Shakespeare the humanitarian

The following blog post was adapted from an article that appeared in THE DAY.

Shakespeare intervenes in refugee crisis

THE DAY, Wednesday, 16 March 2016

http://theday.co.uk/arts/shakespeare-intervenes-in-refugee-crisis

This is the only known script in Shakespeare’s hand...

The British Library has digitised a powerful speech in Shakespeare’s own handwriting: a heartfelt plea for the humane treatment of refugees. Does the bard have an answer to Europe’s crisis?

Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, is sticking by her welcoming policy for refugees, despite the mounting resistance from EU citizens. And yesterday she found support from an unexpected source: England’s most famous writer and beloved bard, William Shakespeare.

A powerful speech appealing to the humanity of a xenophobic crowd has surfaced as if from beyond the grave - or rather, the British Library has digitised the handwritten document in time for this year’s anniversary of Shakespeare’s death.

Scholars believe that the speech was inserted by Shakespeare into a play about Sir Thomas More by less interesting writers, and commentators were quick to point out that it has a spooky affinity with today’s refugee crisis.

The scene of the play takes place on 1 May 1517 - a day which later became known as ‘Evil May Day’ (cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_May_Day). French, Belgian and Italian immigrants had travelled to London to escape various religious and political wars in Europe. Inflamed by an angry speech calling on ‘Englishmen to cherish and defend themselves,’ a violent mob of working-class apprentices marched through central London, where many of the foreigners were living.

Sir Thomas More, who at the time was under-sheriff of London, was sent to calm them. He asks them to imagine the ‘wretched strangers’ with ‘babies at their backs’, ‘plodding to the ports and coasts for transportation’. It is a description that could be taken straight from today’s shores in Europe, which saw hundreds of thousands cross the Mediterranean in search of asylum last year.

More then asks the crowds to put themselves in the strangers’ shoes. He asks: “How would you like to be treated in their place?” And he finishes with a scornful summary of the crowd’s ‘mountainish inhumanity’ (i.e. big as a mountain or perhaps referring to the supposedly backward mentality of people who live in mountainous regions?).

Thomas More

‘It is striking and sad just how relevant it seems to us now considering what is happening in Europe,’ said the British Library’s curator, Zoe Wilcox. ‘At its heart it is really about empathy.’

'Your great trespass'

This a powerful speech, say some, but let’s not get carried away. The circumstances of 16th-century England were strikingly different to Europe today. There was no European Union, no Daesh targeting civilians. There are 50 million more people in England and Wales now than in 1500. Political decisions should not be dictated by a long-dead writer from Warwickshire.

This is wilfully missing the point, argue others. Of course Shakespeare is not directly addressing Nigel Farage. But his words prove that this is an issue that returns throughout history. It is easy to fear outsiders, but xenophobia is always proved wrong as a culture adjusts to its new arrivals. We must remember our common humanity - and no one is better at reminding us than Shakespeare.

Armada portrait now belongs to the British nation!

Click HERE to read an article from The Guardian!

Find out more: click HERE!
Royal Museums Greenwich: click HERE!
Wikipedia article on the three versions of the portrait: click HERE!
Spectacular restoration completed!
Long-lost overpainted portrait reveals young Queen Elizabeth I

Manny Diaz recalls his childhood...

The following story was taken from the StoryCorps website (click HERE to listen to it!):

"We lived at 37 West 114^th Street in a five-story tenement house each story had two apartments. So there was like 10 families in that building. And that building had Italian families, had one black family, had Jewish families, had Puerto Rican families. This was during the Depression time.

