AN! Post
AGITATE! as Creative Commons: AGITATE! Editorial Collective Speaks to Nancy Sims
agitatejournalThis interview was compiled by Nancy Sims, Copyright Program Librarian at the University of Minnesota for Against the Grain. It was published in the Charleston Hub on November 30, 2021. AGITATE! Editorial Collective members Keavy McFadden, Richa Nagar, Sara Musaifer, Emina Bužinkić, Nithya Rajan, Sima Shakhsari, and Samira Musleh participated in the interview. Introducing AGITATE!…
Gaza Monologues in the Balkans
agitatejournalPeople and collectives across geographies, including many that are part of the AGITATE! Community took up ASHTAR Theatre’s call for solidarity with Gaza. Our comrades from the Balkans organized the translation, reading, performance and extensive sharing of Gaza Monologues on the International Day of Solidarity with Palestine, observed on Wednesday, Nov 29th. The Free Palestine…
Nature with Culture: Learning from Afro-Colombian feminists to imagine gender beyond the human
agitatejournalBy Sowmya Ramanathan *This is part of the multi-part series Holding Movements, Agitating Epistemes: Remembering, Retelling, and Dreaming for Justice convened and co-edited by Richa Nagar and Ponni Arasu. Read the Series Co-editors’ Prologue to this piece here.* Does a mangrove have a gender? Do the oceans? The rivers? The skies? If you are…
Why the Chinese are Making a Catastrophic Mistake in Xinjiang
agitatejournalby Daanish Mustafa Malice against children is emblematic of evil in the Abrahamic religious tradition. The Old Testament tells the story of how the Pharaoh ordered the murder of every male Hebrew child born in Egypt to protect himself against the Messiah—Moses (es)—that the shamans had foretold would destroy him. Ironically, he ended up…
Some Thoughts on the U.S. Presidential Election
agitatejournalby Sima Shakhsari As we anxiously wait for the results of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, many who are rightly worried about the ramifications of another four years under Trump’s presidency have hoped that Trump’s removal would restore the American democracy. This hope for restoration raises several concerns, that while not particular to this…
The Black Radical Tradition Can Help Us Imagine a More Just World
agitatejournalby Brian Lozenski Thanks to Truthout and author Brian Lozenski for granting us the permission to reprint this article on AGITATE Now!. You can access the original article here, published originally on June 23, 2020. Just as quickly as protests mounted in cities and towns across the country after George Floyd joined the ever-growing…
On the Protests in Iran
agitatejournalBy Sima Shakhsari 23 September 2022 I got an interview request by a journalist from Switzerland and these are the questions: “My main question is why autocrats, including the Iranian regime, fear women and queer movements/activism and perceive them as a threat to their survival. Why is there a need to control women’s bodies? What…
Brownness and Being in the Twenty-First Century
agitatejournalBy Joy Mazahreh Brown.ness (n.)Being Brown;The state of being reduced to storing corpses in ice cream trucks;Or pleading for help in English at a “press conference” in front of Al-Shifa Hospital (held by children);Or trying to convince the world that you are dying by showing the corpses of loved ones on camera Teta…
A friend is passing on today…
agitatejournalWomen of Color Should Be the Ones Remaking U.S. Foreign Policy
agitatejournalby Christine Ahn, Yifat Susskind, and Cindy Wiesner In the 2020 presidential election, Black women, Indigenous women and people of color across the country delivered the votes to throw Donald Trump out of office. These voters want a new era in policy priorities, requiring radical change to the status quo—not just when it comes to U.S.…
Sci-Fi as Accessible Movement Building: A Review of Larissa Lai’s “The Tiger Flu”
agitatejournalby Chloe Dunston The Tiger Flu is set in the year 2145, which author Larissa Lai depicts as a “time after oil” divided by factions, gender, disease, and technology. After years of greedy leadership, environmental degradation, and the exhaustion of fossil fuels, Saltwater City and its outskirts stand alone in what was formerly Vancouver, Canada.…
Woman Life Freedom: A Panel on the Protests in Iran
agitatejournalMahsa Amini, a 22-year old Kurdish-Iranian woman who died while in the custody of the Iranian Guidance Patrol, has become the symbol of the massive protests in Iran. Iranian women have been in the forefront of the protests, removing their hijabs and/or cutting their hair. In this conversation, Professors Yalda Hamidi, Minoo Moallem, and Fatemeh…
Stories, Healing, Transformation: A Conversation with Amoke Kubat
agitatejournalIn October 2023, Amoke Kubat—artist, storyteller, activist, and performer—visited Approaches to Knowledge and Truth: Ways of Knowing in Development Studies and Social Change, a graduate seminar organized and facilitated by Richa Nagar through the Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change at the University of Minnesota. The participants—Lindsey Willow Smith, Kaeda Sabrewing, Somayeh Nikoonazari,…
In Praise of Empathy
agitatejournalHealthy Living
agitatejournal“She has one thousand eyes, Our Mother Goddess Maadathy”: Exploring separation and invisible labor through Leena Manimekalai’s strategic deifications
agitatejournal
by Drishadwati Bargi Director Leena Manimekalai’s Maadathy: An Un-Fairy Tale (2021) belongs to a historical moment when anti-caste cinema and in extension an anti-caste audience have already acquired a vibrant presence in India and the diaspora, thanks to the works of Nagaraj Manjule, Mari Selvaraj, Pa. Ranjith, Neeraj Ghaywan among others. What is perhaps unique…
