❤ Honoring Juneteenth by honoring Black Artists and Black Jews ❤
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Portrait of Indira Allegra
Happy Juneteenth! Juneteenth celebrates the day (two years after the Emancipation Proclaimation) those who had been enslaved were liberated in the U.S., when Union soldigers landed in Galveston TX and announced the end of the war. It’s a celebratory black holiday and today there are festive actions being held throughout Turtle Island. Use this map to find actions in your area today.
Today, in honor of Juneteenth, this newsletter is dedicated to loving and supporting an essential scholar, artist and worker of our time: Indira Allegra.
Let’s use the energy of this weekends New Moon Solar Eclipse to transform and bring real change to individual black lives.
ART IS ESSENTIAL.
ART IS UNDERVALUED.
BLACK ARTIST’S LIVES AND WORK ARE ESSENTIAL.
BLACK ARTIST’S LIVES AND WORK ARE NOT HELD DEAR.
BLACK LIVES MATTER.
BLACK FEMME INDIGENOUS QUEER ARTISTS LIVING WITH DISABILITIES LIVES MATTER.
Indira Allegra has been making work about police violence for many years. Years ago she applied for assylum in Germany from the U.S. for being a black person living under life threatening circumstances and was denied.
Indira’s work springs from a place of deep love and care for her own life, those who occupy similar identities as she does and, for humanity as a whole. It comes from an innate ability to find and see beauty and a lifetime of being forced (because of her identities) to constantly confront her mortality. Her life and work are a testament to the depth of her resilience, the beauty of her spirit and her visionary art.
Today, especially if you are white I ask of you two things:
Will you please visit Indira’s website and view these pieces of hers. Open Casket (listen to audio at the end) and Watching You From a Moving Platform.
Will you allow your body and spirit to experience and be moved by her offerings?
If you receive privilege from systemic racism (ie: You are able to walk down the street, go to the store, do daily tasks without fear of being killed by the police. If you aren’t constantly judged or having to confront the violence of racism daily because of the color of your skin)
Will you consider becoming a patron of her work through Patreon?
I am a Patreon at $25 a month and am looking for others to match my patronage. (of course any amount is welcome and appreciated, even if it is just a few dollars a month.)
Indira has received the prestigious Burke Prize from the Museum of Art and Design, has been commissioned by SFMOMA and other prestigious museums, taught at countless universities and still struggles to pay her rent. These institutions continuously screw over black artists. She is a dear friend and for years I have heard first hand the atrocities she has experienced. The world we currently live in screws over artists and fucks over black artists even harder.
Recently she has family who have been adversely affected by COVID19 and not cared for as they should be because of anti black racism. Her income has vanished because of cancelled teaching gigs, exhibitions and events. She has been denied housing in the bay area because of anti black racism and has recently been followed and attacked.
If it applies to you: Thank you for making reparations by supporting the essential contributions of black artists.
Thank you for sharing love with Indira.
Black Lives Kaddish
I have been asked by fellow kohenet, Shoshana Brown (via journalist Robin Washington), who is part of the Black Yids Matter group of JFEJ and the Jewish Multiracial Network, to spread this request to recite a Kaddish for Black Lives during this Shabbat.
It has been requested that this be shared throughout your Jewish networks and said this evening. This blessing is said to support us, the living, to give appropriate honor to those we have lost, to support their souls transition. May their memories be a blessing.
BLACK LIVES KADDISH
Creator of life, source of compassion. Your breath remains the source of our spirit, even as too many of us cry out that we cannot breathe. Lovingly created in your image, the color of our bodies has imperiled our lives.
Black lives are commodified yet devalued, imitated but feared, exhibited but not seen.
Black lives have been pursued by hatred, abandoned by indifference and betrayed by complacency.
Black lives have been lost to the violence of the vigilante, the cruelty of the marketplace and the silence of the comfortable.
We understand that Black lives are sacred, inherently valuable, and irreplaceable.
We know that to oppress the body of the human, is to break the heart of the divine.
We yearn for the day when the bent will stand straight.
We pray that the hearts our country will soften to the pain endured for centuries.
We will do all we must to bind up the wounds, to heal the shattered hearts, to break the yoke of oppression.
As the beauty of the heavens is revealed to us each day, may each day reveal to us the beauty of our common humanity. Amen.
