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Donald Trump and Harry Jackson in the Oval OfficePhoto: YouTube screenshot/NBC News

Donald Trump invited a virulently anti-LGBTQ pastor to deliver an Easter blessing from the White House this past Friday.

Bishop Harry Jackson has gotten national media attention since 2012 for his opposition to LGBTQ rights and extreme statements, which include saying that LGBTQ people are folks who cannot reproduce who want to recruit your kids and said that the movement for marriage equality proved that the U.S. was just like during the times of Hitler.

Related: Bishop Harry Jackson says gays want to recruit your kids

Jackson once said that marriage equality is a Satanic plot to destroy our seed and told his fellow Christians to steal back the rainbow. We cant let the gays have it.

In 2018, he said that Black Lives Matter will fail because there are lesbians in its leadership.

We cant have social justice, we need biblical justice, Jackson said. It matters that Black Lives Matter has, at the head, a few lesbians who are against the patriarchal society.

And blogger Joe Jervis found a few of Jacksons greatest hits from Twitter.

The list could go on Jackson has spent the better part of a decade speaking in mainstream media and at conservative Christian events making extreme statements about LGBTQ people.

But apparently his statements werent too extreme for the Trump administration. On Friday, he delivered the Easter Blessing from the White House, standing three feet away from Trump for social distancing. Trump introduced him as a highly respected gentleman.

Jackson thanked Trump and Pence for their efforts to protect our nation from coronavirus.

Youve included the churches in your relief efforts, Jackson told Trump, referring to the CARES Act Congress passed late last month. Many churches would have had to close down had it not been for your insightful leadership. So thank you both.

He then read from the Bible and prayed with Trump and Mike Pence. Trump called his blessing beautiful.

Read this article:
Donald Trump invited a pastor who said gays want to recruit your kids to deliver Easter blessing - LGBTQ Nation

I live in New Orleans. In 2005, the aftermath of a once-in-a-century hurricane provided an opportunity to think anew about how to design an education system and rebuild a city.

The current hurricanethe coronavirusgives us a chance to think anew as a social impact sector and as a nation about the future we want to pass along. This is our once in a 100-year opportunity. But just because we have a once-in-a-lifetime chance, it does not mean we will necessarily seize it. In our fixation on grades and achievement, we have too often left out the most important part of what it takes to build a better future for our children.

Now again, I worry that this part, which too often gets taken out, is just the part that we need the most.

That part is a holistic approach to investing in education. It is the argument that what happens outside of the school matters as much as what happens within. It is the statement that health and food matter. That economic opportunities matter. And that black lives matter, too.

For nearly the past decade, defending this part has been a constant part of my work. In 2014, as funding and enthusiasm for education technology was booming, I had been trying to string together a few yeses from foundations for the nonprofit venture fund I was launching, Camelback Ventures.

A coffee meeting led to information about a funding opportunity. Youll receive an email, said my coffee date. A few months later the email arrived. A couple months after that, our proposal was up for approval. The program officer had this advice for me: To get the deal done, they advised, take that part out.

The program officer said that although they agreed with me, all those issues would be a distraction for the foundation to get this deal done.

I did not argue. I, too, wanted to get the deal done. It had been nearly 15 months since I had had a paycheck.

Six year later, I still believe in that part I was told to take out. It is why even though we took a few lines out of our proposal, we did not remove those ideas from our work. It is why Camelback has invested in companies like Tiny Docs (media to advance health and wellness for families), Raheem (tech to create a world without police violence), MadeBOS (tech to create career pathing for retail workers) and Liberate (meditation app for people of color).

In the midst of the current pandemic, we all are asking ourselves, Now what? I don't know what the future holds. But heres what I do know:

We cannot educate through the fact that 11 million go to bed hungry. We cant ignore that there are 3,800 areas with high levels of lead in the water. We cant forget that five children are murdered daily by someone responsible for their care. And we must own up to the fact that we have a system where those who make all other work possibleespecially teachersare underpaid.

Just as we are asking schools to figure out distance learning, those of us who lead fellowship and accelerators must do that same. In the short term, Zoom and Mural will serve as tools for team meetings and virtual summits. In the long run, there is an opportunity to use frontier technologies like augmented and virtual reality to create immersive experiences that can scale.

If youre a social entrepreneur who has built a product or program to solve an issue, you will have to engage in the policy, advocacy and work of getting in the way to help it flourish. If you are a social justice warrior who is an expert agitator, you too will need to figure out how to productize and even scale your work to make sure it has impact.

