Outside the Box

Nas and Jay together. Gotta love it.

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 16:05:45 -0500

Nas and Jay together. Gotta love it.

Dax @ CCNY's Third Annual "Is Hip Hop History?" Conference

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 14:52:58 -0500

Nas, Jay-Z ‘Battle’ Examined at CCNY Hip Hop Conference

Dax-Devlon Ross (top) and Pete Rock are keynote speakers for the Third Annual “Is Hip Hip History?” conference, February 24 - 25 at the Center for Worker Education.

Technology and the deejay, the battle between rappers Nas and Jay-Z, B-girls in a male dominated hip-hop world and a retrospective on graffiti are among the issues to be addressed during the third annual “Is Hip Hop History?” conference. Presented by The City College of New York’s Division of Interdisciplinary Studies, the conference runs February 24-25 at the Center for Worker Education, seventh floor, 25 Broadway, New York.

“Hip hop pedagogy has become an established entity in academia,” said Warren Orange, a co-organizer of the conference. “Since 2009, our conference has provided a forum that features the work of researchers, hip hop industry practitioners, artists and working adult students. This year, the dialogue will be centered on “the battle” as a classic hip-hop theme, its own popular dialectics.”

The event, which is part of a hip-hop educational program available to students in the Division, is expected to draw approximately 200 participants. It is also part of City College’s celebration of Black History Month. Other hip-hop offerings include “History, Culture and Politics of Hip Hop,” a class taught by Mr. Orange during the spring 2012 semester that studies hip-hop’s impact on popular culture in the United States.

“We are looking to extend our vision of hip-hop pedagogy at CCNY, as other prestigious universities have done in recent years,” said Elena Romero, the other conference co-organizer. “We wish to bridge gulfs of race, class and age that often threaten thoughtful considerations of this relatively new cultural genre. We also intend that this stage serve as a bridge connecting the disciplinary lens of African American history and culture with that of American urban development.”

Mr. Orange and Ms. Romero are both academic advisers and lecturers with the Division of Interdisciplinary Studies.

Legendary deejay and producer Pete Rock will serve as keynote speaker for the conference’s opening reception. He is a pioneer in fusing jazz, funk and soul into hip-hop, and he laid down the blueprint for beautiful soulful production in the genre. He also revolutionized rap production through groundbreaking studio wizardry and by making remixes matter more than the original songs while establishing ad-libs as a standard recording asset.

Dax-Devlon Ross, author of “The Nightmare and the Dream: Nas, Jay-Z and the History of Conflict in African-American Culture.” will serve as keynote speaker the second day. His book argues that the battle between Nas and Jay-Z at the turn of the millennium was the latest in a long line of creative conflicts between complex, oppositional African-American icons. It situates the philosophy and imagery of these two hip-hop icons within a tradition of rivalry and explains how and why their truce can be read as a pivotal generational moment that could and should be utilized as a teachable moment.

Other conference notables include B-Girl Rokafella and legendary videographer and photographer Henry Chalfant. Both will host Q & A’s following the presentation of their respective films, “All the Ladies Say” and “Style Wars.”

Admission to the conference for the general public is $20 for one day or $30 for both days; for students with a valid college I.D. the fee is $10 per day. The City College Office of the President and Office of the Dean of the Division of Interdisciplinary Studies at the Center for Worker Education have provided support for the conference. Additional conference information »

CWE Contact: Elena Romero, 212-925-6625 , ext. 258, eromero@ccny.cuny.edu.

Surveillance Footage of NYPD Kicking Door to Kill Unarmed 18...

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 09:06:32 -0500

Surveillance Footage of NYPD Kicking Door to Kill Unarmed 18 Year-Old

Classic Material: Really Rich Russian Says He'll Give (Almost) All Away

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 18:00:21 -0500

New Jersey Nets owner, Mikhail Prokhorov, is Russia’s third- richest man and Vladamir Putin’s opponent in Russia’s increasingly rough and tumble presidential race. Prokhorov recently said that he will give $17 billion of his $18 billion fortune to charity if he wins the presidency next month.

