Alex Juhasz's Podcast "black lives matter: expose the costs and histories of freedom"
Hi, I’m Alexandra Juhasz. This is the first Emergency Episode of We Need Gentle Truths for Now. The podcast engages in radical digital media literacy by enjoying a bite of education and a bit of poetry, creating humane responses to fake news and social media in the era of Covid-19. This extra episode is made during a time of uprising following the killing of George Floyd and other African Americans by police. It connects our serious concerns to two hardtruths: Black Lives Matter and Expose the Costs and Histories of Freedom.
On the sixth day of protest here in Brooklyn, I sent a text to Dr. Gabrielle Foreman, the Founding Director of the Colored Conventions Project and co-director of the Center for Black Digital Research at Penn State. Would she act quickly to contribute what she is so well equipped to offer: hard-earned wisdom about trust, the civic contract, video, poetry, and civil rights for Black Americans?
We decided to play the audio from Situation 8, one of a series of Situation videos Claudia made with her husband John Lucas from 2015-2017. Their multi-genre responses to contemporary America exist around public experiences in individual lives. In the eleven-minute sound clip from the video that follows, we hear resonances of two hardtruths written in 2017 for my online primmer on fake news. #97 focuses on this work and Claudia’s poetic approach to images of black death: “The free press is, indeed, crucial and critical for efforts to enliven democracy. But we might do well to grapple with the hard truth that its marriage to advertising—and to basest forms of U.S. racial injustice—exposes the costs and histories of freedom.”
I wrote hardtruth #44: “Black Lives Matter.” I was reflecting on photographs unearthed to help identify the 272 slaves whose sale funded Georgetown University. I wrote: “The personal, political, and historical connections between reality and representation are riven with power, beauty, contradiction, and loss.”
Gabrielle: I was really taken, when you asked me to take a look at several of the hard truths in this particular historical moment where we are in the streets, where George Floyd's death is resonating around the world, as a fissure, as a crack in a system of greed and avarice and late capitalism, that allows so much money to consolidate in the hands of so few, when the Corona virus is bankrupting and leaving impoverished in so many ways, not only the poorest of our country, but the principles that this country likes to claim itself, are also being laid bare as impoverished, as anemic, as hypocritical. And so I took from one of the entries from the hundred hard truths this statement: “the personal political and historical connections between reality and representation are riven with power, beauty, contradiction, and loss.”
continues……. [note to Matt. Basically let her speak as is, just tighten for necessary corrections or repetitions]... continues
And my father wrote three short haikus. Well, I guess haikus are short by definition. They’re called Das Kapital. And I'd like to read them now. He says: “Wherever having/ money matters more than how/ you get it, crime rules. “Connections between the difference between reality and representation are riven with power contradiction and loss. Das Kapital II: “Hustlin’ is the art/ of practicing capitalism/ with no capital.” Looting is what that hustlin’ is called. “It's the personal political and historical connection between reality and representation, which is riven with power, contradiction and loss.” And Das Kapital III: “Greed motivates more/ efficiently than hate/ and for longer than love.” We talk about “Love Wins” in the face of gun violence in the United States. And this poem makes me wonder if love wins when it is pitched in battle against greed. “Greed motivates more/ efficiently than hate/ and for longer than love.” I only hope my father's words are not true. Even when history teaches us that here, historically, and here, now, they resonate with a righteous truth that we're living through right now.
. . . Did you get that? Were you there?
I'm in awe and I'm ending the recording now.
Thank you for listening to this Emergency Episode of We Need Gentle Truths for Now, Black Lives Matter: expose the costs and histories of freedom. We have heard the wisdom of Pier Gabrielle Foreman who learned from her mother, Lynn Foreman, and father, Kent Foreman, whom the Chicago Tribune has called the “elder statesman of spoken word.”
To learn more about his poetry, as well as the larger Fake News Poetry project, please see the embedded links.
This episode was produced, written and read by Alexandra Juhasz. It was directed and edited by Matthew Hittle and copy edited by Gavin McCormick. Music by Noah Chevan. Thank you for listening.
FOR ACAT
Summary
We engage in radical digital media literacy by enjoying a bite of education and a bit of poetry, creating humane responses to fake news and social media in the era of Covid-19. This episode was made quickly during a time of uprising following the killing of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade and countless other African Americans by police. It connects these serious concerns to two #100hardtruths: Black Lives Matter (#44) and Expose the Costs and Histories of Freedom (#77), written by Dr. Gabrielle Foreman (@profgabrielle), the Founding Director of the Colored Conventions Project and Co-Director of the Center for Black Digital Research at Penn State University. In her elegant, eloquent oration, Dr. Foreman elaborates on the connections between African-American history, photography, the advertisement and sale of slaves, and the American press, all underwritten by the basest forms of U.S. racial injustice, underpinning this moment and our ongoing efforts for freedom. She ends with three poems by her father, Kent Foreman, Das Kapital I, II, and III, as a way to testify to the linked frictions between the reality and representations of capital and its many associated lootings.
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Join us!
Read or respond to a poem or hardtruth found at the online primer of digital media literacy, #100hardtruths-#fakenews or fakenews-poetry.org.
Organize your own Fake News Poetry Workshop.
Reach out with questions or content @ 100hardtruths@gmail.com.
Twitter: @100HardTruths
Instagram: #100HardTruths
YouTube: 100 Hard Truths
#BlackLivesMatter