As a commentator, educator, public intellectual, and one of the best known anarchist voices in the U.S., Noam Chomsky has become a defining perspective as social movements develop.  His analysis of the shift in global capitalism, and our own role in its flux, has seen a recharge of importance as we entered the “new normal” of the post-2008 economy.  Like was done with workplace struggles at the birth of the union movement, we are attempting to locate housing struggles out of the abstract legislative sphere and back into the neighborhoods.  With the foreclosure crisis and the Occupy Movement that followed, a housing movement that saw occupation and defense as central began to be birthed against all conventional wisdom.

I sat down with Noam Chomsky to discuss the growing Take Back the Land and housing justice movements, the nature of the foreclosure crisis, the Occupy Movement, and what radical politics will look like in this new period of social movements.

SB:

I am working both with both Take Back the Land and local housing non-profits to create a big housing focused movement.  The two primary things that we do in Take Back the Land are foreclosure resistance, setting up blockades, working with families, trying to get neighborhood solidarity.  And also finding empty bank-owned homes and moving homeless families into them.  So one of the things is that it is a very direct thing, it uses direct action.  What is direct action, and why does it end up being so important as a kernel for movements like this?

Noam Chomsky:

Direct action carries the message forward in a very dramatic fashion.  For one thing it can help people.  So resisting foreclosure sometimes does help people get into their homes, but it also dramatizes the issue in a way in which words don’t.  Direct action means putting yourself on the line.  That’s true of civil disobedience and many other types of action, which indicate a depth of commitment and clarification of the issues, which sometimes does stir other people to do something.  That’s what resistance and civil disobedience were always about.  In fact, direct action has often been the preliminary to really major changes.  Revolutionary changes, in fact.  In the United States the sit-down strikes of the 1930s were a major impetus for passing significant New Deal legislation.  The reason is that manufacturers could perceive that a sit-down strike was just one step before taking over the enterprise, kicking out the owners and managers, and saying ‘we’ll run it ourselves.’  Which can be done, and it’s the real revolutionary change.  Changes the structure of hierarchy, domination, ownership, and so on.  And direct actions of the sit-down strikes were dramatic indication of that.

The same was true of, say, the civil rights movements.  Things that had been going on forever, hundreds of years, but what sparked it were a couple incidents of direct action.  Rosa Parks insisting on sitting in a bus.  Greensboro, North Carolina a couple years later.  Black students sitting at a lunch counter, and these things then took off and became major movements with a lot of consequences.  Without the direct action that probably wouldn’t have happened.  You could do as many speeches as you like and it wouldn’t have had the effect of those actions.

SB

One thing we have also been talking about is that this is built out of necessity.  People need a place a to live.  Do you think that this kind of necessity helps with the idea of direct action, making it more fundamental?

NC

It should, if done properly, bring home to people that human rights are being taken away by a social and economic system that has no real legitimacy.  I mean take foreclosure, take a look at the legislative history.  As you know, when the bank bailout was legislated by congress, the TARP bailout, it actually had two components.  One was to bailout the bank, essentially the people who created the crisis.  The other half was to do something to help their victims.  Of those two components only one was implemented, the first one.  And people ought to know that.  It’s the second one that counts.  Yes the perpetrators were bailed out, how about their victims?  They’re left hanging out to dry.  And I think almost anybody can see the extreme injustice of this, in fact criminality if not illegality of it.

SB

In the language, when we are discussing the issue, we draw on the idea of housing as a human right.  It’s the slogan we use.  We call on the U.N. Convention on Human Rights(Universal Declaration of Human Rights).  Why do you think this “human rights framework” is important for talking about housing?

