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Seattle playwright, actor, and dancer Kamaria Hallums-Harris didn't know what she was going to write for her senior thesis project at Cornish College of the Arts. But when George Zimmerman shot and killed Trayvon Martin, her mission clarified.

As the Zimmerman case unfolded on the news, she began to wonder whether black women were being killed by police as often and for the same reasons that black men were. Her queries led her to the history of lynching.

She found the story of Mary Turner, who in 1918 was hanged by her ankles, set on fire, and riddled with bullets. Seeing that Turner was eight months pregnant at the time, a member of the white mob that strung her up cut the unborn baby from her womb and stomped on it. She also found the story of Laura Nelson, who was raped and hanged from a bridge. The baby she was carrying reportedly survived the murder.

Hallums-Harris weaves such stories into Waning, a coming-of-age drama about a 17-year-old black girl named Luna (Danela Butler). Luna struggles with anxiety. As she begins to reckon with a burgeoning queer identity, she also begins to discover the many horrifying acts of violence against black people in the United States. In the midst of that psychological thunderstorm, she unexpectedly becomes pregnant.

Over the course of the play's brief 50 minutes, Hallums-Harris alternates quiet bedroom scenes with extended transitions that pulse with emotional intensity and very active metaphors. There's a scene where a nameless man (Benjamin Symons, who otherwise plays Luna's boyfriend, Ravi) reads the brutal facts of Mary Turner's lynching while Luna moans in the ecstasy of her first queer experience, as if pleasure can't be experienced without acknowledging the history of pain that precedes it.

In another moment, as Luna meditates on her pregnancy, a remixed version of Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit" pipes in through the speakers overhead. The striking juxtaposition recalls a biographical detail from Hallums-Harris's own life.

While she was writing Waning, Hallums-Harris, like her main character, found herself unexpectedly pregnant. "It felt like the modern-day equivalent of lynchings to me, that I wanted to keep this child and was not set up to do so," she says. Her due date was her graduation day, and she says she was performing in two shows, working three jobs, and trying to keep her grades up all at the same time. "I did not have the resources. I did not have the funds, so I wrote that into Waning," she says.

Not that it didn't take a toll. Waning, which was co-produced with Earth Pearl Collective, is a heavy show, and the production takes unorthodox steps to prepare people for it: On Tuesday nights, the crew will lead audiences through a self-care breathing ritual involving lavender packets, intended to help them through the play's heavy themes. (Also, white audience members are encouraged to bring a friend of color.)

Hallums-Harris says moments where the past seems to rhyme with the present interest her the mostthat interest is reflected both in the script and in the show's music and movement. Jazz from the Robert Glasper Trio mixes with hiphop from Kanye West and Kendrick Lamar. A character named Leuanna (played Hallums-Harris), a sort of dancing fairy godmother whose life is intertwined with Luna's, incorporates into her movement gestures from hiphop, ballet, and modern dance.

While Hallums-Harris draws strength and creative energy from her research and from her particular swirl of contemporary and historical aesthetics, the implications of all of it aren't lost on her. That is, if the present looks a lot like the past, then the future doesn't look too good. This idea concretized for her during the writing process, and she finds it depressing.

"But I couldn't write anything else" she says. "I just needed to figure it out."

Before graduating from Cornish with a degree in original works in 2014, Hallums-Harris attended South Carolina Governor's School for the Arts & Humanities (the alma mater of actors such as Nicole Beharie and Danielle Brooks). Since she's been in town, she's acted in shows at Annex and Seattle Immersive Theatre, and she just landed the role of Barbara in Intiman's upcoming production of Robert O'Hara's Barbecue.

In the meantime, despite the heavy emotional toll of writing Waning, she'll be working on another time-bending play called Mitochondrial Eve, in which Hallums-Harris imagines the life of humanity's common matrilineal ancestor in different scenarios throughout time, from The Beginning right on up to the present day. Right now, she says, the first scene involves Nat Turner's wife having an affair with Kurt Vonnegut.

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The Long Shadow of Lynching in 2017 - TheStranger.com

Des Moines Public Schools board members sported Black Lives Matter shirts and their Tuesday meeting.(Photo: Molly Longman/The Register)Buy Photo

It was business as usual at the weekly Des Moines Public Schools board meeting at Des Moines Central Campus High Schoolon Tuesday evening.

But one thing was different six ofDes Moines School Board's seven members were sporting black T-shirts that read "Black Lives Matter" in thick, white lettering.

