Get our most popular stories once a week!
The Republicans are getting out their spears and rattles and chanting around the party fire again..."
Posted by olympicrange in Who is Bill Ayers?
hungryaardvark 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?
|
At Hip Hop's Birthplace, Residents Prepare For the Worst
(This post originally appeared on Jeff's blog, Zentronix)
As the House of Representatives rejected an economic bailout proposal brought on by the national mortgage crisis, tenants of 1520 Sedgwick Avenue and their supporters awaited word today of the fate of the most famous address in hip-hop.
It was a day in which the drama of the nation was being mirrored at a place right the heart of hip-hop history, as tenants and their supporters began planning to save their homes while real estate developers scrambled to close a speculative deal against declining prospects for credit.
Late last week, a judge cleared the way for the landlord group behind the West Bronx apartment building to begin preparations to sell the building, whose value has been assessed at about $7 million.
The building at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, where DJ Kool Herc and Cindy Campbell threw their first party in late August 1973, is one of a declining number in New York City covered under an affordable housing mandate called the Mitchell-Lama program. It now represents the continuing decline of urban affordable housing.
But the judge's order allows the landlord group to pay off the rest of its outstanding $5 million mortgage and remove it from the affordable housing program.
Read the rest of the post »
Kabobfest Culture
Blogging isn’t easy.
Just ask May Alhassen, one of several contributors to the mostly Arab-American blog, KabobFest. She succinctly describes the website as “an Arab-themed Daily Show in blog format.” From tongue-in-cheek biographies where contributors describe themselves as attendees of “madrassas” (which simply means “school” in Arabic) to blog entries featuring Obama in Saudi-style headwear, the alternately acerbic and irreverent sense of humor is on full display.
But the issues KabobFest dissects are serious. “[The humor] is mostly meant to illustrate the absurdity of…attempts to politicize and demonize our people, language, culture and religion,” May said.
One striking example is a delightfully absurd five-minute video production on the Kuffiyah, a piece of cloth targeted by hyperventilating conservatives as an infectious symbol of Islamist terror.
For May, America's stereotyping of American Muslim women as draped in headscarves, veils, and burqas is particularly problematic, as she has noted in blog entries. A Muslim woman who chooses not to wear hijab, May says those who judge her are most often not other Muslims, but non-Muslims.
“I meet a lot of judgment and ignorance from the general public and my piety is constantly called into question,” she said.
May was born in America but raised with Arabic as her first language. Upon entering public school she was dumped into English as a Second Language (ESL) class. “They thought because I spoke Arab that I was a dunce,” she said. “That's how they perceive you if you speak any language other than or in addition to English.”
Read the rest of the post »
Will Black Ever Be the New Black?
Black. Is there anything more iconic, more essential to fashion? More than just a color, it is an aspiration - sexy, classic, provocative, demure, slimming. It's Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's and punk pioneer Sid Vicious. Black is never out of style - except when it comes to skin color.
Outrage and concern over the fashion industry's obsession with super skinny models and exotic furs, but little thought is given to its underlying racism.
Last year, only three Black models were cast in New York's fashion week. Across the pond in London, a whopping one model of color was used. Things were even worse in Milan percentage-wise where of the 1,084 times an outfit was sent down the catwalk, it was worn by a Black model a mere fourteen times.
The numbers for Asian and Latina women were just as anemic and disturbing, but the representation of both ethnicities was still better than Blacks.
The print industry is no better. A couple of months ago a writer for The Times of London scoured through 25kgs (about 55lbs) of the top fashion magazines from the United States, Europe, Japan, and India. Wading through thousands of pages of editorials and advertisements, the journalist found paltry 163 photos of non-White models. Fourteen of this already laughable statistic were of Africa descent. In an industry where exposure is such a vital part of success, the absence spoke volumes.
Not to be left out, the beauty world is doing its part to promote a less colorful society. "Tanorexia" may be on the rise amongst our porcelain-skinned peers, but the aversion to dark skin that began on plantation fields 400 years ago is not only present, it is thriving in the 21st century.
