Book Trailer: Scott Poulson-Bryant's The VIPs

The first trailer for the upcoming novel THE VIPs, by Scott Poulson-Bryant, author of HUNG.

Adisa Banjoko: Chess, Race, Class & the Urban Mind

HHCF: Chess, Race, Class & the Urban Mind

Hip-Hop Chess Federation founder Adisa Banjoko talks about misconceptions of Hip-Hop subculture and history against the backdrop of mainstream ideas of urban youth.

Why the NBA and NFL Players Unions Need to Pay Attention to What’s Happening in Wisconsin

Saturday Edition

Why the NBA and NFL Players Unions Need to Pay Attention to What’s Happening in Wisconsin
by Mark Anthony Neal

All eyes were on Carmelo Anthony recently, as the NBA star got his wish to be traded to the New York Knicks. In the backdrop of this story is the fact that Anthony would only agree to be traded to the Knicks if they signed him to a contract extension—one that that had to be signed before the NBA’s current collective bargaining agreement ended in June. Collective bargaining agreements are also the minds of NFL players, where they and NFL owners face a March 3rd deadline to negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement, before the owners will lock the players out of their places of work.

As the influence and prestige of organized labor continues to wane, professional sports unions (and Hollywood writers' unions) have too often, and unfortunately so, become the face of organized labor. That changed recently when the Wisconsin State legislature presented a bill with the aim of limiting the collective bargaining powers of public workers in the State. For the past two weeks public workers in Wisconsin have taken to the streets to protest the proposed changes, generating a level of solidarity for organized labor that has not been witnessed in decades. As historian Mark Naison noted, the presence of 70, 000 workers in front of the Wisconsin State capitol “is as improbable as Black students sitting in at lunch counters in 35 cities throughout the South.”

Given the historic confluence of recent events—the protests in State capitols in Wisconsin and Ohio are clearly taking energy from the images that we saw in Tahiri Square—the NFL and NBA players unions should be concerned with being on the right side of history, in what may become a new labor movement in this country. It is critical for players to see the connections between their struggles and those of everyday American workers.

That the average American has little regard for the labor strife among groups of professional athletes, including baseball players, who will likely make more money in a year, than most American will make in a lifetime, should not be a surprise. To their credit, professional ballplayers have often tried to downplay their labor concerns (Antonio “can’t remember the name of my kids” Cromartie notwithstanding) knowing full well that such complaints curry little favor for fans struggling to pay their own bills. Such constraint is particularly palpable for NBA and NFL players, where a significant amount of fans might believe that the leagues’ Black players should be grateful for the social status that their athletic careers afford them.

Yet there are comparisons that can be made between workers struggling to retain their collective bargaining powers and professional athletes trying to negotiate a collective bargaining agreement that allows them to retain their hard earned benefits. The same social and political forces that want to take away the ability of public workers to bargain collectively are the same that want to limit the influence of players’ unions. In both instances, at the root of such efforts is to depress the wages of workers.

Often obscured in the visibility of highly paid professional athletes is that they are in fact laborers; they work for the benefit of others’ profits be it team owners, the networks that carry the NBA and NFL, or the companies that use players’ images in advertising. In a strict technical sense, they are exploited labor, as is the case with most working Americans who are underpaid and undervalued, but given how well professional athletes are financially compensated, most miss that fact. Indeed, many of us would love to be “exploited” for $3.4 million a year (the estimated average salary for an NBA player).

The owners’ goals in the new collective agreements with the NFL and the NBA are to bring down labor costs and to increase profits, a process that was begun when both leagues created salary caps more than a decade ago. In theory salary caps control labor cost, but there are no such limits on the profits that owners et al can make from these new labor agreements. Indeed, NFL league owners are pushing for an 18 game season that would generate even more profits at the expense of players’ longevity.

Not surprisingly concerns for cutting budgets is at the forefront of attempts in Wisconsin and others states, to limit the collective bargaining power of public workers. The current push is born out of the current fiscal crisis that the nation faces, but attempts to limit the bargaining power of American workers have been trending for decades.

As Naison observes, “the rise of organized labor, from the mid 1930’s to the mid 1950’s, coincided with a significant improvement in the standard of living of all American workers, whether or not they were in unions.” What we have witnessed over the past 30 years, regardless of the state of the American economy, is American workers giving back many of the gains they derived from organized labor, dovetailing with a redistribution of wealth from the American working class to the wealthiest Americans.

Of course some view professional athletes as being a part of that wealthiest segment of Americans, which is why players union will never garner significant support for their own labor struggles, not matter how legitimate

Perhaps the more thoughtful tact for the leaders of the NFL and NBA players unions is to speak out in support of the workers in states like Wisconsin, Indiana and New Jersey and for some of the most visible players in their leagues to use their celebrity to speak to the importance of collective bargaining rights for all American workers. Such solidarity would not be a simple gesture, but the strongest articulation by professional athletes that they see their fates as inevitably linked to those who are ultimately responsible for their fame and their wealth.

Contemporary athletes have been on sidelines for far too many critical issues that we confront in this country. With attacks on collective bargaining rights in their sports as well as in American statehouses and the offices of the wealthiest Americans (shout to the Koch brothers) they have no excuse not to be in the game, as it were.

Charlie Braxton: Why We Must Stand With Workers

from BET.com

Commentary: Why We Must Stand With Workers
by Charlie Braxton

The eyes of the nation need to focus on Madison, Wisconsin, as hundreds of government workers, union members, students, and other supporters gather in protest to Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s economic assault on government workers.

The assault comes in the guise of Scott’s proposed budget repair bill that aims to balance Wisconsin’s budget. This proposal includes requiring state workers to pay more toward their pension and limiting the majority of the workers’ right to collective bargaining (police and firemen are excluded). If enacted, these changes would effectively cripple the power of unions in Wisconsin and severely limit state workers’ ability to fight for better wages in the future.

Early Friday morning, Republicans in the Wisconsin Assembly abruptly passed the measure that would strip collective bargaining rights from most public workers. Since the state Senate has yet to vote, the political standoff is far from over.

Although not quite as draconian as Wisconsin’s proposal, similar scenarios have taken place throughout the nation, as the governors of New Jersey, Ohio, Indiana, Missouri, and Florida have all proposed similar budget measures aimed at their state workers’ pocketbooks. For example, New Jersey’s Republican governor, Chris Christie, has outlined a series of deep cuts and changes to the state’s government workers’ pension fund that includes workers paying 30 percent of their health care premium, increasing the amount of their co-pay, and rolling back a 9 percent across-the-board pay increase from 2001. Add this to the modest wages many government workers receive and a sputtering economy and the effects could be devastating.

According to the governors of these embattled states, these drastic measures are necessary in order to balance their respective budgets, save their state’s pension funds, and stave off massive government lay-offs. They bristle at the suggestion that the budget crunch is a convenient excuse to punish the states’ workers, who tend to make up a significant portion of the Democrats' constituency. Moreover, when the governor of a state engages in union-busting activity, what signal does that send to the private sector that traditionally have had no qualms about jettisoning the rights of the American worker?

Remember, many of the people that make up the thousands of government workers from the above-mentioned states (especially in urban areas) are middle-class people of color. We’re talking health care workers, social workers, teachers, etc., many of whom are our friends and family. Also, a large percentage of the people these workers serve are people of color. Any cut in their wages and/or benefits would drastically affect their ability to serve the public. This is why we must stand on the side of the state workers. Not to do so, would be, in my opinion, uncivilized.

Majora Carter: Greening the Ghetto

From TED

In an emotionally charged talk, MacArthur-winning activist Majora Carter details her fight for environmental justice in the South Bronx -- and shows how minority neighborhoods suffer most from flawed urban policy.

