Monday, November 30th, 2009

The Retreat Into Whiteness

houses

Here’s a preview of a new piece I pulled together for ColorLines that reviews Rich Benjamin’s flawed but important book Searching For Whitopia.

It also engages Hua Hsu’s already classic piece, “The End of White America?”, which will likely prove to be one of the most influential pieces of writing by the end of the coming decade. All of this stuff is ground that I’m trying to cover in Who We Be.

Anyway, here’s a big old dose of the article:
Read more

posted by @ 2:20 pm | 0 Comments

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

Andrea Lewis, 1957-2009

Is it me or are we really taking it this year in the Bay?

I’m saddened to learn of Andrea Lewis’s sudden passing.

I’d known Andrea through community organizing and progressive media circles for a long time. For many years, she was the voice of morning radio here on KPFA. She brought humaneness and humor to every topic she touched.

Andrea was like a warm cup of tea, easing you into the day while getting your brain working and heart beating. She represented exactly what the best of this community is about.

We miss you, Andrea. You, Gina, Ron, and everyone up there—your laughter lingers. Our love always.

There will be services next Tuesday, November 24 at 6:00pm at the First Unitarian Church of Oakland.

posted by @ 4:51 pm | 0 Comments

Tuesday, November 10th, 2009

Who We Be :: A Preview In The Believer!

believer001

Apologies for not being as up as I should be. Lots to write about in the coming days–including 2009’s landmark year for graffiti books and the new movement around cultural policy taking shape. But here’s what I’ve been up to lately…

I’ve been hard at work on the new book, Who We Be: The Colorization of America, and am proud to announce that the new issue of this month’s The Believer features a preview of what’s coming in the book. It’s a piece I’ve done about the great cartoonist Morrie Turner, whose 45 years of work are on exhibition through November 19 at the SF Public Library. Check that show out, and go find the mag.

In the meantime, BIG shouts to Ed Park, Andrew Leland and the amazing Ms. Gabrielle Zucker. Here’s a taster:

The night of Barack Obama’s victory, eighty-six-year-old cartoonist Bil Keane called his old friend Morrie Turner, himself a sprightly eighty-four. Turner was working on his strip Wee Pals in the office of his tiny bungalow in South Berkeley, leaning over his drafting desk, its surface worn to the curve of the wood grain, tracing and embellishing the pencil outlines in India ink on Bristol board. A Law & Order rerun played in the background. Inking a strip to the natter of a TV program: for Turner, these were familiar rhythms, warm comfort for forty-three years. At that moment, the last thing he wanted to hear was the news….

More bites here!

posted by @ 3:03 pm | 1 Comment

Thursday, October 15th, 2009

Is Hip-Hop Grown Up?

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Where’s the Geritol swag bag, son?

The annual VH1 Hip-Hop Honors and this BBC article featuring my friends Joe Conzo and Nick Conway prompted TheRoot.com’s editor Danyel Smith to ask some of us if we had any opinions on the topic.

The great Noz, of Cocaine Blunts fame, weighed in. And so did Jozen Cummings and I. Here’s an excerpt from that short piece…

Ten years ago, I wrote a piece on hip-hop nostalgia. I was against it.

(Hey I said it was a short piece!) To read the whole thing, click here.

posted by @ 9:56 am | 2 Comments

Tuesday, October 6th, 2009

Hip-Hop Theater Festival 2009 In Full Gear

For the fam in NYC, the Hip-Hop Theater Festival is already in full gear with its annual showcase of the best in hip-hop performing arts. In fact you already missed Sacha Jenkins’ collabo with Tommy Smith and the Beatnuts last weekend.

But not to fear, for this week, the fest will be showcasing fam-friendly Zomo the Rabbit: A Hip Hop Creation Myth, and the New York premiere of The Word Begins, written and performed by Steve Connell and Sekou (tha misfit).

Next week, there’s Radha Blank’s “Seed”, Shontina Verdon’s “Wanted”, and Betty Shamieh’s “The Alter Rgo Of An Arab-American Assimiliationist.” Plus, another opportunity to check one of my favorite pieces of all time by one of my favorite actors, Eisa Davis in her classic, autobiographical Angela’s Mixtape. Check the video below!

For all the details on the HHTF 2009 including tix and times, check here.

posted by @ 4:56 pm | 0 Comments

Thursday, October 1st, 2009

Rest In Power, Gina Hotta

Let us now praise the great Gina Hotta. Gina passed of a heart attack suddenly Monday evening.

Gina was one of those activists who worked like a river. She never demanded the spotlight, never sought the glory. She was all about the work.

And what great work she did.

DJ Phatrick called her “the voice of Asian American Bay Area.” Her activism was never separate from her journalism, and in that way, she cast a light for many of us to follow.

She was an Asian American activist who seemed to have her mind and spirit in every major movement of the past three decades–from peace and disarmament work right up through the University walkout last Thursday, where I saw her last, working the picket lines and talking about the administration’s anti-union activities.

But most of all, Gina was a lover of beautiful sound. If hip-hop had come a decade or so earlier, I’m convinced she would have been one of the first Asian woman DJs. She carried her equipment everywhere, capturing the sounds of change, and brought her work back to the world weekly on Apex Express.

Her collection of Asian American music and interviews with musicians is probably one of the deepest in the world. We could talk for hours about this artist or that band. Music kept her young. She was as up on the latest Asian American poets and DJs as she could school you on the lost soul and funk bands of the 70s.