Read the rest of the post »
Dread Not
A few weeks ago I was waiting for the bus on San Francisco’s iconic Haight Street when an ebony-skinned man with short dreads carrying a bag of aluminum cans passed in front of me. He paused, looked me in the eye, and shook his head in disgust before passing me by. I couldn’t hear him clearly, but I was able to string together something along the lines of:
“You wearin’ dreads ‘cause it’s a hairstyle, not ‘cause your life is right.”
On my ride home I thought about why his words felt so intrusive. Was he right to pass judgment? Was I part of a new generation of youth who blindly appropriated cultures I had no historical appreciation for?
I’ve worn my half-black, half-white, fiercely curly hair in one natural style or another since I got out of high school. But it wasn’t until I spent a summer in Costa Rica that I finally just let my hair turn itself into dreadlocks. I decided to grow dreadlocks two years ago after a decade of admiring them on other people. I’m not religious, but even if I was, my hairstyle would be the last thing my faith would affect.
For followers of the Rastafarian faith, wearing dreadlocks is a complex statement of political and spiritual autonomy. Their dreadlocks are their “crowns.” Rastas wear them in accordance to the biblical injunction in the pre-King James version of the Christian bible to never cut their hair.
Yet aside from religious freedom, dreadlocks have also historically been symbolic of Black Nationalist struggles against racism.
Mop top, shit locks, dreads, locks – today’s nicknames for dreadlocks are as varied as the people who wear them. They originally got their name in Jamaica back in the ‘30’s. White landowners were said to dread the sight of them because those who wore them stood in stark defiance of the British Colonial system. Back then, and even after Jamaican independence, the hairstyle was a barefaced political statement against the white dictatorship in Jamaica.
Read the rest of the post »
Black in America Misses The 'Why'
(Editor's Note: This was originally posted at Youth Speaks South Shore.)
The cable television program “Black in America” focused on several different socio-economic issues that affect African-Americans in today’s society. Aired on CNN, host Soledad O’Brien takes the viewer on a journey through various neighborhoods; effectively shedding light on dark issues that have plagued Black America for some time.
Issues such as education, marriage, pregnancy, and violence in different communities throughout the country were highlighted, giving the viewer insight into a plight that only the Black community often feels. While O’Brien did a fantastic job telling the stories of various individuals she interviewed, little emphasis was placed on the story behind the story. Not much focus was given to the “why” in these particular scenarios.
In a country where racism is still alive, it is important for White America not only to see, but also to understand our story as well. For too long only a partial testament been given to the adversity that affects millions of our people on a daily basis.
Take an inner-city Houston education scenario as one example: An effort put forth by the community to try and enroll drop outs back in school is a fantastic effort; one which O’Brien brings to the forefront of her program with adept ease. Here she is with television crews, interviewers, and community activists petitioning at a doorstep for a boy to come back and enroll in school.
However, we fail to analyze the context in which this Black boy is placed. A 17-year-old male stands outside with no shirt on, gawked at not only by several people at his doorstep, but also interviewers, television crews and producers as well as the millions of Americans who will watch him through their television screens.
And that is exactly how they see him – a young shirtless male, with an apparent disinterest in returning to school, emphasized by the fact that he turns immediately on his heels and walks back into his house.
Now readers please ask yourself this question – how would you react if complete strangers showed up at your house in the afternoon, bombarding you with pleas to return to your job? Under the gaze of television cameras and reporters that just so happened to be there as well?
Most likely you would walk back into the sheltered safety of your humble abode. Why wouldn’t you? It’s safe from prying eyes, is it not? No one can intrude on your personal space there, broadcasting all of your personal business on the public airwaves for millions to see. Of course we do not consider this, with just the mere fact that the boy is finally persuaded to (1) put a shirt on (2) return to school and enroll a full month late and (3) finally as his story closes, we see that after only a day in school, he drops out once again.
Read the rest of the post »
How Does It Feel To Be A Problem?
Rasha was 19, frightened, and upset. Woken up by government agents in the middle of the night, she and the rest of her family—except two younger brothers born in the U.S.—were hauled off to a holding cell and later to prison for almost three months. Grilled about terrorism and held on immigration charges, she and her mother were often reduced to tears, despondent and depressed.
And then she was released, without much fanfare, along with her father, mother, sister, and elder brother. As the family made its way out of prison, an immigration official handed them a court date and helpfully observed that they were, in fact, eligible to file a residency petition.