There was no mention of the shirts duringthe formal part of the meetingas board members and Superintendent Thomas Ahart, who did not wear a Black Lives Matter T-shirt,discussedissues such as Des Moines Central Academy upgrades andearly literacy programs.

The shirts spoke for themselves.

Board member Dionna Langford spearheadedDMPS'Black Lives Matter initiative, selling the shirts for $10 and donating 50 percent of the proceeds to two Des Moines organizations that work to improve the welfare of Des Moines' black community:Brother 2Brother, which partners young men of color withmentors, andInvesting in MyFuture,which pushes black students to pursue higher education.

Langford said $655 were raised for the organizations after selling 131 locally printedshirts.

Black Lives Matteris an international movement, foundedby three black women in 2013 after the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the Florida shooting of black teen Trayvon Martin.

At the meeting, Langford explained why the school board felt it was important to stand in solidarity with their black students and community.

"The statement we want to make today as a board is that we care about our black students," Langford said. "We care about their families and we care about our black workforce While weve seen progress throughout the years, our education system is still rife with inequities and our poor, brown, and, yes, black children often pay the price."

According tostatistics from the Iowa Department of Education, in the 2014-2015 school year,the African-American dropout rate in Iowa is over double the rate of white students. Black students were the only group with a graduation rate of under 80 percent, the statistics show.

Des Moines Public Schools states on its website that 18.8 percent of its population is black.

Black Lives Matter T-shirts were waiting for board members on their seats at the Tuesday meeting.(Photo: Molly Longman/The Register)

"We are still vigorously working to close the achievement gap between our poor and our black students of color," Langford said. "As a school district, it is our responsibility to ensure every single child as my grandma would say, whetheryoure black, brown, white, orange or purple graduates with the knowledge they need to be successful at the next stage of their lives."

Both Langford and school board vice chair Cindy Elsbernd said they'd received negative feedback from members of the community after they announced they'd be wearing the Black Lives Matter shirts at Tuesday's meeting.

"I've been asked why I would support the violent Black Lives Matter group," Elsbernd said. "I don't. In fact, I don't support violence at all neither does Black Lives Matter Black students, I see you. I've learned from you. Your successful education is important to me. You matter."

Board chairTeree Caldwell-Johnson assured attendees at the end of the meeting that the school board supports students of all walks of life.

"I hope that the people in our community understand that we support all of our children," Caldwell-Johnson said."Tonight we're focusing on a particular cohort, but we supportand want to educate all of our children and, again, not only do black minds matter and black lives matter, all children matter in this district."

Board member Rob Barron, who was the only board member who didn't don a Black Lives Matter shirt, explained that his clothing choice was "not for any lack of solidarity or belief in the movement, but purely based on an outvoted belief of not wearing a T-shirt at a board meeting and a belief in professionalism."

Barron draped his Black Lives Matter shirt over his desk so attendees could read it during the meeting.

Debbie Griffin, a pastor at Des Moines urban ministryDowntown Disciples, attended the board meeting wearing a Black Lives Matter shirt and a clerical collar.

I wore this shirt to stand in solidarity, not only with the school board that's supporting black students, but in solidarity with black students and my black neighbors," Griffin said. "It's a way for me to express my lovefor my neighbor and my concern for their equality, justice, dignity and honor."

During the meeting, Langford left attendees with a statement about why the movement was important to her.

"As an alum of the Des Moines public school system, I could share my own stories of moments where I was made to feel as an other and how that impacted my thoughts about my ability to succeed in the classroom. And if you talk to many other black students, I would not be surprised if you would hear similar stories," Langford said. "Every single one of our student's lives matter within the Des Moines public school district and that includes black children."

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DM School Board members sport 'Black Lives Matter' shirts - DesMoinesRegister.com

Realities of water politics

While everyones eyes have been focused on the aftermath of the election mine included the devil has been keeping his hands busy with Dianne Feinstein in the Senate.

Feinsteins water bill is a charade. Her bill is a fraud on Michael Eggman and the San Joaquin Valley farmers, to send the Delta water to Los Angeles, to pay back certain very, very wealthy Hollywood television and media moguls for financing her and Jerry Browns election campaigns, and Feinsteins pick to replace Barbara Boxer, Loretta Sanchez.

And to fund Browns pet high-speed rail project connecting Sacramento to Southern California. Hollywood wants greater influence and access to the capitol dome.

It is not about the Delta smelt; that is a red herring. It is about shipping Northern Californias precious water supply to a bunch of very wealthy and thirsty people who choose to live in the desert and water their lawns.