NC

Well there is a kind of a gold standard on human rights.  It’s the Universal Declaration in 1948.  Its important for American’s to understand the status of that declaration.  It was not a Western imposition.  It was arrived at by consensus over a very broad range, including input from elsewhere.  In fact, much of the initiative came from elsewhere.  Some from here, Eleanor Roosevelt in particular.  But it was agreed upon and affirmed by congress.  It has the highest legal status you can say.  It’s got three parts, all of equal status.  The first part is political and civil rights, so the right to vote and so on.  The second part is social and economic rights, and that includes the right to housing, the right to healthcare, the right to education.  All fundamental rights, and by world standards are easily as significant as voting rights.  Maybe more so.  The third section is cultural rights.  The right to preserve your culture, to protect it and so on.  Well the U.S. attitude from the beginning has been to dismiss the third component, not even talk about it.  It’s never discussed.  And to reject the second component.  So U.S. officials have disparaged and dismissed the social and economic provisions.  That’s true especially under the Reagan and Bush One administrations.  Jeane Kirkpatrick, the U.N. Ambassador under Reagan(1), just dismissed the socio-economic provisions with ridicule.  It’s a letter from Santa Clause.  That’s exactly the same as throwing out the civil and political rights and saying their nothing, just a lot of words.  Paula Dobriansky(2) in the first Bush administration, she described social and economic rights as ‘a myth.’  That there are no such rights.  The only rights are civil and political rights, and it’s just a myth to think that these are rights.  Morris Abram, who was the delegate to the international U.N. human rights group(3), they were debating something called the ‘right to development,’ which basically paraphrased the Universal Declaration.  He voted against it; I think the U.S. was the only country to vote against it, with, again, very disparaging remarks.  Saying it’s preposterous.  Incitement.  You can’t talk about social and economic rights.  They don’t exist.

So the U.S. has been one of the strongest opponents of social and economic rights, which is a core part, one-third, of the Universal Declaration.  Actually the U.S. is opposed to two-thirds since it doesn’t discuss the cultural rights.  We should know that our country is in the lead in undermining human rights.  That’s important, especially given the standard rhetoric from political leaders, intellectuals, media, and so on about how we defend human rights all over the world.  We don’t defend them at all in principle.  We defend them against enemies.  So we are all in favor of human rights in Easter Europe or Iran, and say that’s fine.  But not in our domain.  Not here.

Foreclosure is one case in point.  The right to housing is a core part of the Universal Declaration.  Its particularly obscene her, for the reasons I’ve mentioned, because in the foreclosure case these people were cheated.  They were cheated by the big banks, who created the crisis on the verge of criminality, some of them actually criminal.  They created the crisis; induced people to undertake obligations they couldn’t possibly fulfill, and are now throwing them out in the streets, even though congress legislated there should be assistance to the victims.

SB

One thing I think is interesting is the housing movement starts to take shape, likely because of the 2010 crisis, but the character of it takes shape along with the Occupy Movement.  They are both about taking over spaces.  Either trying to reuse space, or take it back from another entity.  Do you think there is actually something significant about this idea of actually occupying a space?

NC

They both have that theme, but as you say it’s a different type of occupation.  In the Occupy Movement, it was to take a public space to use it for developing structures of solidarity.  Mutual aid, debate, discussion, organization, a place to reach out into the community to bring about badly needed changes.  In the case of the housing movement, its much more concrete.  It’s a matter of giving people a roof over their heads.

There are straightforward ways to deal with the foreclosure.  First, a number of people could be granted the right to rent their old houses and pay rents that are not that high until they reconstruct their finances and are able buy them back.  That could be done.  There are other simple means that could be applied.  So I think for the anti-foreclosure movement should have a very strong appeal to the general public if the issues are formulated clearly and properly.

And there’s just the straight human side.  Why should people be thrown out of their houses because the banks are crooks?  Then they get bailed out, of course.

SB

Do you think communities of color have been especially affected?

NC

Sure.  Victimization increases with poverty, it increases with race.  We can’t overlook the fact that despite some progress, racial oppression is still a major feature of American society.  It hasn’t gone away.  Just take a look at the distribution of people in prison.

