Acclaimed journalist and artist Molly Crabapple has drawn and reported on stories from Guantanamo Bay, Syria, the West Bank, Iraqi Kurdistan and across the United States. With her powerful illustrations she has pushed the boundaries of visual reportage – and established an important place for art in hard news.
On the release of her memoir Drawing Blood, which intersperses testimony of her own artistic and journalistic engagement with full-colour illustrations, we welcome Molly Crabapple to the Frontline Club to reflect on recent projects and to share her personal insight into the use of art as a tool for better understanding and documenting current events. With US presidential primaries now firmly underway, she will discuss her ongoing work on topical home turf issues including policing and the justice system, as well as her experiences covering the effects of conflict across the Middle East.
Molly Crabapple is an artist, journalist, and author of the memoir, Drawing Blood. Called “an emblem of the way art can break out of the gilded gallery” by the New Republic, she has drawn in and reported from Guantanamo Bay, Abu Dhabi’s migrant labor camps, and in Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, the West Bank, and Iraqi Kurdistan. Crabapple is a contributing editor for VICE, and has written for publications including The New York Times, Paris Review, and Vanity Fair. She is the winner of a 2015 Front Page Award for her drawings of Aleppo for Vanity Fair, and was shortlisted for a Frontline Award in 2013. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art.
This event will be chaired by Natasha Lennard, a British-born, New York-based writer of news and political analysis, focusing on justice, power, biopolitics and dissent. She writes regularly for the Intercept, Fusion and Al Jazeera America, and has written for VICE News, The New York Times, Salon, The Nation and Politico, among others. She is editor-at-large at The New Inquiry journal.
Illustration: Molly Crabapple for VICE: ‘What Life is Like Inside the Besieged, War-Torn Syrian City of Aleppo’
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It is election year in the US and one man has dominated the headlines. Six months ago, the prospect of Donald Trump as presidential candidate might have been something to joke about but it is now looking increasingly like a reality. What does this mean for the Republican Party?
With the Republican race dominating much of the spotlight, what about the Democrats? Are we set to see the first female president in the White House? With primaries about to begin, we will be looking at the battles going on in both parties and who we might see come out on top.
What does the rise of Trump mean for politics in the US? We will be looking at the political landscape in the lead up to the November presidential election.
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Chaired by Michael Goldfarb, journalist author and broadcaster. He has reported for The Guardian, The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR and Global Post.
The panel:
Xenia Wickett is the head of the US Programme at Chatham House and the dean of the Academy for Leadership in International Affairs, Chatham House’s new leadership training initiative. Prior to this she was the executive director of the PeaceNexus Foundation and from 2005 to 2009 she was at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center.
Adam Brookes is an independent journalist and author based in Washington, DC. For many years, he reported for BBC News on American politics and the economy, with a special focus on defence and security. He contributed to the BBC’s coverage of three presidential elections – in ’04, ’06, and ‘12.
Peter Trubowitz is professor of international relations and director of the US Centre at the London School of Economics and associate fellow at Chatham House. Before joining the LSE, he was professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin. His most recent book is Politics and Strategy: Partisan Ambition and American Statecraft.
William Lowery is a New York qualified lawyer and works for an international law firm in London. He is the vice-chair of Republicans Overseas UK, an organisation that represents and promotes the interests of Americans living, working, and studying in the United Kingdom.
]]>After a devastating defeat in the midterm elections, which saw the Democrats lose control of the Senate, what can we expect from President Barack Obama as he enters his final two years in office?
Will we see a president stuck in an endless deadlock with the Republicans preventing him from moving forward, or will he attempt to use his final two years to take bold action?
With events in Ferguson, Missouri, highlighting the deep racial divides that still exist in the US, we will be asking what the legacy will be of the country’s first African-American president. Our panel will be taking a view of the political landscape and debating what Obama can achieve in the next two years.
Chaired by Matt Frei, Europe editor and presenter at Channel 4 News. Previously be was Washington correspondent and is author of Italy: The Unfinished Revolution and Only In America.
The panel:
Xenia Wickett is the project director of the US project and the dean of The Queen Elizabeth II Academy for Leadership in International Affairs at Chatham House. From 2001 to 2005, she served in the US State Department in numerous positions including in the Bureau of South Asia, the Bureau of Nonproliferation and the Homeland Security Group. After September 11, 2001 she was assigned to the Office of the Vice President (OVP) to work on homeland security.
Michael Goldfarb is a veteran journalist, and broadcaster. He has covered conflicts in the Balkans and Middle East and conflict resolution in Northern Ireland. His book Ahmad’s War, Ahmad’s Peace, about the Iraq War was a New York Times Notable. He has started his own production company making radio current affairs documentaries for the BBC.
