One of my biggest pet peeves- and I know for many of you its the same- is to find out about a concert, a conference or any kind of cool event that sparks my interest, after it has already taken place. Therefore, please mark the dates of this years’ Split This Rock Poetry Festival into your calendars!
From March 20 through March 23, 2008, Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness will feature America’s top activist poets reading, performing, sharing, and teaching their craft in Washington, DC. Split This Rock Poetry Festival aims to bring greater attention to national heroes – activist poets who are tackling these tough times through art. The location and lineup are great and the program sounds highly promising!

Bringing together poets and activists, training workshops on news media, writing strong op-ed pieces, using poetry to empower the disenfranchised, and integrating poetry into political activism will provide you with the tools you need to be an effective advocate at the local and national level. Poetry readings, film screenings and walking tours will let you discover the rich literary and activist history of Washington DC. During the afternoon panels you can network with like-minded people and share your words and ideas with others!
Come celebrate the power of the written and spoken word and sign up now!

Dorkbot DC is the Washington area chapter of an international art/tech org that brings artists and engineers/gadgeteers together to cross-pollinate ideas, collaborate on projects, and to show off new work, new tech, etc. We hold meetings every month. We’ve been meeting at Provisions, but with Provisions in transition, we had to move to a new locale. This month, we’ll be meeting at the Marian Koshland Science Museum of the National Academy of Sciences (6th and E Streets, NW). Below is a PDF flyer that can be printed out and posted/distributed. It looks to be another great gathering. If you’re in town and you like to do “strange things with electricity,” come join us. It’s always a interesting evening.

Hosted by: the Hip Hop Caucus, Amnesty International, and the ACLU featuring dead prez, Mystic, Wise Intelligent, Uncalled 4 Experience, Akir, Hasan Salaam, GRIME, Emoni Fela, Head-Roc, Son of Nun, DJ Chela and J Period Tuesday, June 19th
9:30 Club: 815 V St. NW$10

Buy your tickets online HERE or at the 9:30 Club box office www.hiphopforhabeas.com

On Juneteenth (June 19th) the Hip Hop Caucus, the ACLU and Amnesty International are cosponsoring a concert featuring dead prez, Mystic and others at the 9:30 Club in Washington, DC. In the tradition of commemorating Juneteenth, we are connecting the legacy of torture as a part of slavery with the legacy of torture we have established in the global “war on terror.”

Last fall, when Congress passed the Military Commissions Act, it included a section which prohibited any non-citizen in US custody that the President designated an “enemy combatant” from going to court and exercising the most basic human right - the right to go before a court and ask the government what the basis for their detention is. This prohibition on filing a writ of habeas corpus has meant that people who have been in US custody for more than five years continue to be held with no meaningful judicial review, and in some cases are being tortured.

Tickets for this event are only $10.00 and are available at www.tickets.com or the 9:30 Club box office. Please join us for this historic event. Let nothing stop you from coming to this critical concert -if you can’t afford the $10, please call the Hip Hop Caucus office before 6/15 at 202-787-5256. Together we can end torture!

The FBI held Hasan Elahi in custody and extensively interrogated him for several days in 2002, believing him to be a terrorist. But even after his innocence was established, his name remained on the terrorist watch list. Partly to provide a future alibi and partly to raise some troubling questions, Elahi began tracking all his movements and activities using a GPS and a camera, posting the real-time results on his website. Hasan Elahi turned his life into a technological disappearing act and maybe also into a work of art.
Interviewed by Niels Van Tomme.

How is your relationship with the US government nowadays?

Hasan Elahi: I get harassed still to this day– every time I fly through Kennedy airport I get taken in for hours. Other airports are hit or miss. To be honest, I have very good reason not to live here after all this, but remain here. This is home, this is where I grew up, I’m an American citizen and this is my country. So it does pose a very interesting question when your idea of the country does not necessarily reflect your government’s policies. I am certainly indebted to the US for what I’ve established here with my citizenship, it would’ve been impossible growing up in a small village in Bangladesh. On the other hand, I don’t agree with what our government is doing and that’s one of the reasons I’m doing this project.