SB

There is kind of a sweep effect that ends up happening, where one house becomes empty, two become empty, it becomes six…

NC

It begins to destroy the neighborhood, so everybody has a stake in it.  It’s a real reason for everyone to cooperate to prevent it from happening.  It’s wholly indecent as far as the original family is concerned.  It is also unnecessary because there are clear ways of dealing with it, and then there is kind of a domino effect.  It destroys the neighborhood.

SB

As we are starting to see the, I guess I shouldn’t say the “end” of the Occupy Movement, but we are walking away from that kind of rhetoric and the occupations, what do you think effect do you think it has had on movement building?  On the way that we discuss the issues.

NC

Well, the Occupy Movement was very brief.  It started a year ago(4), lasted for a couple months.  It had a brilliant tactic.  It was very effective.  It had an enormous impact.  Far more than I would have guessed, I must say I was surprised.  It spread all over the country to hundreds of cities.  All over the world.  I gave talks in Sydney, Australia to the Occupy Movement.  It just galvanized a lot of energy, activity, and so on.

But it was based on a tactic, and tactics don’t make movements.

Tactics, for one thing, they kind of a half -life.  They have diminishing returns.  You can’t apply them forever.  The same is true of the most famous of the Occupy Movements, in Tahrir Square in Egypt.  I was just there the day before yesterday.  People are still there. Tahrir Square is still a symbol of ongoing struggle, but you can’t keep occupying Tahrir Square.  For one, people in the neighborhood just get angered and irritated by it because its disturbing their lives.  The effectiveness of the tactic begins to diminish, so you have to turn the tactic into a set of principles, which you then pursue with different tactics.  And I think that’s the stage in which the Occupy Movement is today.  As it is in the case of Egypt, where they’re debating, discussing, asking how to go on under the new circumstances.  Not necessarily rejecting re-occupying of Tahrir Square, but moving in another direction.  Occupy needs to do the same thing.

The Occupy Movement is far more diffuse and diverse.  It doesn’t have the central character that, to some extent, the Egyptian Movement had, or the Tunisian Movement.  Its got similar problems all over the world.  Spain, Greece, Portugal, England.  In some places its had real successes.  Take Quebec.  In Quebec the Student Movement, which is not part of the Occupy Movement but I think was stimulated by it just as Zuchotti Park was stimulated by Tahrir Square.  The Quebec Student Movement had remarkable success.  It should be better known.  Initially it was a protest against a sharp rise in tuitions.  It expanded, and gained enormous that could have led to overthrown the government and a significant change in a whole range of policies.  That’s an enormous achievement.  That should be better known, and it can stimulate other things.

SB

What is interesting about them is that they turned an idea of an occupation into a permanent, long-standing social movement that was going to be there after this took place.  It was going to continue to maintain that student power, not let it dissipate after a large victory, but maintain that presence.

NC

It was a popular movement.  Students have often been kind of a stimulus and a source for broader activism, but it can’t succeed until it goes well beyond the students.  That was the case, for example, for the civil rights movement.  Greensboro, North Carolina was students.  SNCC spearheaded the civil rights movement with students.  The Freedom Riders, not all, but the majority were young people and students.  Over time it grew and became a mass popular movement, and had major achievements. Like all movements, it was limited and never achieved its real goals.  They were aborted.  In fact, right when the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King turned to class issues they were crushed.  There are lessons there.  And everyone knows Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech in 1963, but not many people know what, in many ways, was a more important ‘I Have a Dream’ speech of his in 1968.  The evening that he was assassinated.  That evening he spoke to a large crowd.  He was in Memphis, Tennessee to support a public workers strike.  A sanitation workers strike.  He was moving towards establishing a Poor People’s Movement.  Not black, Poor People’s Movement, which would address the fundamental issues of housing, that was a crucial part of it, poverty, malnutrition, and so on.  Actually, one of steps was an early housing movement in Chicago.  Urban Chicago.  He used his usual biblical style rhetoric.  He described himself to the crowd as like Moses, standing on a mountain.  He could see the Promised Land.   The land of freedom and justice, and overcoming poverty and oppression.  He could see it, he was not going to get there, but you’ll get there.  He spoke to the audience, then he was assassinated right there.

