How the Dayton Police Tried to Silence My Voice [VIDEO]

Jasiri-Chief BielDayton Chief of Police Richard Biel and Jasiri X at the Dear Dr. Hip-Hop: Speak, Be Heard, Be Considered event in Dayton, Ohio. Photo by  Andrew-Bryce Hudson (www.andrew-bryce.net

This weekend, I had an opportunity to speak and perform in Dayton, OH, with the legendary MC Lyte at an event called, “Dear Dr. Hip-Hop: Speak, Be Heard, Be Considered.” A few days before arriving, I got a call from one of the organizers telling me that the Dayton Police Department had a “problem” with some of my lyrics and demanded to know what songs I was going to perform before they would secure the venue.

Being that this wasn’t the first time a group tried to censor me, I immediately got on the phone with my lawyer who advised me on what action I needed to take.  I sent this email as my response:

Here are the links to my music and videos. I reserve the right to perform any one of these songs. There is not one lyric in any of these songs that advocates or calls for any kind of violence, especially towards law enforcement. Nor do I advocate or condone violence in our community, violence against women, or drug abuse like many rap artists. I’m a Hip-Hop artist and community activist that has dedicated my life to mentoring young men in our community to be peaceful and law abiding citizens. I have never had one incident of violence at any of the many shows, panels, or lectures I’ve done all over the world. It is the responsibility of the Dayton Police Department to provide a safe environment for the citizens they are obligated to serve and protect. I will consider any form of censorship an infringement on my constitutional right to free speech, and will forward any further communication on this issue to my lawyer. 
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Here I am, an artist that uses Hip-Hop to uplift my community, and I’m the one they have a problem with? I’m sure they are upset at the fact that I use my music to speak about issues of injustice like the police killing of Oscar Grant, the brutal beating of Jordan Miles, the unconstitutional racial profiling policy called Stop and Frisk, and the fact that a Black person is killed every 36 hours by police, security guards, or people posing as neighborhood watch like George Zimmerman.  Instead of protecting my rights to speak truth to the people of Dayton, they would rather silence me, as if that will make the problem go away.
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The police are quick to say we shouldn’t judge them by a “few bad apples”, but then push policies like Stop and Frisk that paints our entire community as criminals because of a few bad apples. One police sergeant just thought it was OK to bring targets that looked like Trayvon Martin to a gun range. Dayton’s Police Department has it’s own share of controversy. In 2011, police officers claimed a man named Kylen English, who was handcuffed in the back of a police car, used his head to break the window, climb out of the police car then jump over a bridge to his death. English’s family has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the city.
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What we need for a real relationship is not silencing voices that are critical of police policies that negatively effect our community. Nor do we need another forum where police listen then get up from the table and do the same things the community complains about. We need a equal partnership. We need police to admit their mistakes, not make up unbelievable stories to justify their wrong doing. We need bad cops fired and replaced, not protected and promoted.
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In Dayton I met a wonderful community of committed educators, entrepreneurs,  artists, and activists working daily to stop the violence and empower the youth. I hope the Dayton Police Department decides to be part of that community, instead of an occupying force.

NY Oil Calls Out LL Cool J Says He Needs an Intervention Re-does Rock the Bells

NYOil-suitI knew it was bound to happen, somebody gone stepped to LL Cool J on the battle tip over the song Accidental Racist and threw down the gauntlet.. NY Oil who many may know as Kool Kim of the famed group UMCs just re-did the classic jam Rock the Bells and called out LL Cool J.. He basically said LL needs an intervention and proceeds to give a history lesson reminding LL and everyone else that general Robert E Lee was a slave owner and doesn’t need any RIPs and good tidings..

NY Oil wrote this…

My son LL COOL J went out.. with that wack ass song he did with Brad Paisley….

Now for the record I have always been a LL fan.. but he violated.. and LL has always been a confrontational rapper.. so .. it is what it is.

Wake up brother.. come back home.

NY Oil doesn’t leave LL hanging by himself.. He saves his harshest lines for country singer Brad Paisley and lets him know,  healing racial relations is not about allowing some privileged white man feel good about rocking a confederate flag..

We’ll see if LL responds with a song of his own.. One thing we should not forget, no matter what we think about that country song.. LL is still one of the greatest emcees in Hip Hop to ever touch a mic..You best have some serious skillz if you’re gonna call him out..

