· COMMUNITY Panel · Kid Lit Dissident Kid Lit Four South Asian authors talk about children's publishing & narratives that come from pain but create joy. Watch the panel on YouTube or IGTV. Political dissidence isn't often thought to be part of parenting discourse or children's reading practice—but it must be. In our third panel, four South Asian authors talk about navigating children's publishing and the balance of narratives that come from pain but create joy. Saira Mir, Simran Jeet Singh, Vashti Harrison, & Shelly Anand discussed why their books tackle issues including race, religion, age, and body image, and how children's literature can aim to decenter the white gaze, break out of victimized narratives, and spark conversations in young readers. Watch Deputy Editor Aditya Desai on how this panel came about. The panel opened with Shelly reading from her book, Laxmi's Mooch , that has since been published to great acclaim. It then moved into a conversation with Saira, Simran, and Vashti and their books, Muslim Girls Rise , Fauja Singh Keeps Going , and Festival of Colors , respectively, while tackling such questions as: How do you balance the desire to claim ownership of narratives or to offer representation? How do we navigate being asked to write about communal trauma, pain versus writing what we want? What are the strategies of breaking out of a victimizing framework? We conclude with an illustration demo from Vashti on how she collaborates with the writer's storylines and finds ways to place her own political stamp on the book! EDITOR'S NOTE: Since this panel on 20th December 2020, our panelists have published more notable books (some recent, others upcoming in 2023). Check for updates by navigating to their pages below. SUB-HEAD Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Panel Kid Lit Children's Literature Age Ageism Black Solidarities Islamophobia Anti-Racism Publishing Industry Public History Colorism Leadership Future Dream Spaces Dreaming Spiritual Practice Art Practice Illustration Demonstration Reading Muslim-American Narrative Identity Procreate Sikh Spiritualism Biracial Diaspora Diasporic Distance Dreamers Legends Muslim Girls Brownness In-Progress Affirmation Art Knowledge Comics Debut Authors Public Arts Authenticity Genre Tropes Religion Generational Stories Kindness as Politics Personal History Experimental Methods Language Comic Humor Pedagogy Absurdity Literature & Liberation Art Activism Fiction Craft Race Metaphor Vernacular Literature Politics of Art Victimization Narratives Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. 20th Dec 2020 AUTHOR · AUTHOR Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. 1 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 On That Note:

· INTERACTIVE Live · Brooklyn Between Notes: An Improvisational Set Since this performance, Lal has been prolific: aside from his collaborations with Rajna Swaminathan, Ganavya, and others, he released raga shorts “Shuddha Sarang” in 2021 and “Bhairav” in 2024, as well as the EP “Raga Bhimpalasi” this August. Follow our YouTube channel for updates from past or future events. As part of SAAG's live event In Grief, In Solidarity on June 5th, 2021, the raga and jazz pianist and composer Utsav Lal performed a set that kicked off the proceedings. With his quick-fingered approach, glimmering with deep pauses leading to swift digressions that slide through and between notes, Lal—who has been called “ the Phil Coulter of raga ” —began the event by offering a set that was at once meditative and immersive. Lal has performed solo at the Carnegie Hall, Southbank Centre, Kennedy Center, and Steinway Hall, among others, and has been honored as a Young Steinway Artist, amongst others. He has seven solo records, including a historic world’s first album on the microtonal Fluid Piano (2016). In 2023, Lal performed for SAAG's Volume 2 launch event as part of the “ Vagabonds Trio, ” which includes himself, Rajna Swaminathan, and Ganavya Doraiswamy. The performance heralded both a new volume of SAAG and Rajna Swaminathan's latest album, Apertures . Buy Lal's latest release, Raga Bhimpalasi: Indian Classical Music on the Piano, here . SUB-HEAD Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Live Brooklyn Raga Jazz Piano Music Performance Live Performance Improvisation Rajna Swaminathan Ganavya Carnegie Hall Fluid Piano Vagabonds Trio Raga Bhimpalasi Classical Music Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. 5th Jun 2021 AUTHOR · AUTHOR Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. 1 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 On That Note:

WRITER Sneha Krishnan SNEHA KRISHNAN is a writer, teacher, and translator. She is an Associate Professor for Studies in OP Jindal Global University and Founder-Director of ETCH Consultancy Services. Her poems have been published by Belongg, Analogies and Allegories, Indian Poetry Review, Lit Stream Magazine , and AllEars Magazine . Her translations and essays have appeared in Gulmohar Quarterly, The Hindu, The Statesman, Deccan Herald, Conversation, Medium, Feminism in India, Science Policy Forum and The Wire . Her short fiction has appeared in The Walled City Journal and the New Writing Anthology by Helter Skelter. WRITER WEBSITE INSTAGRAM TWITTER Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 LOAD MORE

Tarfia Faizullah's oeuvre is one of poetic attunement to how the temporalities of violence at various scales—be it the mass rape and torture of women in the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971 or the colonial plunder of cultural artifacts—are linked with crimes of intimacy at the most personal and private level. Eliding cliche, her work is connected by a searching fury at unjust banalities. INTERACTIVE FLUX · Tarfia Faizullah: Poetry Reading Tarfia Faizullah Tarfia Faizullah's oeuvre is one of poetic attunement to how the temporalities of violence at various scales—be it the mass rape and torture of women in the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971 or the colonial plunder of cultural artifacts—are linked with crimes of intimacy at the most personal and private level. Eliding cliche, her work is connected by a searching fury at unjust banalities. FLUX: An Evening in Dissent A selection of readings by Tarfia Faizullah served as a gentle, immersive break between panels. Faizullah read excerpts from her poetry collections Registers of Illuminated Villages and Seam and the experimental poem Alien of Extraordinary Ability , which we published earlier that year. “ Is this a museum or a border? where there / is a border, does there need to be patrol? ” Faizullah muses in Alien of Extraordinary Ability , a startling and experimental work shifting slowly from a visa alien classification by United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) federal agency to the vicissitudes of borders, abuse, and plunder simultaneously intimate and global: speaking with one voice, then with many, often within a single verse or phrase. Jaishri Abichandani's Art Studio Tour Kshama Sawant & Nikil Saval: A panel on US left electoralism, COVID19, recent victories, & lasting problems. Natasha Noorani's Live Performance of "Choro" Bhavik Lathia & Jaya Sundaresh: A panel on the US Left & its relationship with media in the wake of Bernie Sanders' loss. Rajiv Mohabir: Poetry Reading SAAG, So Far: A Panel with the Editors DJ Kiran: A Celebratory Set ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 Watch the event in full on IGTV. SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ Event Dallas Live FLUX Published Work Poetry Alien of Extraordinary Ability Seam Reading Bangladeshi Diapora Bangladesh Immigration Work Authorization Borders Visa TARFIA FAIZULLAH is the author of two poetry collections, Registers of Illuminated Villages (Graywolf, 2018) and Seam (SIU, 2014). Tarfia’s writing appears widely in the U.S. and abroad in the Daily Star, Hindu Business Line, BuzzFeed, PBS News Hour, Huffington Post, Poetry Magazine, Ms. Magazine, the Academy of American Poets, Oxford American, the New Republic, the Nation, Halal If You Hear Me (Haymarket, 2019), and has been displayed at the Smithsonian, the Rubin Museum of Art, and elsewhere. Tarfia is currently based in Dallas. Event Dallas 5th Dec 2020 On That Note: Heading 5 23rd OCT Heading 5 23rd Oct Heading 5 23rd Oct

Trade unions are the most potent stopgap against Javier Milei, an outlandish avatar of Argentina's Faustian bargain with the far-right. But Argentina is poised on the razor’s edge: outside of brutal crackdowns or Milei losing his voting base, there are few foreseeable outcomes for the working class in impoverished Argentina. THE VERTICAL Buenos Aires, Shuttered Trade unions are the most potent stopgap against Javier Milei, an outlandish avatar of Argentina's Faustian bargain with the far-right. But Argentina is poised on the razor’s edge: outside of brutal crackdowns or Milei losing his voting base, there are few foreseeable outcomes for the working class in impoverished Argentina. VOL. 2 REPORTAGE AUTHOR AUTHOR AUTHOR The second general strike this year happened this past Thursday on May 9th, bringing Buenos Aires to a standstill (photograph courtesy of Confederación General del Trabajo ). ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 The second general strike this year happened this past Thursday on May 9th, bringing Buenos Aires to a standstill (photograph courtesy of Confederación General del Trabajo ). SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ Reportage Argentina 12th May 2024 Reportage Argentina Trade Unions General Confederation of Labor Javier Milei Javier Milei Peronism Omnibus Bill La Libertad Avanza Austerity Economic Crisis Inflation Unemployment Poverty Unitary Central of Workers of Chile Brazilian Unified Workers' Central Worldwide Unions' Federation Kirchnerism Party of Social Workers Bolsonaro Military Dictatorship Free Market Welfare Cuts Privatization Justicialismo Juan Peron Cristina Kirchner Partido Justicialista Nestor Kirchner Progressive Wave in Latin America Pink Wave Labor Movement Labor Labor Rights Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. On January 24, in a city with many of its stores and banks closed, there was a suffocating heat. In the blocks surrounding the National Congress, Buenos Aires witnessed the first general strike in the country in seven years. Workers in columns with their flags came from all over to reject the measures of the government that took office a little over a month ago. This scene was soon replicated in the main cities throughout the country. In front of the steps of the Congress, Pablo Moyano, Truckers union leader and co-chairman of the trade union federation known as the General Confederation of Labor ( Confederación General del Trabajo or CGT), spoke to a square full of workers who were raising their voices against the proposed austerity policies by the government. "We ask the deputies to have dignity and principles,” Moyano said. “We ask them not to betray the workers, the doctrine of Peronism, which is to defend the workers, the poor, and the pensioners." Moyano condemned the decreed privatization of state corporations such as Aerolíneas Argentinas (National Flag Carrier), Télam (News Agency), Banco Nación (National Bank), and Radio Nacional (Public Radio). He accused them of leaving “millions of workers on the