Friday, July 30, 2004
Spinning The Balloons
Uh yeah, we meant to do that.
By the way, no truth to the rumors that FCC agents had taken Don Mischer into custody. Yet.
posted by Zentronix @ 10:55 AM
Joke of the Day
Or maybe it's real news? Check this out.
posted by Zentronix @ 10:42 AM
Thursday, July 29, 2004
No Confetti!
For anyone watching on CNN, you caught the line of the night just after Kerry completed his speech. From an unknown DNC operative somehow patched in on the mainline: "More balloons! More balloons! More balloons! No confetti! More balloons! More balloons! Come on! What the fuck are you guys doing?"
Half-serious question: Will Michael Powell fine CNN and try to ban the DNC? I give it equal odds.
posted by Zentronix @ 8:16 PM
Just A Note
If you want or need your hip-hop angle on the Convention and the demos, Pop and Politics is straight killing it this week.
posted by Zentronix @ 9:59 AM
Ride Your Donkey
Did Sharpton go out like a sucker or play it perfectly? You decide.
The transcript is here.
posted by Zentronix @ 9:45 AM
Remember Florida
All this talk about votes just takes me back 4 years. As do these reports from Florida, even though they don't point back directly to 2000.
So I went back and unearthed my reporting from November 2000 for 360hiphop.com. I was sent down on the night after the elections to cover the recount in Miami and West Palm Beach. I hung out with Gihan and Tony, two kick-ass organizers from the Miami Workers Center, in Liberty City interviewing residents. Then we got a call from one of their workers in North Miami. What happened next, well read this (it's presented just as it ran on 360hiphop):
GUNZ N BUTTA GOES IN SEARCH OF LOST BALLOT BOXES
BY: Jeff Chang
In Florida, as the presidential election goes into vote-count limbo, everywhere is war and rumors of war. Then we heard about a lost ballot box. Gunz N Butta fights for democracy.
The road to West Palm Beach is jammed with Democratic party operatives and reporters. Stakes is high. And on the narrow, pastel streets, the strangest protest crowd of the longest presidential run in history has gathered.
The re-vote revolt is being led by white legislative aides, rank-and-file unionists, Jews and Christians, and a significant contingent of elderly black women who have brought along two generations of daughters. There's even an angry young Republican woman who believes more in saving the system more than preserving a Bush victory.
A voteless mob is an angry mob.
As the parade of Democratic legislators step to the podium to ask for recount, the crowd corrects them with roars of "Re-Vote!" They don't want compromise, they want their ballot back.
Back in Miami, where dead people turned out to elect a Mayor three years ago, the mood is conspiratorial. There are rumors of Jeb Bush pushing his weight behind the scenes, and unopened ballot boxes sitting in polling places.
Treva Landrum voted where she lives, in the Liberty City housing projects officially called the Liberty Square Housing Development, but better known as The Pork-and-Beans. While turnout was the highest she's ever seen, she says she feels that quite a few of her neighbors were denied their right to vote.
"It's probably a lot of ballots being missing, a lot of the ballot boxes not being in the proper place," she says. At the Miami Worker's Center where she works, she says she's had a few calls about a missing ballot box in North Miami.
"A lot of people know that there is something not clean about this election," Treva says. "I believe that a lot of people want to see Bush in the seat. I believe a lot of people was paid, people that work the precincts were paid. I really feel that."
"We need to do an election all over again, and they need to have policemen at every precinct to make sure everything go right," she says. "I ain't saying that police ain't corrupt too! But we need that."
At 6:00 P.M., after most of the ballots have been recounted, we begin the search for a lost ballot box.
Tony Romano and Gihan Perera, the twentysomethings who run the Miami Worker's Center, have heard from one of their members, a Haitian American nurse who believes she has seen a ballot box sitting in a nursing home she used to work at in North Miami.
Along with Geraldine Borders, we jump into Gihan's Jeep and head up to the home. The nurse is nervous, tells Gihan to turn the lights down as we approach the Grand Court nursing home at 280 Sierra Avenue. It's infectious, and soon we are plotting our Mission Impossible in low voices.