“I’ll sell everything, all my assets when I become president and donate almost all of the money to charity,” Prokhorov said during a talk show with fellow candidate Vladimir Zhirinovsky.

Prokorohov went on to say that he would only retain $1 billion for personal expenses after leaving office. “I’ll need something to live on,” Prokhorov, 46, said.

Classic Material

The Latest Casualty of the Stop and Frisk Regime

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 08:10:00 -0500

By Dax-Devlon Ross

Two days ago I was leaving an event at a Harlem youth organization when I came face to face with the tail end of an encounter between the police and a teenager. As I approached the corner one plain clothes cop appeared to be issuing a final statement/warning to the teenager in question while two others hovered outside of an unmarked car parked at a reckless angle suggesting they’d rolled up on the kid jump-out style. My heart quickened. I braced myself. I had no ideas or plans but I felt I needed to be ready. Ready to intervene. Ready to observe. Ready to be frisked myself.

What GOP Race Baiting Really Means (and What Should be Done About It)

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 13:59:00 -0500

By Dax-Devlon Ross

In a recent op-ed NYT columnist David Brooks argues that an increasingly divided nation needs a national service program that would “force members of the upper tribe and the lower tribe to live together, if only for a few years.” In addition to the increased accessed to wealth, Brooks hints at a civilizing effect that this interaction can have on the lower tribe. He doesn’t say what the upper tribe is supposed to get out of the deal but he does end the piece by suggesting forced mixing would create a “better elite and a better mass.”

I like Brooks. I think he is fair and thoughtful. I enjoy reading him. In this instance I think he was angling for something daring but ultimately skirted around the thornier issue that an integrated society aims to interrupt—the misguided beliefs that those in the upper tribe have about themselves and those in the lower tribe, and the way those beliefs coupled with the concentration of wealth and power in the elite’s hands reinforces the division and inequity that maintains a caste system based largely on race.

That’s a mouth full; I know.

Forced diversity has a bad rap in this country. Its detractors rile up their base with hot-button terms like lowered standards, quotas, reverse discrimination, government interventionism and social engineering. Its advocates have traditionally defended diversity with shaky moral arguments rooted in equality, justice and rights. For the record, diversity for the sake of diversity is dangerous. If done just to meet a quota or appease a group, it’ll likely a remain superficial, fringe project that will ultimately confirm the deep-seeded prejudices of its detractors. Moreover, feigned efforts belittle and undermine the real value of diversity, which is finally beginning to emerge. In one broad study of 250 U.S. companies, increased diversity was shown to improve business performance across the board. In one of the most widely circulated diversity experiments to date, researchers at Tufts found that diverse juries take longer to deliberate, weigh more issues and come to different conclusions than all-white juries. The most important conclusion social scientists have drawn thus far is that having diversity in the room influences the way people think and ultimately decide, perhaps even unconsciously.

In the last six months alone the Obama administration has taken major steps to inject this new understanding of diversity’s importance into our body politic. Last August he signed an executive order requiring federal agencies to advance diversity in the workplace. “We will only succeed in our critical mission with a workforce that hails from, represents and is connected to the needs of every American community,” the director of the Office of Personnel Management said in a statement accompanying the order. This past December the administration issued new diversity guidelines to school districts and post-secondary institutions. School districts can now shape policies and school locations to achieve a better racial mix. In a sharp reversal of the Bush administration’s “race neutral” policy, colleges and universities can now “consider race to further the compelling interest of achieving diversity.” In a statement coinciding with the new guidelines, Attorney General Eric Holder said, “Diverse learning environments promote development of analytical skills, dismantle stereotypes and prepare students to succeed in an increasingly interconnected world.”

Both statements point to a rebranding effort on the administration’s part. Diversity is no longer being spoken of or acted upon as an initiative to redress past injustices and level the playing field. It’s now being positioned as a key feature of the country’s future prospects. Predictably, both moves were met with criticism from the far right and apathy from the far left.

