Thursday, October 2nd, 2008

Musical Interlude :: Z-Trip’s Obama Mix

Click above for the link to DJ Z-Trip’s Obama Mix, recorded live in Denver at the Manifest Hope Gallery during the DNC.

posted by @ 1:22 pm | 0 Comments

Wednesday, October 1st, 2008

Q+A :: Tom Morello On Obama, Race & The War

As guitarist for Rage Against The Machine, Tom Morello brought turntable pyrotechnics to the guitar. This past August, he and his fellow bandmates supported anti-war demonstrators, especially Iraq Veterans Against the War, at concerts held during the Democratic and Republican National Conventions.

(Click here or here or here for coverage of the Denver protest.)

But before he was a Guitar Hero, Morello worked as an aide to California Senator Alan Cranston. He has seen the political system from both inside and out.

Vibe caught up with Tom Morello performing as The Nightwatchman at a Labor Day Concert for SEIU on the first day of the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis, which had been cancelled due to Hurricane Gustav.

Vibe: Do you think the 2008 election will be a historic turning point?

Tom Morello: I think it remains to be seen. I think that anytime we’ve seen real, substantive, progressive, radical, or revolutionary change, it has come from below, not from above.

Two important lessons I learned working with Senator Cranston—who is one of the most progressive guys on issues of the environment, immigration, civil rights, and peace issues—eighty percent of the time I was with him, he spent on the phone asking rich guys for money. That money doesn’t come for free. That is how this system operates. You can change the people in office, but you can’t change the system by pulling the ballot. You can’t.

How change happens, whether it’s been women’s right to vote, desegregating lunch counters, eight-hour work days, is from the people who are not in office, standing up, organizing, struggling, fighting, and demanding their rights—much like the Iraq Veterans Against the War did. Had they backed down and said, ‘we’re going to go along with it and hope for the best’, they never would have gotten that audience. It’s a small microcosm of what this is about.

As the half-Kenyan, Harvard graduate from Illinois, in his early forties, who’s not running for office, I’d say this. If Obama is elected, problems of race don’t go away. This country has four pillars: baseball, apple pie, NASCAR, and racism to hold this shit up. And so it would certainly be a step towards civilization if the electorate were able to put a moderately progressive African American in office. But it should not mean problems of race would be over. We’d have to be extra vigilant against that.

Vibe: That’s one of the things some of the protesters were trying to make a point of out in Denver. They’d say, ‘It’s about accountability and forcing the issue.’

Tom Morello: And memories tend to be short. It was two years ago when a Democratic Congress was elected, to end the war. And they cowardly rolled over like dogs, and didn’t do it. And why aren’t there barricades in the street over that? We put them in office, and they just weren’t held accountable, and that’s key. No matter who’s elected—on November 5th, is when the real work begins for you and me, because you have to make sure, if it’s McCain, you have to fight like a bobcat…in a sack! And if it’s Obama, you have to fight like a bobcat in a sack to make sure it doesn’t backslide.

Vibe: Talk a little bit about what you have been doing around the anti-war movement.

Tom Morello: Well I’ve been a part of the anti war movement since the 10 million person march before the war began. And I think Iraq veterans speak with the most authoritative voice, they set the stage. George W. Bush and I have something in common, neither one of us served under fire. Those men and women did and when you listen to their stories, it brings the reality of what that war is home. We visited them in the Veterans Hospital today, and soldiers lost half their bodies or half their heads, but that’s the reality of it. The whitewashing of the war of mainstream corporate media has been just criminal. We don’t see the maimed families and all the dead Iraqi civilians. All that is ‘Yo is the surge working or not?’ Well what the fuck does that mean? It isn’t working for the 22-year-old boy I saw who doesn’t have any body below his bellow button. It isn’t working for his 19-year-old wife, either. So, I think that Iraq Veterans Against the War not only have the right ideas, but the courage to take on whoever’s in office.

Vibe: Are there any other plans going into the fall, as the debates kick in?