For Life, When Death Crumbles
agitatejournal
By Sima Shakhsari Mahsa (Jina) Amini, a 22-year old Kurdish-Iranian woman, died in the hospital on September 16, 2022, three days after being arrested by the Iranian Guidance Patrol (also known as the “morality police” in English ) for her alleged “improper hijab.” Her murder became the mobilizing cry for the massive protests that have…
The Gatherer’s Call: For the Love of Prayer and Protest
agitatejournalBy Humera Afridi Power, kinship, beauty, and grace evince themselves in unified, embodied supplication. Hope and victory reside in solidarity. This protest was prayer in action. There is a certain magic to Jummah. That midday hour on Friday is imbued with a sweetness which on some lucky Fridays extends a numinous quality all the…
A Frank Discussion with Iranian Americans about COVID19 and US Sanctions on Iran
agitatejournalby CODEPINK It’s one thing to read news accounts about US sanctions and the outbreak of coronavirus in Iran, but it’s another to hear first-hand accounts. The following is a frank discussion with six Iranian Americans about how the collapse of the Iranian economy and the healthcare crisis affect the lives of people back…
Singhu: The Unwritten
agitatejournalby Simona Sawhney This piece was originally published on Dalit Camera: Through Un-Touchable Eyes— a platform for narratives, public meetings, songs, talks, discussion on dalits. The response of the mainstream media to the protesting farmers at Singhu and Tikri, like that of the government, oscillates between pity and indignation. On the one hand, there…
Maadathy: An Unfairy Tale– Screening and Panel Discussion
agitatejournalby Leena Manimekalai, Bhavana Goparaju, Ajmina Kassim, and Semmalar Annam in conversation with Roja Suganthy-Singh On October 15th, 2021, AGITATE! launched the North American tour of Maadathy: An Unfairy Tale in collaboration with the Department of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies at the University of Minnesota.1 The event included a screening of this film, followed…
Dear Rohith…
agitatejournalBy Ponni Arasu This letter is part of Holding Movements, Agitating Epistemes: A Multipart Series On Remembering, Retelling, And Dreaming For Justice co-convened and co-edited by Richa Nagar and Ponni Arasu. I dedicate this piece to Radhika Vemula, Rohith Vemula’s mother and to A. Mangai aka V. Padma, my mother. Two women who fight for…
Making Home, Not Taking It: Anti-Imperialism and Anti-Zionism from South Africa Today
agitatejournalBy Koni Benson This article was originally published on African Arguments (February 17, 2024), and is republished here with the author’s permission. It is common to hear people say that history repeats itself, but history does not repeat itself; people repeat themselves, which is why it is important to place the struggle for Palestinian liberation,…
Black Lives Matter and Savarna Supremacy
agitatejournalby Vishal Jamkar and Richa Nagar We begin here, with Sharpton’s words, as two writers whose lives are lived across the borders of India and the Twin Cities of Minneapolis-Saint Paul, where Floyd’s murder has led to a great global uprising against racist and colonial settler structures and logics of the United States and…
Life After an Earthquake is the Labor of Reconstruction
agitatejournalby Emina Bužinkić According to the Volcano Discovery network, over the last 30 days, Croatia was shaken by at least 500 earthquakes, leaving at least seven people dead, dozens were injured, and thousands had to leave their homes. The strongest one — measuring at a 6.4 magnitude — struck the area around Petrinja, central Croatia, on December…
Moving Memories: An Archive of Bangladeshi Queer Migrants in the US
agitatejournalCurated by Efadul Huq and Rasel Ahmed for SAADA Moving Memories is an archive of Bangladeshi Queer migrants in the US. The archive is hosted by SAADA (South Asian American Digital Archive) and was created in partnership with Queer Archives of the Bengal Delta. The exhibit centers the voices of ten Bangladeshi queer migrants whose…
Feminisms, Translations, Solidarities: A Conversation with the Translators and Editors of ‘The Purple Color of Kurdish Politics’
agitatejournalIn February 2023, AGITATE! launched our Feminist Knowledge Production event series, organized in collaboration with Richa Nagar’s graduate seminar on Feminist Knowledge Production at the University of Minnesota. We are pleased to share with you a recording of the first event in the series: a conversation with the translators and editors of ‘The Purple Color…
“We can do everything, but we can’t do it all at once”: Motherhood, Children’s Books, and Activism in Conversation with Madelaine Cahuas
agitatejournalFatemeh Nasr Esfahani & Wendy Lutter with Madelaine Cahuas Madelaine: Good morning. Hi, everyone! How are you all doing?[1]This conversation took place on December 1st, 2023, via Zoom, from 11:30 AM to 1:15 PM. Fatemeh: We’re doing great. We’re so excited that you can give us some time. Madelaine: Thank you. Fatemeh: Ok, so…
The Creative Process
agitatejournalby James Baldwin (1962) From Creative America, Ridge Press, 1962. Perhaps the primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid; the state of being alone. That all men are, when the chips are down, alone, is a banality—a banality because it is very…
How to Name and Claim Your Theoretical Approach
agitatejournalby Nadine Naber This essay was originally posted on Nadine Naber’s blog, Liberate Your Research. Since I launched Liberate Your Research, one thing is now more clear to me than ever before. Radical scholars, especially interdisciplinary activist scholars, face disproportionate levels of overwhelm and anxiety in academia. Lacking go-to theories, or theoretical blueprints, contributes to…