Culture and Coexistence into the Great Unknown
Destroyed in a dramatic and highly-publicized implosion, the Pruitt-Igoe public housing complex has become a widespread symbol of failure among architects, politicians and policy makers. A 2012 documentary unveiled the many witting and unwitting villains, including urban poverty, public policy enforced racial segregation, and urban disinvestment in favor of the White Suburban Dream.
Fela Kuti, Nigerian music legend, political insurrectionist and provocateur against the corporate and missionary sell-out of African wisdom and religion, ending up in jail and tortured…and loved by the African people. Here, Jamaican-born, Africa-based writer Lindsay Barrett puts us on Fela’s life path, his wild and unstructured Afrobeat sound, the commune, the wives, and the push against the Nigerian military dictatorship.
The 2014 film controversially reinstated the radical legacy of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., where he spoke out against war and poverty and was marginalized by the political establishment as a result. This review of Ava DuVernay’s Selma is by Zaid Jilani.
Watch “The March,” a documentary from 1964, re-released to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington. At this year’s ceremony in DC, Republican politicians opted to stay home. Maybe they all had prior engagements…
Matthew Pallamary, Dorchester native and author of several fiction and non-fiction books on the South American indigenous perspective, examines healing from the collective shadow exemplified by the Boston Marathon bombings and managing the spirit of the “wolves within.”