voice of roma education center!

three upcoming benefits for the voice of roma education center in kosovo!

Come out for a beautiful slide show, short film and discussion about the Roma of Kosovo. Presenting and joining the discussion will be me, Marko, educator and activist. I teach at the (Roma led) Voice of Roma education center in Kosovo.

I will share stories of some of the current politics of the region, some of the affects of the war and current relations of Roma people with their Serbian and Albanian neighbors. How religion is playing a role in this region (many Kosovo Rom are Muslim). I will also talk about the work of V.O R, the current emigration of thousands of Roma family’s, Roma traditions (both perceived and real), women’s rights and of course, the amazing kids I taught!..

All of this I try to share through stories as people told them to me or from my own experiences working in the community. I do not come to the presentation as an expert on Roma culture or to speak for the Romani people of Kosovo. I am not Rom and feel that I was very privileged to be welcomed into this community with such warmth. I come to this work very much interested in education, solidarity and mutual aid.

These are benefits for the Voice of Roma Education Center in Kosovo.. donations in the millions accepted!..all donations will go directly to the education center.

Hope to see you there!

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thursday, january 28th, 7pm
938 Valencia Street at 20th
San Francisco (Dolores Street Community Services)
Wheelchair accessible and close to Bart!

$5 donation requested  no one turned away for lack of funds.
yummy snacks
Co-sponsored by the Center for Political Education and Voice of Roma

Also speaking at the this event will be Sani Rifati co- founder of Voice of Roma! He will talk about the present work of Voice of Roma (cultural, educational and economic development) and break down the negative stereotypes of Romani people in the media. He will also talk about the continued displacement of thousands of Roma families.

The Center for Political Education

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tuesday february 2nd  7 pm ….yup that’s groundhogs day!

1721-1/2 63^rd St., Berkeley

(5 blocks S. of Ashby BART)

donations accepted  no one turned away

Yummy snacks   this is not an accessible house

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wednesday february 24th 7pm

station 40

3030B 16th Street

San Francisco (right across from the 16 street bart station)

donations accepted     no one turned away

yummy snacks       this is not an accessible house

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It is the mission of Voice of Roma to promote and present Romani cultural arts and traditions in a way that counters both romanticized and negative “Gypsy” stereotypes, and in so doing, to contribute to the preservation of Romani identity and culture. VOR also works to heighten awareness of human rights issues faced by Roma in today’s world, and to support efforts by Roma to (re)build and maintain their communities, improve their lives, and to strengthen the Romani voice both nationally and internationally. Our mission is accomplished through organizing and implementing cultural arts, educational, economic development, and charitable projects for and about Roma.

Voice of Roma

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DO VIDENJA……

….so dear readers we have come to the end of the beautiful balkan/europe adventures…………..

Mongol Shuudan (russia) LISTEN!

…..and we had two choices for traveling back home……

……….across the atlantic on this aeroplane made of tiny lights…..

… or overland thru siberia on these magical sheep…. thats me on the right and wendy on the left…..

volim te  xo  marko

Quelqu’un M’a Dit  (carla bruni france) LISTEN!

…won’t you meet me at the gates to the garden

And I always thought: the very simplest words
must be enough. When I say what things are like
everyone’s heart must be torn to shreds.
That you’ll go down if you don’t stand up for yourself,
surely you see that.     Bertolt Brecht

Wendy and i placed red carnations on the grave of Brecht, which is the tradition…. And Wendy poured “Club Mate” (very strong mate soda) on his grave hoping he would wake up and have a conversation with us….  and magically it worked!….

We talked of art and theater, and both got totally inspired… she studied theater at university and knows a lot about it. Did you know that Brecht used what he called the 4th wall in his plays? Its something like when the performers break with “the performance” and turn and talk directly to the audience. I know all you theater folks already know this … so im not telling you anything new.. but I am relatively new to theater, having only been a lowly punk rock star in a former life, so its new to me.. and really exciting!

so now I’ll break the fourth wall…. and turn to you and say….

