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Zack de la Roca Speaks to Arizona’s Harsh Immigration Law-Congressman Gets Death Threats

April 24, 2010 By

In the wake of Arizona passing what amounts to an Apartheid style anti-immigrant bill Zack de La Roca from Rage Against the Machine speaks out. He lets folks know just how bad this bill is and what we should be doing…For  Zack this is not his first time speaking to the immigration battles in Arizona. It was just a few months ago (january 16th that Zack was present at a March which was broken up by police..

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

Rep. Raul Grijalva closes Tucson office after death threats

The Arizona Democrat had called for a boycott of the state over its harsh new immigration law

http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2010/04/23/raul_grijalva_closes_office_due_to_threats

Congressman Raul Grijalva

WASHINGTON — Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., closed down his Tucson and Yuma district offices Friday afternoon, after a man called the Tucson office twice threatening to “come in there and blow everybody’s head off,” and then go to the U.S.-Mexico border to “shoot any Mexicans that try to come across,” an aide says.

Grijalva, the co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, had been very critical of Arizona’s harsh new immigration law, which would require law enforcement authorities to check the immigration status of anyone they suspect isn’t in the country legally. That could, needless to say, lead to significant racial profiling and harassment in Arizona, where 30 percent of the population is of Hispanic origin. Grijalva called for conventions to boycott Arizona until the law is defeated or, if signed by Gov. Jan Brewer, overturned. (UPDATE: Brewer signed the bill into law Friday afternoon.)

“Just as professional athletes refused to recognize Arizona until it recognized Martin Luther King Jr., we are calling on organizations not to schedule conventions and conferences in Arizona until it recognizes civil rights and the meaning of due process,” he said Thursday.

So the calls Friday morning left staffers feeling uncomfortable, spokesman Adam Sarvana said. The offices were closed as a precaution, and are set to open Monday as planned. The FBI is investigating the threats.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2f6svit0tI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vm7H97Qf734

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Henry Louis Gates pens Article Absolving White People For Slavery-Wants us to Blame Africans

April 23, 2010 By

Wow this is a two page story that the New York Times is running…You’d think Henry Louis Gates would’ve learned a few things after his confrontation with Cambridge police last year when they accused him of breaking into his house and jammed him up… Apparently not.. All I can do is shake my head and note that this article appears the night after ABC Nightline ran that story about Black Women not finding suitable men.. As author Bakari Kitwana pointed out, Yes today we all need to highlight and celebrate Black pathologies…

So this article basically says Africans helped white slavers capture us.. Duh.. We’ve been known that. Hell it was Black slaves that usually ran to master and told about slave insurrections. It was Black slave that were sometimes made to be overseers. None of that absolves the horrific institution of slavery which here in the US was rooted in the strong belief that our ancestors who were forced to work those fields were less than human and forced to endure unspeakable horrors. The hatred for us because of skin color remained long after slavery into Jim Crow and as we can see in recent days continues..We wont even get into a discussion of colonialism and the racialized politics around that especially as African nations fought to be free. Meanwhile while this Gates article appears, the state of Texas is erasing and downplaying the harshness of slavery in its history books.

This article is akin to pointing out that there were Jews who helped the German during the height of Nazi Germany.. Not for one minute would one ever think of absolving germany for her role in the holocaust and nor should we be absolving those Europeans who gleefully played roles in Transatlantic slavery, no matter what Africans helped out.. What took place in this 2000 x 3000 land mass we call America rest on the shoulders of ‘Mr Charlie’. He gets no pass on what was done..He was caught holding the bag.. and to be honest if there was some nutcase on the continent who “Helped” sell us into bondage they can be dealt with as well.. But in the meantime it was Mr Charlie of European decent who was all up in here raping our mothers, sisters and grandmothers, snatching up kids and separating our families, beating our people to pulps and basically using and abusing human being stolen from their land.  I dont care how many Henry Gates articles are published by the NY Times..He (Mr Charlie ) gets no pass..nuff said

-Davey D-

Ending the Slavery Blame-Game

by Henry Louis Gates

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/23/opinion/23gates.html?pagewanted=1

Henry Louis Gates

THANKS to an unlikely confluence of history and genetics — the fact that he is African-American and president — Barack Obama has a unique opportunity to reshape the debate over one of the most contentious issues of America’s racial legacy: reparations, the idea that the descendants of American slaves should receive compensation for their ancestors’ unpaid labor and bondage.

There are many thorny issues to resolve before we can arrive at a judicious (if symbolic) gesture to match such a sustained, heinous crime. Perhaps the most vexing is how to parcel out blame to those directly involved in the capture and sale of human beings for immense economic gain.

While we are all familiar with the role played by the United States and the European colonial powers like Britain, France, Holland, Portugal and Spain, there is very little discussion of the role Africans themselves played. And that role, it turns out, was a considerable one, especially for the slave-trading kingdoms of western and central Africa. These included the Akan of the kingdom of Asante in what is now Ghana, the Fon of Dahomey (now Benin), the Mbundu of Ndongo in modern Angola and the Kongo of today’s Congo, among several others.

For centuries, Europeans in Africa kept close to their military and trading posts on the coast. Exploration of the interior, home to the bulk of Africans sold into bondage at the height of the slave trade, came only during the colonial conquests, which is why Henry Morton Stanley’s pursuit of Dr. David Livingstone in 1871 made for such compelling press: he was going where no (white) man had gone before.

How did slaves make it to these coastal forts? The historians John Thornton and Linda Heywood of Boston University estimate that 90 percent of those shipped to the New World were enslaved by Africans and then sold to European traders. The sad truth is that without complex business partnerships between African elites and European traders and commercial agents, the slave trade to the New World would have been impossible, at least on the scale it occurred.

Advocates of reparations for the descendants of those slaves generally ignore this untidy problem of the significant role that Africans played in the trade, choosing to believe the romanticized version that our ancestors were all kidnapped unawares by evil white men, like Kunta Kinte was in “Roots.” The truth, however, is much more complex: slavery was a business, highly organized and lucrative for European buyers and African sellers alike.

The African role in the slave trade was fully understood and openly acknowledged by many African-Americans even before the Civil War. For Frederick Douglass, it was an argument against repatriation schemes for the freed slaves. “The savage chiefs of the western coasts of Africa, who for ages have been accustomed to selling their captives into bondage and pocketing the ready cash for them, will not more readily accept our moral and economical ideas than the slave traders of Maryland and Virginia,” he warned. “We are, therefore, less inclined to go to Africa to work against the slave trade than to stay here to work against it.”

To be sure, the African role in the slave trade was greatly reduced after 1807, when abolitionists, first in Britain and then, a year later, in the United States, succeeded in banning the importation of slaves. Meanwhile, slaves continued to be bought and sold within the United States, and slavery as an institution would not be abolished until 1865. But the culpability of American plantation owners neither erases nor supplants that of the African slavers. In recent years, some African leaders have become more comfortable discussing this complicated past than African-Americans tend to be.

In 1999, for instance, President Mathieu Kerekou of Benin astonished an all-black congregation in Baltimore by falling to his knees and begging African-Americans’ forgiveness for the “shameful” and “abominable” role Africans played in the trade. Other African leaders, including Jerry Rawlings of Ghana, followed Mr. Kerekou’s bold example.

Our new understanding of the scope of African involvement in the slave trade is not historical guesswork. Thanks to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, directed by the historian David Eltis of Emory University, we now know the ports from which more than 450,000 of our African ancestors were shipped out to what is now the United States (the database has records of 12.5 million people shipped to all parts of the New World from 1514 to 1866). About 16 percent of United States slaves came from eastern Nigeria, while 24 percent came from the Congo and Angola.

