##Reading

On the academic side of things:

• The 2009 classic “Suspending Damage – A Letter to Communities” by Eve Tuck, where, among other things, she discusses theories of change. (More on that below.)
• This new education research piece by Casey Wong, “The Wretched of the Research: Disenchanting Man2-as-Educational Researcher and Entering the 36th Chamber of Education Research.” This one is behind a big, thick paywall.

On the non-academic side of things:

• California’s Novel Attempt at Land Reparations from The New Yorker.
• What exactly is the “system” that we are fighting?, from Roar, which includes this lucid paragraph to define “The System”:

The modern state — with a capital S — does not refer to individual states, but rather to the entire system they form a part of: the political, social, economic and cultural order we live under, including capitalism, patriarchy, imperialism and racial and gender hierarchies, all working together as a single, complex mechanism. We can think of it as a vast operating system for ordering and controlling functions and relations among human society, economy, populations, and the natural world, analogous to a digital operating system like Windows, Unix or MacOS.

##Writing

I’m starting an essay about theories of change in activist eduction research. It will be a shorter piece; I think I can finish in before July. This week I did a lot of iterative drawing and sketching in different colors about the piece. I’m finding this is a better way to start a new piece than putting linear words on a screen. Here’s a peak into the notebook:

In this process, I’m usually capturing stray thoughts that will need to go somewhere, writing out anchor ideas and quotations, making lots of arrows about relationships, and redoing all of this page after page to refine things. The colors have a loose meaning too.

##Listening

Mixes I’m playing

• Some ambient sounds by low light mixes. Nice for coming down off a busy day.
• Dubstates & Dreamstates, also by low light mixes.
• Jazzy house by DJ Tobi Grimm.

Music by Friends

Horray! There’s a new record label in Detroit called Papaya Records. It’s founded by my friend Eastside Jon, and the first two releases came out this week. Both releases are by local stars, Dez Andres and Hazmat Live. Click on the pics to take a listen. Dancing shoes on.

New discoveries

Descendants of Cain by KA. Dark, earthy, sorrowful writing over melodic loops. Most songs don’t even have percussion in the beat. I’ve been playing this album over and over.

Records I’m spinning & sampling

Dubby cover version of Evelyn “Champagne” King “Love Come Down.”