streets and handing them over to their friends [the private corporations].” CGT organized its first strike just 45 days into Javier Milei's regime under the slogan "The homeland is not for sale". The strike protested the state reforms and the deregulation of the economy, including sweeping labor changes, the end of severance pay, the extension of employment trial periods from three to eight months, and the privatization of state-owned companies. The sweeping reforms included a massive presidential executive order and a 523-article bill , the Omnibus Bill, that has been hotly debated in Congress for months but passed in April. Milei’s ruling coalition, La Libertad Avanza , wrangled a majority opinion on the bill by eliminating many of its original articles, including the privatization of the national bank, with the support of right-wing and center-right parties. But in a country in a deep economic crisis , with the highest annual inflation rate in the world (almost 300%), with 40% of the population now under the poverty line, and a near-collapse of industrial production, the toll the austerity measures have taken on Argentines is immense, and Milei’s policies are still far too punishing, especially those concerning the privatization of public agencies. The Omnibus Bill is on track for a contentious fight in the Senate next week . Over the past few months, unions from all over Latin America and Europe marched in support of the strike such as the Unitary Central of Workers of Chile and the Brazilian Unified Workers' Central . The Worldwide Unions' Federation , which groups unions in 133 countries, called its affiliates to show solidarity with Argentina's workers. This past Thursday, on May 9th, the CGT, the Argentine Workers' Central Union (CTA), and the Autonomous CTA carried out the second general strike against Milei’s austerity policies since January, after the passage of the Omnibus Bill in the lower house. Hundreds of flights were canceled. Bus, rail, subway systems were all halted. Banks and schools were shuttered. Industrial production was at a standstill. The streets outside of the demonstration on 9th May 2024. (Official CGT statement). Buenos Aires, a city with a metropolitan population of 15.6 million people, was as empty as it would be on a holiday. The CGT represents trucker unions, health personnel, aeronautics, and construction. They were joined in the strike by informal workers, pensioners, and the state´s workers unions–the main sectors affected by these austerity measures. In January, Rodolfo Aguiar, Secretary General of the State Workers Association of Argentina (ATE), entering the Plaza de los Dos Congresos along Avenida de Mayo, spoke to SAAG and argued that the government's main victims are those who are publicly employed. “We, the state workers, bother those who want to appropriate the State to put it at the service of global corporations.” Milei's anti-state and austerity policies have caused changes in the national administration. As of April, over 15,000 state workers had been fired. In order to discourage participation in the demonstration, on January 18th the presidential spokesman, Manuel Adorni, announced the deduction of pay for any state workers who participate in the strike (the same threat was repeated on May 9th). The move backfired. The political opposition party also participated in the demonstration. Axel Kicillof, the governor of the province of Buenos Aires, the most important in the country, attended the march. Kicillof is representative of the left wing of Peronism—a camp often considered as best positioned to be the political heir of Kirchnerism. Albeit with a different call than that of the CGT, the leftist Party of Social Workers (PTS), which has four deputies in Congress, also participated in the mobilization. “There was a strike in many places, but the most important thing was the mobilization. The government wants to downplay it, but the participation in the streets was very high,” said Myriam Bregman, congresswoman and former presidential candidate of the leftist coalition Workers’ Left Front , in a statement outside Congress. According to the CGT, one and a half million people joined the strike throughout the country in January, while 600,000 were part of the epicenter of the march in the city of Buenos Aires. The government says that only 40,000 people were mobilized. It remains to be seen what numbers will be used to describe the most recent strike. The Criminalization of Protest With the election of Javier Milei, the far-right has come into power in Argentina for the first time since the recovery of democracy in 1983. Milei is bombastic, a self-described “anarcho-libertarian.” In a broad sense, he evokes a contemporary authoritarian ruler in the vein of Donald Trump or Jair Bolsonaro. In Argentina, this means that Milei espouses a classically liberal view of the free market, as well as a sharp rollback of welfare reforms. He also cuts an incendiary figure in more outlandish ways. He has argued for the privatization of everything from human organs to babies . Milei has also confessed that he talks to his dog Conan, who died 7 years ago, through an “interspecies medium.” Apparently Milei has been known to ask Conan, whom he has four living clones of, for political advice. But most consequential for Argentina is Milei’s strong affinity with the last military dictatorship: an ugly history rearing its head in a country that has been reeling from the damage for decades. Under the dictatorship, 30,000 people were tortured and/or disappeared . Approximately 500 children were ripped from their parents. The military dictatorship (1976-1983) carried out a policy of illegal repression, indiscriminate violence, persecutions, systematized torture, forced disappearance of people, clandestine detention centers, manipulation of information, and other forms of State terrorism. In addition, it contracted the largest foreign debt up to that time in Argentine history. Eventually, industrial production collapsed, leading to mass deindustrialization of the country during the following years. Having come to strength in the waning years of the last Peronist government, Milei’s political party was supported mainly by young men, many of whom voted for the first time in the last elections in October last year. During the toughest years of the pandemic, Milei characterized the center-left government as a "criminal infection." Milei represents, of course, much of what has always been anathema to Peronism. Under the broad political ideology of justicialismo , Peronism has a long history of leadership in Argentina. It has staunchly opposed the military dictatorships, and broadly supported Juan Perón's agenda of social justice, economic nationalism, state-led market intervention through subsidies, and international non-alignment. Trade unions in Argentina have long been considered the “spinal column” of Peronism. Milei came to the government accompanied by Victoria Villarruel, the vice president and an activist from the last military dictatorship. Villarruel denies the number of disappeared people and supports the controversial “theory of two demons,” equating left-wing killings with state terrorism, a theory of far-right which denies the genocide under the military dictatorship. Milei and Villaruel are the first president and vice president in Argentine democracy who have tried to relativize social condemnation against the crimes of the last military dictatorship (1976-1983) and state terrorism—breaking with the democratic consensus on the dictatorship’s crimes against humanity. Indeed, Milei's verbiage is similar to that of the military. For Milei, there was “a war” in the 1970s, in which “excesses” were committed. Of course, in reality it was an illegal systematic plan of extermination. More specifically, under Milei, “internal security” has become the state’s chief prerogative, involving policies denounced by human rights organizations and left-wing activists in Argentina. The president appointed Patricia Bullrich, a politician with a long and strange history in Argentina (originally part of the left, but ended up in the extreme right) to Minister of Security. Bullrich, in turn, came up with an anti-protest protocol that aims to criminalize protests and crackdown on demonstrations in the street. Bullrich’s protocol details the operation of the security forces in the event of disturbance of public order. The measures include sanctions on groups making such demonstrations. The sanctions include detention or a payment of fines, as well as the withdrawal of benefits for those who are beneficiaries of social security. Despite the implementation of the protocol, the mobilization on the street was massive and successful. That the unions can and have brought the capital to a standstill is a fundamental challenge to Milei: few options are imaginable, save brutal crackdowns, or an erosion of Milei's support. In recent months, leftist groups demonstrating against the Omnibus bill in front of Congress have been brutally repressed. Police have fired rubber bullets, tear gas, and water cannons to disperse protests, which have by now become everyday occurrences. Protests have challenged Milei's government ever since he took office. Ten days after he was inaugurated, he was confronted with a spontaneous cacerolazo (a form of protest by hitting pots) against the devaluation and the increase in prices. After the first cacerolazo, the president gave an interview on radio , where he made a statement that "there may be people who suffer from Stockholm syndrome." "They are embracing the model that impoverishes them, but that is not the case for the majority of Argentina," he said. Of course, there is also a very large portion of Argentines who support the far-right government, in the hopes that it can be successful in Argentina, especially in the macroeconomy in order to stop inflation. Critics of this “pragmatist” viewpoint point continually to IMF stipulations and the devastating impacts that austerity policies have had many times in the past. But in truth, Milei’s voting base is part and parcel of a larger political drift in Argentina. The Rightward Drift How is it that a country like Argentina, one with a long tradition of social and labor rights, has elected a president who seeks to abolish so much of what its citizens have come to know? In the simplest analysis, much blame lies with the previous administration, in the hands of the largest Peronist party, the Partido Justicialista or PJ. Under President Alberto Fernandez and Vice President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, the administration failed to stem inflation and thus recover the purchasing power of wages–a crisis that modest wage increases were insufficient to mitigate. The frustration caused by the economic crisis led citizens towards the neoliberal parties, plunging the left into demoralization and uncertainty. The years under the presidency first Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007) and subsequently his wife, Cristina Kirchner (2007-2015), have long been known as the years of the “progressive wave” in Latin America, a historical period that is often characterized by leftist leaders in the region including Lula da Silva in Brazil, Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, and Evo Morales in Bolivia. The progressive wave is often