Your exhibition, ‘Tracking Transience: The Orwell Project’, sounds bombastic and scary, at the same time there is a certain peace coming from your images. Are we accepting fear?

HE: I don’t know if we’re accepting fear, I think acknowledging fear is a little different than accepting it. I have to take this to the point where it’s almost comical. Looking at my urinals, pretty much all of it is actually fun.

There are tongue-in-cheek things happening behind the scenes that defuse the tension of the real story. If I only focused on the negative, then it would become depressing and gloomy, it would become scary. Rather I reverse the situation, take control of it, almost create a satire of it by stepping back from it, and heighten that fear even more. There is something silly about the images of the airline meals. There is even a real knife. If I had a knife in my bag in any of the airports around here, I would get arrested and taken away, but as soon as I sit down on the plane, it’s perfectly all right to hand that knife to me.

(more…)

Provisions Library is pleased to host the Columbian Human Rights Committee’s upcoming discussion about the humanitarian crisis in Columbia. Speakers include:

-Eduardo Zuniga, Governor of Narino, hard-hit by political violence and aerial spraying of drug crops in recent years, anthropologist
-Father Mauricio Ponti­n, Coordinator for internally displaced persons and refugees, Office of Social Ministries, Colombian Catholic Bishops Conference
-Marco Romero, President of CODHES, Consultancy for Human Rights and Displacement, professor of political science, Universidad Nacional.

Made in Palestine, the first comprehensive exhibition of Palestinian Art in the United States opens this Thursday at the Venezualan Embassy in Washington DC. Organized by the Station Museum, in Houston Texas, the show has travelled to San Fransisco, New York, and Vermont. Featuring work in a wide range of mediums and styles, by two generations of Palestinian artists, the exhibition strives to portray the broad range of Palestinian art and culture, created under harsh circumstances of occupation or exile.

The exhibition opens Thursday, May 3 with a reception from 6pm to 9pm and will be open to the public until mid-June at the Andres Bello Hall of the Venezeulan Embassy at 1099 30th St. NW.

From the Station Museum: More on the artists and the exhibition
From Mother Jones: More on the history of the exhibition and an interview with artist Ver Tamari

…which may soon be closing. The Warehouse Theater arts complex may not be long for this world, with recent news that their property tax for next year will increase by 500%. read the CityPaper blog post. Located in 2 separate storefronts on 7th St. NW between New York Ave and L St., between the Mt. Vernon Square and Gallery Place/Chinatown metro stops, the Warehouse has been home to art shows, theater and music performances, film screenings, readings, mind-expansion and merriment for the past 13 years.

This Saturday, April 28th, beginning at 6 pm, the Warehouse is having a reception for two shows opening this weekend: Watch this Space consists of work from “animators, filmmakers and other media daredevils” that will be projected in the Warehouse Cafe & Bar’s central airwell; No description is available for the group show NO REPRESENTATION [abstraction in the capital], but the title would seem to speak for itself.

So, after a day of brainercise at Learn-A-Palooza, come out and support the Warehouse this Saturday!

…Or Teach. Learn-A-Palooza is a community wide event in Adams Morgan, Dupont Circle, and other neighborhoods in Washington DC. This Saturday April 28th, this knowledge-sharing festival has something to offer everyone. Classes range from “Understanding your credit report” to “Modern dance”. Click here for the full days’ schedule of over 65 classes.

The 2007 Visions in Feminism Conference is this Saturday, April 28. As observed by keynote speaker Elaine Brown, the current political climate hasn’t been this ripe for wide-spread activism since the ’60’s. Building community, an essential ingredient in the process to bring about positive social change, is this years’ Conference theme. Registration is cheap and the day’s workshops and panel discussions are sure to inspire. The Conference begins at 9am at American University.

Click here for additional info about the Conference. Click here and here for more about former Black Panther Party leader and keynote speaker, Elaine Brown.