Majora Carter redefined the field of environmental equality, starting in the South Bronx at the turn of the century. Now she is leading the local economic development movement across the USA

Hip-Hop as Literature? The Conversation Continues

Minnesota Public Radio
Midmorning Live

Anthology of Rap and Hip-hop

Over the past 30 years rap and hip-hop have emerged as a powerful and influential cultural force. Midmorning examines the power and the poetry of rap music, from the "old school" to the present day.

Guests

* Adam Bradley: Associate professor of English and author of the "Anthology of Rap.

* Mark Anthony Neal: Professor of Black Popular Culture in the Department of African and African American Studies at Duke University.

* Toki Wright: Professor at McNally Smith School of Music in St. Paul, MN and professional rapper/hip-hop artist.

Hip-Hop Speaks--"American Workers Vs Multi-Billionaires": A Video by Jasiri X

from Jasiri X

Our latest video "American Workers Vs Multi-Billionaires" was filmed on location in Madison, Wisconsin, where thousands of hard working Americans came together in unity to fight back against a Governor bought and paid for by Billionaires to break up Unions and deny workers collective bargaining and a living wage. "American Workers Vs Multi-Billionaires" was produced by Cynik Lethal and directed by Paradise Gray.

LYRICS

Scott Walker works for multi billionaires
John Boehner works for multi billionaires
while corporations get billions in welfare
and millions in this country been out of work for years

Sarah Palin works for multi billionaires
American workers vs multi billionaires
they wanna end social security and medicare
while millions in this country don't have a dime to spare

Can main street get a bailout
Tell the president our checks weren't mailed out
Tell the house of representatives and senate
And whatever business got the stimulus and spent it
Now they getting record profit that's tripling with no limits
But they cutting jobs and unemployment benefits have ended
How we gone live with no income coming in
And the little help we get is cut from the budget then
What's the role of government
Do workers stand a chance if multi billionaires are running it
Oh now you worried bout the deficit and cutting it
But when them banks needed billions you had enough for them.
Them car companies you had bucks for them
2 wars rebuilding 2 countries guess we stuck with them
the average citizen just ain't lucky then
cause we be getting pimped so I guess we getting fucked again

Rush Limbaugh works for multi billionaires
Bill O'Reilly works for multi billionaires
while corporations get billions in welfare
and millions in this country been out of work for years

Sean Hannity works for multi billionaires
Crazy Glenn Beck works for multi billionaires
they wanna end social security and medicare
while millions in this country don't have a dime to spare

When did the American worker become the enemy
Why is wanting a living wage such a penalty
What happened to justice and liberty
These billionaire haters wanna crush us literally
On the box is Murdoch and his foxes
And if you watch it you might as well be an ostrich
They terrorists cause they hold facts hostage
24 hours straight of we hate what Barack did
If you want to unionize your a communist
But if you buy a congressman they just call you a lobbyist
It's so obvious but here's where the problem is
they act like regular Americans but they sloppy rich
Why you think they wanna cut taxes
cause every single one of them in the higher brackets
This ain't white or black it's class warfare time for action
Just look at wide the gap is

American workers vs multi billionaires
The middle class vs multi billionaires
while corporations get billions in welfare
and millions in this country been out of work for years

Rupert Murdoch is multi billionaires
the Koch brothers are multi Billionaire
they wanna end social security and medicare
while millions in this country don't have a dime to spare

What Does It Take to Publish a Successful Digital Magazine?

Running an online magazine is rewarding, hard work

Clutch Founder/Editorial Director Deanna Sutton:
What Does It Take to Publish a Successful Digital Magazine?
by Felicia Pride

I don’t know when I first was introduced to Clutch magazine. But instantly I thought three things: dope + necessary+ finally. Under the passionate tutelage of founder and editorial director, Deanna Sutton, and under the banner ushering in the new era for young, contemporary women of color, Clutch represents an important model in digital publishing entrepreneurship—finding a need, successfully filling that need with high quality design and content, and connecting with your audience, sincerely at your home base and through social media. As a result, the magazine has accumulated a steady increase in viewers every quarter since its inception.

BackList caught up with the crazy busy Sutton to gain insight into her day-to-day, future goals for Clutch, and why tough skin is an essential trait for publishers.

BackList: What did you do in your previous life?

DS: I was in marketing and public relations for some top PR agencies and brands.

BackList: When did you first visualize Clutch?

Deanna Sutton: I first visualized Clutch in 2002 after I lost my father suddenly. I was in a deep state of depression and through an encounter with my best friend on the state of magazines for women our age, the idea was born. We started as print and re-launched as an online magazine in April 2007.

BackList: At one point, you were sort of running Clutch as a one-woman show. What was that like on a daily basis?

DS: I am blessed to have great friends, writers and supporters that helped a lot when Clutch first launched in 2007. But, yes up until about a year ago I was posting, assigning, publicizing and more for Clutch. No life.

BackList: Now that you have a team working with you, how have things changed?

DS: It’s still very hard. Coming up with content that our readers will like is extremely difficult. Our readers are one of a kind and expect nothing but the best and hold us accountable if we don’t give that. I still do everything I did before, now I just have some help.

BackList: Who is a Clutch reader and how did you finally profile her?

DS: The Clutch reader is extremely intelligent, fashionable, aware, social and progressive. It took me about 2 ½ years to figure out what our readers wanted and who the Clutch woman was. It took lots of chances on the content – from focusing on celebrities to fashion and beauty to finally commentary that matters to us. I am so not into celebs like that and I didn’t want Clutch to be stans for celebrities.

Read the Full Interview @ theBackList

Rapper Rhymefest in Runoff Race for Alderman

 

Is “Solidarity” Making a Comeback? Thoughts on the Return of a Long Neglected Concept

special to NewBlackMan

Is “Solidarity” Making a Comeback?
Thoughts on the Return of a Long Neglected Concept
by Mark Naison

When the union's inspiration through the workers' blood shall run
There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun
Yet what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one
But the union makes us strong

Solidarity forever, Solidarity forever
Solidarity forever, for the union makes us strong!
“Solidarity Forever”--Ralph Chapin

The success of the Wisconsin movement to protect collective bargaining rights of government workers, and of similar movements around the country, depends on the revival of a concept that has been out of favor in the United States for many years- the concept of “Solidarity.” Republican lawmakers like Scott Walker were clearly expecting that this concept was dormant when they decided to attack bargaining rights of public employees. They were gambling that workers in the private sector who had lower wages, less generous benefits, and less job security than government workers would want to see them cut down to size in a Recession. They were expecting that envy, rather than Solidarity, would govern the attitudes of people hit hard by the Recession. Their experience, and their ideology, suggested that working class Americans would be more interested in lowering their own tax rates then protecting the bargaining rights of their unionized brothers and sisters.

But the response of to the Wisconsin bill, and to similar bills in Ohio and Indiana, seems to have caught Republican lawmakers by surprise. Firefighters and police officers, both exempt from the elimination of bargaining rights the Walker Bill, both turned out in force to support the protests as the Wisconsin Capital. So did high schools students, who came to support their teachers, and University students, who feared the Governors next step would be steep tuition rises and the elimination of bargaining rights for graduate students. When you couple this local response with the support of organized labor nationally, the result was the largest labor protest in a state in recent American history, with 70,000 people turning out the first weekend of the demonstration.

And when you look at the growing size of protests at the Ohio State capital, where private sectors unions have joined public sector unions in denouncing a similar bill to the Wisconsin one, you have to ask “What is going on? Why are labor unions, which have been on the defensive for the last thirty years, able to mount this kind of movement? Why is Solidarity, out of favor for many years, suddenly back in fashion?”