Brecht was called before the house un-American activities committee (HUAC) in 1947 to testify about his communist allegiances. He was blacklisted along with about 40 other writers, directors and actors. Brecht initially said that he would not testify about his political affiliations, but later, on the advice of his attorneys and the fact that he had a flight booked back to east germany.. decided to testify.

The story goes, that he made a theater of the proceedings by wearing  workers overalls and smoking a very smelly cigar. He also slowed things down a bit by speaking English very poorly and giving the translator a hard time… anyway, he did testify that he was not a member of the communist party and was thanked by the chairman for his testimony.  He was criticized afterwards for breaking with the others who stood strong in their conviction to not testify and were cited for contempt……

…. was this another case of the bourgeois artist looking out for number one? ….. or of another Marxist, yet again selling out his sisters and brothers ….. or a brilliant spoof on the “new fascists” in America? ….  ?????

If all people want is to see something they understand, they shouldn’t go to the theater. They should go to the bathroom.     Bertolt Brecht.

die moritat von mackie messer    LISTEN!

dragi friends……

eva… this is not the amazing eva, but a photo of nick from rudimentary peni. .. for some unknown reason i dont have a photo of eva… which is sad… besides being our wonderful host..we sang “three quarters of the world are starving, the rest are dead” as we cleaned house together….. thank you!

hvala! danke! gracias! dzieki! grazie! multumesc! faleminderit! nais tuke! thank you!

tu casa es mi casa

Spent an oh so lovely day with wendy at the graves of Bertolt Brecht and Heiner Muller.! Which is a dream come true for me! We made a quick stop at Tacheles, a former squat turned tourist attraction/nightclub/ beer garden… it has that certain esthetic that is still popular here of “faux squat”. A kind of post-industrial artist warehouse, without the artists. The walls aren’t fixed, bricks exposed, there is “grafitti” in the bathrooms, … but the drinks, and the lighting are really expensive  … it was closed when we arrived. The art that still gets shown here is similar to what you would find in soho in N.Y.C. …the music/performance are people like mark e smith from the fall, or the drummer from sonic youth on solo tours.. a kind of nostalgia for a former time when sonic youth or the fall actually played here. Wendy and I were both here in the 90’s (before we knew each other) and the place held some kind of attraction for both of us then, (which I think is sweet)…. It still had some of its “squatiness”, and artists/activists then…..now its just sad.

The gentrification in berlin is everywhere and like everywhere there are similarities in the ways the process unfolds and in the ways in which it destroys communities. Berlin is interesting in that it is still one of the cheapest European capitals to live in, and although ive asked why this is true to pretty much every Berliner I know, no one can tell me why. A few theories ive heard so far: there is a glut of available housing in berlin, this was more true in the first years after the wall came down, but still true today. There was unused housing in the former east, which was either squatted or renovated for rent or sale after the fall of the DDR. As the capital was moved to berlin from bonn, a lot of housing was built and or renovated in anticipation, but the mass influx of people they expected never happened.

Another theory is that there are neighborhoods in Berlin that have primarily Turkish people living in them, (who came to berlin as “guest workers” in the 70’s and 80’s)  and since a majority of them come from Anatolia in Turkey, which is a rural region in turkey, that somehow they have a different relationship to land, to ownership, to family and to thus to capitalism…. I don’t quite know the logic in this theory, but I think it has something to do with the fact that many of these folks from the first wave of “guest workers” are now owners of property and they keep the rents down so that family and friends can also emigrate to Berlin… ??? this is a fascinating theory and I would love to know if anyone knows anymore about it…..

Wendy and I went flyering with our dear friend veronica for a meeting that is being organized to discuss/ take action against the gentrification in krueztberg. Flyers in german and in turkish… one of each for each door in the neighborhood…..