Through the work of Professors Thornton and Heywood, we also know that the victims of the slave trade were predominantly members of as few as 50 ethnic groups. This data, along with the tracing of blacks’ ancestry through DNA tests, is giving us a fuller understanding of the identities of both the victims and the facilitators of the African slave trade.

For many African-Americans, these facts can be difficult to accept. Excuses run the gamut, from “Africans didn’t know how harsh slavery in America was” and “Slavery in Africa was, by comparison, humane” or, in a bizarre version of “The devil made me do it,” “Africans were driven to this only by the unprecedented profits offered by greedy European countries.”

But the sad truth is that the conquest and capture of Africans and their sale to Europeans was one of the main sources of foreign exchange for several African kingdoms for a very long time. Slaves were the main export of the kingdom of Kongo; the Asante Empire in Ghana exported slaves and used the profits to import gold. Queen Njinga, the brilliant 17th-century monarch of the Mbundu, waged wars of resistance against the Portuguese but also conquered polities as far as 500 miles inland and sold her captives to the Portuguese. When Njinga converted to Christianity, she sold African traditional religious leaders into slavery, claiming they had violated her new Christian precepts.

Did these Africans know how harsh slavery was in the New World? Actually, many elite Africans visited Europe in that era, and they did so on slave ships following the prevailing winds through the New World. For example, when Antonio Manuel, Kongo’s ambassador to the Vatican, went to Europe in 1604, he first stopped in Bahia, Brazil, where he arranged to free a countryman who had been wrongfully enslaved.

African monarchs also sent their children along these same slave routes to be educated in Europe. And there were thousands of former slaves who returned to settle Liberia and Sierra Leone. The Middle Passage, in other words, was sometimes a two-way street. Under these circumstances, it is difficult to claim that Africans were ignorant or innocent.

Given this remarkably messy history, the problem with reparations may not be so much whether they are a good idea or deciding who would get them; the larger question just might be from whom they would be extracted.

So how could President Obama untangle the knot? In David Remnick’s new book “The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama,” one of the president’s former students at the University of Chicago comments on Mr. Obama’s mixed feelings about the reparations movement: “He told us what he thought about reparations. He agreed entirely with thetheory of reparations. But in practice he didn’t think it was really workable.”

About the practicalities, Professor Obama may have been more right than he knew. Fortunately, in President Obama, the child of an African and an American, we finally have a leader who is uniquely positioned to bridge the great reparations divide. He is uniquely placed to publicly attribute responsibility and culpability where they truly belong, to white people and black people, on both sides of the Atlantic, complicit alike in one of the greatest evils in the history of civilization. And reaching that understanding is a vital precursor to any just and lasting agreement on the divisive issue of slavery reparations.

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Filed Under: 2009-Daily Hip Hop News, Political articles, Southern Shift Tagged With: , , ,

State of Arizona is Set to Join the ‘Birther’ Movement-They Tell Obama-No Birth certificate No Name on Ballot in 2012

April 23, 2010 By

The state of Arizona continues to be a sad joke for the rest of the country. First it passed a stringent immigration bill that gave police sweeping powers that would essentially allow them to step to any and all people they perceived as being ion this country illegally. Translation: Arizona stepped back to the horrific days of Apartheid South Africa with a ‘Let Me See Your ID‘ law that would undoubtly target Mexican and Mexican Americans..

http://www.thesouthernshift.com/news/2010/04/let-me-see-your-id-arizonas-new-immigration-law-harks-back-apartheid-south-africa

Next we have Senator John McCain who appeared on the Bill O’Reilly show to weighed in on the hoopla around the law and decided to make the outlandish statement about Mexicans illegals  were intentionally running down people. He later backtracked and tried to explain himself. He said he was referring to people near the border fleeing law enforcement. We say it was John McCain having flashbacks of his POW days when he felt compelled to refer to his Vietenamese captors as ‘Gooks’.

http://www.thesouthernshift.com/news/2010/04/let-me-see-your-id-arizonas-new-immigration-law-harks-back-apartheid-south-africa

Today we now have Arizona trying to pass a law demanding that the President show his birth certificate if he expects to be on the 2012 ballot.. Yes Arizona the new cradle for dumbness and white supremacy..(I guess thats a redundant statement) has now officially joined the ‘Birther Movement’. Unbelievable.

-Davey D-

PHOENIX – Arizona lawmakers expressing doubt over whetherPresident Barack Obama was born in the United States are pushing a bill through the Legislature that would require the president to show hisbirth certificate to get on the state’s 2012 ballot.

The House passed the measure Wednesday on a 31-29 vote, ignoring protests from opponents who said it’s casting Arizona in an ugly light and could give the elected secretary of state broad powers to kick apresidential candidate off the ballot.

“We’re becoming a national joke,” Rep. Chad Campbell, a Phoenix Democrat who opposes the measure, said Thursday.

The measure’s sponsor, Republican Rep. Judy Burges of Skull Valley, said she isn’t sure Obama could prove his eligibility for the ballot in Arizona and wants to erase all doubts.

“You have half the population who thinks everything is fine, and you have the other half of the population who has had doubts built up in their mind,” Burges said.

So-called “birthers” have contended since the 2008 presidential campaign that Obama is ineligible to be president because, they argue, he was actually born in Kenya, his father’s homeland. TheConstitution says that a person must be a “natural-born citizen” to be eligible for the presidency.

Hawaii officials have repeatedly confirmed Obama’s citizenship, and his Hawaiian birth certificate has been made public, along with birth notices from two Honolulu newspapers published within days of his birth in August 1961.

Courts have rebuffed lawsuits challenging Obama’s eligibility, but the issue hasn’t gone away. Lawmakers have introduced similar bills in a handful of other states. They include Oklahoma, where a measure passed the House but failed in the Senate, and Missouri, where a bill was withdrawn before any action was taken.

Eleven U.S. House Republicans have signed on to a federal bill, but it hasn’t received a hearing in the Democrat-controlled House.

Arizona’s measure would require U.S. presidential candidates to submit documents to the secretary of state proving they meet the constitutional requirements to be president. The secretary of state could then decide to keep a candidate off the Arizona ballot if he or she had reasonable cause to believe the candidate was ineligible.

Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett opposes the bill, arguing it gives his office too much power, according to his spokesman Matthew Benson. Benson said Bennett, a Republican, has no doubts about Obama’s citizenship.

The bill now goes to the Senate, where supporters are trying to pull together enough votes to pass the measure. If they do, it’s unclear if Republican Gov. Jan Brewer will give it her support. Her spokesman, Paul Senseman, said the governor won’t comment on pending legislation, but he added she doesn’t have doubts about Obama’s citizenship.

The measure comes amid a string of controversial proposals in Arizona that have garnered national attention, including a sweeping illegal immigration crackdown awaiting action by the governor and a measure allowing people to carry concealed weapons without permits. The governor signed the gun bill last week.

Rep. Tom Chabin, D-Flagstaff, pleaded with his colleagues to oppose the birth certificate measure Wednesday.

“When you undermine the sitting president of the United States, you undermine our nation, and it makes us look very ugly,” Chabin said Thursday.

But some supporters insist the bill isn’t aimed at Obama, it’s just common sense.

“It’s our ballot,” said state Sen. Jack Harper, R-Surprise, who believes Obama has proven his citizenship. “The parties need to prove that their nominee is eligible to hold the office of president to be on our ballot.”

original story: http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/President-Barack-Obama

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Filed Under: 2009-Daily Hip Hop News, Political articles, Southern Shift Tagged With: , , , , , ,

As the Poor Get Poorer Look for Brutalizing Police to become the New ‘Buffer’ Middle Class Set to Protect the Rich

April 19, 2010 By

I been saying this for a minute and will most likely do a show on this later this week. But as the economy worsens and the gap between the Have and Have Nots widens we are going to have some serious problems. One disturbing note is that an estimated 75% of the people do not trust the government. That’s playing out with the rise of militias, increasing threats by Tim McVeigh like domestic terrorists and just an overall overt disrespect for anyone in office. A lot of anger has been directed at President Obama, but increasingly more and more ire is being turned toward anyone in office.