They drank the Colorado River dry, and now Feinstein and Brown want us to pump the Delta water up over the Los Angeles Grapevine to make the desert bloom again. We all need to write a letter to Feinstein and Brown and tell them about the chasm between refreshed angels of heaven and the thirsty devils of hell.

Norman J. Moore

Manteca

Take pulse of press reports

I commend The Record for The Associated Press article about how to recognize fake internet news (Feb. 14).

In addition to their advice, I suggest that people also consider the reliability of the source when reading or viewing legitimate news.

Are they biased in their reporting? Do they make inferences rather than providing proven facts. Do they use words such as some or many? Do they actually provide quotes attributed to verifiable people or do they use a reliable or anonymous source?

Much of what is presented as news is merely gossip. This change in reporting could be more aptly called distorting as formerly trusted media has become highly partisan and biased.

They report news that has not been verified and no evidence supports their conclusion. These news stories are repeated by other print and media outlets as truth, when they are conjecture or worse, deliberate attempts to lie and mislead the public.

WikiLeaks proved that journalists colluded with the Hillary Clinton campaign in providing questions prior to a debate and asking for approval before printing a story about Clinton. The campaign did not deny the veracity of the evidence but, instead, decried how it was obtained.

Prior to that, it was revealed that one of the major media outlets deliberately edited the 911 tape of George Zimmerman to give the false impression that he was a racist. There are other examples of respected journalists falsifying news stories to promote their bias. In other words, they lie.

Most recently, news reports about Russian hacking supposedly to assist the Trump campaign have not been verified but that does not stop them from reporting this gossip. If you repeat a lie often enough it is believed.

We deserve better.

Nancy L. Boone

Stockton

States infrastructure woes

When California has its largest Dam, Orville Dam, in disrepair and 200,000 residents have to leave their homes and run for their lives, its disastrous.

Our Sacramento elected government leaders controlling California need a wakeup call. Aside from the critical need to update and repair Californias levees, dams, roadways, bridges and pot holes, Gov. Jerry Brown should now bite the bullet and forget the bullet train. Were talking about his desire to spend Californias taxpayer dollars on his costly billion dollar bullet train to nowhere when so many other major problems need to be addressed.

Another thought is the idea of California becoming a sanctuary state and how ridiculous this would be. Gov. Brown and his group in Sacramento are asking President Trump and our current administration for federal money to help Californias recent horrific flooding problems. If in fact California was a Sanctuary State and we did not have access to federal funds for repairs what would those elected officials in Sacramento do for the money needed?

Please wake up Gov. Brown and the rest of you in Sacramento leadership positions and see the states priorities.

Betty K. Thomas

Stockton

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Letters (Feb. 21, 2017) - Stockton Record

Pam Adams Journal Star education reporter @padamspam

PEORIA Before the presidential election, Patrisse Cullors, a co-founder of Black Lives Matter, spent a lot of time explaining the organization and its work.

Now the questions Im getting are how is Black Lives Matter going to relate to the current presidency, Cullors said during a recent telephone interview.

The answer is clear to the woman whose hashtag galvanized a campaign against police violence and anti-black racism.

Cullors will speak Thursday at Bradley Universitys Renaissance Coliseum.

A California-based artist and community organizer, Cullors co-created the phrase with Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi in a passionate response, posted on Facebook, to the 2013 acquittal of George Zimmerman in the murder of Trayvon Martin in Florida. A year later, Cullors helped organize support for protests in Ferguson, Mo., after a grand jury did not indict police officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown.

Black Lives Matter has been successful in putting the deaths of unarmed black men and youths at the center of national conversations about criminal justice reform, Cullors said. But Donald Trumps presidency highlights the importance of building coalitions, she said, among groups advocating for human rights, including immigrants rights and the rights of people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.

We know weve got to build a broad movement to insure Trump isnt elected again in four years, Cullors said.

Co-sponsors of Cullors appearance represent a broad coalition of campus and community groups.

Pam Adams can be reached at 686-3245 or padams@pjstar.com. Follow her on Twitter @padamspam.

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Black Lives Matter co-founder to speak at Bradley - Peoria Journal Star

Too young, too black... Daudi Abe

When The Stranger asked me to attend and write about A Conversation with the Parents of Trayvon Martin at Town Hall, which happened last night, I hesitated. Not because this isnt important stuff, but because its such a tough topic for me. I have a son who is close to Trayvons age, and the seemingly constant barrage of black death caught on camera phones has become too much for me to keep watching. The sadness and grief that surround these stories are hard to hear. But the work is important. I attended the event.