For Camelback, these ideas are not a radical change. We have long believed that this work is important. Before the pandemic, we heard phrases such as education plus and systems change to describe the idea that it was more than good schools with great teachers and technology that would lead to better outcomes. Whatever it is called, leaders of color have thought in these ways for years. And now that the vocabulary has caught up to us, we must make sure that the vocabulary does not leave us behind.

In the next 12 months, we cannot let this exogenous shock decimate organizations led by people of color. Our organizations were under-capitalized in the good times and therefore are the most vulnerable now.

That means funding organizations must innovate, too. Providing general operating grants, maintaining funding levels, and then increasing them is a start. But if our country can provide a stimulus plan to companies that lack liquidity because they spent precious capital to buy back stocks, then it can provide support for entrepreneurs of color who launched their organizations by cashing out their 401(k)s. Heres how:

Invest in research & development: The Big Four tech companies have spent over $600 billion on R&D in the last decade. It is the only way we will get to new policies, ideas and models. The emergent recovery funds from foundations should be R&D funds. This is not the time to simply double down on your portfolio. This means foundations must bet on new ideas, including from black, indigenous and people of color.

Add constituencies to governing boards: Lets practice co-determination. In countries such as Germany, corporations must have a percentage of the board be employees. This has aligned interest, provided stable governance and created value. Money should not be used as a tool for control, but rather for collaboration. Foundation boards should add board members who have lived experience on the issues they support.

Invest in an equity ombudsperson: Equity ombudspeople arent chief diversity officers but instead independent, contracted professionals, appointed for an unimpeachable timeframe such as at least two years. They identify systemic issues and handle internal and external complaints related to issues of equity, with a focus on race, gender and ability. Ombudspeople build trust with communities and hold donors accountable. If youre not ready for this yet, start with this new funder collaborative.

Now, more than ever, we can no longer leave critical parts out. Those parts are the lives of individuals, families and communities to whom we are all inextricably linked. Those parts are the work of anti-racism. A massive investment in leaders of color and designing for equity is the first step. All the parts we leave out of this redesign will be the ones well be fixing until the next crisis blooms.

Originally posted here:
As We Rebuild, Heres the Part We Cant Afford to Take Out - EdSurge

Editor's note: The following interview was conducted by phone on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, January 20, 2020. Eight weeks later, on March 17, New York Live Arts announced the cancellation of the premiere of Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company's Deep Blue Sea, originally scheduled to run April 1425 at the Park Avenue Armory. We have decided to share excerpts from that conversation with Jones, though the premiere of Deep Blue Sea has not yet been rescheduled.

Deep Blue Sea is a massive undertaking. A host of recognized creatives in architecture, design and music are working with Bill T. Jones to fill the Park Avenue Armory's 55,000-square-foot drill hallamong the largest rooms in New York City. "It is my honor to be commissioned by the Armory," says Jones, who also performs in the work, ending a 15-year hiatus from the stage. "But the Armory is a motherf***er. There is no space like it. Where do you rehearse?" The answer has largely been "away from the city," hosted by Bethany Arts Community, MASS MoCA and others; each residency has been a chance to experiment with building a cast of 100 people. "Working people. Family people. Not a bunch of cool dancers from Brooklyn," he says. "Well, some are cool dancers from Brooklyn. They can be between ages 16 and 70. I was going to say 65 but then realized I am already 68, so that's not very fair."

It's good to reconnectwe last spoke in 2011.

Right. Life goes on.

It seems auspicious that today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, as his speech "I Have a Dream" is among the source material you've referenced for Deep Blue Sea. How does it appear in the work?

I perform it backwards, with the words in retrograde, so it sounds like a bit of Dada poetry. I suppose it's too late for a spoiler alert now. That speech, though, is an American icon and, for me and for a lot of people, it's as important as the United States Constitution. I grew up in a Martin Luther Kingloving household. My parents were very religious people, and I always thought I agreed wholeheartedly with this notion that we shall overcome. Now it's very much an open question.

"Will we overcome?"

Don't you ask the same question?

At times.

Right. And why is that? There is a very sticky and potentially explosive conversation that, along with the election, is going to ask us, "Are we really still this beacon, this light on a hill, this conglomerate of disparate groups and stakeholders that we call American democracy?" This work deals with that ambiguity.