To understand this, it helps to look back at American History. For the last one hundred years, Solidarity has been more notable in its absence than its presence in the American working class. For the first thirty years of the 20th Century, corporations were able to keep the largest and most fast growing industries in the country- steel, automobile, electronics, ground transportation- almost entirely union free by playing off workers against one another by race, religion, and national origin and convincing the majority of the white protestant population in the nation that organized labor was a foreign implant.

However, all that changed during the Great Depression. When banks failed and the economy imploded, leaving nearly a third of the labor force unemployed by 1933, and another third working part time, working class Americans, seeing that that hardship hit people of all racial and religious backgrounds, and in every region of the country, began to listen to labor organizers, and representatives of radical parties, who argued that individual effort could no longer assure prosperity and that workers could only improve their lives by organizing together.

These organizers made the argument that ALL workers would benefit when employed workers were able to form strong unions and they urged unemployed people to support unionization drives in major industries, rather than be recruited by employers to be strike breakers and anti-union vigilantes.

In the two most successful strikes of the Depression Era, the Minneapolis Teamsters Strike of 1934, which led to the unionization of a sizable share of overland truck traffic, and the Flint Sit down strikes of `1936-37 which led to the unionization of General Motors and US Steel, both of which involved pitched battles between strikers, police and Citizens Committees organized by employers, the unemployed either remained neutral or took the side of the strikers. As a result, employers not only were unable to recruit strikebreakers, they were unable, even with the police on their side, to control the streets surrounding the plants and warehouses that were on strike assuring that the protests went on for weeks, and months, until the employers finally agreed to union recognition. There were other conditions that led to the success of these strikes, such as the refusal of the Minnesota and Michigan governors to us the National Guard to remove workers from factories and warehouses, but the support of the unemployed who had nothing to gain, in the short run, from the success of these movements, was absolutely critical. Somehow, a critical mass of the unemployed, along with workers outside the affected industries, had come to believe in all workers would benefit when some workers achieved union recognition. They had become caught up in “union fever” the idea that only by organizing unions could workers attain dignity and respect as well as a decent standard of living and they fought side by side in the streets with striking workers until these communal battles were won.

Were they justified in this belief, or had they just succumbed to the UnAmerican propaganda of Communists and Socialists? Fast forward to the 1950’s. Thirty five percent of the American labor force is unionized, including most of those working in steel, auto, electronics and transportation. The people who built these unions not only had the highest standard of living in the world, they lived in one of the most equal advanced nations on the planet, where the top one percent of the population controlled 9 percent of national income, as opposed to 23 percent today. In New York City, where unions were particularly powerful, you had an amazing network of public universities, which charged no tuition, public hospitals, schools with free after school centers and great music and sports programs, and museums and zoos which charged no admission. The evidence is incontrovertible- the rise of organized labor, from the mid 1930’s to the mid 1950’s, coincided with a significant improvement in the standard of living of all American workers, whether or not they were in unions.

Most Americans do not know this. Except among people in union education departments and those who teach labor history in universities, the role of labor unions in spreading the benefits of prosperity in the years following the Depression is neither known, nor acknowledged. However, the current economic crisis, with its eerie parallels to the Great Depression, is making many working class Americans wonder whether their dreams of individual prosperity and security are still possible in a society where the housing market, banking system, and now local governments are in such trouble. Some may be blaming their plight on the “fat contracts” and “bloated pensions” of government workers, but others are wondering what the role of the banks and large corporations have been in putting them in such a predicament, and how they can fight back

It is in this context that the Wisconsin protests put forward a message that, to everyone’s surprise, touches a chord. Maybe working Americans have had enough of blaming unions and government for what has happened to them. Maybe they are starting to think that the calls for “sacrifice” that politicians of both parties are making should be directed toward the very wealthy, who are the only people who have not been hurt during the crisis. And maybe they are starting to hear a message that says that working Americans had better overcome their differences and start to fight for their rights or their hopes for a life of comfort and security will be gone forever.

Solidarity, here in America, in 2011? Look around you, in a million years, would you have expected there to be 70,000 people massed outside the Wisconsin State Capitol demanding protection of collective bargaining rights for government workers?. Why, the very thought is as improbable as Black students sitting in at lunch counters in 35 cities throughout the South.

History can move in mysterious ways.

And Solidarity may be making a comeback.

***

Mark Naison is a political activist who was a member of CORE and SDS in the 1960s. He is a graduate of Columbia University and holds a Ph. D. in American History. Naison is a professor at Fordham University in New York. He is the author of 'White Boy, A Memoir'.

Art That Matters--Carrie Mae Weems Takes on Gun Violence

With her 'Operation: Activate' project Carrie Mae Weems is making art that truly matters.

Artist Aims Latest Campaign at Senseless Gun Violence in Syracuse
by Mark Anthony Neal | TheLoop21

For more than 25 years, artist Carrie Mae Weems has earned a well deserved reputation for making art that highlights issues of privacy and intimacy in Black life. Beginning with her first project “Family Pictures and Stories” (1981-1982) to perhaps her most well known exhibition “The Kitchen Table Series,” (1990), currently on display at the Art Institute of Chicago, Weems has made the business of Black life behind closed doors an important feature of her art.

Recently Weems has gone against her usual process, mounting an exhibition of public art in the city of Syracuse, N.Y., where she currently lives, addressing the reality of gun violence that is tearing apart the city.

As part of a course that she teaches at Syracuse University, “Art and Civic Dialogue” and work she does with an artists collective that she founded a few years ago called Social Studies 101, Weems created Operation: Activate, 2011, using iconographic images, like those of the Black Panther Party and stark text to challenge the perpetrators of gun violence in the city.

Read the Full Essay @ theLoop21

'Left of Black': Episode #22 featuring S. Craig Watkins

Left of Black #22
w/S. Craig Watkins
February 21, 2011

Left of Black host Mark Anthony Neal welcomes Professor S. Craig Watkins (via Skype), author of the book The Young and the Digital: What the Migration to Social Network Sites, Games, and Anytime, Anywhere Media Means for Our Future (Beacon Press).

→S. Craig Watkins is a Professor of Radio-Television-Film and Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of several books including Hip Hop Matters: Politics, Pop Culture and the Struggle for the Soul of a Movement (Beacon Press 2005), Representing: Hip Hop Culture and the Production of Black Cinema (The University of Chicago Press 1998) and most recently The Young and the Digital: What the Migration to Social Network Sites, Games, and Anytime, Anywhere Media Means for Our Future. Currently, Watkins is launching a new digital media research initiative that focuses on the use and evolution of social media platforms. For updates on these and other projects visit theyoungandthedigital.com.

***

Left of Black is a weekly Webcast hosted by Mark Anthony Neal and produced in collaboration with the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke University.

Happy Birthday, Ms. Simone

Nina Simone: She Cast a Spell—and Made a Choice
by Mark Anthony Neal
SeeingBlack.com Music Critic

I could do what you do, EASY! Believe me / Frontin' niggaz gives me heebe-geebes / So while you imitatin' Al Capone / I be Nina Simone and defecating on your microphone— Lauryn Hill, "Ready Or Not"

My skin is Black, My arms are long / My hair is wooly, My back is strong / Strong enough to take the pain / Afflicted again and again / What do they call me?— Nina Simone, "Four Women"

She was the voice of a movement. Deep blues, even darker hues, from the Delta to Dakar. When the old guard (Stokely and Martin and Ralph and dem)—in the days before Aretha—talked about the "voice" of the movement, they always invoked Nina Simone, Ms. Simone to all those who couldn't wrap their minds around this woman, Black woman, protest woman, iconical woman, the one woman whose very voice summoned the spirits of the Middle Passage, of those under the overseer's lash, of that charred fruit hanging from southern trees. — the spirits of blues whisperers, sacred singers, heavenly shouters and insatiable desires. This woman, Black woman, was the voice of a people.