I’ve been thinking about these diversity initiatives in light of the latest round of racial humbuggery foaming up in the Republican primaries. I’d like to say I’m shocked but I know better. Black folks routinely get blamed for the country’s problems. It’s just the way things work here. I would argue that this episode of black bashing began with Rick Perry’s feckless remarks about the death penalty in early September. His shortcomings as a candidate aside, the audience’s applause following his grossly mean-spirited statements sent a clear message to viewers and to the rest of the field. It was open season on minorities of any kind and the candidate who tapped into the anger stood the best chance of winning that support. In the weeks that followed a gay soldier was booed by an audience of Republican supporters and Newt Gingrich publicly ridiculed the Occupy Movement. It was only a matter of time before black folks got their comeuppance.

I’m encouraged by the broad spectrum of Americans who’ve stepped up to discredit and denounce racism in the past few weeks. I’m equally encouraged that the remarks have inspired many in my Facebook community to take an active interest in the election. But being shocked and appalled by the racism in our country isn’t enough anymore. It doesn’t get to the heart of the matter. The real issue, as I see it, is that candidates are incredibly inept, inarticulate and flat out ignorant when it comes to diversity. These otherwise articulate men don’t have the slightest clue that diversity is no longer a luxury but a necessity. Ron Paul sees civil rights legislation as an affront to American values. Rick Santorum isn’t aware of the existence of a vast black middle class that defies his welfare stereotype. Newt Gingrich’s problems are twofold. He thinks black people are the only folks offended by his disparaging remarks and that arguing his case against welfare before the NAACP is a sufficient solution. As for Mitt Romney, as governor of Massachusetts he stealthily repealed the state’s 20 year-old affirmative action policy during a summer recess. (In his first official act as Romney’s successor, Deval Patrick, reinstated the state’s affirmative action policy.) Each of these actions illustrates a clumsy disregard for diversity that has become the hallmark of the Republican Party.

Back in 2007 Al Sharpton invited Fox personality Bill O’Reilly to dinner at a famous soul food restaurant in Harlem. Afterward, O’Reilly gushed about his night on the town. “I couldn’t get over the fact that there was no difference between Sylvia’s restaurant and any other restaurant in New York City,” he said on his radio show. “I mean, it was exactly the same, even though it’s run by blacks, primarily black patronship.” As far as I can tell he honestly believed he was paying a compliment. O’Reilly’s statements demonstrate the quintessence of the “upper tribe” privilege coursing through the GOP primaries. A white man of a certain age and class can be a credible and highly compensated expert on American politics without any basic knowledge or experience whatsoever with cultures and viewpoints other than his own.

I don’t expect private citizens to feel comfortable talking about or dealing with diverse groups of people. As a nation we’re not there yet. That work is being done incrementally. But I know I’m not asking too much of a potential commander in chief to 1) understand the value of diversity to the nation as a whole and 2) place a premium on having diverse people around him or her in key decision-making roles because doing so improves the administration of government.

As I see it, the problem – the barrier – is that Brooks’ upper tribe has always seen its role in relation to the lower tribe as the civilizer, uplifter, benefactor and gatekeeper. It has rarely appreciated the work it needs to do to prepare for a multihued future or what it can learn from views and values informed by a different set of experiences. The business community is slowly learning this because global markets demand it. Colleges and universities are slowly learning this because competition for talent is stiff and prospective students and faculty are looking for diversity. The 2008 election notwithstanding, national politics remains one of the last visible strongholds of sameness. An astounding 96 percent of the U.S. Senate is white and 83 percent is male. The House is similarly homogeneous. In and of themselves racial and gender uniformity should not preclude good, fair governance. But when you combine these characteristics with the extreme concentrations of wealth in congress, a dispiriting image begins to emerge. Accordingly, it should come as no surprise that Washington appears broken to outsiders. When sameness reigns, change wanes.

From the moment it took office, the Obama administration has by far been the most ethnically diverse administration the nation has ever known. It has striven to nominate diverse individuals to the federal bench and advance the rights of Americans with disabilities, gay and lesbian soldiers and others. It has been, without question and despite its imperfections, a shelter in the storm. Moving forward diversity at all levels and in all forms has to be part of the national vetting process. It is intertwined with foreign policy, immigration and the economy. When we’re talking about diplomacy, we’re talking about how we engage diverse viewpoints. When we’re talking about immigration, we’re talking about who has a legitimate stake in this country. When we’re talking about jobs and unemployment we’re talking about who gets an education, who gets an opportunity, who gets a promotion—all of which have historically been diversity issues. We’re also talking about who bothers pursuing an education, a job and a promotion. People try harder when they feel they’ve got a fair shot. As it stands, the current Republican field has fumbled the diversity ball so badly and habitually at every turn that if this was a football game all of them would be sitting on the sidelines, where they belong.