Tony says, "We should just bust in the place and be like, yo, what's this here?"
The others disagree. Gihan says, "We should scope it out first and then try to figure out what to do."
Finally, we agree on a plan. Tony will walk in the home and say he's looking for a place for his mother and wants to check out the nursing home. He'll ask to use the bathroom, so he can wander around to see if a ballot box is really there. Then he'll holler at us on the cell phone.
He changes out of his green Palmeiras soccer jersey into Gihan's V-neck and strides down the block, rehearsing his lines in his head.
Gihan pulls the jeep around the corner. As we pass the home, the nurse ducks down and insists he turn off the car lights. Gihan and I dial information to get numbers for black churches, the Board of Elections, and the NAACP, and the nurse's blood pressure starts to rise. "He's not back yet," she groans after a few minutes.
"Hang on", says Gihan.
A few more minutes. "He's not back yet! Let's go get him," she cries.
"Hang on!" says Gihan. We wait in the darkness.
Then the cellie rings. Gihan puts the call on the speaker.
"Yo", Tony whispers, "there's definitely a box in here, man. It says right on it, Ballot Box 212, Metro-Dade Elections Department in big letters. It's in this room right next to the front door, it's just sitting there. It's locked."
"I told you!" the nurse shouts.
Geraldine, Gihan and I look at each other. Oh shit.
"Hey, I gotta go," Tony says. " They're taking me on a tour of the place."
PAGE 2
The race is down to 300 votes. What we do now could save the elections. Gihan starts rehearsing his speech to TV cameras in his head. I'm so shook I can't think.
Gihan says, "OK Jeff, you go in there and demand to have them open the box. If it's full of ballots, I'll just tell them we gotta take it in."
"Uh", I say, "I, uh, I can't make the story if I'm gonna break the story. It would be kinda weird, you know, sorta journalistically ethically, uh, if I were to be the one to be going in and getting the box."
"OK", Gihan says. Damn, Gihan is thinking.
He decides he'll go in and say he's there to collect the ballot box. If they don't give it up, then we'll call the TV stations and the NAACP. If they try to hide the box, he says, he'll just go in there and jump on the box.
Tony runs back to the car. "Yo, they were playing bingo in there", he says breathlessly. "They were about to get me in a game."
We tell him our plan. Tony looks grim. "Be careful in there," he says.
We all swagger into the Grand Court nursing home.
At the front desk, Gihan steps to the counter. And there it is: the ballot box, in the storage room to the left. A large shiny steel thing with a big padlock on a rusty chain. Ballot Box 212.
Gihan says, "We're checking to see if all the polling places have turned in their boxes. So I'm here to pick up the ballot box. "
The front desk administrator, an Afro-Caribbean woman, looks at him. "Can I see some I.D.?"
Gihan reaches into his back pocket like he's gonna pull something out. Then he asks, "Is there stuff in that box? Because, you know, we're just checking because we've heard reports that there are ballot boxes still out here."
The administrator says, "Oh yeah, there's something in it. It's pretty heavy."
We're all staring at the big shiny box. The Metro-Dade Elections Department sticker. Gihan asks, "Can you open it up? We just want to check if there are ballots in there, because, you know, this election is so close."
"Well, I can't open it up. I don't have the key," she says. We're all staring at the big padlock. The rusty chain.
The administrator points to the box. "They are totally separate from us. I mean, someone called yesterday to ask about it and said they would come pick it up. But they haven't shown up yet," she says. "So do you have I.D.?"
Gihan says, "Well, no. We're just going around to see about these boxes. You know the election is down to 300 votes."
It's the administrator's turn to be surprised. "Really? We were all looking at it thinking the same thing, like what's in there. We were all worried about it, too. But I can't just give it to you."
Gihan says, "OK." The administrator offers a business card and says we should just come back with some I.D. Gihan's head is spinning as we walk out. "Call the television stations," he says.
