elke weesjes

In conjunction with the exhibition of the same name at Bedford Library, you're invited to join historian Elke Weesjes for an evening of engaging talks revolving around the history of Bedford-Stuyvesant and the community mural movement. Featuring special guest speakers Janet Braun-Reinitz and Rochelle Shicof
"A Neighborhood in Transition - Murals in Bedford-Stuyvesant", which combines image and text, was inspired by the book, Do Not Give Way to Evil: Photographs of the South Bronx, 1979.  Through a number of essays and stunning photographs by Lisa Kahane, this book documents the devastation and rejuvenation of the South Bronx.  Fascinated by the powerful combination of word and image, I wanted to do a similar project in my own neighborhood, Bedford-Stuyvesant.

Through images of murals in Bedford-Stuyvesant, this exhibition examines the transition of this infamous Brooklyn neighborhood. Visitors are taken on a historical and visual journey from Bed-Stuy's dark days characterized by poverty, racial tensions, violence and the slogan, "Do or Die Bed-Stuy," to a new dawn defined by restoration, community building and the brand new slogan: "Bed-Stuy and Proud of It!"""

Dutch communists were remarkably progressive in their views on (heterosexual) sex, sex education, contraception and family planning. Many were active members of the Nederlandse Vereniging van Sexuele Hervorming ('Dutch League for Sexual Reform' or NVSH), and were passionate advocates of sexual health, and promoted the use of contraceptives and the legalisation of abortion. This progressive stance on sexuality and contraception was not led by the Dutch Communist Party (CPN). In fact, from the 1940s until the late 1960s, topics related to birth control, sex education and family planning had been given a wide berth in the CPN and its organisations. The CPN seemingly followed the example set by the Soviet Union, where, after a very brief moment of sexual liberation in the early post-revolution years, conservative views about sexuality, the family and household organisation had prevailed. Considering the Dutch party's refusal to address sex education and family planning, it is quite remarkable that so many of its members were such passionate advocates of sexual health. Based on a series of interviews with twenty-five cradle communists, communist archives, and a wide range of other sources, this article explores communists' stance on sexual health, and discusses their roles in the NVSH and the abortion rights movement during the Cold War. It argues that in regard to sexuality and sex education, the ideas of Dutch communists were much more in line with utopian socialist traditions that predated the Russian revolution as well as anarchist traditions carried through to communists, than with the Soviet ideology.

This article explores communists’ attitudes towards gender roles and sexuality in Britain and the Netherlands during the Cold War (ca. 1948‐1970). It looks at the changing roles of women in the communist movement in the public sphere, as well as the changes in practices of gender relations in the communist home—that is, the private sphere. This article, which is based on interviews with Dutch and British individuals raised in communist families, argues that communist children who were taught progressive theories while simultaneously witnessing traditional practices in the home were spurred to feminist thinking and so joined the movement in its early stages. In light of these findings, this article makes the case for the inclusion of communists in the vanguard of feminism in Britain and the Netherlands.

As the number of migrant children in US government custody has risen to its highest level in history, mental health experts and lawyers are increasingly voicing their concerns about the psychological and social consequences of detention and prolonged separation from primary caregivers.

Most individuals can understand that it is extremely stressful and anxiety provoking for a child of any age to be detained in a foreign country and separated from their caregiver. What is less understood by the wider public is the anxiety experienced by US born and raised children whose caregivers live under chronic threat of deportation. These children also live in a prison, albeit a less sensational and more insidious one. Instead of being built of metal and concrete, their prison is built of fear.

In this field report I share my experiences of teaching an intergenerational oral history course I created as part of the Young Adult Literacy Program (YALP) in Brooklyn, New York. This workshop, which ran from mid-May to late June 2014, grew out of a—still ongoing—research project that focuses on the history of Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood and adjacent neighborhoods. The course combined the practical application of oral history techniques with theoretical analysis of the results. Students were interviewed about their experiences growing up in historically underserved areas and, in turn, interviewed older members of their respective communities to map change and continuity. The interviews served as a teaching tool for my students and as primary sources for my research project. Through being interviewed themselves, my students learned about the characteristics of good interviewing as well as the characteristics of being an effective source.

