Performing the World!

Note: The Hankster has a session on Democracy. B there or B square>

Independent Voters: Yes, They're Real, and They're Not Centrist!

Alan Abramowitz makes the case for independents, in a "counter-intuitive" kinda way, at UVA professor Larry Sabato's "Crystal Ball" (- hmmm, fitting blog name for a political psychic?) You might want to check out IndependentVoting.org's Sarah Lyons' piece
"Independents are not Moderates" which ran nationally, and linked here at politics from the eyes of an ebony mom - political perspectives from Joni Hudson-Reynolds, an African-American Mom


INDEPENDENT VOTERS

• Sam Reed's gift to Washington's independent voters (Posted by Kate Riley, Seattle Times EDITORIAL) While his Democratic opponent was squired around by state party officials who wanted more of a closed partisan primary, Reed, a former Thurston County auditor, took the independent path, stating strongly his commitment to being true to Washington's voters who embraced the blanket primary by initiative in the 1930s.
• First Thoughts: A crucial 72 hours (By NBC’s Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, Domenico Montanaro, and Ali Weinberg, msnbc/First Read) And since we’re geeking out with numbers today, political scientist Alan Abramowitz makes this counter-intuitive point: Independent voters don’t matter as much as some claim... [Really?]
• Setting the Record Straight: Correcting Myths About Independent Voters (Alan I. Abramowitz, Sabato's Crystal Ball) It’s true that independents are a diverse group. But that’s mostly because the large majority of independents are independents in name only. [Again, really?]

2012
McManus: Team Obama's victory plan (By Doyle McManus, LA Times) At a breakfast organized by Bloomberg News, Plouffe said he thought Obama could recapture many of those independents, because they still want to "get away from the stale ideas of the left or right and focus on what's going to be right for the country." But he hasn't pulled it off yet.

NEW YORK

• So much for independent redistricting? (by Jay Jochnowitz, Albany Times Union/The Observation Deck) Consumers Union says there’s plenty of time if they call a special session and get it done.
• Marriage Equality: The Hows and Whys (BY WILLIAM BRINA AND NATHAN RILEY, Chelsea Now) The final major factor setting the stage for marriage equality’s victory was the blunting of the Conservative Party’s sway.
• Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest: 7/7 (by David Nir for Daily Kos Elections) Round up of NY House races
• Democrats tap David Weprin to run for seat vacated by Anthony Weiner (BY ERIN EINHORN, ALISON GENDAR AND JONATHAN LEMIRE, NY Daily News) Assemblyman David Weprin, member of a powerful Queens political family, is the Democrats' choice to run for Anthony Weiner's vacant congressional seat. Weprin, who has close ties to the borough's political machine, will become the candidate to represent Congressional District 9, which spans sections of Queens and Brooklyn.

EDUCATION REFORM
Institute to Host Innovative Brazilian Educators (East Side Institute Community News) Dr. Liberali is currently working closely with São Paulo’s Director of Education, Regina Licco, and Secretary of Education, Alexandre Schneider, to bring her group’s progressive reforms to the city’s schools. Institute director Lois Holzman and Liberali initially met in 2006, when Liberali invited Holzman to present to her students at the university.

California Budget: Kudos to the Voters!

CALIFORNIA
California budget: A sign that the Golden State (By Daniel B. Wood, Christian Science Monitor) Whatever kudos are due probably go to Golden State voters themselves. Last year they approved a suite of reforms intended essentially to reboot the state's political structure – after a decade marked by the recall of a governor, legislative gridlock, huge budget deficits papered over with dubious fixes, state-issued IOUs in lieu of payment, and a trashed credit rating.

UTAH
Poll: Tea party fatigue among independent Utah voters (BY ROBERT GEHRKE, The Salt Lake Tribune) Monson said now, it appears, that the tea party is becoming "an even more Republican phenomenon," more rooted in the GOP than simply a group of conservative activists. Jensen, however, said that has always been the case. "The tea party has always been completely absorbed," he said. "It didn’t get absorbed. It has always been a part of the Utah Republican Party."
Utah League of Independent Voters: Independents vary widely on different ideologies, so it seems unlikely independents could ever be united. In fact, despite our many individual differences, on this wide reaching tenet we agree--"Get the parties out of the way and let the people decide!"

NEW YORK
Staking Out Slot In Race for Mayor (By MICHAEL HOWARD SAUL, Wall Street Journal) City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer and former Comptroller Bill Thompson—each potential nods for the Democratic nomination—are also looking at ways they can attract voters who might have been leaning toward Mr. Weiner.

INTERNATIONAL
Report from Juarez (East Side Institute News) Our last newsletter included updates from Miguel Cortes, class of 2008, a youth development worker and psychologist at CASA in Juarez, Mexico.  Since our last report, 16 high school youth were tragically massacred at a party -- the most recent tragedy in a city that has drawn worldwide attention for its drug-cartel fueled violence.  Miguel reports that the community was overwhelmed and shocked, then later outraged by the response of military authorities who dismissed the killings as "gang-related." Miguel immediately organized a community-education class where the young people were encouraged to give their pain in letters, poems and therapeutic conversation that might transform the community's loss. He continues working with the young people and is active in the varied committees and coalitions that have formed in the wake of the violence.

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.

Hankster Summer Friday: Live-blogging Friday the 13th, Inception of a Chosen Nightmare

Ahhh, happy to again be home early from work on Summer Early Friday -- only 4 more of these left! Even the temperature is dropping -- a little...

