The NYTIMES article below highlights a couple of important issues, one of these being international immigration and the attempt of working people of color to destroy national barriers. This very well could be the form of a new international labor movement. Every country is faced with the influx of migrant communities as the export and free movement of capital restricts the free movement of labor. Labor is in a life and death struggle to close this contradiction as we must chase capital wherever it goes in order to resist it.
Secondly, like the US, in France, it is mainly Arab and African (mostly Algerian) people who carry the brunt of economic inequality and state repression. In this situation, a fatal collision between two teens on a motorcycle with a French squad car sparked a revolt within the Algerian communities of Paris against the police.
It makes no difference which side was on the offensive or if it was accidental. The revolts in France are a completely substantial and warranted form of resistance against white supremacy and the State which upholds it. This revolt is one in a series of general rebellions among Arab and African workers as well as white workers and students. The riots have to be viewed as a logical response to white supremacy and capitalism and their outcome can only be the self-government of the French workers a la the aborted Revolution of 1848, the Paris Commune of 1871, and the French General Strikes in 1968 and 2006.
This resistance cannot be viewed as irrational violence, but as logical and valid as the battle of Algiers.
Lastly, Sarkozy represents the struggle of neoliberalism over the Welfare State. This flies in the face of those who want to hold up France as inherently more progressive than the United States. State policy is no indicator of working class consciousness or values. This idea, thrown out by Marx in the 1840s, was Hegel's turn from the support of Revolutionary France in 1789, to his unabashed support of the Prussian State in his later years.
What is taking place in the United States, with the immigration of Latin American peoples, is merely the national form for what is happening on an international scale.
All power to the Paris revolt!
As Violence Eases, Sarkozy Calls Riots Unacceptable
November 29, 2007
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
PARIS, Nov. 28 — President Nicolas Sarkozy made a lightning strike into France’s troubled suburbs today, visiting a wounded police captain and pledging afterward in front of the trailing television cameras to bring attacking rioters to justice.
At 7:30 a.m., just hours after returning home from China, Mr. Sarkozy was at a hospital in the suburb of Eaubonne, north of Paris, lending his support to the police officer, who had been injured during clashes with rioters that started late Sunday.
“So that things are very clear: what has happened is absolutely unacceptable,” Mr. Sarkozy said outside the hospital. He added that those who fired the shots would find themselves in court.
After two nights of rioting Sunday and Monday night, largely in the north Paris suburb of Villiers-le-Bel, the situation eased Tuesday night following the massive deployment of 1,000 anti-riot police there.
Mr. Sarkozy described the event that sparked the violence — the death of two teenage boys whose motorbike collided with a police car in Villiers-le-Bel — as “not something that we can tolerate.” But he criticized those who seized on the incident to seek vengeance through violence.
“There’s no link between what happened with these perfectly innocent two young boys and shooting at public officials,” Mr. Sarkozy said.
Mr. Sarkozy made no other stop in the suburbs and did not linger in Eaubonne, but his brief visit was symbolically important.
His performance as a zero-tolerance, law-and-order interior minister for former President Jacques Chirac was much criticized by residents of France’s working- and lower-class suburbs, and during his presidential campaign he stayed away from the tough neighborhoods in the suburbs that were consumed by three weeks of violence in late 2005.
During the campaign last April, for example, he abruptly canceled a visit to a neighborhood of the eastern city of Lyon as 100 protesters gathered there. Some brandished signs that read, “Sarkozy, you are not welcome here,” others shouting, “Scum,” and “Karcher.”
The words “scum” and “Karcher” have come to be both identified with Mr. Sarkozy and emblematic of his difficult relationship with France’s ethnic Arab and African populations. In 2005, he vowed to clean out young troublemakers from one Paris suburb with a Karcher, the brand name of a high-powered hose used to wash off graffiti, and also pledged to rid poor neighborhoods of their “scum.”
He has never fulfilled his promise to return to Argenteuil, where he used the term “scum” and was pelted with bottles and rocks in 2005.
Later in the morning today, Mr. Sarkozy met at the Élysée Palace with the families of the two teenagers who died in Villiers-le-Bel. Mr. Sarkozy said he was opening a judicial inquiry into the deaths, Jean-Pierre Mignard, a lawyer for the relatives, told reporters, according to the news agency Agence France-Presse.
