Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Slaves in paradise, Tsvangirai to hospital and Tracy Quan downtown

My new article for the Inter Press Service, on the Esclaves au Paradis (Slaves in Paradise) exhibit, Father Christopher Hartley and the state of Haitians laboring in the Dominican Republic, was published yesterday and can be read here. I was going to post it yesterday but thought that, given the situation with Morgan Tsvangirai and the Movement for Democratic Change in Zimbabwe, it could wait until today.

Reuters reports today that Tsvangirai is now in intensive care with a broken skull, after having been released from police custody along with 30 other opposition figures arrested on Sunday. But, given the track record of the Zimbabwe government up until this point, it would appear that this crisis is far from over and continued vigilance is required. Many thanks to all of you who wrote, called or faxed the Zimbabwean embassies in the U.S. and the U.K.

On a far lighter note, my friend Tracy Quan will be having a reading tonight at East 9th Street’s Manhattan nightspot Solas, for any of those who are in town, celebrating her "special relationship with the Upper East Side," a neighborhood I have never been able to afford to live in (being a Brooklyn and Queens boy) but have visited from time to time.

1 comment:

Tracy Quan said...

Hi Michael! Thanks for announcing our event which went nicely, I think. Actually, lots of people are on the Upper E Side because they can't afford to live anywhere else. That's long been the case, but it's more and more true, as other parts of Manhattan, Brooklyn (and probably Queens!) spiral into fashion. There are, of course, different ideas about what constitutes the UES. West of Lexington is astronomically priced, but the area I talk about is closer to York Ave. On the wall of PS 158, you can still see a sign indicating that it was once called Avenue A. If you take a closer look at the street scape and the condition of some buildings, on your next visit, you'll see what I'm talking about... The old working class parts of Yorkville are still present.