Part of what has driven this is the nagging perception is that the those in office work for the rich and powerful and not for the people. There’s a lot of media middleman efforts seemingly designed to keep people’s anger directed at politicians and not the rich and powerful figures behind the scenes who are driving policy. It’s only a matter of time before folks come to realize that no real changes are gonna take place until the proverbial Wall Street fat cats are put in place.  Sadly they seem to realize this as well.

Now once upon a time the Aristocratic class and Land Barons who ran this country realized it was just a matter of time before their African slaves and white (European) indentured servants would come to realize as they were working side by side on the fields they were being smashed on by the same person. They feared these lower class folks would rise up and turn on the rich and so these Aristocrats did a couple of things. First they elevated the status of the indentured servant. They were granted more privileges than their African counterparts and were literally told they were better. Many were given overseer status. Their job was to keep everyone especially the African slaves in check and basically protect the rich land owners.The overseers became the first police officers.

The original concern from our founding fathers was to protect the rich and powerful from the poor they were exploiting

Next they put laws in place that would protect them from the ‘Tyranny of the majority’. This is one of the basis for the Federalist Papers put forth by early president James Madison. As Professor and fellow radio host Dr Jared Ball once explained to me…The ‘tyranny of the majority’ the Aristocratic class was afraid of was the poor and desperate who were being oppressed yet vastly outnumbered the ruling class. If they should ever get into power the fear was they would start redistributing the wealth and might start returning the harsh oppressive favors they levied on everyone else. Because of that fear, in a nutshell the game plan was to find ways to protect the interests and property of the rich and powerful and with each passing year and generation different scenarios, tactics and schemes have been thought up. It might’ve been saying slaves were only 3/5th human and not allowing them to vote. It might’ve been making women property and denying them the  right to vote.  It might have been concocting the ‘American dream’ narrative and leaving a whole lot of poor whites under the illusion that with a bit of hard work, elbow grease and determination they to could one day become rich and powerful.

For decades the rich and powerful were able to keep things moving because they had a buffer class that kept the misery of the poor from smashing on the oppressive nature of the rich. They were the Middle class.  For the overwhelming majority of people in this country getting a nice house and a white picket fence was the goal. Forget being a land baron, just give me a small piece of the pie and I’m straight is how most people thought.  Become Middle Class and issues of inequality, injustice and the existence of an underclass would be swept under the rug. We saw this with poor whites who became working class and would show a disdain for Blacks and Browns shooting for the same goals. It was the outspoken voices of the so-called working and Middle class who shitted on things like affirmative action and welfare. We even saw this amongst Middle class Blacks and Browns who would buy into what has often been described as the illusion of inclusion. The need to continue to struggle for total freedom and equality was abandoned by many ‘who got theirs’ who would then turn around and arrogantly chastise those who didn’t make it..

But as we can see that illusion has all but crumbled and those who were happy being middle class the reality has sunk in that they to are not only poor, but they may now be a part of this expanded permanent underclass.  This realization is setting on for many as they’ve seen their 401ks tank, their credit completely ruined, overwhelming mounting debt that they can’t get rid of thanks to new and more stringent bankruptcy laws designed to protect the rich, sky-high school tuitions and jobs permanently gone while more and more workers are being told they are too old or too irrelevant for today’s youthful and politically dumbed down job market. Today in 2010 we’ve seen a collapse of the Middle Class. It’s either your rich or poor. Very very few are in between. Those who are holding on desperately and willing to do whatever it takes to avoid the plight of those around them. Enter the new Middle class.

Private 'security' outfits like Blackwater are increasingly being used to be a buffer between the rich and poor.

To protect themselves from the ‘Tyranny of the majority‘ we are now seeing the formation of a new buffer class made up of law enforcement. Police, prison guards, Border patrol, ICE, private security firms like Blackwater or whatever name they now go by, IRS agents etc…Those who are willing to smash on ‘their own’ are finding they can escape being apart of this permanent underclass by joining up. We’re hearing about the formation of more and more gated communities and private police forces being used to patrol them. We’re seeing this phenomenon in areas where gentrification is taking place and there is concern that newcomers may have to endure the anger of displaced residents.

We’re also hearing about how private police forces are being used to ‘supplement’ supposedly beleaguered police departments. Journalist Jeremy Scahill noted this a while back with Blackwater mercenaries who has been investigating.  What took place in New Orleans during Katrina with them being them holding down empty hotels while poor people around them desperate for food and shelter were forced away seems to have just been a test run for what will soon be commonplace.

Adding to all this is the increasing number of egregious incidents of police brutality. First, many of these incidents seem to be more brazen. It doesn’t seem to matter that incidents are caught on film as is shown in the video below. Here we a police officer  from  a Chicago suburb ruthlessly clobber a driver over a dozen times. The passenger was already tasered.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8WCEAIcaT0

Such incidents also seem to be taking place beyond the confines of the hood where police suppression has been an everyday thing. What took place with innocent students many of them white during the G20 Summit at the University of Pittsburgh is one of the more glaring examples. Having experienced being tear gassed and seeing out of control police running into dorms whupping on students while pursuing ‘fictional’ anarchists was eye-opening.  It suggested that it did not matter that students from this prestigious university who are generally heralded and cuddled by the city were gonna be shielded. Police came after them like there was no tomorrow and left many of us this is just the tip of the iceberg.. Look at what happened to students in California protesting fee hikes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etv8YEqaWgA

In this video notice  the officers of color seem to be going off the most.. Also note how many people seem to cheer the cops on in the comment boxes. They praised the cops for samashing on students protesting 40% fee hikes at a time when everyone is losing jobs.. What sort of backward thinking is that? The type to prevent the ‘tyranny of the majority’.. Something to ponder..

-Davey D-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOI5l2_RghQ

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Filed Under: 2009-Daily Hip Hop News, Political articles, Southern Shift Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Chamillionaire: Hustling & Grinding in a Hi-Tech World…

April 8, 2010 By

We caught up w/ Houston rapper Chamillionaire who has been making a lot of noise as of late, not just for him reuniting with childhood friend and fellow Paul Wall after 7 years and going on tour, but also because he’s been making some behind the scenes moves into the tech world. In fact much of our conversation centered around us discussing ways in which rap stars can move away from simply setting up record companies and use their creative ingenuity to set up the next Google or Youtube.  

“It’s not always about making money with these companies, sometimes its about getting information so later down the road you can make money”, Chamillionaire noted. He explained that in the age of music going digital rappers need to be thinking outside the box and trying to figure out other ways to leverage their brand  and resources above and beyond simply selling records and merchandise.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOV0EvGpB1I

We talked to Chamillionaire about how he stays on his grind and asked if he saw any differences in the way the Bay Area makes it happen compared to our sister city of Houston which shares a strong independent rap scene. He noted that one can definitely tell when they are in the Bay Area. The music and overall swagger is unique on to itself. However, the people’s work ethics and drive to succeed on their own terms are pretty similar.  He noted how Paul Wall and Bay Area rapper Tha Jacka had just departed the tour bus as I arrived to go shoot their own videos. Chamillionaire marveled at the way folks collab with each other and

Along that vein we chopped up it up about the large yet often overlooked Latino/Brown Hip Hop scene in Texas. Chamillionaire noted that he was impressed how large it was and how some artists coming from Brown communities are killing it in terms of the people they can reached. he talked about Houston rapper SPM and how succesful he was while many withing ‘mainstream’ Hip Hop circles were clueless. Chamillionaire talked about how some of his songs are popular in brown communities and the influence is so strong that he’s started rapping some of the songs in Spanish which he puts on his mixtapes.