Your sources also include Moby-Dick. Where does Melville intersect with Dr. King?

Well, in Moby-Dick there was a little black boy on the boat whose name is Pip. He is an unlikely character among the macho, cantankerous and combative population of the Pequod, which Melville has artfully used as a metaphor for modern society. He is the least powerful person on the boat, and this is what attracted me to him. The fact is, I turned an accusing eye on myself: I remembered so much about the book, but I didn't remember this character! And I suppose reading the book in the wake of Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, trans rights, all those things: We look at the under-observed in our society with newfound respect nowat least some of us do. Martin Luther King and Pip come together in that poetic, though tenuous and metaphorical, association.

Is this a first time for you collaborating on production design with an architect?

Hm. Yes, it is. And Liz Diller says, "I don't do dcor; I'm involved in dramaturgy."

So much of her and her partners' work is about movement. The High Line isn't really a building at all, but a path; The Shed has movable components; The Juilliard School renovation is about circulation and space

What you say about movement in their work is very true. Is Deep Blue Sea an architectural project? Yes, it is, and no, it is not.

You once said to me that "creation, when you're in the heat of it, is a near-sacred thing that you don't really control. It controls you." Do you still feel that way, or do you feel more in control now? Do you even want more control?

I don't think it's changed much. I don't think that I have the ultimate agency, particularly when you're working with persons who come from very distant disciplines like architecture, and they are very accomplished artists who have strong senses of their own voices. I am not more free. Am I more diplomatic? I don't know. Am I better at working through problems? Not really, but I do have people around me who are, like Janet Wong, my associate who is an extremely politic and kind person, and yet she's very strong. Whereas I might scream, she has other ways of getting what she wants.

What besides dance interests you today?

I'm reading the work of Octavia Butler, who is in some ways the grande dame of Afro-Futurism, before it even had a name. Now, of course, it's a visual art movement; there is a version that is coming literally from Africa. We are now in the postBlack Panther era, and the black community is not the only community that is interested in speculative space. Native American people, Asian people, queer people, are all in some ways using speculative fiction.

Along with their main objectives, it seems social movements like Black Lives Matter and #MeToo aim to remind us we have physical bodies, as opposed to just virtual identities. Is that another association for you as a choreographer?

I appreciate your framing of the question, but some of us have lived our whole lives, our whole creative lives [pauses] If you are a black man of my description, and you're working in the white avant-garde, you know these things deep in your bones. Maybe there was no language or no appetite for discussing them as there is now, but it's not like it was a revelation for many of us. I would say to you as a writer, when you say "we," who are you talking about? Who is the "we" that makes aesthetic judgments and defines art movements?

You said earlier that the idea of "we" was a central question of Deep Blue Sea.

That is a central question of my life right now. Because I have been the cool black guy in a room full of cool white people. There was a time when I could count on one hand, Ralph Lemon, Bebe Miller, Blondell Cummings, Ishmael Houston-Jones: There were only a handful of us. Why was that? Let's talk about our historyeven in the avant-garde. Let's talk about our history in light of what we have discovered about our society. On that note, I think I have to go because I have to be upstairs in one minute.

I appreciate your time.

Thank you. There is a lot more here we can be talking about. These are questions about the field that I think are crying out for serious attention.

Read the original:
The Show That Would Have Been: Bill T. Jones Talks Deep Blue Sea - Dance Magazine

With the Alliance Theatres Festival of New Works postponed due to the coronavirus (COVID-19), the Midtown venue is bringing those works to the masses through a new free online series, the Virtual Play Club.

The festival, which was to take place March 30 through April 30, was to include a presentation of the four finalists from the Alliance/Kendeda National Graduate Playwriting Competition and the Reiser Atlanta Artists Lab.

While the Reiser lab presentation is still to come, the Alliance/Kendeda contests finalists scripts are being showcased in a series of events April 16 through 24, where the public is invited to a live conversation with the playwright to discuss the script. Also, the finalists scripts will be posted to the theaters website for view April 9 through 24.

According to a news release, the Virtual Play Club series will end with an artists roundtable discussion moderated by Rachel Karpf, former artistic producer with the WP Theater in New York and featuring all four finalists, as well as Atlanta playwrights Will Power, Steve Coulter, Kimberly Belflower, Mary Lynn Owen and Mark Kendall.

