Friday, August 15

Help for Italy's Roma / Stinti / Zigane

I know a lot of people who like to go out dancing to "gypsy jazz."

I think I'm going to solicit some of their favorite area musicians to donate time and see if I can put on some sort of "all gypsy jazz music" dance for them--that is, if they pay up. Want another song? Pay up!

I'm not quite sure if Opera Nomadi is the right organization to send the money to.

But with Italian gypsies having to get fingerprinted, citizen or not, when other Italian citizens and non-citizens don't, and with non-citizen Italian gypsies having to face 133% the sentence length an Italian citizen would, and with all the violence being committed by non-gypsies against gypsies (again, citizen or not) in Italy...I want to send a big chunk of change to help Italian gypsies fight for due process and a decent life where they live.

It takes money to buy printer ink, A4 paper, envelopes, stamps, and motorcycle gas (I imagine many gypsies don't have mailing addresses, and that lots of organization for direct action would happen by going to camps and telling people). (See the paragraph w/ the text, "the uninspiring, boring, tedious, and nerve wracking work of building a community" in it here.)

The fundraiser might be crazy and might not work. But what if it does? I'll bet I could convince dozens of gypsy jazz bands to do the same thing all around the continent.

That'd be so cool.

I just hope I can find an organization that's into the stamps-and-letters-and-motorcycle-visits type of organizing.

Opera Nomadi is the biggest in Italy, but I don't know if it's the best.

3 comments:

Miriam said...

Very commendable! how do you find these causes? Or are you somehow connected to Italy? Gypsies?

Katie said...

I think I either saw it on Lenin's Tomb or on one of the bigger social justice blogs by a woman of color.

Anyway, ain't commendable till I do it. ;-P

Uncle Robot said...

I just started going to gypsy jazz night in SF. Can you tell what kinds of dancing people do to gypsy jazz? Is there one that works best? Please email me at analitic (at) gmail (dot) com.

Thanks so much!
Nathan

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