Excellent story on the ISP this morning:

[T]raditional thinking still sees women as mainly homebound. The pressure usually comes from the parents themselves who discourage their daughters from pursuing a career in journalism. 

Read the rest of the story here. And then, of course, donate to my project that works with young women in Cambodia in self-publishing projects here.

Corporate creep, the profit-minded takeover of public space, is not unlike a roach infestation: stomach-churning, not pretty, and always a losing battle. Yet the battle rages on. The issues underlying many current debates re-exert the right of the public over public space, whether real or virtual: Social networking site privacy uproars, state and city university walk-outs, the low-power FM radio movement, sponsored public transit stations. And the sad fact is, despite that they greatly outnumber the, ah, vermin – the public is losing this fight against the corporate creeps.

Except in Toronto, Ontario. . . .

Read the rest of this story here.

A few weeks ago, a group of students and a local artist excavated a tiny part of the Rock at Northwestern University, a monument on the school’s campus most famous for being an open space for signage, personal announcements, and the public beratement of other school’s sports teams. The action liberated only about 15% of the rock’s face—work undone, clearly, the next day—and aimed to house the removed paint chips in the University Archives. Where, as historical documents of Northwestern life, they probably ultimately belong.

Yet the action kicked off a pigpile of dumb responses, including an 858-member Facebook Group, and an article in the school newspaper that made the following arguable contentions: 

• that the purpose of art historians is to “appraise the worth” of objects
• that the value of an object is solely determined by the impact humans have on it
• that doing the same thing that hundreds of people before you have done, over again, aligns you with history, which is always good

I’m not normally so hard on J-School students. (I’m usually just hard on my own students.) I wouldn’t be, here, either, if this writer didn’t end with the assertion that “when you strip the paint away, all you have left is a stupid rock.” (The best retorts to any of the above contentions posted in the comments section below will win you a prize.)

Now, I don’t want to turn this post into a rant about the kids today! But what does it say about our capacity for branding, hopes for climate change, or tolerance of corporate scofflaws—to name just three examples—that the above might be preferable to “a stupid rock”? I’ll leave it for you to mull.

In the mean time, Sarah Kavage went and did a little rock recon (above!), and you can see more of her images here.

And here’s the beer & ladies, originally uploaded by roniweb.

Veronica Areola, Cinnamon Cooper, and an awesome fellow feminist pal of theirs whose name I am forgetting but who you can see BEHIND MY BEER went to a Chicago Sky Game alongside tens of cheering fans early this Fall. Perhaps you didn’t know I take my basketball very seriously? That’s right, my shameful misspent youth includes a stint as a sports writer.

p.s. I apologize for the inadvertent branding of this image. I do not actually endorse this product, and certainly not at $8 a cup.

“So, the real number of jobless garment workers was less than 30,000,” Cambodia’s Labour Ministry Secretary of State Oum Mean was quoted as saying, while announcing more garment factory closures in 2009 than was estimated when I researched this proposal. A little over 38,000 jobs, in garment factories alone, have been lost in 2009.

My SAIC students, who study non-commercial praxis (that is, not activism and not verbalism, but a practice rooted in theory informed by Unmarketable and Paolo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed), devoted one day of the final presentations at Mess Hall, local noncommercial art and community venue. Here are some pictures from our excursion (by Kelly Pope) which ran the gamut from educational to terrifying:

We made food. Food nourishes both community and body. Also: delicious.

Sarah Kavage talks about wheat. Anna, who does work around landscape and sublimity, later had some feedback on her plan to farm the wheat.

Coty presents his work on craftivism while we all sew, except for Jonathan, who ponders. And me, ’cause it turns out I can’t listen and sew at the same time.

This man wanders in off the street to ask our video conferenced-in guest Nance Klehm some questions. Then he stays, because it turns out he has a lot of questions. When he left later he politely asked to join our class. Sadly, the class is full. Also there is only one left.

Jonathan and Lauren sew with Moritz Majce (who, with Herwig Kopp, presented their project Intra Extra 2009 to our class). Jenna ponders and Sarah, our indexer, takes notes.

Francis during his completely amazing performance as Jick Nickerson, an executive at Remove-vertising, which is a service that removes offensive and illegal outdoor advertising.

“Fucking Girl Power, OK? Now Get to Work” a little bit became our class mantra. It came to stand for the mandatory sloganeering we need to spur action—the verbalism that prohibits activism and fails to transform into praxis. If I weren’t fundamentally against clothing as medium for even jokey political slogans, I would make them all t-shirts.

