In May of 1963, US Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy convened a meeting of black representatives from the realms of politics, academia, and the arts. The remarkable gathering included James Baldwin, Lena Horne, Lorraine Hansberry, Harry Belafonte, social psychologist Kenneth Clark, president of the Chicago Urban League Edwin Berry, and Jerome Smith, a young activist and CORE fieldworker. Kennedy offered defensive platitudes of his record on civil rights; Clark, Hansberry, and others tried to impress upon him the inadequacy of the federal response to the situation in the south. Both sides spoke past each other until the meeting was brought to a halt by the soft-spoken yet passionate interruption of Jerome Smith. >>

Dancing in front of the May Day march against the state of Arizona's draconian anti-immigration laws down Broadway in New York City, one protestor in festive spring drag. >>

Two of the more influential books that have taken swipe at our contemporary intellectual property landscape concerned themselves with trademark, logos, and capitalism. Here I am thinking of Rosemary Coombe's seminal The Cultural Life of Intellectual Property and Naomi Klein's more activist take on the subject, No Logo. What would happen if you condensed the arguments in these two books into a 15 minute video? >>

I'm no native informant. But I gather that the song featured prominently in the Broadway show Fela! means something like "nobody hates something as useful as water." Make yourself as indispensable as this, goes the implied wisdom, and any detractors you gain will just look silly. An appropriate motto for a musician like Fela Anikulapo-Kuti ... >>