Dispatches From the Culture Wars - Brave New Year edition

Naomi Klein disses dystopia; Mexican-American Naomi Klein disses dystopia; Mexican-American studies showdown; The cost of free speech; Philanthropreneurship; Cosby, himself; She's Beautiful

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The Tucson students who launched the lawsuit against the state of Arizona to overturn H.B. 2281 -- Maya Arce, Korina Lopez, and Nicolas Dominguez -- next to a picture of former Mexican-American studies instructor Curtis Acosta.,Liana Lopez

Dystopian Fiction’s Popularity Is a Warning Sign for the Future

By Geek's Guide to the Galaxy  
December 20, 2014
Wired

Dystopian fiction is hot right now, with countless books and movies featuring decadent oligarchs, brutal police states, ecological collapse, and ordinary citizens biting and clawing just to survive. For bestselling author Naomi Klein, all this gloom is a worrying sign.
Her new book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate, argues that only dramatic policy shifts can avert climate catastrophe, and that ordinary people need to speak up and demand emissions caps, public transportation, and a transition to renewable energy. That’s a hard sell politically, which is why dubious measures like geoengineering and cap-and-trade have been proposed instead.
“It seems easier, more realistic, to dim the sun than to put up solar panels on every home in the United States,” says Klein. “And that says a lot about us, and what we think is possible, and what we think is realistic.”

The House on Mango Street Goes to Trial: #MayaVsAZ

By Tony Diaz
December 31, 2014
Huffington Post

Mayra Arce even resembles Esperanza, the protagonist in The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. That was one of the 80-plus books that were part of the Tucson Unified School District's K-12 Mexican-American studies curriculum before the program was dismantled under Arizona House Bill 2281.
But Maya isn't the main character of a book. She's the main plaintiff in the lawsuit against the state of Arizona.
On January 12, 2015, Maya heads to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco to overturn the law used to prohibit Mexican-American studies in Tucson.

In Black Lives Matter Protest, Corporate Rights Trump Free Speech

By Brendan Fischer
December 26, 2014
PR Watch

Minnesotans protesting police violence and institutional racism could face "staggering" fees and criminal charges for a protest at Mall of America, with the City of Bloomington announcing plans to force organizers to pay for the mall's lost revenue during the exercise of their free speech rights, highlighting important questions about free speech in an era of privatized public spaces.
Around 3,000 people flooded the mall on Saturday, December 20, to sing carols and chants following police killings of unarmed African-American men like Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, and Dontre Hamilton. The protests were peaceful, and some mall workers stepped outside of their businesses and raised their hands in support. Police closed around 80 stores during the two-and-a-half hour protests, and locked down several mall entrances.
Days after the action, Bloomington City Attorney Sandra Johnson announced that she will not only seek criminal trespass and unlawful assembly charges against the protesters, but will also seek to have them pay for the mall's lost revenue and overtime for police officers--a cost that she says will be "staggering."

A World Guided by “Philanthropreneurs”…or America’s Philanthropic Oligarchy

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By Rick Cohen      
December 22, 2014
Nonprofit Quarterly

Yet another word has been added to the lexicon of nonprofits and foundations: “philanthropreneurship.” London Business School marketing professor Rajesh Chandy uses the neologism to refer to “the skills [that] enabled people to make their fortunes, which are often the ones required to solve apparently intractable problems.” Chandy identifies Pierre Omidyar, Jeff Skoll, Richard Branson, Steve Case, and, not surprisingly, Bill Gates as exemplar philanthropreneurs.
For all of the suspicion in our society of people of wealth, there is a persistent theme in that people of wealth, people who have earned millions or billions in the business world, are somehow better equipped to devise solutions to social problems than the rest of us.

Bill Cosby, Himself: Fame, Narcissism and Sexual Violence

By Max S. Gordon
December 24, 2014
New Civil Rights Movement

I’ve been surprised by women and men, white and black, who continue to defend Bill Cosby.  Regardless of whether we are “for” or “against” him, I’ve assumed that there was one thing we could all agree on: if he is guilty, he should pay for what he did.  I was wrong in that assumption.  Not everyone feels he should be punished, even if the allegations are true.
Yet for those who believe Cosby is guilty, wanting justice doesn’t necessarily address the emotional turmoil we feel about him and our relationship to his art, our bewilderment over the loss of an icon.  For some, it is the pain and horror of watching a black man “eviscerated” in the media.  People use the word “lynching” and even “rape” to describe what they feel is being done to Bill Cosby.   Some feel they have lost a best friend, while others protect Bill unreservedly, rabidly loyal as if to a family member.  
In fact, there is so much talk about what Cosby is going through, that the real issues at hand become obfuscated or dismissed.  What is happening in our conversation about Bill Cosby isn’t just about his downfall, although that is an important part of it.  It’s about our attitudes towards women, rape, victimization, and sexual violence.

She's Beautiful When She's Angry Captures the Women Who Changed It All

By Alan Scherstuhl
December 3, 2014
Village Voice

One of the year's best films, Mary Dore's She's Beautiful When She's Angry is an urgent, illuminating dive into the headwaters of second-wave feminism, the movement that — no matter what its detractors insist — has given us the world in which we live.
"We live in a country that doesn't like to credit any of its radical movements," Susan Brownmiller says in the film. "They don't like to admit in the United States that change happens because radicals force it." A score of those who dared force it turn up for fresh interviews in Dore's wide-ranging film: Here's Rita Mae Brown, Ellen Willis, Fran Beal, Judith Arcana, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, and many more, dishing truth and priceless anecdotes about what it felt like to change the world — and how tough it was to do so.
[She's Beautiful When She's Angry is playing across the country. To find a screening near you, go to http://www.shesbeautifulwhenshesangry.com/findascreening/]