Tom Morello: My touring starts right before the election, so it’ll probably ramp up to that. There’s no doubt that Obama’s going to be a better president than McCain.

Vibe: Are you going to endorse him?

Tom Morello: No. I think that in my music and in my politics, I’d like to keep them completely uncompromised. If there’s a candidate that I see eye to eye with up and down the line, then I’ll endorse that candidate. With his saber rattling about Iran, with his determination to continue an imperialist war in Afghanistan, there’s a lot that’s iffy about that, but he’s certainly better than McCain. I’m not going to give either one of them a chance to breathe when they’re in office. It’s important to continue to put the pedal down when either one of them is in office.

Vibe: Do you think we are on the verge of a new majority in this country?

Tom Morello: I think that race plays such a huge factor in anything in America. The fact that we’ve had these seven years, that we’ve had the worse presidency in the history of the republic, and that the polls show the two candidates, Republican and Democrat, in a dead heat?! Are you kidding me?! You should be able to run a barnyard animal against any Republican candidate and have it be ninety/ten.

Well there’s a simple answer to that. I think it’s an unspoken answer, but it permeates every poll and we’ll see. I was watching the Democratic Convention, and I don’t know if America can vote for a first lady who’s African American and smarter than they are.

Vibe: Whoa.

Tom Morello: I came from a small white town in central Illinois. I’m watching that through the eyes of the parents I grew up around, and I’m thinking, ‘I don’t think they can pull that trigger’. ‘I’ll take the soccer mom from Alaska who can shoot a gun.’ Part of me is screaming in front of the TV: ‘Give the Democrats a chance to fuck it up for once! Enough of that!’

For more on the 2008 election from Tom and many others, check the November issue of Vibe, on newsstands soon!

Tom Morello’s new album, a solo record as The Nightwatchman called “The Fabled City” is out this week. A record with Boots Riley of The Coup and Stanton Moore of Galactic will follow in early 2009.

Special thanks to the intern crew for the transcriptions for this interview series:

Tanya Burnett
Damon Daniels
Crystal Fairweather
David Fromayan
Jason O’Connnor
Lauren Peterson
Merichelle Villapando

posted by @ 2:39 pm | 0 Comments

Monday, September 29th, 2008

At Hip-Hop’s Birthplace: Hope For The Best, Preparations For The Worst

As the House of Representatives rejected an economic bailout proposal brought on by the national mortgage crisis, tenants of 1520 Sedgwick Avenue and their supporters awaited word today of the fate of the most famous address in hip-hop.

It was a day in which the drama of the nation was being mirrored at a place right the heart of hip-hop history, as tenants and their supporters began planning to save their homes while real estate developers scrambled to close a speculative deal against declining prospects for credit.

Late last week, a judge cleared the way for the landlord group behind the West Bronx apartment building to begin preparations to sell the building, whose value has been assessed at about $7 million.

The building at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, where DJ Kool Herc and Cindy Campbell threw their first party in late August 1973, is one of a declining number in New York City covered under an affordable housing mandate called the Mitchell-Lama program. It now represents the continuing decline of urban affordable housing.

But the judge’s order allows the landlord group to pay off the rest of its outstanding $5 million mortgage and remove it from the affordable housing program.

Such an action, all sides believe, would clear the way for the purchase of the building by well-known real estate developer Mark Karasick, despite an offer on the table from the tenants, the city, and their supporters to purchase 1520 Sedgwick for $10 million—$3 million above the building’s expected value.

Cindy Campbell and DJ Kool Herc have been at the head of an effort to have the building declared a historic landmark, but events have been moving quickly in the past year.

Today, Cindy Campbell worried that a sale of the building might displace over a hundred families.

“Winter is coming up. There’s elderly people, children. Some of these people have been living there for over 30 years,” she said. “People’s lives are more important than a developer trying to flip over his money.”