 

Accidental Racist-LL Cool J Says He’ll Forgive the Iron Chains if You can Overlook His Doo Rag

Screen shot 2013-04-08 at 1.48.58 PMSo LL Cool J and country singer Brad Paisley did a song called ‘Accidental Racist‘ where Paisley raps about why he rocks the confederate flag.. he says it’s about Southern pride and has nothing to do with the hateful past.. LL raps that he wishes white men wouldn’t judge him for wearing sagging pants.. He says if you don’t judge my doo rag, I’ll forget the iron chains..

I get the who notion of wanting to spark dialogue and wholeheartedly deal with racism.. but c’mon LL the iron chains can’t be forgotten.. especially since those chains never left.. Systemic oppression and the system of white supremacy never left..

Today its called the Prison Industrial Complex.. Today it’s called police terrorism  where  Black people are shot and killed every 36 Hours by law enforcement. Today’s its called the Rap Industrial Complex, where we have rich mostly white executives bombarding us and the world with the most vile and absolute coonish music the planet has ever seen..

Today those iron chains are replaced by one out of four Black folks in the US living below poverty thanks to continued land grab and pillaging in the form of fraudulent foreclosure, corporate tyranny and gentrification.

Maybe on an individual basis LL and Brad can get along.. and that’s nice.. the real enemy is still alive and well and ain’t listening to songs like this.. The sooner we all can separate corporate agendas and imperialism and those who represent it from average folks trying to do right, we might be better off.. But as it sits, many want their cake and eat it to…until then Brad Paisley can rock his confederate flag as soon as he gives back the economic resources his daddy stole from my daddy..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=uC6Ev5o5r7Y

45 Years Ago Today Dr Martin Luther King Was Killed by the US Government

Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane

The US Government Killed Dr King

Today April 4th 2013 marks the 45th anniversary that Dr Martin Luther King was assassinated.. I want folks reading this to be crystal clear about a couple of things.. First, do not mention King’s death and reduce it to the work of a deranged man name James Earl Ray..If the local or national corporate backed media talks about Dr King’s death in those terms, then they are negligent. In fact its safe to say they are complicit in helping cover up what should disturbing to all of us.. Dr Martin Luther King was killed by the FBI.. he was killed by our US government.. He was one of many victims to the FBI’s Counter Intelligence program best known as Cointel-Pro..

Repeat after me… COINTEL PRO.. This was the program used by former FBI head J Edgar Hoover to go after  the Puerto Rican Independence Movement, the American Indian Movement, The Student Anti-War Movement and the Chicano Movement. The FBI saved its most vicious and invasive tactics for the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements.. Malcolm X and Dr King were key targets, primarily because they had linked the domestic struggles for  ‘Civil Rights’ and Black American self determination to the larger struggles taking place internationally.. That was dangerous to the FBI and our government and led to Hoover seeing King as public enemy number one along with the Black Panthers and other groups that had shifted into the same direction of internationalizing Black struggles.

So again do not say Dr King was killed 45 years ago today without mentioning Cointelpro.. In another note we should not lose sight of the fact that earlier this year we saw a lot of fan fare around  Dr King statue on the national mall and President Barack Obama get sworn in using Dr King’s bible..In fact his inauguration was on the same day as the King Holiday.. many thought this was anice and potent gesture.. I say it was a distraction.. If President Obama can get sworn in using King’s Bible, how about using those Presidential powers to completely unearth the role the US government played in Dr King’s killing? How about using those Presidential powers to to bring about justice and punsish all those still alive who were a part of Dr King being killed..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlKP5fgY4C0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbJkJTFXvkM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMgccsq1IyM

 

 

What took place was with Dr King being killed was something much larger then James Earl Ray.. It was part of something deep rooted and systemic..

You Didn’t Make the Harlem Shake Go Viral — Corporations Did

Harlem ShakeWanna know why so many got upset w/ the Harlem Shake phenom? It wasn’t so much because white kids who never heard of the dance doing it.. I think for a lot of folks that’s what was easiest top grasp onto.. but for many there was something else going on.. many weren’t quite able to articulate and pinpoint it, but something about this just felt foul..

Well here’s what was going on.. what was driving this Harlem Shake thing, wasn’t a bunch of folks sincerely having fun.. It was corporations getting behind this video and making the whole thing pop to the tune of big time money… So yes, folks were right when they said the Harlem Shake was the ‘Gentrified Harlem Shake‘ a term I first heard from writer dream hampton….To be accurate it was corporate gentrification.. The end game was to make  it appear as if everything was spontaneous..but it was anything but.. I like to use the words ‘social engineering‘…to make it plain and simple, call it manipulation or just straight up pimping