Mr. Mignard was quoted as welcoming the move, adding that it would allow the families and their representatives “to participate actively in the search for the truth.”
At least in one neighborhood of Eaubonne today, Mr. Sarkozy was warmly welcomed.
“He’s doing a great job,” said Jean-Claude Morard, 63, a retired window cleaner, over coffee at a local café.
“He’s right to show others that he’s the boss. For once we have a good guy in power!”
He added, "I prefer a guy who’s involved in every matter of his country than someone who stays in his ivory tower."
Antonio Da Silva, 36, the owner of a kitchen contracting company, agreed. “He comes as a showman, that’s for sure, but this is a brave man,” he said.
But just down the street, in front of the local McDonald’s, there was the residual distrust of Mr. Sarkozy that has long characterized his relationship with many residents of the suburbs.
"It’s a show in the American style!" said Marcel Lutz, 68, a retired printer, of Mr. Sarkozy’s visit. He added: "He doesn’t need to be everywhere. We are not in a state of siege here!"
Outside a shopping center in Soisy-sous-Montmorency a few miles away, Carole Baron, 27, a worker in a beauty salon, characterized the visit as a temporary gesture at best.
"Sarko’s visit might put people at rest after what happened two days ago, but to me, it won’t change anything," she said, adding, "Coming here is certainly an act of kindness but I doubt it’ll make things move or have any kind of influence."
Maia de La Baume contributed reporting from Eaubonne, France.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Paris is Burning...again.
Friday, November 16, 2007
Memorial for Brooks Best, Tuesday, Nov. 20 4-7PM
All,
We will be having an informal memorial for Mom at Passantino Brothers Funeral Home, 2117 Independence Ave. close to Paseo Blvd. in Kansas City, MO. It will be held Tuesday, November 20, 2007 between 4-7PM. At 4:30, we will play music and invite those who knew and loved Mom to share their thoughts, stories, and feelings. Please come as you are, casually dressed, and at any moment in that time window that will be convenient for you.
Thank you all for showing us such an outpouring of love and support. It has held us together when it was always Mom that played that role.
If anyone would like to send flowers, the funeral home asks that you have the delivery set for Tuesday. This way, the flowers will be fresh.
Thanks again.
The Best/Wilson Family
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Brooks Best: May 16, 1940 - November 14, 2007
Exactly six months ago today, I was told by my brother, Reese, that my Mom is terminally ill. Today, my Mother, Brooks Best, left us to pursue her next journey. We love her so much and this world will not be the same and neither will I.
I would not be who I am without her. She gave me the unconditional love, imbued me with the right values, and had my back at every step. I'm distraught without her.
Mom, if you can read this, I love you and you'll always be with me.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
WOMEN IN STRUGGLE II
Just an update on the WIS event. We have a new flyer with this week's film which has changed from Women In Struggle to Leila Khaled Hijacker. An additional film, Into the Fire, about an American women's volunteer brigade in the Spanish Civil War, will be played November 20th.
Women In Struggle Film Series
Women have made legendary contributions to movements and revolutions around the globe which have fought for the self-government of oppressed people. Despite the frequent characterization of women at home and abroad as "victims," "backwards" or "brainwashed", there exists a long and rich tradition of women's struggles which oppose not only patriarchy within their own communities but also white supremacy, Western empire and colonialism. This film series seeks to tell the heroic stories of women who have fought for their own liberation, on their own terms, the only way liberation can be won: in struggle.
All Films will be shown at the Cuban Studies Institute
(North end of the Caroline Richardson Bldg, Tulane Univ.)
Tuesday, November 13th @ 7 p.m.
Leila Khaled: Hijacker
This is a story about an extraordinary woman and her journey that highlights the nuanced politics of nationhood and gender. This film about a Palestinian woman hijacker challenges our assumptions about those who resort to violent self-defense in response to oppression. It also complicates the current discourse on Islam and terrorism by its deliberation on the meanings of terms such as "terrorist", interrogating and asking if one person's terrorist could be another's freedom fighter.
Tuesday, November 20th @ 7 p.m.
Into the Fire:
American Women in the Spanish Civil War
Spain, 1936: right-wing military officers led by General Franco (and supported by Hitler and Mussolini) attempt to seize power in Spain and crush an incipient revolution. In response, nearly 80 American women joined the "Good Fight"—volunteering, in defiance of the U.S. government, to help fight the Fascists in what would become the Spanish Civil War.