Moustafa Bayoumi’s book, How Does It Feel to be a Problem: Being Young and Arab in America, depicts the struggles of Arabs who are growing up in the shadow of post-September 11th America and confronting the paradoxical mix of capricious and prejudicial attitudes evinced by its institutions.
An associate professor at Brooklyn College (CUNY), Bayoumi crafts his narratives, drawn from the lives of seven Arab American youth in the Brooklyn area, with careful, considered prose. Wisely, he often maintains a distance from his younger subjects, adding germane facts and historical context to illuminate the stories. Further, he chronicles not only their conflicts, but their successes and their ambivalence in the face of daily frustrations.
A less attuned academic might have taken the opposite route, relegating people’s voices to the periphery of a drawn-out polemic or perfunctory rundown of immigration patterns.
Instead, here we learn of the bonds formed between Rasha and her sister while in jail, the distant state her brother fell into after release, a school petition signed by 200 classmates on the family’s behalf, and a chance encounter with a smug prison official in Times Square.
Read the rest of the post »
Perez Hilton Hates Yellow People
(This post originally appeared on Disgrasian and was reprinted on Racialicious.)
Ever wonder how an internet meme gets started? Or, for that matter, how it then spreads and metastasizes until it becomes accepted fact?
Over the last week, we’ve seen one particular meme develop about China: “China Hates Black People” (courtesy of Perez Hilton).
This idea didn’t, however, originate with Perez Hilton. It started last Friday with a story in Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post, “Authorities order bars not to serve black people,” which alleged that Chinese government authorities were secretly planning to ban blacks from bars during the Olympic games. Reporter Tom Miller based the story on the claim of one anonymous source:
“Uniformed Public Security Bureau officers came into the bar recently and told me not to serve black people or Mongolians,” said the co-owner of a western-style bar, who asked not to be named.
Then Miller quoted another unnamed source, a “black British national who lives in Beijing,” to further shore up the story:
“Chinese people are prejudiced, but I would have hoped that the government would set a better example as it debuts on the world stage.”
The story was then picked up by legitimate news sources like Reuters, The Globe and Mail, and The Age, and that was before it hit the blog-o-sphere. Four days later, around the same time that the Chinese government officially denied that such a ban existed, Perez Hilton posted the story, et voila…a meme is born. In the two days since and at the time of this writing, 649 comments have been made about Perez’s post, and many of them are loaded with xenophobia, racism, and hate, and not just for the Chinese:
National Hip Hop Political Convention Opens in 2 Weeks
(This post originally appeared on Vibe.com and on Jeff's blog, Can't Stop Won't Stop.)
Since the first National Hip-Hop Political Convention was held in Newark New Jersey in the summer of 2004, young voters have come to the polls in big turnouts, driven by a landmark surge of young voters of color. This surprised many long-time political observers, but not the organizers of the Convention--full disclosure: I was there--who had seen the growth of hip-hop activism and organizing around the country.
After the Convention, those efforts continued around the country, joined by high-profile voter registration campaigns by Diddy and Russell Simmons. Those efforts continue today. Simmons' Hip-Hop Summit Action Network has taken Hip-Hop Team Vote to a number of campuses. T.I. is joining the Hip-Hop Caucus's efforts to register and turn out young people to vote in 12 target states, including swing states like Florida, Georgia, Missouri, North Carolina, and Ohio.
When the third National Hip-Hop Political Convention opens in Las Vegas on July 30th--in the heart of another swing state, Nevada--it can boast of its role in expanding the field of hip-hop generation elected officials and candidates, including co-founder Rosa Clemente who will be addressing the body as the Green Party vice presidential candidate. Representatives of the Democratic and Republican National Committees will also be speaking. The focus will be the Convention's political agenda, first forged in Newark in 2004.
2008 Convention Chair Troy Nkrumah took time away from a heavy load of emails, text messages, and phone calls to talk with Vibe.com about the importance of the Convention and its agenda, and what role it hopes to play in this historic election and beyond.
Read the rest of the post »
Hip-Hop Leaders: Jesse Jackson's Time Is Up
(Via RaceWire:)
Kevin Powell and Nas both think that it’s time for a guard change among Black political leaders. Calling it a generational shift made most noticeable by the success of Barack Obama’s message within the Hip Hop generation, both men think they are members of this next wave of leaders to take the torch from older Civil Rights leaders like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.
