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GOPAL KRISHNA SAD SONGS 003
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ಗುರುವಾರ ಕೇಳಿ ಶ್ರೀ ರಾಘವೇಂದ್ರ ರಕ್ಷಾ ಮಂತ್ರ
Wednesday, 21 June 2023
ವರಕಕಮಮ ಶಲ ಮಕಕಳಗ ಮಟಟ ಚಕಕ ಬಳಹಣಣ ವತರಣ
from Latest Kannada News | Kannada News Headlines | Breaking Kannada News | ಕನ್ನಡ ವಾರ್ತೆಗಳು https://ift.tt/N0vtuCi<
ಗಹ ಜಯತ: ಮರ ದನಗಳಲಲ 8 ಲಕಷಕಕ ಅಧಕ ಗರಹಕರದ ನದಣ
from Latest Kannada News | Kannada News Headlines | Breaking Kannada News | ಕನ್ನಡ ವಾರ್ತೆಗಳು https://ift.tt/rBiK5GY<
ಭರತದಲಲನ ಆತಕಕರ ಬಳವಣಗ ಬಗಗ ಮದ ಬಳ ನರವಗ ಮತನಡ: ಬಡನಗ ಅಮರಕ ಶಸಕರ ಒತತಯ
from Latest Kannada News | Kannada News Headlines | Breaking Kannada News | ಕನ್ನಡ ವಾರ್ತೆಗಳು https://ift.tt/0uitlQ2<
ನನ ನರದರ ಮದಯವರ ದಡಡ ಅಭಮನ ಎದ ಎಲನ ಮಸಕ: ಮದನ ವರಷ ಭರತಕಕ ಭಟ ನಡವ ಭರವಸ
from Latest Kannada News | Kannada News Headlines | Breaking Kannada News | ಕನ್ನಡ ವಾರ್ತೆಗಳು https://ift.tt/hOG30rc<
Lizzo Elton John Rick Astley... Who will give us 'Glastonbury moments' in 2023?
from BBC News - Entertainment & Arts https://ift.tt/mf4XiWt
Lizzo Elton John Rick Astley... Who will give us 'Glastonbury moments' in 2023?
from BBC News - Entertainment & Arts https://ift.tt/DF07xTH
ಆಧರಪರದಶ ಚನವಣ 2024: ದಸರ ಹಬಬದ ಮದಲ ಟಡಪಯದ ವವರವದ ಪರಣಳಕ ಬಡಗಡ
from Latest Kannada News | Kannada News Headlines | Breaking Kannada News | ಕನ್ನಡ ವಾರ್ತೆಗಳು https://ift.tt/PRvWESp<
Tuesday, 20 June 2023
What to the Incarcerated Is Juneteenth?
Incarcerated laborers sew military uniforms under the UNICOR (Federal Prison Industries) program
Juneteenth is a bittersweet day for Black people in prison holding onto the promise of freedom.
Let’s start with history. The Emancipation Proclamation -- issued by Abraham Lincoln on September 22, 1862, during the American Civil War -- declared that on January 1 all slaves in the Confederacy would be “forever free.” Unfortunately, that freedom didn’t extend to the four slaveholding states not in rebellion against the Union, and the proclamation was of course ignored by the Confederate states in rebellion. For the roughly 4 million people enslaved, Lincoln's declaration was symbolic; only after the Civil War ended was the proclamation enforced.
But the end of the fighting in April 1865 didn’t immediately end slavery everywhere. As the Union Army took control of more Confederate territory during the war, Texas became a safe haven for slaveholders. Finally, on June 19, Union General Gordon Granger rode into Galveston and issued General Order No. 3, announcing freedom for those enslaved. There were about 250,000 slaves in Texas when it became the last state to release African American bodies from the cruelest institution known to American history. By the end of that year, the 13th Amendment abolished slavery, mostly (more on that soon).
Darrell Jackson: My understanding of Juneteenth developed in prison
Juneteenth has long been a special day in Black communities, but I didn’t learn about it until I went to prison.
