Global

The Extreme Court may have struck down affirmative action, but nevertheless, 2023 is shaping
up to be a superlative year for debuts and revivals of Black-themed dramas treading the boards of
Los Angeles’ stages. This bumper crop currently electrifying L.A.’s theater scene include: June
Carryl’s police brutality two-hander Blue (see https://www.roguemachinetheatre.org/); Katori
Hall’s Dr. King one-acter The Mountaintop (see: https://www.geffenplayhouse.org/); plus an
adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth starring African American thesp Max Lawrence in the title
role (in repertory at https://theatricum.com/).
Now we can add to this already auspicious list Will Power’s thought-provoking, perplexing
Fetch Clay, Make Man, directed by Debbie Allen. As the newly minted Muhammad Ali (Ray
Fisher, reprising the role he first played a decade ago) prepares for his 1965 rematch with ex-
champ Sonny Liston, the heavyweight champion summons Stepin Fetchit (Edwin Lee Gibson) to

Numbers can be dehumanizing. However, when placed in their proper context, they help to illuminate wider issues and answer urgent questions, such as why is Occupied Palestine at the threshold of a major revolt. And why Israel cannot crush Palestinian resistance no matter how hard, or violently, it tries.

 That's when numbers become relevant. Since the start of this year, nearly 200 Palestinians have been killed in the Occupied West Bank and Gaza. Among them are 27 children.

 If one is to imagine a heat map correlating the towns, villages and refugee camps of the Palestinian victims to the ongoing armed rebellion, one will immediately spot direct connections. Gaza, Jenin and Nablus, for example, paid the heaviest price for Israeli violence, making them the regions that resist most.

I was reading about bumble bees recently — specifically, their looming demise, thanks to human greed and ignorance — and started thinking about the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. We should have eaten from it!

Well, we did, but then apparently upchucked everything we learned and, in the process, fooled ourselves into thinking that technology has allowed us to recreate the Garden of Eden from which we’d been banned. You might call it the Garden of Capitalism, in which humans can take what they want without consequences, forever and ever and ever. This seems to be the myth at the core of dominant global culture.