Performing the World 2012: In a World That Can't Be Saved...

Every two years I participate in a magical event held in New York City called Performing the World. This will be my 3rd year presenting as a grassroots independent political blogger based in New York City aligned with IndependentVoting.org -- and with a eye to the development of democracy internationally.

This year the conference is titled Performing the World 2012: Can Performance Change Save The World?  The conference schedule, including bios of all the presenters is now up on the website (www.performingtheworld.org) for your viewing pleasure!

My session is titled Developing Democracy Roundtable 2012

From the Arab Spring to the U.S. independent political movement, our world is in a state of motion. Attendees will join The Hankster in a discussion of the state of democracy internationally and what is needed to develop a participatory political culture. The first 20 participants will receive a copy of Developing Democracy, a documentary created from interviews with Performing the World 2010 attendees.

This year there are a number of democracy-focused sessions:

Can Kids Run a Town?
Dr. Porfirio Grazioli, Nadio La Gamba, Carrie Sackett
Young people learn democracy by performing democracy. Founded in the years after World
War II for Italy’s many orphaned children, today Boys’ & Girls’ Town of Italy is home
to young refugees from Africa, the Middle East and Eastern Europe.



Performance, Dialogue and Building Democratic Solidarity between Zimbabwe, Swaziland and South African Youth Activists
Betsi Pendry
Southern Africa has been torn apart by political conflict, violence and for many, by
the loss of its revolutionary history and potential. There is increasing conflict between
political youth groups in Swaziland, Zimbabwe and South Africa as Zimbabwe and
Swaziland slide into political chaos and South African Youth Congress linked to the ANC supports the "hands off" position of the ANC. The session will explore the activity of the Living Together Project, hoping to develop solidarity through developing the creative and performace skills of a group of political activists in the region.

Creating Democratic Space and Envisioning Peace: Theatre Confronting Violence and Fostering
Community Development in Zimbabwe
Daniel Maposa
This session gives a third degree examination on the use of applied theatre in nurturing social cohesion in the aftermath of politically motivated violence in Zimbabwe in 2008.

Pew Research: Partisan Ideology (A Philosophical Shell Game)

Moderate. Liberal. Conservative. Republican. Democrat. Independent.  With choices like these, who's to say what the Pew Research poll means! What does it mean to say you are a liberal or a conservative? What does it mean to say you are a Republican, Democrat or independent? And what does it mean to derive meaning from polls?

THE PARTIES
More Now See GOP as Very Conservative - Views of Parties' Ideologies (Pew Research) Nearly half of independents (47%) say their political views are moderate, about the same as last year. The remainder tilt conservative, with 33% saying they are either conservative (29%) or very conservative (4%); 17% say their views are either liberal (14%) or very liberal (3%).

Recommended chaser:
Whereas modernist conversation required a grounding in epistemological claims about why we think and feel the way we do when we try to influence each other, Newman and Holzman see that view of language as a kind of "aboutness" and as limiting. In contrast, they propose a view of language as something we perform in relationships, and they take readers beyond John Shotter's position that all meaning-making conversation occurs in a context of justification and argumentation. They suggest, instead, that new meaning is best created in a shared performance of meaning, and they discourage recitations or negotiation of meanings that we bring from our prior forms of "knowing". --  A Review of Fred Newman and Lois Holzman's The End of Knowing, By Tom Strong, Division of Applied Psychology at the University of Calgary

Women, Education and Peace in Afghanistan with Safida Begum

Women, Education and Peace in Afghanistan

with Safida Begum

Monday, May 2, 6:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.

All Stars Project, 543 West 43^rd Street (between 10^th and 11^th Avenues)

Free to the public

The United States has been at war in Afghanistan for ten years.  Yet how many of us know anything about the day-to-day life of ordinary people in this far away country?

The next offering from the Global Outreach Department of UX provides a chance to learn directly from Safida Begum, a pioneer of women’s education in her own country, who traveled to Afghanistan to help train teachers in a country where there are very few schools for girls or, if schools do exist, where they lack such necessities as water, washrooms, blackboards and furniture.  “Women, Education and Peace in Afghanistan” will be an interactive workshop in which Begum will lead the group in an exploration of why women and education are one of the keys to development and peace in Afghanistan.

