Get our most popular stories once a week!
Hey Aaron,
Thanks for your insightful post. Good analysis as always, considering..."
Posted by Tomas Palermo in Philly Students Front and Center
olympicrange posted in Who is Bill Ayers?
vitablue posted in From Slingshots to Solutions: Goals for Organizers
rl122176@yahoo.com posted in Who is Bill Ayers?
|
Domestic Crusader
The presidential candidates don't argue over whether it is right to bomb Muslim countries, but rather over whether they’ve chosen the right Muslim country to bomb. A special interest group commanded by Israeli ex-officials unloaded 28 million copies of an anti-Muslim hate film in swing states to titillate idle exurban imaginations. The hammer of the “war on terror” is wielded against an ever-expanding pool of people who conveniently appear as wayward nails.
As these ominous realities unfold before their eyes, some American Muslims appear resigned and fatalistic.
Wajahat Ali is not among them. The 27-year-old California-born Muslim with Pakistani roots takes an aggressive but level-headed approach to politics and the arena of ideas. An attorney, activist, writer, journalist, and playwright, Wajahat aspires to the dynamism and versatility of Muslim scholars and poets of past ages.
“There’s no rule that say you only have to be one thing,” he says, emphasizing the need for American Muslims to become valuable leaders within their own communities—and to make their own communities leading examples of Muslim values: tolerance, justice, and scholarship.
“Prophet Muhammad said, ‘Seek knowledge, even if you have to go as far as China.’ You want to be part of a renaissance, you want to be part of a cultural, spiritual, intellectual revolution, where you revive Islamic scholarship,” Wajahat says.
Read the rest of the post »
9/11 Millennials: Are We Smarter?
On the seventh anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and The Pentagon, much of the media coverage tends to hover on the same question year in and year out: "Are we safer?" A simple Google search reveals that media outlets from the conservative Heritage Foundation, to CBS News to the progressive Huffington Post have been pondering this query every year consecutively since the tragedy. The question I don't hear being asked: "Are we smarter?"
To answer this question, we should look at the 9/11 generation, otherwise known as Millennials, and ask what the net result in seven years has been on their lives as Americans, and on their understanding of the world. The response will probably be different depending on if you talk to youth from domestically established families versus young people who are new immigrants or the children of immigrants. As a recent Colorlines article describes, the collective reaction to 9-11 sharpened the immigrant debate and many hard working Americans of color were objectified through a racial lens as neverbefore.
The mainstream national response to [September 11] sacralized it, relying on trusty, racialized archetypes of Americans as white and native-born, and foreigners as a dangerous, dark threat. The sacralization process, complete with racist stereotypes, merged with the immigration debate, pitting Americans and foreigners against each other and bolstering the idea that the United States should limit the entry of other people. These archetypes, so prominent in the post-September 11 political discourse, had a narrowing effect on the subsequent immigration debate.
Are young people smarter about immigration issues in America, or have we been fighting the same battles for equality and just reform for seven years? If you were to gauge your answer based on how little was said about the issue a the recent presidential conventions, you'd have to say there hasn't been much progress.
Exact Change
(This post originally appeared on Fobbdeep)
During McCain's Thursday night acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, he was trying to showcase the "C" word as being the center point of his campaign. The word being "change" and not the other word McCain has been known to call his wife. This was clearly an attempt to undermine the theme of "change" in Obama's campaign. With it being absurd that change can come about from the elite, meaning is lost from the word.
For those glossy-eyed progressives caught up in the Obamania, there should be a realization that even in this campaign, change will not come about through a single politician. Proper institutional and social change grows from grassroots organizing, even if the Reeps would like to tell us otherwise. It really is up to the people to work collectively and challenge the system.
With "change" becoming the buzz word of the moment, it becomes necessary to really reflect on what the word means. On Bambu's latest release, Exact Change, he breaks down the real notion of change as a community involved. With the monetary second meaning of the title, it speaks to those tough times where were down and out, using exactly all we have to pay for a loaf of bread.