When Nina Simone died quietly in her home in southern France on 21 April 2003, the spiritual essence of three generations of freedom fighters passed on to the otherworld the proverbial crossroads with her. With a voice that embodied the pain and power of the scattered African diaspora and classic West African facial features that suggested a short distance between the Tyron, North Carolina of her birth and Kwame Nkrumuh's Ghana, Nina Simone couldn't help being political. Listening to her sing "My Baby Cares for Me" from her debut recording Little Girl Blue (1959), one has to pause as she utters the line "Liz Taylor is not his style". Coming from the mouth of this woman Black, her invocation of "America's Sweetheart" was indeed a celebratory gesture towards the beauty of Black women. (In an ironic reversal, the song was featured in a 1987 Chanel ad campaign.) Simone's only Top 20 recording, Gershwin's "I Loves You Porgy", was drawn from that first album.

By the early 1960s, Simone's music began to more directly echo the tenor of the times. Once the darling of the supper club set, Simone was more and more likely to be found performing at a Civil Rights fundraiser. Simone was brought into the movement at the behest of her good friend, the playwright Lorraine Hansberry (A Raisin in the Sun). It was because of her experiences with the movement that Simone wrote and recorded her most potent critique of American racism. As she recounts in her autobiography I Put a Spell on You, she was dramatically moved by the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, which killed four little Black girls. The attack took place less than three weeks after the March on Washington and marked a turning point in the Civil Rights movement as most of the movement's major figures, notably Martin Luther King, Jr. and SNCC's Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Toure) were pushed closer to radicalism. Simone restrained her own rage — she purportedly wanted to go out in the streets and shoot some White folks — and transformed that rage into the scathing political tome "Mississippi Goddam". The song was recorded live at Carnegie Hall in March of 1964. Simone's career her access to the super club set—would be radically altered by the recording.

At the beginning of the song, she announces "the name of this tune is 'Mississippi Goddamn'. And I mean every word of it," as her largely White audience laughs at her comments. The brilliance of the song lies in the way she initially destabilized the immediate reception of the song, by placing the song's lyrics on top of a swinging show tune beat. It was as if the song was performed to the music of the "Sambo Shuffle" — that moment when Sambo decides to stop "shuckin' and jivin'" and actually starts to speak "truth to power." The audience is still laughing with Simone after she sings the opening chorus ("Alabama's got me so upset / Tennessee makes me lose my rest / And everybody knows about Mississippi, Goddam") and states that "this is show tune, but the show hasn't been written for it yet." But this is where the song, and its reception, changes. Simone rips into America's race policy, simmering as she sings "don't tell me, I tell you / Me and my people just about due / I've been there so I know / You keep on saying go slow," a reference, in part, to the Brown vs. The Board of Education (Topeka, Kansas) Supreme Court decision which urged the desegregation of American public schools with the oxymoronic notion of "all deliberate speed". The audience is dead silent after the verse, a fact that Simone acknowledges, when she says to the crowd "bet you thought I was kidding". The moment seemed to only fuel the fury brewing underneath Simone's performance up to that point. When she starts singing "This whole country is full of lies / You all gonna die, die like flies," it is clear that she is in a space, in opposition to the non-violent stance of the mainstream Civil Right Movement, and one that portended the violence in American cities like Los Angeles (Watts), Newark and Detroit in the coming years.

Though contemporary audiences often miss the significance of Simone's rejection of the religiosity of the Civil Right Movement the woman publicly uttered Goddamn and openly questioned the value of prayer or the risk she took at the time with her critique., the reality is that better known and celebrated challenges to power, like NWA's "F*ck the Police" could not have occurred without Simone's brave stance. (the Dixie Chicks must have made her proud in her last days) Literally all of the mainstream protest music recorded by Black artists in the late 1960s and early 1970s, like Sly and the Family Stone's "Thank You (Falletinme Be Mice Elf Agin)", The Temptations' "Ball of Confusion", Freda Payne's "Bring the Boys Home", Roberta Flack's "Compared to What?," Marvin Gaye's What's Going On, and Stevie Wonder's Innervisions, were indebted to "Mississippi Goddamn". Simone would record other Black protest anthems like Billy Taylor's "I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to be Free," which had been a long-time favorite of protest marchers, and "Why? (The King of Love is Dead)," her musical eulogy to Martin Luther King, Jr. But, as a Black woman, Simone also spoke to burgeoning Black feminist and Womanist movements.

Well before theorists discussed the realities of Black postmodern identities, Simone presented a portrait of Black femininity that spoke to various intersections of race, color, caste, sexuality and gender. I have little doubt that Nina Simone's "Four Women" was somewhere in the consciousnesses of Hortense Spillers and Kimberle Crenshaw, when they wrote their ground-breaking critical essays "Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: An American Grammar Book" (1987) and "Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics" (1989), respectively. In the song, Simone discusses the different though linked realities of Aunt Sarah ("my skin is black…my hair is wooly, my back is strong"), Saphronia ("my skin is yellow, my hair is long. Between two worlds I do belong"), Sweet Thing ("My skin is tan, my hair in fine, my hips invite you . . ."), and Peaches ("My skin is brown, my manner is tough, I'll kill the first mother I see"). The four women, represented what Patricia Hill-Collins would later describe in her book Black Feminist Thought (1990), as the "controlling images" of Black womanhood. Specifically mentioning Aunt Sarah, Saphronia, and Sweet Thing, Hill-Collins writes, "Simone explores Black women's objectification as the Other by invoking the pain these women actually feel."

Hip-hop artists Talib Kweli Greene (with Hi-Tek) paid tribute to Nina Simone's feminist vision on his recording Reflection Eternal (2000). Talib Kweli's "For Woman" updates the legacies of Aunt Sarah, Saphronia, Sweet Thing, and Peaches, taking into account the affects of Reaganism, crack cocaine addictions and the rampant spread of HIV infections. Michael Eric Dyson notes in his new book Open Mike: Reflections on Philosophy, Race, Sex, Culture and Religion that Kweli's version of the song "is a study in the narrative reconstruction of the fragmented elements of Black survival and a cautionary tale against the racial amnesia that destroys the fabric of Black collective memory." Dyson adds that "By baptizing Simone's sentiments in a hip-hop rhetorical form, Kweli raises new questions about the relation between history and contemporary social practice, and fuses the generational ambitions of two gifted artists."

The fact that a figure like Talib Kweli would be inclined to recover Simone's art was lost in much of the mainstream commentary about her death. In his obituary about Simone, Peter Keepnews, suggest that "In the 1970s her music fell out of fashion in the United States." (New York Times, 22 April 2003) But his comments disregard the whole generation of Black youth who were introduced to Simone via her classic "Young Gifted and Black" (1969). For many folks in the post-soul and hip-hop generation, their introduction to Simone music and songwriting came via hearing "Young, Gifted and Black", which became a mantra for the first generations to come of age after the Civil Rights era. As post-soul standard bearer Meshell Ndegeocello asserted in the Los Angeles Times, "Nina Simone was a messenger to our heart and conscience… No telling how many lives she touched with the simple affirmation of the beauty of being 'Young, Gifted and Black'."

