Image: “THE BRAVE ONES replace colonialism with liberation” banner, still in progress, Doodles’ contribution to the 9th Annual Jamaican Independence Day celebration in Skid Row neighborhood, August 2024. Anniversary of the beginning of the Haitian Revolution is also in August. Note: “Carib” likely meant “the brave one, the brave warrior” in Arawak language.
Kind morning /Բարի լույս* to you, dear neighbors, artists, collaborators, community partners, co-conspirators, supporters of arts in Skid Row and of doodles without borders,
*the morning greeting in Armenian translates as “kind morning” (բարի լույս [baree looys])
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Post highlights: (1) Events/Activities in and near Skid Row, (2) Thoughts Aloud – Local to Global, (3) Quote of the Month.
HIGHLIGHTS in and near SKID ROW, September 2024
Some neighborhood events, celebrations, and parties to join
- TOMORROW, Monday, Sept 2, 12-3pm: – LABOR DAY Celebration at LACAN (838 E 6th St)
- Friday, Sept 6, 7pm, Movie Night at LA poverty department‘s Skid Row Museum (250 S Broadway)
- Wed, Sept 11, 6p – MOVIE in the PARK @ San Julian Park (movie starts at dusk)
- Fri, Sept 13, 5-7pm: Arts Jam Open Mic @ Studio 526 (526 San Pedro)
- Tues, Sept 17, 10:30a-12pm: Creative Writing @ Skid Row Museum
- Friday, Sept 20, 7pm, Movie Night “Marley” at Skid Row Museum
- Friday, Sept 27, 5-7:30pm, Open Mic with Lorinda @ Skid Row Museum
- Fri, Sept 27, Dusk: Movie Night by StopLAPDSpying coalition in front of LAPD headquarters (check their instagram to confirm and for more info)
Until September 15th: LAST TWO WEEKS to catch “Visions of Transcendence: Creating Space in East and West” at Wende Museum in Culver City, including a number of Skid Row neighborhood artists from OG Man to Lan to Linda Leigh to Gary Brown and more. Entrance is Free. Fri-Sun 10a-5p (10808 Culver Boulevard, Culver City, CA 90230)
To view or print the full monthly calendar, go to doodleswithoutborders.com/calendar
SAVE THE DATE
Sat-Sun, October 26-27: 15th Annual Festival for All Skid Row Artists. Follow LA Poverty Department for more info
ONGOING
“Welcome to Covid Hotel” at Skid Row Museum (250 S Broadway) until December 2024
OPEN MICS as places to come together, and plant seeds of collective struggle.
There are at least THREE open mics currently in Skid Row neighborhood:
Weekly – (1) every Thurs, 6:30-9pm at Peace and Healing Center (116 E 5th)
Monthly –
2) every second Friday of the month, 5-7pm, at Studio526 (526 San Pedro St)
3) every last Friday, 5-7:30pm with Lorinda at LA Poverty Dept‘s Skid Row Museum (250 S. Broadway)
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THOUGHTS ALOUD
Grief affirms Life
This month will be one year since the total genocidal banishment of over 100,000 Artsakh Armenians from their ancestral lands in September 2023–a continuation of an ongoing Turkish/Ottoman intentional geno//dal vio/ence against Armenians that dates back more than 100 years. Only a couple of weeks later the intensification of geno//dal /s/ae/i onslaught on Pa/est/nians began.
Grief and mourning are rooted in love of life, love of collective life. One part of honoring, remembering the lives of those who were killed and banished is clarity, so much clarity in centering transnational working class struggle and collective liberation. Doodles without Borders commitment to PACBI is one node in this work.
Doodles without Borders PACBI Statement of Solidarity
(you can find the statement in English and Armenian at bit.ly/DoodlesPACBI, and the corresponding IG post with doodle here)
In total solidarity with the people of Pa/estine, Doodles without Borders commits to adhering to the Pa/estinian international call for Boycott, Divestment, & Sanctions (BDS) & to complying with the underlying guidelines of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of /s/ael (PACBI).
This commitment links to two key aspects of Doodles’ identity.
First, we do a majority of our work in LA’s Skid Row neighborhood – a low income working class neighborhood with a large number of unhoused residents, part of Black LA, one of the largest recovery communities in the world, and on the receiving end of the violence stemming from existential pillars of u.s. empire: capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy, imperialism, settler-colonialism.
Second, we ground in our connection to Armenian heritage, part of the vast SWANA–South West Asia & North Africa–region, and on the receiving end of imperial genocidal violence from multiple directions.
Both these realities, reflected in daily lived experience, help inform us about the interconnectedness of racial/ethnic, economic, imperialist, colonial, genocidal state violences. The resources intentionally not going for universal housing, healthcare, education, and equitable access to a dignified life in Skid Row neighborhood and across u.s. empire, are the very resources subsidizing is/ae/i arms sales and directly supplying aze/o-tu/kish imperial genocidal ambitions in Armenian Artsakh and across the region, as well as funding the intensified genocide of Pa/estinians.
For all these reasons and out of absolute commitment to Pa/estinian life and freedom, Doodles without Borders commits to:
• boycott any cultural product or event funded, commissioned, &/or sponsored by an official /s/aeli body
• not collaborate with or take money from /s/aeli institutions
• refuse “normalization” efforts seeking to justify Israel’s violence or present a false symmetry between oppressed & oppressor
• advocate for others to similarly divest from /s/ael and end support for the oppression of Pa/estinians.
Doodles without Borders is rooted in arts and cultural work as essential en route to collective liberation, and the understanding that none of us are free until all of us are free.
For more information or for support drafting a PACBI commitment for your organization, contact: pacbi@wawog.com go to @wawog_now and writersagainstthewarongaza.com/pacbi
dwb ONLINE:
1) Doodles without Borders (dwb) is now on Instagram / Facebook.
2) There is a monthly dwb Skid Row Community & Arts Calendar. If you do community strengthening work in Skid Row and know of an event/meeting that should be on there, please share.
3) dwb wishlist! You can find it here: bit.ly/dwbwishlist
Able and interested to SUPPORT Doodles?
Support Artwork Storage as a Human Right (and Collective Responsibility)
Community Arts Depot is a sister project addressing the vital need for artwork storage and access focused on Skid Row neighborhood members and residents. Artwork Storage as a Human Right – a glimpse from the Community Arts Depot story. This project’s sustainability is deeply dependent on grassroots support. To donate to the campaign click HERE!
Email us for donating directly via Venmo, Paypal, or other ways.
QUOTE OF THE MONTH / Pairings: Zabel Yesayan, Leila Khaled, Ismatu Gwendolyn
“Literature is not an ornament, a pleasant pastime, a pretty flower. Literature is a weapon to struggle against injustice.” – Zabel Yesayan, novelist, political figure before an during first and second Armenian Republics, late 19th / early 20th century
“Israel and the United States did not boycott the [South African] apartheid. Boycotting oppression must be a culture”. – Leila Khaled, freedom fighter in the Pa/est/nian liberation movement, born in 1944, 3 years before the geno//dal ethnostate of /s/ae/ was formed
“We want the fiction of a happy ending more than we want actual liberation in of itself.” – Ismatu Gwendolyn, writer, collectivist, revolutionary, part of a long history of Black Radical Tradition on Turtle Island (so-called united states)
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For previous newsletter(s), go to www.doodleswithoutborders.com homepage
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Community Artivism 