Trae Day community celebration ruined by driveby shooting at Texas Southern

July 23, 2009 By mrDaveyd

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DaveyD-leather-225 By now everyone has heard about the unfortunate situation that went down Wednesday night on the Texas Southern University campus during a huge community event called ‘Trae Day’which was a day long celebration meant to honor popular Houston rapper Trae the Truth and give out free school supplies. According to police reports, 6 people were injured in a drive by shooting as things were winding down.

Houston police were quick to point out the the shooting stemmed from rival gangs that reside in cities outside of Houston. For many in attendance, it was a huge black eye for organizers and participants who wanted to put forth the community activism and political maturing of Trae as well as many of the artists on the bill like Bun B who was scheduled to perform. The host of the event was Houston City Councilman Peter Brown who is campaigning for mayor and scheduled to attend was Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee.

This incident is one that is certain to evoke skepticism in the minds of some politicos who are wondering if engaging the Hip hop community is a liability. This unfortunately happens even if the artists themselves had nothing to do with the drama. In this case, Trae had already left the event when the shootings took place. But his name will be associated with what went down as more than a few pundits will gleefully try to connect the dots and conclude that rappers + large crowd=violence.

Was it because of the number of people shot? Well two days ago in Newark, New Jersey 5 people got shot and there was no national coverage. There was a shooting in Jersey City where 4 officers were shot and that didn’t make national news. It wasn’t talked about on the Bay Area stations nor any of the stations in Texas.

Houston city council member Peter Brown hosted the Trae Day event. he is currently running for Mayor. Him and Trae collected school supplies for needy kids to offset the recession and budget cuts.

What i find even more disturbing is how this incident has made national news. It was one of the top stories on the news here in the Bay Area. They reported that story but not the flare up between the Neo nazis and KKK in Paris, Texas-why? I was watching the local news stations in New York City this morning and again this was a top story…Again no mention of the Paris, Texas incident-why?

Here in Richmond, California there was a multiperson shooting involving 4 or 5 people and it barely made the newspaper-so why did Trae who is relatively unknown outside of mainstream circles suddenly become a household name?

When I saw the coverage in NY they made sure to mention it was a Get Out to Vote event.. They didn’t make mention that it was an event that collected school supplies for people in need… Why was this not mentioned? AP and other major news agencies covered this story and I think it was only one local outlet that talked about the school supplies Trae and City Council Peter Brown who is running from mayor collected.

Lastly there were national acts on that bill, Rick Ross and Bun B they were never mentioned.. News coverage is always by design and not by coincidence. I think the game plan was to discredit an event that was doing exactly what we complain ‘street oriented rappers aren’t doing.. organizing and politicizing their fans and the communities they come from..

Trae the Truth is one of Houston's most popular rappers. He was being honored at TSU for his community work

The usual tact after a shooting incident is to gather a bunch of pundits around and start examining the lyrics of rap songs and critique the style of dress. And while I’ll be the first to admit there’s always a time and place for such discussions, whats at stake right now is dealing with the larger underlying issues that lead to bad behavior, bad choices and nihilistic attitudes. This could include poverty, poor schools, bad housing and lack of health resources to name a few. The solutions to many of these ills are likely to come in the forms of a legislative or political decision where resources are allocated and laws are passed allowing one to obtain some sort of relief. Hence its good that Peter brown and Sheila Jackson were on hand. Its good that people came together and tried to make community activism and political education accessible to people normally left out of the process.

In anycase props to Trae for his work. Props to those who showed up to be inspired and get their polical and community grind going. Lets hope that we can all come together to resolve the causes leading up to last nights shooting at TSU.

The way we have to look at this is that in many corners of society where people are marginalized and communities are undeserved the best way to lessen the chances of incidents like this occurring is to address the underlying issues that lead to violence. In other words community events like Trae Day are not only needed but should be seen as crucial steps in our attempts to move society forward.

Something to Ponder

-Davey D-

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6 shot, wounded in drive-by at Texas Southern

By JUAN A. LOZANO (AP) –

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hvOKe3DE5K2dH0FCSznMnjDPNzYwD99JVMI00

HOUSTON — A drive-by shooting at a community rally on the Texas Southern University campus Wednesday night left six people wounded, a school spokeswoman said. Police believe the incident was gang-related.

One male student was among the six people who were shot and treated for serious, but non-life-threatening injuries, TSU spokeswoman Eva Pickens said.

Witnesses told police that one car drove by and opened fire on the parking lot where a popular Houston rapper was promoting community service and voter registration, Pickens said.

Peter Role, a local music promoter, told the Houston Chronicle he heard what sounded “like the Fourth of July.”

“We heard some gunshots and everybody was hitting the ground,” Role said.

Campus police believe the incident resulted from a rivalry between two gangs, one from Missouri City, a suburb southwest of Houston, and the other from Fresno, a small town outside Missouri City, she said.

Among the rally participants was Houston City Councilman Peter Brown, who is running for mayor in November’s election.

Lucinda Guinn, who manages Brown’s mayoral campaign, said the rally — billed as a “family block party” — included a concert by rapper Trae the Truth and featured participants such as Brown and U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee. Guinn said she had no details on the shootings, but was dismayed that “an effort for bringing a very positive message to the community” would end in violence.

Nancy Byron, Trae’s publicist, told the Chronicle that the rapper already had left the event at 8:30 p.m. or 8:45 p.m. and did not see the shooting.

“We’re very depressed about it and we feel like its a black eye on an otherwise very community-driven event,” Byron said.

An e-mail sent to Lee wasn’t immediately returned. Her telephone mailbox was full and wouldn’t take messages.

Texas Southern is a historically black university in Houston with an enrollment approaching 10,000 students.

Associated Press Writer Terry Wallace contributed to this report from Dallas.

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Filed Under: 2009-Daily Hip Hop News, Political articles, Southern Shift Tagged With: Davey D hip Hop news-Trae the Truth, Peter brown Houston Cituy council, Peter brown-davey D hip hop news, Sheila Jackson Lee, Texas Southern University shooting, Trae Day community celebration ruined by driveby shooting at Texas Southern, Trae the Truth

Is the Obama Health Care Plan Really Better Than Nothing?

July 23, 2009 By mrDaveyd

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By BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

Candidate Barack Obama told us to judge his first term by whether he delivers quality affordable health care for all Americans, including nearly fifty million uninsured. So why does his proposal not cover the uninsured till 2013, after the next presidential election when Medicare took only 11 months to cover its first 40million seniors? Why are corporate media pretending that no opinions exist to Obama’s left? And why has the public option part of the Obama health care plan shrunk from covering 130 million to only 10 million, with 16 million left uninsured altogether?

Is the Obama Health Care Plan Really Better Than Nothing?

By BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/obama-health-care-plan-really-better-nothing

The health care debate inside and outside the matrix

Like just about everything else, your take on the national health care debate depends on whether you’re inside or outside the matrix.

Within the bubble of fake reality blown by corporate media and bipartisan political establishment, the health care news is that the Obama Plan is at last making its way through Congress. It’s being fought by greedy private insurance companies, by chambers of commerce, by Republican and some Democratic lawmakers.

Under the Obama plan, we’re told, employers will have to insure their employees or pay into a fund that does it for them. Individuals will be required under penalty of law to buy private insurance policies and for those that can’t afford it or prefer not to use a private insurer there will be something called a “public option.” This “public option, the story goes, is bitterly fought by the bad guys because it will make private insurers accountable by competing with them, forcing them to lower their costs. Both the president’s backers and opponents agree that the whole thing will be fantastically expensive, and the president proposes to fund it with cuts in existing programs like Medicaid which pay for the care of the poorest Americans and a tax on those making more than $300,000, later raised to $1 million a year.

The “public option” has that magic word “public” in it, and that’s reassuring to progressives and to most of the American people. Taxing the rich is a popular idea too. So if you rely on corporate media, the administration, or some of the so-called progressive blogs to identify the players and keep the score, it seems a pretty clear case of President Obama on the side of the angels, battling the greedy insurance companies, Republicans and blue dog Democrats to bring us universal, affordable health care.