Has Optimism Hurt Obama?

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 00:44:00 -0500

By Dax-Devlon Ross

“When the going gets tough,” neuroscientist Tali Sharot writes in her 2011 book The Optimism Bias, “we desperately start searching for the silver lining.” Sharot believes that optimism bias — “the inclination to overestimate the likelihood of encountering positive events in the future and to underestimate the likelihood of experiencing negative events” — leads us to miscalculate our decisions. These miscalculations in turn cause us to regret our decisions. After reading Sharot’s book I thought about President Obama. Had he been hurt by the optimism we felt when he took office three years ago?

In the fall of 2008 Americans were enduring an unprecedented bout of public despair. The economy was tanking, two wars were spiraling, the environment was collapsing and the American people (not to mention people all over the globe) were in desperate need of a glimmer of light. We found it in Barack Obama. He inspired us. He comforted us. He even gave us reason to feel proud to be Americans. In a CBS/NY Times poll published less than a month before the ‘08 election, a record low 7% of Americans said the country was “going in the right direction.” As President-elect Obama prepared to take office three months later, another CBS/NYT poll revealed that 80% of Americans were optimistic about the next four years with him in office, 68% felt he would be a better-than-average president, 71% believed the economy would improve during his first year in office, and 61% said the country would be better in shape in five years. A week after Obama finished his first 100 days in office the CBS/NYT poll returned to Americans with the same question it asked in late 2008. This time around 41 percent said the country was headed in the right direction—a 34% gain in six months. Substantively speaking little had changed. We were still in a recession. The wars were still going on. And yet the public mood was irrefutably different.

The optimism was unprecedented and, as we would come to discover, short-lived. By November 2009, the president’s approval ratings had slid from 66% to 52%. His 38% approval rating this past fall was 12 points below the average for presidents at the same juncture across time. And as Obama’s approval ratings receded, so too did the wave of optimism that had swept him into office. When a CNN/ORC poll asked Americans how well they thought things would be going in the country at the end of 2009, 2010 and 2011, respondents replied with increased negativity each year. The 36% who said “badly” in 2009 crept up to 42% in 2010 and 55% this past fall. Similarly, an annual Gallup Poll of Americans’ optimism about the future for youth plummeted from 59% two months after Mr. Obama took office to a record low 44% two years later.

What’s curious is that even as Obama’s numbers fell, Americans’ optimism about their personal fortunes remained strong and steady. An AP-GFK poll released in December 2011 reported that 78% of Americans were optimistic for the upcoming year, a figure wholly consistent with what the CNN/ORC poll found when it asked respondents how well things are going today for them personally. In every single poll from 2009 through 2011 an impressive 78% reported “Fairly well” or “Very well”.

Does this mean we chose poorly? That Obama has been a disappointment? Or does it beg a different question: Did we underestimate the damage and overestimate his ability to fix it overnight?

Sharot would argue that, in general, we harbor positive illusions about ourselves and our lives. The economy may be in free fall, but the future has better plans for us. In fact, among those surveyed by Gallup about the dismal future of youth, high-income earners — those with presumably the most wealth and access — were the most pessimistic. According to Sharot, this is precisely how optimism bias operates. Public pessimism feeds our sense of exceptionalism relative to others which in turn feeds our optimism about our own lives. And so and so forth.

I would argue that the collision of social, historical, and economic forces that brought that particular moment into being are rare. The optimism that carried Obama into office wasn’t just biased toward a rosy future; it was a statistical outlier. And once that crisis was averted, order generally restored, and our markets substantially stabilized, public pessimism didn’t just recover; it recoiled with a vengeance. And its main target was the man whose very image was at one point synonymous with hope.