There was no surplus food program in those days but somehow the army used to send in trucks now and then and dump food on the street or on the sidewalk under (?) the culvert¹. And people would come, you know, pick up apples or corn or whatever. And then the day that we all looked forward to was the day when the trucks came in and dumped grapes. Oye! Oye! The grapes are here! The grapes are here! Everybody used to run with baby carriages, with pushcarts, with pillow cases to pick up the grapes that were dumped by the US Army trucks. And then we would bring those grapes home. And this was during prohibition, mind you, and we would put the grapes in the bathtub, crush them, and then go to Woolworth’s on 116^th street where you could pick up the burlap² bag to cover the grapes, the yeast, the sugar. So we would cover this bathtub and let it sit for about a month, which is what it takes to ferment, you know? And then… Oh, you wonder what happens to people that wanna take a bath? Well, in this building there’s a kind of a mutual assistance society. Everybody helped everybody else so you just, if your bathtub is incapacitated for whatever reason, you just go to your neighbor and say: “Can I use your bathtub?” and: “Sure!”

This was, uh, I mean we produced wine in the middle of the depression and we would sell a quart of wine for 25 cents and we would give wine to our neighbors. In exchange we would get other things from them. For instance, there was an Italian seaman I think on the 3^rd floor who used to be gone for a month or so and he’d come back with a wad³ of money. Instead of just buying pork chops for his family he would buy a whole pig. And then we’d go up to the rooftop and roast that pig. And everybody ate from that building with that pig so everybody ate the pig from the Italian guy and everybody drank the wine from the Diaz family. In a sense that’s how you survive through a depression, you know, when, when everybody’s poor but nobody feels poor."

¹ A culvert is a structure that allows water to flow under a road, railroad, trail, or similar obstruction from one side to the other side. Typically embedded so as to be surrounded by soil, a culvert may be made from a pipe, reinforced concrete or other material.

² A strong, rough fabric that is used mostly for making bags.

³ A thick roll or folded pile of paper money or papers (a large amount of money).

Questions/to do:

1) Using Google maps, find 37 West 114th Street in New York City. What is the neighbourhood called? What Borough is it in?

2) What was the Great Depression?

3) What was it like, according to Manny Diaz, living in the area?

4) Research facts and figures about the area during the Great Depression.

5) What is it like living in the neighbourhood today? You may use these links to help you:

>http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/31/nyregion/historic-randolph-houses-in-harlem-finally-set-for-renovation.html

>http://www.nydailynews.com/news/harlem-block-crime-article-1.992813

6) Describe and comment this photo:

Harlem tenement¹ kitchen, 1930s

¹A tenement is a substandard multi-family dwelling in the urban core, usually old and occupied by the poor.

7) Describe and comment this photo:

1937 photo by Margaret Bourke-White

"London is the world’s greatest city; we cannot sit back and do nothing about the rough sleeping crisis."

The text below was adapted from an article published in The Guardian, dated Sunday 17 July 2016 (click HERE), written by Sadiq Khan.

Close partnership and innovative approaches are needed to curb the rising numbers of homeless people inherited from the Conservative administration of London. I am committed to tackling London’s housing crisis in whatever form it takes – and the rise in rough sleeping over recent years is a growing source of shame that we have a moral imperative to stop.

People end up on the street for many different reasons – leaving care or hospital, problems with debt, unemployment, mental health, family breakup – and so the help they need is varied too. We can support some rough sleepers, particularly when they have become homeless recently, through programmes such as No Second Night Out.

In more entrenched (i.e. long-term) cases regarding homeless people, a more intensive intervention may be needed, as a one-size-fits-all (i.e. one solution to all problems) approach does not always work. We can promote innovative approaches by making our funding of agencies that help homeless people conditional on these agencies achieving results – an approach that has proved successful in helping people access and remain in stable accommodation.

But, crucially, we need not only to help rough sleepers on the street, but also to prevent people from becoming homeless in the first place – and that’s why I’ll be launching a No Nights Sleeping Rough taskforce with prevention central to its approach. This taskforce will bring together all the agencies to tackle rough sleeping as we will only make a difference through close partnership. The taskforce will set the strategic priorities for services the mayor provides, come up with proposals for new initiatives and projects, and lobby government for the changes we need.

A Labour mayor and government dramatically reduced rough sleeping at the start of this century and I’m determined we’ll do it again. Making a difference won’t be easy, but I will lead the way.