That whole picture has about as much reality as the ones the same corporate media and most of the same politicians drew for us about Iraq, 9-11, weapons of mass destruction and some people over there who wanted us to free them. Iraq and the White House were and remain actual places, and there really is a problem called health care. But the places, problems and solutions are very different from the bubble of fake reality blown around them.

What sustains this fake reality is the diligent suppression from public space of any viewpoints, observations or proposals to Obama’s left. As long as the illusion that nobody has a better idea, that the only choice we have is Obama’s way or the Republicans’ way can be maintained, the crooked game can go on.

But bubbles are delicate things. Keeping this one intact requires so many vital topics to be avoided, so many inquiring eyes to be averted, so many fruitful conversations to be squelched that it’s hard to see how the president, the bipartisan establishment and the corporate media can pull it all off.

The real Obama Plan: doesn’t cover the uninsured till 2013, if then.

The first clue that something is deeply wrong with the Obama health care proposal is its timeline. According to a copyrighted July 21 AP story by Ricardo Alfonso-Zaldivar,

“President Lyndon Johnson signed the Medicare law on July 30, 1965, and 11 months later seniors were receiving coverage. But if President Barack Obama gets to sign a health care overhaul this fall, the uninsured won’t be covered until 2013 — after the next presidential election.

“In fact, a timeline of the 1,000-page health care bill crafted by House Democrats shows it would take the better part of a decade — from 2010-2018 — to get all the components of the far-reaching proposal up and running.”

According to a peer reviewed 2009 study in the American Journal of Medicine, 62% of the nation’s 727,167 non-business bankruptcies were triggered by unpayable medical bills in 2007. Most of these had health insurance when they fell ill or were injured, but with loopholes, exclusions, high deductibles and co-payments, or were simply dropped when they got sick. In 2008 that figure was 66% of 934,000 personal bankruptcies and in 2009 it could approach 70% of 1.1 million bankruptcies. And 18,000 Americans die each year because medical care is unaffordable or unavailable. Waiting till 2013 means millions of families will be financially ruined and tens of thousands will die unnecessarily.

If the Johnson administration with no computers back in the sixties could implement Medicare for 45 million seniors in under a year, why does it take three and a half years in the 21^st century to cover some, but not all, of America’s fifty million uninsured? And why does the Obama Plan make us wait till after the next presidential election? Politicians usually do popular things and run for election on the resulting wave of approval. Delaying what ought to be the good news of universal and affordable health care for all Americans till two elections down the road is a strong indication that they know the good news really ain’t all that good. And it’s not.

Inside the matrix of TV, the corporate media and on much of the internet, discussion of the Obama plan’s timeline, the human cost of another three years delay, and the comparison with Medicare’s 11 month rollout back in the days before computers are almost impossible to find. We can only wonder why.

The Obama plan is about health insurance, not health care.

As BAR has been reporting since January 2007, the Obama plan is not a health care plan at all, it is a health insurance plan. Based largely upon the failed model in place in Massachusetts since 2006, the Obama plan will require employers to provide coverage or pay a special tax. Everybody not covered by an employer will be required to purchase insurance under penalty of law, in much the same manner as you’re currently required to buy car insurance.

“In my state,” testified Dr. Steffie Woolhandler of the Harvard Medical School last month before Congress, “beating your wife, communicating a terrorist threat and being uninsured all carry $1,000 fines.”

As in Massachusetts, the health insurance plans people are forced to buy will cost a lot and won’t cover much. In a July 20 National Journal article Dr. David Himmelstein says,

“Nearly every day that he is in the clinic, Himmelstein says, he sees a patient who has problems paying for care “despite this reform.’ Some of them had free care before the 2006 law took effect but are now expected to handle co-payments. If you’re not poor enough to get a subsidy, say you’re making $30,000 a year, you’re required to buy a policy that costs about $5,000 a year for the premium and has a $2,000 deductible before it pays for anything. For substantial numbers of people, it’s effectively not coverage,’ Himmelstein said. The policy he described is about the cheapest Massachusetts plan available, according to the Physicians for a National Health Program report, which Himmelstein co-wrote.”

A family of four making under $24,000 a year in Massachusetts gets its insurance premium free, but is still expected to cough up deductibles and co-payments and live with loopholes and exclusions that often deny care to those who need it. And in both the Massachusetts and Obama plans, funds to pay those premiums come out of the budgets of programs like Medicaid that already pay for care for the poorest Ameicans.

The Obama plan’s “public option” is a bait-and-switch scam

A July 21 pnhp.org article titled “Bait and Switch: How the Public Option Was Sold” outlines how the public option is neither public, nor an option.

“Public option” refers to a proposal… that Congress create an enormous “Medicare-like” program that would sell health insurance to the non-elderly in competition with the 1,000 to 1,500 health insurance companies that sell insurance today…

“Hacker (its author) claimed the program, which he called “Medicare Plus” in 2001 and “Health Care for America Plan” in 2007, would enjoy the advantages that make Medicare so efficient – large size, low provider payment rates and low overhead…

“Hacker predicted that his proposed public program would so closely resemble Medicare that it would be able to set its premiums far below those of other insurance companies and enroll at least half the non-elderly population.”

The White House is committed to twisting arms in the both houses of Congress and reconciling the two versions of Democratic bills to emerge from the House and Senate. What emerges will be the Obama plan. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the Senate version of the Democrats’ pending health care legislation leaves 33 million uninsured and omits the public option altogether. The House version includes a “public option” estimated to cover only 10-12 million people, a number far too small for it to create price pressure on private insurance companies, while leaving 16 or 17 million uninsured. Instead of setting prices for health care, it will be forced to pay whatever tthe private insurers already pay, and perhaps more.

As private insurers use their marketing muscle to recruit younger, healthier people who’ll pay for but not use their benefits, the public option will be a dumping ground for the customers they don’t want… the middle-aged, the poor, those with pre-existing conditions. And of course the Obama plan’s “public option’ will be managed by contractors from the private insurance industry.

Private insurers spend a third of every health care dollar on non-health related things like bonuses, denial machinery, advertising, lobbying and bad investments. Medicare spends 2 or 3% on administrative overhead. Bush’s “enhanced Medicare” administered by private insurance contractors, spends about 11% on overhead. That’s about what we should expect from the Obama public option. So much for change.

So far, discipline is holding. Nobody in corporate media, the administration, or among Democrats in Washington has gotten round to telling us that the public option has been eviscerated. But its powerful appeal and the awesome power of the word “public” are offered by Obama supporters as the central reasons to shut up, clap harder, and get behind the president on this.

Taxing the rich, paying for health care. How the Obama Plan stacks up against single payer.

Along with being funded by cuts in Medicaid, the Obama plan is supposed to be funded by taxing those who make $300,000 or more per year. That’s not a bad thing. The wealthy don’t pay nearly enough taxes. But the US already spends more on health care than anyplace else on the planet while leaving a greater portion of its population uninsured than anybody.

The Obama plan will not contain costs. It will subsidize the insurance vampires well into the next decade. On the other hand, single payer would eliminate the private insurance industry altogether. In many advanced industrial countries, most of the practices private insurers follow here, such as cherry picking healthy patients while dumping and denying sick ones, are illegal. Why can we do that?

Single payer, according to a study by the California Nurses Association would eliminate 550,000 jobs in private insurance while creating 3.2 million new ones in actual health care. It would be responsible for $100 billion in wages annually and a source of immense tax revenues for local governments.

So is the Obama plan really better than nothing?

The Obama plan seems calculated to buy time for private insurers, to end the health care discussion for a decade or more without solving the health care problem, do so in a way that discredits the very idea of everybody in- nobody out health care. It will leave tens of millions uninsured, a hundred million or more underinsured, and the same parasitic private interests in charge of the American health care system that run it now.

The Obama plan as it now stands requires us to let another 18,000 die for each of the next three years and allow more than a million additional families to be bankrupted by medical expenses before we can judge whether or not the plan is working. It’s easy to imagine Obama partisans telling us in mid 2013 that it’s still too early to be sure.