A recent study (Cook, Ault, and Smerdon 2015) predicts a decade-long megadrought in the second half of the 21st century, and scientists (Steward, et al. 2013) warn that the Ogallala aquifer will be depleted by 2060. These views suggest that the future of farming in the Southwest and Central Plains looks bleak. How much longer will farming communities in this region be able to survive? Will farmers’ adaptability to environmental changes triumph once more, or is the damage caused by poor water management practices and climate change irreversible?

We are constantly given information about the “refugee crisis,” but we know little about the refugees themselves who are in crisis—the challenges they face along the way, in transit camps, and even once permanently or temporarily settled in a host country.

As the current refugee crisis deepens and extreme right-wing, anti-immigrant politicians gain traction in Europe and the United States, the parallels between Jewish refugees and their current Middle Eastern counterparts are worth contemplating.

The Alaska Native town of Newtok is expected to be under water by 2017, according to the Army Corps of Engineers (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 2009). The town is hardly an exception; there are eleven other tribal communities in the Arctic Circle that are in the same predicament (GAO, 2009). However, it is unlikely that these towns will be able to move to higher ground any time soon without the creation of a federal framework that can assist, overlook, and fund their relocation.

On a sveltering evening in July 1977, lightening struck a Consolidated Edison substation in Yonkers, New York, setting off a disastrous chain of events. Seven million people plunged into darkness and when the lights went out, all hell broke loose. Shops were looted, windows were smashed, and buildings were set on fire. How can we explain such a social phenomenon? And why would rioters destroy their own neighborhood?

One hundred years ago, on a small peninsula near the Statue of Liberty, an explosion rocked New York City with a force that decimated nearby neighborhoods. That event came to be known as the Black Tom explosion, considered to be the first U.S. act of domestic terrorism and the impetus for our modern day public safety agencies.

We are all familiar with photographs of death. From Margaret Bourke-White’s coverage of Nazi concentration camps and Eddie Adam’s world famous image of General Loan shooting a Viet Cong soldier in the head, to the 2013 World Press Photo of the Year, depicting the bodies of two children carried by their uncles to a mosque for their funeral in Gaza City. Photography immortalizes places, people and events. It celebrates life and commemorates death.

This chapter, which draws on 20 oral testimonies and includes numerous photographs, examines the impact of the 2010-2013 drought on farming communities in Southwest Kansas. Specifically, it documents daily life under harsh environmental conditions and explores how these communities cope with the devastating effects of drought. In addition to providing the context needed to better understand droughts and their implications, this chapter also addresses the history of agriculture in Kansas, describes the dry spells farmers have withstood in the past and considers the depletion of the Ogallala, the nation's largest aquifer. This research illustrates that, although new ways of surviving and thriving emerge in the face of these dramatic environmental shifts, the future of these communities is bleak, and their demise, perhaps, inevitable.

Last year Frank Dikötter won the prestigious BBC Samuel Johnson prize for his book ‘Mao’s Great Famine’. The jury was impressed yet stunned that they didn’t know the full scale of the atrocities committed during the Great Leap Forward. Dikötter knocks Mao off his pedestal and reveals what he really was; a brutal and violent dictator. After the publication of his book the author received daily hate mail for over a year. In our interview he explains how his opponents’ arguments are the same used to deny the Holocaust.

Dutch communists were remarkably progressive in their views on (heterosexual) sex, sex education, contraception and family planning. Many were active members of the Nederlandse Vereniging van Sexuele Hervorming (‘Dutch League for Sexual Reform’ or NVSH), and were passionate advocates of sexual health, and promoted the use of contraceptives and the legalisation of abortion. This progressive stance on sexuality and contraception was not led by the Dutch Communist Party (CPN). In fact, from the 1940s until the late 1960s, topics related to birth control, sex education and family planning had been given a wide berth in the CPN and its organisations. The CPN seemingly followed the example set by the Soviet Union, where, after a very brief moment of sexual liberation in the early post-revolution years, conservative views about sexuality, the family and household organisation had prevailed. Considering the Dutch party’s refusal to address sex education and family planning, it is quite rema...

This chapter examines and compares the social and political history of the communist youth movement in Britain and the Netherlands between 1957 and 1968. It looks primarily at the histories of the British Young Communist League (YCL) and its Dutch equivalent, the Algemeen Nederlands Jeugdverbond (ANJV; ‘General Dutch Youth League’). The chapter details these organisations’ changing relationship with their respective communist parties as the Cold War began to thaw, and their quest for their own identity. It explores members’ successful and not-so-successful attempts to collaborate with non-communist radical youth on important political issues, such as nuclear disarmament, student rights, and the Vietnam War, in a bid to break through their social and political isolation.

