VP Kamala Harris Community Rally in Philadelphia - October 27, 2024

Pennsylvania—there are only 9 more days to get out and make your voice heard in this election. Join Vice President Kamala Harris in Philadelphia for a community rally. Have questions about registration or polling locations? Visit IWillVote.com For ASL feed, please tune in here: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/85381952026 -------------------------------------- Follow Vice President Kamala Harris! Kamala's Twitter:   / kamalaharris   Kamala's Tiktok:   / kamalaharris   Kamala’s Instagram:   / kamalaharris   Kamala's Twitch:   / kamalaharris   Kamala's Facebook:   / kamalaharris   Kamala's Threads: https://www.threads.net/@kamalaharris #KamalaHarris #Harris2024

Kamala Harris

681K subscribers

My plan will allow Medicare to cover in-home health care for seniors.

This is a matter of dignity, and it's born out of a personal experience, after I cared for my mother after her cancer diagnosis.

— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) October 27, 2024

Love and Protect the Vulnerable Among Us

by Gregg Chadwick

Dear Loved Ones,

As you know Tuesday’s election results have released a toxic brew of misogyny, anti LGBT, anti immigrant, anti global warming, and outright racist actions and rhetoric from out of control Trump supporters.
There is so much hate out there for trans folks - as well as lesbians and gays and people of color.
People have asked me what they can do. First off - love and protect the vulnerable among us.
Words are not enough. Action is needed so that our families and communities feel protected from the hate.

The California Legislature has stated such in no uncertain terms:

"By a margin in the millions, Californians overwhelmingly rejected politics fueled by resentment, bigotry, and misogyny.
The largest state of the union and the strongest driver of our nation’s economy has shown it has its surest conscience as well.

California is – and must always be – a refuge of justice and opportunity for people of all walks, talks, ages and aspirations – regardless of how you look, where you live, what language you speak, or who you love.

California has long set an example for other states to follow. And California will defend its people and our progress. We are not going to allow one election to reverse generations of progress at the height of our historic diversity, scientific advancement, economic output, and sense of global responsibility."

View image on Twitter

 Follow

Samantha Gruber @Sam_E_Gruber

I am a safe place ♡#SafetyPin #Ally #LOVE

5:16 PM - 10 Nov 2016

 
•  3434 Retweets
 
•  7373 likes

Here are some actions that you can take now that were originally presented on the Huffington Post by Alex Berg. I have edited and added my own thoughts to her list.

1. Be physically present. Gender nonconforming and transgender Americans already face disproportionate violence and criminalization across the country, which has been exacerbated by laws dictating which bathrooms trans folk can use. Similarly, those in same-sex partnerships still face violence and harassment when together. You can offer to accompany LGBTQ people to the bathroom, walk with us outside, sit next to us on the subway and stand beside us in other spaces to ensure that we have an ally who can provide a physical presence in unsafe spaces.

2. Donate to LGBTQ organizations and people. If Trump and Pence do what they say, queer organizations will be gearing up for legal battles. You can ensure that these organizations can do this work by throwing them some coin. Check out Lambda Legal, Human Rights Campaign, the New York City Anti-Violence Project, It Gets Better Project (to combat LGBTQ bullying), and the Lorena Borjas Community Fund, which provides funding to bail out queer detainees. If you want to donate directly to LGBTQ people, you can search GoFundMe for those raising funds for transition-related healthcare, which is not covered by most insurance.

3. Get involved with your school board or PTA. Parents, this one’s for you. The Supreme Court will hear its first transgender case this spring about Gavin Grimm, a 17 year-old transgender boy who is fighting for the right to use the male restroom at school. Grimm’s case will decide the fate for transgender young people across the country, while Trump has said he would rescind existing guidelines that advise schools to allow trans kids to use the bathroom that aligns with their gender identity. But, you don’t have to wait for that to happen. Agitate on your PTA committees and before your school boards about their policies for transgender students. Are there gender-neutral restrooms at your school? What are the policies for locker rooms and sports teams? And, are teachers and administrators actively supporting LGBTQ student alliances? Even if you don’t have an LGBTQ-identified kid yourself, you can help bring attention to their safety.

4. Recognize that queer people also face racism and other forms of discrimination. Trump has used racist, xenophobic and Islamophobic rhetoric during the duration of his campaign, which has resulted in an uptick in hate crimes. documented daily on twitter and other social media platforms  LGBTQ people of color face homophobia, transphobia and misogyny that is racialized, meanwhile queer Muslims face profiling as both Muslims and LGBTQ people. We can amplify the voices of queer people of color by sharing their stories and statuses and centering them in LGBTQ spaces. Learning about intersectional identities is just one click away.

5. Become LGBTQ culturally-competent in your field. If you are a doctor, lawyer, teacher, waiter or in virtually any field, you can educate yourself to provide competent care to queer people, use the correct language when coming into contact with us and volunteer your skills to help us. It is difficult to find doctors who can meet our specific healthcare needs, but there are resources you can use to educate yourself. If you are a lawyer, you can volunteer your legal skills to help us navigate the criminal justice system or to acquire accurate documentation. And, if you work in any field, you can educate yourself about correct terminology and always be on the look out for bullying, harassment and violence.