Poor People’s Campaign

There was supposed to be a march on Washington, a ‘poor people’s march,’ which he was to lead.  His widow, Coretta King, led the march, and, from Memphis, it went through the places in the South where the major struggles had been.  Birmingham, Selma, and so on.  Ended up in Washington, and set up a tent city(5).  An Occupy Movement.  They set up a tent city in Washington.  They were going to appeal to congress to legislate bills that would deal with the fundamental class issues, like poverty and housing and so on.  They were allowed to stay there for a while and then congress sent in the security forces.  They smashed up the tent city in the middle of the night and drove them out of Washington.  That’s a part of the civil rights movement that you don’t hear about on Martin Luther King Day, but it’s important.  It won major victories, but it couldn’t break through Northern racism and insistence on class privilege.

And we are right there now.  Occupy is a sort of a Poor People’s Movement.  Of course, there too the tent cities were broken up.  People were driven out, but you have to go on.

SB

If you look back, this is not the first time that people have done things like eviction resistance or occupying houses.  Can you talk a little bit about where in the past this has happened, and maybe internationally?

NC

In the 1930s it happened all the time, and in large parts of Europe left groups, often anarchist groups, have taken over buildings.  Reconstructed them so that homeless people could live there.  These movements have never reached a point of take off where it becomes a general thing to do, but they’ve been effective in many places in limited ways.  You never know when it’s going to take off.  You couldn’t have predicted that in Greensboro, North Carolina.  You couldn’t have predicted it with Rosa Parks.  You couldn’t have predicted it with Zuccotti Park.

SB

Do you think that now there’s an open discourse about radical politics that anarchism has a voice in the discussion?

NC

It certainly opened the doors, but whether it has a voice in the discussion depends on how people walk through those doors and develop the opportunities and possibilities that are available.  So, yeah, there’s openings.  And people have also sensed in their own existence the possibilities of mutual aid, solidarity.  One of the most important things about the Occupy Movement, I think, was just to create the kinds of bonds and associations that will be necessary for a more just and decent society.  People just helping each other, instead of ‘I just want to enrich myself add to my number of commodities.’  I’m going to join in a soup kitchen or a library or a public discussion, and we’ll all do it together.  We can win together.  That’s critical.

A young Chomsky, just starting a life of activism when organizing against the Vietnam War.

Notes:

1. Jean Kirkpatrick was nominated by Reagan as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
2. Paula Dobriansky has worked as a foreign policy expert in the administrations of five presidents in total, with her position ranging.  Her statements were made when acting as Secretary of State for Human Rights and Human Affairs, which she did for both Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush.
3. The official title for Morris Abram that is being referenced is Representative of the United States to the European Office of the United Nations, which he was appointed to be George H. W. Bush.  He served from 1989-1993.
4. The date of this interview was 10/26/12.
5. Called Resurrection City

This interview was a part of the larger documentary Expect Resistance, which chronicles the Take Back the Land and Occupy movements in the context of Rochester, NY.

Learn more about the film here.

Fortified Rochester

February 13th, 2013

The following is a guest post submitted by Joel Helfrich.
Submit your story today.

link to original piece: http://www.rochestersubway.com/topics/2013/02/fortified-rochester/

You do not have to be a designer to see that Rochester has a problem—well, a number of problems, actually. That we continue to make the same mistakes, however, regarding design of our built environment, is perhaps one of the most egregious. This column highlights some of the worst offenders in Rochester—some of which are still being built…

Nearly every example brings to mind historian Mike Davis’s magnum opus: City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles (1990) . The title reminds me of attempts in Rochester such as through the Rochester Regional Community Design Center, Rochester Subway, Reconnect Rochester, and various enlightened architects to draw attention to the social, cultural, and design-based decisions that allowed Rochester to have much of the bad architecture that it has today. People in Rochester are trying to fix this problem, however, in an attempt to bring back design standards that worked: housing atop storefronts, buildings built to abut the street for easy access to rail, rail systems that promoted vibrant, productive urban centers, streets that promoted walkability, et cetera. Davis’s fascinating sequel, titled Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster (1999) , builds on his first book by continuing to show with devastating reality how Angeleños fail to realize the disconnections between their lives and the physical surroundings.