No one is picking up the Board of Elections line. All the black church leaders are meeting with Jesse Jackson. The NAACP number doesn't work. Tony calls Channel 10, "Yo! I got a breaking story for you."
I'm ringing the Democrat's new Voter Fraud Line in West Palm Beach. Someone gets on the line immediately. I explain the story, then they take the address and promise to call me back.
Tony walks back, shaking his head. "The guy at Channel 10 said he's been getting calls like this every 10 minutes. The boxes are full of pencils and extra ballots. "He goes, 'Chill out, dude.'"
Someone else will have to save democracy tonight.
posted by Zentronix @ 9:44 AM
Tuesday, July 27, 2004
Black President
(UPDATED LINKS 11am 7/28/04)
The hype came in the form of a skinny mixed-race Senate candidate with no opposition, Barack Obama (backgrounders here and here, perhaps the next chance for a real Black President in 2016.
Women screamed. Pundits creamed. Hillary and Jesse both beamed. This guy is for real and people will soon be talking about him as "the new face of the Democratic Party".
What are his politics? Call them urban neo-progressive. He's positioning himself right between Jesse and Hillary.
The fire in his speech was vintage Jesse '88. Note how Obama used "hope" as his keyword. Note how thoroughly he's absorbed the language of the multiculturalists of the 80s (yep, we've come a long way baby). And the speech will be remembered for this money line, also vintage Jesse/80s multiculti with a touch of 90s irony:
"Well, I say to them tonight, there's not a liberal America and a conservative America; there's the United States of America.
There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America.
The pundits, the pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue States: red states for Republicans, blue States for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the red states.
We coach little league in the blue states and, yes, we've got some gay friends in the red states.
There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq, and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq.
We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America."
But even as he affirmed his urban background, he pitched himself to the so-called middle. The next line could have come out of a DLC playbook.
"Now, don't get me wrong, the people I meet in small towns and big cities and diners and office parks, they don't expect government to solves all of their problems. They know they have to work hard to get ahead. And they want to."
But the key lines if you want to understand Obama's politics were the next ones:
"Go into the collar counties around Chicago, and people will tell you: They don't want their tax money wasted by a welfare agency or by the Pentagon."
There it is. Here's a Democrat who has absorbed the small-government mantra, who is telling conservative whites--and post-Farrakhan blacks--he's not gonna be easy on his people. At the same time, he's telling liberals and people of color he's not gonna be easy on military spending. Anti-welfare and anti-war. Hillary and Jesse.
Now read the next section of his speech again, and recognize game. Obama is sharp, he's a great orator, and he's just a lot slicker than either neo-conservative Corey Booker or neo-liberal Bill Cosby:
"Go into any inner-city neighborhood, and folks will tell you that government alone can't teach kids to learn. They know that parents have to teach, that children can't achieve unless we raise their expectations and turn off the television sets and eradicate the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white. They know those things. (APPLAUSE)"
He cut those lines real fine, didn't he? Welcome to the neo-progressive.
This is a different politic than, say, those promoted by the Dean insurgency, which was essentially a one-noter: anti-war, anti-Bush. These are politics that could potentially play a major role in reshaping the Democratic Party. Centrism is dead. Clinton and Bush took that one to bed. People are searching for a new alternative, and Obama's neo-progressivism--if it takes hold in the communities of color he can potentially energize--combines a shape-shifting ability to move right, while reviving the moral high ground of the left.
Don't forget Obama once ran against Bobby Rush, the ex-Black Panther, on the Southside, in a race that held as much intergenerational intrigue as the Booker-James battle in Newark, even though the press never framed it that way. In the African American community, where Sharpton's failed candidacy represents the exhaustion of the old model and where the hip-hop generation is still getting organized, neo-progressivism--and all the values it promotes-professionalism, wit, irony, and above all, an imperative to find a post-Jackson, post-Farrakhan hybrid--could become the intergenerational compromise.