In the early 2000s, prisoners at Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla decided to hold a Juneteenth celebration. Because the Department of Corrections didn’t treat the day as special, Black prisoners used the category of "African American Cultural Event" (which had usually been used to celebrate Black History Month) as a platform to celebrate Juneteenth. The spirit of liberation moved through the incarcerated population, motivating other prison facilities across the state to follow suit.
It seems hard to believe, but prior to my incarceration, I knew nothing about Juneteenth. I had taken classes that included American history, but the event apparently wasn’t part of my school's curriculum. I first heard about that history from other prisoners at Clallam Bay Correction Center, where I was incarcerated in 2009, and that prompted me to learn more about the ways that African Americans mark Juneteenth. By the time I had entered the prison system, Black prisoners had expanded the celebration to include family, friends, and community members, creating an opportunity for prisoners to connect with loved ones in ways that regular visiting did not permit. We were able to choose what foods we ate and provide our own entertainment, using creative ways to communicate inspiring messages to the African American prison population and their families.
One memorable moment for me came in June 2012. The Black Prisoners Caucus was hosting the event, which had not happened since 2007, and a friend and I were asked to perform a few songs. It was my first vocal performance and I was extremely nervous. When we finished, my friend's 7-year-old daughter shouted from the audience, "Daddy, they killed it!" Though I didn't have any family present at the event, that little girl's endorsement etched a long-lasting smile on my heart. Her words had become a soothing balm in the face of the stress, self-doubt, depression, and anger I had felt as a prisoner throughout that year.
It’s important for the world to know that Juneteenth holds great significance for the Black bodies who are locked away in prison. But we shouldn’t forget that the 13th Amendment abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, “except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.” For the men and women who are Black and in prison, that exception connects us to our ancestors who were in chains long ago.
Antoine Davis: The conflict of celebrating freedom while in chains
I can only imagine the effect that June 19, 1865, had on the souls of those trapped in the most barbaric institution in American history. The hope for freedom, passed down from one generation to another, had finally come to pass. Tears from Black faces must have run like rivers, not from the pains of a master's lashes but from the joy of knowing that one’s momma and daddy, sons and daughters, family and friends would no longer live in bondage.
Such images of joy have run through my mind as I have celebrated Juneteenth with Black families and White families, all occupying the same space in the prison's visiting room. While our loved ones laugh and dance, eat and rejoice, the truth about what we celebrate creates for me a tension between joy and grief. The joy comes from recognizing how far we've come as a people. The grief comes from the reminder that while chattel slavery was abolished, a new form continues in a prison system that incarcerates African American people at an alarming rate.
Prisoners aren’t the only people who understand the injustice. For several decades, activists and academics have developed an analysis called “Thirteentherism,” which argues that the 13th Amendment created constitutional protection for the brutal convict-leasing system that former Confederate states created after Reconstruction and which evolved into today’s system of racialized mass incarceration.
Here’s just one statistic of many: In Washington state, 33 percent of prisoners serving a sentence longer than 15 years for an offense committed before their 25th birthday are black. Blacks make up 4.3 percent of the state's population.
The statistics that demonstrate the racialized disparities in prisons make me think of Devontae Crawford, who at the age of 20 was sentenced to 35 years in prison. Although he committed a crime with three white friends, Devontae ended up with more time than all his crime partners put together. Today, all three of them are free, and Devontae still has 30 years left to do in prison.
One of my closest friends, who asked to remain anonymous, also comes to mind. He was sentenced to 170 years in prison after his white friend shot a man during an altercation. Although his friend admitted to being the gunman, this prisoner remains incarcerated while his white friend was released after serving seven years.
Jackson/Davis: Still slaves to the system
As Black men in prison, we live the tension between celebrating the abolition of slavery and struggling inside the criminal justice system that replaced slavery. We prisoners who are left to deteriorate inside one of America's most inhumane systems are able to find joy in celebrating Juneteenth, but not without indignities.
For example, a number of us were told by the DOC that prisoners would have to pay an estimated $1,500 for this year's Juneteenth celebration -- $500 for food, not including the cost to our guests, and $1,000 to pay for additional guards. Juneteenth became a national holiday in 2021, and DOC officials decided that African American prisoners should cover the overtime and holiday pay for the extra guards deemed to be necessary for us to celebrate Juneteenth with our children.
