Monday, November 3rd, 2008

What Time It Is :: Wendell Pierce With The Last Word

For months, we have been telling you about how important tomorrow is. Now this is it. The last word.

We’re going to Wendell Pierce, better known as Bunk Moreland from “The Wire”. Maybe he’s a dude you look up to. Maybe he’s a dude you respect. He’s not a hater, but he has a message.

Did you think hip-hop has helped or hurt Obama in his quest to become the first black president?

Well, I’m pretty much an old head so I don’t listen to a lot of hip-hop. I mean you know, it’s cool. Uh. You know, it’s cool.

I mean, the fact is the youth of America, every election cycle has this sense of responsibility and sense of importance. But then it’s inflated because they never vote. So while every election cycle we’re like, ‘Young people gon’ get out and vote! P-Diddy said vote or die, what we’re gon’ do, you know man? I gon put this rap and talk about the real deal!’ And you ask the majority of all those hip-hop heads, did you go out and vote?

See I don’t see the lines of all those same young people that are sitting there trying to get into the Fox (Theater) in Atlanta…

But you should have seen Nas at Rock The Bells. He had 25,000 middle fingers in the air…

Right! I know. That’s big. But you’re not gonna see the same crowd outside the polling place. Cause I’ve never seen that. So if hip hop wants to impress me, bring that same amount of people and that same amount of energy at one time at one polling place.

I put a challenge out to Vibe. Show me in your December issue the pictures of the hundreds of thousands of hip-hop heads outside the polling places with their fingers up like that and their ‘I voted’ sticker on their lapel.

Hip hop has never ever had an impact besides selling records, popular culture. They’ve never made an impact on the political world because they’ve never been a part of it.

Can you imagine if we ever saw that many young people at 9am at one polling place in this country on November 4th?

I see Jay-Z sell out Madison Square Garden five nights in a row. If you would like to impress me, I would like to see those same numbers of people outside five polling places in New York City. When I see that, then hip-hop is gonna impress me.

That’s a serious challenge.

Tell ’em that Wendell Pierce from ‘The Wire’ put out the challenge. And as Bunk would say, “Ya happy now, bitch?”

posted by @ 8:23 am | 1 Comment

Sunday, November 2nd, 2008

Q+A :: David Banner On What Tuesday Means

Rapper and activist David Banner has been one of the most compelling voices on the politics of the hip-hop generation. He took some time out with us to talk about why he supports Barack Obama and what Tuesday means.

A lot of folks are talking about this election as one of the most important we’ve had in this generation. How are you feeling about this election?

I definitely think it’s one of the most important elections, if not in our generation, in history. I think people are concentrating too much on the fact that we may potentially have the opportunity to have a black president, but I think as important is that we actually have an opportunity to get new blood in, somebody who wasn’t necessarily grown to be the president, somebody who actually is coming up from real people, who in actuality has lived a normal life and has had the struggles that ordinary people have had so in turn can understand the trials and tribulations of regular people.

Do you think that once he gets in he’ll be able to take care of the issues that people haven’t seen taken care of for the last 4 decades and beyond? Or do you think he’s gonna be under pressures from other forces to do the same old same old?

Well, I think those pressures will always be there. It’s up to the man to make the decision on what he wants to do. I think what people should also understand is that Obama potentially is coming behind the worst president in history. So that means that he has a lot to clean up also. And I think people should be patient with him and understand that he has to clean up a lot of stuff. Imagine that even if the day he came in, that he ended the war, it still would take a long time months and months if not years to slowly bring the troops back home, phase them out of Iraq. So for me, we just have to understand that he has a lot to clean up. We are in a recession, so before we can make it better, we first have to come out of it.

You’ve done a lot of work around the Gulf Coast, around Mississippi and Louisiana around the folks that have been affected by Bush’s policies. A lot of stuff came out around race in the elections this year. Do you think Obama is going to be able to do anything about those issues or is he going to have to dial it back—be kind of a Jackie Robinson? Do you think he’ll be able to deal with the issues that were left by Katrina?