The song, co-written with her musical director the late Weldon Irvine (a mentor to hip-hop artists like Talib Kweli and Mos Def), was meant as a tribute to her late friend Lorraine Hansberry who died of cancer in the mid-1960s. But the simple message of the song was so powerful, that is was immediately given tribute via the musical visions of Aretha Franklin and Donny Hathaway. Franklin's version anchors her 1972 recording Young, Gifted and Black, her most explicit political recording and Donny Hathaway's live version of the song, which appears on the posthumously released In Performance ranks among his best performances. (He also recorded a studio version on his debut Everything is Everything, 1969).

Ndegeocello's observations about Simone finds resonance in the music of some hip-hop generation artists. Besides his "deconstruction" of "Four Woman," Talib Kweli's "Get By" (from his current Quality) Simone's sampled voice (from her rendition of "Sinnerman", which at once references the West-African subtext of much of Simone's music and notions of Afro-religiosity ("Get By" is definitely on the "way out of no way" spiritual tip). In another example, Lauryn Hill consciously invoked Nina Simone's name on The Fugee's "Ready or Not" (The Score, 1996) in an effort to distinguish her womanist musings from the gangsterization of mainstream hip-hop In yet another example the famed reconstitutionists, MAW (Masters at Work's "Little" Louie Vega and Kenny "Dope" Gonzalez), re-mixed Simone's "See-Line Woman" last year (for the Verve//Remixed project, giving Simone a club hit in the process.

The interests in Simone's music by a generation of artists, largely born after her recording of "Mississippi Goddam" is just further evidence of the potency of her spirit. The title of Simone's autobiography, I Put a Spell on You paid tribute to her rendition of the Screaming Jay Hawkins composition. In Hawkins' hand the song was an uncomfortable (at least to Whites) acknowledgement of the "dark" powers of Black masculinity in a society where young White women, had been largely denied access to that masculinity. But in the hands of Simone, the song was transformed into a moment of high catharsis. Nina Simone put her own spell on us, one that serves those from the Delta to Dakar, and beyond, well into the future.

— June 4, 2003 (SeeingBlack.com)

Forty Years of Philadelphia Sound

Songwriters Leon Huff and Kenneth Gamble composed tunes with political messages for chart-toppers like the O’Jays and Billy Paul.

Forty Years of Philadelphia Sound
By Jim Morrison

When Leon Huff and Kenneth Gamble would huddle to write songs, they’d each bring a long, yellow legal pad of potential titles, sometimes 200 or 300 each. Huff would sit at the upright piano in his office with a tape recorder rolling. He would start playing and Gamble would riff lyrics. “Sometimes [the songs] would take 15 minutes to write and sometimes they’d take all day,” Gamble recalls. “The best ones came in ten, fifteen minutes.”

The two first ran into each other in an elevator in Philadelphia’s Schubert Building, where they were working as songwriters on separate floors. Soon after, they met at Huff’s Camden, New Jersey home on a Saturday and wrote six or seven songs the first day. “It was an easy, easy fit,” Gamble recalls.

During the 60s, they had moderate success with hits like “Expressway to Your Heart” by the Soul Survivors, “Cowboys to Girls” by the Intruders and “Only the Strong Survive” by Jerry Butler.

But they wanted to be more than writers and producers of regional hits who occasionally made a national mark. The opportunity came 40 years ago in 1971 when Columbia Records, hoping to finally break into the black music market, gave them a $75,000 advance to record singles and another $25,000 for a small number of albums. With the money, Gamble and Huff opened their own label, Philadelphia International Records (PIR).

As they sat down to compose following the deal, the Vietnam War raged on, conflicts over desegregation spread across the country and civil war ravaged Pakistan. “We were talking about the world and why people really can’t work together. All this confusion going on in the world,” Gamble says. “So we were talking about how you need something to bring people together.”

One of the titles on a legal pad had promise: “Love Train.” Huff fingered the piano. Gamble, the words guy, began singing, “People all over the world, join hands, form a love train.”

Within 15 minutes, he recalls, they had a song for the O’Jays, a group from Canton, Ohio, that had considered calling it quits after a couple of minor chart successes. Gamble and Huff had spotted them three years earlier opening a show at Harlem’s Apollo Theater. While Eddie Levert had been singing lead for the trio, they liked the interplay between Levert and Walter Williams they saw onstage. So for the first singles on PIR, they wrote songs featuring the two trading vocals. “I knew once we put our leads on Back Stabbers it had the potential to be something special, but I didn’t know to what magnitude,” Williams says.

Read the Full Essay @ Smithsonian.com

GSH: The Revolution Has Been Sampled, Remixed and Televised

The scope and relevance of Scott-Heron's work is nearly unparalleled. There isn't much his music & poetry hasn't covered and their aren't many artists who haven't covered him.

Gil Scott-Heron:
The Revolution Has Been Sampled, Remixed and Televised
by Mark Anthony Neal | TheLoop21

“The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” is easily the best known of Gil Scott Heron’s compositions. Written and recorded just as the most militant energy of the Civil Rights and Black Power era seemed to be waning, the song was a sharp and prescient view of the commodities of struggle and resistance—the place where revolutionary acts give way to market forces and prime time ratings.

In 1970, Scott-Heron couldn’t have imagined 24-hour news programming like CNN, let alone Al Jazeera, though it is fitting that as the revolution is indeed being televised from Tahrir Square in Egypt, that he is as healthy and as relevant as he has been in nearly two decades.

To be sure, Gil Scott Heron has paid a price for his truth-telling and his willingness to make politically relevant music accessible to all that would have it. Perhaps we’ll never fully know if the drug-addiction and other dependencies that have so often derailed his vision was part of some COINTELPRO inspired conspiracy to deny our most gifted and passionate, access to the thing that matters the most—their right minds (surely cheaper and neater than assassination).

Read the Full Essay @ theLoop21

Lessons For Wisconsin from the Flint Sit Down Strikes of 1936-37

special to NewBlackMan

Lessons for Wisconsin From the Flint Sit Down Strikes of 1936-37
by Mark Naison, Fordham University

With the state legislature in Wisconsion occupied and surrounded by thousands of state workers and their supporters, and with schools closed throughout the state because of teachers calling in sick, I cannot help but think of the greatest strike and building occupation in the history of the American labor movement- the Flint Sit Down Strikes of 1936-37. Though the Wisconsin struggle is being led by government workers, and the Flint Strikes involved workers involved in automobile production, both movements took place during the worst economic crisis of their era and were fighting for the same goal- collective bargaining rights for working people through a union of their own choosing- and were much more about dignity and respect than about income.

The Flint Strike, which involved the occupation of 9 General Motors automobile plants over a six week period, transformed the history of the industrial labor movement. During December of 1936, when the first GM plant was seized and occupied, the entire automobile and steel industries in the United States were union free. When the strike was finally settled, both General Motors and United States Steel agreed to bargain collectively with the CIO ( Congress of Industrial Organizations) unions seeking to organize their industries.

The Flint Strike , though it was precipitated by local conditions- a fierce unrelenting speed up on the GM assembly line , the involvement of a Ku Klux Klan like organization called the Black Legion in suppressing labor unrest in GM plants- was part of a national movement to win bargaining rights for industrial workers. As a result, the Flint workers were supported by the national leadership of the CIO-led by the formidable John L Lewis- as well as their own national union, and numerous leftwing organizations including the Communist Party. Though only GM workers actually occupied the factories, at key points in the strike, thousands of union workers were mobilized to come down from other cities to make sure that right wing Citizens Committees were unable to storm the plants, and that food and medical supplies were delivered to the striking workers. There were also doctors, nurses, lawyers, and journalists who came from all over the country to help the strikers. By the second week of the sit-down strikes, it was clear to everyone involved that this had become a truly national movement

The same dynamic must operate if the Wisconsin movement is to achieve its main goal- removal from the governor’s legislative program of any effort to weaken the bargaining rights of public workers in the state. Unions around the nation who face similar initiatives ( in Ohio, Tennessee and New Jersey) must send delegations to join the occupation and the protests and give whatever financial and legal support is necessary to teachers who are keeping the local schools closed. National union leaders who have a high public profile, people like Richard Trumka and Randy Weingarten, must not only come to Madison to offer their support of the movement, they must head straight to the White House to demand that President Obama and Democratic Congressional leaders come out aggressively in support of the Madison movement. Student social justice organizations must send delegations to Madison to join the thousands of students at the state’s public universities who have been a central part of this movement from the beginning.