We also talked about mixtape game and whether or not they were still relevent in today’s climate. We also chopped it about whether he would continue doing his  ‘Mixtape Messiah‘ series. He noted that after 10 years he decided to retire that series and launch a new one called ‘Major Pain‘.

We concluded our interview by talking to Chamillionaire about his upcoming album called Venom where he explained that he wanted to move away from being ‘political correct’ topics and explore more edgy type of material . “I wanted to be a bit rebellious on the album”, He noted.

Chamillionaire also laid out who he feels are some of the most important rappers in Texas that we should be paying attention to as well as his favorite songs including ‘Turn It Up’ and ‘Hip Hop Police’.

Click HERE to Here Breakdown FM podcast featuring Chamillionaire

Below are the links to our two part Breakdown FM Podcast.

Chamillionaire Interview pt 1

Chamillionaire Interview pt 2

Below is another interview that  our friends from Check the Levels  out in Austin did with Chamillionaire during SXSW

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

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Did a Racist Coup in a Northern Louisiana Town Overthrow its Black Mayor and Police Chief?

April 7, 2010 By

 Waterproof, Louisiana, and the region around it may be majority Black, but White Power is determined to prevail by any means necessary. White parish officials replaced the town’s African American mayor and arrested the Black police chief for kidnapping when he placed a lawbreaker under arrest. “They are determined to let you know you have a place and if you don’t jump when they say jump you are in trouble.”

As you read this story you can listen to the interview we did yesterday with investigative reporter Jordan Flaherty and Chief Miles Jenkins.. Its unbelieveable that such things are still going on in 2010 Here’s the link our Hard Knock Radio podcast   http://www.swift.fm/mrdaveyd/song/33537/

Shout out to Black Agenda Report who first ran this piece..

 
Did a Racist Coup in a Northern Louisiana Town Overthrow its Black Mayor and Police Chief?
by Jordan Flaherty
 
“We hope the justice department will look into this and bring some much-needed reform to this part of the world.”
 
In Waterproof, a small northern Louisiana town near Natchez, Mississippi, the African-American mayor and police chief assert that they have been forced from office and arrested as part of an illegal coup carried out by an alliance of white politicians and their followers. In a lawsuit filed last week, Police Chief Miles Jenkins asserts a wide-ranging conspiracy involving the area’s district attorney and parish sheriff, along with several other members of the region’s entrenched political power structure. These events come at a time when the validity of federal power is being questioned because of the race of the US president, and in a state where white political corruption and violence have been and continue to be used as tools to fight Black political power.
 
About 800 people live in Waterproof, a rural community in the south of Tensas Parish. Tensas has just over 6,000 residents, making it both the smallest parish in the state, and the parish with the state’s fastest declining population. The parish’s schools remain mostly segregated, with nearly all the Black students attending public schools, and nearly all the white students attending private schools. With a median household income of $10,250, Waterproof is also one of the poorest communities in the US. The only jobs for Black people in town are in work for white farmers, according to Chief Jenkins. “Unless you go out of town to work,” he says, “you’re going to ride the white man’s tractor. That’s it.”
 
“White political corruption and violence have been and continue to be used as tools to fight Black political power.”
 

Mayor Bobby Higginbotham (pict right)

Bobby Higginbotham was elected mayor of Waterproof in September of 2006. The next year, he appointed Miles Jenkins as chief of police. Jenkins, who served in the US military for 30 years and earned a master’s degree in public administration from Troy University in Alabama, immediately began the work of professionalizing a small town police department that had previously been mostly inactive. “You called the Waterproof police for help before,” says Chief Jenkins, “he would say, wait ‘til tomorrow, it’s too hot to come out today.” He also sought to reform the town’s financial practices, which Chief Jenkins says were in disorder and consumed by debt.

 
Chief Jenkins asserts that a white political infrastructure, led by the Parish Sheriff Ricky Jones and District Attorney James Paxton, were threatened by their actions. This group immediately sought to orchestrate a coup against the two Black men, including clandestine meetings, false arrests, harassment, and even physical violence. Court documents describe how Paxton, Jones, and their allies formed an alliance “designed to harass intimidate, arrest, imprison, prosecute, illegally remove plaintiff from his position of police chief, prevent plaintiff from performing his law duties as police chief and/or force plaintiff to leave the town of Waterproof.”
 
“If you’re educated and intelligent and know your rights and in this parish, you are in trouble.”
 
Ms. Annie Watson, a Black school board member in her 60s who was born and raised in Waterproof, worked as a volunteer for the mayor. She says that the mayor and chief, who had both lived in New Orleans, brought a new attitude that Parish officials didn’t like. “The Mayor and the Chief said you can’t treat people this way, and the Sheriff and DA said you got to know your place. If you’re educated and intelligent and know your rights and in this parish, you are in trouble,” she says. “They are determined to let you know you have a place and if you don’t jump when they say jump you are in trouble.”
 
Ms. Watson explains that Paxton and Jones were threatened by Chief Jenkins’ efforts to professionalize the town’s police force. Aside from representing a challenge to Sheriff Jones’ political power, this also took away a source of his funding. “Before Mayor Higginbotham, all traffic tickets went to St. Joseph,” she says, referring to the Parish seat, where Sheriff Jones is based. “So he cut their income by having a police department.”
 
Jack McMillan, an African American deputy sheriff in Tensas Parish, says he tried to warn Chief Jenkins to back down. “You’ve got to adapt to your environment,” he says. “You can’t come to a small town and do things the same way you might in a big city. Like the song says, you got to know when to hold ‘em, and know when to fold ‘em.”
 
Tensas Parish
 

District Attorney James Paxton

Tensas and the nearby parishes of Madison and East Carroll all share the sixth judicial district – currently represented by District Attorney James Paxton. Buddy Caldwell, DA for the sixth judicial district from 1979 to 2008, is now Attorney General for the state of Louisiana. The sixth district parishes all have majority Black populations and mostly white elected officials, which Chief Jenkins and Watson attribute to political corruption and disenfranchisement of Black voters. Prior to the registration of 15 voters in 1964, there was not a single Black voter registered in Tensas, despite having more than 7,000 African American residents (and about 4,000 white residents), making it the last Parish in Louisiana to allow African Americans to register.

 
Waterproof is “Reminiscent of the bygone days of southern politics,” with a white power structure maintaining political power over a Black majority, according to veteran civil rights attorney Ron Wilson, who is representing Jenkins in his civil rights lawsuit. “At any and all costs, even jeopardizing the life and freedom of my client, they will ruin him to maintain power. This case is ultimately about whether an African-American can be guaranteed the rights that are assured to him in the Constitution.” According to court papers, this Jim Crow alliance dominates elected power in the area, and “even on the local level, where the office holders tend to be African American, they are powerless to control their own destiny.” According to Chief Jenkins, the District Attorney once boasted that he controlled the votes of Waterproof’s Black Aldermen.
 
“Waterproof is ‘reminiscent of the bygone days of southern politics,” with a white power structure maintaining political power over a Black majority.’”
 

Chief Miles Jenkins

Chief Jenkins says he faced an immediate campaign of harassment from Sheriff Jones. “They just wanted this town to be white-controlled,” explained Chief Jenkins. The police chief described being arrested multiple times under the order of District Attorney Paxton and Sheriff Jones. The charges, says Jenkins, range from charges of theft for a pay raise he received from the town’s board of Aldermen to criminal trespass for going to the home of a citizen who had been stopped for speeding without a valid driver’s license, to disturbing the peace for an incident where individuals threatened the police chief with violence for issuing traffic citations. Ms. Watson says the charges were invented out of thin air. “It was a sad case of lies,” she says, adding that, “The majority of the town of Waterproof supports the chief and supports the mayor.”