Well, this is what I need America to understand. I need America to understand Obama is going to be the president of the United States. Not the president of Latino people. Not the president of white people. Not the president of Black people. So as a leader he has to do what’s best for the United States. As a person who has been in a position of power, sometimes you have to make a decision as a leader, you have to tackle problems that’s best for the American population as a whole. And that’s what I was trying to get a lot of people to understand.

There are situations that, yes, need to be handled. But there are bigger problems right now, i.e. the war, the recession, gas prices, stuff like that. I think the best thing for Obama is for Obama to pick issues that are actually solvable and for him to start solving problems that he knows he can accomplish so people can actually see some change. I think what happens a lot of times is we have the best intentions but we try to tackle problems that are gonna take, that are bigger than us. This is my personal opinion. But I think for the American population they looking to Obama to solve some things. He should pick problems that he knows he can solve, solve them so people can see some change.

A lot of folks are talking about how the South is going to figure into this election. One of the things folks are saying that this is the election that shifts the South and I wonder if this is what you’re seeing on the ground, a shift from the old conservative white Southern strategy Nixon coalition to the New South.

I definitely agree with that. But what I need people to understand is that this election won’t be the end of anything. If anything, it’s going to be the very beginning. People are looking at Obama as the savior. People are looking at this election as the all and all. That’s not the truth and we shouldn’t put that much into the election. Yes, it is a very important election. Yeah it may be the most important election in history, but it won’t be anything that will change things by itself. It’s just the beginning. We as Americans have to change our ways. You even look at the way that Obama is helping to change the way that the world views Americans. Obama is one of the few presidents in a a long time that’s loved and adored overseas, we need that right now! But it’s only the beginning. We’re going to have to work hard. We’re going to have to continue this process. Let’s say if everyone in the South gets out to vote, Obama gets in, you know—will that trend continue? That is the important thing.

Here’s a last question because it comes up over and over again in the south. What if the vote doesn’t count? What if you have all of these folks of color, all of these young folks to get out and vote and they still find a way to do what they did in Florida in 2000. What then?

This is what I tell people. Number one, the popular vote was way too close in both of those elections. This is why we have to get off our ass and make sure that we all vote. If the popular vote is too close then that leaves room for people to gibble and gabble, for people to hide in the darkness and the what-ifs. That is just the reason why we have to make sure that we get out and vote and it’s obvious if they do it. Like the only time that you can hide a lie is if it’s a little bit of the truth. Every lie has a little bit of the truth. But if Obama blows McCain out of the water, then people just have to righteously get up and take it. Then America will definitely expose itself for what it really is. So what we have to do is make sure that the popular vote is nowhere to being close.

posted by @ 11:56 am | 0 Comments

Wednesday, October 29th, 2008

LBTV :: More Blatherings On Hip-Hop

I’m in the ether right now getting ready for the Born In The Bronx conference at Cornell–stay tuned for pics and highlights sometime next week after the elections.

In the meantime, here’s another vid. Of course, I can’t promise any more coherence in this one than the Bloggingheads one below. But you knew that already…

Thanks to Justin!

posted by @ 8:35 pm | 1 Comment

Wednesday, October 29th, 2008

Bloggingheads :: Eli Lake and I Debating Hip-Hop & Politics

Here’s Eli Lake and I from today’s Bloggingheads TV:

Eli and I talked about the Vibe cover story, Ice Cube’s aspirationality, and debated crime policy and the Clipse, Bill Ayers and Too Short, and a lot more.

