Category Archives: Zeitgeist Movement

In this Thursday, Feb. 9, 2017 photo, people react as U.S. Rep. Jason Chaffetz speaks during a town hall meeting at Brighton High School in Cottonwood Heights, Utah. Some attendees of the contentious town hall hosted by Chaffetz have sent the congressman fake invoices after he claimed some people there were paid protesters. Rick BowmerAP

Ideas

Ferguson was Deputy National Press Secretary and Senior Spokesperson for Hillary Clintons 2016 campaign for President.

On August 25, 2009, Democratic Congressman Bart Gordon held a town hall meeting in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. A local news report called it a discussion about the nation's health care that led to loud boos and heckling from the crowd. On February 9, 2017, Republican Congresswoman Diane Black elected to Gordons seat in the fall of 2010 held a town hall meeting in the same city. A local news report headline proclaimed, Diane Black, GOP lawmakers faced defenders of Obamacare at lively town hall . Sounds similar, right?

The zeitgeist is quickly setting in: Republicans right now face a backlash akin to what Democrats faced from the Tea Party in 2009 and 2010. Some have gone so far as to call this resistance the Democratic Tea Party. Its a convenient comparison: Democrats like it because the Republican Tea Party was successful in 2010, and the media appreciates it as a simple and straightforward story. I've been guilty of leaning on it myself.

But the Democratic resistance and the Tea Party actually differ in a number of important ways, each of which tells a different story about where our country is and where our politics may be headed.

For starters, the Tea Party was forged as an opposition to a societal reality in our country, while todays resistance is opposed to a political reality. The Tea Party began before the election of President Obama, as a reaction to President Bush and the bank bailouts of 2008. Tea Partiers believed that society and the economy had all left them behind. The movements anger was stoked by the realization that the country had changed to the extent that it would elect someone like Barack Obama and support his liberal policies like the Economic Recovery Act (the so-called stimulus) and the Affordable Care Act (scornfully dubbed Obamacare). These members wanted the entire country to revert to a set of values that more closely resembled what they saw on Leave It to Beaver .

On the other hand, the current resistance isn't based on a belief that our country has gone astray from some former golden age. It's a political backlash, borne out of Donald Trumps policies and his presidency. Its participants arent rejecting the social structures of American society. They are embracing and defending our evolving structures of diversity and inclusiveness. The people stepping forward to resist the Trump Administration are standing against an Administration that doesnt respect the core values that this nation holds: that we are all equal and that we can all achieve our own dreams.

Second, these movements were forged in entirely different political situations. Members of the Tea Party believed they had been marginalized and had to fight back against this new oppression. They represented a minority, losing the 2008 elections by almost 200 electoral votes and 10 million people, while Democrats gained a more significant majority in the House and a filibuster-proof 60-vote majority in the Senate. Headlines announced a permanent progressive majority. The Tea Party disapproved of their country going in this new direction, which bred their movements anger.

Todays resistance is almost the complete opposite. While Trump is indeed president winning the Electoral College by approximately 75 votes he lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million. While Republicans maintained their control of the House and the Senate, they lost seats in both. The current resistance isnt reacting to its lost status as the majority in American politics, as the Tea Party was. It is speaking out for the majority of Americans who feel inadequately represented in Washington. This resistance is giving political voice to those the political system has deprived of a voice. They are speaking for the silenced majority.

The third major difference is in how these movements act. There are certainly some tactical similarities both use rallies and town hall meetings to attract attention to their causes but the undercurrents are very different. The Tea Party was truly a movement of anger at the system, at the country and at the movements members declining station in life. This best manifested in their slogan, from the American Revolutions Gadsen flag, Dont Tread on Me demanding that people and government just leave them alone to their familiar ways.

While todays resistance certainly has some anger, the basic emotions fueling it are alarm and fear. We are alarmed by what the current political system, and its leadership, will do to us, our friends and our country. We are fearful that our family and neighbors might be barred from entering the U.S. by a Muslim ban or might lose their access to health care if the Affordable Care Act is recklessly repealed. We are worried that the political system now serves corporate interests and the Presidents far-flung (but undisclosed) business interests, not the interests of the people or their nation. We are alarmed that people we know and love wont be treated equally or fairly under the new Administration. The Tea Party consisted of people angry about their own perceived situation; the resistance is people alarmed and fearful about what might happen to others.

The best distinction between the two movements, though, is the one that is most important to our President: crowd size. The largest Tea Party rallies reported were between 150,000 and 250,000 people, depending on the source. The Womens March last month irrefutably included over 4 million people nationwide a 16-fold difference. Washington, D.C., alone likely doubled the largest Tea Party totals.

While it would be easy and convenient to pronounce that 2017 is merely 2009 redux, the simplicity of that comparison belies the underlying and important reality. The Tea Party sought to fix our country and align it with Tea Party politics; the democratic resistance seeks to fix our politics and align them with our countrys values. The movements may share some tactics, but the spirit that drives them are, and the consequences of them will be, very different.

Ferguson was Deputy National Press Secretary and Senior Spokesperson for Hillary Clintons 2016 campaign for President; before, he was Executive Director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Independent Expenditure.

Continued here:

The Resistance Is the Majority of Americans Not a New Tea Party - TIME

Congressman Dave Brat (R-Va.) faced a raucous group of detractors and supporters at a town hall meeting in tiny Blackstone, Va. (Jorge Ribas/The Washington Post)

President Trump and the Obama administration share a stance toward protests at town halls: Meh.

Here's Trump on Tuesday evening in response to flare-ups at GOP town halls in recent days.

And here's White House press secretary Robert Gibbs back in August 2009, when the tea party was starting to raise hell in town halls about the Affordable Care Act:

Q: Are you concerned at what appears to be well-orchestrated protesting of health care reform at town halls as derailing your message?

GIBBS: No. I get asked every day about the myriad of things that could be derailing our message. I would point out that I don't know what all those guys were doing, what were they called, the Brooks Brothers Brigade in Florida in 2000, appear to have rented a similar bus and are appearing together at town hall meetings throughout the country.

Gibbs added: I hope people will take a jaundiced eye to what is clearly the astroturf nature of so-called grassroots lobbying This is manufactured anger.

Gibbs, it turns out, wasn't really right. We'll see whether Trump is.

Astroturfing, for those unfamiliar, is the political practice of making something appear organic as though it's coming from the grass roots. The implication is that the protesters aren't really regular-Joe citizens, but political activists sometimes appearing at multiple town halls to cause a scene and make the movement appear bigger than it is.

Update: Now Sean Spicer, echoing Trump, says, "It is a loud group, small group of people disrupting something, in many cases, for media attention." Spicer, though, is actually more charitable to the protesters than the Obama White Huse was, saying they are a "hybrid" of activists and astroturfing.