Bam sent me a copy of the album the other day, and I must say that this is his dopest release thus far. The album is laced with production from the likes of Sabzi of Blue Scholars, Illmind, Amp Live, etc. As usual Bambu brings a critical voice meshed with an LA swag flow. One of the many standout tracks is "Quit" which features production by Illmind, where Bam tackles the new age studio gangsters. Geologic provides an acapella at the end of the track.
Bambu f. Geologic - Quit (Listen or Download)
If you’re in the Bay this week, roll out to Exact Change Tour show at Cafe Du Nord and pick up the album:
Breaking Bread
(This post was originally published by Rock The Trail, a project of Rock the Vote and WireTap.)
I am patiently waiting for my flight to depart at the airport. Where am I going, you may ask? I am the official Rock the Vote/WireTap magazine correspondent for the third Bi-Annual National Hip Hop Political Convention (NHHPC) taking place in Las Vegas this week. The excitement is building across the country as the Hip Hop generation gears up for the another round of community-building, forward-thinking discussions, provocative panels, informative workshops, as well as showcases and celebrations of the diverse talent and power of the Hip Hop community.
So who makes up the national Hip Hop community you ask? Combine artists, social justice advocates, activists, sprinkle in some music-lovers, community organizers, college students, scholars, add some journalists, backpackers, historians, and insert movers and shakers, interested spectators, heat up and stir. It’s the remix of the “Melting Pot.” Think fondue. Fondue isn’t very Hip Hop, but follow me here. Everyone brings the ingredients to the table to contribute to the luscious pool of ideas. They coagulate to form the national Hip Hop political agenda. The key idea here is that everyone maintains their individuality and uniqueness and only takes from the pot what they need or can share with others. This is a community meal where everyone gets a sample of everything, and only takes what they need. Everyone will convene at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas to break bread, engage in defining this agenda and continue building for the future.
Read the rest of the post »
Resurrection of the Cassette Tape?
I blogged a couple months ago about the death of the record store. So I was really intrigued when I read a post on Boing Boing Gadgets about cassettes still being a multi-million dollar industry. In prison.
The Boing Boing post references a NYTimes article about a North Hollywood-based mail-order tape business. Pack Central is a retailer that caters to about 50,000 prisoners. The inventory includes 10,000 CD titles and 5,000 cassette titles.
But as Boing Boing's John Brownlee points out, unlike a CD, "[A] tape can't be broken apart and used as a shiv. Prisoners are allowed to have them."
According to the Times article, current top-selling cassette titles include Mariah Carey's "E=MC2" and Lil Wayne's "Tha Carter III." Evergreen best sellers include Al Green's "Greatest Hits" and Michael Jackson's "Thriller." They might not sound the best on analog, but it's better than prison with no music.
The biggest takeaway point from this story, I think, is that corporate record companies could learn something from Park Central. This small retailer is doing so well because it's opening itself up to an undervalued market. If the recording industry put more resources toward innovative technology and business strategies it wouldn't have to go after so many illegal downloaders.
Mideast Youth Takes On Afghan Media
Last year, we profiled Mideast Youth, an independent blogging network dedicated to eliminating extremism from the Middle East and North Africa. I thought I'd check back in with the group to see what they've been up to. Sure enough, they've been busy as ever. But their new project is both fascinating and really cool.
Mideast Youth has launched Afghan Press, a blog whose purpose is to "use digital media to show the world what currently goes unreported" in Afghanistan. The journalist-activists who started Afghan Press want to cover daily events in remote villages and interview locals -- everyday people -- who are never represented in the media. And they hope to do this using all different forms of media.
Afghan Press has also become a place to announce journalism training opportunities for Afghan journalists. In this way, Mideast Youth hopes to contribute something to Afghanistan's media.
