When Kelly Clarkson comes on my Ipod - i’m not ashamed
Happy 30th Birthday Kelly!!
NOT DALTON'S KIDS: 30 DAY ART CHALLENGE
Friends, Fam, Folks,
Daltonism is the scientific term for color blindness. Though it now only refers to a particular kind of color blindness, the condition was originally named after John Dalton, an English chemist who wrote the first scientific paper on the subject.
As many of you know, racial tensions are literally boiling right now in our country. With the deaths of Trayvon Martin (17 year old black boy gunned down in his neighborhood carrying skittles and iced tea), Shaima Al Awadi ( Iraqi mother beaten with a tire iron within her home in El Cajon California), Stephon Watts (15 year old black autistic teenager shot in the head in his home by Chicago police) and Anna Brown (29 year old black women dragged out of a hospital and put in jail where she later died) all happening within weeks of each other, we see the damage that dormant racist, xenophobic, ablist, and classist sentiments can exact on our nation. These scars which have long been left unacknowledged or have been willfully ignored are starting to fester and rot.
Young boys are being murdered in their own neighborhoods and their stalkers/attackers are left to roam free. Mothers are being beaten to death in their homes. Children with autisism who cannot always process social cues are shot in front of their parents. The ailing and ill are being dragged from hospitals and left to die on the floor of a jail cell. If we had any reason to believe that the election of a single White-African American man to the presidency marked the birth of America’s post-racial identity, those reasons no longer hold water.
I do not send you this message to scare you or to guilt trip you. I tell you this to rally you. I am asking you guys to take a stance and for most of you this will not mean any adjustments to your daily lives. All I am asking you to do is create. Beginning April 1st, I am asking you to create a piece of art every day for 30 days. I am asking you to create in honor of the lives that have been stolen. I am asking that everyday you email me a poem, a song, a story, a picture, a design, a painting, a sculpture, a dance, a critique. Here is the catch, all of the pieces should explore your sentiments about race. If you do not think about race everyday, here is an opportunity for you to stand with the millions of Americans and people around the world who are forced to.
This is our opportunity to say, we are not color blind. We are not Dalton’s kids. We see clearly what is going on in our countries, in our neighborhoods, even in our own hearts, and as artists we won’t stand for it.
Please, beginning April 1st take this stance with me. Send all your submissions to notdaltonskids@gmail.com AND CC notdaltonskids@yahoo.com. If you do not CC both addresses it will not get read and posted. The pieces will be anonymously posted to a blog site called Not Dalton’s Kids. If you would like to be publically credited please indicate so in the email. Additionally, if you do not wish your piece to be shared publically, please indicate this in the email as well. However, I encourage you all to allow the pieces to be posted as this is a collective effort to add constructive conversations to the discussion and acknowledgment of race and racism. Please share this with as many people as possible. Much love to all of you. Rest in safety and in power. -alysia harris
(via bhargette)
Nothing external to you has any power over you.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (via disease)
Not to be able to stop thinking is a dreadful affliction, but we don’t realize this because almost everybody is suffering from it, so it is considered normal. This incessant mental noise prevents you from finding that realm of inner stillness that is inseparable from Being.
Eckhart Tolle (via lucifelle)(Source: hookahsmoke, via thedevaluationofspermdump)
The highest form of wisdom is kindness
The Talmud (via dirrtyfilthynasty)(Source: eatfreshbitch, via thedevaluationofspermdump)
The word passion comes from the root word “patior,” meaning to suffer. To feel deeply we cannot avoid pain.
bell hooks (via tokillahumblebee)
There is no greater ecstasy than to know who you are.
Osho (via lucifelle)(Source: nirvikalpa, via thedevaluationofspermdump)
Can you understand? Someone, somewhere, can you understand me a little, love me a little? For all my despair, for all my ideals, for all that - I love life. But it is hard, and I have so much - so very much to learn.
Sylvia Plath, The Journals of Sylvia Plath(Source: bookmania, via thedevaluationofspermdump)
A lot of parents will do anything for their children, except let them be themselves.
Banksy(Source: theonlymagicleftisart, via thedevaluationofspermdump)
A person with true self-acceptance is “a person with full awareness of self in body, mind and spirit. This person’s center of consciousness (Hsing – “Heart Flower”) is in full bloom, ready to receive power from above, openly relating to and being reflected by others.” It may seem clever to know and accept others…yet accepting oneself is the way to Wisdom. It may feel powerful to overcome others…yet disciplining oneself is true Strength. It may be noble to honor others…yet respecting oneself is deep self-esteem.
Laura Archera Huxley(Source: lucifelle, via thedevaluationofspermdump)
