Tuesday, January 29th, 2008

Activism Right There! At Cal


posted by @ 10:27 am | 0 Comments

Saturday, January 26th, 2008

Whoops!

Boy, was I wrong. Sorry. Well, at least I got it out of my system.

OK! You may now pile on.

posted by @ 5:18 pm | 7 Comments

Wednesday, January 16th, 2008

Hip-Hop Word Count

This is very funny.

posted by @ 8:22 am | 0 Comments

Tuesday, January 15th, 2008

I’m Teaching A Writers Workshop

Hey CSWS/TC fam, I just wanted to call your attention to the fact that I’m part of this amazing 5th Annual Intergenerational Writers Lab being offered by Intersection For The Arts and the Kearny Street Workshop in San Francisco. I’ll be teaching a couple/few weekends in May.

It’s 3 months of intensive Saturday literarianizing with a team of kick-ass literarianizers: playwright Ricardo Bracho, poet Truong Tran, SF poet laureate devorah major, journalist/author Annalee Newitz and essayist/poet Bushra Rehman. There are readings and much fun. Program begins in March and ends in May.

If you want to get down, your application needs to be in by February 1st. I’m told that the demand for the 12 slots has gotten nuts in recent years, so come correct or don’t come at all! The info and app is here, and we’ll announce the public reading series soon. Hope to see you in May…

posted by @ 8:31 am | 1 Comment

Friday, January 11th, 2008

Poll Dance

posted by @ 10:45 am | 0 Comments

Wednesday, January 9th, 2008

The Old Dogs Learn New Tricks :: What the Clintons Learned From Iowa


Hey young people! Hey women! Thanks for coming!!

Xposted at The Huffington Post

Don’t call it a comeback. Hillary was always going to win, polls (especially polls of African American candidates) and media (always itching for any reason to throw dirt on a Clinton coffin) be damned.

But New Hampshire marks the moment that generational change is becoming major factor in the Democratic primary race.

The Clintons have history here. After young people—the supposedly politically dodgy “Generation X”—turned out in huge numbers to sweep Clinton to the presidency in 1992, the Dems consistently ignored them and their issues for the next 3 elections, calling them “apathetic” and “cynical”.

It’s true that we proved them right for the next few elections. But there were more than a few good reasons to stay home on election day: Bill’s strategic demonizing of young African Americans, the welfare deform that tossed hundreds of thousands of poor young people out on the street, the rapid deterioration of college access, and the tough-on-crime “centrist” politics that put more young people of color behind bars than any previous American generation.

(I was stunned this morning to see a new level of unseemly Boomer crowing, as if a Clinton victory is a much-needed beatdown of post-Boomers and the MSM who allegedly love them. It’s a demonstration of how closely many Boomer Dems identify with the Clintons. It bears noting, though, that the drop in the youth vote after 1992 played no small role in the rise of Newt Gingrich and the politics of the impeachment.)

So thus it has been since 1992. Every election season, there are a few lines about increasing student loans—Just what we need! More debt!—and some token lines about the wonder of idealism (thank you, Bill Bradley), but other than that it’s usually been, “Boy, get me some coffee.” Then came 2004, the hip-hop generation’s all-but-ignored breakthrough moment, and Iowa 2008, with Obama’s armies of the quad.

Even as the media was writing off the Clintons as tired, confused and done, they were rapidly assimilating new knowledge. They knew that young voters would make up a much smaller proportion of Dem voters in New Hampshire than in Iowa. Hillary’s grassroots operation was in place, her people were motivated by a life-and-death kind of adrenalin, and she learned some key lessons from Iowa.

1) Take back the women’s vote. A lot of attention last night–in an explicitly sexist way–focused on “The Tears Of The Ice Queen” story. (How uncomfortable were CNN’s Donna Brazile and Campbell Brown with line of rhetoric? Very. How many male commentators would ask Rudy Giuliani to cry? None.)

But no one in the MSM picked up on Gloria Steinem’s call to action in the Times yesterday, part of an all-out effort to tell the white women of New Hampshire: this race ain’t about race, it’s about gender.

(For more stuff on the Steinem piece, check Julianne’s blog here and here, and a guest post by Jennifer Fang on Carmen’s blog.)

2) Split the kids. On Sunday, Bill Clinton told MTV News, “I think historically young people have not voted in the Iowa caucus because they are from other states…This time we had a lot of students who did come back and I think, frankly, thousands and and thousands of them were from Illinois and wanted to support Senator Obama, and they had a very aggressive outreach. And … we haven’t made that mistake here; we’ve reached out to young people here just as much as he has, and I think we just have to keep trying.” Aside from the carpet-bagger diss—get used to it, Bubba, because it is what it is—it was a telling shift. The campaign retooled itself to attract young white women.