I found Davis’s book convincing as an undergraduate and again as a graduate student. I recently reread the book and found it not so radical—tame, in fact—than I had remembered it. His descriptions of prisons, no-go areas, fortresses, windowless buildings, and unwelcoming places, many of them created intentionally, made me think about my own city. Whilst thinking about his work, I considered especially what designs the City Planning Commission must have approved within the last 10 years—quite clearly a great amount of schlock. What follows are some examples of horrible places and architecture that might actually be doing damage and harm to our residents and visitors of the city. Clearly these are not welcoming spaces, nor do they evoke a sense of pride, health, or happiness:

The Rochester Riverside Convention Center is a case in point. The front is not better than the back along South Ave or from the Broad Street Bridge. The front along Main Street, although it has some windows, is separated from the people on the street by railings and concrete. This building created an entire block that is now a wasteland, devoid of people and brimming with cars all heading one direction: away from the urban core. Rochester’s main natural landmark, the Genesee River, is shielded from many views by this behemoth. A vital, cultural resource is made inaccessible for an entire block.

The Excellus BlueCross BlueShield headquarters nearby spans an entire block in nearly every direction, yet appears from most angles to lack an entrance or exit or any doors, its employees trapped in a corporate structure that, as the Eagles put it in “Hotel California”: “You can check-out any time you like, But you can never leave!” Even from a safety standpoint, this offense seems astonishing.

The planning people in City Hall do not appear to be getting any better at the process of approving new construction. The intersection of Main and Culver recently saw the sprouting of a new McDonald’s where an old McDonald’s once stood, but the sitting of the building to the corner is notable because of its windowless back to the intersection. In fact, one section of the building facing Culver Road gives the impression, because of a separate brick color, that the windows were bricked in. The back door, often with plastic pallets and metal dolly just outside, faces the intersection. It locks down the corner. Its design is solely for the benefit of cars that drive through the back (front?) of the building that faces the neighborhood. McDonald’s was just the latest piece of the puzzle that is the intersection of Main and Culver. The high security windows (reflective glass!), doors, and set-back of the Volunteers of America, as well as the drive-through clothing drop-off, harms another corner of the intersection. The old Papa John’s and East High, with its miles of chain link fence, do little to make the other corners of this intersection any better. Clearly the message is well taken here: the needs of neighbors and people travelling by foot or bicycle are secondary to cars. Moreover, impoverished neighborhoods are not worthy of good design.

But even up-and-coming neighborhoods like the South Wedge have felt the burden of bad design. Postler & Jaeckle’s addition to its headquarters on the corner of South Ave and Hickory Street, with its high windows and long expanses of brick, is dreadful. While it may serve its purpose as a storage area for P&J’s equipment and supplies, it does nothing to add to the area around it, the new businesses and housing on South Avenue, the surrounding architecture, or any feeling of peacefulness.

Nearby EchoTone Music on South Ave reminds me of a Medieval Times restaurant chain or, better still, a brown colored White Castle restaurant—fortress-like in design and appearance. Yet even the average White Castle, the original hamburger chain, has windows.

Perhaps the worst offender of the South Wedge is School Number #12 , in part because it is supposed to be a place for children to learn. Its Soviet style prison-like architecture is extremely oppressive. Even the lunchroom does not have windows, a terrible environment for little children who attend that school yet must close their eyes to imagine a life outside of concrete. Parts of Highland Hospital are also atrocious, especially the parking garage on the corner of Rockingham and South, but also the back of the hospital along Rockingham and Mount Vernon.