The problem with town hall protests is that they are, by nature, defined by anecdotes and the viral nature of a limited number of heated exchanges. It's nearly impossible to know how representative this is of broader unhappiness with the president (or anything else). It's too difficult to quantify anger, where it's coming from and how representative it is of the broader populations.

Scott Jennings, a former aide to President George W. Bush who has also worked forSenate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), made what I think is a valuable point about all of this:

Whether Tuesday'sprotesters in Anderson County, Ky.,who told McConnell to do your job wereactually out-of-town malcontents" -- the same allegation Gibbs made in 2009 is kind of beside the point. Even if these people lived in Anderson County, or anyplace in Kentucky, do their chants really represent the broader population in their county or their state? Just because a small group of people is making good TV, does that mean McConnell should really be concerned? And has there been an appreciable change in voter sentiments less than four months since the election?

Polling suggests we're in pretty much at the same position. Trump was elected as an unpopular candidate, and he's nowan unpopular president. The opposition to him was extremely vocal during the campaign calling him a racist, sexist, misogynist and Islamophobe and it remains extremely vocal today.

But the comparison between today and 2009 is an instructive one. It's entirely possible that those protests more than sevenyears ago were being organized and weren't totally organic, as Gibbs alleged. But it's also clear that any such organizing was successful precisely because actual opposition to the Affordable Care Actwas a strong motivator for people to turn out to the town halls. And opposition to Obama's health-care planbecame such a rallying cry on the right that it spurred the Republican takeover of the House in 2010 and then helped them take the Senate in 2014. It was certainly more substantial than Gibbs professed to believe at the time; it amounted to the canary in the coal mine for Democrats in Congress.

That said, it's just so difficult to know where to draw the line between flashy protests at town halls and legitimate, game-changing shifts in the political zeitgeist. It's not that we shouldn't cover these protestsand try to understand them. And it's not that these burgeoning town hall eventscouldn't become a sign of something bigger; they certainly could, and opposition to Trump has majority status in the United States. But we should always be aware that anecdotes can also be just that anecdotes.

The rest is here:

Sean Spicer blames chaotic town halls on 'professional protesters.' So did Obama's team. - Washington Post

With his slick amberhair and proclivity for three-piece suits, Jidenna is a walking anachronism in most places. The look compounded with his politically charged charisma forces an unsurprising question: Is he a model citizen or a playing a character? The 31-year-old Wondaland Records signee would sayits neither, that the aesthetic is simply a smooth extension of his biography. Even 2015s Classic Manthebreakout hit swanky enough for a Kendrick Lamar remixdraws from aspecific experience. The scenes where hes staving off police officers and tutoring young men parallel those of his home community of East Flatbush, where neighborhood civilians handled mild controversies like car accidents before calling the police. So, the Classic Man in the songis also a hat tip to a deceased neighborhood OG named Alex, who Jidenna remembers breaking up fights when he was younger.

That depthof subject matter is probably not something youd immediately gain from listening to his most famous song, but its not the case for Jidennas exceptional debut album The Chief, where his ethos and heritage forms the albums backbone. The LPs sonic versatility draws inspiration from East Flatbushwhere the Caribbean diaspora lives in urban cacophonyand Jidennas own Nigerian background. The Chief tends to be at its best when those signatures cavort at the forefront: Bambi has the tropical swing of a trap-leaning Harry Belafonte; cuts Adaora, Little Bit More, and The Let Out are threaded by strands of Nigerian highlife and pidgin English. Jidennas late father Oliver Mobisson, the trailblazing computer inventor from whom Jidenna borrows his tailored suit style, guides this effort, too.

My dad was like, If youre gonna do this music thing, you better invent something, Jidenna tells me on the day of The Chiefsrelease. Were sittingat Suede, a Caribbean restaurant in East Flatbush, within walking distance from where I grew up.He was like, Be innovative at all costs. Dont go in there looking like anybody, dont make no music that sound like anybody. So that pressure, that came from him.

The album is also the cap to an extraordinary 2016 forthe collective of musicians who make up Wondaland. The label remained attached to the zeitgeist without releasing a single album: Last year saw a breadth of black stories receiving blockbuster platforms, withJidenna and label founder Janelle Monae in their midst. Best Picture nominees Moonlight and Hidden Figures are Janelle Monaes first two live-action film roles. Jidenna showed up in Netflixs Luke Cage and appeared in HBOs Insecure, in a wife beater at that. When the chopped and screwed version of Classic Man showed up in a pivotal scene in Moonlight, a film that deconstructs black masculinity, the songs vision of a benevolent alpha male rang purposefully mordant.

Jidennas astonished when I rail off these roles during our discussion. I dont sit there and scan through social media much. Jidenna says. I dont know how popular we are. Im still living like down the street. I cant tell. But when Im talking to you and thinking about ithe takes a breathClassic Man was in Moonlight. Like, pivotal-ass scenes.

Hell have time to truly take stock of his accomplishments, but not before hes finished withhis promo runthe day after we spoke, hewent toNew Orleans for All-Star Weekend festivities. The night before, he was at the Meatpacking District for his album release concert. (The show itself had the feel of a house party that happened to take place in a high-tax bracket district: The room smelled of perfume and hair product as Jidenna danced and sang his lain hair into a tangle of curls by nights end.)

For all of his modesty,Jidenna spent about an hourpreparing himself for our interviewin a tinted Chevy Suburban parked right outside of our meeting place. Buthes otherwise very present and careful when he speaks, considering his answers as he massages his beard and scratches his hair, which briefly puffs like a just-lit stove when he lifts his red kufi. Jidenna converseslike a man whos assured but still in transition: Hes navigating through a new political climate and out of his three-piece suit phase.

For you, what differentiates East Flatbush from the rest of New York?Whats interesting about East Flatbush and the area I lived at in Boston when I was in high school was that they were similar neighborhoods. It was Caribbean-Americanpredominantly Haitian, Trini, and Jamaicanand Nigerian. My music, at least my perspective, is really shaped by all of that. Thats why youll see bits of rock steady or reggae. Youll see bits of Brazilian music and Nigerian music, and of course hip-hop, soul, funk, and all of that good stuff.

After spending time as a public school teacher, did it feel like a transition coming from teaching to music?I never wanted to teach. I did that because I needed money, and I lucked out because it was a hip-hop academic program and I had to make music that the children liked. So Im studying hip-hop and urban music and then putting rhymes to it in a way that sounds good. So Im studying trap, studying Katy Perry and whoevers hot at the time and bringing it to the kids. It was a natural transition to where I can rap and talk shit the way that I wanted to and not have to talk about integrated algebra and U.S. History.Classic Man was made in between making songs for the hip-hop education program. I was just like, Man, I gotta get out of this. So I just burned one down real quick and made Classic Man as an exercise.

