A Brutal Take and a Mother's Strength
Behind Alley Cat Cafe, Downtown Pontiac, MI.
Here's a brutal take on non-profit organizations from "Social Service or Social Change?" by Paul Kivel.
One strategy used by the ruling class to maintain the social order has been to fund social welfare programs through government and non-profit agencies. This creates the appearance that the government is responsive, creating an illusion of “progress” while recruiting buffer-zone agents from the groups of people demanding change of the system. But more often than not, the programs are severely underfunded, overregulated; more, they merely provide services, without addressing the structural issues as required to actually eliminate the injustice or inequality motivating people to organize in the first place.
I'm reminded of what I've heard one Detroit organizer say more than once in community settings: "Non-profits are the banks dressed up in drag." Kivel goes on to pinpoint the squeeze community folks might find themselves in when they work for non-profits.
Hiring community leaders into paid program and administration jobs separates them from their communities by making them beholden to the governmental and non-profit bureaucracies that employ them, rather than to the communities they are trying to serve.
This squeeze can be real, and it's not over once you leave the non-profit. You might find relationships altered, in need of repair, or simply over.
Erik Nielson interviewed Carrie Stewart, the mother of NYC artist Michael Stewart who was killed by police in 1983 after allegedly tagging the wall of a train station. Covered by the New York Times, Stewart's death inspired Basquiat to create Defacement (The Death of Michael Stewart). Nielson was nervousness about interviewing Mrs. Steward, not wanting to retraumatize her by bringing up her son's murder. Here is what Nielson said about the hour long conversation with her.
Full of strength and composure, and remarkably free from bitterness, Mrs. Stewart never took her eye off the political significance of his death. Citing New York's stop-and-frisk laws and the ongoing abuses faced by people of color nationwide, she said she wanted people to remember that her son fell prey to an America that victimizes young men like her son "all the time." Her voice quavered only once, and it wasn't when she recounted the terrible night of Michael's death; it was when she reflected upon the abuses that still persist, even after 30 years.
A short tour of Hello Records in Detroit, from about knee-high:
Status Board
Reading: Grant application requirements. Reading them very closely.
Writing: The last push on a conference proposal with a group of graduate students from my fall BreakBeat Lit course. We're "taking our talents" to the Sound Studies, Writing, and Rhetoric conference this fall in Detroit. Of course, after we made the submission deadline, said deadline was then extended a week. So it goes.
Listening: A quick dive into Khruangbin. What an incredible band. Here's their tiny desk concert for starters.
Community: A 2-hour grant planning session with some artist friends in Detroit. We're making a play to pilot in schools the Live Listening Session they developed as part of their artistic practice. I hope the funders are as excited about it as I am.