Al Sharpton vs. Tavis Smiley on Obama or why we need a Black radical agenda quick.

Hip Hop Intellectual Resistance: A. Shahid Stover Xlibris Books, 2009

A.Shahid Stover

To say that hip hop is nostaligic would be a gross understatement. Hip hop was forged in history and by remixing history. Even in its infancy it spoke of a swagger of old men. Perhaps it was because of the void caused by the end of 1960s activism, we (and I consider myself a hip head head despite my preference for Coltrane) had create and recreate our heroes and heroines. Hip Hop is Marxian without even knowing it, blending performance, music, history, literature over a break beat.
Or perhaps Hip Hop is only recognizable in its self-consciousness? For real, the thrust of “consciousness rappers” is the precise movement when they announce themselves as “hip hop.” Think about it this way, conscious rappers likeMos Def, Dead Prez, Common, The Roots and their R&B satellitte Erkyak Badu all speak of “hip hop” in the third person, always in a sense of mourning and reclaimination. While the “unconscious” rappers like Lil’ Wayne, Rick Ross simply do it without any thinking. If that’s not a Hegelian mind fuck, I don’t know what is.
Self-consciousness plays a role in the development of the new school of hip hop scholarship. Like the Black Arts forefathers (i.e.- Amiri Baraka, Lawrence Neal Sonia Sanchez” who grouped around jazz, writers like Trisha Rose, Michael Eric Dyson and Bakari Kitwana uses hip hop as a starting point to ask the fundamental question: Where are we going as a people?

Add to this mix, A Shahid Stover and his collection of essays Hip Hop Intellectual Resistance. Stover a self described “writer/radical intellectual/ underground emcee” has produced a brillant collections of reviews and reflections that shine in the tradition of organic intellectuals like Harold Cruse and John Henrik Clarke.
Proudly schooled in the local bookstores and barber shops, Stover’s influences range from Franz Fanon to Herbert Marcuse and the Black existentialist thinker Lewis Gordon to provide a broad framework of understanding hip hop through a radically spiritual and anti-capitalist lens.
Speaking in the tradition of Fanon’s challenge of generations to “saying that every generation must out of
relative obscurity, find its mission, fulfill it or betray it” Stover writes
“The unchallenged permanence of western imperialist socially structures ultimately thwarts the stated emancipatory aims of Black cultural resistance when such cultural resistance remains at a safe length from radical social praxis. As such , it is the spiritual responsibility of the Hip Hop intellectual, to crtically address and radically confront these structures of western imperialism which continue to thrive and remain socially relevant to the lived experience of the postmodern lumpenproletariat in neo-colonial American ghettos.” Like whoa.

Stover’s reviews of Noam Chomsky, Barari Kitwana and Kevin Powell focus on the issues of intergenerational discourse, mass media and the development of Black masuclinities. The last point is a sticky one- B-boys being b-boys, Stover hasn’t included any woman in this collection. I feel that this is a fundamentally flaw, since Black woman labor and their position within hip hop as “other”- video ho, etc. is the primary focal point of understanding the nexus between labor, capital and hip hop.
Still, Stover’s writing is expectional. Like many hip hop heads in their 30s, he’s negotiationing the fine line being the street and the academy, between high and pop cultural. Stover’s writing serves as a educational tool to shape reality and a means of transmitting the hard learned lessons of the past. Like any MC he does so with style and grace and brings it all home. Werd.