Last, but certainly not least: the forgettable East Ave. Wegmans , which opens in May. Many people are drawn to the Wegmans chain. My relatives take visitors to Wegmans. People who move away from the area wish that they could take a store with them. Overflowing with proprietary architecture, fake windows, and security glass, the new East Ave. Wegmans is the latest edition to our social and cultural fabric—our built environment. Many people view Wegmans as an “institution.” After all, it is less museum and more prison like, in my opinion. It is not hard for your average Rochesterian to recognize the brand. It is the same shoddy inferior design, no matter if you are in Pittsford or Geneva , New York; in Virginia or Maryland ; or on East Ave. in Rochester. That there was ever a fight over this place from City officials and the City Planning Commission seems hard to imagine, given that it looks exactly the same as the last local Wegmans built in Greece on Mount Read . This abysmal place features nearly three sides of a “new” building in an “old” wrapper without windows, greenspace, or anything that makes a human feel happiness, healthiness, or wellness. Let us not forget the massive parking lot. As my late father-in-law would put it: “Sons a bitches!”

There has to be a different way of doing business in Rochester. Couldn’t the City create a green code so we can be like Buffalo or obtain some additional green infrastructure with plans similar to Syracuse? Imagine permeable paving, a green roof, solar panels, a small wind turbine (not banned by Rochester city code, yet), a green wall, bioswales, a rain garden, water harvesting from the roof, et cetera. The list goes on!

The questions from looking at and thinking about all of Rochester’s sad places remain: will Rochester continue to fortify itself, creating spaces that are not worth anything? Or will we turn the tide and make aesthetically pleasing places that are worth caring about? The former is most likely what this City will do, but I would love to hear your opinions and learn about the places in Rochester that make you feel sick, as well as those that continue to lift your spirits.

About Joel Helfrich:

Accidental Racism is still Racism by Alykhan Alani (@DJALYKHAN)

 Accidental Racism, Pop Culture, and White Supremacy by Alykhan Alani

(link to original article: bit.ly/16NGEi8 )

[ Streaming Link to the song & Link to the lyrics ]

By now, I am sure you’ve heard the new country-pop record that’s just been released by country heavyweight Brad Paisley, featuring one of hip-hop’s most venerable dookie-chain rocking, Kangol-cap wearing hip-hop icons who not only listens to his mama but can’t live without his radio, gets headsprung  in the club, remains current with chart topping hits, and still has time to pursue romance.  LL Cool J’s success and appeal stem from a rather lengthy career and diverse catalog, but let us not forget his most salient contribution - audibly defining mutually beneficial heteronormative safe sex across the boroughs for at least two (if not more) generations of hormonal youths, awkwardly grinding in high-school gymnasiums across the nation.  LL Cool J probably does a number of things well, but politicking about race simply isn’t one of them.

LL and Paisley trade verses about misunderstanding one another on Accidental Racist, which has begun to make its way around the Internet, generating a great deal of conversation along the way.

The underlying assumption of the song is that since we can’t change history, we ought to do our best to see each other as equals and move on, despite the fact that we may feel uncomfortable due to the (often subtle) threat presented by particular cultural artifacts like confederate flags, or du-rags (interpersonal racism is written off as irrational and structural racism doesn’t seem to exist in this narrative).      

When it comes to race, it might very well be the case that privileged (white) folks are wracked with guilt about a history they had no hand in creating (or are blissfully ignorant, which is often the case), and the fact that they actively benefit from (and perpetuate) it causes a great deal of anxiety within them. However, certain cultural signifiers like the confederate flag have a very specific and violent prehistory to them. Would this song even be regarded as ‘acceptable’ if Brad Paisley and LL were “conversing over a beer” about a swastika?

Instead of engaging in a meaningful and artistic discourse about race and guilt, LL simply endorses Paisley ‘judging the book by its cover’ rhetoric.  Such enthusiastic approval verbally articulated over a poorly produced country-hop ‘beat’ brings to light a number of problematic assumptions.

