How and Why Hip Hop Has Always Been Political-But Will That Continue to Be the Case?

Whenever we talk about Hip Hop and Politics it’s always done from the stand point with us going to the ballot box as the ultimate goal. Don’t get me wrong, voting and participating in the electoral arena are important, but Hip Hop is so much bigger and so is politics.

For many of us politics is more than us voting for a particular candidate or having a catchy slogan that everyone chants at a rally. At its core, politics is about Empowerment. It’s the social, economic and political control of our communities with voting and political education being among the important steps we take to reach that goal.

Hip Hop is more than a ‘Hot 16‘, ‘fresh new gear‘ or ‘swagger devoid of substance‘. At the end of the day Hip Hop like politics is also about Empowerment. It’s about giving voice to the voiceless and helping remove both ourselves and the community from a position of being maligned and irrelevant with respect to the larger society. Like voting, knowledge and understanding of self and our communities is critical.

It’s important for us to have a firm understanding about the political and social conditions that existed at the dawn of Hip Hop’s birth in the early 70s. It’s important to note that our communities were under serious attack and the expressions associated with Hip Hop was one way in which we responded and ultimately coped.

The pioneers to this culture came up seeing how the FBI under the leadership of J Edgar Hoover and his Cointel Program, went all out to destroy the symbols of resistence and liberation from earlier generations including; Malcolm X who was killed, Martin Luther King who was killed and the Black Panther Party which was destroyed with many of its members jailed. Among those incarcerated during the dawning of Hip Hop was Afeni Shakur and the mother of Tupac. She along with her Panther comrades known as the New York 21. were jailed in 1971 while she was pregnant with Pac

The Free Speech and Anti-War Movements were under attack with then President Nixon declaring an all out war on radical youth. Hippies and Yippies were two components of youth culture caught up in the cross hairs as were Black and Brown organizations like SNCC, the Young Lords and the Brown Berets.

During Hip Hop’s dawning, New York City was enduring serious financial hardship as it teetered on the brink of bankruptcy. That calamity was avoided when city leaders decided to keep the cops, the firemen and garbage workers and instead fired 15 thousand school teachers leaving many of us without after-school programs, extracurricular classes like music and art and our overall education, shortchanged on many levels.

All this was exasperated by greedy landlords in the South Bronx who were burning down tenement buildings almost every other day and collecting the insurance money. Their actions put an already stressed community into an economic tail spin as the Bronx became the worldwide symbol of urban decay.

While all this was going on, the NYPD seemingly working in tandem with President Nixon’s War on Youth had launched an all out war on the gangs that were starting to emerge in the Bronx. They even had a special gang division who were just as brutal back in the days as they are now. Compounding this war by the police, was the fact that many Black and Brown gangs formed because they found themselves under attack by white greaser gangs who didn’t take too kindly to the Bronx neighborhoods expanding its Black and Puerto Rican populations. Hence there was serious racial tension.

It was in this climate that Hip Hop emerged.

Charlie Rock an original Zulu Nation member and former Black Spade which was the largest gang in New York gives a run down of the political and social climate at the dawning of Hip Hop

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycREFrL6-RA

The Spirit of Resistence: Hip Hop Has Always Been Political

Resistence-It’s a facet in Hip Hop that is not fully appreciated and reflected upon.

So again let me repeat… Hip Hop is resistence…It was us fighting back, standing up to and flipping the script on oppressive forces. Bootom line Hip Hop was always POLITICAL.

Afrika Bambaataa

It was political when Afrika Bambaataa a former Black Spade warlord while attending Stevenson High School in the Bronx sought to escape gang life and formed the Organization which he later turned into the Mighty Zulu Nation. This was Hip Hop’s first organization which had among its goals to be a youth movement.

It was political when you went to hear Bambaataa spin at a park jam and he would rock Malcolm X speeches over breakbeats, reminding us what our political ideology should be.

It was political when Bam took the name ‘Zulu’ for his new organization after being inspired by the movie of the same name that depicted the South African Zulus fighting European colonizers. As the Zulu Nation grew, Bambaataa sought to instill pride and bring out the best positive attributes from the people around him. He did this by referring to Zulu members as ‘Kings’ and ‘Queens’. Bam once told me he did this to help raise people’s self esteem with the hopes that they would live up to the lofty titles he bestowed.