How did you and Janelle Monae end up having that first meeting at that masquerade ball? Ill tell give you the whole story: Facebook, we saw it early at Stanfordbecause it was in the Ivy Leagues and Stanford before anybody. That was the testing ground. So I saw the social media world and people just being so into themselves, their friends, and the obsession with screens early. We wanted to make a response to that, so we made this thing called Masquerade Ball. Were dressing up, were fly as fuckwhatever that means, you didnt have to wear a suitbut the biggest thing was everybody had to wear full paint on their face. The rule was staring was legal. You could stare at anybody. Imagine everybody in a mask here. I dont know who these people are, but I could just look at them, which is totally different from regular society. So, our focus was human intimacyno phones were allowed and nobody without a mask was allowed. That was kind of a response to Facebook: A Facelook, if you will.

We invited Janelle to that because we felt she was peculiar and dope and weird enough for the shit that we were doing.

You finished recording The Chief a while ago but recorded a few more songs. Which songs were they? Really I was done by spring of last year. And then we had journeys, waiting, and promotion, so I said let me make another album. The additions were Trampoline, The Let Out, Bully of the Earth, and Safari.

I could hear the Nigerian influences on The Let Out. I did that in a clutch right after Thanksgiving. Me, Nana [Kwabena, the songs feature] and [collaborator] Andrew Horowitz made that in like one week, start to finish.The video showed the inspiration. When I go home for the holidays, we go see our cousins, year-roundpeople we aint seen in a minute. The elders go to sleep, you got your red cup, your party, your pregame. When youre at the house, you go out to party. I wasnt dressed up in no suit. I was dressed in a hoodie and snapback, or whatever. Ive worn that more of my life than suits, you know. Ill show people that too, this year.

But its become your thing. I leaned into it, but I gotta show people Im as versatile as my music is. But wed go out late, purposefully, so we wouldnt have to pay for shit. Nana made that beat. I was like, yup, and the verse came quick.

You moved around a lot coming up. Why the constant movement and what brought you to Brooklyn? Well, my family is from two different continents, so thats already gonna change things. And my moms family is from Wisconsin, but she lived in Boston, so off the top thats three different places. School took me to California, and post-school I wanted to work to make it in the music industry, so I moved to New York.

My sister was like, you gotta come out here, Brooklyns poppin. Its funny: I didnt find the music scene I thought Id find, but I came into my own as a man out here. I worked my ass off here, bro. I had four jobs a day. Youve got to to keep the house afloat to pay the bills. Ive never worked that hard in my life. I was out running on this very street, in a suit, in an 1800 suit, and some shoes I got from Zara, and the soles were worn. And I only had one pair of shoesthat was it. I had my little thrift shops suits and my one pair of shoes that matched all of em. They were grayish black, and I would just run, get on the bus, hop on the train, work here, go to this program, go to this job. I think it toughens you, and thats why I came into my own out here.

Whats the point where things started to change, from doing jobs to music? I had a plan to exit school and teaching. I saved up my money. Im frugal: Let me stack up where I can buy time. A lot of people buy things; I buy time. I bought time, months where I could just work on an album.

In that time, when I was leaving school, this must have been early 2014. I hadnt even heard of Fancy.

So it was Classic Man then Fancy? [The songwriting credits] says it samples it because we didnt wanna get sued. But I didnt hear it before we made the record. Once we heard it, we were like, Oh, yeah, super similar.

You went to the same school as Insecure creator Issa Rae and Luke Cage showrunner Cheo Hodari Coker. That was a dope connection to have in 2016. I cant believe they gave me the slot, man. Issa, I had only met once or twice, but Issa was my homie. Its the Stanford connect. I get free vaporizers from the Stanford connects. I get in hella rooms, just because of that school connect. Im bragging about it so the little kids know the benefit of school that nobody tells you. You gotta go because you gotta get a better job. Thats not what I wanna hear. I wanna hear that I can win. I wanna hear that Ima be on that screen.[He pointsto the restaurants television screens, which are playing CNN and ESPN.] I wanna hear that this is the way that I can get out of my situation and change the game and fuck shit up, man. I dont want job safety.

Not play the game, but beat the game. You wanna beat the game. That was my way, man.

You ever worried about distancing yourself from listenersand the kidswith these suits? I knew that kids would like it. What Im more worried about maybe not worried, but I wanna make sure is that I show all sides of myself. Or most. I know Chappelle said dont sell every side of yourself, but I want to share more, and that includes dressing down sometimes. Thats honesty. Its funny because if I do it now, people are like, Whoa, is he trying to Nah, I do this. Ima ease into it, so motherfuckers dont think that, you know? If the kids see me in some jeans here and there, even with a snapback, theyll know, sometimes, they can wear a suit, but its not like they always have to wear it. So I think itll be fine, I just gotta roll it out right this year.

And you were in DC for the Womens March. What propelled you to make the trip? You know how many people were born from women? All. Everybody. That was the one day that women were prioritized after being de-prioritized in so many countries, and in so many societies in this world. I had to be there. I dont think youre an asshole for not going, marching is not the only way to part of it. But I personally wanted to show up and show my face and be an ally. We got a lot of work to do, beyond the march. Theres even little nuances that I do that Im aware of in a conversation. Im more likely to interrupt a woman than I am a man. So these are things that I have to fix in my life. I do think were on a positive slope, and I never seen women that happy in my life.

Im relatively progressive, a liberal, and Im unapologetically that. Ill be a jerk if I need to be about liberal shit. Im not fucking PC, Im aware of things I do. If somebody calls me out for some racist shit I say or some misogynist or sexist shit I say, then yeah, please call me out. At the same time, I think that this PC culture we live in is dangerous. It doesnt allow people to mess up, it persecutes people, for having one little mistake.

What do you think your audience looks for in your music? Im at an interesting point where its predominantly people of color. A show is like people from the Middle East, people from the African Diaspora, and women. Its funny: Its everybody that Donald Trump has cast away and offended. So the peopleI see the least is white men.

Yeah, a lot of yours and Monaes audience are still people of color. Its interesting, right? When we do tours, its still people of color. I remember talking to the RootsI was talking to Tariq, I was talking to ?uestlovethey were talking about that shift, going from Philly out to the world. It aint happen to us yet.

Are you concerned that the idea of masculinity is archaic? Seems like you talk a lot about what a man should be. No, I never say what a man should be. It tells you what kind of a man I am. If you listen to the album, you know who the fuck I am, bro. You know exactly, if I have to stab you and its gonna be in the front, Im gonna tell you exactly what the hell Im doing. Ive done it, if I gotta go through a dangerous territory, Im ready to kill, if youre a woman and youre with me, Im with you and Im committed and I adore you. If we meet at a party, Im thinking about the night. But I also dont want a one-night stand, I want a little bit more than that, you know what Im saying? Im a say some shit thats gonna offend you, somebodys gonna feel some kind of way. The whole album is who I am, but I dont ever go in there like, A man should do this. This is what makes a man, you know? Nah man. This is what I believe.This is what a man looks like for me, this is what a Chief looks like for me.