For further information on future films contact NewOrleansCommittee@gmail.com
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Hip-Hop in Africa: Tanzania
Only four minutes long, this clip reveals some of the conflict between "Hip-Hop" and "Bongo Flavor" as genres fighting to become the dominant forms of hip-hop in Tanzania. Bongo Flavor appears closer to American Bling Rap, as validated by some of the "Hip-Hop" artists whose style reflects a more militant, political context reminiscent of Dead Prez.
In the U.S., the hip-hop of Dead Prez remains marginal when compared to the hip-hop of Three 6 Mafia and UGK. But depending upon the historical circumstances of Tanzania, it could be that this hip-hop has a broader popular base. Only further investigation will reveal.
It is left unclear as to which form has the larger base, but are both valid expressions nonetheless. After all, it is the conflict between the two (or many) that is essential to its understanding and development.
The universality is important, additionally. In the opening sequence, a man tells us that hip-hop is his news, education, and religion. Were folks saying this during the height of Jazz or Rock? It wouldn't appear as such. But because our world is becoming so similar and becoming so together politically and culturally, people can begin to speak in this fashion.
Paul Wall and Chamillionaire Squash the Beef
Drewreports.com has recently reported that Paul and Chamillionaire have squashed the beef and performed together on November 7th at Texas State University. Apparently, they haven't spoken for over five years.
It isn't mentioned at Drewreports.com, but from what I understand (I'll validate it later) was that the beef was exacerbated by Paul replacing Cham's spot on the song Still Tippin' which dropped in the Spring of 2005.
I interviewed Paul in the Summer of 2006 and forgot to ask about his falling out with Cham. Later, I went back and listened to some of the music that Paul and Cham recorded under the name "Color Changing Click" and it was hot. The post-Geto Boys and UGK Houston (which was really West Coast music) has some of the hottest hip-hop coming out right now and has its own independent sound. UGK and Scarface are still putting out quality shit, though, and UGK just dropped a new single and album that is sick.
I'm happy the beef is squashed and every time I learn of other feuds ended I think of the below song. Although, I'm not on some "hip-hop needs to unify", "end black on black crime" type shit, either. Peace.
Monday, November 05, 2007
WOMEN IN STRUGGLE I
This week and next week at Tulane, two films on women's role in anti-colonial and anti-imperial struggles will be shown at the Cuban Studies Institute.
Tuesday, November 6 at 7PM, come see an important documentary about the anti-colonial movement in Zimbabwe, titled Flame. The following Tuesday, November 13, check out Women in Struggle about four women who were imprisoned for their involvement in the national liberation movement in Palestine.
These films are being exhibited to counter the ideas that women in colonial societies cannot be self-governing and that there is something inherent to Muslim and Arab people that is violent and authoritarian. These were the themes behind the Stalinist David Horowitz Freedom Center which sponsored Islamofascism Awareness Week late last month.
"Women's liberation" has been used as a pretext for imperial endeavors by the U.S. abroad and the above films cast women's liberation in fuller context and reclaim its content.
We hope you'll make it out.
Text from flyer...
Women in Struggle: A Film Series on Women and the Struggle Against Imperialism
Some people say that the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in order to "save" Afghan women. Some believe that U.S. empire can be a benevolent and progressive guardian of women in the "Third World." Others warn us of the violent and sexist nature of Islam which, we are advised, all Muslim women fall so tragically victim to. The TV waves and internet are saturated with debates about "welfare moms" and "video hoes" as liberals and conservatives alike try to figure out how to fix the so-called backwards character of Black women today. From our classrooms to our communities, seldom do we see women of color portrayed as anything other than victims. Aren't there proud histories of women of color? Haven't women of color contributed to the countless social movements and revolutions which have fought for a new world? Haven't women battled for our own self-government?
We have, and we continue to do so. Despite what some may tell us about the status of women of color at home or abroad, there exists a long and rich tradition of women's struggles which oppose not only patriarchy within their own communities but also white supremacy, Western empire and colonialism. This film series includes films that tell the heroic stories of women in Latin America, Africa and the Middle East who have fought for their own liberation, on their own terms, the only way liberation can be won: in struggle.
All films will be shown at the Cuban Studies Institute (north end of the Caroline Richardson Bldg) on the Uptown campus of Tulane University.
