietnam to a different standard than it holds itself? Why is Vietnam being told to sacrifice its security by the United States when the United States wouldnt do the same?

Another part of the USCIRFs report highlights a 2018 law passed by Vietnams National Assembly that requires religious organizations to register their existence with the government. This law was enacted to protect Vietnamese citizens from scams and abuse. There were a number of cases where someone claiming to be teaching one religion or another would con people out of their life savings or trick people into servitude.

The law requiring registration of legitimate religious institutions creates a database where Vietnamese people can check whether an organization they are interested in is legitimate or not. There are numerous religions practiced throughout Vietnam, from traditional Vietnamese religions, to Buddhism, to various Christian faiths, to Islam. None of these religious groups have had any issues following the registration system.

The report claims that smaller religions such as Cao Dai are persecuted. Yet anyone can visit Cao Dai temples and the Cao Dai Holy See is located in Tay Ninh, Vietnam, and practices freely. In fact, the beauty of Cao Dai houses of worship makes them popular sites for tourists that visit the region.

Given that the claims made by the USCIRF do not line up with the reality in Vietnam, and given what is known about the USCIRF, its role, and its makeup, it is clear that this bodys report on religious freedom in Vietnam is pushing a political agenda.

For anyone that has followed the history of the United States over the last century, it becomes clear that the report is a continuation of an old pattern. The USCIRF is still spreading anti-Communist propaganda that claims Communists and countries governed by Communist Parties are anti-religion. And now they want to threaten the people of Vietnam with sanctions to help spread these lies.

The true crime here is not being committed by the Vietnamese government. Rather its the cultural imperialism of the United Statesa big, rich countrywhich is targeting a smaller socialist country and trying to bully it into capitulating and following its will. One would think that the United States government would have learned by now that when they try to bully Vietnam, the venture ends in failure.

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Extremist-dominated 'religious freedom' commission in the U.S. targets Vietnam - People's World

Multimedia artist Sama Alshaibi consistently interrogates the female form as a nexus point for politics, histories, climate, and forced migrations. Her exhibition Four Series at Zane Bennett Gallery spans 15 years of artistic inquiry with a selection of photographs from four discrete bodies of work: Carry Over (2019), Silsila (2009-2017), Between Two Rivers (2008-2009, 2016), and Negatives Capable Hands (2007-2010). Each series represents a facet of her interrogation, drawing on historical sources, contexts, and techniques to articulate the definitions and exploitations of freedom.

Alshaibi consistently features herself as a primary subject, illustrating how Western geopolitical forces, traditions, and networks undermine individual liberties, particularly those of Middle Eastern women. Carry Over deflects the Western gaze of Orientalist photography in the Middle East and Northern Africa. Using albumen, photogravure, and gum printing processes of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Alshaibi poses in symbolic clothing with objects in Gamer (2019), for instance, she wears a burqa and carries a towering stack of metal tins on her head, tins typically used by Iraqi women to carry buffalo cream and bread.

Alshaibis portraits are taken in a studio environment based on the likes of historic precedents such as Maison Bonfils and Francis Frith who, capitalizing on new photographic technologies, cataloged and codified a European appetite for the Middle East. Except Alshaibis images ultimately rebuke codification. The extravagant proportion of the props combined with the figures isolation underscores the contrived form of the tradition. In Water Bearer II (2019), Alshaibi carries a large vessel resembling a giant hand grenade or acorn. She appears to have extraordinary strength, carrying this blanched, cumbersome, and likely useless object overhead while wearing a white dress that is so long as to fold over her feet and prohibit her movement. The effort depicted is to no end save for producing an image.

Self-portraits in Between Two Rivers capture physical signs of trauma on the body using theater cosmetics. Obverse Discursive (2016) shows a close up of the artists face wearing a fitted hijab, gazing upwards and off to the right, lips sewn shut with golden thread, bloody where it appears to penetrate the skin. In another photo, Arabic and Cuneiform: to read and write (2016), bruised and branded arms extend over crumpled, luxuriously red fabric, hands cupped as though requesting alms from the camera. The arms branded cuneiform marks are bloody, suggesting a traumatic dislocation from language and history as though they had to be inscribed on the body for safekeeping.

In an affiliated artist statement, Alshaibi who had to flee Iraq growing up describes images in Between Two Rivers as a response to the Iraq war. She argues that the concept of womens liberty was leveraged by Western powers to gain support for the invasion. Photos in this series illustrate the adverse effects the conflict had on women in particular.

The strongest work in the show comes from the seven-year multimedia project Silsila for which the artist loosely followed the path of a 14th-century Moroccan traveler, Ibn Battuta. Battuta traveled more than any other explorer in premodern history, the published account of which appears in his book A Gift to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Travelling, otherwise known as The Rihla. Inspired by his path, Alshaibi focused on the extremes of water, particularly the diverse and regional populations of people facing ecological displacement.

The series links those communities, examining how rising tides expected to swallow the Maldives or Hawaiian Islands are reciprocally connected to droughts befalling Middle Eastern and North African deserts. Works exhibited from this series include draped figures, often mirrored in water, and regularly associated with circles.

In Tasma (Listen) (2014), a figure kneels on the ground in a green burqa, hands on her knees in the center of a circle of stones in the middle of a receding desert. The circular composition is repeated in other works like Ma Ijtamaat Aydina ala Qabdih Muattal (What Our Hands Joined Was Broken) (2014) where two rows of identical figures face one another with hands outstretched. Inner pairs shake hands while outer pairs are unable to bridge the distance with human contact. Clouds punctuate the blue sky overhead, reiterating a kaleidoscopic quality. Throughout the series, the mirroring capacity of water collapses the sky and ground.

Each of Alshaibis series highlights how individual agency, particularly that of Middle Eastern and North African women, is subject to geopolitical and economic forces that destroy the environment. The cause of displacement is varied war, climate change and capitalism, colonialism yet they each create inhospitable environments that undermine the liberties each regime paradoxically claims to champion. What is remarkable about figures in Silsila is the movement they nevertheless possess, carrying and wearing billowing fabrics, poised in motion, in dialogue with the changing landscape.

Four Series continues at Zane Bennett Gallery (435 S Guadalupe Street, Santa Fe, New Mexico) through April 16, 2022.

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Freedom in Body and Water - Hyperallergic