The Kucinich amendment, which allows the few states wealthy enough to try it the liberty to fashion their own single payer regimes is intended to attract progressives and single payer votes in Congress without breaking the bubble. By itself, it should not be a reason to support this bill.. The wealthiest state in the union is probably California, and it’s handing out IOUs instead of salaries this month. It’s hard to see what would be lost if this health care bill went down in flames, and we started over again next year.

Can he get away with it?

Maybe. Maybe not. If the corporate media and the president can keep discussion of the devilish details to a minimum, if they can silence, co-opt and intimidate the forces to Obama’s left — if they can keep most of the public inside their bubble of fake reality, Barack Obama may achieve his goal of thwarting the reform that most of the American people want — an everybody in, nobody out single payer health care system on the model of Canada or Australia, or Medicare for All. It won’t be close, it won’t be easy, and with nothing to be gained, progressives shouldn’t make it any easier.

Since the president’s success depends mostly on keeping people silent and in the dark, he will probably be unable to mobilize the 13 million phone numbers and email addresses collected during the recent presidential campaign, and now held by OFA, his campaign arm. If an organizing call went out to them, too many would try to read the bill and discuss the options, and such a discussion could easily get out of hand. When OFA called house meetings on health care last December, the most frequently advanced question was why we couldn’t or shouldn’t get a single payer health care system.

Single payer isn’t dead yet. It’s very much alive among Barack Obama’s own supporters. To succeed, he has to bury it alive, to keep them in the bubble, in the dark and quiet, or clapping so loudly they cannot hear themselves or each other think. It’s not over.

Bruce Dixon is managing editor at BAR, and can be reached at bruce.dixon@blackagendareport.com

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Filed Under: 2009-Daily Hip Hop News, Political articles, Southern Shift Tagged With: Bruce Dixon-Black agenda Report, Davey D Hip Hop news-healthcare, Healthcare reform, Is the Obama Health Care Plan Really Better Than Nothing?, Single payer

President Obama Reacts to Harvard Arrest Says Police Acted Stupidily

July 22, 2009 By mrDaveyd

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daveyd-raider2 It was just last week that President Obama spoke at the NAACP Convention and gave an incredible speech that received a rousing standing ovation. He covered a lot of ground, but frustratingly he never made mention of police brutality and the high number of incidents that have taken place with young Black and Brown people being shot or mistreated. He has gone out of his way to comment on almost all police killings including the ones in Oakland, Pittsburgh and last week in Jersey City.

Since that speech we have seen Jersey City police kill a woman who had a knife , but was never warned before being shot to death. Her husband, residents and witnesses accuse the police of wrong doing.

We’ve heard about the false and dubious arrests of prominent Hip Hop figures and community activists like; Paradise Gray of X-Clan and Wise Intelligent of Poor Righteous Teachers.

We’ve heard about Black police officers in Philadelphia suing fellow white officers for posting up and running a website full of racist rants called Domelights. What was the final straw that prompted the lawsuit was white officers referring to the young Black kids who were recently discriminated by a white run country club as ‘Ghetto Monkeys’ .

Since the NAACP speech, we’ve seen the angry white pundits like Pat Buchanan and even some Senators make over the top racist remarks about Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. Buchanan was so angry that he came on a primetime news show and called Sotomayor a Minor Leaguer and stated that white men weren’t getting a fair shake. He said the race pot needed to be stirred up. He then went and made the outrageous assertion that this country and its wars were built and fought 1005 by white people.

Since that speech we’ve seen KKK square off with the New Black Panthers in Paris, Texas after they attempted to disrupt a rally being held to protest the freeing of two white men accused of dragging a young man Brandon McClelland to death.

On that same day Henry Louis Gates the prominent 58 year old Harvard Professor who heads up the African studies department was arrested in his own home after police initially approached him accusing him of breaking into his own home.

I guess President Obama has heard enough and finally said something. He accused Cambridge Police of acting stupidly. It took me by surprised. Now I hope it calls up Attorney General Eric Holder and has him start investigating police misconduct and start holding folks accountable. They better start holding those serious conversations about race and do this quick before Holder or Obama get arrested and mistreated over a minor incident by police who are resentful about these two Black men holding so much power.

That may seem like a off the cuff remark, but I remind people as I close out that back in the late 1800s after slavery had ended, Black folks were moving into positions of power. We were getting into elected offices. We even had a Black senator. We were moving on up as jealous and resentful white folks saw the upward move as a threatening. This was called the Reconstruction period. Enter DW Griffith and his movie Birth of a Nation. This was where the Ku Klux Klan was introduced and depicted as heroes who saved this country from ‘Uppity Negroes’ getting power.

It wasn’t too long after Birth of a Nation came out that the KKK increased its membership in huge numbers and that mobs of white people started rioting, burning down and even bombing Black cities and neighborhoods. From Chicago to Cincinnati to Tulsa, Oklahoma, roving mobs of angry whites came through and destroyed these cities and the people within them. After that came along period of lynchings. These things happened almost everyday in places throughout the country prompting singer Billie Holiday to do the song ‘Strange Fruit’.

Let’s not wake up and find ourselves repeating history as more and more racist shed their masks and start showing their true colors and expressing their true hatred for Black and Brown people.

Something to Ponder

-Davey D-

Mass. policeman who arrested Gates won’t apologize

Prominent College Professor Henry Louis Gates was mistreated in his own home by a white police sergent who refuses to apologize

NATICK, Mass. – A white police sergeant accused of racism after he arrested renowned black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. at his home insisted Wednesday he won’t apologize for his treatment of the Harvard professor, but President Barack Obama said police had acted “stupidly.”

Gates has demanded an apology from Sgt. James Crowley, who had responded to the home near Harvard University to investigate a report of a burglary and demanded the scholar show him identification. Police say the 58-year-old at first refused and then accused the officer of racism.

Gates said Crowley walked into his home without his permission and only arrested him as the professor followed him to the porch, repeatedly demanding the sergeant’s name and badge number because he was unhappy over his treatment.

Obama said Wednesday he didn’t know what role race played in the incident but added that police in suburban Boston “acted stupidly” in arresting Gates even after he offered proof that he was in his own home.

Looks like President Obama has had enough of all these police terrorism incidents-he has finally spoken out by saying the police acted stupidly

“I think it’s fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry,” Obama said. “Number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home. And number three — what I think we know separate and apart from this incident — is that there is a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately, and that’s just a fact.”

He said federal officials need to continue working with local law enforcement “to improve policing techniques so that we’re eliminating potential bias.”

Crowley said Wednesday he’s disappointed by the heated national debate triggered by the incident and insisted he followed proper procedures in arresting Gates last week in Cambridge on a charge of disorderly conduct. The charge was dropped Tuesday.

Officers were responding to the home Gates rents from Harvard after a woman reported seeing “two black males with backpacks” trying to force open the front door, according to a police report. Gates, who had returned from a trip overseas with a driver, said he had to shove the door open because it was jammed. He was inside, calling the company that manages the property, when police arrived.

Gates was accused by police of “tumultuous” behavior toward the officers. But Gates countered by saying Crowley was clearly responding to racial profiling and “couldn’t understand a black man standing up for his rights, right in his face.”

source:http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090723/ap_on_re_us/us_
harvard_scholar_disorderly

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Filed Under: 2009-Daily Hip Hop News, Political articles, Southern Shift Tagged With: Davey D Hip Hop News-Henry Louis Gates arrested, Harvard arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Henry gates, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Police brutality, President Barack Obama, President Obama, President Obama Reacts to Henry Gates Arrests Says Police Acted Stupidily

M-1 of dead prez-Report Back from Gaza -Why we should be concerned w/Palestine and International Struggles …

July 22, 2009 By mrDaveyd

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M-1 of dead prez reports back from his trip to Gaza

We caught up with M-1 of the group dead prez to find about his recent trip to Gaza. For folks who don’t recall, last week M-1 made headlines along with former Green Party Presidential candidate and Cynthia McKinney, New York City Councilman Charles Barron and UK Parliament member George Galloway.. They along with over 200 people defied a blockade and warnings from the Israeli government and went to Gaza to bring humanitarian aid.