Kevin Powell is a writer and activist, known to some for his early 90s appearance on the first season of The Real World, who is running for Congress in Brooklyn. Nas, born and raised in Queens, is arguably one of the greatest emcees in the history of hip-hop who is has been stirring up lots of controversy leading up to his latest album, Untitled (formerly the N word).
Powell says:
I certainly acknowledge and appreciate what the Civil Righters have done, but we younger African Americans are saying now, loudly, the jig is up and it is time for you to go, especially if you have not created hope and plans of action for our communities. The days of marching and protesting without a clear purpose are over. The days of voting for someone just because they are Black are over. Indeed, the multicultural legion of young Americans who've flocked to Obama's campaign suggest that we want leadership that builds bridges, not be stuck in the rhetoric and realities of the past. I have witnessed this as I've been campaigning. Yes, I must represent the concerns of Blacks and Latinos in East New York. But I cannot ignore the Hasidic Jews in Williamsburg or the young White professionals in Fort Greene. They are all my people. Until we have Black leaders who understand that the America we need now is one where an Obama can be president and a Nas can make a rap song like "Black President," both condemning Obama doubters and reminding everyone of the inequities that still exist, then we will continue to have leadership that is operating as if it is 1968 instead of 2008.
Nas seems to echo Powell's sentiment, and he says that he and other rappers have already begun taking their place within this changing Black political heirarchy (Listen to audio):
Hip Hop's leaders are definitely riding the wave of momentum created by Barack Obama's campaign, and they want their turn at the mic. Do you think Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton should "grab nuts" and be out?
Hipster Racism
(Editor's Note: This post originally appeared on Racialicious, and was updated on AJ's blog The Cruel Secretary.)
By now, you've seen the latest New Yorker cover, with the Obamas garbed in the gear of the latest fear-mongering Americans' wet dream.
Of course, people at Michelle Obama Watch, Daily Kos, Politico, and other blogs have expressed rightful and righteous outrage over the cover.
The Washington Post's and CNN's Reliable Sources' Howard Kurtz said: "I talked to the editor of The New Yorker, David Remnick, who tells me this is a satire, that they are making fun of all the rumors," Kurtz added. (Source)
Bill Burton, The Obama campaign spokesperson, responded: "The New Yorker may think, as one of their staff explained to us, that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the caricature Senator Obama's right-wing critics have tried to create. But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. And we agree." (Source)
My current live-in partner, who works at the New Yorker, just couldn't believe that so many people responded so angrily at the cover at the Daily Kos and other sites. He "wanted to see [my] reaction." When I emphatically told him that I didn't find it funny, he said, "You're so angry."
"Of course I'm angry. What do you expect? This is my reaction is to your employer doing something so racist." "I'm trying to have some fun here."
Humph, you gotta love hipster racism.
I define hipster racism (I'm borrowing the phrase from Carmen Van Kerckhove) as ideas, speech, and action meant to denigrate another's person race or ethnicity under the guise of being urbane, witty (meaning "ironic" nowadays), educated, liberal, and/or trendy. This racist and sexist balderdash that's the New Yorker cover fits squarely into that definition. So, honestly, does the behavior of my partner, who prides himself on coming from a California family of educators who taught him to be colorblind and on working at a magazine renown for being, well, urbane, witty, educated, liberal, and trendy yet likes to view me as the Angry Negress.
Read the rest of the post »
Gang Injunction Approved in Southern California
(Editor's Note: This post originally appeared on Luis Rodriguez's blog.)
As expected, and despite opposition from a number of community leaders, a gang injunction against the San Fer gang has been imposed by the courts on a nine-and-a-half square mile area of the Northeast San Fernando Valley, encompassing most of Sylmar, a northwest portion of Pacoima and all of San Fernando City (most of the rest of Pacoima has already been under a gang injunction for years against the Pacoima Flats, Projects Boys, and other Pacoima gangs).
This is reportedly the largest gang injunction area in Los Angeles
Already, young Latino men I know -- not in gangs -- have been stopped, arrested, and in one case almost photographed (to be part of a statewide gang data base). This last case was stopped when the young man's parents became involved and demanded their son not be photographed or placed on this data base. Finding that this young man had no gang ties, he was eventually released.