6. Contact your local lawmakers. The backlash against queer rights isn’t just happening federally. North Carolina’s bill #HB2 which walked back LGBTQ protections and made it illegal for trans people to use the appropriate bathroom was a house bill, passed by legislators who were elected at a local level. Find out who your local representatives are and where they stand on LGBTQ rights. Then, give their office a call. Here is a tool by Common Cause that will help you find your elected official -> http://act.commoncause.org/site/PageServer?pagename=sunlight_advocacy_list_page

7. By fastening a safety pin to their clothing, people are declaring themselves allies to folks who have been maligned by Trump and his followers, to show that they stand in solidarity with anyone who might be afraid. 

8. Support progressive journalism such as Mother Jones or the Nation. 

As the son of a Marine I was taught at a young age how to fight and how to win.
We lost a significant battle on Tuesday night. Our LGBT family and friends are in tears.
They are afraid that their families will be torn apart.
After hugging my wife and daughter this morning, I got to work.
I will fight with my pen, and my brush and my physical presence when needed. 

Feel free to join up with me on Facebook or follow me on twitter. We need to create a movement to prove that Love does trump hate.

So much more to come.

Sending my love
Gregg

www.greggchadwick.com

You Are Cordially Invited to Gregg Chadwick's October Events and Exhibitions!

Please Join Me This Upcoming Weekend as I Open My Studio

at the 12th Anniversary of the Santa Monica Art Studios. 

In my twelve years at the Santa Monica Art Studios my artwork has been included in more than 70 exhibitions worldwide, 

including numerous community oriented benefit auctions.

I often open up my studio to visiting students, community members, scholars, and international guests. 

These visitors to my studio have included a bus load of Japanese Nursing Students from Tokyo, 

a visiting group of academics from the University of Verona in Italy, 

professional art restorers from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and the Getty Museum, 

an art meditation session with art writer Peter Clothier, 

as well as numerous visits by Santa Monica students interested in the arts and culture. 

Last year a group of around twenty young adults impacted by AIDS gathered in my studio and other studios for a moving exploration of art and personal expression. 

Also on July 8, 2015 we gathered as a community at the Santa Monica Art Studios to celebrate the life 

and mourn the passing of Olaf Pooley - actor, painter, centenarian, Santa Monica Art Studios Artist. 

At the Santa Monica Art Studios, I am part of a community of artists - driven to create, share knowledge and experience, and help the community at large. 

I would be honored to have you join the long list of visitors to my studio #15 at the Santa Monica Art Studios.

Hope to see you soon!

Saturday, October 8 from 6-9pm 

Sunday, October 9 from 1-5pm

3026 Airport Boulevard, Santa Monica, CA 90405

“Blush Response" will be available at

Art & Home: An Evening with Los Angeles Family Housing to benefit LA Family Housing.

Wednesday, October 26, 2016  7-9pm

    

Room & Board 

Helm's Bakery Building 

8707 Washington Boulevard, CA 90232

Gregg Chadwick

Blush Response

10"x10" oil on canvas 2015

In collaboration with Angeleno magazine, please join us for a special art show at Room & Board in Culver City. 

Over 100 local, contemporary artists have donated artworks in support of LA Family Housing. (LAFH). 

Dedicated to helping families and individuals transition out of homelessness and poverty, LAFH offers a range of housing opportunities enriched with supportive services.

Artwork on display in the showroom will be available for purchase for $400! 

If you have always wanted a Chadwick, this is a wonderful opportunity to get an artwork at an affordable price and to support an important cause.

Please RSVP at http://www.roomandboard.com//events/LAFH 

More at:

https://www.facebook.com/events/1094088290638897/

Hope to see you at these events!

Thanks for your interest in my art.

Gregg

www.greggchadwick.com

Gregg Chadwick

Santa Monica Art Studios - Studio #15

3026 Airport Avenue

Santa Monica, CA  90405

cell 415 533 1165

Trayvon Martin Tribute: Cruel World by Zone Fwey

A moving tribute to Trayvon Martin by Minneapolis based recording duo Zone Fwey.

Listen Here:


More at:
Zone Fwey

The Gospel and Blues of Rocky Ground

by Gregg Chadwick

Rocky Ground

(Song by Song Review of Bruce Springsteen's New Album - Wrecking Ball)

 ''The verses are the blues, the chorus is the gospel."

- Bruce Springsteen in Conversation With Jon Pareles in The New York Times July 14, 2002

Gregg Chadwick
The Luminist
12"x12" oil on linen 2010 

As if reaching out from the past into the present, Bruce Springsteen's song Rocky Ground (Listen Here) opens with a  ghostly voice calling out the refrain "I'm a soldier."

This verbal fragment was culled from a historical performance of the Church of God in Christ Congregation's rendition of  I'm A Soldier In The Army Of The Lord,  recorded by musical historian Alan Lomax in Clarksdale, Mississippi in 1942*. 