We spoke with M-1 about how he hooked up with Viva Palestina which was the organization that made the trip. M-1 explained that he has been involved with Palestinian causes for a number of years. He broke down the history of his involvement and spoke about how the organizations and people he has rolled with have been equally involved in struggles African Americans are dealing with here. We will be posting that up later this afternoon

In the meantime we are posting up two portions of our long interview. The first is M-1 addressing a nagging question that frequently pops up:

Why should Black people in America be concerned about political happenings in far off places like Iran or Palestine when we have problems here at home? M-1 gave us a history lesson and reminded us that the Black struggle has always been international from the days of Paul Robeson to Malcolm X wanting to take our case before the United Nations to Martin Luther King dealing with Vietnam on up to the foreign aid that came to help us when we went through Katrina. M-1 goes into detail about why Black folks had better be concerned about international struggles. He lets us know that our struggle at home would’ve been seriously hindered if we weren’t internationally connected. He also encouraged us to see our selves as part of a larger movement without borders.

In this next video clip we speak to M-1 about what he experienced while visiting Gaza. He talks about the conditions there and how the people are and the role his fellow rappers in Palestine are fairing … We also spoke to M-1 about why he felt he was a hostage in Egypt. The government kept people in the country from 5-10 days and then made them jump through all types of hoops to get out of the country. He also talked about the totalitarian state of Egypt and how it was ironic that Obama spoke at a country that does not allow free speech. If dead prez was living in Egypt espousing the political views that they do here they would be in jail.. below is the interview segment from that..

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Filed Under: 2009-Daily Hip Hop News, Political articles, Southern Shift Tagged With: Davey D Hip Hop Corner-M-1 interview on gaza, Davey D Hip Hop News-dead prez Report back from Gaza, m-1 of dead prez, M-1 of dead prez-Report Back from Gaza -Why we should be concerned w/Palestine and International Struggles, Middle East, Palestine

Did White People Build This Country? A False Assertion Gets Corrected

July 22, 2009 By mrDaveyd

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daveyd-raider2 The challenge we have with today’s news media is that far too often it is driven by ‘expert’ punditry. We see this all the time where people holding lofty titles like ‘Professor’, ‘journalist’ and ‘doctor’ are invited onto shows as pundits and are assumed to be the definitive expert in the topics being discussed. As a result anything they say is taken as fact and hence gets repeated and passed along to others as gospel.

Far too often people holding other perspectives that are widely shared by members of particular communities are excluded from these discussions which leaves folks who do not fully understand or critically think about media matters to assume the following;

1-There are no other perspectives to consider but those of the pundit

2-When other perspectives are presented they are ‘alternative’ at best and on the fringe and out of sync at worse.

3-If a person who looks or says he/she is a member of that marginalized or often excluded community does appear on a mainstream news show what they say is given addition weight and taken as the predominant view of the community.

Over the years I’ve heard these types of handpicked leaders say outrageous things on behalf of the community ranging from ‘we are against immigration reform’ to ‘racism and discrimination has ended and we no longer need to talk about such matters’. We’ve heard age old myths that have long been proven wrong like ‘The majority of Black people are in jail as opposed to college or the majority of Brown people in this country are here illegally. We’ve heard conservative women come on shows and say things like; fighting for equal rights to pay is not needed at this time.woman should stay home and take care of family. I am still hearing handpicked Black pundits pushing outdated assertions like; Black people from the hood don’t do well in school because they are afraid of appearing to ‘act white’ . Can we please require this myth which first emerged in the late 80s when during an interview with film maker Spike Lee?

We can take these misperception closer to home-with false assertions like; President Obama is a Muslim or President Obama is a socialist.

This continued misrepresentation of communites has spawned the media reform and media justice movements that has pushed for major changes and overhaul of systems in place that routinely assualt people who do not have a seat at the table where they can speak to the masses and provide a counter or more balanced view.

Rachel Maddow Corrects False Assertions made by Pat Buchanan

In the clip below we will show you haw this works and one of the rare times someone in mainstream media returned to the airwaves to correct what was uttered, widely heard and subsequently listened to and believed. This centers around the debate that took place the other day between conservative pundit Pat Buchanan who appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show and made the outrageous assertion that this country was built by 100% white people. He said that the Civil war, World War I and II were fought by all white people and basically rewrote American history. This was a conversation between two white people and Buchanan’s remarks went unchallenged and uncorrected until yesterday when Rachael Maddow came on her show and spent 10 minutes correcting the assertions made by Buchanan.

As I said this rarely happens. As you listen to this keep in mind how many people were left believing what Buchanan said was fact. Hopefully we all learn to think about what is presented on the news more critically. Check out the clip below.

-Davey D-

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Filed Under: 2009-Daily Hip Hop News, Davey D-Words to Ponder Blog, Essential videos to peep, Political articles, Southern Shift Tagged With: Davey D Hip Hop news-Race relations, Did White People Build This Country? A False Assertion Gets Corrected, Pat Buchanan, Rachel Maddow-Corrects Pat Buchanan

KKK & Neo Nazi’s Square Off Against Black Panthers in Paris, Texas

July 21, 2009 By mrDaveyd

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Here’s pt2 of our interview with Brother Jesse

Madness went down in Paris, Texas today as members of the New Black Panther Party and White Supremacists squared off. The trouble took place when skin heads descended upon a rally held by members of the Black community to protest the jasper style-dragging death of Brandon McClelland last september by two white men. In what appeared to initially be a slam dunk case, the special prosecutor Toby Shook said no charges would be pursued due to lack of evidence..

Brother Jesse Muhammad of the Final Call Newspaper was one of the first to break this story. He was present at the rally today and gave us a in depth break down of what took place. You can peep out brother jesse’s blog here.

http://jessemuhammad.blogs.finalcall.com/

In the meantime take a look at the footage from AP and you can get a glimpse of what took place.. As you watch this ask your self- how and why is this happening in the Age of Obama and why isn’t Race being discussed seriously as advocated by Attorney General Eric Holder

-Davey D-

Brother Jesse of the Final call was on the scene and took this crazy picture. Reuters and AP were also on hand.

Neo Nazis and KKK Members tried to disrupt a rally in Paris, Tx held by the New Black Panther PartyPolice stand in between Neo Nazis and New Black Panther members

Police stand in between Neo Nazis and New Black Panther members

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Filed Under: 2009-Daily Hip Hop News, Political articles, Southern Shift Tagged With: Brandon McClelland-Davey D Hip Hop News, Davey D Hip Hop News KKK vs Black Panthers, Davey D Hip Hop News Paris, Jesse Muhammad, KKK & Neo Nazi's Square Off Against Black Panthers in Paris, New Black Panther Party, Paris Texas July 21 2009, Race relations, Racial Unrest in Paris, Texas, The History of a Troubled City-paris Texas

Mark Anthony Neal: The Demise of VIBE

July 20, 2009 By mrDaveyd

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The Demise of VIBE
By Mark Anthony Neal–SeeingBlack.com Contributing Critic
Jul 19, 2009, 21:48

Professor Mark Anthony neal

There is no small irony to the fact that the announcement of the folding of Vibe Magazine occurred the day after the death of Michael Jackson. Though Jackson’s career was on the downside in the United States when Vibe Magazine published its first issue in September of 1993, the magazine was the product of a cultural landscape that Jackson had a large hand in crafting. Presenting a glossy and urbane view of urban culture, Vibe became a preeminent venue for journalists and scholars chronicling contemporary Black popular culture. The lists of writers who can claim a Vibe by-line represent the cutting edge of a critical intelligentsia, many of them Black writers who would have had few other legitimate options to hone their craft. As such the death of Vibe Magazine raises questions about the future of popular criticism at a moment when few print or on-line journals see the value of paying for such content.

Vibe Magazine was launched just as rap music and hip-hop culture were gaining mainstream credibility in terms of delivering a substantial buying audience to advertisers. The galvanizing of that audience was set in motion years earlier when MTV embraced rap music in the form of Yo MTV Raps—an embrace that was made possible, in large part, due to the efforts of Michael Jackson, CBS Records head Walter Yentikoff and Vibe founder Quincy Jones to force MTV to open up its playlists to Jackson and, by extension, other popular Black recording artists in the early 1980s.

