Art, activism and hair come together in photo and film exhibit

Hair stylist and community organizer Shaina Machlus (left) with her mother

"The reason I decided to be a cosmetologist is that I realized you could do some serious community organizing through hair," Shaina Machlus said before a packed house at the Interactive Resource Center on Friday evening.

Machlus, a Guilford College graduate and professional hair stylist who gives free haircuts to people experiencing homelessness at the Interactive Resource Center, is the instigator of the Hair Do Project.

A crowd diverse in age, race and income level representing the intersecting worlds of activism, art and cosmetology gathered at the Interactive Resource Center for the a photo exhibit, documentary premiere and panel discussion on Friday.

Machlus later explained during the panel discussion that she envisioned the project as a way to draw out personal stories from people based on their experiences with hair and to string them together into a social history that will empower collective transformation.

"If you want to have a nice social experiment, ask them about their hair," she said. "If people don't want to talk about anything else, they'll talk about their hair, whether they have it or not."

Ed Whitfield

Interview subjects seated in a barber chair (or standing behind it) discuss how a hair cut affects their self-image, and builds self-confidence to go to a job interview or build relationships with others in a documentary made by Kevin Smith. One woman talks about getting her hair cut shorter to prepare for the hair loss following a cancer diagnosis, and several interview subjects, including Machlus, talk about their worst haircuts.

A celebratory mood highlighting a sense of collaboration pervaded the unveiling of the Hair Do Project, which received funding from the NC Humanities Council. 

"I'm so happy to be part of a Southern city that's so ripe to become so much more equitable, engaged and communal," Machlus said.

Fund 4 Democratic Communities joins internet blackout to protest SOPA

As major sites like Wikipedia and Google "go black" by blocking some or all of their content today to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act (SOPA and PIPA), the Greensboro-based Fund 4 Democratic Communities has joined in.

Above, a screen shot of the homepage for F4DC's website, www.f4dc.org.

"F4DC has joined the internet blackout protest over the SOPA and PIPA bills in Congress," said a statement on the group's Facebook page today. "See our website for more information and how you can voice your opposition to these bills, which threaten free speech online."

Proponents of the bill say it would protect against internet piracy and copyright infringement, while opponents say the wording of the acts is vague and would pave the way for widespread censorship of the internet including popular social media and networking sites that many say have fueled popular and dissident movements worldwide.

Whitfield responds to legal opinion on minimum wage initiative

Proponents of raising Greensboro’s minimum wage go before the city council tonight as the city clerk presents an opinion by the legal staff that the petitions are “insufficient.”

Ed Whitfield, a member of the Greensboro Minimum Wage Committee, contests Assistant City Attorney Terry Wood’s opinion on the initiative in a formal response posted last night on the Greensboro Minimum Wage Campaign blog.

In Whitfield’s view, the council has some latitude to decide whether to accept the city clerk’s certification of insufficiency, and should review the matter because of confusion surrounding which municipal election should be used to set a 25 percent threshold. (For a citizen initiative to be put on the ballot the number of signatures must equal 25 percent of the number of people who voted in the last election.)

Whitfield: “We hope that the city council would consider using their power under Sec. 2.73 of the city charter to clarify this initiative system so that everyone will know what election will be used in determining what constitutes ‘25% of voters who voted in the last previous election’ referred to in the law.”

Whitfield also casts doubt on an assertion by Wood that municipal action to raise the minimum wage would violate the North Carolina constitution’s prohibition against municipalities regulating labor. If the initiative is truly unconstitutional, Whitfield’s letter suggests, then the city is already in violation of the constitution.

Whitfield: “We would also like to understand the ability of our city to offer huge incentives to individual corporations if it cannot be involved in regulating ‘labor, trade, mining and manufacturing.’”

Finally, he argues that Wood’s interpretation of the constitution is selective, and that federal and state labor laws merely set the floor, not the ceiling, on wages. Whitfield quotes the relevant statute as also saying, “The fact that a state or federal law, standing alone, makes a given act, omission or condition unlawful shall not preclude city ordinances requiring a higher standard of conduct or condition.”