 
Chief Jenkins says he was arrested and declared a flight risk by District Attorney Paxton, despite living and owning property in the Parish. “In all my years,” says attorney Ron Wilson, “I’ve never seen a police officer, and certainly not a police chief, charged for something like this.” Chief Jenkins alleges he was attacked and choked by a deputy sheriff, who he says shouted, “Shut up…We are in charge…We are the sheriff and the sheriff controls Tensas Parish. The sooner you all learn this the better off you will be,” an action that Ms. Watson says she also witnessed.
 
“The chief was even charged with kidnapping for one incident in which he arrested the former town clerk for illegal entry.”
 
Chief Jenkins says his police car was shoved in a ditch, and when he arrested the people who had committed the act, the DA refused to press charges. In fact, he says the DA refused almost all charges he presented and released anyone he arrested. The chief was even charged with kidnapping for one incident in which he arrested the former town clerk for illegal entry. “That’s the most ludicrous notion I’ve ever come across,” says Wilson. “That a police chief can be arrested for kidnapping, because he placed someone under arrest who was breaking the law.”
 
A grand jury has returned indictments of Chief Jenkins and Mayor Higginbotham, and Higginbotham’s trial is scheduled to begin this Monday. The mayor faces 44 charges, including multiple counts of malfeasance in office and felony theft. The charges appear to be based on the results of a state audit of Waterproof that found irregularities in the town’s record keeping going back to before the election of Higginbotham – irregularities that the mayor and police chief say they had repaired.
 
Patterns of Violence
 

Mayor Gerald Washington was killed shortly after being elected

Mayor Higginbotham was elected at the same time as two other Black mayors of small Louisiana towns, both of whom also received threats based on race. In December of 2006, shortly after Higginbotham was elected mayor of Waterproof, Gerald Washington was shot and killed three days before he was to become the first Black mayor of the small southwest Louisiana town of Westlake. An official investigation called his death a suicide, but family members call it an assassination. Less than two weeks after that, shots were fired into the house of Earnest Lampkins, the first Black mayor of the northwest Louisiana town of Greenwood. Lampkins reported that he continued to receive threats throughout his term, including a “for sale” sign that someone planted outside his house.

 
Waterproof was Klan country from the Reconstruction era until well into the 20th century, and violence frequently broke out in the area. Seven Black men in Madison Parish were lynched over a period of three days in 1894 for the charge of “insurrection,” apparently because one man refused to follow an order from a sheriff. “The Klan was very active here,” says Ms. Watson, recalling her childhood in the 50s and 60s. “We had crosses burned on people’s lawns. The school principal had a cross burned on his lawn. A man named Sun Turner was shot and killed on the streets by the Klan.” Waterproof is an hour south of Tallulah, the site of a notoriously abusive youth prison, and a little more than hour east of Jena, where accusations of systemic racism brought 40,000 people from around the country, including many civil rights leaders, to a 2007 march. Like Jena, Waterproof is also home to a prison that contracts to hold federal immigration prisoners.
 
“Gerald Washington was shot and killed three days before he was to become the first Black mayor of the small southwest Louisiana town of Westlake.”
 

Sheriff Rickey Jones

When asked for comment on Chief Jenkins’ lawsuit, Tensas Parish Sheriff Ricky Jones denied that race was a factor, claiming that Jenkins had abused his office and that many of the local citizens who filed complaints against him were Black. “I’m not going to support any type of corruption,” said Jones. “Certainly not from him.” District Attorney Paxton, also named as a defendant in the lawsuit, disputed all accusations from Jenkins, suggesting that he had tried to help Jenkins when he was first elected. “A lot of this will become clear when the case against Mayor Higginbotham goes to trial on Monday,” he added.

 
Flood Caldwell, one of the town’s aldermen, is currently serving as the town’s mayor. Jenkins points to Caldwell’s appointment as further evidence of a coup, saying that the town aldermen, under the direction of DA Paxton, illegally voted to remove Mayor Higginbotham. “No one recognizes Caldwell as mayor except the DA and his friends,” says Chief Jenkins. The office of the Louisiana Secretary of State confirms that they still have Higginbotham listed as mayor, adding that they cannot comment further because of pending litigation.
 
Wilson says this case is ultimately about the repression of Black political and civil rights. “I think this has been going on in Tensas for a while,” he says. “I think they’ve gone too far in this case, and someone finally has come along and says they won’t go along.” Wilson hopes this lawsuit will bring federal attention. “We hope the justice department will look into this and bring some much-needed reform to this part of the world,” he says.
 
Chief Jenkins says he took the Sheriff’s job to serve the community, “You’ve given this country the best years of your life and you get treated like an unwanted stepchild,” he says. “I didn’t realize there was so much politics to just doing your job.”
 
Ms. Watson believes that this is a struggle for self-determination and basic civil rights. “I was born in 1948,” she says. “Ever since I was born, Blacks never had a say in this parish, until Chief Jenkins and Mayor Higginbotham. They spoke up, and tried to change things. That’s why the parish is going after them.”
 
Jacques Morial of the Louisiana Justice Institute contributed to this story.
Jordan Flaherty is a journalist, an editor of Left Turn Magazine, and a staffer with the Louisiana Justice Institute. He was the first writer to bring the story of the Jena Six to a national audience and audiences around the world have seen the television reports he’s produced for Al-Jazeera, TeleSur, Press-TV, GritTV, and Democracy Now, as well as his appearances on Anderson Cooper 360, CNN Headline News, and several other programs. His post-Katrina reporting for ColorLines shared an award from New America Media for best Katrina-related reporting in ethnic press. Haymarket Press will release his new book, FLOODLINES: Community and Resistance from Katrina to the Jena Six, in 2010. He can be reached at neworleans@leftturn.org.
 
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Court Rule For Comcast Net Neutrality Falls on Our Watch-That’s a Damn Shame!

April 6, 2010 By

Just getting word about the FCC being defeated in court against Comcast over the issue of Net Neutrality. The courts ruled that the FCC has no authority to enforce Net Neutrality principles. This now opens the doors for any of the large telecoms like AT&T and Verizon who have spent millions of dollars  lobbying politicians, paying off traditional Civil Rights groups for their silence or advocacy and hand picking ‘pundits to murky the issue by setting up all sorts of distracting debates, to start regulating content. In short, the doors are now open for these telecoms to create toll lanes on the web where the more you pay the faster and more accessible your website, home page etc, to the masses. Here’s the actual decision  http://pacer.cadc.uscourts.gov/common/opinions/201004/08-1291-1238302.pdf

The Internet was attractive to so many of us because it leveled the playing field. It allowed the little guy with a good idea to have voice right alongside the mediocre, slow-moving big guy with lot so f money. The net allowed a lot of folks to come up. The principles around Net Neutrality allowed a small outfit like Pandora to smash on the staleness of a Clear Channel. It allowed scores of Indy artists who we got to enjoy at last week’s Paid Dues concert in LA to be just as relevant and accessible as the corporate backed auto-tune drones that made so many of us thankful we could escape via the internet.

The principles of Net Neutrality have allowed scores of grassroots organizations to put up good fights and organize effectively. One example, is Basta Dobbs, the campaign against former CNN host Lou Dobbs that saw 32 cities simultaneously hold press conferences demanding his removal from the airwaves because of his constant racialization of immigrant communities. Organizers acknowledged  that a lot of their success was owed to their ability to reach the masses online.  Today there is a current campaign against CBS and comedian Adam Coralla making disparaging remarks against Filipinos got legs thanks to online efforts and the principles governing Net Neutrality. 

