Call for art, spoken word, music- Sex worker rights are Human rights!

In conjunction with International Human Rights Day on December 10th, a coalition of New York-based sex worker rights, anti-violence and decriminalization advocates are hosting a Human Rights Speak-Out and Arts Evening. You are encouraged to submit your work!

We are looking for:
- pieces that connect to or highlight themes in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (see http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/ and the examples below); and to the idea that criminalization of sex work leads ultimately to human rights violations.
- visual art; and short (2 to 7 minutes) spoken word or poetry pieces, musical pieces, theater shorts, films, etc.
- current/ former sex workers, and folks who are otherwise in communities that are heavily impacted by criminalization and policing of sex work are especially encouraged to submit

Submit to : kmdadamo@gmail.com and belltoweroverflo@hotmail.com
For spoken word and performance, please email written copies if possible. For film, either mail a copy or send an online link to view. For visual art, please either send JPG images (no more than 2) or otherwise call to make arrangements to submit.

Submit by: November 25th

Be sure to keep Dec. 10th on your schedule! Travel stipends for local NYC area travel to the event on the evening of December 10th may be available for submitting artists. Please keep in mind that the event will be promoted to media outlets in order to try to bring a sex worker rights and human rights message to a wider audience.

Here are some examples of conditions faced by sex workers and articles of the UDHR that correlate:

Sex workers and people profiled as sex workers are often ignored when they report violence, rape, or other crimes against them, and even presumed to have brought the violence on themselves. Frequently, they face violence, including sexual violence and extortion, at the hands of the police.

Article 3.

* Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

Article 5.

* No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Article 7.

* All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.

People, particularly transgender folks and people of color are often profiled as sex workers and arrested. For example in Washington, DC, officers can arrest people they “presume to be prostitutes” in so-called Prostitution Free Zones.

Article 9 of the Declaration says:

* No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.

Article 20.

* (1) Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.

Criminalization and stigmatization create enormous obstacles to sex workers organizing for labor rights, and sex workers sometimes face discrimination when they seek different work.

Article 23.

* (1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.
* (2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.
* (3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.
* (4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

Article 25.

* (1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

Stand in Solidarity with Gumbo YaYa!
www.iamnotaproject.wordpress.com





Greetings community,

Gumbo YaYa wants you to stand in support of healing and creative expression for African American girls and women. Most of you know I help sustain a community-based sister circle called Gumbo YaYa: Creative Expression and Healing for African American Girls and Women. Well soon the project will expand to communities in South Africa and Kenya and continue in Durham, NC.

We want you to stand in solidarity with us! If you believe in our mission and our work email your name and the organization you represent to be listed on our community support page!

Gumbo YaYa is a holistic, arts-based program that directly addresses reproductive justice, awareness, and empowerment of African American girls and women. Established in 2007, Gumbo YaYa draws on the cultural practices of knowledge-sharing, political action, art-making, and community- building created and sustained by African American girls and women.

Gumbo YaYa’s mission is to affirm the health, wellness, and vitality of African American girls and women through creative and expressive healing.

To date, Gumbo YaYa has worked with over 100 women and girls in New York, North Carolina, and New Orleans. We have staged three community performances, and held one community forum.

We have collaborated with a host of like minded individuals who firmly believe in our mission and our work. We have been funded by New York University- ism project grant, New York University- Department of Multi-cultural Programs, Health Medical Research Foundation, The Imperial Court of the Daughters of Isis, Billings & Martin and several private sponsors. We have successfully entered our fall giving season, and raised over 2,000 for our international initiatives.




Here is what coming up...

Winter 09-10: Gumbo YaYa Cycle 3 Planning phase
Spring 2010: Gumbo YaYa Reproductive Justice, Now! begins
Community performance and forum
Summer 2010: Gumbo YaYa South Africa/ Kenya
Fall 2010: Gumbo YaYa documentary short film screening

We want you to stand in solidarity with us! If you believe in our mission and our work email your name and the organization you represent to be listed on our community support page!

Please feel free to share resources with us about grants, funding streams, donations, bartering/freecycling, people doing this work internationally, activities, and more.