From the Afghan Press mission statement:
Afghanistan is a country riddled with poverty, illiteracy, censorship, human rights abuses and corruption. There are hardly any progressive and independent news sources functioning within it. We aim to change that!
We want to create a powerful Afghanistan through new media technologies. The internet is our only gateway to free speech and global outreach...It is time for Afghanistan to have a successful digital media outlet that is by the people, for the people, to the world and whose mission is to improve the country.
War on Error: Real Stories of American Muslims
Who are the Muslims in our midst? Terrorists? Existential threats to Western civilization? Sworn enemies of America?
These questions – rehearsed and scripted much like the answers – were rolled off the assembly line at a furious clip when America decided to wage war on two Muslim countries in the aftermath of September 11th.
Rarely have Muslims been invited to partake in this denunciation masquerading as discussion—except, of course, those polished ex-Muslims eager to denounce their former coreligionists carte blanche, accruing handsome benefits for themselves in the process.
War on Error: Real Stories of American Muslims is a book which challenges the conventional and tiresome rhetoric aimed at Muslims—specifically, at the more than four million Americans who call Islam their faith.
Written by Melody Moezzi, a writer and lawyer who describes herself as “a thinking, feeling, educated and stubborn Muslim Iranian American woman,” the book does not address anti-Muslim prejudice through erudite exegesis. Rather, following the journalistic maxim of “show, don’t tell,” it engages the reader by presenting slices of 12 young Muslim American lives, including the author’s own, in accessible prose.
Moezzi presents us with a multiplicity of stories, including that of two Americans who convert to Islam despite ubiquitous domestic depictions of Muslims as fanatics; a young woman from Iran whose parents fled at the eve of the war with Iraq; a young man with an Egyptian father, Korean mother, and a penchant for rapping; a Bosnian war refugee turned legal advocate; a Wall Street Journal reporter close to the slain journalist Daniel Pearl; and a founder of a Muslim organization who braved death threats to serve the LGBTQ community.
Read the rest of the post »
If You Can't Beat 'Em, Join 'Em
Music sales dropped this year to their lowest point since 1985. Album sales, including paid-for downloads, are down 11 percent from $2.9 billion. (In the compact disc's heyday, music sales peaked at $3.4 billion.)
With the demise of records stores across the country, free downloads and piracy, it's not too surprising that CD sales are down. But the numbers aren't exactly as they seem.
As blogger Stan Schroeder points out, digital sales are climbing at a pretty fast pace. In 2007, CD and DVD sales fell 13 percent, while sales of downloads (including ringtones) went up by 34 percent. Although the rise in online music sales hasn't been enough to offset losses -- in fact, revenues dropped by 8 percent -- those numbers hint at something really important.
In time, digital sales will get back up. But if the music industry wants to help that process along, there are a few things it needs to do.
Record companies need to learn how to adapt to a changing market. Instead of the RIAA stubbornly sticking to its own ways and investing abundant resources in going after piracy perpetrators, it needs to get with the proverbial program. Illegal activity has long had its place in the market -- think ticket scalping, made stronger than ever by online sources like Craigslist. Once music companies abandon old ways of thinking and figure out how to use new technologies and online resources to their advantage, they'll be able to innovate, compete and get back to making "obscene amounts of money," as Schroeder puts it.
Since illegal downloading isn't easy to police, the music industry would do well to view the phenomenon as a viable competitor. Right now, that competitor is pleasing consumers through ingenious means (BitTorrents, invite-only downloading sites, etc.). Record companies just need to figure out how to give customers what they want.
It's pretty telling that when Radiohead allowed fans the option to choose their own price for its album Rainbows -- at first released only digitally -- consumers did actually pay for the album. In the U.S., the digital download made about $8 an album. It just goes to show, people are willing to pay for quality, even if they have the option not to.
Once the RIAA realizes it can't edge illegal downloading out of the market as easily as it can edge out small, independent labels, music sales might start to go back up.
N-Word, Please.
(Editor's Note: This originally appeared on Chinaka's blog, Thickwitness.)