Not sure I was the most articulate dude in the face of Eli’s ridiculously broad and deep intelligence–which ranges from Pakistan and nukes to SoulStrut.com and the Rawkus catalog–but I tried to hold my own and it was a very enjoyable conversation…

posted by @ 5:44 am | 0 Comments

Friday, October 24th, 2008

Musical Interlude :: Meters Drummer Rocks "Obamagroove"

Inspired by Barack Obama’s speech in Denver, where 3/4s of the Meters played at a New Orleans benefit, legendary drummer–really the best drummer of all-time–Zigaboo Modeliste decided to funk up his own tribute to the man in “Obamagroove”…

Here’s the bonus house remix by Zig’s son, Kelly “Spy Boy” Jones. It’s got a NOLA-meets-Baltimore-inna-Manchester-stylee vibe…

Download the songs at www.obamagroove.com and Zig will personally send half the proceeds to the campaign.

10 days. Keep on marchin’!

posted by @ 8:44 am | 0 Comments

Thursday, October 23rd, 2008

Voices of The New Majority :: A Southern Son Finding A New Life


Nov 27
Photo Courtesy B-Fresh Photography

You look up and this cat is smiling at you. He’s wearing a red shirt and his eyes are hidden behind shades, another rapper on the grind. He’s here now in Las Vegas, where gaudy wealth and brutal poverty exist side-by-side, and a million simulations of the American dream are on sale around the clock. He’s got a CD, and it’s called “My America.” He introduces himself. Some rappers name themselves after heroes, villains, cartoons. His name is a simple fact. Nov 27, his date of birth. It’s the only thing he’s sure of.

He was born James Price, in Little Rock, Arkansas, 28 years after nine African American students desegregated Central High School, 21 years after the Civil Rights Act was passed. When he was born, when Bill and Hillary Clinton were still in the State Capitol and Little Rock’s civil rights traumas were about to give way to gang-land traumas.

Nov 27 grew up all over town. “I didn’t really have a stable home from time to time year to year,” he says. His parents were still trying to live the party life. So he moved all over town to stay with grandparents, aunts, other relatives.
“When you’re not in a stable environment, you can’t adapt fully. You can never feel like you’re safe.”

He adds, “I was kinda homeless for a little bit, I had to deal with surviving on the streets when I was young. That made me learn how to survive through my mind. That’s where rap comes from—surviving from the mind.”

Some of his kin were Bloods, so he was too. Then, at 14—the year he began thinking of rapping seriously, the year he started hearing Cash Money and Busta Rhymes and Snoop and Dre in a whole new way—he found himself at a new school on the north side of town, the Black Disciples’ and Gangsta Disciples’ side of town. It was, he says, “the beginning of my troubles.”

Wearing a red cap sideways to school one day, he was surrounded by 30 cats in black or blue. They told him they didn’t like the way he was wearing his hat. He wouldn’t back down so he got beat down.

“That’s just some of the stuff teens go through out here on the streets,” he says.

“It’s like, you can’t surrender, you don’t want to be considered a punk because these cats want you to throw your rag down or abide by their rules cause it’s their side of town.”

After two years of banging, he says, “I came to the realization I got to do something better. I can’t indulge in this nonsense to where it could lead to the end of my life. There was times when I was like the only one representing for the gang that put me down. And I got these so-called homeboys? They weren’t down. So it was like, what’s the use? I got no backup.”

His family sent him to Austin, Texas to cool out for a couple of years. And he did. But when he returned to Little Rock, back this time to a Blood neighborhood, trouble still seemed determined to stalk him.

“I was at a security job at Pacific Railroad. Friday night. I was gonna go holla at my homeboy. Something was telling me just stay home. I guess that was my conscience. ‘Just stay home, just stay home.’ ‘Naw man, it’s Friday I’m trying to see what’s up with the night.'”

“I’m walking down the street. I see six cats over there approaching me like, ‘What up?’ I didn’t say nothing to ’em, I kept walking. They surrounded me. I’m thinking I’m gonna have to squab with them cause they around every angle. I’m trying to get ready, see who’s gonna make the first move. Then I hear clink-clink, paw-paw-paw-paw.”

