Academic literature on the topic 'Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs'

This chapter examines how New Orleanians in the post-Katrina era have drawn upon African American–rooted parade traditions, especially the practice of second lining, to respond to what some have called the biopolitical order in New Orleans, particularly those aspects of it related to state and criminal violence. Some parades have been organized by long-established social aid and pleasure clubs and other traditional African American networks; some are the product of emergent cultural and political formations. Such acts may be viewed as improvised responses to a biopolitical order that is itself

Private clubs have existed for as long as people have desired to gather in groups to do things together. It has been suggested that private clubs (and their predecessors) date to the Roman baths but probably pre-date even those. It is doubtful that the Roman baths represented the first time people congregated in groups to socialize, discuss commerce, politics, or just engage in a mutually agreeable activity. Certainly, most agree that the ‘modern’ clubs (in the English speaking world) originated in England, were limited to ‘gentlemen’ and organized for social, political, business and/or pleasure reasons. The concept was then ‘exported’ along with ex-patriots all around the world. Clubs have since evolved to the point where they exist in countries around the world although they are embraced to a greater or lesser extent in different places. Examples of private clubs can be found in such countries as England (and the greater UK), Ireland, the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, South Africa, Switzerland, Hong Kong, India, Pakistan, Japan, Singapore, and the UAE. Perhaps no country has adopted the idea of clubs as much as the USA, where they have evolved into a veritable industry, are protected by law, and number into the thousands. Humans, being social creatures, long to spend quality time with others – ‘others’, historically, representing those of their own kind. Perhaps it is for this reason that clubs have, rightly or wrongly, developed a reputation for being discriminatory. People generally find benefits from spending time with others. These benefits may accrue in many forms, including personal, professional, and political.

There has been a weekly Sunday African-American second-line parade for 150 years in New Orleans--a diffused democratic street ritual of performativity enacted through dance, music, and stylin'. The main action focuses on the sponsoring Social Aid and Pleasure Club, who parade between the ropes with their hired brass-band, on-stage and for public consumption. Yet the so-called second-liners rolling and dancing outside the ropes provide the peak moments of aesthetic excellence in their claiming of interstitial spaces: on the sidewalks between the street and house-lines; on church-steps, atop truck beds or along rooftops; on porches, stoops, and billboards. Drawing on a living tradition of New Orleans African-American expressive culture, individuals display creative style as both personal pleasure and social invigoration. The physical gestures and non-verbal messages of this vernacular dance are here analysed through a series of images by second-line photographer Pableaux Johnson.

Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005, killing over 1,000 people and displacing over 1 million. As the rebuilding process began, musicians, Mardi Gras Indians, and Social Aid and Pleasure Club members began trickling back. Culture prevailed as politics failed. The life force of music and memory, determined to survive, came back to the shattered city. The hurricane wasn’t the only devastating force: the city had undertaken many urban development projects in Tremé throughout the second half of the 20^th century, demolishing historical areas and displacing people. New Orleans has also long suffered from government corruption, and several politicians were arrested throughout the 2000s. Yet hope and vibrancy abound. The 2014 funeral for Larry Bannock, Big Chief of the Golden Starhunters, drew a large gathering of black Indians in a magnificent cultural spectacle. Amidst much political and social controversy, Mayor Mitch Landrieu removed the Robert E. Lee statue from the city in 2017. As New Orleans begins its fourth century, it faces issues of gun violence, poverty, and gentrification, but opportunities from a flourishing digital economy, resurgent music scene, and cultural mecca as well. It is still the vibrant, diverse society composed of people whose roots lie across the world, whose resilience has been a rudder through the storms and violent upheavals throughout the centuries.

This chapter tracks the migration of a half million Arab migrants from the Ottoman Empire to the Americas between 1880 and 1914. Syrians and Mount Lebanese departed the Ottoman Middle East to plug themselves into the expanding capitalist economies of the post-abolition Atlantic world. Through labor migration, Syrians developed a transnational remittance economy that successfully confronted the peripheralization of the Arab eastern Mediterranean. Steamship, telegraph, and printing technologies facilitated the establishment of Syrian “colonies” (jalliyyat) in Argentina, Brazil, and the United States. Once abroad, Syrian migrants built social institutions that connected the Arab Atlantic across continents and linked the diaspora to its homeland. Fraternal societies, philanthropic clubs, mutual aid societies, and the Syrian diasporic press each contributed to this new public sphere, abetting Syrian commercial success and grabbing the attentions of the Ottoman state by the 1908 Young Turk Revolution.

This task assesses the following clinical skills: … ● Patient safety ● Communication with patients and their relatives ● Information gathering ● Applied clinical knowledge … Your consultant has asked you to speak to Agnieska Polanski aged 38 whose smear result has shown ‘severe dyskaryosis’, HPV positive. Your task is to: … ● break the news to Agnieska about the abnormal smear ● discuss the next stage of management (i.e. colposcopy and biopsy) ● answer any questions … You do not need to take a history. You have 10 minutes for this task (+ 2mins initial reading time). Please read the instructions for candidates and actors. This station is designed to test the candidate’s ability to break bad news in a sensitive and professional way. This case involves a patient who has a severely abnormal cervical smear result (with the possibility of early cervical cancer). The candidate explains the implications of such a smear and discusses the next step in management. Record your overall clinical impression of the candidate for each domain (e.g. should this performance be pass, borderline, or a fail. You are Agnieska Polanski, aged 38 years, and you have come to an outpatient gynaecology clinic (called a colposcopy clinic) to discuss your recent cervical smear result. You have a feeling that the smear might be abnormal because the secretary refused to discuss it with you on the phone and you received a very prompt appointment to see the doctor. You love children and work part time in a local nursery and after school club whilst you are studying for a NVQ level 3 childcare qualification. Your social life is great at the moment— you live with a very supportive and loving partner Lee and are planning to get married next year. Your partner and you have planned to have children and you will probably come off the pill just before your wedding (because at your age you don’t want to leave it too long but you don’t want to look huge in your wedding dress).

All of the contributors to this book are clearly in favor of community schools. We would like to see this movement grow rapidly or, as we often say, “go to scale.” This would mean that communities with high needs and low performance would be assisted in transforming their schools. The Children’s Aid Society (CAS) work is one of the streams that have come together to create a new field of full-service community schools. The CAS model has been strengthened by many adaptations throughout the country and overseas. A National Technical Assistance Center for Community Schools has been set up at Intermediate School (IS) 218 with facilities for orientation and training. More than 6,000 policy makers and practitioners from all over the world have taken the tour and observed the rich climate at this pilot school. The concepts of community schools do not necessarily sink in at first encounter; it sometimes takes a while for people to “get it.” The question often arises: Do you really expect the schools to do all of that? It is not well understood that the idea behind the community school movement is for schools to do less, not more! Partners such as CAS come into the building and take responsibility for health, social services, extended hours, and parent and community involvement. However, some school superintendents do get it; Thomas Payzant is a good example (see ch. 15 in this volume). Arne Duncan, head of the Chicago Public Schools, is another strong advocate: “We started with 20 community [school] centers this year [and] we want to add 20 each of the next five years so we will get up to 100 over five years. . . . [T]he Chicago School System cannot do this alone. . . . We have universities, local Boys & Girls Clubs, the YMCA’s, Jane Addams’ Hull House . . . helping to run our program with us.” The quest for appropriate space within schools for the core components is being addressed in large new school building initiatives around the country.