A little background: Trayvon Benjamin Martin was born on February 5, 1995. On the evening of February 26, 2012, he was shot to death as he walked home from the store by George Zimmerman, a volunteer neighborhood watchman. He was 17. He was unarmed. When Zimmerman (who is a white Latino) spotted the seventeen-year-old Martin walking back to his fathers home in Sanford, Florida, he called 911 to report a suspicious person and was instructed to remain in his car. Instead, Zimmerman confronted Martin, and, after a brief altercation, Martin was shot. Zimmerman was charged with second-degree murder, claimed self-defense, and was found not guilty by a jury on July 13, 2013. On February 15, 2017, Trayvons mother, Sabrina Fulton, and father, Tracy Martin, spoke at Town Hall in Seattle.

When Trayvon's parents walked out on stage with moderator and local icon Vivian Phillips, I suddenly noticed the large percentage and racial mix of young people in attendance. A black mother herself, Phillips did a masterful job of guiding the conversation with empathy, yet pressed both parents to expand in detail on the unimaginable. For me, the most poignant moment of the evening was Tracys story of finding out Trayvon was the unidentified young man the media had been reporting for hours as shot to death. Father, unable to locate son, calling sons phone and going straight to voicemail over and over, calls the police who arrive, get a description, go back to the squad car and return with a folder containing a photo of Trayvon dead on the ground. The silence and focus of the crowd during that telling was an emotional peak, or valleynot sure which.

Because so much has happened since then, it can be easy to forget that George Zimmerman, whose name neither Fulton nor Martin said the entire night, wasnt arrested for 44 days, and that the trial is commonly referred to as the Trayvon Martin Trial even though he wasnt technically on trial, and that Martin was basically blamed for his own death by defense attorneys for the shooter, and also that when Sabrina Fulton sees a picture of her son, she sees an average teenager.

But Trayvon stopped being an average teenager that fateful moment nearly five years ago when George Zimmerman laid eyes on him. I wondered how these parents could not be totally consumed with anger and revenge, given not only what happened to Trayvon, but also given the way the Sanford Police Department and other local authorities treated the family in the aftermath. However, I sensed that speaking about their feelings on this topic numerous times has been therapeutic. Indeed, Tracy Martin, who was raised in East St. Louis, mentioned how he had to really restrain himself from going East St. Lou many times while in those moments of pain.

Fulton and Martin said they initially felt optimistic that President Obamas comments on the case might make a difference, but soon realized how powerful institutionalized racism is within the justice system, especially in the Deep South. Fulton in particular challenged the crowd: If you dont stand up to this kind of injustice, you are part of the problem. And added: Knowing that Trayvon was killed because of the color of his skin, you are obligated to do your part.

The phenomenon of fatal encounters with law enforcement for African Americans has a long local history. In 1938, three white Seattle police officers were fired, charged, tried, convicted and sentenced to 20 years each in the death of 26-year-old Berry Lawson, an African American waiter who was asleep in a chair in the lobby of the Mt. Fuji Hotel. Ninety minutes after being contacted by the officers, Lawson was pronounced dead at the hospital with a fractured skull. Soon after being convicted, all three officers were pardoned by the governor. A more recent example was the 2016 shooting by two white officers of Che Taylor, an African American who police said had a gun in his car. Curiously, an inquest found that Taylor was complying with officers commands, while also stating that the officers feared for their lives.

Trayvon Martins story has proven to be a catalyst in the discussion of race and policing. In the aftermath of this case and a social media celebration of Zimmerman turning the hooded black male predator into prey, Black Lives Matter was created by three community organizersAlicia Garza in Oakland, CA; Patrice Cullors in Los Angeles, CA; and Opal Tometi in Phoenix, AZ.

Initially a rallying cry and a hashtag on social media, Black Lives Matter was at its core a plea for humanity within the context of what seemed to be inhumane circumstances, in this case involving a minor. The profile of Black Lives Matter was raised significantly with its national freedom ride and the resulting protest presence in Ferguson, Missouri, after the 2014 fatal police shooting of unarmed, eighteen-year-old Michael Brown.

The trivializing nature of response phrases like All Lives Matter further reinforced the need to articulate the sentiment of Black Lives Matter in the first place. As my then 15-year-old daughter told me: By definition, all lives cant matter until black lives matter.

For those locally who dismiss out of hand a statement like "Black Lives Matter," I can only hope that not too many of you work in education or law enforcement. However, given the fact Seattles Public Schools and Police Department have recently been the subjects of federal investigations related to mistreatment of African Americans and other people of color, I think we already know the answer.

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Trayvon Martin at 22 - TheStranger.com