The last time I was here, I didn’t have luxuries like fresh cheese. Wait - I was actually never in Morogoro or Tanzania before this trip, and yes – access to cheese is a reasonable …

With the absence of formal statehood for Somaliland, the imagination of a state might be easily lost-and yet, hope reigns. It is true that recognition is important for the majority of Somalilanders in the Diaspora. What is forgotten is that without the will and determination to build communities or a sense of belonging, recognition and its benefits are merely peripheral to the cause. Instead, the heart of the matter is precisely that-cultivating a place and home for a people too often characterized as stateless, fragile, mired in chaos and incapable of coming together for the greater good.

Every one has a theory on what it means to be Egyptian right now. Defiant, aggrieved, oppressed, tired, agitated, fighters,vehement, fearless, revolutionaries, ready. Few seem to see the long and difficult process that led to this …

Call-out for an online and printed zine about dealing with body/hair/size/fat phobia for and by Indigenous peoples and people of colour. The title is still a work in progress, but here you can find all the details on submitting & how to get involved.

For women of colour, shadeism is an ever-present reality of daily life. Four young girls detail their own struggles with the embedded discrimination of shadeism in this documentary: Shadeism.

Shadeism from Shadeism on Vimeo.
   

From backstage to front of house, feature contributor Jesse Newman, and photographer Daniel Kukla cover the S/S 2011 collection of Malaysian-born, New York based fashion veteran Zang Toi, during September’s New York Fashion Week.

Aakanksha Kapoor gives us a peek in to the Argentina Group Showcase on the last day of New York Fashion Week, September 16th 2010, at the Lincoln Center.
Inspiration from modern literature and polo, to nuns and deserts– this six designer showcase had it all.

As it happens, This Is Worldtown dropped by New York Fashion Week (NYFW) this month.
In the first of our coverage, feature contributor Shida Salehi of The Perfect Pairing, shares insights and images from the front row, at the NYFW debut show of Farai Simoyi, of Zimbabwean heritage, now making her dream come true in NYC.
The show took place at the Skylight West venue, Sept 13th 2010.

‘Homegrown’ is easily the production that stirred up the most controversy– and national attention– at this year’s Toronto indie theatre and arts festival, Summerworks.
Based on real events and experiences of the playwright Catherine Frid, ‘Homegrown’ centres around a seemingly unlikely friendship between the young man, Shareef Abdelhaleem, arrested and accused of terrorism in 2006 as part of the so-called ‘Toronto 18′, and, the lawyer/playwright, who is determined to separate the facts of the case from the secrecy, delays and media spin (easier said than done).

In November, 76 Tamil refugees escaped Sri Lanka on a rusty freighter. They arrived in Victoria, where they were met by RCMP and Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) officials, who promptly jailed them for three months on allegations of terrorism. It would be fully half a year before the CBSA would admit that it had never had any evidence.