As scholar Todd Boyd recently opined, “In the early ‘90s, hip-hop had made the successful transition from Sedgwick and Cedar through Compton on its way to global dominance. Along the way, as the music grew more and more pervasive, its influence had started to become evident in multiple cultural arenas.” Vibe Magazine was a blatant attempt by Jones and publisher Len Burnett to trade on hip-hop’s increasing commercial and cultural influence. In the process the magazine helped establish a generation of Black writers and critics as tastemakers for an American—and increasingly global—public desiring to consume the best of Blackness.

kevinpowellcolor-225 Figures like Joan Morgan, Kevin Powell, Toure, Karen Good, Danyel Smith, Michael Gonzalez, and Scott Poulson Bryant—what I’ll call the Vibe Magazine generation—along with seasoned critics like Harry Allen, Greg Tate, Barry Michael Cooper and Nelson George (all veterans of the Village Voice in the 1980s) were among the writers that graced the pages of Vibe Magazine, contributing to what became a late 20th century renaissance of Black thought and thinkers. The best of those writers brought contemporary Black popular culture in conversation with the rich traditions that came before. At its best, the Vibe Magazine generation helped establish the criteria for high-end popular cultural criticism and perhaps the first sustained critical view of Black youth culture that was informed by Black youth culture.

But Vibe’s success would undermine its very role as a critical arbiter of urban culture and, ultimately, the legitimacy of accessible mainstream cultural criticism. Many will point to the magazine’s role in the bi-coastal tensions that arose between the Death Row and Bad Boy record label camps, personified in the war of words between the late Tupac Shakur and the late Christopher Wallace. As Boyd suggests, “Vibe’s place as a nexus in this bi-coastal war cemented the magazine’s status as a relevant chronicle of hip-hop’s rapidly expanding evolution from sub-cultural status to mass cultural behemoth. Vibe, like The Washington Post during Watergate, no longer simply reported on the story; the magazine had at this point become an integral part of the very story that it was supposed to be reporting on.”

Equipped with a new sense of gravitas, Vibe became a part of the promotional machine that fueled hip-hop’s invasion of the American mainstream. Vibe Magazine was not alone in this regard; the Source Magazine, particularly after Bakari Kitwana’s editorship, was in many ways far more egregious in this matter, though it never professed the kind of mainstream appeal that Vibe Magazine garnered at its circulation peak. Many of the so-called urban journals of the late 1990s and early 21st century became little more than enablers of hip-hop’s most distasteful excesses, instead of providing the kind of critical scrutiny that many expected the magazine to maintain. In the process the very criticism that the magazine was founded on became devalued in a marketplace more interested in access to celebrity lifestyles. Magazines like Vibe were all too aware of the price that was to be paid if they didn’t toe the line. Such was the case when Damon Dash, then of Roc-A-Fella records pulled advertising from the magazine after Elizabeth Mendez Berry’s expose on domestic abuse among hip-hop figures placed the mogul in an unfavorable light.

Though many will cite the current recession as the primary force in Vibe’s demise, the magazine’s closing is just confirmation of a trend that began earlier in the decade when print media became challenged by free Internet content. With a wealth of cultural criticism available, print journals have been hard pressed to justify paying for content such as book reviews, film criticism and music journalism. The use of in-house bloggers has been one of the responses by print journals, though writers are paid a fraction of what they were paid even three years ago.

JohnMcWhorter-225 The Internet has been an important component in bringing so many more voices to light—voices that were largely ignored a generation ago—but the democratization of criticism has undermined the value of cultural and critical expertise. Thus figures like Stanley Crouch and John McWhorter can be pitched as credible critics of hip-hop culture, though neither man has expertise on the subject.

With diminishing resources available for thoughtful and accessible cultural criticism (the academy remains a viable option for inaccessible criticism), contemporary mainstream Black cultural criticism exists as little more than commentary on the Obama White House and complaints about Black Entertainment Television. Blackness, however more visible, has been reduced to fit a 24-hour news cycle.

Longtime critic and author Nelson George alluded as much in a recent interview on the Michael Eric Dyson Show when he lamented that with a lack of available venues for Black criticism to be nurtured, very often audiences and consumers are unable to discern what is essentially “product” and what is “art.” Increasingly many Black critics have taken to publishing their criticism on self-contained blogs and websites, without remuneration, simply to make sure that the story of Black culture gets told right. Still others, confronting a public less interested in reading, have begun to produce video blogs and podcast in an effort to maintain a critical public voice. The best critics have been able to adapt to the limitations placed on their writing and I have faith that this generation of Black critics will do the same.

Mark Anthony Neal is the author of several books including New Black Man and Songs in the Key of Black Life: A Rhythm and Blues Nation. He is a professor of African-American Studies at Duke University.

Filed Under: 2009-Daily Hip Hop News, Industry news & Views, Political articles, Southern Shift Tagged With: Black writers, Mark Anthony Neal: The Demise of VIBE, nelson george, Vibe Magazine

Pat Buchanan Calls Sonia Sotomayor a Minor Leaguer-Says white men didn’t get a fair shake during hearings

July 20, 2009 By mrDaveyd

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Editor’s Note: For decades, conservatives played on the racist and sexist fears of their constituents by spinning dramatic tales of the white man’s decline in the face of advances by women, African-Americans, Hispanics and other minority groups. Conveniently putting aside their calls for personal responsibility, conservative pundits and many GOP legislators blamed the woes of working-class white men on affirmative action programs.

Uppity women and minority groups, or so the story went, were exploiting past injustice to gain an unearned leg-up over more deserving white males. White men were, allegedly, increasingly victimized by government policies that privileged women and minorities.

Needless to say, conservatives were far more concerned with rolling back the rights of women and minorities than offering policy solutions that truly helped low-income white men.

In the past few months, conservative griping about the oppression of white men has come back with a vengeance. Lacking any real material with which to attack judicial nominee Sonia Sotomayor, Republican lawmakers and media conservatives have mightily struggled to paint Sotomayor as an unqualified affirmative-action candidate — one committed to using the law to erode the rights of while males.

Sotomayor was absurdly attacked as a “reverse racist”; she was accused of gaming the system to get ahead; her temperament, educational achievements and judicial history were slimely undermined despite ample evidence that she is more than qualified to serve on the Court.

Some of the most vicious attacks have come from Pat Buchanan, a conservative extremist who for mysterious reasons still enjoys a spot on MSNBC as a “political analyst”. Recently Buchanan appeared on the Rachel Maddow show to argue that Sotomayor has made a career of discriminating against white males and that her nomination constitutes affirmative action run amok. Needless to say, Maddow easily dispatched Buchanan’s silly — and racist — arguments. By the end, the frazzled Buchanan looked like someone’s racist grandpa, as Maddow showed just how irrelevant, retrograde and blatantly racist conservative grievance-based ideology has become.

Source: http://www.alternet.org/story/141425/rachel_maddow_takes_down_msnbc%27s_resident_racist%2C_pat_buchanan/

Here is the full transcript:

Rachel Maddow Takes Down MSNBC’s Resident Racist, Pat Buchanan

Rachel Maddow: One prominent Republican who believes that the Republicans did not make enough of the issue of race at the Sotomayor confirmation hearing is my MSNBC colleague, Patrick J. Buchanan, who argued in his column this week that the hearings should have been seized even more by Republicans to try to win over white conservatives who feel aggrieved by racial issues.

He says, quote, “These are the folks that pay the price of affirmative action when their sons and daughters are pushed aside to make room for the Sonia Sotomayors. What Republicans must do is expose Sotomayor as a political activist whose career bespeaks a lifelong resolve to discriminate against white males.”

“Even if Sotomayor is confirmed,” Pat says, “making the nation aware she a militant supporter since college days of ethnic and gender preferences is an I assignment worth pursuing.”

Joining us now is my MSNBC political colleague, Pat Buchanan.

Pat, it is-it’s been far too long since you’ve been on the show.

