Actually Alive and #IranElection

I’ve actually been very active online recently, but through twitter.  Just keeping up with twitter feeds on #iranelection is taking most of my time (and the rest goes to actual work), but check out @mmckone and @georgetownDG.

Upcoming Events

The Least of These
A Reel Progress Screening
5.11.2009
7 – 830 PM

Featured Speakers:

• Michelle Brané, Director, Detention and Asylum program, Women’s Refugee Center
• Barbara Hines, Professor, University of Texas School of Law
• Clark Lyda, director, “The Least of These”
• Angela Kelley, VP for Immigration Policy

Click here to RSVP.
Admission is free.

The Ideology and Politics of the Millennial Generation: How Progressive Are Young People Today?
5.13.2009
12 – 1 PM
Center for American Progress
1333 H Street NW
Washington, DC 20005

Featuring:

• John Halpin, CAP Senior Fellow
• Ruy Texeira, CAP Senior Fellow
• Abigail Kiesa, Youth Coordinator at CIRCLE
• Erica Williams, Deputy Director and Policy and Advocacy Manager at Campus Progress

This event is free and open to the public.
Click here to RSVP.

A light lunch will be served at 11:30 a.m.

Credit Where It’s Due

I’m still trying to track down the name of the photographer who took the picture I’m using as my header here and on Twitter.  So far I’ve found multiple references to it, but no credits.  The best I can figure out is that it was taken in Dubai.

If anyone has any more information, I’d love to know.

Thanks.

What Am I (Not) Doing Here?

I keep meaning to post but then not posting, a pattern that’s been going on for some time.  It’s not for lack of interesting things going on in the world – the Somali pirates have prompted quite a few blog posts by people recently – but I just haven’t been paying attention to the same things that I used to.  Some of it is most definitely the lack of time due to my job, but I’ve also switched my current focus from reading everything Africa or economics related to learning about nonprofits, entrepreneurship, lifehacking, and searching for scholarships to pay for grad school in the fall.  I am going to grad school in order to return to the field of African development, so I’m sure those posts will return, but I just don’t have anything to say on the subject right now.  But, that is the dominant theme of this blog, by design and by content, and so to pursue other subjects, while reflective of my current interests, seems almost like an abandonment of the purpose of the EI.  In truth, however, this is false.

Everyday idealism is all of the little things that one might do to make the world a better place, and the belief that all of those little things do result in far-reaching consequences, even without our explicit knowledge.  Changing the world is difficult at best and impossible-seeming most of the time, and even living a good life as an individual can seem beyond the scope of one’s abilities day-to-day.  But I see that as no reason not to try.

Everyday Idealism

Right now, being an everyday idealist means holding the sometimes impossible belief that I can actually get myself organized.  It’s the little things – the everyday things – that make us who we are.

More on this later.

‘Franz Freaking Fanon?!’*

Found this draft from last year.  Not sure why I never published it.

Yes, I can now say that I’ve finally actually read him. So far I’ve only read Toward the African Revolution, but intend to read A Dying Colonialism or Black Skin, White Masks eventually, although I’m looking forward to it much less than I was.

It’s not that Fanon is a bad writer; he’s often compelling, in no small part because his writing has the rhythm of poetry. Many of his essays include such sections. One of my favorites is “Letter to a Frenchman,” the entirety of which consists of drumbeat lines such as these:

Remember Setif! Do you want another Setif?
They will, but we won’t.
All this you told me, laughing.
But your wife wasn’t laughing.
And behind your laugh I saw.
I saw your essential ignorance of this country and its ways.
I’ll tell you what I mean.

…….

And you mingling with those:

Who have never shaken hands with an Arab.
Never drunk coffee.
Never exchanged commonplaces about the weather with an Arab.
By your side the Arabs.
Pushed aside the Arabs.
Confined the Arabs.
Native town crushed.
Town of sleeping natives.
Nothing ever happens among the Arabs.
All this leprosy on your body.

No matter your feelings on his politics, at some level his prose grabs hold.

Thursday Cartoons Are a Bit Behind

I suck at this blog currently.  I know, I’m sorry.  I’m slowly getting better.  In the meantime, maybe I can call on the Obama’s new pet for help?