Bullets pierced his stomach and his arm. As he lay on the ground he wondered, “What did I do to deserve this?”

His wounds weren’t fatal. But his emotions were a riot. “I went through my pain with that, my anger, my frustration. Listened to my conscience. I didn’t retaliate because that just would have been another dead person on the street.”

He shrugs.

“That’s pretty much what Little Rock go through, man.”

The violence didn’t end. A short time later, a group did a drive-by on his house. He was 20, had been shot 4 times in his own neighborhood. He knew he had reached the bottom.

“So I just went to sleep, and I woke up. That was a sign. Like, hey I’m still alive. After that, that was the turning point. I was like, ‘I ain’t finna be around here in this death trap.'”

He left for Austin for good. Got a job, rented an apartment, got back on his feet. Started rapping again, made contacts in the industry. He joined up with a group called Mafia Mob. He was searching for something.

Nov took a job as an elections clerk and was awed by the intensity of the Democratic primary caucuses. He started noticing how his neighborhood on the east side of Austin was becoming gentrified. He got interested in community events. He was going to one—a Department of Justice hearing on community policing—in the fall of 2007 to give a statement when trouble found him again.

As he was crossing the street, two whites stared him down and starting shouting at him. He stopped. They got out of the car. From behind his shades, Nov 27 told them, “I’m not trying to fight but I’ll defend myself.” They started scrapping.

When the police came, they took the two white men aside. They slammed Nov faced down on the asphalt. The men told the police Nov had thrown rocks at their car and challenged them to a fight. But when Nov tried to say that was a lie, they handcuffed him, pulled his shirt over his face, and took him to jail, charging him with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest.

But this time, the trouble ended up different. Nov landed an attorney, Kenavon “K.C.” Carter, who took the case. After watching the police video, the judge offered to dismiss the charges dropped if Nov would stay out of trouble for 6 months. That wasn’t going to be a problem this time. Carter took Nov to more community events, brought him to Las Vegas for the National Hip-Hop Political Convention.

So now this cat is standing in front of you. He’s told his story. Behind his shades, his mind is spinning. He is meeting people he never would have met before, he is seeing possibilities he never would have seen before.

“In my raps, I try to tell people we don’t have to blame nobody for our oppression because that leads to hating. That’s where rap plays a role, it can relieve tension and bring people together,” he says.

“Change can be a positive thing,” he adds. “Bullets went through me but they didn’t kill me, man. It’s like I’m resurrected, a new me now.”

Behind his shades, it seemed clear he was getting closer to what he was looking for. A tribe. A cause. Something to believe in, something that might last past tomorrow.

posted by @ 2:23 pm | 0 Comments

Thursday, October 23rd, 2008

Angry Black White Boy The Play Opens Tonight!

Please come out tonight for the opening of Dan Wolf’s theatrical take on Adam Mansbach’s Angry Black White Boy at The Intersection for the Arts in San Francisco’s Mission District.

You can also join me and Hard Knock Radio’s Weyland Southon on Saturday night in welcoming Adam Mansbach his own angry self for the show and a special discussion afterwards.

If you can’t make it this weekend, the play continues through November 16th. Come on through!

posted by @ 10:59 am | 1 Comment

Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008

Voices of The New Majority :: A Hip-Hop Activist In Search Of Answers


Carlo Javier Garcia
Photo Courtesy B-Fresh Photography

In August, crowds gathered every day in the streets of Denver to protest at the Democratic National Convention.

On the day before the Convention opened, one in the crowd was a 22 year-old Puerto-Rican, University of Colorado student named Carlo Javier Garcia. He wore Swiss Army sunglasses, red and black Adidas, a red and black kaffiyah, camo shorts, and a black “Recreate ’68” t-shirt. He marched alongside anarchists.

