Greetings.
First of all, please take note of my upcoming shows/appearances:
20 October, Liverpool: Just An Ordinary Lawyer@ St. George’s Hall
25 October, Liverpool: Words Behind 4Wings @10. Performance by 4Wings members and staff of a drama written by Tayo Aluko, inspired by stories shared by the women. St. George’s Hall.
26 October: Participant, Book Launch, Liverpool. Pastor Daniels Ekarte and the African Churches Mission. Liverpool, 1931-1964. Writing on the Wall BHM23
27 October, Bolton: This Little Light (A Paul Robeson presentation). Bolton Socialist Club
29 October, Faversham: Art As A Weapon – Some Pan-Africanist Examples. Faversham Guild Hall.
31 October, London: Just An Ordinary Lawyer. The Courtyard Theatre, Shoreditch, London.
7 November, Cambridgeshire: Call Mr. Robeson. St. Ives Library.
8 November, Cambridgeshire: Call Mr. Robeson. St. Neots Library.
10 November, online: Art As a Weapon – Some Pan-Africanist Examples. Yorkshire Festival of Story
And recently:
I did a reading of my new play, Coleridge-Taylor of Freetown, at Liverpool Lighthouse. I had been quite nervous about how some of the subject matter would be received, but the feedback was as good as I could have hoped for. The reading was live-streamed and a recording is now online on my YouTube page, and will remain so until around the end of October. I am hoping that it will go on stage starting sometime in the first half of 2024.
The Black workers’ section of the North West branch of the trade union UNISON hosted a performance of Call Mr. Robeson at the Royal Exchange Theatre, and in the programme note, I wrote about the power of collective action and solidarity. I was able to report for the first time, a personal victory in a dispute with Edge Hill University against whom my union, Equity, had made a court claim on my behalf. Edge Hill had unjustly cancelled a talk and a performance I was to give at the university in February.
I also did a performance of a monologue, Dodging Bullets for #BlackBoyJoyGone and BlackFest, went on stage at the Africa Writes Festival 2023 to talk about the forthcoming re-publication of my late father T M Aluko’s 1963 book, One Man, One Matchet, for which I have written a Foreword. I also sang at a number of protests here in Liverpool.
Parting Shots: White Supremacy - of Violence
My ancestors were described as savages, in an effort to justify their enslavement and in order to be able to terrorise them with impunity. They fought for their liberation, and often employed grotesque violence against their oppressors in response to the brutality they had suffered. In the process, many innocent victims died, and/or suffered greatly.
There are many Jewish people, many of them Israeli, who refuse to stand with Israel at this moment in time. I stand with them. They say, with greater eloquence than I could ever muster, that the present actions of Israel in Gaza constitute war crimes, and they refuse to discount the millions of daily acts of dispossession, brutality and oppression suffered by Palestinians since 1948 that led to the ‘Al-Aqsa Flood.’ I present two such Jewish people, one of whom I am proud to call a friend: Marika Sherwood. She escaped Hungary as a teenager during the Holocaust. Her views are expressed in an email she wrote ten years ago, to someone who objected to something I said about Paul Robeson’s possible views on Israel, implying that I was anti-Semitic. By definition, her support for a supposed anti-Semite makes her one of those thousands upon thousands of “self-hating Jews” that one often hears about: those who resist the notion that because of their European history and ancestry, any violence they perpetrate against non-Europeans is by definition righteous and justifiable, and that white, or Jewish (and white) lives matter more than any others.
The other one is Gideon Levy, speaking from Israel.
I give the final word to a Palestinian who describes himself as no supporter of Hamas, and is one of very many people who have recently been exposing the hypocrisy of Western governments, commentators and media outlets.
Husam Zomlot, Palestine Ambassador to UK
I fully expect to get some push-back for the above paragraphs. There will be numerous unsubscribes, I might lose some friends, and there might even be attempts to have one or two forthcoming appearances or performances cancelled. Whether or not these are successful depend on the bravery or otherwise of the organisers, but to quote Paul Robeson, “The artist must take sides. He must elect to fight for freedom or slavery. I have made my choice. I had no alternative.”
I dedicate this to the memory of a friend who was buried this day, Thursday 12 October 2023. Mark Hutchinson was co-founder of an education and human rights charity Journey to Justice, and fittingly, he had items from the Christian, Muslim and Jewish faiths at his funeral service. I also dedicate it to babies born today. May their future be better than the present.
Best wishes,
Tayo Aluko
P.S. I usually have the Parting Shots section mostly behind a paywall. I have suspended that for this edition, but if you don’t already, please do consider becoming a paid subscriber.
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