New ideas always take the form of urgency and passion, two other values Obama upheld Tuesday night. By jumping into the U.S. Senate, Obama leapfrogs Jesse Jackson, Jr. and a host of others for the next generation of African American leadership. And in the Senate, he will only be able to move rightward.
Which brings us to the 2016 scenario, a distant question for now: is this the Democratic Party's future? Can you get with that?
Anxious to see what Pop And Politics and Afro-netizen have to say.
posted by Zentronix @ 9:54 PM
More Evidence The Republicans Are In Trouble
Who's briefing Gillespie and these idiots? (Memo to strategists: Michael "Hundred Million Dollar Man" Moore is now officially no joke. Anyway, is Cheney on vacation? Did Karl Rove get captured by terrorists? Upside: this could be the most hilarious election ever.
posted by Zentronix @ 3:02 PM
Look Who's Talking
On tonight's agenda: Howard Dean. Yeeeeeeaaaaaaargh! And Theresa Heinz Kerry. So shut the fuck up, you right-wing ketchup haters! Ohhhh, anticipation.
posted by Zentronix @ 7:53 AM
Monday, July 26, 2004
Shut Up Already. Damn.
The most powerful man in the Fleet Center was dude running the teleprompter. Everyone--including Bill Clinton (my son was disappointed it wasn't George Clinton)--was rushing against time like Cinderella before her 11pm EST curfew.
Reverend David Alston's gripping speech was hurt the most. It was a great one, could have been one for history, but live TV doesn't wait for nobody.
So Bill's punchlines--and he had some great ones--died on the vine. On the other hand, Hillary stretched her reported 4 minutes to like 10+. Take that, Edwards! I lay money she'll do it again in 2012. What a rebel.
Hey, can anyone in Fleet get me one of those concert lightie things? I might have an extra Tipper Rocks! hand-drum around here.
BTW Michael Moore chillin with Jimmy and Rosalyn? Word.
posted by Zentronix @ 8:45 PM
The Convention 7
Enjoy these fine writing establishments...
1) Pop and Politics (relaunching today!)
2) Boston Indymedia
3) Afro-netizen (Re-corrected, sorry! Blame Ashcroft, MyDoom, Britney Spears, William Hung, etc. etc. In any case, definitely catch the adventures of the self-proclaimed "only credentialed blogger of Negroidal descent". Brother, as one of a small crew of under-35 reporters of color in Los Angeles--Los Angeles!--4 years ago, I feel your pain. Cop all the free food and martinis you can!)
4) Alternet
5) Tom Paine
6) TalkLeft
7) Wonkette
posted by Zentronix @ 11:10 AM
Sunday, July 25, 2004
Here We Go!
And let the protests begin.
I wish I was out there in Boston with yall, but I had to be realistic. Truthfully, covering the 2000 protest season almost killed me, literally. I ended up in the hospital after the Republican Convention, and nobody wanted to let me go to L.A. I did, and it was great, but I'm older now with more adult responsibilities, so I'ma live vicariously through yall. At least for the Dem Convention.
In the meantime, the run-up has been hilarious and chilling, at the same time. Thursday CNN breathlessly reported that the latest security threat was an alleged band of "domestic anarchists" who were set on blowing up downtown Boston. Anyone remember the New York 21? Same plotline. These wag-dogging narratives all seem to come out of a standard-issue handbook, they're used so often.
Here is indymedia's report on the on-the-ground surveillance that precedes any protest season, and another on the free-speech zone set up to specifically to contain that protest.
More info on today's protests as they stream in...
posted by Zentronix @ 4:43 PM
Friday, July 23, 2004
What Blogs Are Great For
Discussions like this and this, continued here and here and on a host of other blogs (Gimme a bit to catchup, and thanks to Funk Digital.)
posted by Zentronix @ 10:01 AM
Thursday, July 22, 2004
What Blogs Are Good For
Mind dumps from people with fascinating minds. Today's example: Jess Harvell on Nas, including gratuitous Polyphonic Spree disses. But leave Jimmy Buffet alone, brah. Best concert I attended in 8th grade.
posted by Zentronix @ 11:24 PM
Wednesday, July 21, 2004
The Most Intellectually Honest Republican
is Kevin Phillips, hands down. His book American Dynasty is a must-read, kinda like a bloodier-and-oilier-and-scarier version of Fahrenheit 9/11, and without all the references to Michigan.