The most notable image last night was Hillary’s imitation of Obama’s perfect Iowa victory speech: the candidate bathed in morning light, surrounded by bright hopeful diverse (well, as diverse as you can get in Iowa) crowds in rapt attention, ready to explode in joy. Last night, Hillary’s handlers perfectly duplicated Obama’s set–right down to placing all the under-24 white women they could find (plus an Asian Indian woman for a little color and a Chinese dude for a little diversity) behind her. “Ready to Lead” became the inspirational “Ready for Change”. She even inserted a couple of applause lines about predatory student lenders.

All this was in sharp contrast to her Iowa speech in which she gave a boiler-plate stump that even she didn’t seem invested in, looked uncomfortable standing next to Bill, and was surrounded in poor lighting by Madeline Albright and shady-looking union operatives.

So the old dogs can learn new tricks. Hillary moves on to South Carolina ready to sound more liberal and more concerned with racial justice than she ever may again this election season. And you can bet that a lot of dedicated young activists in the Clinton and Obama campaigns are about to be tapped by their higher-ups for the ride of their lives.

Because of the hard work of what might now be seen as a vanguard group of activists at the University of Iowa, Iowa State, and other college campuses in the Hawkeye, Democrats are more interested than they’ve ever been in what young people are going to be doing on the day their little election comes to your state. So if you’re a left-leaning college student, know that for the next several weeks, you will be the most courted youth in the history of American politics.

The ball is now in your court. What do you really want?

posted by @ 9:54 am | 5 Comments

Monday, January 7th, 2008

Tmw Is The Day


Yes, not just for the New Hampshire primaries, but for the Wire soundtracks. Feel free to criticize me for my single-mindedness (it wouldn’t be the 7,643th time) but I’m hella gratified and proud to be a small part of this amazing project.

Plus the truth is I’m still getting up to speed on my thang for 2007, let alone 2008, so all the unfinished biz from ’07 will be handled in due time. Yes king! Yes queen!

In the meantime, run don’t walk to cop both brilliant sets: The Wire: And All the Pieces Matter – Five Years of Music from the Wire and The Wire: Beyond Hamsterdam: Baltimore, the Bmore rap set. Then come check back here for all the rest over the next few days.

Just a small last word on tomorrow’s vote: the media has been rubbing Clinton’s face in it–over Obama’s increasing lead in New Hampshire and more. Don’t believe the hype til the returns come in tomorrow night. Much as everyone wants to believe, the media has a much better story if Clinton is portrayed as besieged right now. The bigger the lie, the more they believe.

posted by @ 3:13 pm | 0 Comments

Monday, January 7th, 2008

Bill Clinton :: Hillary Lost Iowa Because Of The Youth Vote

MTV News reported yesterday that Bill Clinton is blaming Hillary’s loss in Iowa on underestimating the youth vote.

Psssh. Par for the course for the old Dems. After young people–so-called Generation X–swept Clinton to the presidency in 1992, the Dems consistently ignored them and their issues for the next 3 elections, calling them “apathetic” and “cynical”. The drop in the youth vote after 1992 was a fact that played no small role in the rise of Newt Gingrich and the politics of the impeachment.

Here’s Bill’s quote. Amazing how he can still find ways to rationalize a youth vote away:

“I think historically young people have not voted in the Iowa caucus because they are from other states,” the former president told MTV News on Saturday night. “This time we had a lot of students who did come back and I think, frankly, thousands and and thousands of them were from Illinois and wanted to support Senator Obama, and they had a very aggressive outreach. And … we haven’t made that mistake here; we’ve reached out to young people here just as much as he has, and I think we just have to keep trying.”

posted by @ 1:21 pm | 0 Comments

Thursday, January 3rd, 2008

Sweeping Out The Dust

Hey fam, welcome to the New Year and best wishes for all of you!

I’m already way behind on my list of posts to do in this blog including:

+ Best Records of 2007
+ What Obama’s Win In Iowa Means (short version: something, but not much)
+ And the imminent return of “The Wire”.

Let me get the last one out of the way and just let this blog do the talking. More previews here.

In the meantime, patience! Hotness takes time…

posted by @ 6:53 pm | 0 Comments

Thursday, December 20th, 2007

F the CC :: Part 3,765

Belatedly, John Nichols on the FCC’s latest Monopoly move. I was listening to the lobbyist for newspaper owners the other day and rolled on the floor for a few minutes laughing at the way dude invoked localism as a reason they needed to be able to buy up TV and radio stations. That was a new one.

In any case, Congress has the last word. That means you can still make a difference. Sign a letter here.

posted by @ 11:30 am | 0 Comments



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