AN! Post
Who Makes Us
agitatejournalJade Wong Using dialogue and visuals, “Who Makes Us,” a 9-minute piece which invites viewers into a conversation between two college friends: myself, a child of Chinese immigrants, and Kiara, an immigrant from the Philippines. Through this conversation, we explore themes of invisible labor, motherhood, and community. The first part of the video focuses on…
আমাদের দেশ সংস্কারের স্বপ্নরেখা | Our Dreams for Reconstruction
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তুমি কে? আমি কে? বিকল্প! বিকল্প!Who are you? Who am I? Change! Change! আমরা বাংলাদেশের নিম্ন-আয়ের, নন-বাইনারি এবং আদিবাসী কুইয়ার মানুষদের একটি সংগঠন। শিক্ষার্থী ও তরুণ হিসেবে বাংলাদেশের চলমান বৈষম্যবিরোধী ছাত্র আন্দোলনের সাথে আমরা যুক্ত ছিলাম, আছি এবং থাকবো। বাংলাদেশকে ফ্যাসিবাদ মুক্ত করার এই ছাত্র-জনতা গণঅভ্যুত্থানে যারা আমাদের সাথে আছেন তাদের সকলকে আমরা সংহতি জানাই।…
Diverse Feminist Collective Open Letter
agitatejournal
“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”― Audre Lorde “Everything that is experimented on the Hills will be implemented in the plain land.” —Kalpana Chakma Dear Reader, We are a newly formed collective of activists, artists, researchers, teachers, human rights defenders, and individuals from systematically…
The Power of ‘Ordinary Conversations’: A Review of Madhumita Dutta’s ‘Mobile Girls Koottam’
agitatejournalBy Nithya Rajan Feminist research is increasingly moving towards collaborative research methodologies that center the experiences, voices, and knowledge of the people being written about and disrupt the researcher-researched dynamic through a dialogic process. Even so, very rarely are we presented with unanalysed narratives and stories of those whose lives we seek to understand. Madhumita …
The Red Muharram: An Ode to the Martyrs of July
agitatejournalNironjon Artist’s Statement The Patriotic Olive green terror marching past the maimed corpses of the deceased after emptying barrels of 7.62mm and its genocidal appetite, pig sirens became our midnight lullabies while the drones & Helicopters dropping sound grenades as if we were not already deafened from the fallacious gibberish of news headlines. The balcony…
Exodus from Ireland
agitatejournalMarwan Makhoul Hindi translation by Richa Nagar | Urdu translation by Abdul Aijaz & Gwendolyn Kirk I arrived in Ireland and my coat cried out:You’ve gone abroad, my friend, but left me at home!Perhaps it was an omen,for missiles were embracing over my familyin Galilee, when I weakened and accepted Annemarie’s invitation.I came to read…
“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…
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,…
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…
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,…
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…
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…
‘If I Must Die’ by Refaat Alareer, with Translations
agitatejournalPalestinian in Hiroshima
agitatejournalBy Mazin Qumsiyeh I and Oliver Stone both spoke at Hiroshima on the anniversary of the first nuclear bombing in human history and we are slated to speak in two days at Nagasaki on the anniversary of the second nuclear attack. My speech is below in English (I will send the Japanese version later). These…
Women 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.…
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…
Artwork
agitatejournal
by Sunil Awachar Dr Sunil Abhiman Awachar is a poet, painter and Assistant Professor at the Department of Marathi, University of Mumbai, India. He is a full-time activist in the Dalit human rights movement. He has published four anthologies of poetry in Marathi, that include ‘Global vartamanachya kavita (2008)’ ‘Mi mahasattechya darashi katora gheun ubha…
(Too) Great Expectations? On Fieldwork, Guidelines, and Ethics in Human Geography
agitatejournalby Mark Anthony Arceño, Deondre Smiles, Emelie Bailey, Anurag Mazumdar, Thelma Vélez, J.P. Wilson, Kelly Yotebieng, and Kendra McSweeney ABSTRACT This blog post engages the American Association of Geographers’ (AAG) 2009 “Statement on Professional Ethics.” We argue that the Statement falls short in helping us (students) understand how we know if we are doing…
Beautiful Damaged People
agitatejournalby Abhay Flavian Xaxa Among the doom and gloom they smile, Mistaken for idiots by the mad rational world. The Adivasis, beautifully damaged people! On the treasures of iron, gold and diamond they sit, Poor and powerless, holding the curse of nature. The curse of loving their land , water, forest, where they prefer…
कुठली मेथडॉलॉजी… Which Methodology…
agitatejournalby विनायक लष्कर (Vinayak Lashkar) कुठली मेथडॉलॉजी… -विनायक लष्कर कुठली मेथडॉलॉजी वापरून आमच्या जिवंतपणाचं तुम्ही संशोधन करताय गुर्जीतुमच्या मेलेल्या सिद्धांतांनीआमचं जिवंत असणं कधीच नाकारून टाकलंय…संख्या फेकण्यात तर तुम्ही सराईत तज्ञ आहात गुर्जीपण कोणत्या पद्धती वापरून तुम्ही करणार आहातआमच्या शोषलेल्या रक्ताचं गुणात्मक विश्लेषण…संशोधन पेपरांचे तर तुम्ही ढिगावर ढिग रचतच चाललाय गुर्जीपण आमच्या घामाची शाई तुम्हाला कधीच उमटवता येणार नाही कागदावर…राष्ट्रीय, आंतरराष्ट्रीय पातळीवर टाय कोट…
‘We are part of the tapestry’: Black Iranians launch collective
agitatejournal
Rest
agitatejournalby Amoke Kubat These times; Coronavirus now called COVID-19. The whole world is on lockdown. People are fearful, confused, defiant and restless. Somebody must have cried out from the wilderness, “What next, God?” I asked myself privately, “Is this when Hell freezes over?” I am sleepless with such questions. I am concerned but not…
Conversations on Tamil Feminist Theater, hosted by Marappachi Theater (Part 2)
agitatejournalThis is the second installment in a two-part series on Tamil Feminist Theater We live in a time when conflict and destruction are no longer the exception but the norm. It may be natural disasters or conflicts created by State and non-state institutions and individuals. It often feels like a dark cloud is looming over…
Conversations on Tamil Feminist Theater, hosted by Marappachi Theater (Part 1)
agitatejournalThis is the first installment in a two-part series on Tamil Feminist Theater We live in a time when conflict and destruction are no longer the exception but the norm. It may be natural disasters or conflicts created by State and non-state institutions and individuals. It often feels like a dark cloud is looming over…
Healthy Living
agitatejournalWe Belong to the Land
agitatejournalby Antônio Bispo dos Santos Translated by Carmela Zigoni1 I. When I provoke a debate about colonization, the quilombos2, their manners and their meanings, I do not want to position myself as a thinker. Instead, I am positioning myself as a translator. My elders formed me first through orality, but they put me in school…
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…
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…
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…