In just under a month, Def Jam will release Nasir Jones' ninth studio album. I'm not quite sure what to call it.
For the most part, I've steered clear of the much anticipated and even more debated effort. Nas' iconography is built as much on hype as it is in his discography itself. If I got caught up in every Nasty Nas debate, I'd scarcely have time to memorize Streets Disciple Disc two. I certainly wouldn't have time to play ultimate frisbee with the QB's Finest LP. Considering the mid-nineties funk with Puff Daddy over Hate Me Now, the long term Jay beef turned marketing scheme, the minor squab with 50, and the pomp and circumstance of his marriage to his bossy wife-- my Nassip-o-meter doesn't really peak like yours do. It makes me very little nevermind until he's on my stereo.
Even the debate over the controversial album title didn't get to me until these last few incarnations. So the album was scheduled to be called Nigger. Yeah? As the wholly patriotic Thickwitness you know me to be, I could barely set down my copy of the First Amendment long enough to phone C. Dolores Tucker. Even when I did dial, the line was busy 'cause she was on Sharpton's call waiting.
Read the rest of the post »
Growing The Urban Vineyard
I've been reading a lot about urban farming and sustainable food systems lately. All over the country, local folks are finding ways to tie together goals of community-building, education, economic development, health, and self-reliance through models of sustainable agriculture. So I was really intrigued when I heard that some people are taking those models to another realm, with urban viticulture and enology -- that is, vine growing and wine making.
The concept of growing a vineyard in the middle of a city is particularly interesting because viticulture is a very precise science. Grapes are sensitive and temperamental creatures. Growing them for wine requires just the right conditions. Variations in climate, soil contents, pesticides, etc. can make all the difference in the world.
I found two bloggers who have started urban vineyards. Manhattan resident Nathaniel Martin calls himself the "Self Sufficient Urbanite." Here's the reason he gives for starting his project:
Being self sufficient and treading lightly on this planet means consuming only what you need and understanding the sources of those goods and the methods that created them. I've been an avid beer brewer and wine maker for years which has brought me a lot closer to understanding how good alcohol is made from raw ingredients. The transformation from barley and grapes into alcohol is a magical alchemic process. Sugar is converted into alcohol by yeast. The sugar comes from either fruits that have sugar naturally or grains that have starches that are converted to sugar through heat and enzymes. Growing these ingredients is another matter... I've never made (or more appropriately grown) those raw ingredients myself, so I was still missing out on part of the experience of how beer and wine is made into a finished product.
Martin says he started growing grape vines last year -- two Cabernet Sauvignon vines and one Shiraz. Both come from a local farm in Upstate New York. You can check out his photos documenting the beginnings of this project.
Another urban dweller, blogger Chris Pearson, is growing vines in Washington, D.C. For anyone interested in urban vineyards, Pearson's blog "The Urban Vineyard" has so far done an excellent job of documenting the step-by-step process of vine growing, with tips along the way. His photos are also a good resource.
Whether urban vineyards will follow the footsteps of urban farms remains to be seen. This could very well be a next step for local food advocates looking for ways to bring communities together.
MOGG Culture: Addiction or Cure?
Amid the media frenzy over the effect of violent games on kids or the sight of grandmothers smacking backhands on the Nintendo Wii, one crucial gaming phenomenon has been largely overlooked: millions of youth are immersed in massively-multiplayer online games (or MMOGs), sometimes to the point of addiction.
What separates MMOGs from conventional video games? Players pay a monthly subscription fee to take part in online environments crafted by developers. The game doesn't stop when you do. Instead, you choose attributes for an in-game character on the server, which never sleeps save for maintenance. One MMOG, World of Warcraft, caters to more than nine million players.
While addiction is a clinical diagnosis, MMOGs have rarely been analyzed through a social lens. What compels young people to play for hours on end? What does the trend reveal about their surroundings, their condition, and their desires? Could these games actually encourage youth cooperation and non-judgmental collaboration?
