[-empyre-] Shadows in the Dawn

[Jon McKenzie]

Simon, Johannes, and all,

In addition to official sanctuary cities, other US cities have also
developed networks of local social services, housing, and LEP (Limited
English Proficiency) classes for immigrant and refugees communities, so
sanctuary can extend beyond the legal and political to the economic,
social, and cultural. Buffalo, NY, is one such city and has four different
agencies helping to resettle immigrants and refugees. It’s part of a
decade-long attempt to repopulate and rejuvenate a city that suffered
depopulation due to loss of industries. The initiative has been come under
fire from some native Buffalonians and the right.

Some links:

Partners for the Public Good: Immigrants, Refugees, and Languages Spoken in
Buffalo

https://ppgbuffalo.org/files/documents/data-demographics-history/populations_and_cultural_groups/datademographicshistory-_immigrants__refugees__and_languages_spoken_in_buffalo.pdf

Buffalo News: Buffalo ranks 8th among U.S. cities welcoming Syrian refugees

http://buffalonews.com/2016/09/15/buffalo-ranks-8th-among-u-s-cities-welcoming-syrian-refugees

NPR: Resettled Refugees Help To 'Bring Buffalo Back'

http://www.npr.org/2015/12/02/458007064/resettled-refugees-help-to-bring-buffalo-back

Buffalo News: Mayor says Buffalo is not 'sanctuary city' for refugees

http://buffalonews.com/2017/01/29/buffalo-welcoming-refugees-no-need-declare-sanctuary-city-mayor-brown-says/

The *New Yorker* just ran an article on a safe house in Buffalo which
functions as part of a new Underground Railroad to Canada.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/13/the-underground-railroad-for-refugees

For those interested, a Performance Philosophy research group called
“Philosophy of the Refugee” will present at PSi 23 in Hamburg this summer.
My focus is Buffalo, but recall that Socrates was sentenced to exile or
death—and chose the hemlock. The refugee haunts philosophy.


Jon

On Wed, Mar 15, 2017 at 3:50 PM, Johannes Birringer <
Johannes.Birringer at brunel.ac.uk> wrote:

> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> dear Alan and all
>
> am reading an interesting book on migrants from East Africa to Madagascar;
> primatologist Alison Jolly actually calls them
>  "accidental pilgrims" (the lemurs) --  which I found a fascinating term
> for that evolutionary crisis which was also an ecological one,
> affecting what was to become Malagasy Republic, the red island, drifted
> off the main continent, over millions of years ago,
> and the lemurs raft-tripped over, looking for a safe place in the wild.
>
> Alan asked whether US American might be in a bubble, at this time (?), i
> am not sure i can answer that, and I fear i can't speak
> for anyone in other areas of the world where things are peaceful and
> bucolic, or precarious and contested, where people make do, or move or are
> forced
> to flee or seek survival; I doubt there is a global effect, as you called
> this debate --  that sounds presumptuous to me, arrogant,
> but you can call me naive, it's just that i can't be engaging paranoia or
> apocalypse. You (Alan) and I did moderate the debate on ISIS
> here a few years ago, and I think it was a misguided debate perhaps (I had
> no direct experience or knowledge of ISIS, so had to
> fabulate).
>
> But then again, Simon might argue there can no misguided reaction even if
> in disgust? "no immanent critique:
> the truth (of the opposition) will not puncture the bubble (of the
> consensus"  - it seems Simon you have given up on the left, and yet
> as Alan argues, of course there are reactions and there is constant
> re-organization, and in that latter sense, we will, if we can, struggle,
> or be on the raft. I see no room for "Larmoyanz"  (don;t know the english
> word for this).
>
> on the activist side, i guess it starts always locally, and again, it
> seems to me if one were to speak now of one's reactive oppositions,
> one comes across (Alan, you made a strangely interesting point about the
> résistance) as self-romanticizing, does one not? Friends
> marched, i didn't. yes, did go to black lives matter rally on campus two
> days ago, debated race/ethnicity and an "attainment gap" they have
> discovered
> for black and minority students in the west London university (and UK
> wide) where I work, yes, found out today from the union about the
> re-organization
> management are doing on us, sending out at risk notices, cutting,
> dismantling, and so forth. so there will be more talk, surely, on
> re-organizing ourselves?
>
> regards
> Johannes Birringer
> dap-lab
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>
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