American

by sepoy on October 29, 2006 · 8 comments

in imperial watch

I haven’t been able to work for any campaign this year. Did some phone banking. And am hoping to do some election-day moniter-y stuff. Or perhaps, I will just drive people to vote. Next elections, I will vote.

I don’t know if people still remember that Raed Jarrar was denied boarding on a plane because his tshirt had Arabic on it. It prompted many conversations but one argument that struck me was made by moacir – who focused on the Equal Protection amendment as opposed to the usual 1st amendment stuff.

With the help of Stephen Marlowe, Blake Wentworth, Prithvi Datta Chandra Shobhi, Sunit Singh, Ravikrisnha Reddy, moacir and I designed the following piece of hipster-protest.

{ 1 trackback }

Geography, Telecast » Blog Archive » T-Shirt Activism?
October 30, 2006 at 6:32 am

{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }

1 raed jarrar October 30, 2006 at 3:47 pm

great idea. I can help with the arabic writing, it neds some fixing.

send me an email. Thank you for your great work.

2 sepoy October 30, 2006 at 7:47 pm

raed: about the definite article for American in arabic. Actually, that was a decision made largely to distinguish between the urdu and the arabic in the farangi eye. orthographically, they would look too similar. so we decided to go

with the def. article in the arabic and non-gendered descriptor in urdu.

plus, the inside joke of an arabic reading of the text as “The American” was too delicious…

now, i wish i had thought of separating the m/f versions and i will def. do that.

Oh, and _you_ are the one doing all the good work. cheers, mate.

3 Quizman October 31, 2006 at 1:41 pm

Nice!

Meanwhile, you should really wear this shirt, both in the US and in Saudi Arabia. Remember what happened to the dude who said it?

4 farangi October 31, 2006 at 4:07 pm

Raed, Sepoy:

Why bother being all grammarian for us Farangis? You know you all (’s alphabets) look alike to us.

5 tsk October 31, 2006 at 7:11 pm

nothing in black? pssshhhhh…….

6 sepoy October 31, 2006 at 8:05 pm

Yeah, Joey. You are Punk.

7 Baraka November 28, 2006 at 1:32 pm

I wrote the mandatory protest letter.

I’m so glad you did something far more creative & beautiful.

Kudos,

B

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