When I was in school teaching, it was mostly women who were teaching, which was fine. But the boys, man, they needed someonerole models. I think thats why Im so focused, on manhood and the chief. Like you said, manhood is not a monolith. Im not a big guy, Im not a fucking diesel, the Rock walking around here. But I hold myself that nobody gonna punk me these boys to see, your might doesnt necessarily come from fighting all the time. It can come from the way you carry yourself.

How do you section off your time between Atlanta and East Flatbush? I have no idea. I dont really know what Im doing until the day of or a couple days before, even though its on the calendar. Atlanta is kind of the place I go to produce and make new music. I come to New York to feel people. Im just working a lot now. Its not what it was. But when I was in the album mode, needed to feel it, man. I remember Common on Respirationwhere he was like ,sometimes I take the bus home, just to touch home. I know that, man. I get that.

Is Moonlight going to beat La La Land for Best Picture? Man, I dont know. I wanna see Moonlight win, I wanna see Hidden Figures win. And you know whats great? A win on any of these shows and films we were talking about feels like a win for us all.

Read the rest here:

Jidenna Wants You to Know What Really Makes a Classic Man - SPIN

NT BUZZ Gallery Gitanjali is hosting the second session of Fontainhas Exchange, Is, Interrupted, a performance by Astri Ghosh in collaboration with Pushpanjali Sharma and Gautam Nima through poetry, movement, music and text developed in response to and in conversation with the artworks of Praveen Naiks solo exhibition at Gallery Gitanjali, Notes From The Zeitgeist. Using the gallery as a stage, poet Astri Ghosh and performing artists Pushpanjali Sharma and Gautam Nima will come together to peel through interruptions in identity, intimacy and intention. Astri Ghosh is a poet and writer. After working as a journalist for many years she turned to translation and has published 12 books in Norwegian, English and Hindi. Her translations have been included in four anthologies. She grew up in Delhi and Mussoorie, and moved to Norway to study at the University of Oslo. Astri is currently translating twelve contemporary plays of Henrik Ibsen, four of which were published in 2015. Pushpanjali Sharma and Gautam Nima are interdisciplinary performing artists based in Goa. They are engaged in developing performances and pedagogies that serve experiential knowing through embodiment, movement and dance and somatic and mind-body practices. They believe experiential learning, embodied knowing and interdisciplinary education is the way to bring about change, and this can successfully happen through non-dual practices. They use movement arts towards self-knowing, personal transformation and healing, and teach the same through their workshops. As dancers they are interested in opening dance beyond the realm of entertainment and fitness, encouraging individuals to embark on a journey of self knowing through the lived body and movement as experience. Their performance works are contemplative and philosophical in nature, exposing the unseen, unheard and unvoiced. Through their performances they work towards reducing the gap between the audience and artist and enhancing their experience by inviting them to be a part of their work through interaction and their own creative contribution.

(The performance of Is, Interrupted will be held at Gallery Gitanjali on February 22 at 6 p.m. The event is open to all).

Go here to see the original:

Interruptions with fluid movements - The Navhind Times

[Adapted from the latest Radio Derb, now available exclusively on VDARE.com.]

Talk about fake news: before our very eyes, the Main Stream Media is attempting to disappear Swedens Muslim rape crisis after President Trump alluded to it in his Florida rally on Friday e.g. From an Anchors Lips to Trumps Ears to Swedens Disbelief . [By Peter Baker And Sewell Chan, NYT, February 20, 2017]

Trump did not actually say what the MSM heardthat Sweden had suffered a terrorist attackbut that the Swedes, having taken in large numbers, were having problems like they never thought possible. [Trump Trance? Media Sure It Heard Sweden Comment Trump Never Said, By Charlie Martin, PJMedia, February 20, 2017]

And now immigrants are rioting in Sweden to prove him right. The New York Times is still in denial.

Like disproportionate black crime in the U.S., this phenomenon is a Hate Fact so thoroughly repressed by the MSM that its denizens are genuinely astonished when the subject surfacesalthough its old news to readers of samizdat publications like VDARE.com.

And, of course, ordinary Europeans know, and are drawing conclusions. Listen to this sound clip. Its a caller to a British radio show hosted by Nigel Farage, the Trumpish former leader of Britains national-conservative UKIP party. If the callers accent sounds vaguely familiar, its because hes from Liverpool, so he talks like a Beatle. Thats B-e-a Beatle: B-double-e beetles dont talk:

Well, I went to a mosque in Liverpool. People have been talking about trying to understand Islam, to try and get a grasp of what Islams all about. And the Imam, who was standing in front of the congregation, he said: Allah has given us this country, and every knee will bow at the name of Allah.

Islam is a takeover movement. It wants All it believes, that Allah has given them this country. Theyre just taking over. Well have one choice: Either convert or go. We will be pushed aside.

Now, why are we allowing this to happen? This is colonization. This is takeover. Why have our elite allowed this over the generations?

The Muslim population is exploding in this country. In 1971 there was just 70,000 Muslims. Nobody knows how many there are now. There may be as many as seven million. We know there are 2,000 mosques in Britain now. When the Queen came on the throne there was only one.

Islam is exploding in this country. Its democracy [siche means demography] is increasing dramatically, and were under serious threat. People have got to wake up to this problem. Weve got to do something about it.

Do we let Islam simply take over? No, we have to stop immigration, yes, but their birthrate is exploding as welltheyre filling up the maternity hospitals.

Were going to reach the point where were going to have to say to the Muslims: Its time to go home. Go back to the Dar al-Islam. You dont belong in the West. Youve nothing to contribute here. Those who have integrated can stay; but if you want to remain in your way of life, which is anathema to the West and is totally against our culture, you must go.

Thats where we [second voice, inaudible] should stand.

Islam is taking over Farage stunned as caller tells him fears for Britain

By Darren Hunt, February 14, 2017

Nigel Farage was left somewhat aghast at that. Thats strong stuff, he mumbled.

OK, Im not going to go all Brit-centric on you. Thats not my country any more, and I watch what is happening over there with a calm, detached despair.

I am going to say, though, that this little exchange captures the zeitgeist in the modern West rather neatly, and the direction the zeitgeist is headed. To put it bluntly, its headed from Nigel Farages position to the callers.

Farage is a decent sort, and hes done real service to his country, and to the West at large, by putting a cheerful, likeable, moderate face on national conservatism. That hasnt stopped the CultMarx screamers telling us that hes Literally Hitler, of course. But the bar for being Literally Hitler is now so low that if you like your country, and would prefer it not be swamped with foreigners, then you too are Literally Hitler.