It was political when Bambaataa and other artists including Kurtis Blow, Kool Herc, Mele-Mel, Run DMC and the Fat Boys all participated in the Artist United Against Apartheid project where they recorded several songs for the Sun City album. Later Bambaattaa would tour Europe doing concerts to raise money for the ANC (African National Congress).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joYTCwNMdq8

What was even more remarkable and definitely ‘political’ about Afrika Bambaataa who was dubbed the Master of Records, was his goal to turn his former gang comrades into a positive force. Bam has often remarked how and he and others would spend lots of time working and building with folks. He said it took a ‘whole lot of meetings and whole lot of patience‘ but eventually folks grew and got it together.

When he started touring Bam took many of the folks from his Bronx River neighborhood with him. He gave them jobs as roadies or as security. He did whatever it took to get them into new environments to help expand their horizons. He was essentially doing a prison to work program years before the city was doing one. If that isn’t political I don’t know what is..

Years later we would see a number of other Hip Hop artists, most notably MC Hammer a former High Street Bank Boy out of Oakland, do similar things. Hammer spent hundreds of thousands of dollars creating jobs within his company in to help facilitate the transition friends and people in his neighborhood would have to make when returning home from the pen.

Hammer took his desire to transform lives to another level when he approached local Bay Area urban radio station KMEL in the early 90s and convinced them to let him air a radio show he created called Street Soldiers. The show was designed to give folks who were ‘in the life’ (gangs drugs etc) an opportunity to get out. Gang members would call in and talk about the challenges they were facing and get feedback from their peers and community experts who would help them turn their lives around. Hammer hosted the show for the first several months and then turned it over to current hosts Joe Marshall and Margret Norris of the Omega Boys club.

The Geto Boys

In a similar vein we have the Geto Boys out of Houston. Everyone is familiar with many of their politically charged rap songs that dealt with everything from crooked police to shady DEA Agents to a President and his quest for war. We’re also familiar with the fact that Willie D used to do a political talk show on Houston radio.

However, what many people didn’t know was that the GB spent quite a bit of money paying legal fees and other court costs trying to get innocent people out of jail. Bushwick Bill and Scarface talked about this in great detail a few years ago when they came on our daily Hard Knock Radio show to protest the state of Texas executing Shaka Sankofa. If I recall correctly, Bushwick said they spent at least 200-250 thousand dollars in their efforts. That was another example of Hip Hop’s spirit of resistence.

Hip Hop Has Always Addressed Electoral Politics

Melle-Mel recorded a song called 'Jesse' praising Rev Jesse Jackson-It one of the earliest rap songs encouraging folks to Get Out and Vote

Moving into the arena of the Ballot Box, Hip Hop has been a participant in some form or fashion going all the way back to 1984 when Melle-Mel of Grand Master Flash & the Furious 5 recorded a song called Jesse’ which highlighted Reverand Jesse Jackson‘s historic run for the White House. The song also encouraged everyone to ‘Get out and Vote‘ while at the same time taking then President Ronald Reagan to task for the economic harm he was causing poor people around the country.

See Ronald Reagan speaking on TV, smiling like everything’s fine and dandy
Sounded real good when he tried to give a pep talk to over 30 million poor people like me
How can we say we got to stick it out when his belly is full and his future is sunny?
I don’t need his jive advice but I sure do need his jive time money
The dream is a nightmare in disguise (Let’s talk about Jesse)
Red tape and lies fill your for spacious skies (Let’s talk about Jesse)
But don’t think that DC just did it first (Let’s talk about Jesse)
There’s a lot of DC’s all over this universe (His name is Jesse)

Later in the song, Melle-Mel smashes on the former President for his initial refusal to meet with Jesse Jackson after he offered to go to Syria and help secure the release of Navy Lt. Robert O. Goodman Jr. who was being hostage after his plane was shot down when he ‘accidently’ flew into their airspace. Ironically even though the song was popular in clubs and at rallies, many urban station never played the record. Jackson himself, told me he didn’t hear the record until the some 10 years after it was recorded. Talk about a disconnect between generations.

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

In 1988 Luther Campbell aka Uncle Luke of the 2 Live Crew teamed up with one of his artists Anquette to back former US Attorney General Janet Reno who at the time was a Dade County (Miami) District Attorney vying for another term.

Anquette did this incredible James Brown inspired song called Janet Reno where she praised Reno for her legal prowess and for going after dead beat dads. The song helped Reno win the election which in turn angered her opponent a lawyer by the name of Jack Thompson.

