‣ Writer Lindsey Adler brings us along her journey through a Yoko Ono symposium, which she fittingly dubs “Yokofest,” reappraising the artist’s legacy for Defector:
It is inescapably relevant that Ono was a Japanese woman who demanded to be let into the avant-garde scene in New York just a few years removed from the end of World War II. She often felt stripped of her agency and power, so she used what she had: her body and the way other people perceived it. This included her vocal chords. She often screamed, wailed, and at times turned sounds we associate with sex into screams of horror.
She felt deep grief over both the attacks on Japan and the horrors of Japanese imperialism. She lost custody of her daughter, Kyoko, and didn’t see her again for 27 years. She watched her husband die and laid grieving in the bed they shared, trying to ignore the sound of heartsick fans blasting “Imagine” outside of The Dakota, trapping her in a loop of hearing her dead husband’s voice.
When I learned this final detail, and pictured Ono trying desperately to block out this music, I felt my chest tighten with sadness and anxiety. My eyes welled up and at that moment, I was the one who felt the need to let out a primal scream. (I did not. Even at Yokofest, that would have been inappropriate.)
‣ Hasan Ali writes for the Nation about the singular voice of late Pakistani singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, who brought Sufi qawwali music to a wider audience:
Last fall, Real World released the recording as Chain of Light, which becomes Khan’s final studio album, 34 years after it was recorded and 27 years after the singer’s death. Today, Khan’s legacy is undeniable, to the point that the pieces that form the bulk of the modern qawwali repertoire were almost all made famous by him. Though qawwali is a devotional music, Khan was responsible for taking it from the shrine to the record shop, turning it into a genre that could be enjoyed in a secular context. His use of sargam (a technique in which the voice is used like an instrument to improvise within the structure of the composition) to complement the music’s devotional aspects gave it an exploratory quality with immediate appeal to fans of modern jazz or psychedelic rock. To Khan’s hundreds of millions of fans in India and Pakistan and his admirers dotted across the West, the new material on Chain of Light amounts to a musical resurrection.
‣ Iconic drag artist Jinkx Monsoon sat down with Them‘s Mathew Rodriguez to talk about changing her legal name — and the attacks on trans people that pushed her to do it:
A judge legally signed off on my new name and I have one piece of ID with all the correct information on it. And to me, even though that one piece of ID is only part of it, it’s one piece of ID that says who I am correctly. And that is one step closer.
I didn’t really talk to anyone else that day, but you know how when you’re in certain spaces and you see someone and you recognize family? You make eye contact for a second and that’s all it takes to know: “Hey, we’re here doing the same thing. Good on you.” It’s just little moments of eye contact and just little moments of recognition between me and other trans and nonbinary people and the very helpful civil servants who were working that day. I am a very lucky person that my city is so willing and happy to help its citizens claim their true identity. And I just know that that’s not what the situation is around our country. I don’t know how to best advise people in less tolerant areas or more conservative areas other than try to think of it as one step at a time and each step you take is a step in the right direction.
‣ And in an act of violence that has sent shockwaves across the world, the first openly gay imam was murdered in South Africa while on his way to officiate two weddings. Todah Opeyemi reports for BBC on Muhsin Hendricks’s outspoken advocacy for queer Muslim communities:
Hendricks often spoke about the importance of interfaith dialogue and the need to address the mental health issues and trauma faced by LGBTQ+ individuals within religious communities.
He told the Ilga World Conference in Cape Town last year: “It is important that we stop to look at religion as the enemy.”
Reverend Jide Macaulay, an openly gay Anglican minister, described Hendricks’ death as “truly heartbreaking”.
The British-Nigerian LGBTQ rights activist runs House of Rainbow, an organisation that provides support for gay people in Nigeria where same-sex relationships or public displays of affection are illegal, and paid tribute to Hendricks’ bravery.
“Your leadership, courage, and unwavering dedication to inclusive faith communities have left an indelible mark,” he said.
Sadiq Lawal, a gay Muslim man living in Nigeria, told the BBC that Hendricks, had made such an impact as he had made “the impossible possible” by saying the words: “I’m a queer imam.”
‣ In his monthly Prism column, William C. Anderson takes a look at the rise and fall of DEI initiatives, providing a sorely perspective on programs that he explains were “a counterinsurgent tactic to pacify uprisings” in 2020:
The ease with which corporations shredded their DEI policies is why it’s important to note the fundamental differences between fighting to be included and fighting for autonomy and self-determination. Diversifying oppressive structures and seeking equity within corporatocracy is as limited as trying to do the same within representative governance. Before you demand a seat at the table, you should first ask if it’s a table worth being at in the first place. Let’s not pull up chairs at dinner parties that need to be destroyed. Unfortunately, that’s the standard response for a public hypnotized into thinking they have a collective stake in capitalism.
The oversimplification and sanitization of the civil rights movement also have much to do with this. State-sponsored historical narratives translated in schools, museums, and political arenas have reduced multipronged struggles to nothing more than a fight to “melt and integrate,” to quote the late poet Gil Scott-Heron. This problem over-represents the integrationist wings of the civil rights movement and downplays a dynamic revolutionary period. It shrinks it to a moment in time where Black people are portrayed as entirely satiated by an unguaranteed right to vote, more institutional racial representation, and, of course, the ability to spend money equally among white consumers in previously inaccessible spaces.
