Women’s History Month
Reply
Category Archives: African American Culture
PANEL at JFK before RECEPTION
How I See It: Folks are Hurting This Song
Somebody’s Hurting My Folks *1,2,3,4,5,6
I am asking all of our Black ministers to ask their choirs to learn and sing this song. White folks in Spokane are lacking your soul when they sing this song. Please come to our next social justice event prepared to teach white folks how to sing and swing this song.
Click here for more about the Poor People’s Campaign and the song.
If you looked through the archives you will notice an absence of the African American Community at the marches, at the rallies, at the demonstrations, at the social justice community organizing meetings but at the Spokane Black Agenda Summit July 30, 2011 over 100 African Americans built a plan to action. What do you think happened after that? Click the above link to see what they planned.
- My folks – those that are showing up for social justice.
- Somebody’s hurting my Black sisters and brothers.
- Somebody’s hurting poor people.
- Somebody’s hurting my church.
- Somebody’s hurting my community.
- Somebody’s hurting my global community.
Stephen Pitters: New Poetry Collection: “Prerecorded”
Subjective-romantic best defines Stephen Pitters’ style in this collection. He uses long poetic forms to convey the powerful, uninhibited, and at times, heartfelt actions and reactions that play out in the lines of his poems. He is a self-taught language artist in the vein of other artists who embrace and articulate the emotion and the spirit of loves and lives. He explores the physicality of relationships as Walt Whitman does in his poem, “I Sing the Body Electric.” At times, Pitters’ poems speak to the raw yoga of love, and at other points, he transcends the tangible, the touchable to weave through the less sure pathways of the heart.
The narrative he uses in these passages are not half made-up composites, but rather, they sketch real-life events in the weighted style of the romantics with a heavy dose of melancholy and with a small measure of sarcasm baked into his work. His expressions stem from his experiences as a man in the middle of his passion and not a detached observer. The central inspiration for these offerings surrounds a genuine need to share unique, postage-stamp accounts of relationships of hearts and of heartbreaks lived by one man, one African-American man in the middle of the tumultuous Sixties and Seventies when he endured the racism and the discrimination of the era.
Stephen Pitters is a poet, educator and author residing in Spokane, Washington. He has had three volumes of his work published by Gribble Press: Bridges of Visions, 2009, Walks Through the Mind, 2011, and Currencies of Life…Enlisted Behaviors, 2013.He started a new series of poetry with the 2017 title “Conversations on Altered Roadways” and 2018 title “Prerecorded”. Besides publishing, Stephen has hosted The Spokane Open Poetry Program on KYRS, Thin Air Community Radio, since 2004. He is also a long-time member of the Fairchild community.
African Americans in the Arts in the Spokane / Coeur d’Alene Area
Visual and Performing Arts, Literary Arts, Media Arts
I would like to thank all of those that are helping us to develop a database of African Americans involved in the Spokane and Inland Empire in the visual, performing, literary and media arts.
Steve Pitters and I have been discussing how to bring about a change in mind-set infusing overall community opportunity for African Americans in the Arts in Spokane. The individuals listed here are being asked to consider the following ways they can enhance the cultural scene for each of us by doing the following:
- Develop a community who will commit to attend each others functions and events. This will help to ensure our visibility at these events.
- Use this list to notify us of our activities.
- Use this list to make others in the community aware of our activities.
- People in other cultures and communities in the United States and elsewhere insure the development and growth of talented individuals and businesses.
- We need to change the “me for myself” attitude. Spokane is small enough for us to be able to sustain and support the talents of those who wish to share it with others.
Send us your thoughts and calendars of events and let’s collaborate with each other in support of like-minded interests and events.
Below are the names and contact information we have located so far. Please continue to send us names and contact information on other artists you might know. We would like to know the medium they operate in, email address, street address, phone number, web address, and whether they are on Facebook
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
It Must Be Black History Month
African Americans in Spokane
What White Women Can Do!
Who Does Safety Pin Box Support?
Safety Pin Box benefits all people involved, but is specifically geared at supporting Black women & femmes who are contributing to the movement for Black lives.
Every month, Safety Pin Box will give one-time financial gifts to individual Black women who have demonstrated a commitment to serving Black people. Financial gift recipients will be featured in that month’s box at their discretion, and will be invited to contribute to that month’s task writing. Any and all Black women contributing to Black liberation in any way are encouraged to apply and recipients will be chosen at random each month from Black women applicants in our pool. The more subscribers we have, the more Black women we can support. Subscription fees, as a form of reparations, go directly to supporting Black women freedom fighters every month.
Learn More Click https://www.safetypinbox.com/black-women-being/
First Thursday Coffee Visitor
SPOKANE OPEN POETRY PROGRAM
HOST: Stephen Pitters
Thin Air Community Radio
88.1/92.3
Steve joined us for Thursday’s Coffee discussion. This week we discussed developing grassroots community building on the precinct level. He said we may want to put in a proposal at Spokane’s KYRS radio for airtime. He left us a copy of the June schedule so that we might see the programs the station is presently airing.
We are looking it over for future programing.
We could discuss the need for GRASSROOTS community organizers INSIDE OR OUTSIDE of the two party system. We at the first Thursday coffee discussion group have discussed how to build the community we would like to live in and now it’s time to take the next step.
I’d suggest:
- Have a house party meeting. Open your house. Invite your neighbors to have a discussion about participating in a democratic process built from the grassroots of your community.
- Meet regularly and report back to a First Thursday coffee discussion group. If you are not currently participating in a First Thursday group, form one with other citizen activists with whom you would like to meet and discuss political, social justice and cultural concerns.
- Define a job description for what a community organizer might do.
- If you’ve been marching, protesting, rallying and complaining about your government you need to go to My Vote. After logging in with your name and birth date, click on Voter Registration Details to find your precinct number.
When was the last time you heard from your Precinct Committee Officer?
PUBLISHER’S NOTE: STeve is looking for VISUAL, PERFORMING AND LITERARY artists to interview on his program “Spokane Open Poetry”. He DOesn’t JUDGE, JUST allows you TO SHARE WHAT YOU ARE ABOUT!
The Spokane Open Poetry Program is for of all ages. He is waiting to hear from you. Spokaneopenpoetry@kyrs.org
iWPS Poets Finals In Spokane
Names are in order of above photos. Click on names below to hear them perform.
Anthony McPherson Arvind Nandakumar Asia Bryant-Wilkerson Christopher Michael Damien McClendon Ed Mabrey Jahman Hill Kenneth Something Kofie Dadzie Michael Harriot RJ Walker Rudy Francisco Steven Willis Yaw Kyeremateng
Read the story by local writer Sara Saybo on winner Arvind Nandakumar:
MORE INFORMATION ON LOCAL SLAMS