Kim Ghattas is a BBC correspondent based in Washington covering global affairs. She was the BBC’s State Department correspondent from 2008 until 2013, traveling regularly with the Secretary of State. She is author of The New York Times best seller, The Secretary: A Journey with Hillary Clinton from Beirut to the Heart of American Power. She was previously a Middle East correspondent for the BBC and the Financial Times, based in Beirut.
Robert Carolina was elected chair of Democrats Abroad UK in 2011. He started his support of the Obama campaign in 2007, and went on to lead a number of Obama campaign efforts in the UK in 2008. He is a principal with Origin, a London-based international technology and intellectual property law firm.
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As Barack Obama enters the second year of his second and final term in office, he faces considerable foreign policy challenges. The US position on Syria and the controversy over the attack on the US embassy in Benghazi, Libya are weighing on the president. There is a notable attempt by the Obama administration to make a strategic pivot towards Asia and away from the Middle East.
Join us as we dissect Obama’s foreign policy ambitions, exploring the shifts in focus and how they are playing out. Will he achieve his second term goals? Can he successfully pull focus to Asia or will the conflict in Syria direct attention back to the Middle East?
The Obama administration is making considerable efforts to redefine American power, through domestic reforms that the president calls “nation-building at home” and substantial shifts in foreign policy. We will be looking more widely at the attempts to rebuild America’s global strength.
Chaired by author, journalist and broadcaster Michael Goldfarb. He has worked for NPR and the BBC, and has written for Global Post, the Guardian, The New York Times and The Washington Post.
The panel:
Kim Ghattas has been the BBC’s State Department correspondent since 2008, and travels regularly with the Secretary of State. She is author of the recently published The Secretary: A Journey with Hillary Clinton from Beirut to the Heart of American Power. She was previously a Middle East correspondent for the BBC and the Financial Times, based in Beirut. Her work has also appeared in TIME magazine, the Boston Globe, NPR, and The Washington Post.
Professor Michael Cox is founding co-director of LSE IDEAS and professor of International Relations at LSE. He has held appointments at The Queen’s University of Belfast, California State University at San Diego, The College of William and Mary in Virginia, the Department of International Politics, Aberystwyth, The Catholic University of Milan, the University of Melbourne, and the Centre for Defence and Strategic Studies in Canberra, Australia. He is general editor of two successful book series Rethinking World Politics and Cold War History. He is author, editor and co-editor of several books including The Rise and Fall of the American Empire: From Bush to Obama, US Presidents and Democracy Promotion, US Foreign Policy and Soft Power and US Foreign Policy.
Dana Allin, is senior fellow for US foreign policy and transatlantic affairs, and editor of Survival: Global Politics and Strategy at The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). He is professorial lecturer at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), of the Johns Hopkins University in Washington D.C., and adjunct professor of European studies at the SAIS Bologna Center. He is author and co-author of five books including, most recently, The Sixth Crisis: Iran, Israel, America, and the Rumors of War and Weary Policeman: American Power in an Age of Austerity.
Nick Schifrin is a foreign correspondent for ABC News based in London. Previously he was the ABC News Afghanistan-Pakistan correspondent and bureau chief based in both Kabul and Islamabad, from 2008 until 2012.
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In 1961 Wilbert Rideau was a nineteen year old African-American living in Louisiana, the deep south of segregated America. An eighth-grade dropout despaired by the dead-end and small-town future his life held for him he set out to rob a local bank. The robbery went very wrong and lead to Rideau killing a young white female bank teller, he was arrested and gave a full confession as an angry white mob gathered outside chanting ‘kill that nigger’. He was sentenced to death row.
The forty four years he spent behind bars form an extraordinary story through decades of racial unrest and monumental change, of how Rideau overcame insurmountable odds to redeem himself and to later be described as ‘the most rehabilitated prisoner in the country’.
He went on to edit the prison news magazine The Angolite the first prison publication to be nominated for a National Magazine Award. It was nominated seven times under his editorship. He also co-directed the documentary The Farm, which was nominated for an Oscar. He worked with prisoners and officers to improve the lives of his fellow inmates, lecturing and co-writing a prison text book on how to manage prisoners and meeting with disadvantaged groups to speak about prison life. Yet in spite of his tremendous efforts Rideau remained behind bars, whereas many with longer prison sentences and worse prison records were released sooner.
With the help of his wife Linda Labranche, Rideau’s murder conviction was reversed a third time in 2000 and he was found guilty of a lesser charge of manslaughter in January 2005. Award winning journalist Wilbert Rideau will be joining us at the Frontline Club in conversation with Afua Hirsch, the Guardian’s legal affairs correspondent to recount his extraordinary story and the work he now does educating people about the realities of the world behind bars.