A. Shahid Stover’s writings can be found on Brotherwise Dispatch- www.brotherwise.com

Word. Obama’s policy reminds me of what what Katt Williams said about the US in Iraq- “The US government is some pimps, they say shit that don’t make sense”
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This past Saturday, I attended the Organizing 2.0 conference at the CUNY Murphy Center for Labor Studies. Sponsored by Change to Win and a host of other labor unions, the Organizing 2.0 conference set it itself as a “ grassroots conference organized by social justice organizers primarily from social justice organization and labor unions” who were seeking the learn the ins and outs of using Web 2.0 and social media to advance their organizational goals. (For those who want a quick primer in what in social media, check out Social Media Revolution)

The conference drew close to 200 people, mostly white folks from the traditional labor movement, with a good mix of young organizers. I went in capacity as a outreach coordiantor for the Brecht Forum, but also as someone who is interested in developing Web 2.0 strategies for revolutionary organizing. In the past year, I’ve revive my blog, started Facebook and even developed a twitter account. While all these are important tools in terms of disseminating information, it’s important to remember that they are just that, tools and without a strategy there isn’t going to be a magic bullet for building a radical/revolutionary left political pole online or offline. Read the rest of this entry »

Roy Decarava was more than a photographer, he was a keeper of light. Moving about the dark corners of Harlem he illuminated our collective experiences in the pulpit, stage and street corners.Like his predecessor James van Der Zee, and contempories Romare Bearden, Langston Hughes and Ricard Wright, DeCarava work was in the vanguard of African American modernist expression. He was one of the first documentarians of “every day Black life”, as captured in the wonderful book The Sweet Fly Paper of Life (co-created byHughes).

Roy Decarava’s photographs were also an opening salvo in the civil rights movement. For years, the photographic gaze was used to imprison Black people in negative stereotypes either as exotic animals to be played with or threatening thugs. Decarava photography illuminated us, and in the words of Langston Hughes “expressed our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. ” Even though I never met Mr.Decarava, I was also brought that he was a teacher at Hunter College. We lost a champion this week. Roy Decarava, presente!

Tonight marks the start of the World Series between the Yankees and the Phillies. While a lot of attention will be to African American players like Jimmy Rollins, CC Sabathia and Derek Jeter, very little know about that both teams played in the last “all white” World Series.

In an article in today’s Daily News author Roger Rubin details the 1950 background between the Bronx Bombers and the Phillies. “The Yankees and Phillies did not embrace integration soon after Jackie Robinson broke the color line with the Dodgers in 1947 and were among the last clubs to field a black player. When the Yankees added Elston Howard for the 1955 season they were the 13th of 16 teams to integrate. The Phillies added John Kennedy in 1957, the last NL team to do so.”

Considered the flagship of the Pacifica Foundation, WBAI is in the throes of yet another internal conflict. Ever since the firing of Bernard White and demotion of Anthony Riddle, both the ACE-Slate and Justice and Unity have accused each other of seeking to destroy the station.

What is most troubling is the complete silence of revolutionary and progressive minded media activist in New York City. For many the tiresome debate has created a a very lax neutrality which has stripped away miuch of the integrity of the station. Don’t get it twisted. As a FM station located right smack dab between Hot 97 and Z 100, WBAI is perhaps the most important tool in the dissemination radical culture and politics. What is troubling is that the situation of WBAI reflects tensions found throughout the city, questions of moneyed politics, race baiting, white supremacy and political priorities are all coming to a head at the station and threatening to rip the fabric of an already weak and overworked NYC left.

In an attempt to create a third force of radical and revolutionary listeners and media producers I offer these ten points on WBAI. I welcome feedback and criticism
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The Philosopher and the Bomb
Zizek at the Cooper Union

