Media Diversified
Foregrounding marginalised voices
Robert Kazandjian is an educator and writer. He works with vulnerable children in North London. His writing seeks to challenge inequality, in all its guises. He has previously written for Ceasefire Magazine on racism in Israel, gender politics and hip hop music, and the necessity of Armenian Genocide recognition. He blogs poetry at makemymark.tumblr.com. He cites Douglas Dunn, Pablo Neruda, James Baldwin and Nas as major influences. He tweets from @RKazandjian
10 books selected by Robert Kazandjian If we are truly serious about expressing solidarity and understanding with people, then we need to know their stories. But knowing their stories is not enough. We need to hear their voices. Augustown by Kei Miller Augustown is my favourite kind of novel; super specific and at the same… Read More
by Robert Kazandjian The identity I was constructing for myself collapsed around my L.A-Gear-clad feet when I was six or seven. My friend Kirilos arrived from Sudan, and joined our school. The teacher, encouraged by my proud declarations of Egyptian heritage, told me to speak ‘your language’ with him. ‘Parev, inch’pes es?’ (Hello, how are… Read More
by Robert Kazandjian My dad often tells the story of the only time he saw his own father cry. In early February of 1958, six-year-old Armenag Kazandjian sat at the kitchen table of his family’s Cairo flat, enjoying a bowl of Fūl. My grandad, Vahe, sipped aromatic coffee and read the newspaper. My dad remembers… Read More
by Robert Kazandjian Black Lives Matter. Today, three weeks after 18 year old Mzee Mohammed’s death in police custody in Liverpool, five years and one day since Mark Duggan’s murder by armed police officers in Tottenham, Black British activists are undertaking bold collective action. Organiser Joshua Virasami told the BBC that black people should unite… Read More
by Robert Kazandjian On 23rd June, Cuban flyweight boxer Robeisy Ramirez defeated Kenyan boxer Benson Gicharu to qualify for the Olympic Games in Rio, ensuring that for the first time since 2004, Cuba would have a full complement of boxers at the Games. For someone like me, who has dedicated my best years to the… Read More
by Robert Kazandjian I wrote last week that we had sleepwalked into a nightmare. 17,410,742 people have voted to preserve that nightmare, insisting that Britain reject its membership of the European Union. Half of you don’t like us, that’s the bottom line. Racism and xenophobia triumphed. Had we viewed a Brexit as a legitimate… Read More
by Robert Kazandjian Jo Cox, Labour MP for Batley and Spen, partner of Brendan Cox and mother of two young children, was murdered in the street by a fascist terrorist. We have sleepwalked into a nightmare. Jo Cox’s murder was the inevitable, tragic consequence of a steady flow of fascistic bile that has permeated the… Read More
by Robert Kazandjian Britain’s disregard for black bodies is centuries old, from John Hawkins’ maiden voyage to the Guinea Coast in 1562 and subsequent enslavement of 500 Africans1,which began British involvement in the transatlantic slave trade, to Sarah Reed’s brutalisation by a Metropolitan Police constable in 2012 and her death while in the care of… Read More
by Robert Kazandjian Seven days ago, without consulting a public who have grown increasingly conscious of the British state’s duplicitous “humanitarian interventions”, 397 of our elected representatives voted to add British bombs to the deluge raining down upon the Syrian people. This is our perverse democracy in action. And let us be clear, in… Read More
by Robert Kazandjian ‘I became interested in genocide because it happened so many times. It happened to the Armenians, then after the Armenians, Hitler took action.’ – Raphael Lemkin On July the 11th, Muslim Bosniaks commemorated the twentieth anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide. The Bosnian War raged as the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia… Read More
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