]]>Following the release this weekend of 251,287 confidential United States embassy cables, this month’s First Wednesday debate will focus on the revelations of this latest leak from whistle-blower website WikiLeaks. We will be joined by:
WikiLeaks spokesperson Kristinn Hrafnsson;
Professor Colleen Graffy, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, US State Department and law professor, Pepperdine University;
James Ball a data journalist who has been working with WikiLeaks;
Sir Richard Dalton, associate fellow of the Middle East and North Africa programme at Chatham House;
The discussion will be chaired by author and broadcaster Tom Fenton.
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Two years since the White House changed hands, how has the American empire altered? Very little, argues Tariq Ali, apart from the mood music. Ali will be at the Frontline Club in conversation with Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst, Marwan Bishara, to discuss his new book The Obama Syndrome: Surrender at Home, War Abroad in which he slices through Obama-mania, demystifying the narrative arc of redemption.
Contrary to what the world hoped Obama symbolised; redemption of a racist history, the overcoming of adversity, and the hope of a better, fairer future. Ali argues the wind that drove Obama into the White House was really the immaculate symbiosis of big money and big politics.
In this dissection of Obama’s overseas escalation and domestic retreat, renowned author, filmmaker and international commentator Tariq Ali asks how the American empire has changed since Obama took control, with military activity in the Middle East more prevalent than during the Bush Era. The hopes aroused during Obama’s election campaign have rapidly receded: Obama’s failures are paving the way for a Republican surge, while his own supporters become increasingly despondent.
]]>As the US midterm elections approach we will be discussing their significance for Barack Obama’s Presidency.
What are the prospects of the Democrats losing their Senate majority altogether after the 2 November polls? What impact will it have on the remainder of President Obama’s term in office if his party loses control of the legislative branch to the Republicans?
Join us at the Frontline Club where we will be looking ahead to the midterm elections and the next two years for President Obama’s in the White House with congressional scholar, Professor Thomas Mann, an expert on campaigns, elections and the effectiveness of Congress.
Chaired by Michael Goldfarb, London correspondent for globalpost.com
With:
Bill Barnard, chair of Democrats Abroad UK;
Dr Thomas D. Grant, chair of Republicans Abroad UK;
Professor Robert McKeever, Dean of the Faculty of Law Governance and International Relations, London Metropolitan University, and author of Raw Judicial Power? The Supreme Court and American Society, The United States Supreme Court: A Political and Legal Analysis and lead author of (with Professor Philip Davies) of the major textbook Politics USA: third edition due out in 2011.
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What are the forces in play within the American political system and to what extent does their power and influence go beyond the presidency?
Are there forces at work that are so institutionally powerful that they can shape one administration after another irrespective of whether it is Republican or Democratic?.
In Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, America’s Invisible Government, and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years Russ Baker examines the connections between the Bush family; their presidencies, the military, the oil industry, Wall Street and the CIA.
Baker’s five year investigation goes further and leads him towards the conclusion that there are forces at work that will have implications for the current president, Barack Obama
Join us at the Frontline Club with Russ Baker and an expert panel to explore the implications of his investigation for the current president, Barack Obama, and his potential to impliment true reform.
With:
Russ Baker, award-winning investigative reporter and founder of whowhatwhy.com. He has written for the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, the Nation, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Village Voice and Esquire;
Michael Goldfarb, London correspondent for globalpost.com;
Godfrey Hodgson, previously Washington correspondent for The Observer, editor of Insight at the Sunday Times, anchor for Channel 4 News, foreign editor of the Independent and director of the Reuter Foundation Programme for Journalists at Oxford. Currently a fellow of the Rothermere American Institute at Oxford. Among others author of The Myth of American Exceptionalism and America in Our Time: From World War II to Nixon–What Happened and Why.
Chaired by Paddy O’Connell of BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House.
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In the second of our events to mark the first year of Barack Obama‘s presidency we will be examining his foreign policy.
Barack Obama was elected on a ticket of change but to what extent has the international agenda altered since the 44th President of the United States replaced George Bush in the White House?
His address to the Muslim world at Cairo University in June last year was lauded as a masterpiece of oratory and cultural sensitivity but what in practice has Barack Obama delivered when it comes to Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran as well as the War on Terror declared by his predecessor?
Discussion with Jim Sciutto, author of Against US, a book that chronicles the rise of anti-Americanism and Islamic extremism in the Arab world. Rest of panel to be announced. Enayat Fani, senior editor and presenter, BBC Persian Television; Zaki Chehab, author and journalist and editor of arabstoday.net; Davis Lewin, head of programmes at the Henry Jackson Society, a foreign policy think tank based in London
Moderator: Elizabeth Palmer, CBS News correspondent
Photo of US President Barack Obama meeting Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo last year by AP Photo/Gerald Herbert through a Creative Commons licence
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