Tuesday, Nov. 6th @ 7pm
Flame
Synopsis: Flame provides an important and intentionally ambiguous study of who will control not only the depiction of the past but also the present. Flame is the story of two close friends who become fighters in the Zimbabwean liberation struggle and whose involvement in the struggle lead to very different outcomes. Florence, impulsive and brave, and Nyasha, scholarly and cautious, are scarcely more than children when they run away from their village to join the liberation forces in 1975.
Tuesday, Nov. 13th @ 7pm
Women in Struggle
Synopsis: This film is about four Palestinian women imprisoned in Israeli jails for their involvement in the Palestinian national liberation movement. Their "offenses" range from providing safe houses for members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, to surveying targets and planting bombs, to waving the Palestinian flag (which was prohibited before the 1993 Oslo Accords).
*** Email NewOrleansCommittee@gmail.com for more information ***
Sunday, November 04, 2007
Lupe Fiasco at N.O. Hip-Hop Panel Discussion
Friday, November 2, 2007, NOLA Hip-Hop for Hope sponsored a panel discussion featuring artists, professors, teachers, and community folks, followed with a talk with Lupe Fiasco.
Among the eight panelists were a mixture of hip-hop cultural conservatives, social conservatives, and social and liberal democrats, and only two or three offered anything of value.
Most of the discussion situated around the "unholy trinity" that sets the parameters for most hip-hop discussion today; that of misogyny, violence, and materialism. The few of the Left perspective tried to give a broader social context for why themes like these predominate within hip-hop, while those on the Right attributed them to bad parenting, inferior education, depraved morals, etc.
Dr. Shayne Lee, while appealing to the logic and parameters given, argued that hip-hop has many different sub-genres, not all of them misogynistic or violent. He affirmed this by his belief in the free market that lends itself to the variety of tastes of listeners. Additionally, he stated that if one genre becomes the most popular it is because of some abstract economic law.
His flawed economism aside, hip-hop does manifest many different categories to give a broader, fuller expression of its content. But these categories cannot be treated as immutable; as if they have always been with us. These categories move, develop, grow, and are eventually superseded by new categories that act as mere forms for hip-hop's actual beats and rhymes substance.
For instance, gangsta rap and bling rap are two different sub-genres, but bling is a negation of gangsta; a renunciation of its poverty context and a break with both its militancy and embrace of poverty. But bling was an undercurrent within gangsta that eventually came to dominate and absorb the other. This doesn't mean that gangsta rap is dead, but the gangsta rap of today is hardly the gangsta rap of the early and mid 1990s. Labelling it the same tends to blur this distinction.
Betty Washington, a teacher and publisher of Hip-Hop Teen Magazine, took a hardline social conservative approach to hip-hop; an approach that is strikingly reminiscent to C. Delores Tucker and Dionne Warwick's assailing of hip-hop in the mid 90s. Her view is that we (meaning the Jazz generation) need to create and inject from without a mechanical, positive hip-hop and pressure the ruling class to create unprofitable music.
The problem with this view is in treating hip-hop as if it is something external to begin with and not a living, breathing organism from below. The artists scapegoated for all the aforementioned contexts within the music are valid and authentic manifestations of black and working class reality. How does creating such fake music erase violence and drugs? As long as these realities prevail, people will find ways to give expression to them in art and music.
One of the more vocal and animated of the panelists, who was literally all over the map when it come to her position, was adamant that hip-hop takes the blame for everything wrong in society precisely because of the demonization of black people. We couldn't agree more on this question. But her contributions ended there.
When Lupe made his way to the microphone, he was immediately bombarded by the backpack, cultural conservatives with questions as to how he feels about being a 'conscious rapper'. Witty though he was, he answered with a question, "Do you think Jeezy and 50 Cent are conscious artists?" to which the questioner replied, "No." He then stated that he feels that consciousness is an awareness of your surroundings and that Jeezy and 50 are very aware of their own. Whereas Lupe says he talks about the surroundings as they are, Jeezy and 50 embrace them.
Lloyd Banks was asked in an October 2006 interview, "Do you listen to a lot of 'conscious' artists? And how do you feel about their rapping as opposed to your own?"
