|
|
Picture above: an art project, “Meaning Cleaning” by Hayley Severns and Angela Rose Voulgarelis Illgen where “volunteer teams sweep the sidewalks starting from the extreme ends of 14th Street.” Some artists create projects that cost millions of dollar and kill plants, some artists clean streets. We need more of the latter!
This project is part of the forth annual Art in Odd Places, a public art project that is “like a scavenger hunt, (where) New Yorkers will use a map to discover art in unexpected places along this amazing street”.
|
|
|
We went to see Spike Lee and James McBride talk about their new movie, Miracle at St. Anna, at the New York Public Library. They have made the very first Hollywood movie about the black soldiers who fought for the United States during the World War II. That sounds incredible, but it is true, and it is disturbing. “Hollywood is great at creating mythology”, Spike Lee said - and this mythology is a nearly all-white US Army that fought in the World War II (and World War I and Vietnam War).
The truth is, at the beginning of the war, some 80 years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, it was difficult for African Americans to be accepted into the army and defend their countrymen. But many came through, and there were 125,000 African Americans who fought oversees during the War World II. They fought in segregated units at the time, and because of their efforts, in 1948 President Harry Truman signed Executive Order 9981 integrating the military and mandating equality of treatment and opportunity (about f*cking time).
James McBride interviewed many of the surviving soldiers of the 92nd Infantry Division, one of the several famous all-black Army units during WWII, and wrote the book which the movie is based on. He asked some of the men why they would risk their lives and fight for a country that cared so little for them, and the men said that they did it for their children and grandchildren.
|