Thompson sought revenge on Campbell and launched a campaign where he pressured officials throughout the state including Governor Bob Martinez and Broward County sheriff Nick Navarro to go after the 2 live Crew for violating state obscenity laws. Eventually Navarro won a ruling that deemed the group’s album As Nasty As They Wanna Be as obscene.

Local record store owners were warned not to sell the album or they would be arrested. Many shop owners protested but didn’t dare test Navarro. Things came to a head when 2 of the 2 Live Crew members were arrested for performing songs off the album. This is turn set off a huge legal firestorm around first amendment rights.

Campbell, fought this case all the way to the Supreme Court where Harvard Professor Henry Louis ‘Skip’ Gates testified on behalf of the 2Live Crew. He noted that the salacious material they recorded was rooted in the oral/song traditions of African-Americans. The ruling of obscenity were overturned. Again, all this legal drama was caused by Luke’s subversive efforts and Anquette’s song which help turn the tide in an election.

Now we could do an entire book on Hip Hop and Elections where we’d have to cover everyone from Diddy‘s Vote or Die efforts to Russell Simmons Hip Hop Summit Action Network to the Hip Hop Political Conventions that took place in 04, 06 and 08. We’d also have to talk about the formation of Hip Hop Congress and the work they do on campuses around the country, the introduction of Rap Sessions and the political town halls they hold around the country, The League of Young Voters who put out Hip Hop oriented voting guides and recently has been doing work around the census and we’d have to cover Washington based Hip Hop Caucus that routinely engages elected officials on Capitol Hill and did the Respect My Vote Campaign in 08.

We would also have to talk about the recent victory of artist/activist Ras Baraka to the City Council in Newark. He used to serve as deputy mayor. We’d have to talk about the Honorable George Martinez who is currently serving as cultural Envoy, Hip-Hop Ambassador at U.S. State Department. Prior to him serving that position well known Brooklyn based freestyle artist Toni Blackman was this country’s Hip Hop Ambassador. I believe Martinez who also once served on the New York State Democratic Committee is currently running for Congress in NY’s 12th district.

Also running for Congressional office is author/ activist Kevin Powell. This is his second attempt and from the looks of things he stands a really good chance of beating the 28 year incumbent Edolphus Towns. The battle ground is in New York’s 10th district in Brooklyn

Lastly we’d have to talk about Dr Jared Ball out of Maryland who is best known for his political mix tapes ‘Freemix radio‘ ran for Green Party nomination for president in in 08 and long time activist Rosa Clemente who made history by securing the vice presidential nomination for the Green Party. She and former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney had their name on the ballots in all 50 states and garnered impressive numbers even though their historic bid was overshadowed by Barack Obama’s run for the White House which definitely brought out and politicized many in the Hip Hop generation.

From Paris to Brazil Fear of a Politicized Hip Hop

Never in our wildest dreams did marginalized Black and Brown ghetto youth living in the South Bronx, one of the poorest most dilapidated regions of the country ever think this culture of music, dance and oratory expressions we call Hip Hop would mean so much to so many people all over the world. From the slums of Nairobi, Kenya to the streets of Paris, France to the favelas in Rio, Brazil to the hoods in Detroit, to the streets in Gaza, Hip Hop’s presence is not only felt, but has been a driving cultural force in resistence movements especially amongst the young, poor and oppressed. Much of this was inspired by seminal artists like Public Enemy, KRS-One, dead prez , X-Clan and 2Pac to name a few who embodied this spirit of resistence.

For those who think this is far-fetched, think back to 2005 when Paris erupted in riots and over 200 French politicians signed a petition calling for legal action against Hip Hop acts and their aggressive lyrics which they said incited the riots. Acts like Monsieur R and Sniper became the main targets and were actually brought up on charges and faced lawsuits because of their songs that encouraged resistence to the police and government oppression.

Although there were no government petitions signed, in the late 80s, the FBI’s assistant director Milt Ahlerich saw fit to shoot off a letter to Priority Records expressing outrage over the song ‘Fuck tha Police’ which was put out by NWA. In the letter he noted that “advocating violence and assault is wrong and we in the law enforcement community take exception to such action“. Over the years NWA found themselves not being allowed to perform that song at many of the venues because of police pressure. The one time they did in Detroit, 20 plain clothes officers rushed the stage to shut the group down.