Dutch and British communist families were connected with the outside world in many ways. They encountered non-communists at work, in school, in their neighbourhood, and through friends and extended family. Because the Dutch and British communist parties were so small, rank-and-file communists couldn’t live in a self-sufficient bubble and had to interact and get along with people who did not agree with their political ideas. Based on a series of interviews with 38 British and Dutch cradle communists who participated in an oral history project about communist family life, this chapter analyses the issues that arose in the context of these interactions. It discusses participants’ experiences in non-communist surroundings, such as their neighbourhood, school, and workplace, and explores their friendships and romantic relationships.

Based on a series of interviews with 38 British and Dutch cradle communists who participated in an oral history project about communist family life, this chapter explores communist home life and focuses on participants’ political and cultural upbringing. It shows the more practical ways in which family time was structured, before discussing parental prescriptions and aspirations. What kind of parents did Communist Party members want to be and were they inspired by Soviet ideology? Were their aspirations fundamentally different from those of non-communist working-class parents? Searching for answers to these questions, this chapter maps the theory and practice of a communist upbringing and examines the considerable contrast between the two. It specifically looks at gender roles, sexuality, pedagogical values, and morality.

This chapter examines and compares the social and political history of the communist youth movement in Britain and the Netherlands between 1969 and 1991. It looks primarily at the histories of the British Young Communist League (YCL) and its Dutch equivalent, the Algemeen Nederlands Jeugdverbond (ANJV; ‘General Dutch Youth League’). It explores these organisations’ roles in the feminist, anti-racist, and gay rights movements in the final two decades of their existence, and details their changing relationship with their respective communist parties as the Cold War came to an end.

Informed by oral history and memory studies, this chapter draws on a series of interviews with 38 British and Dutch cradle communists and is dedicated to the impact of the Second World War and its aftermath, and the events of 1956 – the year of Khrushchev’s secret speech and the Soviet invasion of Hungary – on the Dutch and British communist movements. This chapter particularly examines how cradle communists in the Netherlands and Britain experienced the contrast between the communist movement’s zenith during the Second World War and its nadir in 1956. Within this context, it discusses the Dutch communist resistance during the German occupation, parental war trauma and transgenerational communication, and the impact of anti-communist measures in Britain and the Netherlands on participants’ lives.

This chapter examines and compares the social and political history of the communist youth movement in Britain and the Netherlands between 1920 and 1956. It looks primarily at the histories of the British Young Communist League (YCL) and the Dutch Communistische Jeugdbond (CJB; ‘Communist Youth League’) and its post-Second World War successor the Algemeen Nederlands Jeugdverbond (ANJV; ‘General Dutch Youth League’). The chapter details these organisations’ relationships with their respective communist parties and explores the impact of the Class Against Class phase, the Popular Front strategy, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the entry of the Soviet Union into the war on the Allied side, and finally the Cold War on the popularity of these communist youth organisations.

This book documents communists’ attempts, successful and otherwise, to overcome their isolation and to connect with the major social and political movements of the twentieth century. Communist parties in Britain and the Netherlands emerged from the Second World War expecting to play a significant role in post-war society, due to their domestic anti-fascist activities and to the part played by the Soviet Union in defeating fascism. The Cold War shattered these hopes, and isolated communist parties and their members. By analysing the accounts of communist children, Weesjes highlights their struggle to establish communities and define their identities within the specific cultural, social, and political frameworks of the Cold War period and beyond.

In this field report I share my experiences of teaching an intergenerational oral history course I created as part of the Young Adult Literacy Program (YALP) in Brooklyn, New York. This workshop, which ran from mid-May to late June 2014, grew out of a—still ongoing—research project that focuses on the history of Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood and adjacent neighborhoods. The course combined the practical application of oral history techniques with theoretical analysis of the results. Students were interviewed about their experiences growing up in historically underserved areas and, in turn, interviewed older members of their respective communities to map change and continuity. The interviews served as a teaching tool for my students and as primary sources for my research project. Through being interviewed themselves, my students learned about the characteristics of good interviewing as well as the characteristics of being an effective source.

... in the light of the history of transportation, slavery, and migration, can fail to understand how the rift of separation, the" loss of identity," which has been integral to the Caribbean experience only begins to be healed when these forgotten connections are once more set in place. ...