When speaking to classes, I remind folks today’s generation is being bombarded from all angles with information specifically designed to make them consumers and followers and not thinkers.. This Harlem Shake thing is a perfect way of showing how that happens.. This article below lays how all this went down and even though it doesn’t specifically lay this point out, I would emphasize, there’s no meaning to the phrase ‘let the buyer beware‘ or in the words of Chuck D from Public EnemyDon’t Believe the Hype‘..here’s an excerpt from the Mashable article.. The entire piece can be found at;  http://mashable.com/2013/03/30/harlem-shake-corporations/

You Didn’t Make the Harlem Shake Go Viral — Corporations Did

Google’s trend charts of the phrase “Harlem Shake” are seismic. Almost no one looked for the words until Feb. 7, then searches surged faster than any term Google ever had, except for “Whitney Houston” after her death. A few weeks later, they fell close to zero.

Experts said the “Harlem Shake” phenomenon was emergent behavior from the hive mind of the internet — accidental, ad hoc, uncoordinated: a “meme” that “went viral.” But this is untrue. The real story of the “Harlem Shake” shows how much popular culture has changed and how much it has stayed the same.

The word “meme” comes from evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. Bits of information — memes — propagate from brain to brain through imitation, are subject to selection and can be regarded as living structures, he says, “not just metaphorically but technically,” because new information changes our brains. They are often made deliberately — think catchphrases, slogans, melodies — and makers may try to propagate them as fast and far as possible, or make them go viral. The myth of the “Harlem Shake” is that its viral spread was spontaneous, not directed by financial interests — a pop culture, popular uprising. Here’s how the meme and the myth began.

Rebel Diaz Moves Onward with a New Video About Hugo Chavez

Rebel Diaz collectiveGlad to see Rebel Diaz and the RDACBX Collective are standing strong and pushing back hard in spite of the set backs imposed on them by the greedy developers in the Bronx, NYC and its gentrification projects and the FEDs.. After the group painted a mural on the walls of their community center, bringing attention to political prisoner Mumia Abu Jamal, there was a chilling response from those in power.. The building owner refused to sell the space to the group and he refused to take their rent or negotiate for new terms… He also never expressed concern about the mural..but nevertheless the group came to learn it was a trigger..

As they noted in a recent press conference, RDACBX is not limited to a building, it’s the spirit of the community and that community is everywhere and expanding..Their latest project is a song and dope video that pays tribute to the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez who was a big supported of the South Bronx community center the group and the neighborhood built.

Here’s what they penned about the video..

Peace Familia!

The direct connection we have with the The Bolivarian Revolution is
that our community space The Rebel Diaz Arts Collective -BX (RDACBX)
was directly funded by Venezuelan owned oil company- Citgo. For 4 1/2
years we received direct assistance from Comandante Hugo Chavez and
the people of Venezuela.

This song is our tribute to him as we consider him to be a champion of poor people around the world. Hugo
Chavez supported Hip Hop in The South Bronx. Hugo Chavez is Hip Hop.
Our community space was violently shut down on Feb. 28th by The NYPD and federal
marshalls. We know what it is. We were a threat because we were
teaching the youth, speaking out against Stop and Frisk, doing
political graffiti, doing open mics, etc.

We are living historic moments of oppression to which we can only respond
with historic moments of resistance!! It is time to Work Like
Chavez!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKkveMo-2NA

Rapper Rick Ross Explains His Song Was just a Big Misunderstanding-He Loves Women

Rick RossRapper Rick Ross appeared on a radio show on q93.3 in New Orleans and attempted to do some damage control by explaining the lyrics to his song..U.O.E.N.O. (you ain’t even know it)..In the song he describes what many call a ‘recipe for rape’ , where he brags about slipping a molly into a woman’s drink, taking her home and having sex, all while she is under the influence and doesn’t know..

The firestorm it set off has been widespread, including a big article in today’s Washington Post that includes a petition demanding key record executives be held accountable.. You can peep that article HERE..

In the article Industryears co-founder Paul Porter tells the Washington Post

Porter goes on to argue that artists should not be solely responsible for their lyrical content. According to him, the bar is being set increasingly lower and many are relying on shock value for mass appeal. This might explain why it seems the lyrical content gets progressively worse in its promotion of violence and drugs. And with media outlets not doing the best job in self-policing the airwaves, references to “Molly” and other drugs continuously get heard on the radio and in music videos.

“Somebody is responsible at every record label for what gets approved,” says Porter. “These are the people that we never talk about. The guys that profit the most never get talked about. Until the pressure is at the top – the bottom is never going to change. Rick Ross is just a pawn.”

There are times when I question the power of our voices against these massive corporate machines. What could we write/say that hasn’t already been written/said? What could we do that would actually hurt their bottom line? And if we reach one artist, aren’t there hundreds of others who are just the same?