associated with a strong expansion of rights and an improvement in employment and social coverage. During the years of Kirchnerism, Argentina became a pioneer of socially progressive policies in Latin America. It became the first country in the region and the tenth in the world to allow same-sex marriage in 2010 . Two years later, it passed the Gender Identity Law, allowing transgendered people to register their documents with the name and sex of their choice. In 2013, Cristina Kirchner enacted a new law that punishes child labor and another that seeks to regularize the situation of more than a million domestic employees, the majority of whom work informally. Kirchnerism, at the time, also presided over low unemployment rates. When Néstor Kirchner took office in 2003, the country was overcoming one of its worst economic crises in history, and more than 17% of Argentines were unemployed. Kirchnerism managed to reduce that figure to less than 7%, according to data from the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses about 6 million jobs were created during the K era. The economic growth was promoted, especially, by the gains of productive capital in the heat of the significant rise in real wages, the increase in external competitiveness derived from the establishment of a high exchange rate, the phenomenal increase in the prices of agricultural commodities, and through the labor value of skilled workers who were unemployed during the long recession at the turn of the century. Thus, redistributive policies were an essential component of strategies for reducing inequality in both economic and social realms. Kirchnerism remained the main wing within Peronism, under the leadership of Cristina Kirchner and managed to return to the government in 2019; the expectation was that it would be able to overcome the economic crisis left by the government of Mauricio Macri (2015-2019), one with hefty external debt with the IMF and a weak economy. Despite the economic crisis, the Peronist government of Alberto Fernandez continued with public works and maintained subsidies for energy and transportation. It also maintained the various social programs that have been promoted to support the most vulnerable sectors. The exit from the pandemic and the prolonged confinement, added to the scandal of the leak of a photo showing the first lady and a group of people, including the president, celebrating her birthday at the presidential residence, during confinement. This leak concentrated the fury of a middle class that had seen its level of income increasingly deteriorate and strengthened “anti-caste” sentiment (“caste,” in Milei’s personal parlance, refers to career politicians, equivalent to the “deep state”). Milei on the Razor’s Edge Notably, even before the recent passage of the Omnibus bill in the lower house, Argentina´s lower house approved the bill in a 144-109 vote on February 3rd. La libertad Avanza has only 38 deputies in the lower house. In February, the main opposition party, Unión por la Patria , a Peronist alliance composed mainly of Kirchnerists, voted against the bill, with their deputies sitting in the session with banners saying “May it NOT become the law!” The leftist Frente de Izquierda y de los Trabajadores, Unidad (FIT-U), also rejected the bill. Following the general vote on February 6th, the omnibus bill was sent back to the commissions over lack of support. The main disagreements were privatizations and federal taxes. The government did not achieve the support of governors whom Milei accused of being traitors and threatened to defund. But between then and April, it was been speculated that Milei is beginning to wise up: giving up some campaign promises to ram through his reforms. At least with the lower house thus far, he has succeeded. Ahead of the Senate battle, Milei remains at a crossroads: whether to continue betting on his anti-caste discourse, accusing the opposition that was willing to support him of being traitors and criminals, or sit down to negotiate and make concessions and understand that the Argentine political system is sustained based on negotiations between the national government and the provinces. But even if the Omnibus Bill now succeeds in the Senate, even in its milder form, it is unlikely to satisfy the unions. Back in February, the bill may have been destroyed in the “palace” but it was first put in check on the street. Indeed, it seems Milei will keep facing down the unions, which are now arguably the most potent force challenging him, not the opposition parties. “A new strike or mobilization is not ruled out,” Moyano had said on March 8th. “But it is latent. It will always be latent. If your worker's rights are attacked, if you lose your job, if your salaries are lowered... I am not going to stand by and no union or leader is going to allow them to fire their workers.” When the CGT did carry out the second general strike , it did so with high compliance, alongside labor across the country including unions representing public transport. But not before thousands of layoffs, subsidy eliminations, wage slashes and pension cuts crippled the working class of Argentina. According to the CGT, the general strike on Thursday was "forceful" and it demanded that the Government “take note.” For the CTA , the strike was the result of "a government that only benefits the rich at the expense of the people, gives away natural resources, and seeks to eliminate workers' rights.” But the real question is: have the events of this year shifted the needle for Milei’s voting base? ∎ More Fiction & Poetry: Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5

Seeking a home beyond Europe and South Asia could provide, Amrita Sher-Gil wrestled with a duality of being that reflected in her oeuvre. A Spivakian reading of her 1935 work Group of Three Girls sees Sher-Gil as an accomplice in perpetuating the Orientalist gaze she faced while trying to prove her prowess to Western audiences unable to view her art as equal. BOOKS & ARTS Speaking Through the Subaltern Vamika Sinha Seeking a home beyond Europe and South Asia could provide, Amrita Sher-Gil wrestled with a duality of being that reflected in her oeuvre. A Spivakian reading of her 1935 work Group of Three Girls sees Sher-Gil as an accomplice in perpetuating the Orientalist gaze she faced while trying to prove her prowess to Western audiences unable to view her art as equal. Group of Three Girls is widely considered one of Amrita Sher-Gil’s masterpieces. The 1935 artwork has become increasingly popular over the years as a symbol of Indian feminism, while Sher-Gil herself has gained more international recognition and seen an increase in art market capitalization. In the South Asian subcontinent, she has become canonical and even adopted into the Indian state’s official historical national narrative. A major road in central Delhi is named Amrita Shergill Marg, while her works are labeled national “art treasures” that “cannot be taken out of the country.” Sher-Gil’s elevated status, especially through Group of Three Girls , was influenced by the academic boom of postcolonial and intersectional feminist methodologies around the 1990s, which have trickled into the mainstream. A central scholar driving that boom has certainly been Indian theorist Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, whose seminal 1988 essay , “Can the Subaltern Speak?” critiques how Western intellectual discourse perpetuates and constructs the “Other,” or the “subaltern” subject. Spivak insists, however, on the subaltern’s heterogeneity—that it is not a monolith, but endlessly diverse, stratified, and therefore unstable. This idea was clearly a precursor to Kimberlé Crenshaw’s introduction to “intersectionality” in 1989. The term “subaltern” gets bandied about regularly. Spivak’s theory has been elevated to near-pop status in online and academic discourses, but is the subaltern still a useful term? Is Spivak still relevant when her own status as a global public intellectual has suffered the arrows of critiques like caste-blindness and complicity with capitalist pandering? Remember that strange Aesop ad? However, a debate on Spivak as a figurehead is not on today’s table. If the term “subaltern” has been propelled into ubiquity to the point of irony and satirical smirking, we can continue to test its value on different canvases. Today, that is Amrita Sher-Gil’s, specifically her painting, Group of Three Girls . In this work, Sher-Gil transmits a vulnerable period of India’s past, through her privileged Indo-European body, onto the rural Indian women depicted on her canvas. By ventriloquizing lower-class female Indian bodies to express and cope with her own feelings of cultural alienation and dislocation, she becomes a subaltern speaking through another subaltern. Is this problematic or a genuine act of solidarity—an attempt to connect with the pain of others? This Spivakian reading of Sher-Gil’s work attempts to expose a more nuanced interpretation of the painting as a complex ethical problem. More widely, it situates Group of Three Girls as a cultural object both embedded within and symbolic of the fragile, unstable historiography of the Indian nation—once a subaltern state tussling between colonialism and nationalism, on the cusp of partition and independence. Sher-Gil as Subaltern? Born in Budapest to a Hungarian opera singer and a Sikh aristocrat-scholar who was “one of the first photographers of South Asia,” Sher-Gil did most of her artistic training in Italy and France. According to Linda Nochlin’s iconic 1971 essay “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?”, Sher-Gil possessed all the crucial factors needed to achieve success as a female artist: formal European art training, a well-networked artistic family and peer circle, money, mobility and independence, and the mentorship of older, more powerful male artists. But she was also plagued by a crisis of belonging. In Group of Three Girls, three Indian women, dressed modestly in Punjabi salwar kameez outfits, sit in front of a jute-brown background. Their hair is mostly hidden by their dupattas. Their clothes are largely plain, though the material looks gauzy, even diaphanous, thanks to Sher-Gil’s long, languid brushstrokes. Influenced by post-Impressionism , she paints the women in solid, vivid colors. One wears vibrant pistachio green, the other a pulsating saffron, while the final dons a deep vermilion. None of the subjects meet the viewer’s eyes. Their gazes are faraway and downcast, evoking resigned melancholy, or perhaps the strangely beatific expression of the serenity in accepting defeat. The women do not touch or look at each other, as if each was pasted separately in a collage. While the colors and brushstrokes teem with warmth and dynamism, the figures themselves appear frozen, alienated, and emotionally distanced: “together…yet alone,” in the words of art historian Giles Tillotson . A light from outside the image casts shadows on the wall behind them. One’s immediate urge may be to code the subjects as lower-class, oppressed Indian women upon seeing their simple, traditional clothing and mute, passive, and despondent stances. This reading is reinforced by two aspects from Sher-Gil’s previous paintings: first, Sher-Gil’s earlier use of shadows, such as in Self-Portrait as a Tahitian (1934), signified a looming, intrusive male