Many of us found out about the Troy Davis case through the Internet

Awareness around death penalty cases like the one involving  Troy Davis  owe much success to the internet spreading. The same with the plight of the Jena 6. Imagine if the students protesting election corruption in Iran were prevented from reaching us here in the US because Comcast or AT&T decided to restrict content? many of us got to know and support their plight because Net Neutrality was in tact. The current student protests here in the US around tuition hikes became known to many thanks to online organizing efforts. There’s a long list of how the little guy was able to make some headway against money, power, position and corporate privilege, thanks to the internet and the Net Neutrality allowing us to reach the masses.

Today’s ruling allowing Comcast and other telecoms to get around Net Neutrality  is bad news on a number of levels. First, it again underscores the power of judges and why we must pay attention in each election to make sure who is in position to appoint and who is actually running to sit on a bench. In this case these were appointed judges. Not sure of their backgrounds as of yet. But we do know the last few unfavorable police rulings like Sean Bell’s killers being acquitted came at the hands of a Bush appointed judge. What were finding is that as elected officials or in this case the FCC do the people’s bidding against the interest of corporations, these companies are running off to the courts which have been stacked over the past 8 years and getting favorable rulings. We can dwell deeper into judgeships on another day.

Second, is that we go through Congress to craft a law specifically protecting Net Neutrality or to grant the FCC authority to regulate and oversee this provision. The challenge is thanks to intense lobby efforts  by the telecoms we may have huge problem. For years, the telecoms have tried everything they could to get things deregulated so they could rush in and start setting up shop. In  previous attempts to allow Congress to grant the FCC such powers to govern Net Neutrality, Congress was stifled by the telecoms…

Sadly former Mayor Shirley Franklin has been among the handful of Black and Brown Civil Right icons doing the bidding of the telecoms who want to get rid of Net Neutrality

AT&T and their lobbying efforts have been a bit more insidious, with them taking advantage of the technological ignorance of many, they’ve been able to exploit the economic hardships experienced in many poor Black and Brown communities by showing up with money in hand to sponsor events, people and needy politicians in exchange for silence or outright advocacy by newly minted handpicked, artificial experts. In other words folks who have been brought off and are now in the pocket stomping for the telecoms. One keen example of this is former Atlanta mayor Shirley Franklin as outlined in this report Shirley Franklin fronting for the Big Telecoms . The angle Franklin and others of her ilk take around the buzz word ‘digital divide’, making it seem like that if we demand the telecoms back off from this Net Neutrality fight they in turn would not continue to help provide access to marginalized communities.

 This is akin to me showing up at a conference on drug sentencing talking about in order for us to have this discussion we must address the issue of domestic violence. In other words they have very little to do with each other unless we wanna get creative and draw colorful lines to connect the dots as directed by the telecoms or we have a personal financial or political and now increasingly social stake in this.  Some of these big time telecoms have enticed folks by working behind the scenes and elevating their profile of their hand pick pundits making sure they get to be on talk shows or start being seen prominently in the blogasphere.

What’s most frustrating with todays ruling is that after writing, explaining and doing radio shows on this important topic for more than 5 years  there are many within this Hip Hop / urban community who I routinely engage who seem to know more about Ice Cube’s latest dis than they do about the Internet’s governing principles that allowed them to get the information in the first place.

For example, this past weekend in Washington DC there was a Hip Hop Bloggers conference and from what I saw Net Neutrality was mentioned only once  and only by someone from the Future of Music Coalition which has been fighting to preserve it.   While many of my peers waxed poetic about how they garnered fame and followers at a date and time when this important principle was at stake, it was sad NOT to see this as a front a center issue. The irony here is that many of us know a Dallas Penn, Okayplayer  or 2 Dope Boyz more than we know the news reporters working the local beat at a corporate owned newspaper. We know AllHipHop or HipHopDx better than we know the NY Times or Washington Post..

As I long explained, non corporate self-styled journalist, Hip Hop heads, urban youth and snarky college kids gaining a foothold to the masses without going through a high-priced, media gate-keeper was problematic.  Many of us laughed at and took glee over hearing how the local papers were unfolding and how local radio stations were crumbling. We looked at our Iphones,  Ipads and other gadgets and arrogantly proclaimed we were the new kings and queens on the block. We did that while ignoring two basic facts which is 1) power concedes nothing without a vicious fight and many of us were blogging but not fighting. We weren’t fighting by educating ourselves on this issue and we weren’t educating our readers on the importance of preserving the new media arenas that they come to love and depend on while escaping the doldrums and oppressive nature of traditional outlets. Voice was given to the Voiceless on the Internet and Net Neutrality   was and has been the main pillar why.

Second, many of us have long shunned politics. It’s an ugly business. It’s corrupt. It’s far from fair. Many of you have had the privilege to get on an unimpeded internet and share all sorts of theories and perspectives on why politics should be avoided. We know about the Obama Deception movie. We know about the Bildenberg group, We know about Illuminati etc.  All of these perspectives and many more have been freely delivered to the masses of people because of Net Neutrality. However, it’s this corrupt political arena where rules are made and policy shaped. As I remind people daily, many of us live in communities, where street politics, workplace politics are just as ugly yet we take time to know and understand them. We learn when we can wear red and blue. We learn what side we can tip our cap. We learn who is backbiter, ass kisser and saboteur in the office. Engaging politics is not beyond us. But to avoid the politics around something we didn’t build and essentially don’t own in terms of infrastructure, but use everyday is as foolish as going to a neighborhood in LA and not know ‘what time it is’..  

When it comes to Net Neutrality, I realize it’s a boring, complex issue. There is no easy soundbite that adequately explains it, but some of the most important things impacting our lives can’t be explained in a tweet or a Facebook status update.  Us being a headline news society will be the demise of us if we’re not careful. We should never trade away aor allow basic principles to be removed even if we had a work around or alternatives.  Somebody told me they wasn’t tripping off the ruling cause they had enough money to sustain themselves and they knew other work-arounds. That shortsighted thinking of ‘I got mine you better get yours’ is what has wrecked havoc on far too many of us… Hell I could call it a day and not trip my damn self.. I’m good on a number of levels as well. In fact maybe this latest ruling might eliminate a bunch of people and I can be one of the few destination places free of technological impediments. It could be all good until I’m the one being smashed on.

It’s kinda like the Fox News mouthpiece Glen Beck who uses a platform granted by his employer Rupert Murdoch to talk crazy, mislead people and basically try to blow up the spot around Net Neutrality. It’s easy for him be dismissive and hostile, because he’s one of the few privileged folks in the world who has a daily TV talk show. He works for a powerful media mogul who spent the past two or three years buying up all sorts of newspapers and could stand to benefit handsomely if all these ‘pesky’ blogs and upstart news sites suddenly disappeared or simply weren’t able to be as accessible on line as his offerings.  

