I’m really impressed with the clarity amidst the complexity of Marlon‘s argument here. While cutting and to the point, its logic opens up a door for each encounter, each action, we take through a precise lens. In regard to so many aspects of power and acquiescence which we encounter daily, it’s exactly the type of question we should be asking of ourselves.
Marlon lives in the building above Beyond Repair, so considering I know he’s watching… MPLS folks, what do you have in mind? How can an expanded view of publication (as in The Act of Public-Making) strengthen anti-racist action and consciousness in the 9th Ward and further? Give it some thought. Have some ideas? Come down to the shop and let’s figure out what we can do to implement it.
What does an abundant neighborhood look like? This is a question that I think about a lot. The 9th Ward is more than a bit of a “food desert ,” especially when it concerns fresh, healthy, and affordable produce.
It’s with this in mind that I’m really excited to have had folks from Twin Cities Agricultural Land Trust down at the shop today. A group of urban farmers, academics, and activists, TCALT advocates for re-zoning strategies that lobby for municipal owned, and / or vacant, land to be made available as land trusts for urban farming.
TCALT will be starting a recurring get-together in association with Beyond Repair. Likely the first gathering will be towards the end of the month.
Considering the differences in experience, income, and generalized desires at play in any one neighborhood, what tools and agreements allow for the greatest amount of input and autonomy wherein people get to live their lives, without the effect of us “living all over one another?” Especially when taking into account the ever present force of voices from outside the neighborhood that seemingly need to be responded to.
Simply put, how do we allow for true democracy in the micro without the loudest participants coming out on top?
Publics and Publication: A Conversation with Emory Douglas
As part of an intermittent series of conversations taking place at Beyond Repair entitled Publics and Publication, Emory Douglas (artist and former Minister of Culture for The Black Panther Party) and Sam Gould (Editor of Red76) will discuss the role of the BPP’s newspaper, The Black Panther, as not simply a fixed object existing to move information along, but a very specific device to form a public around the desires and ideals of the Black Panther Party and its orbit.
The conversation will touch on both the practical elements of putting out the paper, but equally as much the theoretical role and value of The Black Panther and how it served as a tool to illustrate distance between individuals, a device that opened up a space of questioning for the reader, pragmatically, within their day. Inasmuch The Black Panther was both a physical object, allowed to travel relatively freely within the world, but just as much a subject, a tool for public-making afforded a nature as complex as its readership.
Not solely with an eye towards the past, the conversation will utilize the history and role of the paper in its moment as a way to consider the tactical uses of publication within our own moment, both here in Minneapolis’s 9th Ward, and further afield.
Early in the new year a book will be produced from the evenings discussion, available for sale at Beyond Repair and online. Sales from the book will be used to create new actions, publications, programs, and more to address the role of the 3rd Precinct within the 9th Ward of South Minneapolis and how the precincts actions affect the quality of life of 9th Ward residents.
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We’d very much like to thank the folks at Juxtaposition Arts, as well as Penumbra Theatre, and the Walker Art Center, for their support and collaboration in bringing Mr. Douglas to Minneapolis and Beyond Repair.