The evening will be hosted by Lois Holzman, chair, UX Global Outreach and director, East Side Institute.

To RSVP, email Mary Fridley at mfridley@eastsideinstitute.org.

Independent Voter Roundup: Arizona, North Carolina, California, Virginia, New York and Then Some

TOP TWO OPEN PRIMARIES WOULD ENGAGE ARIZONA'S INDEPENDENT VOTERS

• Report backs idea of revamping primaries (by Channing Turner, Arizona Central) Arguments for reform persuaded Rep. Tom Chabin, D-Flagstaff, to author a resolution this legislative session that would haveallowed voters to decide whether Arizona should also adopt a single-ballot primary system, but the bill was never assigned to committee.

NORTH CAROLINA INDEPENDENT VOTERS AREN'T SATISFIED WITH STATUS QUO

• NC not responding well to new majority (Public Policy Polling) The key finding there is that independent voters, who gave GOP legislative candidates a 20 point advantage at the polls last year, now rate the new majority negatively by a 37/26 spread.

CALIFORNIA INDEPENDENT REDISTRICTING

• Dan Walters: Redistricting panel shows true colors of ideology (By Dan Walters, Sac Bee) The underlying stakes of redistricting were starkly evident in last week's maneuvering over the selection of advisers. The finalists for both contracts were seen by political insiders – and apparently by commissioners themselves – as having at least some political taint… Thus the overall tenor of the commission is definitely left-of-center -- no small irony given the right-of-center support for the ballot measures that created it.

VIRGINIA REDISTRICTING AND RACE

• Race and redistricting (EDITORIAL The Virginian-Pilot) Speakers at a public hearing this week in Norfolk raised a more provocative question: Can minority representation be increased by creating a second majority-minority congressional district or at least a new district with a black population of 40 percent or more?

NEW YORK

• Thousands Rally And March From City Hall To Wall Street (By James Lane, Hot Indie News [a lefty Green Party type online publication]) Oliver Gray, Associate Director of AFSCME District Council 37, whose members made up the largest part of the rally, said public sector workers will not allow the Governor to blame them for the so-called deficit. “How are we to blame,” he asked, “when the Governor wants to cut the taxes of the richest people in New York, and gives back to Wall Street investors $15 billion a year in stock transfer taxes?”… New York City Council member Charles Barron, who was the 2010 Freedom Party candidate for Governor of New York, contradicted Governor Cuomo and Mayor Bloomberg, who claim cuts are necessary because the state and city are “broke.” If the state is “broke,” he asked, why are taxes being cut for the richest 1 percent of the population, whose share of the state’s income has shot up to more than 35% from 10% since 1995. Their share of the city’s income is even higher, at 44%, he said.

EDUCATION REFORM

• 7 Essentials for Education Reform (Suzanne Tacheny KubachExecutive Director, Policy Innovators in Education (PIE) Network, Huffington Post) Over the past five years, education reform has gained enormous traction. A new generation of reform-minded policy makers has taken up the cause of transforming state school systems to prepare students for a dramatically changing economy, urged on by state-level advocacy groups who are playing a crucial role in advancing reform state by state. But while urgency has increased and many fresh faces have taken up the cause, the core ideas guiding education reform have remained remarkably stable, defying the ideological or partisan claims that can often stifle political change.
• Fulani and Newman on America’s Education Crisis (Lois Holzman) “Here is an idea for solving the education crisis in America. What if all the kids currently failing in school pretended to be good learners? What if all the adults – teachers, principals, administrators, parents – played along and pretended that the kids were school achievers, heading for college? What if this national “ensemble” pretended this was the case day after day, classroom after classroom, school district after school district?” ----- So begins “Let’s Pretend,” a special report on “Solving the Education Crisis is America” written by Lenora Fulani and Fred Newman, co-founders of the All Stars Project (which released the report) and long-time friends, colleagues and mentors of mine. The three of us have written thousands of words (and spoken millions more) on play, performance, pretence, creative imitation and their critical role in learning and development for people of all ages, but especially for those whom schools have failed/who failed school. All of our words grow out of the complicated interplay of carrying out on-the-ground performance-based development work and dialoguing with scholars, practitioners and policy makers. In “Let’s Pretend,” Fulani and Newman  say it as they see it in a mere six pages. In the time it takes to make a cup of coffee you can read it and see if you see it their way or if they’ve helped you see in a new way.