Rick Ross in his interview says that he has love for women and they are sacred. He refers to them as Queens and says he condemns rape..He claims his lyrics were a big misunderstanding and that its important for artists to clarify.. He starts talking about the song 4;26 into the 8 minute intv..

It remains to be seen how Ross’s explanation will sit with folks.. Many are upset at the stations who promote such songs and are still pushing for them to pull that and other songs that celebrate rape culture..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzR-yTSWZgI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=lI7VOqLYLiY

Khan: 10 Years After the War in Iraq, The Anti-War Movement is Virtually Dead

Freelance Journalist Nida Khan

Freelance Journalist Nida Khan

Last week marked the official 10-year anniversary of the start of the Iraq War. Leading up to the commemoration of this bloody and costly engagement, major networks, newspapers and online outlets acknowledged the decade milestone with extensive coverage. They parsed the many ways in which the Bush administration misled everyone and orchestrated a brazen attack on a sovereign nation. And they criticized the media’s own fallacy in helping to sell the war to the American people. But out of all of the supposed lessons learned and promises to rectify our ways going forward, it’s amazing just how little we have changed. In some sort of twisted irony, many of the most vocal opponents of the Iraq war are virtually silent at this very moment when we are actively entrenched and engaged in more areas of the world than possibly ever before. An estimated 6 million people demonstrated against the war in Iraq (according to Al Jazeera). Viewing old footage of these protests, one thing became vividly evident: 10 years later, any semblance of an anti-war movement has been all but crushed.

Michael Mooregreen-225“As Americans, now whenever we’re told anything, somebody comes on and says there’s reports that maybe this and maybe that, we have to have the most skeptical, critical eye and ear to what we’re being told,” said filmmaker Michael Moore last Tuesday on ‘Piers Morgan Tonight’. Responding to reports of alleged chemical weapons use in Syria, and Ahmadinejad’s potential nuclear capabilities in Iran, Moore emphatically stated that our government – ‘the real government’ as he put it (Wall St., banks, the military) – hasn’t earned a right to be trusted. He went so far as to say that unless Ahmadinejad walks in the room with a bomb in his hand and shows it to him, he won’t believe anything he’s told about Iran. Watching Moore call out our rush to judgment (and subsequent action) around the world, it became blatantly obvious how rare his dissent actually is. In all the hoopla of ‘how could we let this happen’ in regards to Iraq 10 years ago, hardly anyone had the backbone to say that we’re still falling for the same playbook today save for one Michael Moore and a few others that have just been pushed to the margins.

Regardless of what your own personal views may be on Qaddafi (Gaddafi), Ahmadinejad, Abbas or the latest ‘bad guy’ on our list, the fact remains that we are still projecting them through a specific lens that gets drummed up in our mass media without appropriate context or complete information from all angles. And what follows is our involvement in yet another foreign independent country without adequate debate back home. Just because we may now align ourselves with a few other allies when doing so, does that make our actions really any less different than what happened with Iraq? And let’s put aside the notion of dictators that
need to be toppled for a moment and examine the use of weaponry in a host of other nations. Actively utilizing the predator drone program in Somalia, Yemen,

Mali, Afghanistan, Pakistan and numerous other countries, we are still dropping bombs that undoubtedly kill innocent civilians in the process. And yet, where’s the
objection from those that demonstrated against Iraq?

Medea Benjamin

Whenever the concept of drones is addressed in our common discourse, a majority almost instantaneously defend its use because it requires less forces on the ground, and less loss of American lives. Pressing buttons, dropping bombs and watching explosions on a screen as if it were some sort of video game, the individuals operating drones in Nevada or elsewhere are not only further desensitized to the notion of taking lives, but so are the rest of us. No longer do we have to protest the lack of images of coffins with dead U.S. soldiers – we don’t even consider the use of drones an act of war. Under the same open-ended guise of ‘fighting terrorism’, the drone program is fundamentally unchecked from independent entities, and functions pretty much without accountability because it remains a covert process (though there’s talk to move it from CIA control, but we have yet to see). It wasn’t until Congressman Rand Paul’s recent filibuster of Brennan’s confirmation that many Americans likely heard about drones for the first time – and many probably still haven’t. The silence, from all sides, has been quite deafening.