That’s a lot of money for any working folks, but consider what it means for people who make 42 cents an hour, maxing out at $55 a month. No matter what the job in prison, that’s our DOC wage. This means that if we African American prisoners want to include our children in celebrating the historical meaning behind June 19, we will be forced to give the prison facility 3,600 hours of labor. The irony is hardly subtle: Prisoners in Washington state who work at near-slave wages will have to pay to celebrate a day that represents freedom.
We live with this injustice, but we African American prisoners find a way to maintain joy in the face of adversity. It's never easy to cope with the social conditions that are designed to diminish prisoners’ sense of their own value, but we keep on keeping on. If our ancestors were able not only to survive but also sometimes thrive in the face of enslavers’ disregard for their humanity, so can we. Something as simple as a 7-year-old girl shouting encouragement after a Juneteenth performance can be enough to keep us going.
African American prisoners have learned to embrace all the positives, celebrating freedom when we can while living in modern-day chains.
* This article was originally published here
Karnataka Rain: ಈ ಜಲಲಗಳಲಲ ಇದ ವಯಪಕ ಮಳ!
from Latest Kannada News | Kannada News Headlines | Breaking Kannada News | ಕನ್ನಡ ವಾರ್ತೆಗಳು https://ift.tt/aOJfIgr<
ಮದದದ ಮಗವಗ ಜನಮ ನಡದ ಉಪಸನ: ಮಗ ಫಯಮಲಯಲಲ ಮಗಲ ಮಟಟದ ಸಭರಮ
source https://kannada.filmibeat.com/telugu/ramcharan-and-upasana-have-been-blessed-with-a-baby-girl-068570.html
Monday, 19 June 2023
A Historian of Photographic Defacement in the USSR Faces His Own Erasure
On the day when the Russian human rights organization Memorial became a co-winner of the Nobel Peace prize last year, its activists had very little opportunity to process the news. October 7, 2022 found them huddled in a windowless hall of one of Moscow’s district courts, where Memorial was fighting the capture of its assets by the Russian state. Nine months earlier, the Russian Supreme Court liquidated Memorial under the so-called “foreign agent law,” so the new judicial decision to take over their assets was hardly a surprise. On the day the organization was recognized in Stockholm for its human rights and educational work on behalf of victims of Soviet state terror, it became essentially homeless in Moscow.
While formally the cause of Memorial’s legal woes was its failure to consistently brand itself as a foreign agent in all of its public statements, the words of the prosecutor left little doubt as to the real reason behind the state’s hostility. Memorial’s crime was simply its commitment to commemorating the victims of Soviet-era state violence. As state prosecutor Aleksei Zhafiarov put it during the hearings that led to Memorial’s liquidation, “Why should we, the descendants of victorious people, feel shame and repent, rather than pride ourselves on our glorious past?” The organization’s keen gaze at state terror, he made clear, was perceived by the Russian state as actively harmful in the present.
The same commitment to making Soviet-era state violence visible that landed Memorial in the Russian courts is what animates the groundbreaking volume by Denis Skopin entitled Photography and Political Repressions in Stalin’s Russia: Defacing the Enemy. The book, published by Routledge in 2022 in its History of Photography series, is a conceptually and empirically rich study of a corpus of 57 photographs from Stalinist Russia (many of them from Memorial’s archives), in which faces of people declared “enemies of the state” have been removed: scratched out, painted over or otherwise excised. While the existence of such photographs is well known (one such image, for example, was reproduced on the hardcover of Orlando Figes’ Whisperers [2007]), Skopin is the first to probe this practice for what it reveals about both Soviet history and the ontology of photography — group photography in particular.