It’s so nice to see you.

Pat Buchanan, MSNBC Political Analyst: Good to see you, Rachel.

Rachel Maddow confronted Pat Buchannon who is upset that white men aren't getting a full shake with the recent nomination of Sonia Satamayor

Rachel Maddow confronted Pat Buchannon who is upset that white men aren't getting a full shake with the recent nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court

RM:

So, your argument is that Republicans could reap political rewards by making the argument that Sotomayor essentially doesn’t deserve to be on the supreme court, that she’s only there because of her race. Is that-is that-did I understand your argument correctly?

PB: Well, I think I would vote no on Sonia Sotomayor the same way I would have voted no on Harriet Miers-and I said so the first day she was nominated.

I don’t think Judge Sonia Sotomayor is qualified for the United States Supreme Court. She has not shown any great intellect here or any great depth of knowledge of the Constitution. She’s never written anything that I’ve read in terms of a law review article or major book or something like that on the law.

And I do believe she’s an affirmative action appointment by the president of the United States. He eliminated everyone but four women and then he picked the Hispanic. I think this is an affirmative action appointment and I would vote no.

RM: And what do you-what do you think that affirmative action is for?

PB: Affirmative action is to increase diversity by discriminating against white males. As Alan Bakke was discriminated at the University of California at Davis; As Brian Weber, that worker in Louisiana was discriminated against; As Frank Ricci and those firefighters were discriminated against; As Jennifer Gratz, was discriminated against and kept out of the University of Michigan which she set her heart on, even though her grades were far higher than people who were aloud in there.

That’s the type-affirmative action is basically reverse discrimination against white males and it’s as wrong as discrimination against black females and Hispanics and others. And that’s why I oppose it.

RM: I obviously-I have a different view about it, but I want to give you a chance to explain what you —

PB: But why do you have a different view? Why is it OK to discriminate against white males?

RM: Well, let me ask you this.

PB: Sure.

RM: Why do you think is that of the 110 Supreme Court justices we’ve had in this country, 108 of them have been white?

PB: Well, I think white men were 100 percent of the people that wrote the Constitution, 100 percent of the people that signed the Declaration of Independence, 100 percent of people who died at Gettysburg and Vicksburg. Probably close to 100 percent of the people who died at Normandy.

This has been a country built basically by white folks in this country who are 90 percent of the entire nation — in 1960, when I was growing up, Rachel — and the other 10 percent were African-American who had been discriminated against. That’s why.

RM: But does that mean that you think that there are 108 of 110 white Supreme Court justices because white people essentially deserve to have 99.5 percent of those positions? That doesn’t reflect any sort of barrier to those positions by people who aren’t white. You think that’s just purely on the basis of what white people have deserved to get?

PB: I think a lot of people get up there for a lot of reason, but my argument would be: get the finest mind you can get. Get real scholars. Whether you agree with Bork or Scalia or not, they’re tremendous minds and I think there are other minds. I’m sure the Democratic Party, I’m sure has women there that can stand up head-to-head with Scalia and make the case, who have got tremendous credential, knowledge, background.

But this one doesn’t have that. She was appointed because she’s a Latina, a Hispanic and a woman.

RM: She’s also —

PB: I mean, look at —

RM: She is also the judicial nominee who has more judging experience than any judge has gone up in, say, in the past, I don’t know, what is it, 70 years? She has been an appellate court judge of some distinction for a lot longer than Judge Roberts was, Judge Alito was. I mean, it’s not like she was picked out —

PB: Rachel.

RM: She was like picked out of the minor leagues and brought up here, Pat.

PB: Listen, it certainly is. Look at her own words in “The New York Times,” from the tapes. It’s in “The New York Times,” June 11th. She said, “I’m an affirmative action baby.”

RM: Yes.

PB: I got into Princeton on affirmative action. I got into Yale. I didn’t have the scores that these other kids did. How did she get on Yale law review? Affirmative action. How did she get on the federal bench by Moynihan? Moynihan needs a Hispanic woman just like Barack Obama needs a Hispanic woman. That is not the criteria we ought to use, Rachel.

RM: But, Pat —

PB: … for Supreme Court justices, conservative or liberal. That’s why I opposed Harriet Miers. I said I know she’s going to vote with me. She’s a good Christian woman. She’s probably a fine lawyer, but she’s not Supreme Court material, and neither is Sonia Sotomayor. And I think you know that, Rachel.

RM: I don’t know that at all. And I would say that if you and I agree that what our country needs is to be able to choose from the largest possible pool of talent in order to be able to pick the people who are going to have to function at the highest levels so that our country can compete and our country to do all the hard things we need do, I would hope that you would see that picking 108 out of 110 white justices.

PB: Rachel.

RM: … to the Supreme Court means that other people aren’t actually being appropriately considered. And the reason that you have affirmative action is that you recognize that the fact that people were discriminated against for hundreds of years in this country means that you sort of gamed the system, unless you give other people a leg up.

PB: It is not. It does not.

RM: . the best schools and the best jobs-hold on, I let you talk for a while.

PB: She was put into the best schools. She was put into the best schools.

RM: That’s right. She was …

PB: Of affirmative action, not because of ability, Rachel. She was put there, she said herself, because of where she came from. She’s a Hispanic woman. She’s from Puerto Rico. That’s why she was passed over. Other students who applied there with better scores who were denied the right to go to Princeton.

RM: Do you think that she got the grades that she got at Princeton on the basis of affirmative action, too?

PB: I think what they do in the Ivy League, and you know it as well as I do, that half the class graduates cum laude these days.

RM: How did you do at Georgetown compared to how she did at Princeton?

PB: I’ll tell you, I graduated higher in my high school, I will bet or as high as she did. And I certainly say, in Georgetown, I did. And I’ll tell you, I will match my test scores against her — but I’m not qualified for the United States Supreme Court.

RM: But, Pat, for you to argue that there’s no basis on which the United States benefits …

PB: Right.

RM: … from having Hispanics be among the people who we choose the best and brightest from defies belief.

PB: I don’t.

RM: The idea that you think we’ll best serve by only choosing among 99.9 percent white people.

PB: Hold it. No, no, no.

RM: … to hold these jobs, I don’t believe you believe it, Pat.

Pat Buchanan is upset that the race issue was stirred up more during the Sonia Sotomayor hearings

PB:

I — hold on — I believe everybody should get a chance to excel and be on the United States Supreme Court. But if I look at the U.S. track team in the Olympics, and they’re all black folks, I don’t automatically assume it’s discrimination. I will say, “I think maybe those are the fastest guys we got, that maybe they’re the fastest guys in the country, maybe they’re the fastest in the world. If they’re all — our Olympic team in hockey is eight white guys from Minnesota, I don’t assume discrimination.

Why do you assume discrimination simply because you got one component on the Supreme Court? Where is the genius you think who’s a woman and a feminist who sure ought to be on that Supreme Court? Go for her. Don’t go for an affirmative action person you know was picked because she’s a Latina and because she’s a woman.

RM: Pat, when I look at the United States Supreme Court and I see 108 out of 110 white people, I see 108 out of 110 men. I don’t look at that and think, “God, white guys are naturally better at this type of work than other people who aren’t getting these jobs.” I don’t think that way.

RM: I want to hear you — I would love to hear your answer as to whether or not you think that is what explains it, too. Because, I think, what the more obvious explanation is, is that you have to be a white guy in order to get considered for these jobs and has been true since the dawn of time in this country.

PB: No.

RM: That’s starting to break up now so that we can tap a bigger pool of talent. You should be happy about that for your country, Pat.

PB: I do. I do. I’m happy when you got all 78 firemen can take a test, but if all the guys that win in the test are all white guys and one is Hispanic, I don’t say, automatically, the test was fixed, bias, bigoted against black people, because I don’t know that, Rachel.

And those guys did well in that test and they are victims of this evil affirmative action policy which says in effect that everybody’s covered by the 14th Amendment and the civil rights laws unless you’re a white male and your parents and ancestors came from Europe. Then we can discriminate against you. That’s what I am against.