Phillips is the star of the new Harper's cover story, a roundtable on the future of progressive politics with such luminaries as Frances Fox Piven, Eric Foner, Ron Daniels, and a strange golem-like Republican-backed creature named Ralph Nader.
Anyway, here's an excerpt in which Phillips holds forth on what we like to call Republicans dumb, Democrats dumber:
Daniels: Instead, the word "liberal" is a word that the Democrats distance themselves from. They avoid it as if it were the plague.
Nader: And if you get on the defensive in politics, you remain on the defensive for a long time. (Jeff note: Word to Florida, Ralphie!)
Phillips: The reason, of course, is that Democrats have been anesthetized by campaign contributions. And I should add that they have been anesthetized cheaply. During the last 20 or 25 years, the Republicans have been able to take money for granted, but the Democrats know they need to get it, and so they've become willing to soften their language and back away from their convictions. Their neediness cripples them.
Nader: The Democrats could be hammering on the money that Bush raises at these $3 million dinners. They could say, 'This one is for pharmaceutical money, this one's for oil.' They could make an issue about it every time. But the Democrats are caught in the same net.
Phillips: It would be devastating if they could attack the conservatives for having used public money to bail out Wall Street and the corporations. But they can't. the Republicans have so many weaknesses that the Democrats can't exploit, because they have taken a second, smaller helping form the same trough. What hands you a political opportunity in the United States is when something goes very wrong for the people who have power. Today the Republicans are in trouble, and the main thing they have to keep them from imploding is that the Democrats are not much better...
And later in the roundtable, he adds this in response to what issues could motivate the electorate:
Phillips: the obvious thing is the mess that the Bush Administration is making in Iraq. The imperial approach has lost us credibility all over the world. If this can't be used as an indictment against Bush, I don't know what can. The man is the least competent military leader since James Madison let the British burn Washington. Other issues moderates are concerned about are deficit spending and campaign finance. You've got to assemble a new progressive movement with disaffected elements of the existing Republican coalition...
posted by Zentronix @ 8:24 PM
7th Inning Hero
Props to Carlos Delgado for taking a stand in (the somehow appropriately named) Yankee Stadium.
Here's yet another good reason to hate Steinbrenner. Yeah, I still hate the player, what.
For the record, none of this was an issue earlier this week here in Oakland where the only song sung during the 7th inning is "Take Me Out To The Ballgame". As it should be, yo.
posted by Zentronix @ 7:52 PM
More Year of the Monkey Stuff...
In discussing the making of the police state for the Reep convention next month, Nicholas Turse talks in passing about how security measures in Bloomsburg/Bush's 2004 New York parallel Daley's 68 Chicago. Whoa!
posted by Zentronix @ 5:18 PM
Fix Up Look Sharp
OK, happier now. The novelty has worn off and so the silly headers and their annoying exclamation points are gone.New template also means titling is now an issue. Still no comments section. I don't wanna hear it, OK? Next project is cleaning and updating the links. OK nuff metablogging for now. You don't care aboout this stuff. Real soon come.
posted by Zentronix @ 8:06 AM
Tuesday, July 20, 2004
OLD TO THE NEW?
ah hell. i changed the template and now I gotta figure out how to get my sidebars back. til then no links and lists. rrrrrrrah! (maybe photos tho, soon) a big shout to matty c for encouraging this old-ass late adopter to get on the bandwagon...how's that for mixing metaphors?