We look forward to hearing from you.

In service and solidarity,

Ebony N. Golden

3rd Annual In the People's Hands Arts and Activism Project

Community Writing Intensive

Poetry. Hip Hop. Performance. Instead of Prisons.



Contact Ebony Noelle Golden
inthepeopleshands@gmail.com
www.inthepeopleshands.synthasite.com
919.423.3780


Durham, NC—Oct. 1-4 artists from North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, New York, and beyond will gather for the third annual Community Writing Intensive in Durham, NC at the New Horizons School and The People's Channel. This year's theme, "to p.i.m.c. w/ love", is a satirical take on the lack of justice the prison system practices towards people of color and poor people. Visit http://www.inthepeopleshands.synthasite.com to register and see full schedule of events.

Participants will engage poetry, media, hip hop theater, and music as tools for critically and creatively engaging community wellness, prison reform, the school to prison pipeline, and decreasing violence in local communities.

Nia Wilson, Executive Director of SpiritHouse-NC said, "This program is absolutely necessary. Our path to freedom is informed by being able to articulate our stories, our visions, in our own words. SpiritHouse is dedicated to creating these intentional spaces for the entire community to dialogue, write, perform, and heal."

This year’s intensive features:

· Tuition-free workshops
· Workshops led by community poets and community organizers
· Travel Scholarships for commuters
· Youth-led workshops
· Writers-in-Residence
· Performance workshops
· Action-based community dialogue
. Manuscript workshops
. Open-Mic
. Virtual release of e-zine www.inthepeopleshands.synthasite.com
. Establishing a community board of artists and writers in the rooted in the south east

The In the People's Hands Arts and Activism Project is based on June Jordan's 15-year old "Poetry for the People" program. The program "continues to pursue Martin Luther King Jr.'s vision of a beloved community for all".

June Jordan crafted Poetry for the People with three guiding principles in mind:
1. That students will not take themselves seriously unless we who teach them, honor and respect them in every practical way that we can.
2. That words can change the world and save our lives.
3. That poetry is the highest art and the most exacting service devoted to our most serious, and our most imaginative, deployment of verbs and nouns on behalf of whatever and whoever we cherish.

For more information about June Jordan and Poetry for the People, visit www.poetryforthepeople.org.
This project is made possible by a grant from the North Carolina Humanities Council, a statewide nonprofit and affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, the We Shall Overcome Fund, The People's Channel, Betty's Daughter Arts Collaborative, and SpiritHouse-NC.

For more information about the intensive, to apply or to donate time, money, or services contact inthepeopleshands@gmail.com, or call Ebony Noelle Golden at 9194233780. To register for the intensive, visit http://inthepeopleshands.synthasite.com/registration.php.


-END-

3rd Annual In the People's Hands Arts and Activism Project

Community Writing Intensive

Poetry. Hip Hop. Performance. Instead of Prisons.




Contact

Ebony Noelle Golden For Immediate Release 919.423.3780 www.inthepeopleshands.synthasite.com
inthepeopleshands@gmail.com





Durham, NC—Oct. 1-4 artists from North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, New York, and beyond will gather for the third annual Community Writing Intensive in Durham, NC at the New Horizons School and The People's Channel.


This year's theme, "to p.i.m.c. w/ love", is a satirical take on the lack of justice the prison system practices towards people of color and poor people. The intensive will engage poetry, media, hip hop theater, and music as tools for critically and creatively engaging community wellness, prison reform, the school to prison pipeline, and decreasing violence in local communities.

Nia Wilson, Executive Director of SpiritHouse-NC said, "This program is so absolutely necessary. Our path to freedom is informed by being able to articulate our stories, our visions, in our own words. SpiritHouse is dedicated to creating these intentional spaces for the entire community to dialogue, write, perform, and heal."