presence, according to art historian Saloni Mathur. In Group of Three Girls, the shadows could symbolize the rigidities of patriarchy, particularly of impending marriage. The painting can further be contrasted with one of Sher-Gil’s earlier European works, Young Girls (1932), in which two women occupy a figuratively warmer space, their bodies angled towards each other, displaying an intimacy and closeness missing from Group of Three Girls. The two “young girls” appear as connected yet distinct people, given how elaborately they are painted, lending their dress, clothes, hair, and surroundings multiple depths of light and texture. In contrast, the women in Group of Three Girls , whose formal depiction is comparatively flatter, become more symbols than individuals. Instead of appearing as a particular group of women bound by a close relationship, the “three girls” become every group of women, isolated but bound only by the circumstances of being Indian, female, and subaltern. Amrita Sher-Gil, Young Girls , 1932, oil on canvas, 164 cm × 133 cm, National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi. But the subaltern itself is an “essentialist” or unfixed concept. Spivak highlights the slippages within the hierarchical, “taxonomic” categorizing of subaltern identities to demonstrate their relational nature—that they are always formed in relation to another individual or group's identity, ultimately rendering them unreliable. In other words, someone may be a subaltern in one context but an oppressor in another. For Sher-Gil, her half-whiteness, wealth, and European elite upbringing lent her enormous privilege in British India, making the rural subjects she painted subaltern in relation to her primarily via social class. Yet in the eyes of the West, up to decades after she died in 1941, Sher-Gil was herself subaltern via race, gender, and geography; she was a less relevant, less authentic woman of color who predominantly painted in and about a Third World colony. A Crisis of Belonging Group of Three Girls is the first painting Sher-Gil produced after leaving Europe in 1934 for a growingly anti-colonial India. Upon her arrival, she proclaimed her “artistic mission” was to “interpret the life of Indians, particularly the poor…silent images of infinite submission and patience…angular brown bodies, strangely beautiful in their ugliness.” Her painting was the first manifestation of this articulated desire to speak on behalf of the subaltern. Sher-Gil would go on to build on this painting’s style and subjects for the rest of her life, depicting Indian women and rural village scenes in flatter forms and hotter colors. Still, her “mission” reads as cliché and problematic today. Seeded firmly and formally in Group of Three Girls , it can be faulted in the same way as Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze’s writings were by Spivak in 1988, who criticized them for making marginalized peoples into a monolith, essentializing, aestheticizing, and further Othering “them”. Meanwhile, the two scholars maintained the elevation and centrality of their Western gazes while assigning virtue to the subaltern solely through their tragedy and oppression. This critique exposes how Sher-Gil denies Group of Three Girls ’ subjects a sense of individuality or agency. The green-clad woman’s hand is cut off from the frame. The red-clad woman’s left palm faces upwards, as if begging or in surrender. Through Sher-Gil’s downward, Westernized outsider gaze, the subjects are only brought together in a homogenizing representation of subaltern Indian women as downtrodden, helpless, and paralyzed. This reading is supported by Sher-Gil’s significant preoccupation with Paul Gauguin’s Tahiti paintings at the time, which she was riffing on in Self-Portrait as a Tahitian . Gauguin’s work itself has been heavily critiqued for his flat, Orientalist depictions of Tahitian women through a colonial, patriarchal gaze. The structure and output of such a dominant gaze play out similarly in Group of Three Girls, where Sher-Gil represents her subjects “in the singular, as archetypes of humanity,” as Mathur writes, “reproduc[ing]…Gauguin’s primitivist gesture.” Amrita Sher-Gil, Self-Portrait as a Tahitian , 1934, oil on canvas, 90 cm × 56 cm, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi. But Sher-Gil was not a complete outsider like Gauguin, as a half-Indian who had already spent much time in India before moving there at the end of 1934. It was both an exciting and painful homecoming. As Mathur notes , Sher-Gil “sought a point of entry into the cultural landscape…from the difficult position of standing partially outside it.” Sher-Gil felt India would offer her more belonging than a racist Europe—a Paris reviewer once diminished her as “an exquisite and mysterious little Hindu princess” who… “conjure[d] up the mysterious shores of the Ganges.” Yet she was simultaneously apprehensive about not fitting into the Indian cultural landscape. Indeed, as Mathur points out, “Sher-Gil’s early detractors in the subcontinent complained that her Indian portraiture ‘smel[t] of the west.’” For Mathur, it was precisely Sher-Gil’s “sense of fragmentation and cultural isolation” that drove her practice. The artist once reflected: ‘It may be that the sadness, the queer ugliness of the types I choose as my models…corresponds to...some inner trait in my nature…’” These models sometimes included Sher-Gil’s own servants. Grappling With Sher-Gil’s Legacy Art historians such as Geeta Kapur have criticized Sher-Gil’s “narcissistic” attempt to transmute her cultural crisis into catharsis by entwining and equating her pain with that of poorer Indians amid political and national turbulence. In Spivakian terms, Sher-Gil employed her dominant gaze to speak through the subaltern for her own benefit. But others have been more benevolent, foregrounding not the inequality between Sher-Gil and her subjects, but the points of solidarity instead. Writers like Mulk Raj Anand have emphasized how truly moved Sher-Gil was by the poverty and patriarchy blighting India at the time. Scholars such as Prachi Priyanka and Subir Rana have highlighted the influence of Gandhi and Nehru on her paintings. “Gandhi’s notion of Swaraj (self-rule), and Nehru’s concept of ‘Indianization’ ” seeped into works which, beginning with Group of Three Girls , Rana writes, were even considered for use by “Congress propaganda for village reconstruction.” The use of the saffron color in Group of Three Girls, which was eventually incorporated into the Indian national flag, is further evidence of Sher-Gil’s alignment with the Independence movement. She also used the red introduced in this painting more liberally and intentionally in later works, such as Woman on Charpai (1940), to represent women’s desires while conveying their repression. This use of what Rana calls “ semiotic color ” perhaps reflected a growing awareness and redressal of the flatter female representation she had begun in Group of Three Girls , possibly due to more intimacy with and time spent in India. Still, Sher-Gil’s work suffered from similar pitfalls as Gandhian philosophies: a sense of saviorism, romanticization, and Orientalization of a more authentic pre-colonial India, and a homogenizing class and caste-blindness. Spivak challenged “the ‘lie’ of global sisterhood between ‘First world’ and ‘Third world’ women… [while] highlight[ing] the failure of Indian nationalism to emancipate lower-class, subaltern women.” A Spivakian reading of Group of Three Girls neatly encapsulates this argument: Sher-Gil transplants her ‘First world’ gaze onto the Indian women subaltern to her while using the grammar of Indian anti-colonial nationalist ideologies. But it does nothing to speak for or help her subjects, beyond stimulating her own aspiration to transcend her displacement. In 2015, it was revealed that the women in the Group of Three Girls were actually Sher-Gil’s upper-class nieces, not subalterns, after all. But this knowledge did little to impact the painting’s narrativization. There was no rewriting, no uproar. Ultimately, the way the girls are painted remains the same. Yet the way we look at them—and the artist’s gaze upon them—can evolve. Retrospectively, Group of Three Girls is the catalyst for examining how Sher-Gil’s practice went on to “embod[y] the most painful paradoxes of a colonial modernity.” A common, knee-jerk contemporary reading of Group of Three Girls may find it admirable due to Sher-Gil’s mixed identity, or its romantic representation of “the Indian woman” as feminist and patriotic, or because the Indian state has adopted it as the pièce de resistance of the “mother of modern Indian art.” However, an engaged Spivakian reading reveals it to be a historical object emblematic of the tensions of pre-Independent India, revealing a methodology for analyzing the present. The beauty of this work lies not just in its artistry or the sense of relation it might evoke among Indian female viewers, but that it distills so much of the ethical, identity-based dilemmas interlocked at the heart of the Indian nation historically and today.∎ ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 Amrita Sher-Gil, Group of Three Girls , 1935, oil on canvas, 99.5 x 73.5 cm, National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi. SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ Profile Lahore Punjab Amrita Sher-Gil Orientalism Western Gaze Europe South Asia Subaltern Studies Gayatri Spivak Anti-Colonialism Postcolonial Feminist Theory subjectivity saviorism indianization Gauguin Foucault 1935 Group of Three Girls Self-Portrait as a Tahitian Young Girls Feminism Feminist Art Practice femininity feminine Modernism Bauhaus Avant-Garde Traditions Paul Gauguin Deleuze Primitivism Modernity Postcolonialism Avant-Garde Form Semiotic Color Post-Impressionism Art History Art Criticism Criticism VAMIKA SINHA is an arts and culture journalist based in London. She is Deputy Editor at Wasafiri. Profile Lahore 8th Jul 2025 On That Note: The Ahmadis of Petrópolis 21st JAN Chats Ep. 5 · Tamil translation & Perumal Murugan's “Poonachi” 7th DEC The Pre-Partition Indian Avant-Garde 25th AUG

WRITER Noor Bakhsh NOOR BAKHSH belongs to Balochistan. He is a PhD student in Social Anthropology at York University. He has worked as a visiting and ad-hoc lecturer in various public and private universities in Balochistan. He is interested in the anthropology of violence and resistance; enforced disappearances, politics of photographs; digital activism, and hashtag ethnography; South Asia; Baloch and Balochistan; and Balochistan and Pakistan. WRITER WEBSITE INSTAGRAM TWITTER Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 LOAD MORE