The song then shifts to the chorus, sung by the gospel singer Michelle Moore:

We've been traveling over rocky ground, rocky ground

We've been traveling over rocky ground, rocky ground

Only after this spiritual initiation does Springsteen sing the first verse:

Rise up shepherd, rise up

Your flock has roamed far from the hills

The stars have faded, the sky is still

The angels are shouting "Glory Hallelujah"

Springsteen's voice is yearning, soulful, bluesy. The music behind the singer brings to mind Springsteen's mournful song Streets of Philadelphia. Understated piano, a looped, patterned drum rhythm and atmospheric guitar wash across Rocky Ground. Mournful horns set a Van Morrison vibe.

Jacob Lawrence's magnificent Migration Series comes to mind. These paintings documented the African American movement from the rural south to the urban north between the World Wars. From his small studio in Harlem, Jacob Lawrence let loose with a flurry of deeply resonant and poignant words and images that encapsulated the hopes, fears, and dreams of a community moving into the unknown; often bolstered only by faith. The promise of a new day was coming, but the road was hard.

Jacob Lawrence

The Migration Series, Panel no. 3:
From every southern town migrants left by the hundreds to travel north.
12"x18" tempera on gesso on composition board 1940-41 
The Phillips Collection, Washington DC

As if to mark in music the history of this Great Migration, Springsteen's Rocky Ground moves from a folk recording from 1940's rural Mississippi, to Michelle Moore and the Victorious Gospel Choir to a more contemporary musical style: rap.  

Jacob Lawrence
The Migration Series, Panel no. 58:
In the North the Negro had Better Educational Facilities
12"x18" tempera on gesso on composition board 1940-41 
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Moore's rap flows smoothly into the structure of the song setting us up for a powerful dose of spoken word blues:

You use your muscle and your mind and you pray your best

That your best is good enough, the Lord will do the rest

You raise your children and you teach 'them to walk straight and sure

You pray that hard times, hard times, come no more

The lyrics turn from hope to fear and doubt:

You try to sleep, you toss and turn, the bottom's dropping out

Where you once had faith now there's only doubt

You pray for guidance, only silence now meets your prayers

The morning breaks, you awake but no one's there

The intoning voice from the 1940's attempts to give strength. The choir provides a chorus of resilience.  Springsteen returns and sings, "There's a new day coming." But as this morning breaks we are alone in our struggles. This existential moment at the abyss is chilling. No one's there. 

Gregg Chadwick
Under the Copper Sky
30"x22" monotype on paper 2011 

In 2002 Springsteen explained to Jon Pareles in The New York Times that in his music he has to "come to grips with the real horrors that are out there. And that all people have is hope. That's what brings the next day and whatever that day may bring. "

Springsteen goes on to explain that "hope is grounded in the real world of living, friendship, work, family, Saturday night. And that's where it resides. That's where I always found faith and spirit. I found them down in those things, not some place intangible or some place abstract. And I've really tried to write about that basic idea my whole life.''

Unknown Fiddler from Southern US Field Trip, 1959
photo by Alan Lomax

In Rocky Ground Springsteen adopts the traditional sounds and imagery of gospel, but for Springsteen faith and spirit are not found in the realm of angels but instead in the doggedness of daily life. Rocky Ground poignantly reminds us that hope is found in the courage to live each day to its fullest, in the sacrifices that parents make so that their children perhaps will have a more fulfilling life, and in the loving community of friends and family that brings meaning to our shared existence.

*NOTE:

 Alan Lomax was one of the great field collectors of folk music of the twentieth century, recording thousands of songs in the United States, Great Britain, Ireland, the Caribbean, Italy, and Spain. Lomax recorded in the plantations, levee camps, prisons and railroad yards where the men and women of the blues came from and the music was born. 

All lyrics from Rocky Ground -  Copyright © Bruce Springsteen (ASCAP)

More Song by Song Reviews of Wrecking Ball:

1. We Take Care of Our Own

2. Easy Money

3. Shackled and Drawn

4. Jack of All Trades

5. Death to My Hometown

6. This Depression

7. Wrecking Ball

8. You've Got It

9. Rocky Ground

10. Land of Hope and Dreams

11. We Are Alive

More at:

"Bruce Springsteen's widescreen vision of America on Wrecking Ball is filled with terror, tension, tenacity and above all else, triumph which may not replenish your bank account, but it will replenish your soul."

-Anthony Kuzminski, Bruce Springsteen - Wrecking Ball, antiMusic

"What was done to my country was un-American."

Shackled and Drawn

Jack of All Trades

Death to My Hometown

From Down Under: Sean Sennett Talks With Springsteen About Wrecking Ball

All Things Shining by Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly

The Working Man's Voice - The Wall Street Journal

A More Chaste Review of You've Got It by Jonathan Lack

Parsing the Samples and Quotes on Wrecking Ball

Bruce Springsteen, Théatre Marigny press conference, Paris, February 2012

Don't Miss This Upcoming Event on NPR:

NPR Music will broadcast Bruce Springsteen's keynote speech from the SXSW Music Festival in Austin, Texas. The live webcast of that address will take place on NPR Music on March 15 at noon Central time.