WATCH CNN town hall in wake of Parkland school shooting Horror again But now teenagers are committed to what adults and elected officials have not been able to do THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT ma commitment to change

At first, I thought it was too soon .. but I tuned in any way.. and one more time this week I saw teenagers taking leadership and fearlessly be committed to ending gun violence and save lives.  They were not afraid to confront the politicians with the real questions others avoid..  They  called these weapons of WAR made not to hunt but to kill 

These kids give  me much hope for the future

THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT! 

I support and stand with their leadership

MARCH 24 Washington DC Join the #neveragain March to End Gun Violence

jim fouratt

Gays Against Guns member 

Rise and Resist member 

Here's How Nan Goldin Plans to Hold the Sackler Family Accountable for the Opioid Crisis | artnet News

Artist can make a difference when thy put life above MARKET .. Kudos to Nan Golden for "coming clean " anou how she got hooked on opiantes and amos dies of addiction .... and most importantly she took both private personal and public action


Here's 

How Nan Goldin Plans to Hold the Sackler Family Accountable for the Opioid Crisis | artnet New

Nan Goldin, In My Room, Paris (n.d.). Photo courtesy of Nan Goldin/Artforum, 2017.

After spending the past year in treatment for her addiction to OxyContin, the photographer Nan Goldin is launching a campaign targeting the Sacklers, the family of art philanthropists who have quietly made billions from the drug’s sales.

Goldin’s new organization, Prescription Addiction Intervention Now (P.A.I.N.), wants to hold the Sacklers accountable for their role in the opioid crisis as the owners of Purdue Pharma. The family has obfuscated its relationship with the company, which manufactures OxyContin, in the past.

Nan Goldin, Pain/Sackler, Royal College of Art, London (2017) and Oxy Script (2017). Photo courtesy Nan Goldin/Artforum, 2017.

“We demand an immediate response to this epidemic which is growing out of control,” said Goldin and P.A.I.N. in a statement emailed to artnet News. “We are demanding [the Sacklers fund various treatment models; rehab centers, medication assisted programs, harm reduction, relapse prevention, and holistic approaches. We demand they introduce effective labeling of their products and their addiction potential.”

P.A.I.N. is also calling on museums and universities to refuse future donations from the Sacklers, and plans to launch a petition, hold public actions, and build a robust social media presence to correct misinformation about opioids. The group’s Instagram account (@sacklerpain) will share photographs and videos “illustrating the impact of the crisis on individuals, families, and communities.”

Nan Goldin, Dope on My Rug, New York (2016). Photo courtesy Nan Goldin/Artforum, 2017.

In an essay for the January issue of Artforum, Goldin wrote about her struggles with the drug—she has been clean for about a year—admitting that when she finally sought help, she realized how many others were in her position.

Read the full statement from Goldin and P.A.I.N. below:

We want to get information to, and support from activists, artists, educators, doctors, people in recovery from addiction, and those who are still addicted.

Our primary demands are for the Sackler family and Purdue Pharma to move their money into treatment and education. We are demanding they fund various treatment models; rehab centers, medication assisted programs, harm reduction, relapse prevention, and holistic approaches. We demand they introduce effective labelling of their products and their addiction potential. We demand that they impress upon doctors to stop over-prescribing these medications except for patients who are in extreme pain. We demand they set up educational programs for educators, families, and addicts. We demand they install dispensers on every corner in America with Narcan, the medicine that saves people who are over-dosing. We demand Purdue Pharma advertise the dangers of their products as aggressively as they sold it to the public. We demand an immediate response to this epidemic which is growing out of control.

We intend to photograph and film the impact of the crisis on individuals, families and communities. We as a group intend to put pressure on the Sacklers through a petition. We intend to correct the misinformation regarding opioids through social media and other platforms. We intend to organize public actions. All of this is intended to hold the Sacklers accountable, and put social and political pressure on them.