At that same moment, two of his brothers were in Iraq, one on his second tour of duty. Another brother was at home after being wounded in combat in Afghanistan and awarded a Purple Heart. His father, an Army Lt. Colonel, had also done a tour there, and was still working part-time in the reserve in Miami.

Carlo was clearly from the black bloc of the family. But he saw the protests from a different perspective than many of his companions. His family’s service to the country, he said, inspired him to be there.

“There’s a warrior ethos in our family,” he said. “I was in ROTC for a year. The more I thought about it, the more I read and learned in college, I was like, I can’t be a part of this illegal imperialist war. You come to realize you don’t need to be a soldier in the army to be a warrior and fight.”

He spoke as the anti-war marchers and riot police stared each other down in front of the State Capitol. “This”, he said, “is me being a warrior and fighting.”

As an argument broke out among the marchers over whether or not to confront the police, Carlo and I spoke some more. He had helped organize the rally earlier that morning for Recreate 68, which had featured Green Party candidates Cynthia McKinney and Rosa Clemente and Dead Prez.

“You think of what happened in the DNC in Chicago 1968. There were police riots, there was a police state. Look at it now,” he said, pointing to the lines of riot cops facing down the activists, “they are storm troopers going to battle. All the bad things that happened—no, that’s not what we’re trying to recreate. What we’re trying to recreate is the spirit of activism and unity that was so prevalent back then. Now it’s 2008, it’s time for us to reinspire everybody.”

I asked Carlo if he planned to vote. He had more surprises. He said that, unlike many of his fellow marchers, he did. And he was voting, as he had in the previous election, for the Democratic candidate. “Barack is an inspiration,” he said.

Why was he helping organize a protest at the DNC, I asked him, if he was voting Democratic?

He chuckled. He’d heard the question before. A lot.

He explained that his dad was a “yellow-dog Democrat”—an old term Southerners invented to describe voters who would vote for a yellow dog on a Democratic ticket over any Republican.

“Your vote isn’t necessarily significant. I voted in 2004 and 2006 and I’ve been disappointed both times,” Carlo admitted. But he felt the protesters played a crucial role in influencing the Democrats.

“We could go to the RNC and protest all we want. We could have the police state attack us and destroy us at the RNC—it’s not going to make a difference to John McCain and the rest of the Republicans. But we can come here to the DNC and potentially have Barack Obama see us in mass force, see the people movement, and inspire him for change.”

He added, “We have to hold them accountable. In 2006 we elected a Democratic Congress on the platform that they would end the war in Iraq and cut funding for the war. There’s been a troop surge. We’re still at war. My brothers are in there now on 15-month tours. This is my family. These are my problems.”

At that point, the activists seemed to have settled on a decision. They retreated and marched in the other direction toward downtown. The police dispersed. Garcia left to join the marchers.

Later that week, we caught up with each other at the Iraq War Veterans’ demonstration. He had been arrested the previous day, and because he had been on probation, he was facing potentially serious charges. Despite his concern, it seemed as if he had to be at this protest; it hit the closest to home.

He marched to the Pepsi Center then left for Boulder to help set up a Public Enemy concert, sponsored by his hip-hop collective, Mad Society Project. It was a good day—the War Veterans demonstration was the peak of the week for the street demonstrators and the Public Enemy show was a success.

But in general, the protests in Denver hardly matched the fervor of the ones in St. Paul at the Republican National Convention, let alone the outpouring of emotion that greeted Obama’s acceptance speech.

Since then, the economy has become the nation’s most pressing issue, but the wars rage on. In the last month, there have been 10 American and over 130 Iraqi civilian deaths.

A couple weeks ago, I emailed Carlo to check up. He wrote back, saying that he had as his court case loomed, he had thought a lot about what he and the Denver activists had called their “Days of Resistance”. He wasn’t entirely sure they had worked.

“The day of the large scale protest is dead,” he wrote. “I realized our protest wouldn’t change policy before it all went down, but I hoped it would inspire others, and to tell you the truth, ain’t shit changed. We gotta figure out a different formula to inspire the people who need to be inspired.”