More News Headlines for Philsophical Independent Voters

Ok ok I admit it there is more news for independents than Bloomberg and the NYC Independence Party....

INDEPENDENT VOTERS

• From 'Post-Partisanship' To Polarization - The Partisan Divide In Obama's Approval Ratings Has Widened Considerably, But Does It Matter? (by Amy Walter, National Journal)
  
• Inside Politics - Despite calls for a “post-partisan” presidency, a recent Pew Research Center study found that President Obama has the most polarized job-approval ratings for a new president in 40 years. (By Sean Lengell, Washington Times)
  
• Watch The Independents - With Partisanship Still Strong On The Hill, Obama Will Need To Keep Up His Clout Among Non-Aligned Voters (by Charlie Cook, National Journal)
  
• CBS News/NY Times Poll: Obama’s Approval Rating Hits New High (By JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief, The Moderate Voice)
  

LAST WORD

The End of Philosophy (By DAVID BROOKS, NY Times)

 NOTE: Thanks to Baylah Wolfe for this who wrote this on Brooks' post:

I appreciate what you have been grappling with, as you reach for the critical inclusion of emotionality, cooperation and communal life activity in our contemporary historical world. I urge you to read Dr. Lois Holzman’s new book, "Vygotsky at Work and Play". Dr .Holzman is a developmental psychologist and activist, who is challenging, in theory and practice, the cognitive-emotional divide; Holzman and sees philosophical dualism as holding back human growth and development. Lev Vygotsky was a Soviet psychologist who conducted ground-breaking research with children and in particular with disabled children, after the Soviet revolution in 1917. Vygotsky engages dualistic understandings of thinking and speech, learning and development, etc. and his discoveries have come into prominence in recent decades in the fields of developmental psychology and education Building on a 25 year intellectual partnership with philosopher/psychotherapist Dr. Fred Newman, Holzman shows a performatory practice of the unity of theory-practice, cognition-emotion, being-becoming, etc. in projects they have built on-the-ground (in the US and internationally) in the arenas of therapy, education, youth development, medicine and corporate training. Philosophy is dead but philosophy with a small p is alive and growing.

Thanks, Baylah!

Tonight's News from New York City's Performing the World

Tonight is the kick-off of Perfoming the World, the exciting international conference/ performance festival that has brought together over 550 from more than 40 countries to "create some new performances together," as Convener Lois Holzman says. "There is too much that is old -- war, poverty, HIV/AIDS, national and ethnic conflict, sexual abuse and oppression, and countless other ways of stifling human potential and destroying environments... We don't know where we're going, but we do know that we the people have to create how we're getting there. We're going to change the world by re-performing it!"

Over the course of the next few days you will see images and vignettes on The Hankster that hopefully capture some of the spirit and creativity that we are engaged in here in New York City. I already find it inspiring.

I just came from registration and the reception at the beautiful newly renovated All Stars Project on West 42nd St. ("We're not Disney, but we're not Mickey Mouse either!") where many of the presenters and attendees are gathering. Gabrielle Kurlander, President and CEO of the All Starts Project, Inc. says, "For us, play is the thing. We play and produce play everywhere: on our four stages on 42nd Street, in corporate boardrooms, and in inner-city communities...."

"Blogging the World" also starts tonight, with photos of my house guests from Toronto, Gloria and Jacqueline (and myself) on the 7 train going from my studio in Queens to Manhattan. PTW '08 for the first time is being performed in New York City and the performance community has opened its home -- literally -- to attendees.

Ok, that's the last "officialness" on this conference/performance. Without further ado, here is Performing the World! Please stay tuned!