The Week 7 Listicle

Reading and Listening

It’s week 7 of this newsletter. Thanks for joining and sticking around. This week I’m taking it easy with some recommendations of stuff I’ve been reading and listening to since starting these posts.

“Vigil for at Clapham Common for Sarah Everard, murdered by a Met Police Officer”

In week one I remembered this vigil in March 2021 and the manifesto of the feminist group that organised it, Sisters Uncut. Here’s an audio archive of the vigil from Radio AvA, radio by and for sex workers and their allies.

“Living Memory: Black archivists, activists, and artists are fighting for justice and ethical remembrance — and reimagining the archive itself.”

Megan Pillow writes about how activists are collecting and archiving stories of Black lives in the context of the devastation of the the Covid-19 pandemic and racist police violence. Some inspiring evidence of creative and innovative ways of preserving artifacts from street protests and memorials, especially following the police killing of Breonna Taylor in Louisville Kentucky in March 2020.

“From Geronimo to Avatar: Wes Studi's path to historic Oscar”

In week 4 I wrote that no Indigenous actor from North America had ever won an Academy Award for best actor. But in 2019 Cherokee actor Wes Studi did receive an honorary Oscar for his thirty years of contribution to the film industry. One of my favourite podcasts, Unreserved on CBC, recently replayed Studi’s interview with host Rosanna Deerchild.

“Stop Using Disabled People As an Excuse Not to Ban Cars in Cities: We want liveable cities, too”.

Local elections are coming up on 5 May in London. One of the most controversial issues is the implementation of Low-Traffic Neighbourhoods in many of the city’s boroughs over the past couple years. In this piece Charlie Hertzog Young helpfully explains why nondisabled car owners are wrong to use disabled Londoners as alibis for their opposition to LTNs.

“Undercover Investigations Have Changed Everything w/ Gemunu De Silva”

Another of my favourite podcasts: Our Hen House. Here British animal rights activist talks to co-host Marianna Sullivan about his experience in the animal rights movement, including how his early activism was inspired by punk music.

“Like a tree in full bearing struck at the root: Charlotte Brontë on the death of her sister”.

Last week I wrote about mourning and was reminded of this moving letter that arrived in my inbox at the end of March from Shaun Usher’s clever Letters of Note newsletter. In 1848 Charlotte Brontë wrote to her publisher about the impact of the death of her younger sister Emily from tuberculosis at the age of 30.

“The Trojan Horse Affair”

This fiasco also started with a letter. Journalists Hamza Syed and Brian Reed follow the trail of a mystery letter that landed on the desk of a Birmingham City Councillor in 2014, setting off a wave of Islamophobia that went on to shape UK government policy on preventing “extremism”. Gripping and terrifyingly revealing of prejudice and failure at different levels of British government and media.

I’ll be back next week with a post on activist writing in an era of Netflix and Youtube.