As I predicted, many youth not in San Fer, but also alleged San Fer members not involved in crimes, will be harassed and even arrested. Our juvenile facilities, jails and prisons are teeming with youth who shouldn't be there -- a gang injunction makes illegal what is otherwise legal activity: association, using a cell phone, or having tattoos. Now alleged gang members will find themselves going to jail for things that are not criminal.
If you make more laws, you make more lawless.
My work, and the work of many gang intervention workers, is to keep these young people out of the criminal justice system. Our work now has become twice as hard as these injunctions -- and other laws down the pike like the Runner Initiative slated for vote in November -- end up placing poor and often neglected youth behind bars faster and longer.
It's easy now to end up in jail -- it's harder to find treatment, help, jobs, schooling, viable alternatives to street life.
Read the rest of the post »
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.
Charleston's First Integrated Prom
Canadian filmmaker Paul Saltzman is working on a documentary that's sure to be hopeful, fascinating, and at least a little bit heartbreaking. Prom Night in Mississippi tells the story of Charleston High School's first integrated prom. For the first time ever, black and white students attended their prom together.
Legally, segregation ended in Mississippi over 50 years ago. Public schools were integrated about 40 years ago. But if the story of the Jena Six in Jena, Louisiana taught us anything, it's that racial separation and racial tensions are alive and well in some parts of our country.
Actor Morgan Freeman is originally from Charleston, Miss. Since 1997, Freeman has tried to get the high school to integrate its prom. Each year, he's offered to pay for the dance if the school allows all students to attend. This year, school officials finally took him up on the offer.
NPR's Bryant Park Project has a great story today inspired by the upcoming documentary. Photographer Catherine Farquharson worked with the film crew on Prom Night in Mississippi. Her amazing photographs depict a group of excited students getting ready for the prom -- and having a great time once they got there. Check out the audio slideshow featuring Farquharson's genius as well as an interview with one of the students from the high school.
Charleston High School's 2008 interracial prom went off without a hitch. As you can see from the pictures, the students really enjoyed themselves. But, sadly, some white parents didn't let their kids attend, and some insisted on holding a private prom of their own. Listen to the whole story here.
No Justice Without Media Justice
(Via Feministing — where Samhita has been liveblogging from the National Conference on Media Reform in Minneapolis, MN.)
When we speak of a justice agenda we are talking about greater political, social and cultural changes that are plugged into an analysis of power that reform focused movements often times overlook. Many times it is a matter of semantics, since all of us working in justice are effecting change at the level of reform. We are usually working on strategic campaigns, limited in scope that create small pieces of change, but hopefully greater in impact. Collectively and through sharing pieces of our agenda these changes can become a justice movement.
The media reform movement has been around since the 90's and made its debut in 2003 when fighting the cross-ownership rules that are being challenged currently. One of the explicit differences between the media reform movement and the media justice movement is that media reform believes the appropriate end goal for media reforms is more diversity. Media justice believes that reform without a power shift leads to reproduction of status quo inequities. This means that without a redistribution of the means of media production and ownership, our media will not reflect the needs and issues of our communities.
Read the rest of the post »
Still Awaiting Justice in Jena
(Cross-posted from Can't Stop, Won't Stop)
Eight months after 40,000 people converged on Jena, Louisiana, justice still awaits the six young men whose cases inspired one of the biggest civil rights marches in recent history.
This Friday, special judge Thomas Yeager will consider a motion made on behalf of the Jena 6 to remove Judge J.P. Mauffray from their cases. Mauffray had previously denied motions by 5 of the defendants to recuse him from their cases. But last week, the Louisiana Third Circuit Court of Appeals appointed Yeager to preside over this unusual hearing in Mauffray's own courtroom.
Supporters of the Jena 6 say that the motion to recuse Mauffray is part of an effort to give them a fair trial. “Judge Mauffray is the man at the center of Jena’s broken justice system and now he is forced to justify his bias in a court of law with the entire nation watching,” said James Rucker, Executive Director of Color of Change, the 400,000 member group that served as the key organizing body of last September's protests.
Read the rest of the post »