This movement has to be approached as the single most important labor struggle in the United States in the 21st Century. If the governor destroys collective bargaining for public workers in Wisconsin, you can be sure that similar initiatives will succeed in other states. If he

Is forced to take attacks on collective bargaining off the table by the strength of the protest, it will reinvigorate not only the entire labor movement in the United States, but the movement to prevent Congress and state legislatures from destroying what little of a safety net we have in the United States of America

The stakes could not be higher. So if you are in a union or part of a progressive organization, press your leadership to send people to Wisconsin. Insist your elected representatives pass resolutions in support of the Wisconsin movement. And get ready to fight the same battle in your own state when the time comes

Solidarity Foreover!

***

Mark Naison is a Professor of African-American Studies and History at Fordham University and Director of Fordham's Urban Studies Program. He is the author of three books and over 100 articles on African-American History, urban history, and the history of sports. His most recent book White Boy: A Memoir, published in the Spring of 2002.

On an NFL Lockout and Inspiration From Egypt

DeMaurice Smith: On an NFL Lockout and Inspiration From Egypt
by Dave Zirin

There is no form of entertainment in this country more popular than football, and there is no one, save Barack Obama, being scrutinized more closely these days than DeMaurice Smith. Smith heads the National Football League's Players Association—a union that’s being threatened with being locked out unless players give back substantial amounts in wages and agree to lengthen the season to eighteen games. NFL players make large sums of money but risk a lifetime of physical debilitation and the average career lasts only three and a half years. Owners are banking on the fact that players, with their short window to make money, will cave to every demand. Smith is banking on something bigger: a sense of history, sacrifice and community that's greater than sports.

I spoke with Smith last Friday, the day after NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell walked away from the table during negotiations. I asked Smith, on a scale of one to ten, whether he felt there would be a lockout. “On a scale of one to ten, it's still fourteen," he said. "We’re preparing our guys for the worst, we’re hoping for the best. I’m going to keep negotiating. We’ve got our guys on standby right now to be virtually anywhere in the country whenever they want to talk. That’s the way we’re going to roll. I’ve told them that we’re going to negotiate day and night until we get it done, but it takes two.”

Smith is negotiating with—or trying to negotiate with—some of the most powerful, politically connected corporate actors in the United States. Their reach truly inspires awe. When the NFLPA produced a television ad in an effort to garner fan support, the networks first agreed and then refused to air it, presumably after pressure exerted by the league. DeMaurice Smith deemed the censorship “stunning.”

You might think, faced with such power, this would make him pessimistic about the prospects for players, but Smith finds himself inspired by events far removed from the world of football.

“You know,” he said, “we watched things unfold in a far-off country where a lot of the discussion preceding the protests was purely social media, people connecting. We have an ability to get our ‘let us play’ ad out. We know that anybody listening can type in ‘let us play’ and that ad will pop up and, frankly, if networks want to make a decision to boycott us, keep us off, those are the kind of things that get me fired up and let me know that I’m on the right side of right.”

Read the Full Essay @ The Nation

The Black Panther Party and the Tea Party

The Black Panther Party and the Tea Party
TheEbruTV | February 14, 2011

On this Fresh Outlook, we'll shed some light on two organizations on the very opposite ends of the political spectrum: the Black Panthers and the Tea Party. It might be surprising to some, to mention the two within the same sentence. We'll talk about their legacies and possible similarities in how these two movements have impacted broader American culture.

Studio Guests:

Dr. Yohuru Williams teaches history at Fairfield University. He is also the author of "Black Politics/White Power: Civil Rights, Black Power and Black Panthers in New Haven," among other books.

Kate Zernike is a national correspondent for The New York Times and the author of "Boiling Mad: Inside Tea Party America.

Charles Payne Named CEO of Chicago Public Schools

'Left of Black': Episode #21 featuring Carrie Mae Weems and Thabiti Lewis

Left of Black #21
w/Carrie Mae Weems and Thabiti Lewis
February 7, 2011

In episode # 21 of the weekly webcast Left of Black, host Mark Anthony Neal welcomes artist “extraordinaire” Carrie Mae Weems to the Left of Black studio in the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke University. Later he is joined by Professor Thabiti Lewis (via Skype), author of the new book Ballers of the New School: Race and Sports in America (Third World Press).

→Carrie Mae Weems is an award winning photographer and artist. Her photographs, films, and videos have been displayed in over 50 exhibitions in the United States and abroad and focus on serious issues that face African Americans today, such as racism, gender relations, politics, and personal identity. She is perhaps most well known for her “The Kitchen Table Series” (1990) and recently initiated a public art campaign to address gun violence in Black and Brown communities in Syracuse, New York.

→Thabiti Lewis Associate Professor of English at Washington State University Vancouver. He has published widely in the areas of African American literature, African American Studies, and sport and race. His areas of teaching are 20th century American literature, African American literature, Race and Cultural Studies, and Popular Culture. Dr. Lewis has worked as a journalist, talk radio host, and as an editor. His latest book is Ballers of the New School: Race and Sports in America.

***

Left of Black is a weekly Webcast hosted by Mark Anthony Neal and produced in collaboration with the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke University.

NP: Eric Clapton--"Old Love" (Live)

Ashford and Simpson: The Soundtrack to Black Love

Ashford and Simpson: The Soundtrack to Black Love

by Mark Anthony Neal

Some forty-plus years after it’s release, Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” may be the most recognizable Soul duet ever recorded.  It’s easy to think that the song’s timelessness has every thing to do with the musical bond that Gaye and Terrell shared, in the studio and on stage, but in reality Terrell recorded her vocals for the songs months before Gaye did; The duo were not in the studio together for the recording of the song.

While Gaye and Terrell did find studio magic on tracks like “Ain’t Nothing But the Real Thing,” “You’re All I Need to Get By,” and “Your Precious Love,”  the one constant on those recordings was the song-writing and production team of Nick Ashford and Valerie Simpson.  The duo was in their early twenties when Motown head Berry Gordy entrusted them with some of the label’s marquee acts, begining a more than 40-year career, where their songs, have served as the soundtrack to Black love.

Valerie Simpson was 17 and Nick Ashford 21, when they first met at White Rock Baptist Church in Harlem in 1963.  While they were musically drawn to each other—Simpson, a trained pianist composes the music and Ashford provides the lyrics—it would be some time before the two connected romantically; They were more than a decade into their professional partnership, when they finally married in 1974.

Hungry for the kind of Brill Building fame that marked the New York songwriting scene in the 1960s, Ashford and Simpson starting writing songs for the Wand/Scepter label.  They recorded their first song, “I’ll Find You” in 1964 as “Valerie and Nick” on the Glover label.  Their big break though, would come two years later, from an unlikely source; when Ray Charles recorded the duo’s “Let’s Go Get Stoned”—as in high—it was his first #1 R&B song in four years.  The song caught the attention of Gordy, who signed Ashford and Simpson as songwriters.