The zeitgeist is, though, moving in a certain direction, and I believe it will leave Farage behind. Earlier in that radio program hed told listeners he couldnt agree with President Trumps executive order suspending entry to the U.S.A. for citizens of seven exceptionally disorderly Muslim nations.

The public in Europe is headed away from that mild, tolerant position to something closer to the callers. Farage, and European politicians of similar views, and possibly our own President, are transitional figuresplace-holders, until someone more frankly and unapologetically nationalist comes along.

A very respectable British think tank, the Royal Institute for International Affairs, carried out a big survey between mid-December and mid-January, covering ten European countries, with at least one thousand respondents in each country, total more than ten thousand.

To the statement, All further migration from mainly Muslim countries should be stopped, overall 55 percent of Europeans said they agreed.

In Nigel Farages Britain the figure was 47 percent.

Given that some unknown proportion of the surveys respondents must themselves have been Muslims, it would be interesting to see the survey re-done with respondents drawn only from the legacy populations. Im betting youd get over half of legacy British peopleI mean, white non-Muslimsagreeing.

And Ill further bet that ten years from now, that half will be three-quarters.

And note that the statement they were responding to in that survey doesnt restrict itself to seriously dysfunctional places like Somalia and Iraq. It covers all mainly Muslim countries, of which there are at least 48.

The survey reveals the usual differences between groups of respondents: city-country, young-old, more or less educated. Younger, more educated, more urban people show less agreement.

There are some suggestive counter-currents moving there, too, though. Heres a poll out of France, taken at the end of January, on support for the candidates in the upcoming presidential election there. It shows support for national-conservative candidate Marine Le Pen at its strongest in the 18-24 age group: 35 percent in that group, falling to just 16 percent in the 65-and-overs.

If Ms. Le Pen comes first in the April vote, it wont be geezers who put her there, itll be millennials.

I said the zeitgeist is moving in the nationalist direction, but it has a way to go yet. If Le Pen does place first in April, shell likely get swamped in the run-off vote in May, when voters for the other four candidates consolidate against her.

Dutch nationalist Geert Wilders is also looking strong for the election in his country next month; but not as strong as Ms. Le Pen in hers, and like her he faces opposition parties that will unite to keep him out of power. [Netherlands Wilders not riding Trumps coattails, By Nick Ottens Leiden, EuOpinon, February 17, 2017]

So there is major support over there for demographic stability and national conservatism, but not likely major enough to be decisive this year, for all Mr. Wilders happy talk about a patriotic spring. The wheel probably needs to turn a while longer before we see major electoral victories.

Its turning, though. Five years ago Le Pen, Wilders, and Farage were written off as extremist fringe candidates. The Brexit vote last June and Donald Trumps victory in November showed how much things have changed.

And just as here, public discussion about the National Question is all constrained in the narrow, dishonest vocabulary of hate, racism, and the rest. We have to work at changing that.

A person who opposes mass Muslim immigration may indeed hate Islam. I think Geert Wilders does. A great many other people, thoughincluding this onedont mind Islam at all, and wish nothing but long life and happiness to Muslims in Muslim countries everywhere. Theyre entitled to live under their own laws and practice their own religion just as much as we are.

As we say here on the nationalist right: Thats what separate countries are for.

Muslims have forty-odd countries of their own to be Muslims in. Thats surely enough. And there is surely nothing hateful in saying so.

[Adapted from the latest Radio Derb, now available exclusively on VDARE.com.]

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Forget PoliticiansThe People Of The West Have Decided Against ... - VDARE.com

Kyrie Irving (Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)

This past weekend during the National Basketball Associations All-Star festivities, Cleveland Cavaliers basketball star Kyrie Irving appeared on the NBA podcast Road Tripping With RJ & Channing and said, The Earth is flat. The Earth is flat. ... Its right in front of our faces. Im telling you, its right in front of our faces. They lie to us.

Asked about his comment the next day on ESPN, Irving refused to backtrack, and offered the following:

Hopefully theyll either back my belief or theyll throw it in the water. But I think its interesting for people to find out on their own. ... Ive seen a lot of things that my education system has said that was real that turned out to be completely fake. I dont mind going against the grain in terms of my thoughts.

News outlets, blogs and social media immediately blew up, branding him an insane, anti-science conspiracy theorist. How could someone who attended one of the countrys most prestigious universities long enough to play 11 whole games believe something so asinine? Is Kyrie going crazy? Is he a victim of gross misinformation? Maybe one of the NBAs most eloquent black players is simply stupid.

Or maybe he is just like America.

For a moment, lets set aside the fact that the flat-Earth theory is a growing, global movement that fascinates many ill-informed people (including rapper B.o.B.who feuded with astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson about this subject last year). Irving is a 24-year-old millennial who lives in a world where facts no longer matter. Media, politicians and the entire Cabinet of our pea-brained, petty president have repeatedly shown that truth, logic and science are all debatable in this new era where data exists in shades of gray.

Make no mistake, the Earth is round. Astronomy proved it millennia ago. Every third-grade teacher can explain it in 11 minutes. There is no need to debate it.

How crazy is it to believe the Earth is flat?

It is as crazy as the debate that police brutality is not a black problem. Last week the Journal of Criminology and Public Policy analyzed 990 police shootings in 2015. It found that black Americans are more than twice as likely to be unarmed when they are shot by police. Even when the journal adjusted the data to account for the people who attacked police or other victims, the results were clear: If your skin is black, your chances of getting killed by police while unarmed are double.

Yet police unions, Blue Lives Matter advocates and anyone appearing on Fox News refuse to admit that police brutality is a black problem. Every study shows it, but when faced with facts, they act just like Irving. When the journal released its findings, every black person reading it had the same reaction they would have if you told them the Earth was round:

Well, duh.

Yes, youd have to be an idiot to believe the world is flat, but there are also people who believe that voter-ID laws arent racist despite the evidence to the contrary. The Washington Post published its own extensive research last week after studying data from elections from 2006 through 2016 that shows voter-ID laws suppress the minority vote and benefit Republicans. But state legislatures continue to institute these laws and pretend to act befuddled when people accuse them of racism. Even after courts across the land say they are prejudiced. Even after the facts show that voter-ID laws make the electorate more conservative. Even after Republican consultant Carter Wrenn said, Look, if African Americans voted overwhelmingly Republican, they would have kept early voting right where it was.

But none of these statistics matter. If you learned that the fucktard-in-chief had placed a longtime opponent of the Voting Rights Act in charge of the Department of Justice, youd think that was as stupid as someone telling you that you might fall off the edge of the world.

Water is wet, the planet is actually a sphere and black people have an economic disadvantage in America.