Here's what I was thinking about this afternoon:

I take a class at the East Side Institute taught by Dr. Fred Newman called Developmental Philosophy Group. Like most of the work that Newman does, it's ongoing to the extent that people want to do it or feel a need for it or it doesn't get interrupted by some more pressing work that can get done that might have more impact in a world faced with some very serious questions.

I recently sent out an article by David Sirota to my philosophy group-class called The Deception of Real-World Inception. I noticed this article when I was scanning my emails (I subscribe by email to a fair number of online publications, both left and right and this one was in In These Times, a Chicago-based liberal-left publication.) This one caught my eye because it raises a lot of philosophical concepts that our philosophy group has been discussing: logic, "the brain", partisanship, propaganda, ideas, individuals, credibility, reflexivity, characters, cognition, dreams, nightmares... "something profoundly relevant to this epoch of confusion"... "ancient ruminations about reality's authenticity"... "real-world application".... " laws of cognition"....

Sirota uses the real-world summer block-buster Inception as a take-off point to his article, and posits:

In the movie's tale of corporate espionage, we are asked to ponder this moment's most disturbing epistemological questions: Namely, how are ideas deposited in people's minds, and how incurable are those ideas when they are wrong?

I thought this article was insightful. Sirota seems to reference a change in popular (Hollywood?), cultural, relative, self-conscious awareness of propaganda techniques from A Clockwork Orange in the 70s to the present, where so many "fantasies’ artificial inceptions" are "now so deftly obscured..."

It seems pretty much fact now that the US military, and the entire western world's military-industrial operations, have been involved in mind control experimentation for a long time and although I have never read much about it, I do know from personal experience that propaganda was a big issue during the Vietnam era, on both sides.

Sirota's article "The Deception of Real-World Inception" evokes for me something like, well in the 60s and 70s things were simple, there was right and wrong, there was the enemy, there was the state, there were sides. People made decisions about what was right and wrong. The war was right or the war was wrong.

Now, Sirota says in my reading, not so clear-cut -- not that he's unclear in his position (he is against the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, if not war in general), but he's reached a limit in how he sees the left  being able to win over the "hearts and minds" of American war-mongers, or indeed any Americans who have not already made up their minds about what is right and wrong when it comes to political issues of democracy.

To me this has everything to do with the pursuit of truth and verifiability.  It seems to me that Sirota is asking how to get out of this "conundrum" in a more honest way than many leftists. I think he's lamenting the fact that our "minds" aren't so easily changed and genuinely asking what do we do about that.

I didn't see the movie, (definitely next on my list after watching the trailer and reading an interesting interview with Leo DiCaprio in Rolling Stone) but I certainly identify with the last line of Sirota's article:

 "And because those fantasies’ artificial inception is now so deftly obscured, we can no longer wake up, even if facts tell us we’re in a dream—and even when the dream becomes a nightmare."

Have we -- Americans, westerners -- lost a public self-consciousness about the people's ability to stop war, poverty, injustice, corruption -- the nightmare? Is self-consciousness even a necessary or desirable element? Indeed, What is the circuit breaker in this deceptively delusive cycle?

I wouldn't pretend to have the answer, but I think this is a necessary and desirable dialogue and I'm glad David Sirota brought it up.

Thanks to my friend Joan I. for asking!

Have a good Friday the 13th -- and please -- choose your nightmares carelfully!

NH

Mary Says: Create "New York Plays," a series of “community PLAYgrounds” in NYC

Dear friends,

My friend Mary has asked me to let you know about an opportunity to support a progressive cause. This is a great organization and, being a friend of Mary's, I'd love to introduce you to "New York Plays". I could go on and on about the great work of the East Side Institute around the world, but, why don't you check it out for yourself and I'll let let Mary talk about the opportunity:

Through “New York Plays” the East Side Institute continues to make new friends around the world and introduce the power of play to communities the world over. We are receiving many votes from Africa and made it to the 140s by reaching out to everyone we know. Here are 8 ways you can help:

1. Vote again, and up 10 times/day, at http://www.refresheverything.com/newyorkplays
 2. Put this in your status update on Facebook: Help us win this grant by voting for New York Community Plays (with link): The project has gone from 350 to 146 in just a few days and with your help, we can make it to the top ten, which means $50,000 to make this project a reality.
3. Are you on Linkedin? Put this in your status update: A great organization is in the running for a $50,000 Pepsi grant. Vote here to Help New Yorkers Play
4. Change your email signature to add a link  hanks_nancy@hotmail.com
5. Get your Twitter following involved: http://twitter.com/NancyHanks My Friend Mary Says: Have You Refreshed Pepsi Today? Support "New York Plays": Dear friends,  My friend Mary has a...http://bit.ly/cbEs8a
5.B Add this: Vote Create New York Plays on Pepsi Refresh grant $50K to help New Yorkers play http://pep.si/atHHjy 6. Are you on any listservs concerned with grow, play, development, performance, etc.? If you are, let your communities know.
7. Vote every day. Rinse and repeat the previous 6 steps.
8. Do you have any other ideas? Let us know. Help us spread the word! Imagine hundreds of New Yorkers from all walks of live coming together to play with each other - creating new conversations and new confidence in themselves as agents of change. Your support will make a difference! Thanks for anything and everything you can do!
Mary

You can email Mary directly at mfridley@eastsideinstitute.org

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!