It’s been said that Americans are suffering from Obama fatigue. I don’t buy it. What we’re suffering from is optimism withdrawal. Now that the president’s mere presence doesn’t provide the same “high” anymore, we sulk, we groan, we nitpick, we even picket. I remember thinking this while reading Drew Westin’s well-circulated New York Times essay, “What Happened to Obama?”, last summer. In Westin’s view Obama’s refusal to tell Americans a story like FDR or MLK was his primary failure. What the president did in his very first State of the Union Address was level with us. He stood before America and said we’d lived through an era “where too often, short-term gains were prized over long-term prosperity; where we failed to look beyond the next payment, the next quarter, or the next election.” Rather than coddle us, he leveled with us. We’d let our optimism run amuck. And for too long that same reckless optimism — the sense that everything should be fixed by now — has hijacked the conversation about an accomplished presidency that has advanced legislation to assist working people, women, people of color, gay and lesbian citizens, veterans, and younger Americans, and would have been unthinkable under McCain. (If you’re interested, an exhaustive list of the current administration’s achievements so far can be accessed on The PCTC (Please … Cut The Crap!) Blog.) Now the president is setting his sights on ensuring the 1% contribute their fair share. And through it all he’s continued to champion a bipartisan message that unites rather than divides the country. What more do we expect? Or are we just hellbent on perpetual dissatisfaction?

The breakthroughs in cognitive science are showing us who we are and how we operate in a language that is irrefutably honest. A lot of what we think we know about ourselves, our actions and our motivations just isn’t true. Memory is faulty. Bias is pervasive. Self-deception runs deep. And as difficult as it may be to wrap our brains around the implications of this growing body of knowledge, it’s important that we do so before we make a disastrous mistake just because we hope a quick fix can save the day. There is no silver bullet. We got lucky with Obama. Frankly, I’m encouraged by the direction our imperfect country is headed in. I may not see the end of the corporate state or Wall Street greed just yet, but the signs of economic recovery are real. Unemployment claims are down, the most recent jobs report showed notable growth and home sales are up. On balance the world is a safer, freer and more just than it was four years ago. That. Ain’t. Bad. If it means we can live long enough to fight for the better tomorrows we all eagerly anticipate and rightfully deserve, than I’ll take it. Yes, indeed.

Essentials: 7 Albums I Couldn't Live Without

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 17:52:00 -0500

By Derek Beres

This first in my Essentials: Music Series was the hardest to decide. Later posts will be broken down into genre. Like those, this is not a complete “Greatest Hits” of albums, but more a compendium of albums that have such strong emotional pull in my life that I could, possibly, live without them. I just would never want to.

A Tribe Called Quest: Midnight Marauders
Very few weekend nights went by at Rutgers without this record bumping in my, um, 1986 Chrysler Laser. When I dropped that car off to charity in ’99, I was auto-less for 12 years. Miraculously, when my wife and I bought our first together in 2011 (not a Laser), this album came right into steady rotation. Tribe was always ahead of its time by being very much embedded in its time. Timelessness is rare in music, especially so in hip-hop. Sure, there are plenty of cultural references that will define the early ‘90s, but the beats, rhymes and life they were living continues to be relevant. The total joy of “We Can Get Down” (the song Erica and I chose to walk up the aisle to after being wed), Q-Tip’s unmatched swagger on “Electric Relaxation,” the head and hip nods of “Award Tour”—they captured an energy that will never be harnessed again (not romanticizing a ‘better time,’ just saying they nailed it).

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan: Body and Soul
My introduction to the great Pakistani Qawwal was after he cut his record with Canadian producer Michael Brook, Night Song. An amazin intro, I soon fell in love with traditional qawwali (though Brook’s stellar guitar playing and usage of old Peter Gabriel electronic loops did add a new dimension to this art form). Nonetheless, I was hooked the moment that “Mayey Nee Main Dhak Farid Dey Jana” blazed out of my speakers. To know Nusrat is to love the legacy he left behind: hundreds of bootlegged concerts you can find at any Indian and Pakistani grocer for $5 a burned disc. While I also have a love affair with the two-disc Rick Rubin sessions for their incredible production dexterity, Body and Soul is my favorite complete album, with each of the four songs reminding me why a simple configuration of voice, harmonium, tabla and handclaps offers the most transporting listening experience imaginable.