Dina Levy, director of organizing and policy with the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board, said today that tenants and supporters of 1520 Sedgwick were baffled as to why the landlord group has apparently rejected the tenants’ offer, which was supported by New York Senator Chuck Schumer, the New York City’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development, and subsidized in part by the city.

She argued that even if the building were to be sold, the rents in the building likely would not rise because of city regulations and the depressed rental market. She said she felt the tenant deal on the table was a strong one. “I can’t believe that they would not take that deal,” Levy said. “It defies logic.”

Levy added that she was unsure in this market what bank or lender might provide debt to Karasick to purchase 1520 Sedgwick.

Although the landlord group had signaled last week they intended to pay off the $5 million outstanding mortgage today, that had not occurred by the late afternoon. “There’s still the hope that we can save the building,” she said. “That’s still the goal and that’s still the hope.”

But even if the building were to be sold, eviction could not begin right away, and the efforts to preserve the building as a historic landmark and an affordable housing building may redouble in the coming months.

“At this point what I can promise we will do, will be to train the tenants on what regulations are,” Levy said. “This guy (Karsick) will not have a moment’s sleep.”

posted by @ 12:56 pm | 3 Comments

Sunday, September 28th, 2008

1520 Sedgwick Cleared To Be Sold

Courts have cleared the way for 1520 Sedgwick, the birthplace of hip-hop, to be sold next week.

This comes after a year in which the courts first blocked the sale of the building, and tenants of the historic building where Cindy Campbell and DJ Kool Herc threw their first party raised $10 million to buy the building back. Efforts by the efforts of the Campbells and affordable housing activists were also made to grant the building historic preservation status.

This from the article:

“While the owners of 1520 Sedgwick have a legal right to buy out of the Mitchell-Lama program, the building’s residents have made an offer that we believe is more than fair,” said Shaun Donovan, the commissioner for the housing preservation department. “In this light, it is difficult to understand why the owners would choose to put the affordability of over 100 families’ homes at risk.”

More on this shortly…

posted by @ 11:26 am | 0 Comments

Friday, September 26th, 2008

Panic, Paralysis, Protests, and Presidents

Panic, paralysis, protests, presidents-dead, alive, and prospective.

This news week’s like tripling my crack order. The wrong part of me doesn’t want anything fixed.

The Times today has a great piece on the drama that went on after the cameras left the room yesterday at the White House.

Meanwhile the news tickers went bonkers. Palin playing herself repeatedly in front of Katie Couric. Thousands of protesters in the streets around the country yesterday–at places like the AIG headquarters and the Federal Reserve Banks. Washington Mutual getting taken over by the FDIC and sold to JPMorgan Chase. (Free checking still? I don’t think so.)

Oh, and there was supposed to be this debate thing tonight…

Here’s Joe Klein’s take on what went down yesterday and why McCain basically gave us all at least one more–probably a few more than that–days of being glued to the news.

So McCain “suspends” his campaign–he didn’t, really–and equivocates about whether to debate because the financial emergency is so crucial–a week after he said the fundamentals of the economy were sound–and he flies to Washington where:

1. The House Republicans blow up a rare, and necessary, moment of true bipartisanship to make it look like McCain, who has no expertise in this area, has come to the rescue.

2. McCain sits mute in the White House summit arranged for his benefit. He doesn’t even ask Paulson what he thinks of the House Republican plan.

3. He refuses to take a stand, one way or another, on the Republican plan.

In the meantime, Washington Mutual–the nation’s largest thrift–fails. Other banks are teetering. Credit has dried up…and the world financial markets are watching to see if the United States has the political wherewithal to save itself. McCain’s erratic, and irresponsible, behavior this week isn’t happening in a vacuum. This isn’t just politics–even George W. Bush, who never failed to take a partisan advantage in his presidency, realizes that. …

Strange times are here.

UPDATE (9:05am) :: The debate is on.

posted by @ 7:26 am | 1 Comment

Thursday, September 25th, 2008

James K. Galbraith :: We Don’t Need A Bailout

Here is economist James K. Galbraith in the Washington Post with some wisdom for the next president.