Read the rest of the post »
The Death of the Record Store
Earlier this month, many of us celebrated Record Store Day by visiting local record stores, or possibly mourning the loss of some of those stores. In the last decade, over 3,000 independent record stores have shut down across the country. A new documentary is looking at why record stores are losing their place in American life and what it all means for the music industry as a whole.
I Need That Record!: The Death (Or Possible Survival) of the Independent Record Store features such musical greats as Chris Frantz of the Talking Heads, Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, and Ian Mackaye of Fugazi. They're joined by such experts as punk historian Legs McNeil and political theorist Noam Chomsky. Filmmaker Brendan Toller also interviews both small business owners and music label executives.
The film not only explores how technology and the Internet have changed the way we consume music -- with everything from mp3 players to iTunes to music blogs and MySpace to, yes, of course, illegal downloading. It also takes a hard look at how corporate giants like Wal-Mart and Best Buy are pushing small businesses out of the market, how corporate radio dictates what many of us listen to, and how major music labels "squash new ideas" by focusing on the bottom line.
From Toller's I Need That Record! blog:
The music industry has always been a unique marriage of art and commerce, but today commerce has proved to be the ultimate influence. Rather than develop great acts, embrace new technology, offer affordable products; the major labels are more concerned with turning the clocks back to preserve old business models- with only one thing in mind- THE BOTTOM LINE.
Keep the full paid expense accounts and 7 figure incomes. Keep suing fans. Keep shoving bland music down people's throats that will sell x amounts. Keep producing homogenized radio programs that play the same 50 songs. Keep supporting big box businesses that could care less about music; businesses that sell music below list price. Keep screwing the consumers and retailers who love and care about good captivating music. Squash new ideas, new innovations, and new possibilities as the future of recorded music, a commodity that supports the artist, vanishes.
I Need That Record! premiers May 3 (this Saturday) at Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass. All are welcome to attend the screening.
View the trailer here:
And check out a few more links here:
YM Blog-a-thon: Post-College Anxieties
(Editor's note: Youth Outlook and WireTap are kicking off the third Youth Media Blog-a-thon. This month's topic is money. Check back frequently for updates and feel free to join the discussion.)
Few things annoy me more than unsolicited advice.
So it's not surprising that during my senior year of college, I turned a deaf ear to anyone who tried to give their two cents about life post-college. I already knew the horror stories. Me? I was going to be fine. The universe would align itself, I'd fine myself a nice job that didn't assault my soul, great apartment, and my friends and I would visit each other every other month.
Things didn't exactly turn out that way.
While I'm probably the last person who needs to give advice, I'm going to offer my ill-advised, unprofessional opinion based on my not-so-cute encounters with brokeassedness over the past year.
First, a little background:
Recently, a friend and I were talking about how unexpectedly hard knock this post-college existence has been. To put it lightly: it's rough. And not just for spacey cats like myself who majored in impractical things like English. My friend got her degree in Biology, which meant she really studied -- like numbers and shit. Interview after interview, we're learning the truth behind the age-old adage, 'It's not what you know, but whom you know.' Sadly, it rings true both in the corporate and non-profit world's which, for better or worse, are both pretty exclusive. When you don't know the right people, it sucks.
We're not adverse to work in any way. We both had steady full- and part-time jobs while we went to school. But having a degree can sometimes give you a sense of entitlement that's flat out unwarranted.
[Note: These tips come from a very particular kind of college experience. I went to a small liberal arts college in the middle of the Southern California desert. It was like being at Camp -- with a few token people of color thrown in the mix to grace the front of the school catalogue.]
Read the rest of the post »
Vogue Resurrects Old Stereotypes
I should have known it wouldn't last. The year began with such promise. America was starting to look beyond rehashed stereotypes. Progress and possibility were everywhere. Barack Obama was on the verge of breaking into the ultimate Good Ol' Boys network. Sports writers were waxing poetic on Tiger Woods' status as the greatest of all time and quest for golf's Grand Slam seemed inevitable.