Rallies and marches against the war in Vietnam played an intricate role in the larger struggle for civil rights in this country. While we may be losing less troops today of course (which is a plus), modern warfare still results in the murder of innocents. Every time a supposed target is hit by a drone, civilians – often times women and children – are killed simultaneously and many others permanently wounded. And that goes for every bomb dropped, every time, in every town, in every village, in every city, in every country. But when was the last time we saw 6 million protest that? Or even a million? For that matter, when was the last time we saw any sort of massive anti-war protest anywhere? Have we become such a complacent society that out of sight really has translated into out of mind? Or have we become neutralized because the dynamics of warfare have changed? Any which way you look at it, it’s pretty shocking.

With the exception of a few journalists like Glenn Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill that have been discussing drones at length for some time now, the vast majority of our press has been silent (minus recent Rand Paul coverage). Instead, we have media that continues to tell us that the drone program is effective in defeating terrorism and getting the bad guys. Rather than questioning a policy as journalists should do, they have been selling it for years – much in the same fashion that the Iraq war was sold to us 10 years ago. In all the focus on the anniversary of the invasion, never once did pundits and journos from either side of the aisle highlight the fact that we are repeating the same mishaps again, right now, in the present. And in discussions of the media’s complacency in selling the war, how often did we hear an acknowledgment of its current complacency in selling any of our present conflicts?

Guess people will wait to talk about today’s failures another 10 years from now.

written by Nida Khan follow her on twitter at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPqpV9olIlw

Rosa Clemente Blasts Rapper Rick Ross.. Calls on Hip Hop to Say ‘No’ to Rape Culture

Rick Ross brownIn recent days a lot has happened that has kept the issue of rape and rape culture in the forefront.. It ranges from two female social commentators/ bloggers Zerlina Maxwell and Adria Richards being threatened with rape after speaking out against sexual assault and inappropriate sexist jokes to massive rapes in the military to recent fights and resistance that proceeded the passing of the Violence Against Women Act..

Most recently its come in the form of former law enforcement officer turned rapper Rick Ross, kicking lyrics in a new song that advocates date rape…. At a time where one out of three women globally are sexually assaulted and almost half of Black and Brown women in the US being sexually assaulted, Ross’s words are beyond wack. They’re dangerous, irresponsible and reflective of a corporate business culture that has hijacked cultural expression to plant seeds of poison.

The other day long time Hip Hop activist and former Vice Presidential candidate for the Green Party Rosa Clemente responded to Ross with a stinging rebuttal that she posted on youtube.. It was a stark reminder of whats at stake in terms of whats at stake.. Clemente ask for men in Hip Hop to step up draw lines in the sand and protect the culture and the women around them..She calls upon people to put an end to rape culture and uplift the humanity in us all..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lH7pU7PvFA

Long time industry vet Dee Dee Cocheta stepped up and penned a heartfelt  open letter to Rick Ross that appears on All Hip Hop..

Greetings William,

I am writing you a letter because I have sat back and observed long enough. I am coming to you as a ‘sister’ of the human family we all belong to. WE are connected! AND you my brother, I am tired of hearing negative things about you and now I am mad at how you are treating yourself. So please do not take this wrong or feel I am coming at you to scold or beat you up with my words. I am coming to you because I CARE and LOVE YOU!

What brought me to the point of writing this open letter was after reading ALLHIPHOP.com Hip-Hop Rumors on your new song, “U.O.E.N.O.” (you ain’t even know it) titled: YOWZA! New Rick Ross Lyric Will Upset Smart Women! So yeah I’m a little upset and rightfully so as the lyric you wrote about refers to ‘date rape’ and is exactly how I lost my virginity; someone STOLE it at the age of 14 before entering in high school. I take responsibility for being at a party I had no business being at but I want you to know how scary this now 41-year-old woman felt to wake up to blood on the sheets with an aching pain and empty feeling, that your heart is sunken where you feel you lost something. Well I did, I lost the right to choose whom I wanted to share that special moment with because I was knocked out and taken advantage of. See William, your lyric doesn’t educate it only further glamorize what fools like that man did to me 27 years ago. I happen to believe in karma and I know that man got his without me having to lift a finger.

You can read the rest of this letter at http://allhiphop.com/2013/03/25/open-letter-to-rick-ross-from-a-music-industry-vet/

To further demonstrate the extent Rape Culture has encroached upon us, here’s a panel discussion  we did last year for Free Speech TV dealing with the topic..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_-YfUKVGKY

 

 

Hip-Hop’s Ascension Officially Begins

Jasiri Ascension BACK

Tomorrow my first official album drops called “Ascension” on itunes and everywhere. Peep my video for “The Wheel” where I go UFO hunting and get chased by the FBI, and check my promo single “Mandela”

“I was patient like Mandela in prison/ cell sittin but never fell victim cause you can’t jail wisdom”