So what should we be doing? For starters call your Congressperson and tell them you want Net Neutrality. the same way you want clean water coming out your tap.  You can stay up on some of this by checking out my website daveyd.com. You can also go to the Center for Media Justice . You can also check out Kurthanson.com,  FreePress.org and Future of Music Coalition

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Filed Under: 2009-Daily Hip Hop News, Political articles, Southern Shift Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Trials of a Hip Hop Educator: Promoting Proper Education in Our Communities

April 2, 2010 By

Trials of a Hip Hop Educator: Promoting Proper Education in Our Communities

By Bro. Tony Muhammad

Now let me tell you folks just exactly what I mean

The way they try to lower, the black man’s self esteem

Put us in their schools and I call em mental graves

When they teach us bout ourselves, all we learn that we were slaves 

It amazes me that it was almost 18 years ago that Grand Puba of the legendary Hip Hop group Brand Nubian uttered these lyrics in the song Proper Education.  Despite the growth in the development of Black, Latino, Native American, Asian and other cultural history curricula throughout the country, if we take a look at the current state of education and how it affects our youth, we can safely say that we are in the same state that we were back then, if not worse.  Yes, there are now classes in high schools all throughout the country that have been developed specifically for the instruction of African and African American History, Latin American History, etc.  Yet, we have truly not experienced significant advances in the overall consciousness of our communities.  The youth and hence grown adults continue to confuse or lack even the vague notions of critical recent events in our history (i.e. Confusing The Civil Rights Movement and The Civil War because they both contain the word “civil” and The March on Washington with The Million Man March because they both took place in the nation’s capital).  In truth, those of us that are most aware of this problem are no longer in a position where we can simply blame the system for not properly teaching our true history in a public school setting because we have even taken for granted the value of teaching our history itself.  The process very intricately involves the cultivation and nourishment of the self-esteem of our youth of color, but it is not merely limited to this.  KRS-One put it best 22 years ago in the song You Must Learn: 

I believe that if you’re teaching history

Filled with straight up facts no mystery

Teach the student what needs to be taught

‘Cause Black and White kids both take shorts

When one doesn’t know about the other ones’ culture

Ignorance swoops down like a vulture 

Emphatically, as a Social Studies educator who has made the decision to play a role in shaping young minds in an inner-city public high school for over 10 years, I will say that we can no longer expect the system to do for us what we can do for ourselves and our local communities.  Signs of this critical hour are found in the manner in which cultural curricula is treated in two principle states that play a strong role in the development of textbooks; Texas and Florida. 

Hiphopdx.com (and a host of other websites including Daveyd.com and TheSouthernShift.com) recently ran an article entitled “Texas Board Of Education Declare Hip Hop Is Not A Cultural Movement.”  In the article it states that Members of the Texas State Board of Education have given preliminary approval to eliminate significant areas of the curriculum pertaining to Civil Rights and global politics and replace them with “conservative historical figures and beliefs.”  These conservative forces also “approved to have a sociological focus on institutional racism and its presence in American society banned from the books,” in addition to removing references to important Latino contributions throughout history – this is in a state that contains over 8.9 million Latinos (roughly 37% of the population).  In addition, Hip Hop History which is filled with many stories of personalities playing integral roles in working to eliminate violence in communities by way of the arts will also be deleted from the curriculum.  A final vote on this measure will take place sometime in May after conscientious voices in the community have had the opportunity to voice their opinions.  What I will say in short about this is that what the Texas School Board is attempting to do is eliminate any ray of light from the past that may serve to inspire the hope for change in the lives of poor Black, Latino and even White youth.  By eliminating such critical elements of history from the curriculum is contributing to factors that will land more of our youth in Texas in prison. 

In Florida, African and African American History is a state mandate which requires school systems throughout the state to implement it throughout the curriculum. While it has been a state law since the early 1990s, the mandate and the seat that oversees its implementation has continued to be unfunded by the state and it has been proven time and time again that there is no true penalty for school systems that are not in accords with its guidelines.  In February I had the opportunity to be the only educator present at a meeting between curriculum specialists representing three of the largest school districts in Florida, which are regarded as “exemplary” in their implementation of African and African American History; Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade.  I was invited because of my work in reforming the African American Voices Curriculum for Miami-Dade County.  The purpose of the meeting was to discuss how the three school districts can work together so that we can more successfully educate students in the area of African and African American History. 

While engaged in this dialogue, there was an attempt on the part of two White curriculum specialists from Broward to derail the focus of the meeting and turn it into a plead for more funding from the state for the purpose of increasing professional development for teachers.  I commented in response that while more funding is definitely needed, ultimately “Enthusiasm is not determined by funding.”  I said in the presence of a state education official in that very room that if the state has not adequately funded the African and African American History mandate as of yet, it is not going to be doing it in these troubled economic times. 

The state of Florida has proven that it does not really consider the African and African American History mandate a priority, but rather keeps it as a law as an attempt to keep conscientious voices quiet.  I proposed as a strategy instead to scope out enthusiastic teachers in schools throughout the three counties to become advocates not just to teach classes in Black History, but to transform the whole school culture through programs oriented in Black History.  The two White curriculum specialists interrupted me and accused me of proposing a “pep rallying” agenda.  I closed the meeting by saying that the need for proper implementation of Black History goes far beyond teaching a class and goes far beyond mere pep rallying around its content, but in essence, it is about instilling a sense of responsibility in the hearts and minds of the youth that it is being taught to so that they can become effective community leaders when they grow up and are in a position to give back and serve the community.  In truth, it has been Black people in the history of this country (and I will also say this world) that have been the prime catalysts for change and inspiring change whenever it has been deemed necessary for a change to take place.  If Black History (and really any history) is not taken and put to heart in this manner, we end up ineffective in what we seek to accomplish educationally. 

As educators that hold certified degrees in the field as well as those among us that do not hold certified degrees in the field, the solution does not lie fully in state educational mandates, but in the level of responsibility that we are willing to fill our hearts with and the level of sacrifice we are willing to commit to in providing service to our communities, especially in respects to the next generations that are coming up under us.  The process must involve proper role modeling and a thorough teaching of our true history, for, as Marcus Garvey put it himself “A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.”  In truth, no school systems have any real power to determine what knowledge is best for our youth to learn for their growth and development.  As conscientious communities we hold that right! 

As a note, while the work that will be required to impact a significant change in consciousness a reality may entail much volunteerism, let us bear in mind that no good work is ever left unrewarded.  Our first reward comes in the form of us actually witnessing the transformative effect of our work.  If worked in a proper way through networking and the pooling of our resources, it will guarantee opportunities that will garner further success for many of us. 

More discussion on this very soon through the will of God! 

Tony Muhammad teaches Social Studies at an inner-city high school in Miami and is currently involved in The MIA (Music Is Alive) Campaign for the development of the National Hip Hop Day of Service on August 11th .  Tony is most noted for his work as publisher of Urban America Newspaper (2003 – 2007) and co-organizer of the Organic Hip Hop Conference.  He is also a member of Difference Makers, Inc. and FLASC (Florida Africana Studies Consortium). 

Hiphopeducator19@gmail.com

www.facebook.com/tony.muhammad

www.wordpress.com/tonymuhammad 

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Filed Under: 2009-Daily Hip Hop News, Political articles, Southern Shift Tagged With: , , , , ,

Should Dallas Official Charge Erykah Badu?: ‘Window Seat’ To A Black Woman’s Soul

March 31, 2010 By

By now everyone has seen or heard about Erykah Badu‘s provocative video for her song ‘Window Seat’. It’s the first single off her album ‘, New Amerykah Part Two: Return of the Ankh,’ in which she visits Dealey Plaza where President John F Kennedy was assassinated back in November 1963. Here Badu walks around the plaza and in front of unsuspecting tourists she strips her clothes and while completely naked mimics getting shot by an unseen sniper.  The video was shot in one take back on St Patrick’s Day and caused quite a stir amongst her fans who thought Ms Badu had courageously pushed the artistic envelop and made us think about the concept of ‘group think’.

However, now she’s starting to get push back from everyone ranging from the Dallas Police department to city council members who want to know if she had a permit. They are also noting that she could be arrested for indecent exposure. Dallas Police Department Senior Corporal Janice Crowther in a recent interview noted “To shoot that video they would have had to get a special events permit from the events office and it would have had to specify what type of filming they were doing, what subjects they would use and any traffic control they would need.”

It was further intimated that a police officer would’ve been required to be on the scene and there’s no way in the world Badu would’ve been allowed to strip down in public. She could’ve been arrested for a class B misdemeanor charge of indecent exposure, which carries a fine of up to $2,000 and a jail term of up to 180 days. At the time of this writing Dallas police were looking for witnesses to step forward to register a complaint.