Jeff Buckley: Grace
There’s a thirteen-minute live version of “Mojo Pin” on a bootleg in which the unfortunately deceased Buckley moans and shudders for six before exploding on this incredible, delicate song, a tribute to a close friend who couldn’t kick heroin. Hearing Buckley compare chocolate and god in the same line is only to begin to understand the lyrical wizardry of one of last century’s greatest voices. To this day it’s challenging for me to hear “Lover, You Should Have Come Over” without a tear. While his version of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” might be played at every wedding and yoga class, you have to give the man credit. He heard music differently than the rest of us, and returned it in a way that none of us could match. Instead we just enjoy the luxurious, at times relaxed and at times irate voice of a genius.

John Coltrane: Africa/Brass
Pick one Coltrane album. Really? My gut goes with whatever “Out of This World” is on. Problem is, this post is devoted to records, and none has been played as often as Africa/Brass. Three songs clock in at just under 34 minutes, every second absolutely brilliant. With My Favorite Things and Giant Steps behind him, Coltrane upped his own ante by inviting twenty others into the studio for his first Impulse recording. This was a few years before free jazz, Trane leaving his more reserved self behind while staying within the context of structure and harmony that made him famous. The lead track, “Africa,” remains one of his best, while the version of “Greensleeves” presented on the LP will influence generations of jazz players to come.

Gil Scott Heron: Winter in America
In the late years of last century and early years of this, I had the opportunity to see Gil Scott-Heron perform live at SOB’s on three occasions. Each time he came out between two and four hours after he was supposed to hit the stage (a stretch even in SOB’s time). Each time it was only him and his piano. And each time I impatiently waited for the next time. Few men can sit in front of 700 people and keep you interested the way he could. And few albums are as beautiful, melodic and thoughtful as Winter in America. His tragic drug abuse was certainly self-caused; it’s a true shame. Few poets of this depth remain, and this warrior’s passing felt like something great had left the planet.

Kayhan Kalhor: The Wind
With his groundbreaking work in the North Indian/Persian project Ghazal alongside sitar great Shujaat Khan, as well as his performances with the Masters of Persian Music with Mohammad Reza Shajarian and Hossein Alizadeh, the Iranian kamancheh (spiked fiddle) maestro evolved his genre once again on this collaboration with two Turkish baglama greats. The baglama, an oud-like lute resembling a saz in tone and texture, plays gorgeously off Kalhor’s seemingly effortless bowed playing. Considering this fantastic recording is predominantly improvisational only lends power to the notion that all three players are masters of their instruments. There is but one way to listen to The Wind, and that is in its entirety.

Portishead: Dummy
It saddens me that trip-hop had such a limited shelf life. Sure, you’ll find a throwback once in a while. The entire Portishead/Massive Attack/Tricky contingent has gotten musically depressed and complicated. Gone are the days of a simple beat, solid bass line and a punchy kick drum. And gone is the day when Beth Gibbons sat back over that simple beat and bled her heart dry for us all to bare witness. Again, I’m in no way against changing a sound. Plenty of projects have been very good at it. Portishead has not been one of them. But we have Dummy. We’ll always have Dummy.

Why Occupy is Not the Tea Party

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 00:57:00 -0500

By Derek Beres

The answer in one word: creativity.

Yet nothing is so easy to understand. If you watch and read enough media outlets, you get the sense that American politics are divided into two extremes, with a hearty middle wondering which way the ship will tip. On one side, the Tea Party, responsible for everything from reviving and extremifying the right wing to pulling the puppet strings on John Boehner’s tender scapulas with issues like the payroll tax cut. On the other, modern day hippies armed with iPhones and laptops, errant citizens without jobs who should just go get one, upset and angered masses that have somehow turned the national conversation into percentage points and corporate domination.

