All at Once

PEN is a global literary community dedicated to human rights, and freedom of speech. The PEN Prison Writing Project provides inmates with teaching artists to conduct writing workshops.  PEN's Handbook for Writers in Prison is "an invaluable resource to any incarcerated writer."  

Learn more about PEN at their website.

Also: Hello, World: Diaries by Men and Women in American Prisons at the Anne Frank Center  38 Crosby Street, 5th floor. Click here for directions and gallery hours.

Finally: It is Friday, and ATA is on Facebook, along with everyone else. Tell your friends!

Our America

Thanks to El Machete, I have had my awareness raised about an issue that is undoubtedly affecting young people we work with in New York City schools--deportation.

Did you know that some of our young people are considered "undocumented", and that these children face deportation the minute they turn eighteen? Teens who have spent their entire lives in the United States are subject to arrest and criminal proceedings--the purpose being to send them "home" to countries they might not even remember.

A related article in the New York Times notes that immigrant students have recently taken high profile advocacy roles around this issue, risking much.

A group of young filmmakers responding to this issue have produced a CD of topical songs, sales of which will benefit the production of their issue-oriented movie "Papers".

Finally, A recently issued report from a New York State review panel says our system of juvenile prisons is broken, with "young people battling mental illness or addiction held alongside violent offenders in abysmal facilities where they receive little counseling, can be physically abused and rarely get even a basic education..."

After the Fall

The New York Times reports the obvious--the number of affordable apartments in New York City has fallen precipitously as a result of gentrification and rent deregulation. The number of apartments considered "affordable to low-income households" decreased to 991,592 from 1,189,962--a drop of nearly 17 percent--from 2002 to 2008.

FYI, according to the study quoted in the Times, a "low income household" is one that earns less than $37,000/year. Last year, about 42 percent of the city’s households could be categorized as "low income." Who knows? Perhaps you are living in one of them? Or, maybe you are new to the city--just graduated.

Let's say you have been educated, graduated, done the round of interviews, and been offered a gig as a TA. Now, you are a lucky professional teaching artist with a respectable, imaginary, nearly full-time gig at a leading cultural organization in New York City. You might have middle class aspirations, or even be from a middle class background. That would explain your expensive college degree, and your fortitude. Now, in a city in which the average monthly rental is $2801 per month, suppose you earn $125/day for a five-hour workday as a TA. That's $25 per hour, or $625 per week, before taxes. Imagine, if you had this imaginary job, and worked 52 weeks out of a year--which is unlikely, because it's imaginary--you would earn $32,500, before taxes...

You're going to need another imaginary job.

Also: City of Aspiration (pdf) - A study released by the Center for an Urban Future

The Panacea

In the New York Times Sunday Magazine, the indefatigable Nicholas Kristof and company put in an extensive report on the new crusade for women's liberation.

"The world," says Mr. Kristof, "is awakening to a powerful truth. Women and girls aren’t the problem; they’re the solution." According to the article, addressing more resources toward freeing women from brutal oppression may be an effective way to solve other intractable, global problems, like poverty:

"Women hold up half the sky,” in the words of a Chinese saying, yet that’s mostly an aspiration: in a large slice of the world, girls are uneducated and women marginalized, and it’s not an accident that those same countries are disproportionately mired in poverty and riven by fundamentalism and chaos. There’s a growing recognition among everyone from the World Bank to the U.S. military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff to aid organizations like CARE that focusing on women and girls is the most effective way to fight global poverty and extremism..."

Green Day

Published to wide critical acclaim in France, Persepolis is Marjane Satrapi's memoir of growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution.

This crisp graphic novel was turned into a film.

Here are some lesson plans around the novel. This one, Storyboarding Revolution @ The New Museum's Global Classroom, rocks.

Pictures Tell the Story: Improving Comprehension with Persepolis by Janet M. Ankiel of Basking Ridge, New Jersey is also terrific.

A related article on Splashpage; an MTV website about comics.