10:16 pm--OK it looks all good...woo-hah.
posted by Zentronix @ 8:39 PM
Farai Chideya on what Kerry needs to do:holla at the hip-hop generation.
posted by Zentronix @ 1:07 PM
Monday, July 19, 2004
HOUSE AND POST-PUNK NOSTALGIA
Thanks to the wonderfully generous Matos and Daddino (I owe, I owe, so off to rip I go!), eMusic, and Mick Jones and Pennie Smith, I have been swimming in nostalgia all weekend.
The first two compiled a humongous discog of Simon Reynolds' Generation Ecstasy. (Matos just boiled it down to a 6-CD box set) I'm not ashamed to admit I can't get beyond the 80s. All those late 80s house and techno discs make me pine for the crate of records some (very smart or just very lucky) asshole swiped from me as we were dismantling after a gig one night at a club on Durant Avenue. If anyone out there wants to give me back my complete collection of Bonesbreaks records, rare-ass Metroplex records and other-stuff-that-fetches-mad-loot-on-eBay no questions asked, I promise I will not prosecute or otherwise beat the shit out of you.
eMusic has the entire early Gary Numan discography. Forget "I, Robot"! Note to electroclashers: this is why most of you suck.
And thanks to Mick Jones, we now have the rehearsal tapes for the London Calling sessions. Appropo enough, he found these tapes recorded in a garage in a box in his garage They're called The Vanilla Tapes and they're being released as part of a 2CD+DVD London Calling set this fall. The DVD includes about an hour of footage of the making-of-the-album, including a Don Letts doc and videos for "London Calling", "Train In Vain", "The Clampdown" and the famed "Fridays" appearances. I'll detail the tapes another time in some review for somebody.
I first heard of the Clash with their "This Is Radio Clash" video and my cousin (who soon after got a college radio show at KTUH and called himself "Tommy Gun") turning me on to "The Magnificent Seven", probably in the impressionable summer after eighth grade. I was mesmerized by Futura's mural and the b-boys and rappers. Then I found out these guys did reggae too. Whoa! I got to London Calling and the US debut and was hooked.
It's funny because in Honolulu, punk was accessible first mostly to the haole and Local kids who could afford the imports and black leather jackets, so in my private-school setting the context was funny: it signified wealth and brattiness, forget eating canned beans and eggs and recording demos in a dirty, carfume-filled garage.
Not that I was a Marxist then, or even prole for that matter--although summer jobs cleaning restaurant toilets and cooking huge vats of rice (not at the same time) do develop sections of the brain that remain inert in vast swaths of the planet...
Weirdly enough my exposure to good post-punk that didn't come through sifting through my cousin's 45s happened via trips to the Hawai'i State Library downtown which, thankfully, stocked all the Rolling Stone 5-Star Records like Gang of Four and Talking Heads. (No Gary Numan that I remember. Critics hated him!) Anyway, that's what you gotta love about socialism--bureaucrats filling the Library record bins with funky agit-prop.
By the time I was in college, I had complete access to all this stuff at the KALX library-a home away from home for a while-not to mention free tickets to see the bands at The Stone or the Berkeley Square and student loan money to go and buy stuff on the return-it-for-full-credit-if-you-don't-like-it-or-just-want-to-build-up-your-cassette-collection-plan from Rasputins. But I had already been deep into hip-hop and was reading about house in British music mags.
So on weekends like this, it's cool to catch up on things I missed.
You live long enough, you learn about shit you should have known the first time.
posted by Zentronix @ 4:37 PM
Saturday, July 17, 2004
The plight of the Young Right. Ah, would that the Young Left had it so bad.
posted by Zentronix @ 9:28 AM
Friday, July 16, 2004
PLACE TO BE
Bay Area peoples: OUTFOXED: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism premieres tonight, 7pm at the Victoria Theater, 16th and Mission. Q+A with director/producer Robert Greenwald to follow. It's a benefit for Media Alliance, Alternet, and Global Exchange.
See it before the lawyers at Fox News shut it down!
