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Dispatches From the Culture Wars - End of an Era edition

Bye 339 Lafayette; Willmore transgresses; Family Values clash with justice; Neoliberalism devours higher ed; Korean gem at Cannes

The Peace Pentagon, at 339 Lafayette Street, in January 1991, during the Gulf War. ,WNV / Ed Hedemann


A Fond Farewell to New York’s Peace Pentagon

By Frida Berrigan
May 26, 2016
Waging Nonviolence

The War Resisters League’s offices occupied most of the second floor of the Peace Pentagon — a warren of leftist, progressive, artistic and anarchist groups — for almost half a century. But now, WRL and the other groups sheltered by the A.J. Muste Memorial Institute are moving from the corner of Bleecker and Lafayette Streets on the Lower East Side to rented offices on Canal Street. WRL began renting space in the building in the late 1960s and bought it for $60,000 in 1974 — the year I was born. Many of its staff were war tax resisters and anti-war activists, and they worried about having an asset that could be seized in lieu of fines or taxes. So, they sold the building to the newly formed A.J. Muste Memorial Institute in 1978 for $91,000. The Muste Institute ran the building, acting as a very generous landlord to an ever changing clutch of radical causes, in addition to providing fiscal sponsorship, grants and technical support to many progressive organizations.

Long before social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, just opening the door to the building was a chance to network, learn, connect and appreciate the intersections between different struggles and movements. “ We live in a different world today. Bulletin boards? Flyers? Mailing parties? Offices with doors? In a stretch of Manhattan that is almost entirely gentrified, 339 Lafayette seems like a tiny brick-and-mortar relic smooshed between massive spires of steel and glass.
 

The Black Conversation Around Larry Wilmore’s ‘Nigga’ Remark Was Really About Something Much Bigger

By Rembert Browne
May 7, 2016
New York magazinel

The 2016 White House Correspondents' Dinner was hosted by The Nightly Show’s Larry Wilmore. In his speech, in keeping with the tradition of the annual roast, the comedian made many jokes. One of those involved looking at the president of the United States, Barack Obama, and saying, “Yo, Barry. You did it, my nigga.”

Both Wilmore and Obama are black. Typically, that reality makes saying nigga in public free from controversy, but that was not true in this case. Days later the shock of the moment still lingers — Wilmore said “my nigga” to the president; holy shit, Larry — but it’s the wide-ranging commentary that followed that proved more interesting. Especially from black people.
 

Declaration of Family Values Divides Latinos in Arizona

By Daniel González, Rafael Carranza and Laura Gómez
May 27, 2016
Arizona Republic

Tony Moya has known Petra Falcon for more than 25 years.

But their friendship has been strained, if not broken, since Moya saw on Facebook that Falcon was among about 50 Latino religious and community leaders who signed a document declaring that traditional Hispanic family values define marriage as "between a man and a woman."

Moya, who is gay, was so upset, he posted photo of himself and his partner of 21 years, Santiago Serna, 51, and their pet cat, Gato. The couple recently sent out cards announcing they plan to marry on Oct. 1.

Moya's response is an example of some of the hard feelings generated by the document, which has divided leaders of the Latino community who often work together on issues of common concern such as immigration and education.
 

The Battle for the Soul of American Higher Education

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By Aviva Chomsky
May 22, 2016
TomDispatch

During the past academic year, an upsurge of student activism, a movement of millennials, has swept campuses across the country and attracted the attention of the media. From coast to coast, from the Ivy League to state universities to small liberal arts colleges, a wave of student activism has focused on stopping climate change, promoting a living wage, fighting mass incarceration practices, supporting immigrant rights, and of course campaigning for Bernie Sanders.

Both the media and the schools that have been the targets of some of these protests have seized upon certain aspects of the upsurge for criticism or praise, while ignoring others. Commentators, pundits, and reporters have frequently trivialized and mocked the passion of the students and the ways in which it has been directed, even as universities have tried to appropriate it by promoting what some have called “neoliberal multiculturalism.” Think of this as a way, in particular, of taming the power of the present demands for racial justice and absorbing them into an increasingly market-oriented system of higher education.
 

The Korean Gothic Lesbian Revenge Thriller That’s Captivated Cannes

By Jada Yuan
May 15, 2016
Vulture

In the grand theaters of Cannes, Park Chan-Wook's The Handmaiden (French title: Mademoiselle) jolted awake every bleary-eyed reporter at its packed debut screening Saturday morning. An adaptation of Welsh author Sarah Waters's kinky, award-winning 2002 historical crime novel Fingersmith set in Victorian England, Park moves the action to 1930s Korea under Japanese colonialism, where class and tradition still loomed large, but a rich family could flaunt status by having electricity — which plays a dramatic role in the movie — in their big homes. Park is best known for his "vengeance trilogy," including 2003's Oldboy, but he seems far less interested in blood than Dangerous Liaisons-esque intrigue with this one.