MV Bill is an artist we should all know

Several years ago in 2004 a corporate MTV-like 2 day Hip Hop festival called Hip Hop Manifest featuring Snoop and Ja Rule was boycotted by a coalition of Brazilian artists including the enormously popular MV Bill who stated in a Stress magazine article “The organizers are not interested in our issues, or what we rhyme about, they just want to buy our legitimacy, and I have a moral commitment to uphold the history that has created hip-hop. I pity the black man who sells our history for a price.”

What was at stake was these corporate media promoters refused to reinvest the profits into the poor communities in the area and lower ticket prices to make the event more accessible. Many of the Brazilian artists gave up hefty paychecks and a chance to get serious international spotlight, but they felt strongly about the issue and held their ground. They also put a call out to Snoop and Ja Rule and other American rappers to recognize the injustice they were fighting and invited them to come spend time in the poor communities.

“We cannot allow ourselves to be seen simply as idols. Ever since I began creating hip hop, my dream was to show Black people that we could be free and break the shackles.” Snoop, isn’t this beautiful?”, is the question Sao Paulo rap star LF posted to Snoop in an open letter.

M-1 of dead prez who recently went to Gaza always represents for the people

These are just a few of the dozens of examples that could easily be cited to show the resistence and political nature within Hip Hop. From the anti-police brutality albums, put together by artists like Mos Def and Talib Kweli, to the legendary voter registration rallies in Harlem once put on by Sista Souljah to the Stop the Violence Movement started by KRS-One, to the Orphanage recently opened by Immortal Technique in Afghanistan to M1 of dead prez making a trip to Gaza to the anti-police brutality work done by groups like One Hood in Pittsburgh or Hip Hop Against Police Brutality in Texas, to Knaan having his song Raise the Flag be used in the World Cup to Invincible and Finale using their song Locust to make a full fledge documentary about gentrification in Detroit, Hip Hop doesnt give lip service to politics.

From the anti-war efforts put forth by numerous artists (over 200 songs have been recorded at last count) to the efforts around the Jena 6 with artist like Jasiri X doing a theme song. tireless work put forth by artists like David Banner, Nelly, and others in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to the recent efforts put forth by artists like Wyclef Jean, NY Oil, Mystic and many others to help bring relief to victims of the earthquake in Haiti, Hip Hop artists have proven to be a responsive. Pick a subject, Immigration, Domestic Violence, Gulf Oil Spill, you name it and Hip Hop has and is there. The reason being because there are always people in our communities who will resist and are down to fight for Freedom no matter what.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Web707z2oB0

Currently, Hip Hop’s biggest challenge is to resist all the attempts to dilute and redirect its potential to spark meaningful social and political change in the face of oppression. This especially true for Hip Hop that makes its way into corporate backed mainstream enclaves. The corporate agenda is to reduce Hip Hop down to a meaningless disposable song and to reduce politics to a voting over catchy phrase or sensationalistic headline and scandal.

It’s no mistake that much of what I’ve written about has not been highlighted, celebrated, shown on TV or played on the radio. It’s not because people won’t find these acts interesting, newsworthy or popular. The end game is to lessen the influence of an artist and dumb down the audience so game can be run on us. That game of course is to sell us product and complacent ideology. The end game is to get Hip Hop to be used as a tool to drive consumerism vs activism and make the music and our people disposable entities to be discarded or conquered.

Return to Davey D’s Hip hop Corner

War on Youth: 10 Years Later We Remember the Historic Fight Against Prop 21

Ten years ago, various Bay Area youth organizations and movements found themselves coming together to fight a hideous juvenile crime bill called Prop 21. This bill among other things would charge youth as young as 14 as adults and gave the police sweeping powers including the right to detain and arrest three or more people ‘dressed in similar attire’ as a gang. It was a special time in the Bay Area and even though the bill passed in California it was defeated here in the Bay Area where most of the organizing took place..

The fight against Prop 21 was more than just walk outs and chants… It was strategy building. It was coalition building. It was connecting to other movements and struggles with obtaining Social Justice as a guiding principle. It was elders from past movements sitting down and working with young people. It was building upon and working with movements that had been sparked by freedom fighter Angela Davis and the historic Critical Resistance Conference at UC Berkeley. It was working with the movements sparked in earlier years by the Chicano Moratorium, Olin and Student Empowerment Project which were key in organizing students to fight propositions targeting immigrants like the English language only Prop 227 and the so called ‘Save Our States‘ anti-immigrant Prop 187.