Photography and Political Repressions in Stalin’s Russia consists of five chapters. The first one lays out the historical context of Stalin’s terror before advancing to a close reading of the criminal cases centered on improper handling of representations of political leaders, the subject of Chapter Two. Chapters Two to Four are the theoretical heart of the book, in which Skopin lays out his theory of group portraiture and discusses specific cases of photographic defacement, before concluding this discussion with a fifth, empirical chapter on the defaced photographs in secret police archives. He argues persuasively that Soviet-era photographic destruction, while close in spirit to other acts of iconoclasm, such as damnatio memoriae, has its own distinctive logic. The removal of faces from photographs during the Great Terror, he suggests, was driven by a desire to purify the community depicted in these images by visually ejecting the newly discovered “enemy” from the group. Skopin’s theorization of group portraiture under Stalin takes inspiration from Gilbert Simondon’s concept of “transindividuality,” framing collective portraiture that was so prevalent throughout the Soviet period as a tool for cultivating the supra-individual nature of Soviet subjectivity. Such emphasis on the prevalence of the collective, and on one’s inherent entanglement with it, created problems for everyone who shared the photographic space with the people subsequently denounced as traitors. As the number of such bogus denunciations grew, more and more group photographs were swept into the vortex of a visual iconoclasm that targeted “less the portrait itself than its performative value, namely its power to create a relationship between the iconoclast and the enemy of the people” (141).
Given the immediate political danger posed by the visual evidence of association with an enemy of the state, why would so many such photographs be preserved? Instead of destroying the compromising evidence entirely, why would people keep the photos with the traces of violence done to them? Skopin’ hypothesis is that the images were simply too valuable to be disposed of, and this makes sense, especially given the outsized importance that belonging to a group carried for individual identities in the USSR. But it is also possible that these images were preserved precisely as records of the righteous indignation that drove their owners to iconoclasm. They were there to make that outrage visible, and in this way, to protect their owners by testifying to their loyalties.
The complex motivation behind photo tampering is especially evident in a particular subset of photographs – those of familial groups. Many of these more intimate portraits also carried the signs of violent modifications aimed at dissociating the family from a member exposed as “an enemy of the people.” The book considers them as congruent with the logic of group self-purification (the group in question this time being the family), but it also notes some details that seem to call for an investigation of the ways in which the practices around these images differed. While the visual editing of large-N collectives tended towards the dramatic, with faces violently blotched or torn out, images of familial groups more frequently strove to conceal the signs of their modification, for example, by painting a curtain over a figure, or even transforming the clothing of the sitter in order to hide a Tsarist-era uniform or military award in a preventative act of caution. The point with these images, it seems, was not so much to perform an act of outrage that ejected the traitor from the group, but rather to shield a loved one from the violence of history in an act of care.
While the release of Skopin’s study would be an important intellectual event under any circumstances, the grim irony of its publication in 2022 is that this research is unlikely to reach its readers in Russia for many of the same reasons that fueled the dynamic of mass terror in Stalin-era USSR. Indeed, in October 2022, just as the Memorial activists were busy fighting the capture of the group’s assets by the state, Skopin’s academic employer, St. Petersburg State University, terminated its contract with the author, citing “immoral behavior” as the reason for dismissal. The immoral act in question was Skopin’s participation in a public protest against the government’s mass mobilization of military-aged men to wage Russia’s criminal war on Ukraine. Skopin, who has had to leave Russia after spending ten days in detention, is but one among many Russian academics forced to choose between silence and abandoning their students in recent months; the history that his volume had been probing seems to have come a full circle. The very least the rest of us can do is make this violence visible.
* This article was originally published here
Monsoon Rain: ರಜಯದ ಈ ಜಲಲಗಳಲಲ ಮತರ ಮದನ 5 ದನಗಳ ಕಲ ವರಣರಭಟ ಇಲಲದ ವವರ
from Latest Kannada News | Kannada News Headlines | Breaking Kannada News | ಕನ್ನಡ ವಾರ್ತೆಗಳು https://ift.tt/KEZHYDM<
ಆದಪರಷ ವವದ: ಈ ನಗರದಲಲ ಇನನ ಭರತಯ ಚಲನಚತರಗಳ ಬಯನ !
from Latest Kannada News | Kannada News Headlines | Breaking Kannada News | ಕನ್ನಡ ವಾರ್ತೆಗಳು https://ift.tt/HuJLVlS<