Media entities have done a great job at dividing these two camps, though some intelligent thinkers have connected the dots between them: lower taxes for individuals and families earning respectable and not outlandish wages, less governmental interference, more personal freedom. Comparisons must end there. One movement represents change with the other vehemently opposing it. A better way to put it is to say that one wants movement and the other wants to retreat.

The Tea Party is predominantly comprised of individuals imagining a political past that never existed to begin with, which is why this base emits strong religious fervor. At least a portion is comprised of single-issue voters, in which the religion a political candidate practices can sway their vote. For them, inventing a spirituality to suit their needs is acceptable; the same holds true with their politics. And so their American Eden: a supposedly historical moment when everyone paid enough taxes, worked enough hours, and received enough social benefits to make life worthwhile. Schools taught, politicians led and workers worked.

This may have been the case for a fraction of our nation, and indeed may still be so depending on what industry employs you. Yet the factual validity of such a utopian society is impossible to find. I was born just after the era of Civil and Women’s Rights, and these battles are still being waged, progressed as we may pretend to be. Never has America served the total public, and with the way our politics are heading, the chances of such a reality are slimming. To recognize that the Tea Party emerged shortly after we elected our first African-American President is only to scratch the surface of the backward-looking mentality that dominates what is today called the right wing.

The political mind and the religious mind are not divided. They inform one another. If you believe one thing and live another, the fracture between belief and reality is not going to be healthy for you on an individual level, nor for your contribution to an emerging global culture. In Tea Party America, the divide is great. Dreaming up an invented American Eden is indicative of someone who seeks heaven in the future and a savior of the past. The constant distraction of these past and future havens ensures that such a mind is never actually present.

Which is where the loosely knitted Occupy movement diverges. Everything about it serves this moment: unfair tax structures, women’s rights, civil rights, immigrant rights, and a host of other issues that are being addressed. There might be bad lip reading youtube clips to keep us entertained, but organizational meetings entertaining the possibility of a new economic system are helping us realize that other ways of living are possible. Innovation evolves the foundation of thinking—it forces us to think clearer, think smarter, think better, and ideally, think in terms of everyone.

What is being sought in the Occupy circles is the type of change that creates a better society in and for the future, not an idealistic dream of sometime past. This engagement with the present is an actual act of creation, its dreamers erecting a sturdy foundation out of the scattered parts of the collective national mind. It is inclusive of every type of being that yearns for unity, not one critical and judgmental of those who hold divergent opinions from our own, be they religious, political and so forth.

It is a movement that endures pepper spraying, winter chills, public camping grounds and Fox News. Most importantly, it is creative in its applications of resistance. The protestors march along K Street and peacefully disrupt lunches and press conferences to make their message heard. They lie on the sidewalk and unroll red carpets for millionaire politicians to walk over them. They make videos and songs and speeches and poetry. They turn their frustrations into something beneficial and beautiful, even if it’s as simple as making us laugh. The absurdity of our politics has become so great that laughter is all we can truly offer our elected sheep parading in wolves’ clothing.

One thing you have never seen come out of any Tea Party rally is art. You see complaining and, if it’s raining outside, an empty field. Occupy is not about going to a rally for three hours with cardboard and magic markers and returning home. It’s a mental state, a way of being, one seeking creative solutions to previously unaddressed problems.

Occupy is a movement in which the doing is in the hands of the people. We should not be surprised that Tea Party-elected officials refuse to cut payroll taxes yet want to drain organizations like NPR and various arts funds: the creative process is a dangerous one to people who want to live in the past, even when their history never occurred. That doesn’t stop them—they simply invent one. It’s up to the rest of us to invent, and create, things that are worthy of who we are as compassionate and caring human beings. This is a process that draws us together, so that we will not further be torn apart.

Image by flickr user Casey Fox.

Can 50 Cent Feed Africa?

Sun, 18 Dec 2011 22:18:00 -0500

Words & Pic by Derek Beres

The 1985 “We Are the World” campaign successfully implanted the idea of feeding “starving Africans” into the American consciousness. Over the past quarter-century, feeding the peoples of the African continent has been a celebrity cause du jour, a GMO company’s marketing nightmare, and for a few non-profit organizations, a daily struggle. Hip-hop emcee 50 Cent recently became the latest icon to make a bold humanitarian declaration concerning this plight, tweeting that he’s going to feed one billion Africans over the next five years.

