New Night Babies Live with Jokaa at Sudblock Berlin on October 20th + 2 more shows

Timberland said it best, "It's been a long time...", yall know the rest. Flow's coming to Berlin for a whole month and we have a show October 20th at Suedblock (Kottbusser Tor) and October 27th in Paris at Sis Dee's event. Info on that show will be up soon. Flow will be at Werkstatt der Kulturen in Berlin on October 29th and we are working hard to get as many dates as possible for October and November.

Phil will be back from his tour in South Africa next week and there will certainly be pictures and stories to share of his awesome book/performance tour there. Check out Die Akte James Knopf (The Jim Button Files) here.

The internet (and Wolf of Spokenword Berlin) brought Italian band Sense of Akasha and Flow into collaboration with each other. Lyrics from "Superstar" (last track on Of Brickwalls and Breezeways) is featured on SOA's new album Splendid Isolation (track 7).

Be back soon. Til then, never give up.

Fear: the Gift (as in poison) that keeps on giving.

I would've been pissed if my flight had been delayed for some saggin. Now, I don't understand it just like the next person, but then again who says I want to see half naked Calvin Klein ads plastered up and down Broadway either? This whole thing is an issue of cultural value and who's contributing to the capital landscape of this country. Strangely, the ones historically marginalized have been the driving force behind the success of this country. Even today with all of this anti-immigration ridiculousness, were it not for the Latino population of America, shit would be falling apart even more around here. So now, I ask, maybe the saggin pants fad is a sight for sore eyes, but do we really, really give a shit? I don't think we do. I think we just like to find things to bitch about and tax, we like to do that too. There's a more important conversation to have and it won't happen by criminalizing people. When will we learn that lesson? Ugggh. You can't throw everybody in jail America, YOU CANT AFFORD IT! Stay in your lane, save some money and invest in some communication skills. Haven't you heard, talk is CHEAP!

Another mis-representation of the whole story...

No, the most dangerous place for an African American is in the belly of the US prison industrial complex, the clutches of institutional racism which evolves daily through mass media representations that use cute brown babies (like this one) to make sweeping generalizations about an entire race of people. It was as cargo on slave ships, the front lines of the Civil War, Vietnam War and the war against Jim KKKrow. Where's the large, white block print about all that? Call all the spades at the same time, that's all I'm saying.

If you want to have a conversation about saving lives, do it wholeheartedly. Crack open the wound so it can heal or breathe. If the message is about community activism, activate the community dialogue. To me, the caption may as well have read: "Say it loud, you broke and you proud."

One Day Soon

I lay here, admittedly jaded and disappointed in the institution of education. I'm compelled to reflect on my experience of becoming a teacher because I can't sleep; my heart beat is irregular and I'm unsettled, feeling some kind of way. I'm not sure what my thoughts were when I started my education program. I have always been good at school so when the "stock market crashed", as I graduated from NYU with my first master's degree, and finding a job became a daunting task, I was cornered. The question of what do you want to do with your life? held me in a dark corner and forced me to think, quickly and purposefully of an answer.

I evaluated my experience; the list of what I knew how to do was long. The list of what I could learn to do even more lengthy but the one thing I felt the desire to do the most was to teach. I remembered 4th grade and the smile on my teacher's face as she looked at me and said "you are smart". I could see me walking across the cafeteria in 6th grade and my TAG (talented and gifted) teacher beckoning me to come closer to say "your walk is regal. You are like the African queens who used to rule". I recall 7th grade and my teacher and friend saying "don't mind the ones who boo you on stage. You will run someone's business one day." Or better yet, run your own, as a teacher would later decide for me. Many other moments of encouragement became my impetus to teach. It is as if I knew the only chance this world has at world peace rests on the backs of its teachers. We are the ones having one-on-one sessions with the future every day. Tomorrow's people are our pupils and I wanted very much to give back the gratitude I felt for the teachers who took the time to speak words of love and inspiration to me.