The initial hits the duo wrote for Gaye and Terrell in 1967, like “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” and “Your Precious Love” were actually produced by Johnny Bristol and Harvey Fuqua.  It would another year until Gordy allowed Ashford and Simpson take control behind the boards, creating and producing classic tracks like “You’re All I Need to Get By” and “Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing.” 

Gordy came to trust Ashford and Simpson’s song writing and production skills so much that he charged them with producing Diana Ross’s first post-Supreme’s solo albums.  Ross’s first solo album Diana Ross, produced two of her signature tunes, “Reach Out and Touch (Somebody’s Hand)”  and her six-minute rendition of “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.”  Ashford and Simpson clashed with Gordy over “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” as the label head preferred the song to open with a chorus, as opposed to the song-writers’ vision, where the chorus doesn’t appear until four minutes into the song.

Perhaps at the root of the developing tensions between Ashford and Simpson and Motown, was their desire to be artists in their own right.  Nevertheless Simpson recorded two well received, though under promoted, solo albums for Motown, Exposed (1971) and Valarie Simpson (1972).  Simpson also appears on Quincy Jones Gula Matari (1970), where she sings lead on “Bridge Over Troubled Water” and Smackwater Jack (1971)

When Ashford and Simpson appear on Ells Hazlip’s legendary Soul! in October of 1972, they talk of a duet recording they were working on, covering the songs they had written for others.  Sadly that album remains in a can at Universal, and when the duo’s contract was up with Motown in 1973, they signed a deal with Warner Brothers as Ashford and Simpson.

Beginning with I Wanna Be Selfish (1974) , Ashford and Simpson released seven studio albums for Warner Brothers including the brilliant So So Satisfied (1977), which featured the proto-Disco classic “Over and Over” which was covered the same year by Sylvester.  Even as Ashford and Simpson were finding moderate success at Warner Brothers, Gordy still reached out to them to produce two albums for The Dynamic Superiors, most well known for the sweet ballad  “Shoe Shoe Shine” and their flamboyant and out lead singer, the late Tony Washington.

By the time Ashford and Simpson finally have a major commercial breakthrough with Is It Still Good To You (1978) and the single “It Seems To Hang,” they were in top demand as producers lending their talents to projects by Teddy Pendergrass, Diana Ross’s comeback The Boss (1979) and most famously “I’m Every Woman” which was featured on Chaka Khan’s first solo release in 1978.  Earlier in her career, Khan sang lead on Rufus’ cover of Simpson’s “Keep It Comin.”  They also contributed the title track to Quincy Jones’ Sounds…And Stuff Like That (1978), where Khan and Simpson share lead vocals.

The decade of the 1970s closed with Ashford and Simpson having their most successful single, “Found a Cure” which married the gospel harmonies that they perfected a in the early 1960s at White Rock Baptist Church with the pulsating rhythms of the Disco.  But Ashford and Simpson’s biggest success was still in front of them, after they signed with Capitol Records in 1982. 

Their first album for Capital was a concept album called Street Opera, which dealt with the struggles of love and money, perfectly pitched for the period’s economic recession.  Despite having written big time hits for many legendary acts, it wasn’t until 1984’s “Solid” that Ashford and Simpson earned their first #1 R&B hit and top-20 pop hit—twenty years after they recorded their first single.  The song came back into favor three years ago, when they recorded a new version in support of Barack Obama (“solid as Barack’).

Given the continued influence of those original Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell recordings, it’s hard to imagine Black romance over the last forty-five years without the compositions of Ashford and Simpson playing in the background.  As much as Marvin and Tammi set the bar for musical duets, Ashford and Simpson set an even higher bar with regards to song craft and emotion. More amazing than their thirty-five-plus years of marriage is that 45-years of musical partnership—a partnership that earned them induction in the Song Writer’s Hall of Fame in 2002.

Perhaps the best evidence of the value of Ashford and Simpson’s music was their securing of “Pullman Bonds” in 1998, where financier David Pullman guaranteed the duo eight figures drawn from future royalties on their 250-song catalogue.  A reminder perhaps that good music is timeless, and for Ashford and Simpson, nothing has been more timeless that Black love and romance.

LOS ANGELES: Hate On Valentine's Day

special to NewBlackMan

LOS ANGELES: Hate On Valentine's Day
by Kevin Powell

Those of you who know me or my work know that I am anti- all forms of hatred and bigotry, be it racism, anti-Semitism, sexism, classism, homophobia, religious intolerance, or a reckless disregard for the disabled or handicapped. That at this stage in my life, and for the rest of my life, I am a firm believer in nonviolence, love, and forgiveness, even of those who have wronged us in some way. That, as evidenced by my life journey as an activist, writer, and public speaker, I truly do love all people. And mean it—

Nor do I believe in ever viewing myself solely as a victim these days, either, because of my race, or my past class background of poverty. I am with bringing people together, with our communicating with each other through our differences, with our healing that which separates us due to our differences, whenever and however possible.

So it takes a lot for me to write a blog asking people not to support a business. But in the early morning of February 14, 2011, after leaving an amazing post-Grammy party with two female friends, we waited for the available shuttle service to get us from the top of the canyon to the middle of it where we and other party attendees had to park our vehicles.

We remembered the long walk from there to the event and opted to use the shuttle service one of the security personnel suggested we wait for. We were under the assumption the shuttle van would take us and other passengers to wherever our cars were parked along the canyon route. Instead the driver, a very young man, did not announce until the van was in motion that he would not stop until we were at the Beverly Hilton Hotel (fyi, I am not staying at that hotel, but one in West Hollywood). This meant many of the passengers, including the three of us, would have to pay for taxis to get to our cars back in the canyon.

When we got to the hotel's parking lot, we asked the driver if he could take us back up the hill, since he was returning to get more passengers anyhow, so we could retrieve our car. He refused. I attempted to reason with the driver but he would not budge. At that moment a tall (about six feet two inches) man, with thick jet-black hair combed backwards and wearing all black, stepped to the shuttle van's driver's door, spoke in a language I did not understand, then rudely told the two women and I that he was the owner of the company, that we had to get out of the van, that there would be no ride back up the canyon route. I attempted to explain our situation to this gentleman, who said he was the owner of the company, but he cut me off repeatedly, and threatened to physically remove and harm me if I did not get out. Not once did I raise my voice, curse, or disrespect this man in any way. He went a step further, coming around to the passenger side once the women were already out, saying that I "should go back to the jungle" (a reference to one of L.A.'s poorest and most violent communities of color), that he didn't like my people, and that he was a real African (I would learn later the man is from Tunisia, the northernmost country in Africa and is essentially an African Arab). It did not matter who or what I was, not that I am into status or anything of the sort. But it was clear this man had a deep disdain for Black people, and he had immediately reduced me, in his mind, to the worst imaginable stereotypes without even so much as allowing me to complete a full sentence.

Thus in the matter of just a couple of minutes I was physically threatened and racially insulted a few times as my women friends witnessed very clearly. Still, no raising of my voice, cursing, or disrespect towards this man. I told him I was going to call the police to deal with this matter and his hyper-masculine attitude kicked in with the response "I don't care, call them." So I did. And about 15 minutes later two Los Angeles-area officers, a female cop and a male cop, and I were walking from the lobby of the Beverly Hills Hilton to the parking lot to have a talk with this gentleman. I did this because I wanted to obtain, with the help of the officers, his name and the name of his company:


Moncef Said Abbou
President, M&S Valet Parking
Los Angeles, CA
www.msvaletparking.com


And because it was my hope that with the police officers there as mediators, I would not need to file a complaint or write a blog, even. But Mr. Abbou could barely contain his venom and arrogance even in the presence of the police officers: he lied to the male cop who pulled him aside about what happened, and walked away and returned to his car when the officers asked him to listen to what I had to say one final time. This from an individual who runs a business that is completely dependent on its interactions with other human beings. And this behavior to a person, me, who will always have a need to hire or refer companies like his, since I do business in Los Angeles, which is quite a bit.

