Marjane Satrapi is one of the most inspiring storytellers of our time.  She is the embodiment of an artist who uses creativity to express her political views.  Satrapi is best known as the French-Iranian graphic novelist whose best-selling books, Persepolis and Persepolis 2, were turned into a film of the same name.  Persepolis is an autobiographic tale of Satrapi growing up in Tehran in a family with socialist beliefs just before the Iranian revolution.  She came to Boston recently to discuss her life after the Persepolis phenomenon and Muslim women and identity.

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I was recently invited to speak at a conference at Rhode Island College on race, the media and election 2012, where legendary activist Angela Davis was the keynote speaker.  I had a chance to talk to Dr Davis about the history of racial inclusion in social movements and how activism should be more global.

I interviewed Yari Osorio, the vice-presidential candidate of the Party for Socialism and Liberation.  Osorio and I were panelists in a discussion about race, the media and election 2012 at Rhode Island College April 13.  Osorio, a native of Colombia,  is a longtime activist who helped to lead dozens of anti-war and anti-racist demonstrations in New York City and Washington, D.C.  He was arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge along with 700 other people as part of an Occupy Wall Street demonstration last year.  Osorio talks about the role of people of color in the Occupy Movement, third party politics and the upcoming election.

Acclaimed filmmaker Raoul Peck spoke to an audience at Emerson College March 15 following the viewing of his latest film “Moloch Tropical,” a political drama that many believe resembles the demise of Haiti’s first democratically elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Most of the discussion was not only about Haitian politics, but also on how power and democracy works today.

My first “Mic Check” is with Anna Oloshuro Okaro (above), a Maasai farmer from Tanzania and women’s rights activist who was the keynote speaker at Oxfam America’s International Women’s Day celebration March 10, 2012. She was recently awarded Oxfam Women’s Leadership Award in Washington D.C. for her advocacy work on women’s issues and poverty.  Okaro talks in her speech about the food security crisis around the world.

Okaro has an interesting life story.  After a devastating divorce that left her broke, she fought against cultural norms to not only rebuild her life, but to also advocate for women in her community to have better access to education and the right to own livestock and land.  She even helped to build a computer center with a mobile recharger powered by solar panels.

Note: This recording is in Kiswahili with English translation.

While many attendees at the Mobile World Congress have focused mainly on all the latest and greatest mobile tools, a discussion that has gone largely under the radar is the so-called “digital caste system.”  Google’s executive chairman Eric Schmidt said in his keynote before MWC12 that for the “aspiring majority” of five out of seven billion global citizens, “the web is still a scarce resource.”

“For most people the digital revolution has not arrived yet. Every revolution begins with a small group of people. Imagine how much better it would be with another five billion people online,” he said.  “Smartphones are part of the solution, but having a smartphone is not enough to get you online.”

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Issa Rae, the creator and star of the hit web series, The Mis-Adventures of Awkward Black Girl, was a speaker at the first annual “Black Women in America” conference Feb. 25. The sudden success of “Awkward Black Girl” says a lot about not only the potential of viral video and good old-fashioned word of mouth, but also a growing desire among people of color to see better portrayals of their communities in the media.

Watch the video here

Bunker Hill Community College held the opening reception Feb. 9 for its latest exhibit “That’s a Fact: Young, Gifted and Black.” Many of the area’s best and brightest artists, filmmakers, musicians, writers and photographers were invited to display and celebrate their art. It was exciting to attend because it almost looked like a modern day Harlem Renaissance gathering.

During the 1920s and 1930s many African-Americans moved to the North as part of the Great Migration. Many of those migrants had creative aspirations and made their way to Harlem. These artists used their work to express the new black identity; many of them influenced by self-determination, the Jazz Age and the racial bigotry of the time. Like their Harlem forefathers, the young artists in this exhibit are expressing their own black identity, only this time their influences are hip-hop culture and their pride in having a black man in the White House.

Watch the video here

By Talia Whyte

There is a growing number of journalists who are leaving traditional media outlets to create and run their own online news sites.  Kelly Virella is one of those enterprising journalists.  She left her job as the deputy editor of City Limits magazine and website last year to start the news organization, Dominion of New York.  I spoke to her recently about life as a journalist turned entrepreneur.

NABJ Digital: What is Dominion of New York and why did you start it up?

Kelly Virella: Dominion of New York is the online magazine of black intellectual swagger. We report about innovative thinkers, artists and leaders. We investigate complex issues and we blog about current events relevant to the global black diaspora from a progressive-to-radical political perspective…

Read the full interview here