He asks this: Why try to save investment banks when the sector is pretty much gone?

His alternative? Strengthen the banking system through the FDIC, and save the folks who have been all but abandoned in this crisis from jump: besieged homeowners.

Here’s an excerpt:

Is this bailout still necessary?

The point of the bailout is to buy assets that are illiquid but not worthless. But regular banks hold assets like that all the time. They’re called “loans.”

With banks, runs occur only when depositors panic, because they fear the loan book is bad. Deposit insurance takes care of that. So why not eliminate the pointless $100,000 cap on federal deposit insurance and go take inventory? If a bank is solvent, money market funds would flow in, eliminating the need to insure those separately. If it isn’t, the FDIC has the bridge bank facility to take care of that.

Next, put half a trillion dollars into the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. fund — a cosmetic gesture — and as much money into that agency and the FBI as is needed for examiners, auditors and investigators. Keep $200 billion or more in reserve, so the Treasury can recapitalize banks by buying preferred shares if necessary — as Warren Buffett did this week with Goldman Sachs. Review the situation in three months, when Congress comes back. Hedge funds should be left on their own. You can’t save everyone, and those investors aren’t poor. …

A voice of reason amidst the madness.

posted by @ 7:46 am | 6 Comments

Thursday, September 25th, 2008

Naomi Klein On Wall Street’s Shock Doctrine

Naomi Klein from Democracy Now:

Well, the thesis of my book, what I mean by the “shock doctrine,” is that it is in times of crisis, it is in times when people are panicked, when we’ve seen again and again the right push through radical pro-corporate policies, what they call “free market reforms,” precisely because it is in a crisis where the space for debate rapidly closes, and you can invoke this state of emergency to say we have no choice.

And I think we’re seeing a very dramatic example of this tactic right now with this really extortionist kind of tactics playing out in Washington. You know, “Sign this blank check, or we’re all going down, or Main Street is going down, or taxpayers—you know, the sky will fall in on them.”

I’m also arguing that this is only stage one of the shock doctrine. They’re getting this—they’re lobbying for this huge bailout, obviously, but this bailout is a kind of a time bomb, because it’s all these bad debts, and they are going to explode on the next administration. I mean, we know that the Bush administration has already left the next administration with huge debt and deficit problems. They’ve just exploded those, expanded them. And what that means is that whoever the next president is is going to be inheriting this economic crisis that is being exacerbated by this bailout.

So, in the case of McCain, I think—if he’s the president, then I think we know what he’ll do, because we know he wants to privatize Social Security, which is something that Wall Street’s been wanting for a long time, another bubble. We know he has said in the next—in the first 100 days of his administration he’ll look at every program and either reform it or shut it down. This is really a recipe for economic shock therapy. So, while you have all of these trivial issues being discussed in the election season, I think what we could—what we’re really—you know, under the surface, they’re actually being quite clear. They’re going to take—if they take power, it will be in the midst of an economic emergency. They’ll invoke that emergency to push through very, very radical changes. So, you know, what I’ve been saying is, this is not four more years of Bush; it’s much, much worse in the case of another Republican administration.

But there’s huge problems for Democrats, as well, if they win this election, because, you know, we need to only think back to the situation in which Clinton took power, where he ran an election on an economic populist platform, promising to renegotiate NAFTA. Then there was an economic crisis. Clinton came under intense lobbying by people like Robert Rubin, who’s also advising Obama right now, and by the time he took office, he had embraced economic austerity.

So, people need to understand these tactics, need to put pressure on the candidates, the parties, and reject this tactic. And I’ve actually been really heartened, Amy, that people are onto these shock tactics and aren’t falling for it. And, you know, to the extent that we’re seeing a little bit of spine from the Democrats, it is only, as Chris Dodd said, because they are hearing it from their constituents. So people need to keep up this pressure right now.