He was still searching for answers.

I thought back to something he had said on the streets of Denver: “The Bronx was burning. That is us now. Our country is burning and there are people who are speaking out against it. Your average hip-hop head now should be an activist, should be going out and doing something.”

For more Voices of the New Majority, pick up the new issue of Vibe on stands now or check Vibe.com’s Politics page.

posted by @ 9:52 am | 0 Comments

Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008

How Anti-Muslim Bigotry Pushed Powell To Obama

From Maureen Dowd’s powerful piece in today’s Times:

Colin Powell had been bugged by many things in his party’s campaign this fall: the insidious merging of rumors that Barack Obama was Muslim with intimations that he was a terrorist sympathizer; the assertion that Sarah Palin was ready to be president; the uniformed sheriff who introduced Governor Palin by sneering about Barack Hussein Obama; the scorn with which Republicans spit out the words “community organizer”; the Republicans’ argument that using taxes to “spread the wealth” was socialist when the purpose of taxes is to spread the wealth; Palin’s insidious notion that small towns in states that went for W. were “the real America.”

But what sent him over the edge and made him realize he had to speak out was when he opened his New Yorker three weeks ago and saw a picture of a mother pressing her head against the gravestone of her son, a 20-year-old soldier who had been killed in Iraq. On the headstone were engraved his name, Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan, his awards — the Purple Heart, the Bronze Star — and a crescent and a star to denote his Islamic faith.

“I stared at it for an hour,” he told me. “Who could debate that this kid lying in Arlington with Christian and Jewish and nondenominational buddies was not a fine American?”

posted by @ 8:09 am | 0 Comments

Tuesday, October 21st, 2008

Tipping Points :: Early Voting In Swing States

As this long campaign enters its final two weeks, attention has turned to massive get-out-the-vote efforts, especially early voting.

Since this year’s election could bring one of the highest turnouts on record, especially at precincts in communities of color and around colleges and universities, both parties and nonpartisan organizations like the League of Young Voters have already begun bringing people to the polls.

Early voting could very well make the difference. Nearly a third of all voters are expected to cast an early vote.

Polls show that Obama may be capturing sizable leads in the early vote. In part this may reflect the enthusiasm gap between the parties over their candidates. The Gallup Poll reported last week Democratic voters were 20-points more enthusiastic than their Republican counterparts about voting this year.

But the difference may also reflect the party’s diverging tactical decisions. While the McCain campaign seems to have been concentrating on fighting “voter registration fraud” and laws that ease voting restrictions in the courts and on the airwaves, the Obama campaign has been dedicating big resources into galvanizing the early vote.

In Ohio, perhaps the key swing state, many who lived through the last two elections won’t easily forget the long polling lines they faced. Some voters in 2006 waited in bad weather over 12 hours to cast their vote. Interest in early voting has been high, and not just among voters. Earlier this month, Republican officials unsuccessfully challenged the early voting laws. Ohio’s early voters have favored Obama over McCain.

For the past two days, Senator Obama has been in Florida, the other crucial swing state, which began early voting this week. The Obama campaign also has early voting outreach efforts up in the important battlegrounds of Colorado, Nevada, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Montana.

In North Carolina–once a solidly red state–the Obama campaign has been putting together a particularly massive effort to encourage “1-stop voting”. North Carolina law allows voters to register and vote by absentee ballot at any county polling place right away. These efforts seemed to be paying off. Over 200,000 have already voted in North Carolina and Obama may be leading by as many as 30 points over McCain.

In all, thirty-one states allow unrestricted early voting. For information on early voting rules for your state, check the Early Voting Information Center website. To check on where you can cast an early vote, check GoVote. And for voter guides put together by other young folks in your area (or to put one together yourself), check TheBallot.org.

posted by @ 8:21 am | 0 Comments



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