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NYartivist

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The REAL Mideast Peace Process

About me

Gender	Female
Industry	Arts
Occupation	Writer/performing artist/Teaching Artist
Location	New York, New York, United States
Introduction	Laura Schleifer created the word 'artivist' to describe her vocation as an artist-activist. A pro-intersectional veganarchist-eco-socialist writer, theater artist and educator, her work has spanned the globe, from the Middle East, where she performed for Palestinian and Iraqi children on a theater/circus tour, to China, where she taught literature, psychology, history, creative writing and drama to US-college bound Chinese students, to Nicaragua, where she taught English/drama, to performing her songs and monologues off-Broadway and arts mentoring NYC homeless and at-risk youth. Her original feature screenplay, The Feral Child, was a Sundance Screenwriters Lab finalist. She most recently taught courses on Israel and Palestine and on Utopianism at Wesleyan University's Green Street Arts Center. She is currently working on her first book, which deals with animal rights psychology and philosophy, for Vegan Publishers. She also speaks on a variety of subjects relating to the dialectical interconnections between human, animal, and earth liberation.
Interests	Literature, film, theater, politics, social justice, Palestine, pro-intersectional veganism, social ecology, intersectionality, media ecology, racial justice, economic justice, environmentalism, anti-war/anti-imperialism, decolonization, animal rights, sociology, social psychology, Jungian psychology, liberation & radical psychology, creative/expressive art therapy, cultural anthropology, sociology, philosophy, mythology, avant-garde music, visual art, cinema, drama, anarchism, educational theories, freeschooling, plants, animals, intentional communities, earthships, biomimicry, utopian and dystopian visions, Socialism, The Frankfurt School, Communalism, anarcho-Socialism, anarcho-communism, anarcho-feminism, direct democracy, and dismantling hierarchy in all its forms.
Favorite Movies	Dogville, Salo: 120 Days of Sodom, Theorema, Mama Roma, Melancholia, Sin Nombre, The Stepford Wives, The Witch, Embrace of the Serpent, Rashomon, Solaris, Amadeus, Lilya-4-Ever, Waltz with Bashir, Poison, Santa Sangre, The Holy Mountain, The Congress, Afghan Hound, The Karen Carpenter Story, As an Act of Protest, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, The Elephant Man, Eraserhead, All About Eve, Brazil, Soy Cuba, A Woman Under the Influence, Husbands, Confederate States of America, The Bicycle Thief, The Wickerman, Imitation of Life, Pi, Basquiat, The Shining, A Clockwork Orange, Full Metal Jacket, Casualties of War, The Crying Game, Dog Day Afternoon, Christiana F., The Color Purple, Camille Claudel, Mulholland Drive, The Believer, My Own Private Idaho, Mysterious Skin, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, The Brood, Cosmopolis, Dead Ringers, Repulsion, Rosemary's Baby, The 400 Blows, Tarnation, My Left Foot, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, 2001; Space Odyssey, Lolita, The Shining, Birdy, Frances, East of Eden, Marnie, The Birds, The Rope, Spellbound, The Wooden Camera, The Kid, Modern Times, The Great Dictator, Jekyll and Hyde (w/Spencer Tracy), The Man with the Golden Arm, Freaks, Eyes Without a Face, M, Metropolis, Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast, Raise the Red Lantern, Pink Floyd/ The Wall, Once Upon a Time in America, Killer of Sheep, Ed Wood, Panther Panchali, Rebel Without a Cause, Being John Malkovich, Heavenly Creatures, Ladybird, Ladybird, Kess, Nil by Mouth, Withnail &; I, How to Succeed in Advertising, Mary and Max, Two Women, Trainspotting, Welcome to the Dollhouse, In the Company of Men, I Want to Live!
Favorite Music	The White Stripes, Raconteurs, George Barnett, The Wytches, Palma Violets, Babyshambles/The Libertines, Blur, Graham Coxon, Gorillaz, Damon Albarn, Beck, Bloc Party, Orphans & Vandals, Mook, Vant, MGMT, BRMC, The Arcade Fire, Mystery Jets, Bright Eyes, Placebo, Spearhead, The Roots, Mos Def, At the Drive In, The Welfare Poets, Rage Against the Machine, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Tori Amos, Supergrass, Sleater-Kinney, Art Brut, Temple Pilots, Tame Impala. Of the past: Bowie, The Beatles, Dylan, T Rex, Etta James, Billie Holliday, Charlie Parker, Ornette Coleman, Dizzie Gillespie, John Coltrane, Edith Piaf, Pete Seeger, Joni Mitchell, Phil Ochs, Judy Garland, Patti Smith, Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd, The Kinks, Iggie & the Stooges, Ian Dury, The Clash, The Sex Pistols, NY Dolls, The Ramones, The Specials, The Jam, Nick Drake, Jeff Buckley, Kate Bush, Janis Joplin, Rolling Stones (with Brian Jones), Manic Street Preachers (with Richie Edwards), Splt Enz, Midnight Oil, The Reels, Nirvana, Madness, The Cure, early U2 and REM, Talking Heads, Devo, Tracy Chapman, The Smiths, Sinead O'Connor, Smashing Pumpkins, The Pixies, The Breeders, The Raincoats, Mission of Burma, Nina Simone, Robert Johnson, Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, Lucky Dube, The Last Poets, Mozart, Rachmaninov, Chopin and Tchaikovsky.
Favorite Books	Huxley, Orwell, Baldwin, Hesse, Kafka, Sartre, Rimbaud, Plath, Kerouac, Salinger, Steinbeck, Genet, Camus, Upton Sinclair, William Goldman, Saul Bellow, Gunther Grasse, Thomas Mann, Thomas Hardy, Ralph Ellison, Doris Lessing, Ursula K. LeGuin, Patrick Susskind, Jerzy Kosinski, Anthony Burgess, Nabokov, Milan Kundera, Oscar Wilde, Byron, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Isabelle Allende, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Giaconda Belli, Ariel Dorfman, Chinua Achebe, J.M. Coatzee, Edward Said, Octavia Spencer, Israel Horowitz, Sherman Alexie, Ray Bradbury, Margaret Atwood, Tom Robbins, Katherine Dunn (Geek Love), Madeleine L'Engle, John Kennedy Toole (Confederacy of Dunces), C.S. Lewis, Antoine De St. Exupery (The Little Prince), Sontag, Chomsky, Barbara Ehrenreich, Franz Fanon, Jonathan Kozol, Rushdie, Shirley Jackson, Flannery O'Connor, Kate Chopin...other books not written by these authors include: One Child, The Feminine Mystique, The Giver, A Brief History of Time, The Drama of the Gifted Child, Dumbing Us Down; The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsive Schooling, 'The Ecology of Freedom' and 'Post-Scarcity Anarchism', Murray Bookchin, 'Mutual Aid; A Theory of Evolution' and 'The Conquest of Bread' by Peter Kropotkin, 'Eternal Treblinka', 'An Unnatural Order; The Roots of Our Destruction of Nature', 'The Sexual Politics of Meat' Carol Adams.