Attention, Internet: There is a new site that has details about my latest experiments in translocalism, gender theory, and pedagogy, the Adventure School for Ladies. The Adventure School for Ladies is an experimental graduate program that explores gender, cultural production, political engagement and social divisions with the top ladylike scholars in the field of adventure studies. Enrollment for our 2009 winter session is now closed, but please bookmark the site to be alerted to pending sessions.

The charming peops over at Annalemma have concocted the following Call For Submissions for their upcoming zine, Holiday in Cambodia: A collection of holiday stories for a good cause. The cause, you may ask? Why thank you for doing so. From the press release:

In the winter of 2007 editor, author, and activist Anne Elizabeth Moore was invited to live to Phnom Penh to teach Cambodian young women how to make zines. She plans to return December 24th to continue her ongoing project. We think this is awesome. We want to help her out and hope you do too.

Everyone has drama happening around the holidays and we all know drama makes for good stories. Send us your true stories of familial (or otherwise) conflict taking place around the holidays and we will then choose the best ones for publication in zine format entitled “Holiday in Cambodia: a Collection of Holiday Stories for a Good Cause”. There will be an open fee for submissions, meaning submitters are encouraged to send whatever they think is a fair submission fee. Could be zero dollars, could be $100. Yup, just like the Radiohead thing. This book will be available to purchase for $10 on January 31st, 2010 at annalemma.net. All proceeds from sales, as well as submission fees, will go to Anne’s amazing work with young Cambodian women. (Full link here.)

Deadline: December 31, so you have just enough time to schedule, survive, and then live to tell your holiday adventure this year before submitting (or, you know, relive a previous year’s trauma via the magic of writing!).

FURTHER SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:

• Keep the stories under 3000 words.
• One submission per person.
• True stories only. If you have to change names or bend the truth here and there to make for a better story then that’s cool.
• “Send Money” via Paypal to holiday@annalemma.net.
• Email submission to holiday@annalemma.net in Word or .rtf format (from the same email address associated with your Paypal account, or from a different account clarifying who you are and what email address the payment went through). 

And, just to get you in the mood, here’s a quick story from my personal, actual, holiday in Cambodia.

Hate holidays and/or writing, but for some reasons not zines? Straight-up donation page here, no santa hats or dreidels involved.

“No one in the U.N. or elsewhere will ever copy the Cambodian model,” said Brad Adams, Asia head of Human Rights Watch. “It’s the lowest standard the United Nations has been willing to go.” The Plaintiffs in this lawsuit are claiming that they did not receive adequate notice and/or choice about how Facebook and its affiliates used Beacon to collect information about their web-browsing activity before it was sent to Facebook for publication. Sticking with land mines is a puzzler. [A]s an elected official, I would also like to examine the different agreements signed between the US and Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos…. It seems that there is variation in the agreements between the US and these countries.…Why is it that noncitizens from these countries are treated differently? The same crime must have the same punishment regardless of the perpetrator’s race or country of origin. The surge in births of mixed children is the product of the similarly explosive growth here in marriages to foreigners, as a surplus of bachelors and the movement of eligible women to big cities like Seoul have increasingly driven Korean men in rural areas to seek brides in poorer parts of Asia. In addition, a preference for male babies has helped skew the population so there are fewer native-born women to marry. “This film is dedicated to Aung San Suu Kyi, still prisoner in Burma.” The spot fades out on a poster with Suu Kyi’s face and the appeal, “Free now unconditionally.” The end-card slogan: “Chrysler: for a World Without Walls.”

I haven’t seen it yet, and I’m not likely to have a chance for some months, but I wanted to make public this study guide for the film Precious I received via the emails. It comes originally from Fallon Wilson, Black Youth Project Blogger, Summer McDonald, Black Youth Project Blogger, and Moya Bailey, Creator, Quirky Black Girls sent via Teachers for Social Justice. 

Push to Precious: A google group tracking the responses, reviews, internet exchanges, and news about the film.

New York Magazine interview of Gabby Sidibe, star of Precious

From Feministing, “On Representation: Push versus Precious”

From What About Our Daughters, Katie Couric’s interview of Sapphire

Latoya Peterson, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Precious”

Armond White’s New York Press review of Precious

A.O. Scott’s New York Times review of Precious

David Edelstein’s New York Magazine review of Precious

Juell Stewart’s ColorLines piece The Black Matriarch as Villain (read after viewing the film)

Summer’s The Black Youth Project Lost in Translation: A Response to Precious

Fallon’s The Black Youth Project  ISaw the Movie Precious, but what about her mother, Mary and We are All Like Precious: Gotta have a Man

The list concludes with the note, “We hope you find these tools useful and pertinent to your conversations.  If you choose to film and/or podcast your discussions of Precious, we encourage you to submit them to the site here.”