Fundraiser

I saw Réa last night at the fundraiser. Sparsely attended, sadly, but we didn't have much time to do much organizing.

This is her (with the hat on -- she's never experienced this kind of cold before) with some folks I know from Haiti activism.

Réa was telling a story about how she got involved in education. Apparently, it starts with her taking alfabetizasyon classes in 1994. When Aristide was returned from exile in 1994, he resumed one of his crucial programmes -- the adult literacy programme (called Alfabetizasyon -- named, I think, after similar programs in Latin America. On my first trip to Haiti in 2002, I recall seeing a lot of banners and wall art talking about the importance of Alfabetizasyon; I don't think I've seen the same thing since the coup.)

Réa didn't know how to read or write prior to this programme, and she felt that it made a significant improvement to her own life that she wanted to help make literacy more available to other people. So, soon, she had both adults and children as students. And that lead her to eventually opening the SOPUDEP school.

Voodoo Man: Gamba Shema Lana!

So, I mentioned that I was playing around with comics that had fallen into the public domain. And that I was pretty shocked by just how racist they were.

I kept reading them, mostly for two reasons: first, I'm likely to take another cartooning course in the summer -- Cartooning 5 -- and I'll need to define a class project. I was half-thinking about reproducing one of these stories with more modern sensibilities. Second, I've been looking to play more with developing software for the Mac, and I've been playing with some of the open source comic book viewer software.

Recently, I've discovered Voodoo Man. And ugh. Fucking ugh.

( Images. Annoying! )