Slavoj Zizek has been referred to as the most “dangerous philosopher in the west” and perhaps folks should start taking the moniker literally. The capacity filled auditorium was evacuated last night after someone phoned in a bomb threat. Although the NYPD felt the call was bogus, the staff at Cooper Union took no chances and cancelled the event soon after Slavoj finished his lecture based on his new book First as Tragedy, Then as Farce. This was the second time a major talk by Zizek was disrupted; last year his speech “Where are we 40 years after 1968” was interrupted by a bevy of fire alarms.
Still, by all accounts, last night’s event was a smashing success. Lines snaked around Cooper Union, as folks waited to hear Zizek’s talk, indeed before the bomb threat, the major problem plaguing Cooper Union security was getting people in the space itself and hip hugging Lacanians who attempted to sneak into the space.
Beyond the scene, the talk by Zizek was very interesting. He’s overall hard to follow and often times tells jokes that leave out punch lines. Yet, one can appreciate the freshest of his insights and his ability to spark thought about where we are right now. I really dig his comments about how exploitation is based now on rent and connecting its to intellectual property. We are forced into social relationships by knowledge production factories like Microsoft, Apple and Google and means in which we are exploited is that we have to pay rent to use their software, browsers, etc.
The use of the Microsoft example brings to the foreground a little fragment found in the Grundrisse on “general intellect.” There, Marx foresaw a time when machines (or fixed capital) would embody the place of labor, rendering repetitive tasks useless. In an utopian scenario, this would mean more time for people to enjoy life and create. Under our post-fordist nightmare, it means Detroit, the legacy of disposable people (i.e.-mass unemployment).
For me, Zizek’s lecture opens the door in terms of a communist ethic in approaching the economic crisis. Do we as a left place forward a demand for green jobs or even bringing back industry, or do we actually plaace at the center of our thinking the abolition of work? Do we draw lines and form alliances around the left wing of imperialism, or do we challenge the very idea of imperialism itself and take with it the notion that we have to live simply in order for others to simply live?

(Kwame Nkrumah, right with WEB Dubois, left. On the far left is Nrumah’s wife,Fathia)

September 21 marks the centennial of the birth of Kwame Nkurmah. Nkrumah was a teacher, organizer, revolutionary Pan Africanist socialist who was elected as the first prime minister of a free, independent Ghana (once known as the Gold Coast.)

Nkrumah was a Pan-Africanist, who saw the social and political unity of African people throughout the Diaspora. Nkurmah’s dedication to Pan-Africanist philosophy came through his studies in the United States at the historically Black college, Lincoln University. In the US he met and was influenced by Grace Lee Boggs, CLR James, John Henrik Clarke, and WEB Dubois.

Under Nkrumah’s leadership, Ghana become the overseas headquarters of the Black liberation movement in the US. Malcolm X, Vicki Garvin and Maya Angelou met in Accra to form the Organization of African American Unity, based on the Organization of African Unity (developed by Nkurmah). After joining the Communist Party, Dr. WEB Dubois denounced his US citizenship and lived in Ghana. There he went to work on the Encyclopedia Africana and should as a mentor to Nkurmah. In the great documentary A Great and Mighty Walk, Pan-Africanist scholar John Henrik Clarke recalled being broke and stranded in Ghana when Nkurmah plucked him from a crowd and put him up in a state hotel.

Nkrumah was a committed anti-imperialist. He understood that the ritual humiliation and rape of the African continent could only be corrected by oppressed people controlling their own resources and government. Nkurmah correctly called out “neo-colonialism , where foreign powers ruled behind Black and Brown leadership as the last stage of imperialism.
To that end he supported various anti-colonial struggles throughout the continent and abroad. He was a prime mover behind the founding of the Organization of African Unity (now the African Union) and the creation of May 25 of African Liberation day. He allowed Ghana to be used as a base area for various liberation movements.

This made Nkrumah a dangerous man. While visiting China and North Vietnam, a CIA backed military coup overthrew his government. Nkurmah was forced into exile in neighboring Guinea (Conakry) where he was given the ceremonial position of head of state by Sekou Toure.
Nkrumah spent his last years developing his ideas of a United States of Africa thorough his writings Africa Must Unite, Dark Days in Ghana, and Revolutionary Warfare: A Handbook.

Today, Nkrumah’s legacy is more important than ever. Africa is still being exploited both by a neo-colonial elite and foreign powers. With the US African Military command (AFRICOM),attempting to build military bases throughout the continent in a “containment” strategy and the continued dividing up of the Congo through proxy wars, Nkrumah’s vision of a united, socialist Africa is needed, not only for Black folks throughout the Diaspora but for all oppressed people in the world.