Press Room
4/9/09 Albany Times Union "Black Panther Robert Hillary King tells his story"
By Tom Keyser
Robert Hillary King spent nearly three decades in solitary confinement at the notorious Angola state prison in Louisiana. As a member of the Black Panther Party, he and two party members became nationally known as the Angola 3 — political prisoners who spent decades in solitary confinement for, they contend, organizing prisoners to improve conditions.
King, 66, will speak Friday at The Sanctuary for Independent Media in Troy in support of his book, "From the Bottom of the Heap: The Autobiography of Black Panther Robert Hillary King" (PM Press, 224 pages, $24.95).
After becoming a Black Panther in prison and organizing inmates, according to the book's dust jacket, "prison authorities beat him, starved him and gave him life without parole after framing him for a second crime. He was thrown into solitary confinement, where he remained in a 6-by-9-foot cell for 29 years as one of the Angola 3. In 2001, the state grudgingly acknowledged his innocence and set him free."
3/20/2009 Albany Times Union "Iraqi Children make art from war"
By Danielle Furfaro
The three Iraqi teenage girls show up at the library wearing red and black. The red, they explain, symbolizes the blood of dead Iraqis. The black represents the tears and sadness of their country.
Shahad Jassim, 18, Wead Jassim, 16, and Tethkar Ahmad, 15, are refugees.
They fled their war-torn country with their families within the past two years. They fled the scourge of dead bodies in the streets and bombed-out buildings. They fled what they felt would be their own certain deaths.
Now living in Albany, they aim to use art to educate the world about atrocities happening in Iraq and to express their hopes for peace. When they speak about their homeland, they can't help but cry. Their art gives them a voice, and it seems to help. At least a little.
2/12/2009 Troy Record "Upstate Girls"
‘Upstate Girl’ finds voice in photography
By Bob Goepfert The Record
Brenda Ann Kenneally has an addictive personality. That addiction has produced "Upstate Girls: What Became of the Collar City," which opens Saturday at the Sanctuary for Independent Media, 3361 Sixth Ave. in Lansingburgh. It is a photographic study of six young women living in North Troy. The images are stark, real and disturbing as they chronicle the lives of the powerless and disenfranchised. Though fraught with social, political and economic implications, the images are visually hypnotizing as they capture the lives of innocence lost.
2/8/2009 Daily Gazette "Exhibit looks at women in poverty"
Exhibit looks at women in poverty
By Sara Foss
TROY — A young woman named Dana Aftab wanders through a cramped hallway, gazing at blank white walls that will soon be covered with pictures. Dozens of photographs lie on the floor.
“Brenda, how can I help you?” Aftab asks.
Without hesitation, Brenda Ann Kenneally replies, “Hang up your photos.”
“Is there any specific order you want?” Aftab asks.
“However you want,” Kenneally tells her. “It’s your life.”
Aftab takes a plastic sleeve filled with photographs and begins tacking them to the wall. An Albany native who now lives in Brooklyn, Kenneally has spent the past five years photographing Aftab, her sisters and mother and other women who live in Troy. She has taken hundreds of pictures of birthday parties and births and homecomings from prison.