While I'm on the topic of media, there's gonna be a FCC hearing in Monterey July 21 to talk media diversity, local content and local ownership. For more info, check here. If you can't make it, tune into KPFA which will broadcast live beginning 5:30 PST.
posted by Zentronix @ 11:30 AM
Wednesday, July 14, 2004
If you missed "Re-Vote Control" on The Daily Show last night, you now have no excuse. The funniest thing they've ever done, for real. And those are some funny motherfuckers. Unfortunately the clip doesn't have Rob Corddry's floor-rolling "report" on the conspiracy, I mean inquiry, into postponing the elections. All you Brooklyn bootlegers--DVDs of this shit, please? I promise it'll be Chappelle-type fire on the streets.
posted by Zentronix @ 9:55 PM
GOOD NEWS FOR ONCE
It's We Love Monie Love Week at The Suburbs Are Killing Us! Bonuz beatz: the return of hip-house!
Yes, in two weeks we'll wonder why we were so excited.
posted by Zentronix @ 9:48 PM
My review of Ragga Ragga Ragga...it's all about Vybz! Bonuz beatz: the great Matt Cibula on the great Tanya Stephens! (Not in haiku.)
posted by Zentronix @ 9:33 PM
Bill Simmons' brilliant take on Shaq and Kobe.
I am doing a furious whop to celebrate the Lakers' self-destruction. I can't imagine anything topping it.
Well, OK. If Kobe gets sentenced to 12 years. Or the Yankees implode.
Hell, even I don't deserve that much fun in one year.
posted by Zentronix @ 8:46 PM
Thursday, July 08, 2004
URB'N PROPS
Janet Tzou's piece on The Roots in this month's URB could be the best one ever done.
Apathy is still a baby boomer lie. Erin Kaplan on L.A.'s new education activists.
posted by Zentronix @ 5:24 AM
Mosi Reeves on the National Hip-Hop Political Convention.
Mark Reynolds on the National Hip-Hop Political Convention.
posted by Zentronix @ 5:16 AM
Paul Collins, hilariously, on book agents.
posted by Zentronix @ 5:12 AM
Barbara Ehrenreich, belatedly but sagely, on Cosby.
posted by Zentronix @ 5:08 AM
Tuesday, July 06, 2004
BACK! CAUGHT YOU LOOKIN' FOR THE SAME THING
Anyone ready for protest season? Here's my soundtrack of choice: Ozomatli and Antibalas in the Voice.
posted by Zentronix @ 8:06 PM
I also got a go-go piece coming out in this new mag/book called SWINDLE.
Backgrounder: It's basically the extended remix of the Vibe piece I did in 2001. I can't front. I was proud of that one, one of my favorite pieces of all time, tho I know some of the local heads at TMOTTGOGO.com were heated at me 'cause I didn't fit in everything I was supposed to. (Hey buddies! There's only so many words Vibe allows! Nuff respect!) Bonus: the crowd photos by the brilliant Alex Tehrani, which still deserve an exhibition all their own. (Click here and scroll right for just two of them.)
But yo, this SWINDLE version may be even better. The article is longer and tighter, tho I do wish there was more Rare Essence. Bonus: the photos by R. Teri Memolo are also incredible.
Cop it, please, and holla, please, whether you rate or hate.
posted by Zentronix @ 8:03 PM
Kerry picks Edwards. It bolsters the Dem ticket for swing state voters concerned about the economy but worried about voting for a Northeastern limousine liberal known to do the fish-flop.
(Re: the economy...Paul Krugman rips it up today: For the first time since 1932, employment is lower in the summer of a presidential election year than it was on the previous Inauguration Day. Got that? Bush=Hoover, yall. Herbert and J. Edgar.)
But it also means the Dem ticket is sitting solidly in "the middle" on most issues: pro-war, pro-Patriot Act, pro-No Child Left Behind, pro-welfare deform, etc.
Goodbye progressives. Hey, Ralph, make some noise.
posted by Zentronix @ 8:56 AM
Thursday, July 01, 2004
Here's Ernest Hardy on Carl Hancock Rux and his important new novel, Asphalt. Both must-reads.
posted by Zentronix @ 6:16 PM
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