To do:

1) Listen to the teacher read and comment the article, noting pronunciation, vocabulary and expressions, and summarising the main points of the article.

2) Read the following information on The Guardian:

The Guardian is a British national daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821. It is edited by Katharine Viner. It is part of an international media group which includes The Observer (a British Sunday paper) and The Guardian Weekly (an international roundup of articles from various papers). In 2013, The Guardian's print edition had an average daily circulation of 189,000 copies, behind The Daily Telegraph and The Times, and ahead of The Independent. The newspaper's online edition was the fifth most widely read in the world as of October 2014, with over 42.6 million readers.  In the UK, its combined print and online editions reach 9 million readers. The Guardian was named newspaper of the year at the 2014 British Press Awards for its reporting on government surveillance.

3) Answer the following question:

What type of people read The Guardian do you think?

4) Translate the title.

5) Read the following information about Sadiq Khan:

Sadiq Aman Khan (born 1970) has been Mayor of London since May 2016, succeeding Conservative Party Mayor Boris Johnson. Khan was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Tooting from 2005 to 2016. He is a member of the Labour Party. His election as Mayor of London made him the city's first ethnic minority mayor, and the first Muslim to become mayor of a major Western capital. As mayor he has limited charges on London's public transport and focused on uniting the city's varied communities. He was an active supporter of the unsuccessful Britain Stronger in Europe campaign to retain the United Kingdom's membership of the European Union.

6) Question:

Why does Khan describe London as “the world’s greatest city”?

7) Read the following information about the Labour Party:

The Labour Party is a centre-left political party in the United Kingdom. Growing out of the trade union movement and socialist parties of the nineteenth century, the Labour Party encompasses a diversity of ideological trends from strongly socialist to moderately social democratic (social democracy includes the belief in collective responsibility for social welfare). Founded in 1900, the Labour Party overtook the Liberal Party as the main opposition to the Conservative Party in the early 1920s, forming governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and from 1929 to 1931. Labour later served in the wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after which it formed a majority government under Clement Attlee. Labour was also in government from 1964 to 1970 under Harold Wilson and from 1974 to 1979, first under Wilson and then James Callaghan. The Labour Party was last in government from 1997 to 2010 under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Having won 232 seats (out of 650) in the 2015 general election, the party is the Official Opposition in the Parliament of the United Kingdom. In September 2015, Jeremy Corbyn was elected Leader of the Labour Party.

8) Question:

Why does Khan want to solve the problem of rough sleeping?

9) Read the following information about sleeping rough in London:

According to the CHAIN (Combined Homelessness and Information Network) database, 8,096 people slept rough at some point in London during 2015/16, an increase of 7 per cent compared to 2014/15 (though these figures are probably an underestimate). 57 per cent are aged between 26 and 45 years with 1 in 10 under 25 and 11 per cent over 55. 43% have problems due to alcohol, 31% have problems due to drugs, and 46% have mental health problems. 32% had served time in prison. 41% are UK nationals, 37% are from Central and Eastern European countries, 2% are refugees from Eritrea and Somalia. About 15% of rough sleepers in London are women (many have been physically attacked, verbally abused and sexually assaulted). Reasons men end up on the streets include: relationship breakdown, substance misuse, and leaving an institution (prison, care, hospital, etc.). Reasons women end up on the streets include physical or mental health problems and escaping a violent relationship. Social causes include: high levels of poverty, unemployment, the inadequate benefits system, lack of affordable housing and poor management of social (council) housing. Emergency accommodation includes: cold weather or winter shelters, night shelters, emergency hostels, nightstop schemes for young homeless people aged 16 to 25, women's refuges for women fleeing domestic violence.

10) Questions:

> What do you think the consequences of sleeping rough are on individuals?

> What do you think the consequences for London are of having people sleeping rough?

> Is there a problem of people living on the streets in the area you live?

> What solutions to solving the problem of homelessness can you come up with?

Further research:

> Crisis (homelessness charity) website

> Article from The Mirror: There are 10 empty homes for every homeless family in England