Many folks I know recently saw the movie “BOOM the sound of eviction”, a movie that was made in san Francisco in 2001. It tells the story of the dot com boom in s.f and the resistance organized against it. I love it when art lasts and inspires folks to action…..

ich bin ein berliner… i am a jelly doughnut

Tonight while walking the “countryside” in berlin (a long walk around kruetzberg, that includes part of the old wall and a park where a canal from the Spree river was diverted long ago), my dear friends Bergit, Martin and i talked of our lives in the past 2 years…. I learned that martin is a real Berliner as in he has lived here his whole life…

The end of autumn is here and in the fading light and growing cold, we talked of trauma (personal and community), and we talked of change and our work in various projects. A lot has happened in 2 years in our lives and I realized how much I have missed them. These amazing people that I visit again and again who have dedicated their lives to changing this rotten ass system. The last part of the walk Bergit and I took alone to gorlitzer park in the dark. She said something that really struck me… something about how we (anarchists, punks, leftists, queers etc.) are reluctant or scared to talk about personal trauma yet we all have experienced it on some level… while at the same time, many of us work on these projects that have trauma (personal and community) at their root. We tend to work on trauma in the abstract, trauma is something that happens over there to the less fortunate. She told me that she respected me so much not only for sharing my life with them so honestly, but also for being so open to listen. She said that the work of buildingbloc, (when we were here 2 years ago), changed her life in some way…
… the last part of our walk I told her how much I feel she has to offer her community here… bringing her own personal experience to share.. how much hope and strength I get from knowing them… it’s a lot really… not abstract in the least… I feel really lucky to have these people in my life.. all of them!… berlin is becoming a second home of sorts…. “ich bin ein berliner” (i am a jelly doughnut)

erinyen anarcha-feminist collective

check out this amazing collective from berlin!

erinyen anarcha-feminist collective

Although anarchism is, in theory, inherently feminist, the reality is often quite different. Erinyen was created out of a need to bring issues of dominance, alienation, lack of control and masked hierarchy more into the anarchist sphere as well as for creating a place to share information, struggles and ideas. We hope with this platform and the magazine we contribute to more solidarity, understanding and change on all levels, regardless of gender, sex, age, ethnicity … and so on.

CESTA! undercovered…

hey all you artists.. wanna apply for an amazing collaborative arts festival in the
beautiful hansel and gretal forest of Bohemia cz republiki. heres your chance!
CESTA

CESTA’s 13th Arts Festival of International,
Interdisciplinary Collaborations
August 2009

Hidden and naked. Protected and endangered. Forgotten and targeted. The duality
of undercovered is inescapable – the concealed to the unveiled, the censored to the
recognized. The current unprecedented access to information encourages
discovery, yet we attack the conspicuous. We guard our histories, and suffer as the
ignored. We pursue knowledge to achieve progress, yet illumination creates
shadows, and definition creates margins. When do we seek protection through
visibility and when through anonymity? In our quest for recognition and
representation, what do we discard or overlook, and why?
For UNDERCOVERED, CESTA invites artists in all disciplines to collaborate in
creating works implicating this duality through their choices of artistic content,
process, or discipline.

CESTA’s festival themes and parameters of cross-national interdisciplinary
collaborations represent the center’s commitment to improving communication
through creative expression. We base our selection of artists on a review of
applications resulting from our annual open call. Applicants request CESTA to
connect them with one or more collaboration partners or apply as a pre-formed
collaboration group .

For UNDERCOVERED all final festival collaboration groups must be:
1) Cross-national: more than one nationality
2) Interdisciplinary: more than one artistic medium
3) Collaborative: conceptualizing and creating interdependent artistic work
AND must contain work created exclusively for UNDERCOVERED.

Festival Application Deadline: December 19, 2008
(postmarked)

UNDERCOVERED festival schedule
On-site collaborations in
progress:
August 1-26

Presentations of participants’
past work:
August 13-18

Seminars, workshops and
educational programs on the
festival theme:

August 13-18

Final presentations of the
collaboration groups:
August 28-30

Daily reviews of the
presentations:
August 29-31

Festival closing forum:
August 31

LAST RAMONE STANDING WINS!