Dallas City Council member Dwaine Caraway is a big fan of Badu’s but cautiously noted to the Dallas Morning News;  “I want to be clear..We’re not going to tolerate these types of things. We’re not encouraging it….Her good work, however, doesn’t excuse her bad judgment…She’s a very talented artist and one of my favorites. I think that if she had it to do again, it would be – and should have been – in a more controlled environment where we would not at least have had the kids caught off-guard,” Caraway said.

Adding to this are bloggers and critics many who like the song and appreciate the video,but are publicly questioning whether or not Badu actually got nude. Some are suggesting that she used trick photography, wore flesh-colored clothing or did fancy green screen trickery. The reason being is that we had not heard much clamor about this video until it was released. We also have not seen film clips from passer-bys posted anywhere. In an age of flip cameras and Iphones, some are noting that it’s hard to believe that no one else got footage of this ‘strange’ occurrence.

The other point being made is did any of the people shown have to sign release forms. Will we hear from them down the road? Lastly some are cynically calling this a cheap publicity stunt. We don’t think it was. There’s no need for Erykah to go that route. We think she really wanted to make a statement..

We’ll keep you posted on how things unfold. Its hard to believe that Dallas DA Craig Watkins would get behind this and make an issue. At most Badu might pay a fine. There’s so many other things going on that are far worse. Most people enjoyed this video and give her props for being bold.

Below is a pretty cool essay that lays out a nice perspective for us to consider:

“WINDOW SEAT” TO A BLACK WOMAN’S SOUL

by Makeda Crane

I woke up two days ago and my partner said, “You won’t believe what’s #2 on yahoo search, Erykah Badu”! “Really, why?”, I said. He explained to me that it was related to the video for her new song, “Window Seat”, in which she sheds all of her clothes. I thought, ok, she must have done that for a reason. In fact, one of the reasons I have grown to love Erykah is that she makes no apologies for being herself and not fitting into a prescribed category – a statement within itself being a Black woman in America.

But, I wasn’t always a Badu fan, when she first came out, I thought, “she’s so cliché”. As a Brooklyn girl, I saw a million sisters everyday rocking “headwraps” and celebrating an afrocentric aesthetic in their dress, on the streets of New York, way before “Baduizm” was a fad. But, somewhere between “Worldwide Underground and Mama’s Gun, she became Erykah to me – a girlfriend I could turn on, “to get me through”. Mama’s Gun, converted me, as I instantly identified with Erykah’s quest to define her own path and reality as a Black woman in this universe. The ethereal melodies and frequent transitions characteristic of her songs, also was a form of communication that gave me the space and a platform to reflect on the varying dimensions of my experience. The last time I saw Erykah perform was last summer on my birthday and I was mesmerized as usual, as she has the gift of being able to transplant the audience  “in her spaceship” to her “solar system”, all the while enjoying the journey.

I finally pulled up Erykah’s, “Window Seat” video up on YouTube today, and instantly began nodding my head to Erykah’s raspy voice and the entrancing melody. As she took each step (in the video) on the Dallas streets, I felt like I was right beside her – a bit anxious , anticipating her next step but also concerned about the implications of her “full reveal”. Knowing that she would be naked by the end of the video, I began thinking about the historical exploitation of black women’s sexuality and how “accessible”, “marketable” and reliable the images of black women’s body parts were masqueraded in so many Hollywood movies, in hip-hop videos, on liquor store ads and pasted on subway walls. I thought about how growing up as a girl and teenager I was given the message that my body was “dirty” meant to be covered so “it” wouldn’t bring “danger” or “provoke” a man to act on his “natural” urges and that somehow I was responsible for making sure I wasn’t violated. I thought about how ashamed I’d feel walking down the street at 13 or 14 years old, while grown men hollered obscene comments about parts of my body. I thought about the hundreds of thousands of women who are being raped everyday in the Congo, as a tool of war and how the world’s silence and agreement had condoned this reality.

My hope is that in some small way Erykah’s bold move would be the beginning of a new moment in history where black women define black womanhood and sexuality for themselves, free from history’s grip on their backside.

Within the last minute of the “Window Seat” video my eyes met the words evolving tattooed on Erykah’s back and all I could think was, “thank you”. Thank you, Erykah for shedding: the pain felt by black women worldwide: the pain of the auction block, the raping of black women during slavery, the sexual and other types of abuse that too many black girls, endure as a “rite of passage”, the shame and anger of being sexualized earlier that you can understand by Hollywood, the media or even by your own family members, the fear felt by black women walking down the street late at night, the pain felt by the women of the Congo as the world profits from their suffering.

I say thanks Erykah, from all the little black girls and all the grown black women around the world. Thank you for your courage, thank you for shedding all that is a barrier to the expression of life – pain, shame and fear. Thank you for the celebration and honoring of black womanhood – the first mothers of this planet. In our natural state we are beautiful to be honored, respected and valued just because we are here! We are with you in your declaration honoring all womanhood, all humanity and all life, no exceptions! Thank you for your act of liberation! Thank you for giving me the question: What else do I need to shed?

Makeda Crane

Independent Journalist & Human Rights Activist

e-mail: makeda.crane@ yahoo.com

blog: www.makedacrane.com

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Filed Under: 2009-Daily Hip Hop News, Southern Shift Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Russian Subways Suffer Horrific Bombings US Hip Hoppers Talib Kweli & Professor Jelani Cobb are Safe

March 29, 2010 By

By now most of us have heard about the horrific train bombing that took place last night (US time ) early morning (Russian time) that left up to 40 people dead. The reports are saying that two female suicide bombers commonly known as ‘Black widows’ of Chechnya. For those who don’t know Russia has been at war with Chechen separatists since the 1990s. They’ve been demanding their independence. This was not the first time the Metros were attacked. They happened back in 1996.

Aside from this being a horrific act that hits close to home and has had many of us here thinking about our own subway system and how secure they are, the Hip Hop community has two prominent figures over there when this happened. Spelman College Professor Jelani Cobb who wrote the book ‘To The Break of Dawn’ normally takes the subway at the station where the bombing took place. Fortunately he didn’t to work that morning. Also in Moscow is Talib Kweli who tweeted last night it was time to go home..As soon as word of the bombings took place, many of us immediately started reaching out to both parties who are in Russia for seperate reasons. Kweli to do a concert, Cobb is teaching there for the year. I finally spoke to Cobb last night who let us know the blast had certainly shaken him because it’s the line he takes.  He noted that one of his colleagues wanted him to come across town later that day to do some business, he respectfully passed and decided to stick closer to home.

We’re  be speaking with Cobb on our radio show later this afternoon. In the meantime here’s some of the tweets Jelani Cobb shared as news was unfolding

I am safe. I do use the train stations that were hit in the Moscow blast but thank god I wasn’t there this morning.

They are not saying much on Russian TV about the blasts, just that at least 40 were killed. These are major subway stations, transfer pnts.

For whatever reason even Moscow Times website has nothing about these blasts. Cellphone networks overloaded here, can’t get calls out.

Dude, there is still not freedom of the press here. they got a TIGHT lid on it. western media reporting on it.

just spoke to my Russian friends, apparently a third bomb just went off. People are suspecting suicide bombing.

Park Kultury is a major transfer point; in rush hour this station is about as crowded as one in downtown Manhattan would be at that time.

it’s horrible knowing that innocent people lost their lives today.


Here’s Talib‘s Tweets He left Moscow this morning

Thanks for everyones concern. I am at the airport on my way to NY. #welcometomoscow

Feeling blessed. Moscow bombing happened yards from the club I was at last night, very soon after we left. Counting blessings.

About to leave Moscow. Shout to everyone who came to Discoteque and everyone I met at Karma. Praying for those affected by the bombing.

 

Below is a video stream that is showing lots of up to date information of the Russian Metro Attacks http://rt.com/On_Air.html

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