Then Vogue announced LeBron James would grace its April "Shape" issue alongside uber-model Gisele Bundchen, and ... my excitement crumbled.
I know it's just some athlete posing for a picture, but the news of James' coverboy status on the venerable fashion mag had me almost as excited as the other milestones. Vogue is notoriously picky (or prejudiced depending on how you look at it) when it comes to who is allowed on its cover. In its 118 years in publication, there have only been two men and three African Americans to appear on the front cover. (To be fair, Vogue is an equal opportunity discriminator. The designers of Rodarte were recently told to go on a diet and get a personal trainer if they wanted to be in this month's release.)
So, to hear that a Black man was chosen for such a popular issue ... surely, this was a good sign.
If only. What I had thought would be a stylish symbol of cultural growth, was nothing more than a lesson in Black Stereotyping 101. The suave, graceful superstar we see on and off the basketball court was replaced by a snarling, Scary Black Man. Whatever hope or pride I had felt in anticipation of the April cover was replaced by shame and dissappointment. I am pretty thick skinned, but this stupid little picture hurt.
The photo, which bares a striking resemblance to classic King Kong posters, plays on deep rooted beliefs of the past. The image of Black men as animalistic, predatory thugs is apparently still going strong.
Of course, not everyone sees a tinge of racism in James' cover, which is exactly why I find it so disturbing. Obvious injustices -- like nooses swinging from a tree in Jena -- are easy to spot, easy to confront. It is the small, subtle slights that go unnoticed and end up holding us back.
Mourning on Social Networks
(Note: This post originally appeared on PopandPolitics.com.)
After the Virginia Tech shootings in 2007, many members of social networking sites changed their profile pictures to a VT ribbon, in honor of the victims of the shooting. The ribbon often appeared in either black or maroon, symbolizing either mourning for the dead or support for the VT community. When the shootings at Northern Illinois University took place last week, NIU memorial ribbons similarly became widespread on Facebook and MySpace. Being a "Huskie," the school's mascot, was not only a meaningful label for NIU students, faculty and staff, but suddenly also for the extended community that radiated out from NIU memorial groups and the friends and families of the victims.
The shared visual language of these two tragedies, signals more generally how we are approaching mourning online. The images of the ribbon and the mascot are quickly and easily reproducible in a digital environment, creating what could be considered a "brand" of mourning. In an environment where copying and pasting is a regular act of creation, survivor guilt becomes easier to address. Being public about one's guilt or mourning has always been an important part of moving forward after a loss. The cross-cultural ancient rituals surrounding death -- dressing and viewing the deceased, the celebration of life, the placing of markers at gravesites -- are ways for mourners to participate publicly in moving forward.
The act of memorialization is the first step in a form of forgetting, each distinct practice of mourning being a stylization of a culture's particular needs. In these cases, joining in the online visual culture of mourning appears to play an important role in dealing with survivor guilt, giving internet users a simple way to express their grief. Many of the Facebook and MySpace users changing their profile pictures this week, for example, are not members of the immediate NIU community.
Using corporate language and branding tactics nonetheless may be less than ideal, as it expresses noncommercial mourning and guilt in a readymade language of commodity advertisement. The juxtaposition is at once disconcerting and entirely natural. In the case of the school shootings, the corporate university brands are more than familiar; they are the iconic images of a carefully wrought visual culture of power, strength and courage. On a very basic level, they convey what needs conveying and so they rose to the top of the great mix of our ever-expanding digital raw material.
What is particularly interesting about the Facebook and MySpace community's response to the NIU Shootings is the rapid production of these spaces and user-created media about the shootings. The Facebook group Pray for Northern Illinois University Students and Families was created a mere hour and a half after the shootings occurred and membership rose exponentially, to 103,358 members a mere two days after its inception.
Read the rest of the post »