
At long last I'm posting about my new artwork Knit for Defense which premiered at the Renwick Gallery this summer in DC as part of 40 Under 40: Craft Futures exhibition curated by Nicholas Bell (up July 20, 2012 - Feb 2013).
Here's an interview with Jenny Gill of Creative Capital In Focus Cat Mazza's Knit for Defense
I have a little sound bite in Neda Ulaby's story Are All Young Artists 'Post-9/11' Artists? that aired today on NPR's Weekend Edition.
Link to show at Renwick Gallery
The soft cover catalog with Sabrina's Gschwandtner's artwork (!) on cover is available on Yale University Press. It includes nice essays including "body craft: preaching, performance, and process" by Julia Bryan-Wilson.
The Smithsonian American Art Museum's has acquired the piece for permanent collection.
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Eight women stood in a line opposite the Kremlin, neon balaclavas hiding their faces, fists pounding the air in rugged defiance. Before police carted them off, the members of Pussy Riot managed to shout their way through a minute-long punk anthem: "Revolt in Russia – the charisma of protest / Revolt in Russia, Putin's got scared!" LINK TO Guardian article (via Malav)
Knit balaclava pattern here LINK
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The International Labor Rights Forum posted a "Garment and Textile Worker Organizing,
Then and Now" handout for the 100 year anniversary of the Bread and Roses strike in Lawerence, Massachusetts. Here's the link. Thanks Liana.
Trade unions and church groups in the Philippines have joined together in calling a boycott of Philippine Airlines and Air Philippines in solidarity with the Philippine Airlines Employees’ Association (PALEA).
I’m writing to ask you to make your voice heard in support of this boycott. Let Lucio Tan, owner of both airlines, know that you won’t fly PAL or AirPhil until locked-out workers have been reinstated to their regular jobs.
Philippine Airlines is putting into place a plan to outsource its ground crew, which would result in deep pay cuts and job insecurity with the downgrading of employees from regular to contractual hires. On September 27, the PALEA union launched a protest at Manila airport that paralyzed the operations of Philippine Airlines. In response, Philippine Airlines and the government forcibly evicted the protesting workers. Since then, Philippine Airlines locked-out 2,600 airport services, catering and call center workers, and terminated them from their jobs on October 1. The workers have set up protest camps and are running continuous picket lines. They are calling for our solidarity.
It’s time to up the pressure. The company’s line, as quoted in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, is: “No amount of rallies, protest actions or letters of support/complaints from sympathetic groups both within and outside the country could change the fact that PAL has already spun off and outsourced its non-core businesses.” But we know that the airlines cannot withstand a boycott. PAL and AirPhil rely on end-of-year holidays travel for their profit line. If a large enough group of us join the boycott publicly, we will have an impact.
Take a moment to click here to send a letter to Philippine Airlines and the Philippine government.
The PALEA union likens its struggle to that of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) union in 1981. Those familiar with U.S. labor history will recall: when 13,000 air traffic controllers went on strike, Ronald Reagan fired the union supporters and broke the union. As a result, the bargaining power of American workers and labor unions was severely undermined. Let’s act together for a better future for airline workers who are facing job loss and state-sponsored repression today. Now is the time to join with PALEA in their call for justice.
In solidarity,
Brian Campbell
Director, Policy and Legal Programs
International Labor Rights Forum
She earned her Ph.D in History from UCLA in 1974. In the 1960s and 1970s, she was active in the anti-Vietnam War and radical left movements and worked closely with the SDS, the Weather Underground, and the African National Congress. She was also very active in the women's rights movement, and from 1968–1970 was a leading figure, along with Maureen Maynes, Dana Densmore and Betsy Warrior, in the radical feminist group, Cell 16.
In 1977, she and Jimmie Durham organised the Conference on Indians in the Americas in Geneva. She has authored a number of scholarly books and articles on Native American history, and has published three memoirs, Red Dirt: Growing Up Okie (1997); Outlaw Woman: A Memoir of the War Years, 1960–1975 (2002); and Blood on the Border (2005), which is about what she saw during the Nicaraguan Contra war against the Sandinistas in the 1980s. Outlaw Woman won recognition from the Organization of American Historians as a 2003 finalist for the Liberty Legacy Foundation Award in the field of American civil rights struggles. Her writing has also appeared in Monthly Review and The Nation, and on the CounterPunch website. She is presently Professor Emerita of Ethnic Studies at California State University, Hayward.
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