We are asking museums, art spaces, and educational institutions to refuse future donations.

To the best of our knowledge the only institution that has rejected donations from the Sacklers has been the Globe Theatre in London.

This is the time others do the same.

There is no time to waste.

In response to inquiry from artnet News, Purdue Pharma’s executive director of communications said that the company “would welcome an opportunity to sit down with Ms. Goldin and discuss her ideas,” and provided the following statement:

We are deeply troubled by the prescription and illicit opioid abuse crisis, and we are dedicated to being part of the solution. For more than 15 years, this company has a strong track record of addressing prescription drug abuse which includes collaborating with law enforcement, funding state prescription drug monitoring programs and enhancing interoperability, and supporting drug take back programs. In addition, we’ve recently announced educational initiatives aimed at teenagers warning of the dangers of opioids and continue to fund grants to law enforcement to help with accessing naloxone.

ALERT: PETER NOLAN SMITH Sunday, February 8, 4: 30 p.m. MoMA

ALERT: PETER NOLAN SMITH Thursday, February 8, 4: 30 p.m. MoMA CLUB 57 reads from his memory writing. : subjective, not objective ... and delicious indeed.., and Jim has a few words ot say about the MoMA Club 57 show itself

Not only was Peter Nolan Smith the sexiest dude at a Club 57 ... He also was/is a brilliant writer ... get there early .. limit very, (very)limited space, in the basement inside Club 57

MoMA says: "Performance. February 8. Vagabond writer and self-described "well-unknown legend" Peter Nolan Smith stages an intimate afternoon of readings from his 1970s diaries, fiction, and poetry. This interdisciplinary performance layers sound, image, and spoken word in an evocative journey to the low-rent, freeform days when ... :"

Peter's writing is not without controversy. Most of his docu-fiction is just that: a landscape of fact which he plows for his own creative stimulation. As someone myself who has been the subject of hostile confabulation masquerading as fact, I am very sensitive to some of the criticisms of his writing voiced by people who populate his memory. Both Susan Hannaford

and Patti Astor are beacons of personal experience that were, upon reflection, the cement of the brief life of both Club 57 and the Mudd Club. Left out of the MoMA show are the significance of Diego Cortez and Anya Philips to the construction of this illusion of art and fun.

I hold the two young MoMA curators responsible. They appear n some ways to have never stepped back and looked at what was fact and what was confabulation. I suggest that this is a matter of their own young age and experience. To be able to do an objective re-creation of a cultural scene of the cultural importance of the late 70's early 80's in NYC "downtown" is a challenge and demands rigorous, objective research.

Their failure resulted in the exclusion of people and spaces that were vital arteries of the creative sensibility they have chosen to explore. A person I respect as an artist and I consider a friend was made the litmus test of authenticity. Ann Magnuson,

certainly, as performer and director was a correct critical choice they made,. But as we have seen and heard, some people think her spotlight is a very personal follow spot. She is making an artist statement, not an archeologist or archivist point of view.

Hence the pushback from people like Patti and Susan.

For me, to individualize to the degree the show does, fails to center on the actual creative COMMUNITY at the center of this moment downtown. Magnuson created a memory map that is the essence of the show. Ann was absolutely one of the lynchpins of this social club for the children of middle-class suburbs

who came to ot NYC to learn and to play with all the privileges and identifies they brought with them.

Because Magnason sensibility became central, others have voiced feelings of being left out. Such is the role of an institution like MoMA and the significance of its litmus test of authenticity. Which is why these sideshows of individual contributions become for me the most important part of the show. The digital wall at the first-floor entrance to the downstairs space of rapidly changing images of people who were the core of Club 57 as well as the photo work of Trixie Rosen brings alive the actual life of this tiny space and the insular world that surrounded it and the people who created Club 57 And the importance of the sideshows presenting personal memory like we have seen and heard from

Marcus Leathrdale

And now Peter Nolan Smith. Smith's writings are memory pieces written many years later. His reflections resonate with the creation of a more significant sensibility that the Club 57 exhibits stretch for as it spills over to embrace a cultural moment and yes political one as something that is, in fact, was much more significant than one tiny club on St Mark's place. A place entirely different today from downtown Manhattan almost 40 years ago. Smith's memory landscapes personal storytelling that fuses fact with fiction.