RM: Pat, do you — do you — are you happy that we’ve got a Latino on the Supreme Court for the first time or we’re about to? Does that seem like a positive thing for the country?

PB: I would — I think the Republicans had an outstanding Latino who had outstanding grades, who was brilliant and was gutted, Miguel Estrada.

RM: Let me just ask you a question before going to talk about some other Latino who’s not in question here. Are you happy for the United States of America for our prospect as a nation that we’ll be the best that we can be, that there is a Latino on the Supreme Court for the first time ever, that that glass ceiling is broken. Do you see it as a positive thing?

PB: If you say, be the best question we can be. We’re not being the best we can be with Sonia Sotomayor and I think you know it.

RM: Pat, I couldn’t disagree with you more. I credit you sticking to your gun. I think you’re absolutely wrong about this and I think that by advocating that the Republican Party try to stir up racial animus among white voters.

You’re dating yourself.

PB: I say, you know, I think what they ought to do — they ought to defend the legitimate rights of white working-class folks who are the victims of discrimination, because that’s the right thing to do and because it’s the politically right thing to do. It so happens that here, that doing the right thing is the right political thing, standing up for Frank Ricci. We saw the face of — the face of a victim of these policies.

Rachel, you and your friends admire up there and in New York and you never look at these guys who are working-class guys with their own dreams, just like Sonia Sotomayor.

RM: Pat, I don’t need a lecture from you about whether or not I know what working class …

PB: You certainly do, Rachel.

RM: I really don’t need a lecture from you about what I think about working class Americans or what anybody else in New York, including Sonia Sotomayor who grew up in the Bronx thinks about working-class Americans.

PB: What do you think?

RM: A lot of things divide us, Pat. Race is one of those. But there’s a lot of other ways in which we just gratify as a country, and for you to privilege race and say that what we really need to make sure we tap, politically, is white people’s racial grievances, you’re playing with fire and you’re dating yourself. You’re living in the 1950s, Pat.

PB: Maybe I’m dating in the 1960s when the civil rights act was passed. Do you think Frank Ricci and those guys were treated justly when they were denied that promotion because they were white?

RM: Pat Buchanan, MSNBC political analyst — I’m very sorry that we’re out of time. It’s nice to have you back on the show, Pat. Thanks.

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Filed Under: 2009-Daily Hip Hop News, Political articles, Southern Shift Tagged With: Pat Buchanan, Pat Buchanan Calls Sonia Sotomayor a Minor Leaguer-Says white men didn't get a fair shake during hearings, Rachel Maddow Takes on Pat Buchanan, Rachel Maddow-Davey D Hip Hop News, Sonia Sotomayor

Wise Intelligent Speaks: Trenton Police Shoot, Kill a Man Last Night

July 18, 2009 By mrDaveyd

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It was just a few days ago that we ran the article of Wise Intelligent being falsely arrested. Sadly this type of over the top behavior is what Wise Intelligent was trying to avoid.. Police terror is at an all-time high.I said it before and I’ll say it again, whats taking place is alow grade one sided war of sorts. brothers are being picked off left and right by the police..

-Davey D-

INTELLIGENTNEWZNET
INFORMING the HIP-HOP COMMUNITY

Trenton Police Shoot, Kill man last night (7/16/09)

Wise Intelligent Speaks on yet another incident of police terror

On Wednesday July 8, 2009 here is what I was lucky to avoid in Trenton, New Jersey. This is the environment we as black men are embedded in. Regardless of our vocation, lawyer, doctor, beggar, thief, rapper, activist, youth program director or civilian on a path train enjoying New Years Eve; ala Oscar Grant, we are subject to inhumane treatment by “law” enforcement officers that come to the job with a less than human view of black people. This brother had a 7 inch knife (including the handle) in hand. He ran from the police and into his child’s grandfathers home. Police pursued him to the home, he ran out of the back door where he was confronted by several officers brandishing firearms. Of course the official police report says this scared brother who was already running from the police “lunged” at them with a knife? The report says there were more than 20 cops on the scene, police dogs, etc. I can hardly believe that unless police officers are trained to “shoot to kill” they could not subdue this suspect without open firing with multiple gunshots killing this man? Are police officers trained to “shoot to kill”?, or have they through America’s history of devaluing black life, in effect been trained to kill black people? To add insult to injury police officers arrested the grandfather for “giving the suspect shelter in his house” when they admit the suspect “ran” into the elderly mans home? This is colonial era policing! Oppression by any other name is still oppression….

http://www.intelligentseedz.org / http://www.intelligentmuzik.com / http://twitter.com/wiseintelligent

Police shoot, kill suspect
Man wielded knife in incident
Thursday, July 16, 2009

BY ALEX ZDAN

TRENTON — City police shot and killed a man who was carrying a knife on Stuyvesant Avenue last night, officials said.

The unidentified man was wanted following an earlier call reporting a man with a gun, Capt. Joe Juniak said. Based on a description, officers spotted the man on Prospect Street at 7:02 p.m.

Juniak said the man fled from the officers, running to Stuyvesant Avenue, where he entered a house on the 400 block. With marked cars and uniformed officers pursuing him, the suspect fled out the back of the house and onto the avenue, police said. At this point, Juniak said, the suspect was armed with a knife.

In front of 475 Stuyvesant, the man was confronted by officers with guns drawn. Juniak said the suspect lunged at the officers, and they fired, striking the man.

He was taken to Capital Health at Fuld, where he died of his inju ries just before 8:30 p.m.
At the Stuyvesant intersection with Linwood Avenue, people lined their porches in the fading sunlight and watched police pacing back and forth on the street, in and out of the house. The street was shut down for several blocks and lined with crime scene tape.

“They had to shoot him?” one man wondered aloud to his friends sitting behind him on the porch. “Twenty cops, right there.”

The man said the suspect had been carrying a seven-and-a-half inch knife.
A young man on the porch said police had fired three times.

“All I heard was, ‘Toot, toot, toot,'” he said.

Officials confirmed the man had been shot multiple times. One woman who knew the man who had been shot, but not his name, wondered why police didn’t at tempt to wound their suspect.
“You could have shot him one time in the leg. He would have been down,” a woman said. “He’s skin and bones anyway.”

An elderly man in handcuffs sat uncomfortably on the front stoop, guarded by police. Neighbors said he was the grandfather of the man’s child, under arrest for allegedly giving the suspect shelter in his house.
Juniak said that over 30 law enforcement officers were on the scene last night beginning an investigation.

Contact Alex Zdan at azdan@nj times.com or (609) 989-5705.

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Filed Under: 2009-Daily Hip Hop News, Political articles, Southern Shift Tagged With: Kill a Man Last Night, police terror-Davey D Hip Hop news, Trenton Police, Wise Intelligent, Wise Intelligent Speaks: Trenton Police Shoot

White Cops In Philly Refer to Black Kids As Ghetto Monkeys-Black Cop Set to Sue

July 18, 2009 By mrDaveyd

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daveyd-raider2 As you read the article below please keep in mind several things which make this story even more disturbing. First, Philadelphia currently has a Black Mayor, Michael A Nutter and had another mayor John F Street, a community activist and organizer who served for 8 years. This means that the website Domelights used by white Philly Cops to post up racist rantings about the people and the communities they a re supposed to serve was launched and has existed un-challenged on the watch of two African Americans leading the City of Brotherly Love. How is this possible?

For the past 8 years, Philadelphia has had two Black Police Commissioners, Sylvester Johnson and the Charles Ramseywho is highly decorated and currently oversees the department. How is racism this blatant amongst white officers tolerated on their watch? Do these men not have power or do these men not have backbone to stand up and shut things down? How was Johnson and now Ramsey able to lead officers who feel comfortable enough to embrace and exude the type of unconscionable racism described in the article? Their inability to have a zero tolerance policy put in place and acted upon when such egregious behavior occurs is a stark reminder that even though we have Black faces in high places it don’t mean a damn thing for the everyday Black person on the streets of Philly and throughout this country.

Professor and Fox news Commentator Marc Lamont Hill came across out of control cops on the Temple University campus in Philadelphia just last week. They were making several young men drop their pants in a public place while they laughed and cracked jokes.