All three of those statements seem clear to anyone with a double-digit IQ, yet only two of them are accepted by the conservative Zeitgeist (pronounced why-pee-pull). Keeping in the theme of studies released last week, the Institute on Assets and Social Policy at Brandeis University joined with the think tank Demos to release a study entitled The Asset Value of Whiteness (pdf). The paper shows that there is an inherent value of being white in America that translates to an economic advantage. It proves that the racial wealth gap in America has nothing to do with education level, income or spending habits.

They will tell you the American dream is achievable through hard work alone. They would have you believe that education is the key, and that success has nothing to do with race, being born into privilege or the generational inheritance of whiteness. If you believe that, you might as well believe the planet is shaped like a dinner plate.

No, the Earth is not flat, but Irving is as crazy as the people who believe that a Muslim ban can save us from terrorismeven though most terrorists are white males. He is as misguided as the people who see the floods, tornados, blizzards and droughts but refuse to believe that global warming is real. Thinking that you are affixed to a Frisbee flying through space is as ludicrous as guns dont kill people, people kill people. The flat-Earth theory is as stupid as All Lives Matter.

The fact that Irving believes that scientists, astronauts, physicists and everyone in the world who owns a telescope are complicit in a global conspiracy to hide an inconsequential fact is absolutely preposterous. But he puts a ball into a hole for a living, so his paranoid delusion about planetary physics doesnt hurt a soul (until he tries to help his kids with their science homework).

Conversely, the people in power who deny the obvious by-products of racism in America to maintain their white-knuckle grip on power and control arent being silly or ill-informed. Their intentional disregard for repeatedly proven fact at the expense of people of color is evil and deranged, and it is our duty to keep punching them in the face until we finally knock out the 400-year-old hate monster.

They would have you believe that math, data, science and truth are now irrelevant and meaningless, but if we allow opinion and lies to replace evidence and accuracy, then we all get to live in our selective, delusional reality. Im sure that in some of those universes, racism doesnt exist, Donald Trump is a great president and, yes ...

Maybe the Earth is flat.

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Maybe the Earth Is Flat - The Root

When Kevin Naik wanted to do a PhD at the interface of robotics and Internet of Things, it wasnt Ahmedabad University (AU) that first came to mind. Like many his age, he first wrote to professors at three IITs Delhi, Mumbai and Gandhinagar. The IIT faculty had clear research goals for themselves and their groups and Naiks plans didnt quite fit in. Thats when he looked to AU, where he found a willing professor along with freedom to develop his own interests in a PhD. Robotics and IoT are an unusual combination, says Naik. So only a small faculty is working in this area.

In contrast to the IIT legacy, AU is relatively new just eight years old with little reputation outside Gujarat. It makes up by providing flexibility in choice of research. AU enjoys another distinctive edge: a large endowment that provides plenty of leeway to students and faculty.

AU was set up in 2009 by the Ahmedabad Education Society, with a mandate to become a comprehensive university driven primarily by research. It was an unusual start. All private universities in India began as teaching institutions and then developed research as they grew. Almost all private universities were dominated by engineering or medicine. There was no private university at the time that mixed humanities, arts, the sciences and engineering in equal measure.

AU grew slowly initially, laying the foundation in the first five years. Institution-building picked up pace in 2014 when chairman Sanjay Lalbhai brought in Pankaj Chandra as vicechancellor. Chandra was till then director of the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB), where he was instrumental in reconstituting the board and instituting new standards for faculty tenure, among other things. He had a few novel ideas about how a university should function and they were a departure from what universities do now. Two principles guide his vision for the fledgling university. We want to do impactful research, says Chandra. We also want to bring the visual into the classroom.

The foundation raised about Rs 670 crore from sale of land and Chandra set to work. The university had a few unusual characteristics from the beginning. One being that the vice-chancellor reports to a management board and not a family, a governance structure not common among Indias private educational institutions. Delhi-based Ashoka University is an exception to this. We have a governing board that is not easy to hijack, says Ahmedabad University chairman Sanjay Lalbhai. The university also works with a large endowment and is not so dependent on fees. Not many of Indias private universities have a large endowment, the notable exception being Azim Premji University. When the government sanctioned new IITs, each one was given only Rs 500 crore, some yet to get the full money.

Chandra has an endowment that can grow up to Rs 1,500 crore if necessary (through sale of land), and a 180-acre campus that could be designed almost from scratch. He has as much academic freedom as is possible for a private university. He also has the support of the trust and the board that share a common vision. Money, a common vision and a professional board have all brought in flexibility to the university functioning. You cannot build a world class university without top-class talent, says RA Mashelkar, former CSIR director general and member of Ahmedabad University governing board. And you cannot have top-class talent without flexibility.

All the best universities in the world have flexibility to hire the best. Mashelkars prime exhibit is Ahmed Zewail, the Egypt-born chemist who was made full professor at the age of 28. Zewail went on to do pioneering work at Caltech and win a Nobel Prize. Peter Danckwerts, one of last centurys finest chemical engineers and former professor at Cambridge University, didnt have a PhD. Indian scientific institutions and universities once had that flexibility. MM Sharma, one of Indias best-known engineers, was made professor at the University Department of Chemical Technology at the age of 27. India has lost that flexibility now.

But Chandra has flexibility and used it by getting some of the best architects in the country to design AU. Desai Architecture in Ahmedabad was campus architect. Rahul Mehrotra, founder of RMA Architects and professor of urban design and planning at Harvard University, designed the arts and sciences building. Swiss architect Mario Botta designed the library. French architect Stephen Paumier will design the student centre. Although situated in the city, the campus is being built with a central forest, being overseen by ecologists. Pankaj Chandra has a specific vision of pedagogy and culture, says Bobby Desai of Desai Architecture. The campus is built for cross faculty interaction and debate.

In the private sector, OP Jindal Global Universitys main building was designed by Paumier as a vast classical garden. AU architects, who had to work with some old buildings as well, are designing campus buildings for frequent interactions. It is being built for walking in peak summer, when temperatures are in the high 40s.

The concept of universities without departments is not new in the world. University of California at Merced was the first to try it in the 1990s. In India, IIT Gandhinagar has tried the concept with some success. Chandra has organised AU around schools and centres, not departments. Schools are formed in well-established disciplines. Centres are in subjects not well established, and are aimed at developing expertise as the subject grows in depth and relevance. The biggest future inventions are going to be multidisciplinary, says Lalbhai.

The schools are organised around four related areas. Data, materials, biology and behaviour; energy, transport, education and food; air, water, land and forest; individual and community, civilisation and constitution. The three centres are for heritage management, for learning futures and the venture studio.