…

You know, Amy, I don’t think we can stress this enough. Henry Paulson is one of the key people, the top people, responsible for creating the crisis that he is now claiming he will solve, you know, and this is—if we think about the 9/11 analogy and, you know, the state of shock that Americans were in after 9/11 and the emergence of Rudy Giuliani as the savior—and, you know, people have so much regret about that. And in the book, I write about this as the state of regression that we go into when we’re frightened. And I think Henry Paulson has really been cast in this role as an economic Rudy Giuliani, saving the day, impartial, bipartisan, a strong leader.

I found this article in BusinessWeek that ran when Paulson was appointed to the Treasury, and I just want to read you one sentence, because I think it’s all we need to know about Henry Paulson. This is from BusinessWeek, when he got the appointment as Treasury Secretary in 2006. The headline of the article is “Mr. Risk Goes to Washington.” It says, “Think of Paulson as Mr. Risk. He’s one of the key architects of a more daring Wall Street, where securities firms are taking greater and greater chances in [their] pursuit of profits. By some key measures, the securities industry is more leveraged now than it was at the height of the 1990s boom.”

Then it goes on to say that when Paulson took over Goldman Sachs in 1999, they had $20 billion in debts. When he—in these high-risk gambles. When he left, they had $100 billion, which means he took their risk level from $20 billion to $100 billion. So it is absolutely no exaggeration to say that Henry Paulson, far from speaking for Main Street, is actually bailing out his colleagues for some of the very debts that he himself accumulated. This is an extraordinary conflict of interest.

Her original HuffPo piece is here.

Here website is here.

posted by @ 6:31 am | 0 Comments

Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008

The Audacity Of Despair, Or Homeless Again

“The 90s may have spoiled us, b!”

That was the great Joan Morgan, in one of a million conversations this past weekend about the economy.

Things done changed since the Cristal-sipping days, back when artists routinely dropped a milli on their videos. But now all of the chickens have come home to roost.

In the late 90s, the dealings in Lower Manhattan partly help make the hip-hop bubble possible. People were making money off making money. And hip-hop made them look good. We made it so that even if you weren’t hip-hop, you could go down to Soho—yes, Soho—and buy in.

This past weekend, the one after our economy collapsed, it was clear on the hard cobblestone streets of Soho that our days of dancing for dollars were over. In just the past year, Phat Farm and Stussy’s flagship stores have shuttered. Bape, Supreme, and Union’s traffic are mostly European and Asian tourists. Even Clientele’s clientele is thin these days. Adidas stays in the game by discounting its limited edition shoes and shifting most of its floor space to clothing.

What did they used to say? When America coughs, urban America is in the sickbed. America is long past coughing at this point.

Now the dealings in War-shington could define a whole new era, or lead us back to 1973.

On Sunday, as his old company Goldman Sachs looked like it was ready to leap off the precipice, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson went on the morning shows to propose himself as the Monarch of the Economy and to have Congress approve the idea by the end of the week.

When deregulation is your mantra, democracy—the people—cannot be trusted to regulate the market. So Paulson claimed decision-making power above the review of the court or other agencies—”greater powers (over the economy),” according to one finance industry insider, “than even the President enjoys.”

When trickle-down is your economic theory, corporations are the only individuals worth rehabilitating. So Paulson proposed a Troubled Asset Relief Program—TARP, as its called—to use $700 billion or more of your money to purchase nearly worthless assets from some of the biggest corporate debt abusers.

There is a hip-hop analogy here: in the Bronx in the ’70s, slumlords bought up apartment buildings, then hired arsonists to burn them down so that they could pocket the insurance money. Who was left homeless? Not the slumlords.

With the TARP in place, Paulson and his friends can leave their posts at the end of the year and return to a still-bottoming Wall Street that grazes on lucrative funds from War-shington as real folk continue to lose their homes. Critics call this process nationalizing the risk and debt while privatizing the profit.