This year’s intensive features:
· Tuition-free workshops
· Workshops led by community poets and community organizers
· Travel Scholarships for commuters
· Youth-led programs
· Writers-in-Residence
· Performance workshops
· Action-based community dialogue
. Manuscript workshops
. Open-Mic
. Virtual release of e-zine www.inthepeopleshands.synthasite.com
. Establishing a community board of artists and writers in the rooted in the south east


The In the People's Hands Arts and Activism Project is based on June Jordan's 15-year old "Poetry for the People" program. The program "continues to pursue Martin Luther King Jr.'s vision of a beloved community for all". June Jordan crafted Poetry for the People with three guiding principles in mind:

1. That students will not take themselves seriously unless we who teach them, honor and respect them in every practical way that we can.
2. That words can change the world and save our lives.
3. That poetry is the highest art and the most exacting service devoted to our most serious, and our most imaginative, deployment of verbs and nouns on behalf of whatever and whoever we cherish.

For more information about June Jordan and Poetry for the People, visit www.poetryforthepeople.org.

The Community Writing Intensive is sponsored by the We Shall Overcome Fund, The People's Channel, Betty's Daughter Arts Collaborative, SpiritHouse-NC, and the North Carolina Humanities Council.

For more information about the intensive, to apply or to donate time, money, or services contact inthepeopleshands@gmail.com, or call Ebony Golden at 9194233780. To register for the intensive, visit http://inthepeopleshands.synthasite.com/registration.php.


-END-

Zora! Festival

have you all seen this? http://www.zorafestival.com/index.html

FYI: FW: CFP
You have probably seen the call for papers below, posted at our website
over the last year, for the 2010 Zora Neale Hurston (ZNH) Festival of
the Arts and Humanities in Eatonville, Florida (USA) January 23-31,
2010.

The JUNE 1st deadline is around the corner, and your submissions is
enthusiastically anticipated from across disciplines and areas of study.

PLEASE FORWARD THIS EMAIL TO YOUR FRIENDS, COLLEAGUES , and LISTSERVES.

Taking a minute to forward the email below can make a world of
difference for this academic forum and for the sustainable development
of Eatonville, America's oldest incorporated African American town in
the US.

[Cultural preservation activism has helped this community survive urban
gentrification]

Questions?
See the call below and feel free to contact me directly.

Dr. Deidre Helen Crumbley: ZNH National Planner
Associate Professor/ Africana Studies Program
Interdisciplinary Studies Division Box 7107
North Carolina State University
Raleigh, NC 27695-7107, USA

CALL FOR ACADEMIC PAPERS
Invitation:
Scholars are invited to submit papers for the 2010 Zora Neale Hurston
Festival of the Arts and

Humanities (January 23 - 31). The festival theme is "Reflection on the
Life and Legacy of Zora Neale

Hurston 50 Years After Her Death."

The legacy of Zora Neale Hurston is a phenomenon that has undergone a
remarkable

development and expansion in recent decades, embracing, among others,
topics in ethnic identity, social

interactions, feminist theory, and cultural continuity. Hurston's unique
insights into folklore,

performance, and creative expression have invited new interpretation and
inspired emulation, while the

corpus of her own work has grown as a result of research and discovery.
The committee will welcome

papers exploring the dynamic dimensions of the Hurston legacy from
theoretical and/or historical

perspectives and will be especially attentive to appropriate
consideration of past, present, and emerging

scholarly content.

In a tradition of excellence, scholars are encouraged to engage the
literature and discourse of

their respective fields at the same that they present their findings
during the public forum in a form that

is accessible to academics in other disciplines and is also
intellectually stimulating for an intelligent

general audience.

Submission Instructions:

Submit a 150-word abstract along with an 500-word summary of your paper
that of your paper that indicates the

thesis or central question, which you plan to explore, as well as an
idea of the theoretical framework

within which your findings will be considered.

Deadline:

Abstract and summary are due June 1, 2009.

If your work is accepted for the festival, a copy of

the full paper must be submitted by November1, 2009.

Email your submission to:

Deidre Crumbley @: deidre_crumbley&ncsu.edu

AND

N. Y. Nathiri @: apec@cfl.rr.com



Then Mail a Hard Copy to:

Hurston Papers 2010

Preserve the Eatonville Community, Inc. (P.E.C.)

227 East Kennedy Boulevard

Eatonville, Florida 32751