“It's very easy for us to talk about being in solidarity with somebody or groups of people, but what do we mean by that? What is the history of that?” COMMUNITY What Does Solidarity Mean? “It's very easy for us to talk about being in solidarity with somebody or groups of people, but what do we mean by that? What is the history of that?” VOL. 2 PANEL AUTHOR AUTHOR AUTHOR Panel 1 of the event "Solidarity: Beyond the Disaster-Verse" held on 30th March 2024. ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 Panel 1 of the event "Solidarity: Beyond the Disaster-Verse" held on 30th March 2024. SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ Panel Concepts 8th Apr 2024 Panel Concepts Solidarity Palestine Israel The Solidarity Economy Refugees Syria India Political Prisoners NGOs Humanitarianism Intellectual History Sociology History Writing about Recent History Language Disaster & Language Technology & Power Technology & Majoritarianism Israel & India Ties Kashmir Apartheid Welfare State Racializing Logics Asylum Diasporas Abolitionism Event Solidarity: Across the Disaster-Verse Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. The first panel from our event on 30th March 2024, “ Solidarity: Beyond the Disaster-Verse, ” at ShapeShifter Lab in Brooklyn, New York, which marked the close of Volume 2 Issue 1 of SAAG. Here, Kamil Ahsan, Azad Essa, Heba Gowayed, Tehila Sasson, and Suchitra Vijayan discuss what "solidarity" means as a concept, how it is used, and whether it is useful. It begins with some of the rhetoric that Kamil Ahsan discusses in his essay and editorial that closed Vol. 2 Issue 1 of SAAG, entitled Into the Disaster-Verse . What follows is a discussion of four books from the panelists, including: Azad Essa's Hostile Homelands: The New Alliance Between India and Israel (Pluto Press, November 2022), Heba Gowayed's Refuge: How the State Shapes Human Potential (April 2022, Princeton University Press), Suchitra Vijayan's How Long Can the Moon Be Caged? Voices of Indian Political Prisoners (co-authored with Francesca Recchia, Pluto Press, August 2023), and Tehila Sasson's forthcoming Solidarity Economy: Nonprofits and the Making of Neoliberalism after Empire (May 2024, Princeton University Press). Photographs courtesy of Josh Steinbauer SOLIDARITY: BEYOND THE DISASTER VERSE Panel 2: On the Relationship between Form & Resistance SOLIDARITY: BEYOND THE DISASTER VERSE Quintet Performance More Fiction & Poetry: Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5

Trade unions are the most potent stopgap against Javier Milei, an outlandish avatar of Argentina's Faustian bargain with the far-right. But Argentina is poised on the razor’s edge: outside of brutal crackdowns or Milei losing his voting base, there are few foreseeable outcomes for the working class in impoverished Argentina. THE VERTICAL Buenos Aires, Shuttered María Constanza Costa Trade unions are the most potent stopgap against Javier Milei, an outlandish avatar of Argentina's Faustian bargain with the far-right. But Argentina is poised on the razor’s edge: outside of brutal crackdowns or Milei losing his voting base, there are few foreseeable outcomes for the working class in impoverished Argentina. On January 24, in a city with many of its stores and banks closed, there was a suffocating heat. In the blocks surrounding the National Congress, Buenos Aires witnessed the first general strike in the country in seven years. Workers in columns with their flags came from all over to reject the measures of the government that took office a little over a month ago. This scene was soon replicated in the main cities throughout the country. In front of the steps of the Congress, Pablo Moyano, Truckers union leader and co-chairman of the trade union federation known as the General Confederation of Labor ( Confederación General del Trabajo or CGT), spoke to a square full of workers who were raising their voices against the proposed austerity policies by the government. "We ask the deputies to have dignity and principles,” Moyano said. “We ask them not to betray the workers, the doctrine of Peronism, which is to defend the workers, the poor, and the pensioners." Moyano condemned the decreed privatization of state corporations such as Aerolíneas Argentinas (National Flag Carrier), Télam (News Agency), Banco Nación (National Bank), and Radio Nacional (Public Radio). He accused them of leaving “millions of workers on the streets and handing them over to their friends [the private corporations].” CGT organized its first strike just 45 days into Javier Milei's regime under the slogan "The homeland is not for sale". The strike protested the state reforms and the deregulation of the economy, including sweeping labor changes, the end of severance pay, the extension of employment trial periods from three to eight months, and the privatization of state-owned companies. The sweeping reforms included a massive presidential executive order and a 523-article bill , the Omnibus Bill, that has been hotly debated in Congress for months but passed in April. Milei’s ruling coalition, La Libertad Avanza , wrangled a majority opinion on the bill by eliminating many of its original articles, including the privatization of the national bank, with the support of right-wing and center-right parties. But in a country in a deep economic crisis , with the highest annual inflation rate in the world (almost 300%), with 40% of the population now under the poverty line, and a near-collapse of industrial production, the toll the austerity measures have taken on Argentines is immense, and Milei’s policies are still far too punishing, especially those concerning the privatization of public agencies. The Omnibus Bill is on track for a contentious fight in the Senate next week . Over the past few months, unions from all over Latin America and Europe marched in support of the strike such as the Unitary Central of Workers of Chile and the Brazilian Unified Workers' Central . The Worldwide Unions' Federation , which groups unions in 133 countries, called its affiliates to show solidarity with Argentina's workers. This past Thursday, on May 9th, the CGT, the Argentine Workers' Central Union (CTA), and the Autonomous CTA carried out the second general strike against Milei’s austerity policies since January, after the passage of the Omnibus Bill in the lower house. Hundreds of flights were canceled. Bus, rail, subway systems were all halted. Banks and schools were shuttered. Industrial production was at a standstill. The streets outside of the demonstration on 9th May 2024. (Official CGT statement). Buenos Aires, a city with a metropolitan population of 15.6 million people, was as empty as it would be on a holiday. The CGT represents trucker unions, health personnel, aeronautics, and construction. They were joined in the strike by informal workers, pensioners, and the state´s workers unions–the main sectors affected by these austerity measures. In January, Rodolfo Aguiar, Secretary General of the State Workers Association of Argentina (ATE), entering the Plaza de los Dos Congresos along Avenida de Mayo, spoke to SAAG and argued that the government's main victims are those who are publicly employed. “We, the state workers, bother those who want to appropriate the State to put it at the service of global corporations.” Milei's anti-state and austerity policies have caused changes in the national administration. As of April, over 15,000 state workers had been fired. In order to discourage participation in the demonstration, on January 18th the presidential spokesman, Manuel Adorni, announced the deduction of pay for any state workers who participate in the strike (the same threat was repeated on May 9th). The move backfired. The political opposition party also participated in the demonstration. Axel Kicillof, the governor of the province of Buenos Aires, the most important in the country, attended the march. Kicillof is representative of the left wing of Peronism—a camp often considered as best positioned to be the political heir of Kirchnerism. Albeit with a different call than that of the CGT, the leftist Party of Social Workers (PTS), which has four deputies in Congress, also participated in the mobilization. “There was a strike in many places, but the most important thing was the mobilization. The government wants to downplay it, but the participation in the streets was very high,” said Myriam Bregman, congresswoman and former presidential candidate of the leftist coalition Workers’ Left Front , in a statement outside Congress. According to the CGT, one and a half million people joined the strike throughout the country in January, while 600,000 were part of the epicenter of the march in the city of Buenos Aires. The government says that only 40,000 people were mobilized. It remains to be seen what numbers will be used to describe the most recent strike. The Criminalization of Protest With the election of Javier Milei, the far-right has come into power in Argentina for the first time since the recovery of democracy in 1983. Milei is bombastic, a self-described “anarcho-libertarian.” In a broad sense, he evokes a contemporary authoritarian ruler in the vein of Donald Trump or Jair Bolsonaro. In Argentina, this means that Milei espouses a classically liberal view of the free market, as well as a sharp rollback of welfare reforms. He also cuts an incendiary figure in more outlandish ways. He has argued for the privatization of everything from human organs to babies . Milei has also confessed that he talks to his dog Conan, who died 7 years ago, through an “interspecies medium.” Apparently Milei has been known to ask Conan, whom he has four living clones of, for political advice. But most consequential for Argentina is Milei’s strong affinity with the last military dictatorship: an ugly history rearing its head in a country that has been reeling from the damage for decades. Under the dictatorship, 30,000 people were tortured and/or disappeared . Approximately 500 children were ripped from their parents. The military dictatorship (1976-1983) carried out a policy of illegal repression, indiscriminate violence, persecutions, systematized torture, forced disappearance of people, clandestine detention centers, manipulation of information, and other forms of State terrorism. In addition, it contracted the largest foreign debt up to that time in Argentine history. Eventually, industrial production collapsed, leading to mass deindustrialization of the country during the following years. Having come to strength in the waning years of the last Peronist government, Milei’s political party was supported mainly by young men, many of whom voted for the first time in the last elections in October last year. During the toughest years of the pandemic, Milei characterized the center-left government as a "criminal infection." Milei represents, of course, much of what has always been anathema to Peronism. Under the broad political ideology of justicialismo , Peronism has a long history of leadership in Argentina. It has staunchly opposed the military dictatorships, and broadly supported Juan Perón's agenda of social justice, economic nationalism, state-led market intervention through subsidies, and international non-alignment. Trade unions in Argentina have long been considered the “spinal column” of Peronism. Milei came to the government accompanied by Victoria Villarruel, the vice president and an activist from the last military dictatorship. Villarruel denies the number of disappeared people and supports the controversial “theory of two demons,” equating left-wing killings with state terrorism, a theory of far-right which denies the genocide under the military dictatorship. Milei and Villaruel are the first president and vice president in Argentine democracy who have tried to relativize social condemnation against the crimes of the last military dictatorship (1976-1983) and state terrorism—breaking with the democratic consensus on the dictatorship’s crimes against humanity. Indeed, Milei's verbiage is similar