My only dilemma was that my education background was missing one sheet of paper. A teaching certificate. I thought it absurd that the desire to teach was alas not enough. My years of education and higher education and diverse world education, was not good enough for the system. There was no one to advocate on my behalf and say, here's an exception to the bureaucracy, as there should be. No one to say the paperwork requirement needs to be waived and so after getting rejected from alternative education programs, near broke and impoverished, I enrolled in the first program that would have me. I knew enough about financing graduate school to understand that student financial lenders would love to enslave me with loan debt and education institutions would happily play their part in the scam. I enrolled in school and began this two year journey toward my teaching certificate. What a scam it is to have to pay to do what you love, the oldest yet most common trick in the book. Institutionalized classism. Life taxed. The other way to get eaten alive. But what can you do, start a business with no money? Go dark? (which I considered often)

So here I am, in my last semester. Paying for student teaching as I work for free. Paying to do what I've been doing the last seven years. Paying, essentially, for a piece of paper that says the state of New York and any other state that honors the certificate, can trust that I know what I say I know. All I can do is shake my head at the way things work and each and every day encourage my students to find a better way to structure the world through lesson plans that give hope and content that is refreshing. Curriculum where the instructional plan is fluid and the motivation says we are in this together. That is my dream. Maybe this is what my teachers saw in me--the norm they also wanted to disrupt. Perhaps it will come to pass one day soon, I have hope. I always have hope.

New Night Babies- sax bass cello (2006)

New Night Babies - Freedom. live@Cafe Burger, 2006

Translation of Green Party in Kaarst Statement by Julia and Sharon

Official Statement

Background:
The Greens launched their poster campaign "There is only one reason to vote black" at the beginning of August 2009 as part of the "G51 - Time for Green" campaign in the town centre of Kaarst. It is part of a poster series that has been developed in cooperation with the agency Ocean8 and which is limited to this area.

Simultaneous to the "G51" campaign, the main goal of the Green Party's Kaarst office has been to break the absolute majority of the CDU (Christian Democratic Union). The "G51" campaign marks the preliminary stage of the regional elections and has been running since June 2009.

The "G51" campaign has hinted at the need to break the CDU majority in an abstract way. The current poster series aims to make this goal even more explicit, with the use of the motto "there is only one reason to vote black". Also this statement is intended to call upon people to vote Green instead of Black.

Contrary to opinions of certain individuals, there was no intention to make use of racist images through the depiction of dark-skinned buttocks. Similarly, with the choice of female buttocks there was no intention to make use of sexist images. The poster portrays two women hugging each other.

The Green Party in particular have politics which stand out for their commitment to tolerance, Weltoffenheit and equality. Topics like integration as well as "Women's political issues" are at the core of our work. The criticisms we have received regarding the racist or sexist nature of the images on our poster are therefore not teneble. If someone should have this impression we can only contradict them by refering to our principals. Indeed, this poster could be seen to be "anti-racist" since we have received exactly this feedback from people with a migration background.

We certainly agree that the poster "there is only one reason to vote black" is a provocative element in the election campaign. It is not intended to hurt anyone's feelings. It is intended to raise awareness of Green politics, what the Green Party stands for and the election goal ("G51"). Furthermore, it should shake people up and it provides a stark contrast to the posters of the other political parties, which tend to use standard images and tired slogans for their campaigns.

Alongside the well-grounded contents of the Green political agenda, the party stands for "sassy" ideas, innovation and - occasionally - unconventional election campaign methods. This poster represents a contribution to this.




Explanatory notes:
* CDU is the Christian Democratic Union - equivalent to the Conservative Party in the UK / Republicans in the US
* Black is the official colour of the CDU.
* Weltoffenheit is a German concept that is meant to symbolise inclusiveness, multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism.

(Translation by Julia Caroline Brilling & Sharon Dodua Otoo)