I finally got to see The Anthropologists' Give Us Bread on Thursday. On paper, a project to write a play about the 1917 food riots in New York City has the potential to become painfully earnest and preachy. It would almost certainly end up that way if I were to try my hand at playwriting, and it's best for everyone that I don't start.

Luckily, the women behind this particular play have talent in spades. It's gripping pretty much from the start, with fantastic characters, subtle acting, and a plot that grips you from the first scene and never insults your intelligence. ... read more »

Raj's blog | 18 comments

Posted on 13 June, 2009 - 22:36

Yay! I think I just broke the back of the new book. Watch this space for more on that front. But now that I've a draft that I'm reasonably happy with, I can return to more posting here, more activism, and a little bit more going outside than I've managed this year.

With that in mind, I've two events coming up over the next couple of days. If you're in New York and are interested in the food riots that happened there in 1917, I'll be talking tomorrow after a performance in Downtown Manhattan of Give Us Bread. I've written about this project before, and I continue to think it's terrific. Do support them if you can, and if you're free tomorrow night, do come along. Tickets here. ... read more »

Raj's blog | 8 comments

Posted on 10 June, 2009 - 16:08

Brooklyn Rescue Mission Inc. is a community-based organization in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn that develops creative solutions to food justice, community health and the economic challenges our community endures on a daily basis.

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Posted on 19 October, 2008 - 19:59

International women's day commemorates, among other things, the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York. Same town, six years later, women were on the barricades again. America's support in the first world war extended to selling food to Europe. This drove up prices. Women organised. Unable to use traditional democratic channels (the nineteenth amendment wasn't passed until 1920), they used street democracy. One protester, at an East Side Jewish Women's League protest put it like this: "with $14 a week we used to just make a living. With prices as they are now, we could not even live on $2 a day. We would just exist." It's a sentiment that would be all too familiar to women surviving today's price rises. ... read more »

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Posted on 9 March, 2008 - 05:17