to that of the military. For Milei, there was “a war” in the 1970s, in which “excesses” were committed. Of course, in reality it was an illegal systematic plan of extermination. More specifically, under Milei, “internal security” has become the state’s chief prerogative, involving policies denounced by human rights organizations and left-wing activists in Argentina. The president appointed Patricia Bullrich, a politician with a long and strange history in Argentina (originally part of the left, but ended up in the extreme right) to Minister of Security. Bullrich, in turn, came up with an anti-protest protocol that aims to criminalize protests and crackdown on demonstrations in the street. Bullrich’s protocol details the operation of the security forces in the event of disturbance of public order. The measures include sanctions on groups making such demonstrations. The sanctions include detention or a payment of fines, as well as the withdrawal of benefits for those who are beneficiaries of social security. Despite the implementation of the protocol, the mobilization on the street was massive and successful. That the unions can and have brought the capital to a standstill is a fundamental challenge to Milei: few options are imaginable, save brutal crackdowns, or an erosion of Milei's support. In recent months, leftist groups demonstrating against the Omnibus bill in front of Congress have been brutally repressed. Police have fired rubber bullets, tear gas, and water cannons to disperse protests, which have by now become everyday occurrences. Protests have challenged Milei's government ever since he took office. Ten days after he was inaugurated, he was confronted with a spontaneous cacerolazo (a form of protest by hitting pots) against the devaluation and the increase in prices. After the first cacerolazo, the president gave an interview on radio , where he made a statement that "there may be people who suffer from Stockholm syndrome." "They are embracing the model that impoverishes them, but that is not the case for the majority of Argentina," he said. Of course, there is also a very large portion of Argentines who support the far-right government, in the hopes that it can be successful in Argentina, especially in the macroeconomy in order to stop inflation. Critics of this “pragmatist” viewpoint point continually to IMF stipulations and the devastating impacts that austerity policies have had many times in the past. But in truth, Milei’s voting base is part and parcel of a larger political drift in Argentina. The Rightward Drift How is it that a country like Argentina, one with a long tradition of social and labor rights, has elected a president who seeks to abolish so much of what its citizens have come to know? In the simplest analysis, much blame lies with the previous administration, in the hands of the largest Peronist party, the Partido Justicialista or PJ. Under President Alberto Fernandez and Vice President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, the administration failed to stem inflation and thus recover the purchasing power of wages–a crisis that modest wage increases were insufficient to mitigate. The frustration caused by the economic crisis led citizens towards the neoliberal parties, plunging the left into demoralization and uncertainty. The years under the presidency first Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007) and subsequently his wife, Cristina Kirchner (2007-2015), have long been known as the years of the “progressive wave” in Latin America, a historical period that is often characterized by leftist leaders in the region including Lula da Silva in Brazil, Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, and Evo Morales in Bolivia. The progressive wave is often associated with a strong expansion of rights and an improvement in employment and social coverage. During the years of Kirchnerism, Argentina became a pioneer of socially progressive policies in Latin America. It became the first country in the region and the tenth in the world to allow same-sex marriage in 2010 . Two years later, it passed the Gender Identity Law, allowing transgendered people to register their documents with the name and sex of their choice. In 2013, Cristina Kirchner enacted a new law that punishes child labor and another that seeks to regularize the situation of more than a million domestic employees, the majority of whom work informally. Kirchnerism, at the time, also presided over low unemployment rates. When Néstor Kirchner took office in 2003, the country was overcoming one of its worst economic crises in history, and more than 17% of Argentines were unemployed. Kirchnerism managed to reduce that figure to less than 7%, according to data from the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses about 6 million jobs were created during the K era. The economic growth was promoted, especially, by the gains of productive capital in the heat of the significant rise in real wages, the increase in external competitiveness derived from the establishment of a high exchange rate, the phenomenal increase in the prices of agricultural commodities, and through the labor value of skilled workers who were unemployed during the long recession at the turn of the century. Thus, redistributive policies were an essential component of strategies for reducing inequality in both economic and social realms. Kirchnerism remained the main wing within Peronism, under the leadership of Cristina Kirchner and managed to return to the government in 2019; the expectation was that it would be able to overcome the economic crisis left by the government of Mauricio Macri (2015-2019), one with hefty external debt with the IMF and a weak economy. Despite the economic crisis, the Peronist government of Alberto Fernandez continued with public works and maintained subsidies for energy and transportation. It also maintained the various social programs that have been promoted to support the most vulnerable sectors. The exit from the pandemic and the prolonged confinement, added to the scandal of the leak of a photo showing the first lady and a group of people, including the president, celebrating her birthday at the presidential residence, during confinement. This leak concentrated the fury of a middle class that had seen its level of income increasingly deteriorate and strengthened “anti-caste” sentiment (“caste,” in Milei’s personal parlance, refers to career politicians, equivalent to the “deep state”). Milei on the Razor’s Edge Notably, even before the recent passage of the Omnibus bill in the lower house, Argentina´s lower house approved the bill in a 144-109 vote on February 3rd. La libertad Avanza has only 38 deputies in the lower house. In February, the main opposition party, Unión por la Patria , a Peronist alliance composed mainly of Kirchnerists, voted against the bill, with their deputies sitting in the session with banners saying “May it NOT become the law!” The leftist Frente de Izquierda y de los Trabajadores, Unidad (FIT-U), also rejected the bill. Following the general vote on February 6th, the omnibus bill was sent back to the commissions over lack of support. The main disagreements were privatizations and federal taxes. The government did not achieve the support of governors whom Milei accused of being traitors and threatened to defund. But between then and April, it was been speculated that Milei is beginning to wise up: giving up some campaign promises to ram through his reforms. At least with the lower house thus far, he has succeeded. Ahead of the Senate battle, Milei remains at a crossroads: whether to continue betting on his anti-caste discourse, accusing the opposition that was willing to support him of being traitors and criminals, or sit down to negotiate and make concessions and understand that the Argentine political system is sustained based on negotiations between the national government and the provinces. But even if the Omnibus Bill now succeeds in the Senate, even in its milder form, it is unlikely to satisfy the unions. Back in February, the bill may have been destroyed in the “palace” but it was first put in check on the street. Indeed, it seems Milei will keep facing down the unions, which are now arguably the most potent force challenging him, not the opposition parties. “A new strike or mobilization is not ruled out,” Moyano had said on March 8th. “But it is latent. It will always be latent. If your worker's rights are attacked, if you lose your job, if your salaries are lowered... I am not going to stand by and no union or leader is going to allow them to fire their workers.” When the CGT did carry out the second general strike , it did so with high compliance, alongside labor across the country including unions representing public transport. But not before thousands of layoffs, subsidy eliminations, wage slashes and pension cuts crippled the working class of Argentina. According to the CGT, the general strike on Thursday was "forceful" and it demanded that the Government “take note.” For the CTA , the strike was the result of "a government that only benefits the rich at the expense of the people, gives away natural resources, and seeks to eliminate workers' rights.” But the real question is: have the events of this year shifted the needle for Milei’s voting base? ∎ ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 The second general strike this year happened this past Thursday on May 9th, bringing Buenos Aires to a standstill (photograph courtesy of Confederación General del Trabajo ). SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ Reportage Argentina Trade Unions General Confederation of Labor Javier Milei Javier Milei Peronism Omnibus Bill La Libertad Avanza Austerity Economic Crisis Inflation Unemployment Poverty Unitary Central of Workers of Chile Brazilian Unified Workers' Central Worldwide Unions' Federation Kirchnerism Party of Social Workers Bolsonaro Military Dictatorship Free Market Welfare Cuts Privatization Justicialismo Juan Peron Cristina Kirchner Partido Justicialista Nestor Kirchner Progressive Wave in Latin America Pink Wave Labor Movement Labor Labor Rights MARÍA CONSTANZA COSTA is a political scientist, journalist, and Associate Professor in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA). She is also a columnist for international news at Panamá Revista . Reportage Argentina 12th May 2024 On That Note: Heading 5 23rd OCT Heading 5 23rd Oct Heading 5 23rd Oct