The initial revelation came to 50, whose real name is Curtis Jackson, after spending time in Morocco filming “Home of the Brave,” a 2006 Iraq-war themed movie starring Samuel Jackson. (Morocco’s burgeoning film industry specializes in desert locations for inspired Hollywood directors seeking lands that look Middle Eastern but aren’t actually in the Middle East.) Returning to headline the 2011 edition of Festival de Casablanca, Jackson found that he was perceived as something akin to a god—official estimates reported 100,000 attending his free outdoor performance. (Jackson himself tweeted 200,00.) Hundreds of signs stating “I Love 50 Cent” cluttered the throbbing sea of arms; one youth shouted, “50 Cent is my life!” as he jumped onto the hood of the rapper’s van when it tried to leave the festival grounds post-concert.

All this is to say that 50 Cent is possibly more popular in Africa than in his native country. On the flight home the following day, one member of Jackson’s entourage said that it was the second craziest show of his career. The first was a now-mythologized performance in Angola, in which Jackson’s chain was ripped off his neck in the middle of a song. There is little doubt that the music of 50 Cent feeds generations of fans in Africa. Can he turn that into ingestible sustenance?

A number of Jackson’s nearly five million Twitter followers ping-ponged his Africa tweet around the blogosphere, pasting the proclamation with thumbs up signs and “You go 50!” addendums. A few hours before his Casablanca gig, I asked him to be a bit more specific regarding the details. How would he go about funneling that type of money onto the continent? And what countries would he focus on? His reply was thoughtful, thought not exactly telling.

“All different territories,” he replied. “Obviously I’d have to have support in different areas to accomplish this over the next five years. Moving forward, I’ve developed what I call the SKs, or Street Kings, and I feel like I can be more of an inspiration and be more effective in different areas of my actual life, so I look forward to being able to impact and effect people in a strong way moving forward. And that would be one of my first steps towards actually accomplishing it. And when I develop anything, any project that I support, I’ll have created a way of a donating a portion of whatever I make towards feeding a billion people over the next five years.” He concluded by saying, “I did this on Twitter. To anyone who felt like it was a good idea, I asked them to retweet it.”

Re-reading this at home reminded me of listening to the Obama-Boehner-Reid-Cantor chess match—well, at this point, more like checkers—regarding the debt ceiling: big ideas with little implementation. A few years ago, while chatting with Ziggy Marley about the “Back to Africa” project that he was producing with his brothers, I ran into a similar issue. He kept throwing out popular bullet points, such as Africans needing more education and food. By the third time that I asked him what actual steps the Marleys were taking—building schools, writing curriculum, planting gardens—his voice raised two octaves. The last thing I wanted to do was piss off a Marley. Yet like politicians, artists need to be held accountable for their statements. His reply:

“If we could somehow use our resources, instead of people killing each other and selling it all over the black market, or the white market—let’s call it the white market—if we could stop doing that and actually have some control over what is in our ground, we could gain some more financial power in the world, and then start to better the educational system, the medicines, and the food supplies. There is no need for people to go hungry in Africa when there are all these financial resources. Let’s find one identity for the African continent, one passport for all the African people. Let’s start somewhere, it doesn’t have to be one great step. Let’s start simple. It don’t even have to be a big t’ing.”

No, but it has to be something. While his points are valid, he never answered my question. Visiting the Marley website, we find that the brothers did play a free show in Africa. There is also plenty of promotional material about the reality-based documentary regarding their travels, as well as marketing links for their Bob Marley-inspired coffee company and Snapple-like cold tea beverage.

I wish 50 Cent the best of luck in feeding one billion Africans, as long as we recognize the dangerous trap that that sentiment provokes, so brilliantly captured by Ghana-born rapper Blitz the Ambassador: “Africa has become synonymous with charity.” Jackson is one of the few American musicians with the clout and capital to pull something like this off. He just needs to understand that it will require many full-time jobs and a tremendously disciplined mindset for transitioning his idea into reality. Otherwise, it’s just one more tweet in the Twitterverse.