Talk about the Audacity of Despair.

That’s why finance industry lobbyists are licking their chops over Paulson’s proposal. Some news reports suggest that this particular bailout plan was sitting on the shelf for the right moment. Conspiracy theory, anyone?

Conspiracy or not, there are shades here of the Shock Doctrine—Naomi Klein’s name for the strategy of free-marketeers and their governments to use catastrophes as opportunities to lay waste to countries while creating secure economic, social, and political Green Zones for the rich. What happens in Baghdad—and Santiago and Buenos Aires and Jakarta and…—eventually comes home to New York and War-shington.

Paulson’s TARP proposal locks into place the same lack of accountability and transparency that came to define the Patriot Act, the Iraq War Resolution, pro-torture policy, and more for the entire funny-money economy.

And where was W. in all of this, our fair President? After speaking on the economy for short minutes this past weekend, he presumably retired to the West Wing to continue putting together his favorite things for his Presidential Library.

Yesterday, he sent Cheney out on his first Congressional mission since the Iraq War Resolution. He rewrote a speech to the UN yesterday to reassure the world.
Goodnight Bush, indeed.

I said it a while ago and I stand by it: W. is our generation’s Herbert Hoover, the Republican president who led us into the Great Depression. We are now staring down into our own economic depths. The bankers want to make sure it won’t be them leaping out of the buildings this time.

But if Paulson’s deal is so good to Wall Street, why is the market still plunging? The spin is that markets are now reacting to instability in War-shington. There may be a better explanation.

Over the past decade, corporate hucksters sold a fantasy of pure profit, from Enron through Lehman—one that hip-hop all too often bought in our desire to identify with those large and in charge. But markets cannot function for long on a foundation of obscure financial instruments, accounting shell-games, and corporate lies.

The markets come back down to the people, and perhaps the people are now finding the word now to sum up their judgment.

Enough.

posted by @ 7:49 pm | 6 Comments

Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008

The Break/s TONIGHT!!!

Click on the image for the full 100…

Today and Thursday through Saturday at NYU’s Skirball Center.

Get tickets here!

posted by @ 8:44 am | 0 Comments

Monday, September 15th, 2008

Marvin Gaye On The 2008 Elections

In 1972, Marvin Gaye was coming off breakthrough success with What’s Going On. He moved to Los Angeles and turned his attention to the 1972 presidential election, which pitted Richard Nixon against George McGovern.

Nixon was trying to solidify what’s become known as the “Southern Strategy”, using racially coded language–crime, busing, welfare, radicalism–to mobilize a “Silent Majority” of white voters. McGovern, on the other hand, was depending on a coalition of anti-war progressives, young voters, and communities of color.

You can guess which side Marvin was on. His “You’re The Man” single ripped into Nixon for his lies.

Nixon went on to crush McGovern in the general in one of the most lopsided victories in recent memory. The Southern Strategy’s race-baiting politics is now one of the dominant electoral strategies in the country. It’s so ingrained in the fabric of post-civil rights electoral politics, we take it for granted.

If you have any doubt that the U.S. is far from “post-racial”, just check the latest mini-controversy prompted by Obama Waffles. The entrepreneurs behind these campaign products are so casually racist, it seems not much has changed among hard-line Republicans since 1972.

Many commentators have said that Obama’s coalition has many similarities to the McGovern campaign. But there is a key difference. Demographics have shifted strongly away from Nixonland. The rise of young voters and communities of color have completely changed the landscape of politics. In this context, Sarah Palin is an anomaly. Time itself is not on the side of the aging Nixonland electorate. But what happens in November remains to be seen.

Gaye cut another song in 1972, this time with the brilliant, largely unsung Mizell Brothers, called “Where Are We Going?” This one was much less angry–it was more of a mountaintop view of a turbulent and crucial season.

It ought to become the theme song for this historic election as well.

Thanks to O-Dub for the tech assist.

posted by @ 8:28 am | 5 Comments



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