· BOOKS & ARTS Portfolio · Lahore Bibi Hajra’s Spaces of Belonging An architect and painter narrates an authentic story of place at Bibian Pak Daman. Bibi Pak Daman , Gouache on Paper, 36" by 46" When Bibian Pak Daman (the mausoleum of Bibi Ruqqaiyah bint Ali) closed its doors to its herds of devotees, owing to a multimillion rupee expansion and renovation project, Bibi Hajra found herself alone at the otherwise well-populated shrine. Brought onto the project to paint larger-than-life murals on Pak Daman’s walls, architect and painter Hajra, who goes by the moniker “Bibi Hajra”, had a lot to reason with. While the shrine was now deserted, a crowd of emotions inhabited Hajra’s mind. She felt at once handpicked by Bibi Ruqqaiya herself, and yet unbefitting for the role of sole attendee–an inadvertently irreverent line of critique of Bibi Ruqqaiya’s choice, further confirming her misassignment. After a few days, her internal monologue dissipated in favor of the more obvious challenge she now faced: the shrine needed to be cleaned. With the usual janissary-turned-janitors absent, Hajra picked up the jharoo (broom) and began sweeping. The ritual process of regularly cleaning the shrine provided her the confirmation she needed. Through this repetitive act, she created for herself a lived space: one of everyday belonging and ceremony. Originally commissioned to create murals on the shrine as part of its corporate makeover, Bibi Hajra’s relationship with Bibian Pak Daman evolved through observance and praxis. Her work, too, engenders the collective and myriad ways in which the everyday politics of the interpersonal produces what Henri Lefebvre calls “representational space.” The space of the living, of inhabitants and users. Although an architect and urban studies scholar by training, Bibi Hajra rejects the Western disciplinary tradition of taking an isometric view of space in her work. Instead of opting for scientific voyeurism, she renders many routine lifescapes in Pakistan exceptional by taking the conversation to the street. What makes her work distinct is not just her recreation of spaces, as produced through their occupants’ web of relationships, but her personal commitment to revisiting the site multiple times. Each visit allows Hajra to discover the stories which happen around street corners, behind closed doors, in the patli gallis (narrow alleyways) between houses, on verandas and balconies. Her work puts these manifold narratives in dialogue with one another, bringing concurrent lived realities to a singular plane of coexistence. From caricature work depicting a Ramzaan transmission, a staple in Pakistani households, to an ordered yet anarchic portrayal of a gynecology ward, Hajra’s work takes the ordinary-extraordinary of regular life and reproduces it as bizarrely spectacular. Overlapping stories, rendered in her unique comical form, scream for undivided attention. Much like Bibi Hajra herself, the viewer must return to the work as reproduced space over and over again to view it in its entirety. Hajra’s work invites her audiences to create their own representational space. Ramzaan transmission, Watercolor and ink on paper, 29" × 42". Hyper-consumerism on morning shows during the month of Ramzaan Gynecology department on a low fee Thursday, Watercolor and ink on paper, 28" ×40" Her most recent series of paintings inspired by her visits to Bibian Pak Daman — a place she now calls home—go one step further, transcending the usual ‘(wo)man in her natural (read: material) state’ lens Hajra adopts. Crossing into the spiritual, the works portray tree shrines, malangs performing dhamaal , religious mourning and various other ritual practices typically performed at Bibi Ruqqaiya’s shrine, as well as, esoteric stories told to Hajra by devotees she met during her time at the darbar (tomb). Bibi (I) Arrival at Makran (2022) , an oil-based work etched in shades of blood red, includes the oft-repeated, mythical story of Bibi Ruqqaiyah’s lamentations lighting a fire in the forest she encamped in. Another woman told Hajra that Bibi Ruqqaiyah’s sorrow-filled sermons at Khurasan shook the earth and the tremors traveled against the currents of the rivers of Sindh all the way to the river Ravi in Punjab. The water in Bibi (II), Settling in the forest across River Ravi trembles as one peers at its otherwise guaranteed stillness. Hajra’s work is not one of mere observation, but is inspired by conversation. She is at once an artist and a storyteller, and her series on Bibian Pak Daman tells the multifarious, fabulous stories of one of Lahore’s most popular religious shrines. Recalling Karbala at the Makran Coast. Oil on paper. Settling in the forest across River Ravi. Acrylic on canvas. Alive but out of sight. Acrylic on canvas. Still alive just out of sight. Acrylic on canvas. Much like her previous creations, here too, gender and the feminine are at play both in the shrine’s own female character, but also in Hajra’s deliberate impressions of the stories of Bibi Ruqaiyya’s female devotees. A commitment to drawing public space as occupied and crafted by women is one the artist has always maintained, and continues to uphold. It is also a political choice inspired by conversations around women and public space pioneered by feminist groups such as Aurat Azadi March, for whom she produced posters in 2021 and 2022. Zenana. Aurat Azadi March 2022. Bibi Hajra’s method is centered on cultivating artistic space through lived experience, much like her paintings, which take on, as their subject, the spaces created through the ritual performance of Pakistani everyday life. Both her practice and finished works highlight her devotion to embodied praxis and to narrating an authentic story of place, in this case Bibian Pak Daman. ∎ SUB-HEAD Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Portfolio Lahore Art Practice Religious Shrine Fine Art Painting Bibian Pakdaman Mural Space Representational Space Henri Lefebvre Everyday Life Observance Consumerism Gynecology Ward Ramzaan Karbala River Ravi Makran Aurat March Public Space Feminist Organizing Feminist Art Practice Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. 3rd Jul 2023 AUTHOR · AUTHOR Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. 1 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 On That Note:

In the Karoonjhar mountains—a region of ancient hills and rock formations amidst salt marshes and other ecosystems—local activists are fighting to protect the region from mining companies. For years, private corporations in Sindh have mined the mountains for granite, marble, and minerals. Despite court bans, illicit—and, as of a week ago, licit—mining continues. FEATURES Save Karoonjhar In the Karoonjhar mountains—a region of ancient hills and rock formations amidst salt marshes and other ecosystems—local activists are fighting to protect the region from mining companies. For years, private corporations in Sindh have mined the mountains for granite, marble, and minerals. Despite court bans, illicit—and, as of a week ago, licit—mining continues. VOL. 2 PHOTO-ESSAY AUTHOR AUTHOR AUTHOR A site of extraction at the mountain range. All images courtesy of the author unless otherwise specified. ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 A site of extraction at the mountain range. All images courtesy of the author unless otherwise specified. SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ Photo-Essay Sindh 19th Jul 2024 Photo-Essay Sindh Climate Karoonjhar Mountains Nangarparkar Reportage Pakistan Environment Environmental Disaster Mining Granite Sindh Provincial Government PPP PML-N Pakistan Party Politics Rann of Kutch Salt Marshes Hills Mountains Mountain Range Tharparkar Allah Rakhio Akash Hamirani Hindu Communities Jain Communities Multi-Faith Sites Indigeneity Indigenous Activism Groundwater Delicate Ecosystems Sindh High Court Supreme Court Heritage Site Protected Site Extractionism Extraction Ancient Chachro Sardharo India-Pakistan Border Borders Translation Sindhi Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. The lore of the Karoonjhar mountains contains many tales. During Partition, for instance, a farmer, Kasu Bha Sodho, chose to stay in Nangarparkar while his family moved to India. Then, his family dispatched the infamous dacoit Balvand to bring Kasu Bha to them. Confronting Balvand, Kasu Bha declared, “If you want to take me to India, then take Karoonjhar along.” The Karoonjhar mountains rest on the northern edge of the Rann of Kutch, in Sindh's eastern Tharparkar district, and southwest of Nangarparkar. The rock formations in the area are at least 3.5 billion years old. The hills were present when prokaryotes appeared, the atmosphere oxygenated, and multicellular life evolved. They were there when the Cambrian explosion occurred, dinosaurs roamed, and Homo sapiens emerged. But for decades, this range—which spans 19 kilometers, with granite rocks that extend approximately 305 meters below the surface—has been a battleground between the forces of extractionism and the region's indigenous communities. It also continues to be the source of political dust-ups involving provincial governments, national ruling parties, dissenting MNAs and MPAs, rural petitioners , and the residents of Nangarparkar—even after the Sindh High Court ruled to ban extraction. At the national level, it is something of a cudgel between the PPP and PML-N. In February, Bilawal Bhutto, in a public meeting in Chachro, accused the PML-N of scheming to establish a puppet government in Karachi to exploit the mountains. “They think if their government is formed, they will exploit granite and mineral resources of Karoonjhar,” he told the crowd. But at the local level, all this seems irrelevant. Indigenous activists have long fought for the designation of the mountains as world heritage sites, and for compliance with court rulings against extraction. Precious little has prevented the Sindh Cabinet from allowing or even encouraging extraction in the past—aside from local activists and the public. A week ago, the Sindh Cabinet approved mining in part of the region. Today, a local activist appealed to fight back. When I gazed upon these peaks in early February, my mind was far from the conflicts of cabinet halls. In truth, I couldn't help but reflect on the irony of the mountains' extraction by those whose existence is a mere blip in time. The relationship people have with the mountains is evident in the words of the political activist Akash Hamirani, who said: “Oh beloved mountains! You are the land of our dreams, you are a deity, you are strength, no one can cut you.” Encircled by the salt marshes and dunes of the Rann of Kutch, the Karoonjhar Mountains are a natural refuge and sanctuary for thousands of humans, millions of birds, insects, plants, trees, animals, herbs, and mushrooms–all nourished by the waters flowing from the mountains’ sacred heights. Karoonjhar is a psychedelic world full of colors, music—and silence. Many religious and cultural sites are nestled in the mountains' folds. The mountains are also many peoples’ sole economic source, encompassing approximately 108 ancient temples dedicated to Hindu and Jain beliefs . Sardharo, a religious site of Lord Shiva. Since the 1980s, Karoonjhar has been exploited for its decorative stones. “The eyes of a capitalist see expensive and unique marble and minerals in stones, but the eyes of an indigenous person see their god in them…,” says Allah Rakhio Khoso, an indigenous elder and the leader of Karoonjhar Sujag Forum who has been fighting against their extraction for three decades. Allah Rakhio Khoso Laying on a Sindhi Cot in Nagarparkar. Beginning in 1980, powerful companies like Millrock, Pak Rock, Kohinoor Marbles Industries, Haji Abdul Qudoos Rajer, and the Frontier Works Organization (FWO) were granted contracts and leases by the Sindh Government for mining the granite rock of the mountains with dynamite. For decades, Allah Rakhio has organized protests and made many speeches whilst facing numerous challenges and death threats. “Karoonjhar is our life,” Rakhio says. “How can we let them snatch it?” In 2011, the Supreme Court halted the mining of granite using dynamite blasting by Kohinoor Marbles on the heels of public protests. Mining continued, nonetheless, accelerating