The fight against Prop 21 was one that saw folks take momentum that had been sparked with organizations like the October 22 Coalition,  Ella Baker Center and the then emerging Third Eye Movement around the police killings of Aaron Williams and later Sheila Detoy in which a police officer said  Detoy got killed because she was ‘living a hip Hop lifestyle’ .

The Fight Against Prop 21 was one in which Hip Hop artists of various disciplines came together and the  It was young people going around from corner to corner politicizing their peers. It was artists like a then unknown Goapele showing up at rallies and blessing us with inspiring songs like ‘Aint No Sunshinewhere she flipped a Noreaga beat  and told us why we needed to Fight this insidious Crime Bill. It was popular artists like Boots Riley of the Coup going around with organizers like Marcel Diallo and giving impromptu concerts on the back of flat-bed trucks in West oakland. It was artists like The Deliquents, Money B, Mystic Journeymen, Blackalicious and so many others  using their clout to speak out against t the bill  It was artists like Michael Franti connecting his s 9-11 Power to the Peaceful concerts which was  focused on freeing Mumia and political prisoners to the Fight against Prop 21.

The Fight Against Prop 21 eventually led to the formation of our current syndicated Hard Knock Radio Show on KPFA which is also celebrating its 10 year anniversary. It was a huge boost to my Sunday night show Street Knowledge on commercial giant KMEL with various organizers coming on each week to lace people about the protests and events being planned  around the fight.. Later that fight helped spark the Local Flava Hour that myself and DJ Sake 1 did -special shout out to Gold Toes and the Deliquents who helped flipped that for us..

There are so many stories to tell and so many people cut their teeth and became well-known around the country for their organizing. One of the more nationally known figures was former White House Green Jobs appointee Van Jones..but there were scores of people who came out and put in work.. Yesterday some of those key organizers like George Galvis, Krea Gomez, Laatefah Simon, Malachi GarzaNancy Pili and Tony Coleman came together to share reflections and insights, mistakes made  and victories won. We’ll be airing some of that conversation later today (april 22 2010) on Hard Knock Radio 94.1 FM 4Pm PST www.kpfa.org

Below are some articles and videos to gives folks a flava of what took place during a time that many out here found special…

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

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Third Eye Fights Back Against Prop 21
by Davey D-2/4/00

http://www.daveyd.com/thirdeyefightsback.html


Big Props are in order to The Bay Area’s premier Hip Hop organization Third Eye Movement. This past Thursday they were featured on NPR [National Public Radio] where they brought to light the types of methods currently being employed to engage the Hip Hop community and politics. Most notable was was when the group recently showed up with over 300 folks and shut down San Francisco’s Hilton Hotel. Folks are still talking about that incident when Third Eye came down and brought the heat when it was discovered that the hotel chain was supporting Prop 21, California’s Anti-Gang Youth Crime Prevention initiative. It was a sight to behold when all these Hip Hop headz showed up and completely surrounded the hotel. They raised their fists and began chanting in unison a customized version to the popular rhyme featured in the Sugar Hill Gang classic ‘Rapper’s Delight‘.

Hotel Motel –And The Hilton
If you start a war on youth
You ain’t gonna win!

The youth then entered the hotel lobby while still holding up raised fists and began chanting a customized version of the chorus to DMX‘s ‘Ruff Ryder’s Anthem’.

Stop! Drop! People Gonna Rise To the Top!
ooh! ooh! Prop 21’s Gotta To Go!
Stop! Drop! People Gonna Rise To the Top!
ooh ooh Prop 21’s Gotta To Go!

The end result was the Hilton coming out and clarifying their position on the Prop 21. They made it known that it was the president or chairman of the Hilton who was backing Prop 21 and not the chain itself. It was great to get that sort of response and un-blurring of the lines. That wasn’t bad for a bunch a Hip Hop headz who are just getting into politics. The other noteworthy event involved several other Bay Area Hip Hop and youth organization who co-ordinated efforts and held three simultaneous protests against PG &E [Pacific Gas and Electric]. This included San Jose’s UKAH, Concord’s C-Beyond and Third Eye. Again more then 300 folks showed up at each PG &E office demanding that they back down on their support of Prop 21. The result was a sit down meeting with PG &E management in which they came and stated that they would be neutral on the position. Because PG & E had given money to the initiative, there was a push to have them donate equal money to fight the initiative. That hasn’t happened yet.