According to its company website, M&S Valet Parking provides these services: parking management, valet parking services, and shuttle service. And its very prominent quote reads

"We pride ourselves on upholding the highest standards of customer service and efficiency."

Yet even with the police present the man was rude, because he knew the police could not do anything to him other than say I could file a civil complaint against his business. And I can tell people like you, who frequently rent or lease these types of companies in Los Angeles (or know people and companies who do) that you should not support such a company or its owner any further. I am not seeking nor want an apology. And I’ve already forgiven the man in my mind and heart. But if he talked to me in this manner, imagine how many past, or future, passengers have experienced similar behavior from this gentleman because of his bigotry and lack of humanity.

Furthermore, as you can see, I am writing this piece in the wee hours of the morning, because the incident occurred around 4AM PST.

So I have not gotten to sleep as yet. But I feel very strongly that people who express this kind of hatred toward another human being should be exposed and their businesses should not be supported. I happen to be a writer, a public speaker, and a very well-connected political person, so I have a platform. But imagine the people who do not.

And outside my hometown of New York City, Los Angeles is one of the most culturally diverse communities in America. Like every other American city I know L.A. has its share of racial divides and prejudices, in spite of its great multiculturalism, and it is, like New York, still very segregated in many ways. But I think the least we can expect after a Los Angeles-Hollywood awards ceremony such as the Grammys, where people from varied backgrounds perform and are honored (with the Grammys creatively connecting artists who usually do not share the same stage), is a basic level of respect and civility by companies shuttling us from one place to another.

This incident is especially ironic for me for a few reasons. One, long before the party my day had begun with my very first visit to Los Angeles’ Agape International Spiritual Center, a church, led by the brilliant Rev. Michael Beckwith, famous for its message of love, inclusion, and diversity. And that is exactly what I received from the service on this day, and from a short private meeting with Rev. Beckwith afterwards. Indeed, he talked about people like me, who he calls “social ministers,” who must have consistent spiritual paths given all the slings and arrows we deal with in our daily interactions with people, as activists, as community leaders, as agents for change.

I thought of Dr. Beckwith and Agape, for sure, as Mr. Abbou was insulting me inside and outside of his van. I thought, in a very quick instance, all I had to lose if I responded with the same kind of ugliness being hurled my way. I thought of Egypt, another nation with African Arabs, one where Mr. Abbou could have easily been from, and one that many Americans, including Black Americans, are very much supporting at this time of change. And I thought, later, how what transpired between Mr. Abbou and I is so remarkably similar to what far too many Black males, myself included, have experienced from Middle Eastern or African Arab cab, car, and shuttle drivers in my beloved New York City. That is the reason, in fact, so many years ago, I made a conscious decision to rarely take yellow cabs in New York, to just roll with private car service when necessary, because who is going to tolerate being humiliated, disrespected, lied to and lied on, simply because of someone else’s fear and ignorance? Suffice to say, I will never use a shuttle service in Los Angeles again—

And this sort of thing will go on if we allow it to go on, if we do not use our individual and collective voices to say enough, once and for all, and to say, loudly, ain’t I a human, too?

***

Kevin Powell is a nationally acclaimed public speaker, activist, and the award-winning author or editor of 10 books. He resides in New York City, the borough of Brooklyn, and was a 2010 Democratic candidate for Congress there. Follow him on Twitter @kevin_powell

“ChamberSoul” Cellist/Singer-Songwriter Shana Tucker Celebrates Release of 'Shine' in Concert w/a Carolina Chocolate Drop

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: February 14, 2011
Contact: Shana Tucker
919-272-0482; shana@shanatucker.com

“ChamberSoul” Cellist/Singer-Songwriter Shana Tucker Celebrates Fan-Funded Debut CD in Concert; Grammy-winning Folk Artist to Sit In

DURHAM, NC. Getting by with a little help from her fans AND friends: In sixty days, cellist/singer-songwriter Shana Tucker raised over $5000 through IndieGoGo.com to independently produce her debut CD, SHiNE, by simply asking fans if they would pre-purchase the CD in exchange for named liner note credits, t-shirts, ringtones, and house concerts. On Thursday, February 24 at 7:30 PM at the Reality Center in downtown Durham, Shana plans to deliver the independently-released goods, complete with a full-length, full-band performance of SHiNE by some of the most talented musicians the Triangle area has to offer including Grammy-winning Justin Robinson (of the Carolina Chocolate Drops).

“The caliber of musicianship in this area is incredible,” Shana, a NY transplant, observes. “The guys who are playing on this concert are ridiculously talented…I’m blessed to have them on both my recording, and also to share the stage for my release concert.” The band includes Chris Boerner (The Foreign Exchange, Mosadi, The Proclivities), Pete Kimosh (Orquesta GarDel, The Beast), Grant Osborne (John Brown Quintet, Jeanne Jolly), and Josh Stohl (Justin Robinson and the Mary Annettes), who also contributed to the 10-track recording of Shana’s original tunes. “Each musician brings a ‘uniqueness’ to the table. They all know each other, have played together at some point…the synergy they have is something special,” Shana says, quietly nodding her approval. This synergy will complement Shana’s self-defined “ChamberSoul” musical style – a sultry pastiche of acoustic pop and soulful, jazz-influenced contemporary folk.

The evening of the 24th will not be without at least one delightful surprise: Justin Robinson, of the Grammy award-winning Carolina Chocolate Drops (Best Traditional Folk Album), will be in the house to perform a duet with Shana. Well-acquainted with independent artistry from his own pre-major record label days with the Drops, and more recently with his band, the Mary Annettes, Robinson offered to show his support by sharing the stage for a brief moment with Shana during her debut performance. “We’re going to do something unexpected, fun, charming and totally funky…something totally Durham-esque,” remarked Shana about the tunes she and Robinson will be performing together. “It’s an honor and a treat to be able to perform and collaborate with Justin.”

The world of self-produced/self-released CD projects has changed considerably for independent artists in recent years. For Shana, her journey began on September 1, 2010, when she launched her fan-funded “SHiNE Project” through IndieGoGo.com. Her goal was simple: “Raise $5000 in sixty days in order to produce a high-quality CD at a professional recording studio and to pay my musicians as close to what they’re worth as I can afford”. By the campaign’s completion (October 31st), total funds raised were $5370 (total funds raised to-date: $7370). The tagline for the campaign aptly summarized the sentiment: “YOU are my RECORD LABEL! Independent Artist releases debut CD with the help of her fans.” By inviting fans to participate on the ground level, and receive perks for doing so (most popular: named CD liner note credits), Shana ensured a long-term, die-hard fan support system for herself, a heightened level of established trust amongst her mailing list, and a new model for engaging her fans throughout the inception-production-delivery life cycle of the recording project.

Shana Tucker – SHiNE CD Release Concert |
Thursday, February 24, 2011 at 7:30 PM
The Reality Center, 916 Lamond Avenue, Durham, NC 27701
919-688-7776 | www.realityministries.org

Tickets are $12 in advance; $15 day of show. Youth tickets are $5. Guests will receive a complimentary SHiNE CD with their ticket purchase. Orders can be placed online at www.shanatucker.com or through Brown Paper Tickets, www.brownpapertickets.com/event/144970.

For music, photos, videos and more information about Shana Tucker and SHiNE, visit www.shanatucker.com.

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