As I’m reading this story, I can’t help but think about two things. First, is a situation which took place just last week around Temple University in Philly when Professor and Fox News Commentator Marc Lamont Hill came upon some out of control officers who thought it would be funny to harass several young Black men passing through the campus by having them drop their pants in public while being detained.

Hill tweeted about the incident and described how he stood watching the officers when he himself got confronted. The officers wanted him to leave the scene. They said he was ‘hovering ‘when Hill was actually observing which he has a right to do as tax paying citizen. Perhaps the only thing that kept him from being made to drop his pants was that he let it be known he was a professor on the campus where the young men were being jammed up.

Hill tweeted about how angry he was because after the cops let the boys go they started laughing and cracking jokes about the incident. What made this more outrageous was they did this in front of Professor Hill- The message seemingly conveyed by these callous cops was; It don’t matter who the hell you are, we’ll do what we want. One has to wonder if these cops went home wrote about the incident and shared a good laugh with other white cops on the racist website Domelights.

The second thing that comes to mind, is the plight of political prisoner Mumia Abu Jamal. Year after year when his case comes up, the Philadelphia police union Fraternal order of Police #5 leads the charge to block any attempt to free him. Mumia has long talked about the insidious racism and brutality of the Philly police. The things he’s reported on prior to going to jail over 20 years ago and throughout his stay on death row have been met with skepticism, rebuke and disbelief by mainstream pundits who simply feel the police can do no wrong. Perhaps these pundits need to look at the daily, pervasive racist commentary on Domelights from these White officers serving a city with a majority population of people of color and has Black leadership which is more than unnerving. One can then ask how much worse and in your face were these racist attitudes under white leadership, especially when Mumia was free and having to deal with well known racist Police Commissioners like Frank Rizzo. One can only imagine it was even worse.

Lastly one has to ask, how is such conduct tolerated by the Fraternal Order of Police. You go to their website and you see they are alerting their members to upcoming contract hearings on July 24th. I didn’t see anything telling their officers to fall back and set a good example for other officers by not tolearting racism. The FOP want a new contract when they have pretty much remained silent and not reined in their members? Pay attentions folks and lets see how this plays out.

When will President Obama aggressively address these increasing issues of police terror and the racism that is pervasive throughout many departments?

In closing I will say this.. yesterday we had a huge debate on my website and facebook pages about whether or not President Obama was doing enough to address racial issues that are impacting Black folks daily. Many felt like he was on the case. Others felt like he was falling short. One of the main sticking points in our debate were these increasing incidents of police terror that are happening from Oakland to Mississippi to Houston to Trenton, NJ with Wise Intelligent to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with Hip Hop pioneer and X-Clan member Paradise Gray. It was not lost on me that earlier this week President Obama went out of his way to offer prayer and praise to officers who were shot and seriously injured in the line of duty while chasing down suspects in Jersey City, New Jersey. He offered prayer and praise to slain officers in Pittsburgh a couple of months ago and he offered prayer and praise to the 4 officers slain in Oakland back in March. These things he should do.

At the same time, when is our President going to put out of control police on notice and offer solace to people brutalized by renegade cops? When is he going to instruct his Attorney General Eric Holder to draft a plan of action to hold police accountable and make sure that there will be zero tolerance for abuse and racist behavior as demonstrated by the white officers on Philly’s police force.

President Obama gave lots of money in his stimulus package for police-Perhaps he needs to take some of that money bback and treat the polce the way he treated the car companies. Let them know they don’t get any money until they start doing right by the American people.

Something to Ponder…

-Davey D-

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Cops claim police message board “infested with racist, white supremacist” remarks

Boards reference swim club incident, calls black kids “ghetto monkey faces”

One post describes “no car insurance driving, bad weave wearing” black women

Lawsuit seeks for site to be taken down or have cops stop posting during work

Black Philadelphia police sue over message board, say it’s racist

http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/07/17/police.racism.lawsuit/index.html

Domelights is a privately run website used by police in Philadelphia where they routinely post up racist rantings including one where they referred to Black kids discriminated at a Philly country club as Ghetto Monekeys

(CNN) — A group of black Philadelphia police officers filed a federal lawsuit Thursday against their department, alleging an online forum geared toward city police is “infested with racist, white supremacist and anti-African-American content.”

The suit alleges white officers post on and moderate the privately operated site, Domelights.com, both on and off the job.

Domelights’ users “often joke about the racially offensive commentary on the site … or will mention them in front of black police officers,” thus creating “a racially hostile work environment,” according to lawyers for the all-black Guardian Civic League, the lead plaintiff in the suit.

A look at the site’s forums Friday for racist comments found several possibilities.

Reads one: “In urban areas, it seems [African-Americans] living on welfare in paid for housing is ingrained in their culture as well as fighting. … Kids, along with adults can’t speak proper English or spell at a 3rd grade level, but they can sing among “theyselves” the lyrics to a rap song.”

Said another Domelights user of an African-American woman: “She is a classic example of that exact non tax paying, no car insurance driving, bad weave wearing, all the whitey’s are racist black women.”

The site’s tagline is “the voice of the good guys.”

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Read the lawsuit (PDF) Warning: Contents may offend some readers

“Every time African-Americans do or say something in our city, we get this backlash of cops who think they’re anonymous on this Web site — just racist, nasty, hurtful things about what we do,” said Rochelle Bilal, the president of the Guardian Civic League and a 23-year veteran of the force.

The league’s attorney said other black officers echo Bilal’s statement.

“We’ve heard the same story over and over again, which is that [African-American officers] witness in the workplace Domelights being used and discussed [in a racial manner],” said Brian Mildenberg, whose firm is also representing a Philadelphia day camp that recently gained national attention when its mostly black campers were turned away from a swim club.

He said it was “a gift from the heavens in a way that the two things happened at once.”

While Mildenberg and Bilal said they had been monitoring the 10-year-old Web site for years, the pool incident did seem to play into the timing of the lawsuit.

“When they said something about our pretty, brown, young, innocent children and called them monkeys because they wanted to go swimming, that was enough,” Bilal said.

She may have been referring to this comment posted on Domelights: “Maybe the people who work for a living didn’t want to swim with a bunch of ghetto monkey faces.”

The lawsuit also highlights comments made on Domelights by the site’s founder and administrator, a sergeant in the Philadelphiapolice force who goes by the online handle “McQ.”

A statement from McQ that Mildenberg described as “racially abusive commentary” reads, “Blacks and other minorities frequently don’t have the resources that white people have. Consequently, blacks may not be able to keep their vehicles inspected, registered, and roadworthy.”

McQ is also listed as a defendant in the lawsuit. Asked why McQ bears responsibility for the racist remarks of his site’s anonymous commenters, Mildenberg said it was because “he started it.”

The person known as McQ did not respond to a request for comment, but posted a message on the site citing the lawsuit. McQ wrote that the suit may cause the Web site to be suspended, but added his statement was not an admission of wrongdoing.

“I categorically deny any wrongdoing on my part,” the message reads. “I did not make racist posts. I did not maintain the Web site on city time.”

Ideally, Mildenberg said, his clients would like to see the site shut down. Failing that, they want Philadelphia police officers to be prohibited from posting comments on the site, particularly during working hours.

The plaintiffs in the class-action suit also are seeking unspecified financial damages available under the Civil Rights Act for Philadelphia’s 2,300 African-American police officers, according to Mildenberg.

Shelley Smith, Philadelphia’s city solicitor, said. “The lawsuit is about a private Web site. It’s not a police department Web site. It’s not operated or overseen by the police department. The allegations against the city and police department are misplaced.”

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Filed Under: 2009-Daily Hip Hop News, Davey D-Words to Ponder Blog, Political articles, Southern Shift Tagged With: Black Cops Sue White Cops, black Guardian Civic League, Black Philadelphia police sue over message board, Cops claim police message board "infested with racist, Davey D Hip Hop news Police terror in Philly, Domelights, Marc Lamont Hill, Mumia abu jamal, Philadelphia Police, say it's racist, Shelley Smith, temple University, white supremacist" remarks

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