I'm Voting for Rebecca!

My team and I will be filing our petitions to run for Plainfield City Council on Monday, March 31, the official launch day of our campaign. We will be knocking on doors and calling you to enlist your support with our grassroots efforts to keep Plainfield moving forward. I will continue to bring you the independent, transparent, thoughtful, honest, and ethical leadership that you have come to depend on from me as your council representative! 

Sanctified Transparency

Come, saints and sinners/
Sanctified transparency/
Beheld through stained glass.

 

Harlem Church and Glass Shop, by Van Vechten, 1940.

I love this image--I have posted on it in the past.--Rebecca
 

Of "Carpetbaggers" and Coded Language

The term "carpetbagger" recently has been used here in Plainfield by an appointed councilwoman to denigrate the hiring of individuals who reside outside the city boundaries of Plainfield and yet who work here, as if they are not entitled to have a job in our city if they are qualified. I have heard her use this word several times in public statements. See Plainfield Today's post on this here.

Historically, the word was used in the aftermath of the Civil War to define Northerners who went South during the Reconstruction era to profit from the rebuilding efforts and to expose them as individuals who were out to exploit a community for economic gain--it connotes exploitation, greed, opportunism, and rapaciousness. The other day, this code word was used yet again by someone who, herself, "carpetbagged" an education career in another city and county and who was paid from the tax base of that city. In terms of describing our city employees, I view this word, "carpetbagger," as a deliberate and inaccurate use of the term. Perhaps someone ought to pull her coat about it.

Are the young Plainfielders who work at the Watchung Square Mall carpetbaggers? The Plainfielders who used to work at Muhlenberg but who were forced to find jobs at other hospitals in the state because of the closure of our local hospital--are they carpetbaggers? 

I work in Newark, as a professor at Essex County College--am I a carpetbagger? Are the county workers who commute to Elizabeth carpetbaggers? All the other residents who live in Plainfield but commute to jobs in neighboring towns, in New York City, and elsewhere--are they, too, carpetbaggers in those communities? You see what I am getting at.

To make foolish and loaded statements about the motives of individuals who work in our city government and yet who may live in other towns when one's own career was based in another city and was paid from the tax base of that city is the height of hypocrisy. 

The hypocrisy continues when, at the same time, a "pass" is given to a local individual (her friend, Malcolm Dunn) who engineered a more than $1 million dollar gift from the PMUA ratepayers to two retired executives in a backroom deal that forced furloughs of front-line workers and others. If we examine the earlier definition I provided of "carpetbagger"--one who exploits the community for economic gain, one whose motives are driven by greed, opportunism, and rapaciousness--in the context of this backroom deal, um...never mind. 

What I really see here is a smokescreen for a peculiar sort of nativism (which we see, on a national scale, directed toward President Obama by the right wing) that has long been a part of American culture. Nativism (and its close cousins, xenophobia, ethnocentrism, and racism) opposes by its very nature the diversity, growth, and continued development of a city like Plainfield, just as it fanned the flames of national division in the past. 

We need to reject this type of thinking in our city. We need to reject the political motivations of individuals who embrace the past, with its corruption, cronyism, and stagnation. We need to think about, and plan for, the FUTURE!

Rebecca

The "Undisputed Dignity" of Anna Julia Cooper

Today marks the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Anna Julia Cooper, the great scholar and leader. She lived to be 105 years old.
 
"Only the BLACK WOMAN can say, ‘when and where I enter, in the quiet, undisputed dignity of my womanhood, without violence and without suing or special patronage, then and there the whole Negro race enters with me.'" --Anna Julia Cooper (1858-1964)

Here is the link to the Cooper Project: The Cooper Project
 

Because she claimed our/
"Undisputed dignity"/
We entered with her. 

Angela Davis, Icon

Redux: Black Arts, Black Artist

I saw Mr. Baraka on two occasions this past summer. First, while I was vending my cookies at the Lincoln Park Music Festival, he was serving as host of the jazz performances, also reading poetry. I remember the music-filled air punctuated with soul shouts of "Trayvon!" from Mr. Baraka, as he delivered spoken-word poetry while the musicians played. He looked frail that evening, but his voice was strong. The second occasion was a few weeks later at 27 Mix on Halsey Street, where he had come in to grab a bite--we said hello, and he, too, graciously said hello.  May he rest in peace.

Newark-born poet/

Of art and controversy/

Battle-warrior. 

Amiri Baraka (born Everett LeRoi Jones), 1934-2014.

Photo by Carl Van Vechten, 1962.

"Blackboard Jungle" TONIGHT, Wednesday, January 8 at Plainfield Library

The Sidney Poitier Film Festival, sponsored by the Friends of the Plainfield Public Library (FOPPL), continues this Wednesday at 6:30 pm with a screening of the 1955 class film, Blackboard Jungle, starring Glenn Ford and Sidney Poitier. The film, seen as a gritty, realistic view of violence and gang culture in inner-city schools, featured the earliest rock-n-roll soundtrack used in a Hollywood release, and was viewed as the cause of vandalism and violence at some of the theaters where it played. Nevertheless, it went on to receive several Academy Award nominations, including Best Art Direction, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Cinematography.

Although Poitier has only a featured role in the film, it is considered one of his break-out roles and it presages the huge film career he went on to have.

The festival will continue to run on the second Wednesdays of each month at 6:30 pm through May 2014. Below is the list of films--mark your calendar!

 

Uptown Saturday Night - February 12
A Patch of Blue - March 12
In the Heat of the Night - April 9
Stir Crazy - May 14