Monthly Archives: March 2015

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Climate Change … Fantasy Tournament

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OFAClimate change deniers live in a fantasy world, and OFA is dedicated to making sure they’re sufficiently embarrassed by their anti-science positions.

That’s why we’re introducing our first-ever Climate Change Fantasy Tournament. We’re asking Americans to vote to decide the nation’s worst climate change deniers — and we’ll make sure the champion gets a big congratulations in their home district.

Voting starts today — go get started on the first match-up and help decide who’s the worst of the worst.

Check out this bracket

We’ve matched up 16 of the most notorious deniers in America in a winner-take-all tournament — from House Speaker John Boehner, to Ron “Sunspot” Johnson, to a congressman from California who’s so far out there on climate, his theories have landed on Mars.

We learned this week that 85 percent of eighth-graders know the basics of climate science, but only half of the U.S. Senate does. It was only a few weeks ago that one senator threw a snowball in the halls of Congress as a way of saying that climate change isn’t happening — as if the fact that winter is happening somehow trumps the agreement of 97 percent of the world’s climate scientists.

It would be funny if climate change weren’t such a serious issue.

We’ve made real progress in this fight, through the outstanding growth of clean energy like wind and solar in the past few years, and the launch of President Obama’s Clean Power Plan to cut carbon pollution from power plants.

But we can’t truly tackle this problem together as long as so many of our elected officials publicly deny the basic science of climate change.

That’s why we’re not letting them off the hook — help call out the worst of the worst of the deniers.

Vote on the first match-up here:

http://my.barackobama.com/First-Round-Match-Up

Thanks,

Jack

Jack Shapiro
National Issues Campaign Manager
Organizing for Action

~ Youtube ...gotta listen to this

Petite Noir … “The Fall” & “The King of Anxiety”


A Spare, Minimalist R&B Video Influenced by Marina Abramovic

 

http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/03/10/petite-noir-music-video-the-fall/

 

Culture

By

March 10, 2015 1:30 pm

The video for “The Fall,” by the musician Petite Noir, whose EP “The King of Anxiety” is out now.
 It’s been two and a half years since the debut single “Till We Ghosts” introduced the world to the crooning, beat-heavy brand of indie rock proffered by the Belgian-born, Cape Town-raised, London-based musician Yannick Ilunga, who records as Petite Noir. Since then, he’s collaborated with Mos Def, signed with the U.K. label Domino, opened for Solange and been featured on her “Saint Heron” compilation album. But Ilunga would tell you his most notable achievement to date is coining the term “Noirwave,” a new, ideologically influenced artistic genre that identifies as African first, and everything else second. “The term ‘African music’ is so overused,” Ilunga says, “to the point that when some people say it, it just sounds cheesy. Noirwave was always meant to include clothing, art, photography, music obviously — all types of things. It’s taking the Africa that we know, turning it upside down and bringing people a new black. Solange is super Noirwave. So is Beyoncé. Noirwave is pop culture — it’s coming, but right now it’s just boiling.”

The same could be said of Ilunga himself, who recently released a debut five-track EP called “The King of Anxiety” (“a book of secrets,” as he calls it), a buzzy taste of the full-length album that will drop later this year. Having moved from Brussels to Cape Town at the age of 3, Ilunga grew up eschewing pop and traditional African music in favor of metal, rock, punk and electronica, as well as “whatever my brothers and sisters were listening to, whatever was trendy.” He counts all these genres as influences on Petite Noir, but notes that discovering Kanye West’s album “808s & Heartbreak” was the single defining moment of his musical education. “He was a black guy doing whatever he wanted to do, and he was of my time,” Ilunga says. “Of course, people like Michael Jackson were big influences, but when I started listening to them, they weren’t so big. Kanye was relevant.”

A standout on “The King of Anxiety” is “The Fall,” a pensive, meditative ode to the inescapable changes wrought by time, with a quietly anthemic refrain and minimalist orchestration that might call the XX to mind. Ilunga and his girlfriend, Rochelle Nembhard, directed the video for the track, a series of intimate moments shot in a film-noir palette; they star in it together, too. Ilunga and Nembhard face each other, sometimes gazing at each other with deep affection, other times slapping each other repeatedly in the face or playing the knife game. “The video is based on my real relationship, but it’s overexaggerated,” Ilunga says, adding that the video was inspired by “The Artist Is Present,” Marina Abramovic’s 2010 MoMA performance. “The first video we shot looked more like a timeline, and we scrapped that,” Ilunga says. “This video shows what a relationship in general is: our attempt to lose selfness and achieve unity. When we fall, we fall together.”

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Seuss on the loose in San Diego


By Chris Erskine contact the reporter

he San Diego History Museum is staging an exhibition dedicated to the art of Dr. Seuss, March 25 to April 19, at the museum in Balboa Park.

Titled “Ingenious! The World of Dr. Seuss,” the show will look at the breadth of Theodor Geisel’s artistic legacy, and will focus on seldom-seen images and artworks he did across nearly eight decades. Some of it celebrates iconic San Diego locations, such as the Hotel del Coronado.

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Seth’s Road To Redemption


Have you ever made a mistake? Meet Seth, who wants to tell you about the mistake that still haunts him today.

Screen_Shot_2015-03-09_at_4.57.18_PM.pngJoin in our “Believe in Second Chances” National Day of Action with groups across the country and share this video on social media. Encourage businesses to give people a second chance!Here’s the thing – we all make mistakes! For the formerly incarcerated members of our society, though, a single mistake can cost them their freedom, the ability to get a job, the ability to get a college loan, and the ability to secure a safe place to live.

And in a society where policing and our justice system are definitely not color or income blind, this means that we are systematically putting people of color and poor people at disadvantages for their entire lives.

If we continue to criminalize those who have committed a crime after they have paid their debt to society, we are forever punishing and inhibiting them from re-entering and being full citizens. This is the wrong way to deal with the formerly incarcerated, their families and the communities they call home. Obtaining stable employment helps put an end to the cycle of mass incarceration by greatly decreasing recidivism and strengthening communities.

That is why we believe in second chances.

Share this video – let businesses know that you believe in second chances.

Thank for all that you do.

Regina Clemente, Director of Campaigns
Brave New Films