I know from personal experience that when fiction becomes the base of fact about one's own life to others, it is quite frankly infuriating .. I can't tell you how angry I was when "Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor, 1980–1983" by Tim Lawrence was published. Lawrence an academic was never a part of the scene he wrote about. But his own nostalgia for DJ's and the dance floor and the sounds rooted in NYC DJ's he danced to in London in the '80's by happenstance got him a contract to write about a particular period in NYC nightlife. Although I gave him extensive access to what I knew had happened in the time period, he was researching because in many ways I was at ground zero. Lawrence chooses to reject some of what I told him, Rather he depended on in some cases, burned out participants that he fawned over. No matter what documentation I offered him his nostalgia swoon and his desire to be a part of what he was not, produced a sometimes fictitious non-fact based exploration of a time and place. Unlike Kathy Acker, Lawrence did not acknowledge his subjectivity. Like Peter Nolan Smith's mash-up of fact and subjective memory. What is fascinating to me about Smith literary work is he was a part of Club 57b scene he is writing about ..unlike Acker or Lawrence. He was there unlike a person who comes to the material as an outside.

But we who were there and in fact, like Patti and Susan, were essential instigators of the sensibility that MoMA has reframed as what was, have our own reactions.

I have said it before: this show conflates and credits a few individuals and misses the essential moment of truth (Community) except in the most superficial way.

Which is what is captured in the Hemmingway meets Joan Didion stained writing of Peter Nolan Smith. It is contributions like his that Magnuson insisted be a part of the show .... and yes we need to also hear even more from voices like Patti Astor and Sunan Hannaford.
click on the link below and get a taste of Peter Nolan Smith's memory writing.

http://www.mangozeen.com/2013/01/25/new-york/a-step-into-tomorrow-by-Peter-Nolan-smith.htm

ALERT: MoMA PS1 A Glimpse Into The Life and Legacy of Alice Coltrane Sunday, Feb11, 1:00–6:00 p.m. MoMA PS1

ALERT: Sunday, February 11, 1:00–6:00 p.m.

MoMA PS1

Monastic and Ecstatic:

A Glimpse Into The Life and Legacy of Alice Coltrane

Koury Angelo / Red Bull Content Pool.

VW Sunday Sessions presents an afternoon celebrating the legacy of Alice Coltrane in collaboration with her son, saxophonist Ravi Coltrane. Alice Coltrane, also referred to as Swamini and Turiyasangitananda by her family and students, was a prolific composer, harpist, and keyboardist who dedicated the later years of her life to the Sai Anantam ashram she founded in 1983 in Agoura Hills, California. Featuring rare audio and video recordings from the extended Coltrane family’s private archive, the program, organized with Luaka Bop, will also include discussion, presentations, performances of Coltrane’s music by Kelsey Lu and Laraaji, and a workshop by Purushottoma Hickson, a student of the ashram.

All guests will be required to check their phone, camera, and any recording devices upon entry. Recording of all kind is strictly prohibited.

Tickets: $15 (MoMA Members $13)

Programming throughout the building free with museum admission

MoMA PS1’s acclaimed VW Sunday Sessions program welcomes visitors to experience art live and in real time. Embracing performance, music, dance, conversations, and film, the program vividly demonstrates how these art forms can push us to engage with our contemporary world in creative, illuminating ways. With an emphasis on artistic practices that blur and break traditional genre boundaries, the program supports and commissions new work, inviting artists, curators, and other cultural instigators to share their latest projects.

This performance is part

of VW Sunday Sessions.