The centre for heritage management is an unusual experiment, based on the premise that India has a lot of heritage but few professionals to manage it. Ahmedabad itself has many heritage sites. The university centre, however, does not study just tangible heritage like museums, art galleries and buildings. It will also study intangible heritage like language and music, not just by scholars of the discipline. The centre has a partnership with the University of Vallalodid, a 700-year-old university in Spain, through a 0.5 million grant from the European Union.

Partnerships are key to some of the programmes of Ahmedabad University. The deepest of these partnerships is with the Olin College of Engineering near Boston, a twenty-first century institution with a global reputation for innovative pedagogy. Olin College, which has no other partner in Asia, does not have classroom lectures like other universities. Students learn by doing projects.

Over the last two years, four AU faculty have spent a few months each in Olin College and imbibed its methods. The class is no longer like a podium, says Ratnik Gandhi, assistant professor at the school of engineering and applied science. It is like a studio. Undergraduate students are exposed to research methods from the beginning. In the life sciences division, among the most developed disciplines at the university, undergraduates have the luxury of a well-equipped laboratory usually accessible only to masters and PhD scholars in most places. All equipment is handled by our undergraduates, says Ajay Karakoti, nanobiologist and associate professor at the university. It is one way of immersion in the subject.

All students are required to take courses in science, data and mathematics. Engineering students have to learn biology and commerce students must learn maths. Arts subjects are also compulsory. Mayank Jobanputra, an undergraduate in information, communication and technology, had to take courses in critical thinking and argumentation, ethics, communication skills, English literature, and so on.

AU is part of the zeitgeist, part of a movement when rich philanthropists are setting up good educational institutions. The government will never be able to build a disruptive educational system, says Ramaswamy Subramaniam, professor at the Institute of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine in Bengaluru. Hardcore scientists may not easily go to Ahmedabad, as Gujarat is not seen as an academic destination. It took four decades before IIM Ahmedabad got its current reputation. It will take equally long for a private university as well.

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How Sanjay Lalbhai & Pankaj Chandra are trying to build a unique university in Ahmedabad - Economic Times

Its been a full two years since From Harlem to Paris: Black American Writers in France 1840- 1980 by Michel Fabre has lived on my bookshelf. Its really scandalous as to how I acquired such gold, signed by the author himself as it was protruding from a friends bookshelf at an ungodly hour of the night, I helped myself to literature ecstasy. Its a textbook that talks about the Harlem renaissance movement in detail, beyond Langston Hughes, that goes as far back as the New Orleans influence in black culture and travel in France and the beloved Sally Hemings, Thomas Jeffersons (beautiful) slave, who was known to be the first black person ever to travel to France during slavery. As Black History month slowly comes to an end, it would be pity if this book and Harlem was not compared to the recent happenings of New York Fashion Weeks Fall 2017 events and collections. After all, all roads lead to Harlems creative mecca, as told by Alexander Wang, Stella McCartney, and ASAP Mobs faithful push to rebrand Harlem as Manhattans truest fashion zeitgeist.

For one, rising streetwear brand VLONE debuted its highly sought after Nike collaboration in Harlem earlier this month. Creative Director ASAP Bari along with members of the ASAP Mob, including ASAP Rocky (rumored to be dating Kendall Jenner at the moment), and dozens of fans visited the Harlem basketball court inspired pop up shop situated on the west side of 116th street. In a basketball court -like room, VLONEs signature orange decorated custom Spalding basketballs, as Nikes Air Force 1s with Harlem World graffiti and spray painted on sneakers and tees. The brands tagline was also written in old script font Every Living Creative Dies Alone on the walls of the dimly lit very chic retail space. Sneakers went for hundreds of dollars; I suppose the line to get into this streetwear arcade was never ending. The VLONE popup shop was much more refined with a strong brand message to welcome in the heavy collaboration with the billion dollar athletic company. VLONEs value and popularity over the past year has tripled with proof from its products currently being auctioned off for thousands of dollars on eBay. With the brands having repped Harlem from the very beginning, theres a lot to connect to how much Harlem continues to breed people who are not only for the evolution of Black American culture setting the bar, but also how much influence it has with an international audience. As a writer currently residing in Harlem, I wasnt invited to attend the After-Party or given a press recap which was covered by mainstream outlets like Vogue, VLONE has literally floated to the top of whats cool and hip and has simultaneously put Harlem back on the map, once again, as a place that is very much rooted in carrying on tradition, and not just another Manhattan neighborhood undergoing gentrification.

Harlems burgeoning coolness within the fashion industry is again, flattering but not necessarily needed, as it has always been a place of beauty especially during the Harlem renaissance. In the early 20th century, the architecture, the music, the food had all became to be what is known as today. But yet again, high fashion always seems to exude this Christopher Columbus attitude when it comes to exposing something new to the mainstream. What I mean is, it appropriates certain things in cultures that have always been known to the individuals in which the cultures belongs to, but not necessarily identifiable to the greater majority. When Alexander Wang decided to debut his fall 2017 collections in a abandoned theater in Harlem, he forced the fashion crowd to trek their way uptown for a chic adventure. An invited fashion editor (perhaps sarcastically) tweeted about his lack of knowledge of the train routes that far uptown. Did Alexander Wangs team care to invite some of the movers and shakers of Harlem or the greater community? Probably not. If this is too much, then perhaps compare this same concept to when Riccardo Tisci hosted the Givenchy Summer 2015 runway collections in New York and actually came to Harlem to invite random people on 125th street to his show because thats how much he was inspired by the culture for that particular collection. Were Alexander Wangs clothes inspired by Harlem? What exactly compelled him to host his show in Harlem is a question left unanswered at this point. It may seem like a small act of whatever, but the fact of a matter is Harlem is still a community full of black people desperately trying to hold on to their homes and culture, in the light of gentrification and appropriation running rampant in pop culture. Overall, VLONEs ability to reclaim the streets and build credibility with hoodwear, thus making it appealing to mainstream that is reaches the pages of Vogue is a huge accomplishment when it comes to owning the true black identity todays complex but still very elitist fashion world.

Here are 3 Black American Writers Who Have Travelled to Paris:

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The Harlem Renaissance, Alexander Wang and the VLONE Pop Up Shop - Huffington Post

Toujours, the Museum as Witness A selection of works from CAPC Contemporary Art Museum Bordeaux February 18May 22, 2017

Museo Amparo 2 Sur 708 Centro Histrico 72000 Puebla, Pue. Mxico Hours: WednesdayMonday 10am6pm, Saturday 10am9pm

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Museo Amparo presents a selection of some of the most important works from the Collection of the CAPC Contemporary Art Museum Bordeaux, representative of different moments in its history. The show includes pieces from the early years after the Museums foundation as well as from the 1980s, when it became more established; it also highlights its role in presenting new generations of artists and curators that represent the zeitgeist of different periods.Toujoursreveals a collection in constant movement, aware of cultural constructs and the spirit and ideas of its time.

