NID D'OISEAUX

Meganlenzy 21 Floridian ✈️ New Yorker

FROM THE VAULT: Ollie Schminkey - “Boobs” (CUPSI 2014)

Ollie Schminkey, performing for Macalester College at the 2014 College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational. HELP SUPPORT BUTTON POETRY.

Portraits by Alex Hainer

Rising NYC-based photographer and film-maker Alex Hainer is a master of mood. Each of her dreamy images tell a story and entrance you in the natural beauty of her subjects. 

“All during this time, Bobby and I had no thought of the Black Panther Party, no plan to head up any organization, and the ten-point program was still in the future. We had seen Watts rise up the previous year. We had seen how the police attacked the Watts community after causing the trouble in the first place. We had seen Martin Luther King come to Watts in an effort to calm the people, and we had seen the philosophy of nonviolence rejected. Black people had been taught nonviolence; it was deep in us. What good, however was nonviolence when the police were determined to rule by force? We had seen the Oakland police and the California highway patrol begin to carry their shotguns in full view as another way of striking fear into the community. We had seen seen all this, and we recognized that the rising consciousness of Black people was almost at the point of explosion. One must relate to the history of one’s community and to its future, Everything we had seen convinced us that our time had come.”