Deuschtland is a place where obscure punks can still make a living….. where punk drummers can still make a living..

Marky Ramone is a d.j?…. who knew? ……… john langford of the mekons, (one of my favorite bands of all time)  once said in a radio interview, something like…. it was the era of “the least common denominator” the conservatives and the fascists had Reagan and Thatcher and we had THE RAMONES!

weißer mann…..

my presentation in berlin went really well!!! I presented with my friends alex and sandro. The evening lasted 4 and half hours after all the questions… I was blown away by peoples interest and their genuine inquisitiveness…. It’s a very different scene here with ideas and conversation, and time for both… longer attention span? I dunno? There were about 45 people in attendance, which is a giant crowd in berlin for a presentation, as there are lots of presentations/ parties/ meetings almost every night of the week all over the city. I didn’t expect so many people to show up! Thanks to Abolishing Borders from Below for all their work in making these events happen… super!

Alex presented an overview of roma life in the different countries she has traveled to, with a short slide presentation. It was great and made me realize how what i experienced was such a very small, specific slice of Roma culture. One thing that Tito brought to the former Yugoslavia was a home for many people. The Roma in Kosovo live in communities (in houses) and this is definitely not true in all other parts of Europe. Alex’s presentation showed the diversity of roma life and the class divisions that also exist within the culture. Stereotyping of roma people is common, and by showing the diversity of roma life it was a good way to break those sterotypes.

Sandro presented on the current situation in italy… (in Rome and in Napoli). A story of violence, eviction of entire communities and deportation with the support of the Italian state. Its really fucking horrible… incredible racist… and it seems that very little of the Italian public is organizing to stop it….

after a break for cigarettes and club mate (the drink that single handedly keeps the berlin @movement alive and functioning) we had a long question and answer period.  Some of the toughest questions for me were about working for an international ngo, and cultural imperialism. One person kept trying to make the point, or ask the question about me being a white boy (weißer mann) in a community that is not mine and how did that change the community or the integrity of roma culture…. Great questions which I have thought about a lot.        

I realized, that for me, there is a way in which my own analysis of many things went out the window when I was in Kosovo…. That being there in the midst of the daily trauma, discrimination and poverty…  I just tried to focus on the kids I was teaching and give them as much love as possible. Things were at such a survival level much of the time that all my questions of how I was changing “roma culture” by being there, or by teaching English faded to the background. Oh gawd!  does this make me a bleeding heart liberal?

My students were obviously happy that I was there and the love was mutual. The education center itself really took off in my time there and became a  wonderful place for the kids. Its not that my questions weren’t there, they just didn’t seem as pressing when in the midst of everything. I not saying this is right or wrong… just that it was…

One of voice of roma’s first projects, 7 years ago, was intensive English classes for about 50 students. Many of these folks now have jobs in ngo’s, as translators for the very large international community in Kosovo or with kfor and the united nations.. I know some of these folks and there are supporting large families with their incomes. Learning the english language has changed their lives for the better.. they told me so again and again. Unemployment in the roma community in kosovo is around 90%, speaking english is one of the few opportunities that folks have for employment.

I realized my own “cultural imperalism” one day towards the end of my stay in Kosovo. I wanted to do an evaluation with the students in both of my classes. Not just an evaluation but to give them the opportunity to speak about the things that they wanted from their education center. I definitely had a motive of trying to empower the students and to give them the feeling of ownership in the education center… noble goals maybe? We spent a lot of class time on these questions. I took notes on everything the students said. I had the feeling, half way into the first evaluation, that the kids in my classes had never been asked questions like this before. That maybe I was way outside a cultural context for them. I got a lot of blank looks, a lot of kids just repeating what their classmates had already said.  The adults really control the kids worlds and its not normal for them to step outside of that and speak for they want…   I started to feel that I was imposing something on them that I thought was a good thing for them…. was it?  is this appropriate? I am still asking myself.