The exhibition titleToujours always in Frenchis taken from the sculpture by Jack Pierson that welcomes the visitors to the show. This word evokes the idea of the continuity of an institution, of a collection and of the works created by the artists that have shaped the history of the CAPC. With its different definitions, the idea of continuity also refers to the time that has passed since the Museums foundation, its activities, the consistency of its programs and the commitment of the teams that have worked there.

How does a piece of art transcend? The wordtoujoursalso alludes to the museums role as witness to history and to its main mission: acquiring, conserving, studying, and exhibiting its collection. This is why the show focuses on a selection of pieces that establish a dialogue between them. Conceptual pieces by artists such as Daniel Buren and Sol LeWitt, closely related to the Museums first program of exhibitions or presented in later shows organized by Harald Szeeman and Marie-Laure Bernadac, coexist with emblematic interventions by artists such as Annette Messager and pieces by more recent creators such as Leonor Antunes, Wolfgang Tillmans and Lili Reynaud-Dewar.

This selection of works seeks to underline the museums role and its historic responsibility in the construction of a collection. Each piece is a witness, an idea, an opinion and it forms part of the history of the period in which it was made. It can thus be said that the pieces acquire a new meaning, because a collection reflects the different ways in which artists are witnesses as well as active participants of their time.

Toujoursproposes an interpretation related to the current socio-political context and the continuity of certain historical phenomena. It also analyzes possible relationships between language, movement, and space. Each piece has its own cultural reference and when juxtaposed with others in a new context, a dialogue is established in which a new analysis can ariseanother point of view about the history of a place (which could be the museum) or about our common history.

Among the works included in the exhibition areWall Drawing no. 2, 196890 by Sol LeWitt that establishes a link between Minimalism and Conceptual Art.Encadrant-Encadr, 3 rythmes pour 4 murs, 1991, created specifically by Daniel Buren for his solo show at CAPC muse that year, occupies an important place in the CAPC collection.Inventaire photographique des objets ayant appartenu au jeune home dOxford, 1973, by Christian Boltanski, a representative piece of his ongoing research on memory, and the most recent acquisition, Somnium, 2011, by Rosa Barba, a film inspired on the novel of astronomer Johannes Kepler, considered the first science fiction novel. The images present an uncertain landscape, inhabited between fiction and reality.

Excerpt from:

Museo Amparo - E-Flux

Keiko Hirosue hopes to see a change in how shoes are made in the US. Photograph: Maria Spann for the Guardian

It turns out that there are a lot of heels in the shoe business. You would be surprised how much [shoe design] in the corporate world is just copied! I was a little nobody and I wanted to say this isnt right to the director of Topshop, Elizabeth Dunn, a bespoke shoemaker and London transplant, tells me, her voice rising with emotion.

At Brooklyn Shoe Space, a professional shoemaker co-working space and collective that also offers classes for the public on how to make everything from simple moccasins to stitched oxfords and high heels, former employees of Big Shoe are hoping they can change the industry, one step at a time.

As Keiko Hirosue, the founder, talks, three other shoemakers in the collective have made their way to the childrens table where we are sitting, sharing their stories of leaving the corporate design world to strike out for themselves.

The toddler-height table was added at the shoe collective when one of the members, Ritika Wahal, a designer of childrens shoes, asked Hirosue if she could bring her son, then only 18 months old, to the workshop with her. Hirosue responded by getting small furniture and toys to keep the boy occupied while his mother worked on her shoe line at the wooden worktable two feet away. These days, Wahals son continues to visit the shoe collective, where his mother makes him shoes in everything from fine crocodile skin to novelty leather which he picks out himself.

Brooklyn Shoe Space taps into so many aspects of the current zeitgeist its a shared working space, part of the maker movement and marks a return to locally made, bespoke products while serving as a place for womens empowerment and support that it seems remarkable that independent shoe collectives are not popping up wherever young urbanites congregate. Yet.

All the women at the collective left corporate jobs in fashion design because they missed being close to the product, finding their own design inspiration and working with their hands, which they are eager to show me are calloused and abused from hours spent stretching leather over shoe lasts and hammering nails.

My fiance says I have the hands of a 60-year-old, Rebecca Heykes, a young shoemaker in a mod dress and boots of her own design tells me with a laugh. All around the workspace are in-process shoes, with hundreds of thin nails holding the leather in place, a testament to the hand-destroying work.

While all the shoemakers can talk endlessly about the joy of designing and painstakingly creating a prototype, none of them want to spend weeks making 30 identical pairs. So recently Heykes and Hirosue banded together with several investors to open their own manufacturing facility, renting space near their collective in the increasingly upscale neighborhood of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. In keeping with the spirit of their collective, they hired their two factory employees through a program that pairs recent immigrant women with meaningful work.

The two factory employees, who had no background in shoemaking, were taught the craft and now make about 50 pairs of handmade shoes a month for independent shoe lines.

There is no room for fast fashion at the collective, where weeks can sometimes be spent on creating a custom shoe for an individual client. Hirosue and the other women are big proponents of American-made shoes, on a small enough scale to ensure quality and careful attention to every detail.

They talk in hushed tones of Prince Charles John Lobb shoes, which they tell me are rumored in shoe circles to be the same pair he had made specifically for him more than 30 years ago. He gets them resoled over and over, Wahal tells me, leaning in closer.

Ultimately, Hirosue wants to see a change in how the US manufactures shoes, with prototypes made locally at collectives like hers instead of being packaged off to China or other countries that supply overseas low-wage labor to the fashion market.

But handmade shoes dont come cheap. The shoemakers sell their shoes at prices comparable to those at high-end designer shops, with stitched oxfords selling for around $400, simple sandals for $200 and one-off totally bespoke pairs of shoes selling for around $2,000.

While they continue making inroads with fashion brands across the river in Manhattan and hustling to find new boutiques to carry their individual lines, all of the shoemakers regularly teach classes at the workshop to help ends meet during slow times. Shoemaking students come from across the US, Europe, Asia and Australia, with a split of 40% men and 60% women.

Students typically spend five days learning the bare basics of shoemaking, walking away with an original pair. Hirosue herself started out as a hobby student, taking a quick class on fetish shoemaking when she first dipped her toe in the cordwainer waters 13 years ago. Once you start making, it is so addicting, she tells me.

The students who take classes at Brooklyn Shoe Space are a mix of those who simply want to make a special pair of shoes for fun and those looking for a little more technical knowledge before designing their own lines. Everybody wants to be unique and wants custom everything, Heykes explains, which has helped the shoe collective get about 10 inquiries a day from prospective students as well as designers. Being able to Instagram a pair of custom shoes and show off to friends also doesnt hurt when it comes to bringing in prospective students, Wahal adds with a smile.

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Cobbling together: the Brooklynites who gather to make handcrafted shoes - The Guardian