The other victory Third Eye had was with Chevron where they got this big corporation to come out and publicly state they were neutral on Prop 21. All this is encouraging at a time when so many insist on holding a negative image of Hip Hop.The other thing that should be emphasized is that while Third Eye and these others Hip Hop organizations were out there bringing the heat noticeable absent were some of the more traditional organizations who haven’t been aggressively breaking bread with Hip Hop.

In addition to organizing these large scale protests, Third Eye has been hard at work passing out literature and literally going door to door explaining to people the provisions in Prop 21. At first the education was taking place within the High schools and various college campuses but with a month left before the March 7th election, you will no doubt see their activities and visibility increased. There is some sort of big hip Hop rally/concert activity scheduled for February 21st.

Other Hip Hoppers stirring up noise on this on the political front include Keith Knight of the social conscious Hip Hop band Marginal Prophetshttp://www.iuma.com/IUMA/Bands/Marginal_Prophets. In addition to throwing down on the mic..Knight has made a name for himself as a cartoonist whose work can be seen in all sorts of publications ranging from The SF Examiner Newspaper to Salt Lake City Weekly tohttp://www.salon1999.com. Recently he penned a powerful cartoon bringing attention to Prop 21. All sorts of organizations have made copies and have been passing them out. By the way folks may want to peep the group’s album ‘Twist the Knob’.

The Bay Area’s hottest act The Delinquents from East Oakland are also getting into the act. They’re in the process of making post cards that shows their picture on the front with a big Vote No on Prop 21 on the back. They have also included some facts about the proposition as well as their position on other electoral issues. In addition to their popularity, the group has a huge truck that is shrink wrapped with their picture and album cover. They’ll be using this truck promotional tool to get the word out to their folks in the hood to get out and vote as bring them up to speed on some of the politics getting ready to effect ‘The town’.

Respond to Davey D at: Mrdaveyd@gmail.com

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPkFvABs9HU

Hip Hop ActivismTo The Fullest!
by – Davey D

http://www.daveyd.com/FullArticles%5CarticleN224.asp

2/1/00 9:57:26 AM


It was a weekend of intense activism here in the Bay Area as there were several successful ‘No On Prop 21‘ [Juvenile Crime Initiative] rallies that brought together clergy, elected officials and scores of Hip Hoppers. Rarely has anyone witnessed this type of activism and coming together.Things kicked off on Saturday morning with the opening of the ‘No on Prop 21’ campaign office here in Oakland [1019 Clay St in downtown Oakland]. Alameda County supervisor Keith Carson along with Congresswoman Barbara Lee secured a spacious location in downtown. Rap artists and Hip Hop organizations including, Boots of The CoupSon of Nat Turner The 2Pac One Nation Committee, The Black Dot Collective, Underground Railroad and Third Eye Movement to name a few came out in full force.

Here they broke bread with more established community activists and elected officials like the The Mayor of Berkeley [Shirley Dean] , the former Vice Mayor of Oakland [Ignacio De La Fuente] , County supervisors [Mary King, Keith Carson], local City Council members [Larry Reid, Nancy Nadel] and a number of Ministers representing every religion from Baptists to Muslims to Jews. It was really a beautiful thing and the energy that resonated throughout was contagious.

The Ministers led people in prayer while Boots and several emcees ripped some wicked freestyles that directly dealt with the Prop 21 initiative. Everyone took time out to directly address the large audience by offering insight, possible solutions and words of encouragement. Several members who are down with the 2Pac One Nation Committee, The Black Dot Collective and Black Folks Against Prop 21, have put together a weekly political education newsletter called the ‘Daily Struggle [Makin Sure The Hood Knows What’s Crackin]‘ which they have been delivering door to door throughout the hood.

After the introductions were made and strategies imparted the large gathering grabbed pens and pads and went canvassing local neighborhoods. Everyone realizes there is a lot of work to be done getting the word out to the masses. In spite all the activism, there are still lots of people who simply do not know and need to be brought up to speed.Later that afternoon, former Black Panther chief of staff and current Oakland City Council candidateDavid Hilliard put together a large rally in West Oakland. In a move that was reminiscent of the old Panther days of the ’60s, he along with his crew gave out free lunches and brought out emcees from numerous local crews came out to perform and help get people registered.

.Lockdown 2000 Event A Success!

The highlight of the weekend was an event called Lockdown 2000. Here more than 1500 people showed up for a night of ‘cultural revelation’ which included spoken word, Hip Hop performances and dance. All the artist which include Michael Franti, Jason ‘The Kreative Dwella’, Local 1200 DJs and Amandla Poets to name just a slight few, donated their time as each one passionately brought attention to the issues at hand. Those issues were the case surrounding Mumia Abu Jamal and other political prisoners, the building of prisons as opposed to schools and Prop 21. To see all these folks from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds, both young and old come together in such large numbers was incredible. Here’s a brief description from former Black Panther and activist Kiilu Nyasha. For folks who are unfamiliar with this sista she is one of the key elders in the Bay Area who early on had sat down and directly worked with a lot of the Bay Areas ‘conscious’ artists like Paris and Boots to name a few and laced them with some serious political game.

Every group and individual who performed or spoke packed a powerful political punch — and the messages were delivered with terrific artistry and pizazz. Our keynote speakers were Ida McCray Robinson of Families With A Future and Pam Africa of MOVE and The International Concerned Family & Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal, who brought with her from Philly her husband, Buck, and daughter, Pixie (11). There was sooo much love in that venue, such positive spiritual energy that folks walked away saying things like “amazing,” “awesome,” “the bomb!” I’m hoping Wanda Sabir will write a fuller description of the performances in her own unique style, so you can get the full flavor of the event.. All the organizers and performers/speakers volunteered their time, so we cleared well over $6000! We not only packed the place; every group imaginable was represented — from babies to teenagers, young adults and elders, Africans, Asians, Latinos, and Natives. What made it all happen, of course, was the wonderful spirit of cooperation displayed by all who helped pull it together. As one of the organizers, I can say honestly that I never got a “no” from anyone I approached for help; and lots of folks called and volunteered their assistance.

Noticeably absent from all these positive events were reporters from all of the Bay Area’s major TV and newspapers. As early as Saturday morning, I was still getting phone calls from reporters who still wanted to drudge up the drama behind the Cash Money concert violence from two weeks ago. Unfortunately, while they were diligent in covering the violence, not one of them bothered to be diligent in covering the building and coming together of Hip Hoppers who are successfully getting people politicized. There was no mentions on the radio. There were no articles in the local papers and no film clips on the 6 o’clock evening news.

What was most troubling, was the fact that calls were made directly to the weekend assignment editors of these outlets both the day of the event as well a couple of days before alerting them of these activities. The people who placed these calls were some of these high ranking elected officials who normally don’t have a problem obtaining press coverage. In fact while reporters were conspicuously absent from these rallies and events they managed to cover some of these same elected officials at other gatherings. For example, Congresswoman Barbara Lee who helped secure the ‘No On Prop 21’ campaign office spoke at the ‘No on Prop 21’ rally.

So to the average person who still religiously depends upon traditional mediums for his news and community information, there is no such thing as Prop 21. The thought of Hip Hoppers engaging in politics is still unfathomable. All he knows is that his local congresswoman was hard at work fighting for rent control and that’s it. Now, I’m not naive enough to expect anything different from the mainstream news media, but I had no idea it would be so blatant in its dismissal. Maybe its me, but I figured at a time when we have all sorts of drama surrounding Hip Hop in the form of Puffy, Jay-Z and other rap stars, seeing Hip Hop headz working alongside elected officials and the religious community would be a welcome change that one would proudly want to report.

The reason behind doing this would be to first, give props to people who are hard at work doing the ‘right’ thing and secondly, encourage and inspire a supposedly apathetic public to do the same. The big story here was that these Hip Hop artists and organizations working with elected officials is not a gimmick. It isn’t a cute stunt put together to create a photo op. It’s the real deal. It was months and even years of hard work finally manifesting itself in a new type of activism. When was the last time you went to a political rally and Hip Hoppers were equal participants? When was the last time you came across artists who were more interested in addressing the audience and expressing their views as opposed to getting wreck on the mic and using tan occasion as a disingenuous way to promote their album? I guess a multi-ethnic, intergenerational, multi-faceted gathering of people is threatening to the assignment editors of an industry that thrives on divisiveness and continuous mayhem.

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

Here’s a few other articles to peep

http://www.daveyd.com/FullArticles/articleN549.asp

http://www.daveyd.com/FullArticles%5CarticleP60.asp

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Children/NewYouthMovement_Calif.html

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