We Need Gentle Truths for Now

This emergency episode was made quickly during a time of uprising following the killing of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and countless other African Americans by police.Poets, educators, and friends Chet’la Sebree and Margaret Rhee worked with me on two Fake News Poetry workshops on race and the media. The first was in May 2018, with poets of color in Brooklyn; the second, in November at the home of Claudia Rankine and John Lucas, where we translated some of the poems written in Brooklyn into video-poems.Now, in a new moment of insurrection and distance, they reflect upon poetry, media, race, safety, and beauty. Each shares a poem. Then they speak together. “How do we render humanity?” Chet’la asks Margaret. By co-articulating, gently and powerfully, the relations between place, politics, poetry, and power.In so doing, my colleagues also enact the #100th, and final, HardTruth from my online primmer, a call to poetry: “speak and spell, teach and tell, count and swell.” These simple rhymes set forth the hard ideas and warm feelings that unroll here, spoken with intimacy and care by two women of color poets and teachers. Speak and spell about love. Teach and tell about friendship. Count and swell our writing and conversation in a time of continuing distance and proximity, all in honor of a very simple truth: Black Lives Matter.Join us in the change!Reach out with questions or content @ 100hardtruths@gmail.com.Twitter: @100HardTruthsInstagram: #100HardTruthsYouTube: 100 Hard Truths#BlackLivesMatter

This emergency episode was made quickly during a time of uprising following the killing of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and countless other African Americans by police.We hear readings of “A Small Needful Fact” by Ross Gay.  perhaps, in all likelihood,he put gently into the earthsome plants which, most likely,some of them, in all likelihood,continue to grow, continueto do what such plants doFellow-AIDS scholars, Drs. Jih-Fei Cheng and Nishant Shahani (co-editors with me of the book AIDS and the Distribution of Crises, Duke 2020) make resonant connections between ecology, blackness, strength, and violence. How plants, earth, and seeds center rather than scatter us. This reminds Nishant of the daily bounties of the earth, the mundane and sustaining connection to the food we grow and eat, another poem: Eve Ewing’s “I saw Emmett Till this week at the grocery store.” The histories of violence written into plants and fruit—seeds, tobacco, and viruses—and attendant histories of pleasure, labor, medicine, and colonial and global capitalist theft will then focus Jih-Fei’s reflections, also borne from poetry and protest.Eric Garner and Emmet Till were silenced by violence. But their stories persist -- voluminous, angry, peaceful, and mundane -- through the words of poets and critics. In this way, we connect to the hardtruth #69 written for the online primer on digital media literacy, “ghosts can’t tell stories” by Quito Zeigler. Poems are not a solution but rather an invitation and an invocation to act and do a little differently, perhaps as plants do: help us breathe so we can engage together to better the internet and ourselves. Join us in the change!  Read or respond to a poem or hardtruth found at the online primer of digital media literacy, #100hardtruths-#fakenews or fakenews-poetry.org.To read Jih-Fei and Nishant's full pieces of writing on which this episode relies, please see "Following A Small Needful Fact," by Jih-Fei Cheng and "Thinking about Small, Needful Facts," by Nishant Shahani on the Duke University Press blog: Dispatches on AIDS and COVID-19: Continuing Conversations from AIDS and the Distribution of Crises (Dispatch Three).Organize your own Fake News Poetry Workshop.Reach out with questions or content @ 100hardtruths@gmail.com.Twitter: @100HardTruthsInstagram: #100HardTruthsYouTube: 100 Hard Truths#BlackLivesMatter

This episode highlights methods to “practice strategic contemplation,” the 16th HardTruth for my online primer on digital media literacy. This is one of six “principles of feminist filmmaking” represented in Alexandra Hidalgo’s video book, Cámara Retórica: A Feminist Filmmaking Methodology for Rhetoric and Composition. Hidalgo is an award-winning Venezuelan filmmaker, theorist, and editor. These methods of attention to and care for others, the self, and the world inspired connections across the project, which will form the words and methods of this episode.The very first Fake News Poetry Workshop was held at the Ammerman Center 16th Biennial Symposium on Arts & Technology. It was co-led by Kyle Booten, a poet, digital scholar, and programmer. We worked with participants to generate forms and methods that might improve our engagements with the world and social media. Kyle called these psychotechnologies of care. Lisa Moren and Maro Perez wrote one of many poems that took the form of scripts, or algorithms, that could regulate, or better yet, open out to others our attention. Their words had been inspired by Alexandra’s. We seek such tender connections.Practice Strategic Contemplation1. create a list of activities (with an alarm) to go off every 5 minutes for 2 hours2. Go for a walk3. Observe the truth of your surroundings4. Allow for associations that relate to your observations and record during or after walk5. If vibrations occur, then answer phone and follow your own prompt6. Forget Associations7. Repeat until two hours are upThe episode ends with a poem that I wrote with my boyfriend and project participant, Gavin McCormick, as we follow this script through the streets of Brooklyn. Take a walk. Write a poem. Change the internet by writing yourself and others with attention. Or volunteer to read a poem or hardtruth found at the online primer of digital media literacy, #100hardtruths-#fakenews or fakenews-poetry.org.Organize your own Fake News Poetry Workshop.Reach out with questions or content @ 100hardtruths@gmail.com.Twitter: @100HardTruthsInstagram: @100HardTruthsYouTube: 100 Hard Truths