Banks responds, "Well not a lot. I don't really buy their albums or nothin' like that, but I can appreciate the music. I acknowledge what Mos Def brings to the table and Talib Kweli, even The Roots, they're just another branch of Hip Hop. There's so many different styles that make up the Hip Hop culture. I can't even really... The difference with mine is, my music is 'conscious' also, I guess the difference is just the two labels. Maybe it's just more 'in your face' with me. I mean I'm totally and completely conscious with what I'm saying, when I'm saying it so I don't even know why people acknowledge that as different."
"Conscious rap" as a label is ultimately Theses on Hip-Hop point five, dogmatism, and an attempt to divide hip-hop.
What the panelists missed in the end was that hip-hop is a direct and universal outgrowth of life under capitalism and white supremacy and it reveals humanity's striving for real universality in all that we do, especially in our labor. It is a yearning for true freedom; for emancipation from the chains of the old society and that is what the intellectuals, the bewilderers, and the bureaucrats will never understand.
The D&HHP strives to capture hip-hop's totality and to validate all of its component parts, not divorce them from one another because it doesn't fit into our own thought categories. If any round content, any object, doesn't accept the square pegs of our thoughts, we need a new peg. Many of the above panelists and their ideas represent those square pegs that need to be dispensed with.
Lupe Fiasco at N.O. Hip-Hop Panel Discussion
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Friday, November 02, 2007
The Hip-Hop Organization is Nothing New
As Trinidadian Marxist C.L.R. James often wrote, people are striving for a new Universal, but our ability to reach this Universal is hampered by the constraints of the old social organization; the old society. This universality is the negation of capitalist conditions and division of work and the creation of the self-orchestrated plan of working people. Additionally, attaining such a universality will mean eliminating the strict distinctions between work and leisure time, time for education, and time for culture and the arts.
A quick digression.
What humanity achieved in 1905 was our first attempt at supplanting the old capitalist society with the universal self-organization of workers. The Soviets (councils) of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies were both political and economic bodies. That is, their basis was control of the workplace by the workers, but they were also directly democratic institutions; the deputies served as agents for carrying out the collective will of each factory and were subject to instant recall.
After 1917, many of these Soviets became what Lenin called "schools of communism", as they worked to bridge the gulf between intellectual and manual labor and manage production independent of factory managers. This demonstrated our need and quest for unity between our economic, political, educational, and cultural life instead of the old capitalist divisions between these spheres where each is the special function of intellectuals, technocrats, and bureaucrats who decide in our "interests".
One signal of this quest for universality today is the phenomenon of the hip-hop organization. Where hip-hop began as an aesthetic expression of not only racism, poverty, and unemployment, but the desire for an entirely new social organization, today hip-hop is being organized on an apparent political basis. However, because it is organizing outside our productive lives and outside of a movement, it cannot become an independent force, but merely another bankrupt traditional form of organization.
A distinction should be drawn between hip-hop preservation societies such as Ill Crew Universal and Temple of Hiphop and action-based organizations like the Hip-Hop Congress, the National Hip-Hop Political Convention, et al. These latter groups are organizing hip-hop youth, educating them on "political issues", and advocating them to vote.
What is problematic of the hip-hop organization is that it has no solid foundation. It is a superstructure of an art and is erected on top of hip-hop itself. Therefore, it can be easily divorced from hip-hop's subjective content (working people) and transformed into bourgeois, status quo political forms. Hip-hop is working class in content, but the content of the hip-hop organization is its equivocal class composition and its liberal democratic (as opposed to direct democratic) internal organization.
What is proletarian (working class), however, about the hip-hop organization is its recognition of this desire for the new Universal, its break with antiquated notions of racial and national identity, and its belief that everyone can be and do hip-hop. And if anyone can do hip-hop, anyone can do anything.
The basis for the new society is proletarian direct democracy. And this ultimately will not happen within the context of a hip-hop organization with liberal democratic forms, especially in the absence of a mass movement. In fact, it is because we are not among movement times that the organization necessarily takes the form of a bourgeois organization (regardless of its so-called progressive character). Because of this it also lacks a concrete vision for something different. The difference currently remains within the abstract realm of a more benevolent State instead of being a contemporary American form of a Soviet or a "school of communism".
Regardless of its inherent flaws, we should look at the hip-hop organization as one more indication of our positive drive toward working class self-government. The new organizational forms that will be borne out of a movement, will strike closer to this Universal, but it won't come via hip-hop organizations, still if it does come from the hip-hop generation. As Jeff Chang said, and as we've repeated here, art never produces coherent politics.
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