‣ Apparently, Microsoft says it invented a new state of matter. (Just what we need from tech companies right now!) Cade Metz has the story on the alleged addition to that age-old trio of solid, liquid, and gas for the New York Times:
Microsoft’s technology, which was detailed in a research paper published in the science journal Nature on Wednesday, adds new impetus to a race that could reshape the technological landscape. In addition to accelerating progress across many technological and scientific fields, a quantum computer could be powerful enough to break the encryption that protects national secrets.
Any advances are set to have geopolitical implications. Even as the United States explores quantum computing primarily through corporations like Microsoft and a wave of start-ups, the Chinese government has said it is investing $15.2 billion in the technology. The European Union has committed $7.2 billion.
Quantum computing, which builds on decades of research into a type of physics called quantum mechanics, is still an experimental technology. But after recent strides by Microsoft, Google and others, scientists are confident that the technology will eventually live up to its promise.
‣ What lessons can we glean from labor organizing about fighting to protect public health in the US? Researcher Abdullah Shihipar explains for the New Republic:
The larger point to McAlevey’s story is that to advance the labor movement in America, the movement has to organize workplaces and in order to do this, organizers have to be willing to have hard conversations. That doesn’t mean that we concede ourselves to the points of people who don’t agree, nor does it mean that we condescend and belittle opposing arguments; rather, much like the workers of Jefferson Einstein, we commit to talking and listening until we make inroads.
Public health workers did this during the early stages of the COVID vaccination program. Across the country, community health workers did faith-based outreach, outreach to farmworkers and other workers, communicated in different languages, went to community housing projects and staffed pop up vaccination sites. All of this relied on a network of trusted community leaders and institutions. The anti-vaccine sentiment that erupted in the years since reflects the inability to scale up these efforts – they were always limited in nature, and within months, vaccination became primarily the responsibility of the pharmacies.
‣ In a long overdue move, the Haida Nation will finally be able to reclaim its land off the coast of British Columbia per an agreement with the Canadian government, CBC News reports:
The Big Tide Haida Title Lands Agreement affirms that the Haida have Aboriginal title over all of the islands’ lands, beds of freshwater bodies, and foreshores to the low-tide mark.
It will transition the Crown-title land to the Haida people, granting them an inherent legal right to the land.
The transfer of the underlying title would affect how courts interpret issues involving disputes.
Gaagwiis Jason Alsop, president of the Council of the Haida Nation, held up the agreement signed Monday to show the crowd.
He said the ceremony represents a move from an era of denial, occupation and resistance to one of peaceful coexistence and recognition that “this is Haida land.”
Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Gary Anandasangaree told the crowd gathered for the ceremony that it was a moment where history was being made.
Anandasangaree said in an earlier interview that the agreement will kick off a five-year transition period and will require legislation to iron out all the details about how this will apply in practice.
He said it is the first time the federal government has recognized Aboriginal title through negotiations.
‣ In the East Village, one restaurant has served over 15,000 free meals over the course of six months. Jaya Saxena talks with the director of Cafewal for Eater about its role as a job training program and community center for immigrants:
Cafewal — which means “cafeteria” in Pular and Fulani, both common West African languages — operates out of the basement of the Elim House of Worship, which is outfitted with a commercial kitchen. “We have an eight-week training program, so they’ll spend eight weeks in the kitchen with us. And then we’re also sharing the space with a job training and application room. So it’s this nice little pipeline,” says Hefferon.
So far, about 40 of the men they work with have received work authorization, and they’ve been able to help 15 of them find jobs in restaurant kitchens, catering companies, and other food-distributing non-profits. Diners are mostly other West African migrants there to take English lessons, work on their resumes, or just sit in some warmth.
‣ Few among us have not been swindled by surveillance pricing, but the Cut‘s Charlotte Cowles has a handy guide to outsmarting it:
Zephyr Teachout, an attorney and professor at Fordham University who specializes in antitrust law, points out that you’re more likely to be targeted with higher prices if you seem to be in a rush. “If you order a car service to go to a hospital, you might pay more than if you were going to a restaurant, because you’re presumably in a hurry,” she says. “Or, if your order history shows that you frequently pay for express delivery, your vibe is haste, and your prices might be higher.”
Of course, all of this is enraging. “There’s a gross feeling of unfairness when you’re paying a different price for the same product, because you’re being profiled and targeted,” says Teachout. “You don’t need to be an economist to see how it’s the seller exploiting its position of power, and the vast amount of intimate data points they have about people, to rip them off.”
‣ Mina Le’s YouTube essays are the only episode drops I look forward to nowadays — and in her latest video, she discusses the warped nostalgia of early-2000s internet culture and considers the strange social media landscape we find ourselves in:
‣ Life imitates art — er, Abbott Elementary!
‣ And finally, please enjoy this glorious series of puppy side-eye paintings:
Required Reading is published every Thursday afternoon, and it is comprised of a short list of art-related links to long-form articles, videos, blog posts, or photo essays worth a second look.