in 2018, led by the FWO. This prompted an advocate from Mithi, Tharparkar, to file a petition in the Sindh High Court , Hyderabad, in the public interest for the protection of the range and designation as a heritage site. The court ruled against the mining and extraction of the mountain range. Still, mining has persisted illegally. Karoonjhar’s natural springs and stones are also a natural defense against the salinity of the salt marshes of Rann of Kutch. “If Karoonjhar is plundered, this entire region will wither into the salt desert of Rann of Kutch,” warns Akash Hamirani, a climate activist involved in the protests against mining. Groundwater wells supply potable water for the people in the villages and towns near the range. Extraction threatens to dry up these wells. One day, Imam Ali Jhanjhi penned a poem that swiftly spread across social media. Jhanjhi is a former government official, but his poems about the Karoonjhar mountains are the prime source of his popularity. In his poem, بُک وطن کي ڀيلي ويندي, (Hunger Will Claim Our Lives), Jhanjhi reveals how the extraction of Karoonjhar will affect us: They shattered Karoonjhar's bones, They silenced all my moans. When the great disaster arrives, Hunger will claim our lives. After Karoonjhar's demise, Desolation will arise. No more rivers from Naryasar will flow, Villages will vanish, row by row. Fetching water from a dry pitcher, Eyes will thirst, a painful ache, No drops left in the dams to take, Wells will turn to salty lakes. Looking up from the foothills On May 29th, I found myself once more amidst the Karoonjhar mountains, visiting the Rama Pir Mander in Kasbu, Nangharparkar. It was there that I heard Khalil Kumbhar's poem, resonant with the voice of a faqeer. With the words of the poem, he sang: Only the trader will sell, be it sister or mother, Don't cut and sell the mountain, for it is my brother. Can someone tell these sellers, the motherland is not for sale, I've tied a Rakhi to the mountain, for it is my brother. Khalil wrote this poem while imagining the Kolhi women: shepherdesses who peel onions. To them, Karoonjhar is father, brother, honour, and a beloved. “We crossed so many deserts to convey one message,” Khalil Kumbhar said, “but this one song made things easier for us. Not only did our message reach every home, but this song also connected every individual to us, and the people embraced their mountains.” He continued, “Karoonjhar is a Watan (Homeland) for the trees, birds, insects, humans, animals, and all living beings. For a businessman, Karoonjhar is wealth. For us, it is Watan.” Even from the outside, such a perspective makes sense. After all, Karoonjhar contains many delicate ecosystems, supplies water for crops, drinking, and even fills the Rampur Dam (below). Extractionist logic would extend the aridity of the nearby deserts. In 2021, Allah Rakhio, along with two advocates, Teerath Jhanjhi and Faqeer Munwar Sagar, filed another petition in the Hyderabad High Court, appealing for compliance with the Sindh High Court's prior decision and the designation of a heritage site. By 2023, no decision had been made. The extraction of granite and other precious elements from the mountains continued. On July 20, 2023, newspaper advertisements invited bids for the auction of approximately 5,928 acres spread over 17 slots near Nagarparkar in the Karoonjhar Mountains. Public protests erupted. Soon, #SaveKaroonjhar was trending on social media sites across Pakistan. Advocate Shankar Meghwar, who drafted the previous petitions, filed a third petition against the auction, declaring Karoonjhar a heritage site. The decision to auction was successfully reversed due to public pressure. On August 22, Shankar Meghwar succeeded in getting all mining leases on Karoonjhar canceled and merged his petition with that of Allah Rakhio and others. With the leases canceled, the court issued orders to clear all mining sites , asking the district administration to report back within 24 hours. The sites were cleared. “On the evening of August 30, I was targeted by these mafias you know well. They threatened me to withdraw the petition; they started with calls from unknown numbers, followed by personal meetings with life-threatening messages, and forcing me to change locations,” Shankar Meghwar told me. In the months of February and March, the mountains were set on fire more than five times. Locals believed that it was not by chance but preplanned. Fire in Karoonjhar Mountains, photographed by Dileep Parmar, a photographer in Nagarparkar who has been documenting and resisting extraction. Imam Janjhi—in the same poem—addresses those who sell Karoonjhar: Those who sold the soil for gain, Exchanged their mother for wealth and fame, Sold the pots of worshippers' pray, On peacocks' cry, they gave away, With no religion or faith to claim, What shame can touch their name? To auction off generations old and young, A business crowd has come along. The entire land on scales will lie, Hunger will claim our lives. Due to their depth, granite deposits spread far beyond the visible mountain range. Do definitions of forests justify political decisions to allow mining when they simultaneously validate the range of Karoonjhar? From the depths of the waters to the heights of the hills, people chant, “Karoonjhar is not for sale.” These hills are their past, their present, and their future. If this masterpiece of nature, forever carved in their hearts and souls, is looted, they will continue to fight, resist, and protect. But the rest is a long night of terror and displacement. On October 19, a 15-page judgment written by Justice Mohammad Shafi Siddiqui declared that the Karoonjhar Mountains cannot be excavated for any purpose other than the discovery of historical monuments, and even then, only in accordance with international guidelines. “The Mines and Minerals Department has no jurisdiction over it since it is a protected heritage site and not available for mining or excavation,” the court stated. But just a week ago, the Sindh Cabinet approved the Karsar area—25 kilometers from Nangarparkar—for granite mining, pending approval from the Forest & Wildlife Department. The Cabinet committee argues that Karsar does not overlap with forest territory. Simultaneously, the Cabinet designated the Karoonjhar mountains as cultural and heritage sites, forests, and a wildlife sanctuary/Ramsar Site. The contradictory logic seems designed to enable future extraction while attempting to appease the public. Shankar Meghwar argues, “Karoonjhar mountains have their own range, and wherever such stones are found within that jurisdiction, including areas like Karsar, they should be considered part of it and should not be separated based on distance.” Just today, he challenged the government’s decision in the court of Mirpurkhas, calling for the Cabinet's decision to be ruled to be in contempt of court based on previous decisions. On the other hand, the case of the Sindh provincial government's appeal to the Supreme Court to overturn a prior decision protecting the mountain range remains. Meghwar, Allah Rakhio, and others continue to face death threats.∎ Poetry translated from Sindhi by Lutif Ali Halo. More Fiction & Poetry: Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5 Date Authors Heading 5

· INTERACTIVE Event · Panel FLUX · Kshama Sawant & Nikil Saval on US Left Electoralism & COVID-19 Where do radical movements stand in the US? In December 2020, Kshama Sawant and Nikil Saval took stock of the response to the COVID-19 crisis at the federal, state, and city levels and discussed the many failures of two-party politics. But the movements for housing, defunding the police, and taxing corporations in Seattle & Philadelphia are also deploying innovative and unprecedented organizing strategies, most obviously at the local level, that have ramifications for movements across the country. Watch the event in full in on IGTV. FLUX: An Evening in Dissent FLUX was held at a peculiar time. In December 2020, there was both during a raging pandemic and following exciting victories by progressive candidates in state elections in the US, including Nikil Saval, former co-editor of n+1 , to PA State Senate. Tisya Mavuram and Kamil Ahsan convened with Sen. Nikil Saval and longtime socialist Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant to talk about the future of left politics, relations with the Democratic Party, and the pandemic. In Philadelphia, on the actual city budget level, the [Defund the police] movement's ability to win the cuts it demanded did not succeed, as it didn't in many other cities. But what did happen, it is important to highlight, was a protest encampment of the unhoused on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway which is very near to the Art Museum, a symbolic institution of the city. It's one of the richest and most subsidized areas of the city. It's rich because it has been made to be rich. So to have this encampment protesting for housing was a physical challenge to the housing in the city, including the shelter system, which is in shambles. Despite attempts by elected officials, the encampments were able to secure the transfer of city-owned property to a community land trust. This was unprecedented in Philadelphia history. It doesn't meet the actual need, but it begins to pioneer how movements can work with officials on the left in city government, coming from an abolitionist impulse. Tarfia Faizullah: Poetry Reading Jaishri Abichandani's Art Studio Tour Natasha Noorani's Live Performance of "Choro" Bhavik Lathia & Jaya Sundaresh: A panel on the US Left & its relationship with media in the wake of Bernie Sanders' loss. Rajiv Mohabir: Poetry Reading SAAG, So Far: A Panel with the Editors DJ Kiran: A Celebratory Set SUB-HEAD Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Event Panel COVID-19 Recall Efforts Democratic Party Progressive Politics Electoral Politics Accommodationism Bernie Sanders Socialist Alternative State Senate Local Politics Local vs. National Politics Washington Pennsylvania City Council Races State Senate Races Centrism Right-Wing Assault Amazon Gentrification Criminal Negligence Fighting the Two-Party System Migrant Workers Stimulus Package Legitimacy of the Capitalist System Demographics The Guise of Bipartisanship Capitalist Class Reactionary Democratic Elites Nancy Pelosi Chuck Schumer Insider Negotiation Standards of Living Minimum Wage Democratic Establishment Post-George Floyd Moment George Floyd Anti-Racism Mass Protests Amazon Tax Corporation Taxation Labor Movement Racial Justice Tax Cuts for the Rich Primarying Centrist Democrats Defund the Police Abolitionism Minneapolis Police Departments Mayoralties Pledges to Defund Police Career Politicians Budget Votes Movement Organization Movement Strategy Seattle Activist Politics Black Lives Matter Democratic Socialists of America Ballot Initiative Housing Municipal Politics Shelter System Encampments of the Unhoused Negotiating Directly with Philadelphia City City-Owned Properties Land Trusts Leftist Media Magazine Culture n+1 Hospitality Workers Growth of Left Media FLUX Philadelphia Seattle City Councils Labor Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. 5th Dec 2020 AUTHOR · AUTHOR Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. 1 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 On That Note: