photo credit ABC News
Looking back 11 years ago at the 9-11 Terror Attacks, its sad to see the assaults against innocent people in America didn’t stop with those planes crashing into the World Trade & the Pentagon…
I recall that fateful day, how our heart went out to first responders like those brave officers in NYPD who lost their lives.. We embraced them and held them up high and gave them all that they needed to protect the city. 11 years later we have come to see how NYPD took their newly granted powers and use in the most vicious ways against fellow New Yorkers..
We’ve seen NYPD under the guise of ‘fighting terror’ use tactics like Stop and Frisk resulting in them inconveniencing and often times absolutely humiliated close to 700k people last year alone.. Under Stop and Frisk we’ve seen over 85% of those stopped being young Black and Brown males with less than 1% of any weapons found or folks being detained being in violation of any law..
We’ve seen the NYPD do unprecedented amounts of spying on innocent people, mainly Muslim Americans and in particular Muslim students creating a climate of fear, intense Islamaphobia and hatred toward fellow citizens who also lost family and loved ones in those horrific attacks..We seen that play out last year with the proposed building of a mosque near Ground Zero.
Congressional reps like Long island’s Peter King amped up fears and even held hearings accusing Muslim Americans of being possible terrorists who should be investigated. That same Peter King has been relatively silent during the recent rise of domestic terrorist incidents executed by non-muslims including the recent mass killings of Sikhs in Wisconsin. We now see NYPD ready to unveil a new domestic spying program called Domain Awareness Surveillance that makes Stop and Frisk look tame in comparison.
After the Terror Attacks, NYPD garnered our sympathy only to turn around and become an outfit that was described by Mayor Michael Bloomberg as his own ‘private army’… We’ve seen NYPD become a private army for Wall Street banks like JP Morgan during the Occupy Wall Street Movement, where it was revealed that NYPD was put on JP Morgan’s payroll. The end result was the entire world bearing witness to the countless beat downs administered by white shirted police against those who were protesting economic disparities attributed to those Wall st financial giant.
11 years after the 9-11 Attacks we’ve seen NYPD become a terror organization in the lives of African-Americans The recent explosive, Extra Judicial Killings of Black People by Police Report put out by the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement shows every 36 hours an African-American is killed by police all over the United States. New York City, followed by Dallas and Atlanta is leading the charge in cities where Blacks are likely to be killed by police. From the killings of Sean Bell to Ramarley Graham, many have claimed NYPD has sparked more fear in Black and Brown folks than Al Qaeda ever did.
Renaldo Cuevas was shot and ‘accidentally’ killed by NYPD
In spite having intense training and unlimited resources, we’ve seen in the past month NYPD shoot 10 innocent civilians including Bronx Bodega worker Renaldo Cuevas who was killed by NYPD after he fled from robbers inside his store. His killing was the latest in a long line of recent wrong doings by this once lauded law enforcement agency. Among the most glaring involve NYPD officers Michael Pena and Arthur Roland both accused of rape in separate incidents this year. The biggest irony is seeing how former NYPD commissioner Bernard Kerik who was deemed a hero during 9-11 was recently sentenced to 4 years in federal prison. Go figure.
11 years after 9-11 we’ve seen the War of Terror turn on people here in the US who dared protest and question the government over a variety of grievances ranging from misguided war efforts in places like Iraq to illegal drone strikes to pre-emptive strikes on foreign soil to renditions, torture and other atrocities we once considered war crimes that needed to be vigorously prosecuted when executed by others..We’ve even seen the passing of laws like the NDAA which allows American citizens to be stopped and indefinitely detained anywhere in the world. Since 9-11 we’ve seen American citizens killed on foreign soil thanks to our governments secret ‘kill list‘. We won’t even talk about the rise of private prisons and detention camps throughout the US where many are finding themselves placed.
During the 9-11 Attacks we realized that the World Trade was attacked because it was near Wall Street and it represented the financial arm of this country.. We felt bad for those close to those banking institutions and embraced them in solidarity.
11 years later we’ve come to find that since 9-11 many of those financial institutions went and deliberately crippled the economy, causing 1 out of 7 people to be plunged into poverty while they made record profits and got away with millions of questionable and illegal foreclosures. Many describe what these Wall street bandits did and continue to do to millions of Americans and innocent everyday folks all over the world as ‘economic terrorism‘…Many of those who head up these institutions have acted with reckless abandon, never once showing any remorse and justifying highly unethical behavior as them simply doing ‘good business‘..
After 9-11 the entire world looked at America, embraced us and shared in our pain. Many helped us get back on our feet only to see us turn around and embrace foreign policies resulting in the US being seen as a super power that routinely commits acts of terror all over the planet. Talk to those innocent families in Pakistan, Somalia and other countries who’ve been terrorized by our drone strikes.
Since 9-11 the ‘War on Terror‘ has become a money-making venture for those connected to the military industrial complex vs a defense operation designed to keep us and the rest of the world safe from harm..
9-11 itself has become a political backdrop where all sorts of lawmakers evoke the events of that day to affirm a twisted notion of patriotism resulting in them grandstanding and erecting all sorts of Draconian laws from the Warrantless Wire Taps to the infamous Patriot Act which have put severe restrictions on our freedoms vs opening them up. Thank God during this year’s 9-11 commeroration, politicians will not be allowed to speak.
9-11 has become a rallying cry for loud mouth media pundits to beat the drums of war and question the patriotism of others who dare suggest that we find less combative ways to protect our shores, while never once donning an outfit and volunteering themselves to be on the front line of any other military outfit. Some of those pundits while evoking 9-11 to show their patriotism, were leading the charge to prevent those from getting proper aid and resources from those who suffered and continue to suffer from disease and other illnesses including certain types of cancer caused by the debris of that attacks. They cited austerity measures and ‘less government’ as the rationale. After 11 years of intense political infighting under the recently passed Zadroga Act, 9-11 cancer victims will get some relief.
Meanwhile we still have other pundits like Ann Coulter who still stand by their vicious demonization of 9-11 widows, as illustrated in this infamous quote from her one of her books..
These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by grief-arazzies. I have never seen people enjoying their husbands’ death so much.
Today we should take time to reflect on those innocent lives lost 11 years ago and do a bit of soul-searching, questioning the direction this country has taken on our collective watch..Let’s make a commitment to really end terrorism..lets end the terror we are heaping on each other for political and monetary gain.
As you keep in mind some of what was written, I encourage you to read this excellent article from David Rosen that focuses on the growth of what he calls the police-corporate surveillance “complex” You can read that article HERE
written by Davey D
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrrzHjPC9p8
There’s lots to say about whats going down here in Charlotte at the DNC. There are scores of protests… key word ‘scores’. More people are up in arms and stomping the pavement then they were in Tampa Bay..
There was a march and demonstration around the plight of undocumented students…where people should note, that as the DNC celebrated the rise of Latino politicians like keynote speaker San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro who gave a rousing speech that led to folks giving a standing ovation, outside the doors of the convention in front of the entrance, 10 undocumented students were arrested. Actress Rosario Dawson stood with the crowd as this went down in support. She held up a big sign that said Undocumented. Will they be deported? We don’t know..
Michele Obama left folks feeling proud.. For women who have felt been under assault by weeks of rhetoric on the campaign trail about ‘legitimate rape’ policies of GOP, Michele was a welcome breath of fresh air. For Black women she was a source of pride, someone who erased all the nasty stereotypes and bad images constantly being hawked and elevated in the form of shows like Basketball Wives and other Reality shows on network TV.. In fact one sister a radio personality, SkyyHook tweeted ‘Ladies, this is what a REAL wife looks like.. No Fighting, No Throwing chairs or Jumping on tables… Class and humility’.. That tweet was generously passed around.
Live From the DNC-Charlotte Day 1: Today is the first day of the Democratic Nat’l Convention and already in there have been more and bigger protests in the past 3 days then all of what we saw in Tampa.. The big one was the Historic Wall Street South March which saw large number of Labor People come together to not only highlight economic disparities. 99% vs 1% but to also bring heat to President Obama and the DNC for holding a convention in North Carolina which ranks #50 in Union members..
Having a huge presence here in Charlotte are brown folks, many undocumented who came to the march deep and held a Fear No Papers rally last night.. That rally was heavily supported by those who are documented.. Many are not happy with Obama and even though the President has promised to ease back and give folks a break, many are still angry that over one million folks were deported. That means one million families were broken up.. Most undocumented folks are connected to families who are citizens.. So each deportation means a mother, father Uncle etc has been shipped out.. Brown folks from all over, are here and they are geared up to hold a big event tomorrow night.. I don’t get the sense of excitement the way I did in Tampa last week..
For those who don’t know, political conventions are elaborate, very scripted multi-million dollars productions designed to project a compelling message drawing you to the presidential candidate.. Here at the RNC in Tampa Bay, tons of resources were devoted to trying to make people forget about the ‘legitimate rape‘ comments made earlier this month by prominent Republicans like Todd Akins.
The camera people were instructed to pan to people of color in the audience, with RNC handlers strategically moving Black and Brown bodies to camera ready locations throughout the building. On top of that signs and hand-held fans that read Hispanics for Mitt were handed out to all-white delegates of Kansas. Global Grind Editor-in-Chief Michael Skolnik was the one who was tweeting live and first reported this, was in utter shock that the GOP was orchestrating this fake diversity.
During last nights proceedings there were several disruptions both from members of Code Pink as well as upset delegates repping for Ron Paul. The Paul delegates held up signs stating how the RNC had been hijacked and Democracy was stolen. With each disruption the crowd would stand, clap and chant loudly USA, USA USA..
The biggest irony is even though the GOP has blatant anti-immigrant sentiments, they are hawking Obama’s deportation record while Black conservatives and even quite a few whites are actually stating that Obama has no agenda for Black people. I cannot make this stuff up folks. Look for this rhetoric to be given big microphones over the next few weeks.. Such talking points may not sway voters per say to the GOP, but it may lead to many staying home in November.
There’s some big doings going down this week at Club Mighty in San Francisco.. Legendary Bay Area deejay Ren the Vinyl Archeologist who heads up 
The controversy around writer dream hampton (she spells her name in lower case) sending out a tweet where she asserted rappers Stic.man of dead prez and Jay Electronica were ‘ghost writers‘ for Nas is interesting on several levels. First, a lot of folks saw the tweet or heard about it and immediately jumped up to defend the Queensbridge emcee claiming that him having a ghostwriter is an assault to the ‘integrity of Hip Hop’ and that dream is somehow a bad journalist who should be tossed under a bus. I’ll let folks marinate on that for moment..
Ain’t nothing wrong with that when you consider over the years we’ve seen percussionist Duke Bootee do this for Grandmaster Flash & Mele-Mel with the landmark song The Message. We recently saw Bay Area rapper Paris do this for Chuck D of Public Enemy on the album ‘Rebirth of a Nation‘. No one would ever deny Chuck or Mel’s writing abilities or political prowess…In the case of Nas and Sticman, whether what resulted was co-writing, producing where hooks, ideas and a few bars were provided, scoring of tracks to model for Nas or ghostwriting in the technical sense where full songs were penned minus public credit, none of that seemed shocking, out of the ordinary or a bad thing. There’s a long tradition from Billy Holiday’s Strange Fruit penned by 
We see similar process in beat production. Not everyone who is deemed ‘the producer‘ works the drum machine and craft the melodies. By now its common knowledge that revered producer Dr Dre is not in the studio coming up with every single drum track, it doesn’t mean he’s not capable nor would anyone deny is skill as a producer?
As you can probably tell from the title of my paper, I have a number of topics I hope to tie together. The plan is to pull together many ideas into one big theme (which is): this election matters, but not in the way it is usually framed. I don’t think this election matters politically at all, because politics as this system is now set up tells us nothing really. At best, it reflects the will of the highest bidder, or the frame of corporate media, or the effectiveness of the latest legislative tactics to manage or suppress voting (via voter ID laws or redistricting for example). Those that actually do vote do so with great skepticism, and a large percentage don’t even participate in the process at all. While the outcome of this election will not offer very different results (in terms of governance), it will illuminate two very different trajectories for this country (culturally)…and that matters greatly. That is what I want to focus on in this paper.
Self inflicted wounds may be the most difficult to heal, psychologically at least. Since its inception, the United States has lived with a self inflicted wound that has defined every aspect of this society, most importantly, the distribution and control of all economic and political resources. The racialization of this nation (or the color line as W.E.B. DuBois called it) continues to plague this country (and the globe more broadly) and the election of the first biracial president did nothing to change that reality.
For those that think critically, including sociologists, moving beyond the “what” level to examine “who” is in control is critical to understanding how the status quo power structure remains so entrenched. Much of our sociological analyses focus on the producers of our social woes – the corporate elite (1%), imperialists, corporate media, fascist governments, white supremacists, racists, democrats, republicans, Obama, Romney and so on.
While fewer and fewer control the world’s resources, the world has become more open in other ways, specifically due to technology. Disney was right: It’s a small world after all. 🙂 Technology has forever changed the power to control information. Propaganda is still a viable tool via media framing, but with technology, information comes quickly and much more freely via a number of sources. The status quo power structure will have to take more drastic means to maintain its control; hence more infractions on civil liberties, police state tactics, etc.
Census data shows us that fewer white babies are born today than babies of color. Whether the spike in hate groups and the recent mass shootings linked to white supremacists are manifestations of “white angst” over this reality or not can be debated, but much of the cultural strategy on the right seems to be a direct reaction to the shifting demographics. Nativist movements like the tea party exploit white fear to maintain a system of white supremacy in a country getting browner everyday.
Factor #3: The New Cultural Majority – Demographic make up of the electorate
The right’s cultural strategy involves both short term and long term objectives. The short term strategy consists of taking advantage of the 2010 gains at the local and state levels as well as tapping into white angst via nativist movements like the tea party. From it we have gotten a number of battles:1. Anti-immigration legislation, SB 1070 including even crazy talk about repealing the 14th amendment, 2. Ethnic study bans, revisionist history textbooks etc.2. Anti-gay legislation against same sex marriage etc…or even long lines at Chick Fil A to show support for “family values”3. All sorts of anti-abortion and anti-contraception legislation…probably the most targeted war on women since the women’s movement4. Anti-Muslim hysteria – Mosque protests in NY and TN, look up OC Hate video on YouTube, bans on Sharia law passed here and other nonsense5. Voter ID laws to suppress votes of students (youth vote), people of color (particularly black vote) and elderly (Medicare vote)
Succinctly stated, the left cannot depend on the weakening of the nation-state and shifting demographics alone to foster progressive social change. Demographic shift or not, white supremacy can and will manifest itself for generations to come via resource distribution and control. The LONG TERM war, the end of racialization of resources and the real healing of the wound that continues to plague this country will only be healed through changing attitudes, context, narrative building and cultural work.
While the future is not clear, a few things are: The next generation will be more diverse; social issues will become less relevant with this next generation and hegemonic ideals that shape today’s political landscape will continue to be challenged…in other words, the younger generation is beginning to be a cultural force in politics. Does that mean the end of racialization of all aspects of this society? the end of white supremacy and corporate fascism? Not anytime soon but given the mass rejection of the political system by both sides of the spectrum, there is room for movement politics to take hold and a clear cultural strategy is required to move the movement in a progressive direction.
In countries considered “poor”, i.e. most countries in the world, education is a luxury. In actuality, only about 7% of the global population receives a college education (college degree) and the majority of those people are in what are labeled the “developed” world (read richer nations). Well, while education was never really treated as a right in the United States, the electorate is now being molded to accept education as a luxury that only the most affluent of the society will be able to afford (like the rest of the world). While the push toward privatization has taken on many phases (faces) over the last few years (from charter schools to anti-union measures), the next phase (face) is probably the most deceptive: student success initiatives. Budget pressures and student success task force reports provide the cover for the most dramatic changes to the public education system we will see pass through the state legislators to date. Students who are not already excellent academically or who are not economically able to afford increasing costs will be pushed out…and expeditiously. While public schools are still public, affected constituent groups (students, parents, and educators) must educate themselves on the changing laws and organize vehemently to hold THEIR public institutions accountable to the communities they serve. Education is one of the only paths of upward mobility in class based structures that define our society. The more access to education a society’s members have, the less rigid its class system…the less access to education, the more rigid the class system. The privatization of education in a globalized system is meant to control who has access to education…the elite, and only the elite.
So what does a once educated country do when it stops educating a large majority of its population? Very few countries can boast a “middle class” of the sorts that once defined the United States. But with access to education disappearing, that middle class disappears also. Now what? Plan B. The prison industry has proven to be most lucrative. It should be obvious to all that middle class Americans would never be able to accept competing for slave wages in a global economy, and seeing that steep of a decline in standard of living, a forced alternative was hatched. Legal slave wages under the guise of the prison industry complex. Call it indoctrination into the global economy. Private entities can own prisons and corporations can utilize prison labor – from manufacturing products to telemarketing. Cheap labor once outsourced finds its way back to US shores. Those we are now locking out of education, can now be locked up into private prisons as bodies to fill new buildings and cheap laborers to make products.
It’s always a pleasure and enlightening to sit down and chop it up w/ Atlanta emcee 
During our conversation we talked about standout songs like the melodic ‘Anywhere But Here‘, where Mike gives us a thoughtful and compelling view of New York City and Atlanta. In the first part of the song, he talks about Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Stop and Frisk and the ghost of Sean Bell and others who are victims to police terrorism. He talks about the importance holding police accountable via the Mayor and other politicians who control them. He explained that anyone who allows the police to be out of control don’t politically punish the Mayor for allowing this to happen, has missed the mark in a big way..