Image: “Free Skid Row, Free Pa|est¡ne” banner that was started just under a year ago, at the 14th Annual Festival of Skid Row Artists, late October 2023. Later this month, Oct 26-27, will be the 15th Annual Festival.
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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SAY NO TO ARTWASHING AND DISPLACEMENT! LA County Department of Arts and Culture recently released an RFQ for artists to “beautify areas after an RV resolution”–in other words, to use art to cover up and erase displacement of RV residents. Join in signing an OPEN LETTER opposing this: bit.ly/RVEncampmentOpenLetter
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, October 2024
Some neighborhood events, celebrations, and parties to join
- Wed, Oct 2, 4:30-6pm: – Doodles w/o Borders Arts table at General Jeff Park
- Fri, Oct 4, 7pm, Movie Night at LA poverty department‘s Skid Row Museum (250 S Broadway)
- Wed, October 9, 6p – MOVIE in the PARK @ General Jeff Park (movie starts at dusk)
- Fri, October 11, 5-7pm: Arts Jam Open Mic @ Studio 526 (526 San Pedro)
- Tues, Oct 15, 10:30a-12pm: Creative Writing @ Skid Row Museum
- Fri, Oct 18, 12-3pm: MARKETPLACE at LACAN (838 E 6th St)
- Friday, Oct 18, 7pm, Movie Night at Skid Row Museum
- Fri, Oct 25, Dusk: Movie Night by StopLAPDSpying coalition in front of LAPD headquarters (check their instagram to confirm and for more info)
- Saturday and Sunday, Oct 26-27, 12-4pm, 15th Annual FESTIVAL FOR ALL SKID ROW ARTISTS at General Jeff (formerly Gladys) Park, 808 E 6th St, 90021. To sign up to perform, and for more information email at info@lapovertydept.org or call 213-413.1077
Creative I will be GUEST HOSTING at Doodles without Borders Arts Table on Oct 9 and 16, 4:30-6pm! (location: General Jeff Park)
To view or print the full monthly calendar, go to doodleswithoutborders.com/calendar
Local to downtown LA and nearby: Memorials, Vigils, Protests marking one year of intensified geno//de of Pa/est/nians and connections to imperialist geno//dal vio/lence from Artsakh to Skid Row, Turtle Island, and across the world:
1) Sat, Oct 5, 2pm: One Year of Geno//de, One Year (+107 years) of Resistance at Pershing Square
2) Sun, Oct 6, 4:30pm: Jewish Voice for Peace LA – Anti-Apartheid Tashlich @ Echo Park Lake, Lady of the Lake Statue
3) Sun, Oct 6, 6:30pm: Vigil for Palestine and Artsakh @ Echo Park Lake, near Lady of the Lake Statue – none of us are free until all of us are free
SAVE THE DATE
Nov 17th, 3-5pm – Culminating Celebration of Windows of Little Bronze Tokyo Project
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
Fargo Tbakhi: “NOTES ON CRAFT: WRITING IN THE HOUR OF GENO//DE“
I was going to write about the importance of recognizing [our own and others’] cluelessness, but that’s for another time. A couple of weeks ago I was introduced by a friend to a text that I think should be required reading for all creative people. Today I’d like to share an excerpt from Fargo Tbakhi’s “Notes on Craft: Writing in the Hour of Geno//de.”
“What does Pa/est/ne require of us, as writers writing in English from within the imperial core, in this moment of geno//de? I want to offer here some notes and some directions towards beginning to answer this question.
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Craft is a machine built to produce and reproduce ethical failures; it is a counterrevolutionary machine.
I use “Craft” here to describe the network of sanitizing influences exerted on writing in the English language: the influences of neoliberalism, of complicit institutions, and of the linguistic priorities of the state and of empire. Anticolonial writers in the U.S. and across the globe have long modeled alternative crafts which reject these priorities, and continue to do so in this present moment. Yet Craft still haunts our writing; these notes aim to clarify it, so we can rid ourselves of its influence.
Above all, Craft is the result of market forces; it is therefore the result of imperial forces, as the two are so inextricably bound up together as to be one and the same. The Craft which is taught in Western institutions, taken up and reproduced by Western publishers, literary institutions, and awards bodies, is a set of regulatory ideas which curtail forms of speech that might enact real danger to the constellation of economic and social values which are, as I write this, facilitating geno//de in Pa/est/ne and elsewhere across the globe. If, as Audre Lorde taught us, the master’s tools cannot dismantle the master’s house, then Craft is the process by which our own real liberatory tools are dulled, confiscated, and replaced. We believe our words sharper than they turn out to be. We play with toy hammers and think we can break down concrete. We think a spoon is a saw.
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We have to abandon [this Craft] and write with sharper teeth, without politeness, without compromise. We have to learn, or build, or steal, or steal back, the craft we need for the long |nt¡fada, which we carry with us to liberation and beyond.”
Full text here.
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 