The schedule is as follows:

April 16 at 4 p.m.: Unkindness by Logan Faust (NYU Tisch), a conversation with the playwright, director Matt Torney and associate producer Amanda Watkins. Unkindness tells the story of Bonnie, a grieving mother, and Elijah, a would-be prophet, as they struggle to survive after their only motivations for survival, their son and faith, respectively, are taken from them, the release stated.

April 17 at 7 p.m.: Djarum Vanilla by Cary J. Simowitz (UCLA), a conversation with the playwright, director Keith Bolden and associate producer Amanda Watkins. According to the release, Djarum Vanilla is described as follows: November 2014. Missouri. The Darren Wilson verdict is imminent. Protests are becoming a daily part of life in Ferguson. The nascent Black Lives Matter movement is gaining national traction as racial tension in Missouri reaches a boiling point.

April 23 at 4 p.m.: Monster by Ava Geyer (UCSD), a conversation with the playwright, director January LaVoy and associate producer Amanda Watkins. When self-help guru Drew Capuanos compulsive masturbation comes to light, he retains the services of the only person who will still represent him: his power hungry 24-year-old female assistant, the release stated.

April 24 at 4 p.m.: Stitched with a Sickle and a Hammer by Inna Tsyrlin (Ohio University), a conversation with the playwright, director Lauren Morris and associate producer Amanda Watkins. According to the release, the play is described as follows: Aleksandra, a political prisoner at a Gulag camp and part of the camps theater troupe, is forced to help Soviet authorities disguise the existence of the camp in front of a visiting American delegation.

April 24 at 5:30 p.m.: Artists roundtable discussion

All virtual events are free and open to the public, but RSVPs are required so each link to the live conversation may be emailed to participants. For more information, to view the scripts or to RSVP for the events, visit http://www.alliancetheatre.org/virtualplayclub.

View original post here:
Alliance Theatre spotlighting playwriting contest's scripts online through Virtual Play Club - MDJOnline.com

Campus Reform is counting down the craziest outbursts from triggered leftist students.

Whether its social justice warriors blocking streets and shutting down events, or Antifa members assaulting conservative students, weve seen and covered it all at Campus Reform.

From the West Coast to the East Coast, leftist students have been captured on video melting down, lashing out, and threatening conservatives.

WATCH:

Story continues below the video...

Here's the full countdown...

When Milo Yiannopoulos, Steven Crowder, and Christina Hoff Sommers spoke together at an event titled The Triggering at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, protesters did their best to shut things down. One protester, later labeled Trigglypuff by social media users, gained nationwide attention for her childlike outburst.

WATCH:

Conservative activist Hayden Williams was on campus at the University of California-Berkeley when an angry leftist approached his table, threatening him and the students with him. When Williams pulled out his phone to record the incident, a man later identified as Zachary Greenberg, sucker-punched him, before threatening to shoot him. The incident sparked national outrage, eventually leading to President Donald Trump bringing Williams on stage to laud his courage at the 2019 Conservative Political Action Conference.

WATCH:

A student at Western Washington University lost her mind at the sight of a Donald Trump sign on campus, shrieking incoherently at the man holding it for more than two minutes. At one point, a university employee runs to the scene to offer help, thinking the student was screaming for help, at which point the crazed student can be heard saying oh no, Im good, before continuing her yelling.

WATCH:

A conservative student at Sacramento State University was allegedly assaulted by a leftist peer following a social media disagreement. The assailant, who shouted motherf**ker, youre going to end up f**king dead and called the conservative student an Uncle Tom, had to be forcibly restrained by multiple people before fleeing the scene.

WATCH:

At the University of Kansas, a group of leftist students attempted to shut down a Young Americans for Freedom meeting after becoming enraged at the groups stance against safe spaces on campus. In the video obtained by Campus Reform, protesters can be seen berating the conservative students, leading some online to refer to the incident as Trigglypuff 2.0.

WATCH:

At Binghamton University, a leftist mob of over 200 descended upon a Turning Point USA table on campus. Police had to be called after some in the crowd made threats towards the conservative students, before tearing down their table and discarding their property. In response, Rep. Tom Reed visited the school to offer his support to the conservative students, meeting with Binghamtons President to express his concern over the incident.

WATCH:

At Dartmouth, Black Lives Matter protesters stormed the library during finals week, demanding students join in their protest. One student can be heard asking them to leave, saying I have a final tomorrow.

WATCH:

Follow the author of this article on Twitter:@Cabot_Phillips

Link:
VIDEO: The craziest campus leftists of all time - Campus Reform