You know how people use the word visionary to describe those who cause you to see the world differently? I don’t know what the word is for Gina. She made you hear the world differently.

It’s been a terrible year for passings. Rest in power, Gina, we’ll miss you.

Tune in tonight to Apex Express on KPFA or on the web at 7pm to hear a community tribute to Gina.

+ Adriel Luis of Ill-Literacy’s tribute
+ Apex Express tribute
+ Hyphen Magazine tribute
+ Oliver Wang tribute

posted by @ 7:00 am | 1 Comment

Thursday, September 24th, 2009

McCarthyism Is Now

McCARTHYISMTODAY
FIGHT BECK.

“If you call art made to express the ideals of democracy that we strive to create in the United States of America similar to that used by Goebbels and the “People’s Observer” during the reign of the Nazis in Germany, then we respond with images. If Nazi propaganda is their metaphor, than we give you the literal…”
-Artists’ Names Withheld

Download links for an 18×24 poster are at http://mccarthyismtoday.blogspot.com.

62 advertisers have pulled out of Glenn Beck’s show since the boycott began. Click here to add your name to the 275,000 who have already joined boycott support list. Click here to write letters to the editors of your local newspapers to make them tell the whole story on Glenn Beck today.

Pass it on.

posted by @ 2:40 pm | 1 Comment

Saturday, September 12th, 2009

RIP Sundance, Zulu King and 9/11 Hero

amd_heyward
RIP MC Sundance, hip-hop pioneer and 9/11 hero

The front page of the New York Times today features the sad story of Leon “MC Sundance” Heyward, a Zulu King, rapper for the Jazzy Five, and 9/11 hero.

From the article:

Leon Heyward emerged from the subway just as the second plane struck, piercing the south tower. As others fled, he helped evacuate disabled employees from 42 Broadway, where he worked for the city’s Department of Consumer Affairs, and when the first tower fell, he was caught in the churning plume of contaminated dust and smoke.

Within months he started to feel sick…

Last October, after developing lymphoma, Mr. Heyward died at age 45 in the Bronx, where he was born and had formed one of the earliest rap groups. He became, officially, the latest casualty of the Sept. 11 terror attack, and just after 10 on a gusty, dreary Friday morning, the name Leon Bernard Heyward was read for the first time at ground zero as the nation paused again to remember its losses.

Read it all here.

Peace to his surviving family and to all the pioneers.

posted by @ 9:35 am | 0 Comments

Thursday, September 10th, 2009

The New Shape Of The Culture War :: Glenn Beck, Yosi Sergant, Van Jones, and Hip-Hop

progress001
Progress? Yosi Sergant helped launch the arts movement that got Obama elected. Now Glenn Beck is putting everything in reverse.

Are you mad yet? You should be. Glenn Beck has now taken down Yosi Sergant, the second hip-hop activist to be targeted in the Obama administration in a week.

Last night the 34-year old communications director at the National Endowment For The Arts was asked to resign. Why? Because he was trying to organize artists to support President Obama’s national service program, United We Serve. If your next question is: so what? That was ours too. But Glenn Beck compared the effort to “Nazi propaganda”.

(Just sick–especially since Sergant, a Jewish American, has worked as an activist for peace in the Israel-Palestinian conflict.)

This was the same logic paleocons used to batter Obama’s school speech. If he does it, it’s indoctrination. If they do it, it’s “journalism”. But there’s much more to this story… Read more

posted by @ 11:15 am | 49 Comments

Sunday, September 6th, 2009

Time To Knuckle Up :: On Van Jones’ Resignation

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Painting by Robert Shetterly, from his Americans Who Tell The Truth series

So let’s get into another media controversy, this time one that has serious national and generational implications, shall we?

Last night, Bay Area organizer/activist and White House green jobs advisor Van Jones resigned from his post in the Obama Administration after a high-tech Fox News lynching led by Glenn Beck, he of the “Obama Is A Racist” fame.

Beck had Van in his sights before he made those comments, which referred to Obama’s initial reactions to the Skip Gates incident. Blowhard Beck said it proved Obama “had a deep-seated hatred of white people”. But the success of a Color Of Change petition calling on advertisers to drop Beck’s show kicked the attacks into high gear. After tens of thousands of signatures were gathered, major advertisers left the show. Color Of Change, those of you who have been following this blog will remember, was founded after Hurricane Katrina to become the Black online equivalent of MoveOn.org, and is best known for helping mobilize the demonstrations around the Jena 6. Van was one of its founders.

By this morning, one Fox News commentator was crowing that “(t)he Van Jones affair could be an important turning point in the Obama administration if we use it as a window to understand the structure of the left and to stop the huge power-grab now taking place in the name of green jobs…The Van Jones affair is, as President Obama likes to say, a ‘teachable moment,’ and we need to put not just him but the whole corrupt ‘green jobs’ concept outside the bounds of the political mainstream.”

It’s an unusually frank statement of what Beck and Fox were up to–an effort to derail the progressive green agenda, one that Van had helped to shape with his best-selling book, The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems, a bold, important hip-hop generation approach to thinking about race, the environment, and the economy. It’s an agenda that even many in business support.

But the right is not interested in having any real discussion over ideas. They want to demonize and dissemble and play the politics of fear. In the process, they are developing a whole new set of ways to mix fears of race, youth, and left politics together for political advantage in a new era. Read more

posted by @ 12:20 pm | 25 Comments



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