Paisley croons:

“To the man that waited on me at the Starbucks down on Main / I hope you understand / When I put on that t-shirt, the only thing I meant to say is I’m a Skynyrd fan”

Instead of simply walking by a person of color on the street, or seeing a person of color patronizing the same Starbucks he (Paisley) happens to be in, the situation described is one that is all too common - service sector employment where the employee happens to be black and the patron white.  Whether you’re in line at a Starbucks, or at a college campus cafeteria, the implications of racialized service-sector relations are broad.  If your only interaction with people of color is across the counter as you exchange money for food and seemingly pleasant small-talk, there’s a chance you subscribe (perhaps unconsciously) to Paisley’s worldview, which limits where and how you might envision engaging a person of color, relegating them to simple and demeaning service sector employment.  With regard to being a Lynyrd Skynyrd fan, Gary Rossington has distanced the band’s brand from the flag, much to the dismay of many fans.

In the following verse, Paisley attests to the atrocities of the past, yet maintains his complacency, and even manages to evoke sympathy from the listener.  Poor Brad Paisley, he’s so conflicted.

“Our generation didn’t start this nation We’re still pickin’ up the pieces, walkin’ on eggshells, fightin’ over yesterday And caught between southern pride and southern blame”

Right.  No one want’s to waste time fighting over yesterday, except for the fact that the effects of slavery and the embedded nature of racism built into nearly every social institution are far-reaching and incredibly detrimental.  So it might make Brad Paisley and many others uncomfortable to even have to think critically about race, but given the great disparities that exist between blacks and whites in this country, they are conversations that desperately need to be had.  On the other hand, quit being so sensitive about race you bleeding-heart progressive with a not-so-secret love of the four elements and a B.A. in the humanities or social sciences from some east coast liberal arts college - no one cares.

At least Paisley didn’t explicitly pull the ‘I have black friends” card to further mask his tacit complacency with racism.  Oh wait, he did.  Enter rap mogul LL Cool J.

“Dear Mr. White Man, I wish you understood / What the world is really like when you’re livin’ in the hood”

LL’s assumption in these lines further contributes to well-established stereotypes of African Americans, who can only occupy decrepit ‘ghetto’ neighborhoods.  You might think that LL might utilize this opportunity to acknowledge folks of color who reside in underserved rural communities given the country-pop appeal of the music, but he doesn’t.  LL passes up a chance at complexifying the traditional narrative of marginalized African American communities by reifying commonplace stereotypes.  But there’s still time for redemption, right?  Don’t get your hopes up. 

“Now my chains are gold but I’m still misunderstood”

and several lines later

“If you don’t judge my gold chains / I’ll forget the iron chains”

This cute juxtaposition of bling with chains that once shackled the ancestors of many people of color isn’t novel to critical discourse about hip-hop culture, but phrased in this particular way (and given the context of the song) it seems like LL is willing to ‘call it even’ as long as Paisley won’t judge him for being successful.  We may not be able to “re-write history” as our two musically inclined compatriots suggest, but we can surely erase generations of enslavement, torture, and present-day racism if we could only respect one another’s bling.  Wearing expensive jewelry is one way in which a person can flaunt their wealth and success, because we all know that unbridled materialism is the best way to cope with the anxieties of late capitalism. Drake wears both chains even when he’s in the house, so there!  Why would wearing a gold chain contribute to LL being misunderstood?  Well, everyone knows that black men with chains are sports players, rappers, or even more likely, drug dealers, right? 

We might apologize for LL, and write off his verse as simply ‘bad’ up to this point. The following lyric, however, makes redemption impossible and cements LL Cool J’s newfound reputation as an apologist for racism.

“If you don’t judge my du-rag / I won’t judge your red flag”

We’re already battling a great deal of white-washing when it comes to race-relations in this country as it is, and this song had the potential to counter this narrative.  Instead, it falls short in just about every way.

Comparing a du-rag to the confederate flag is simply irresponsible and reductionist, even for the purpose of a pop-song.  Both cultural artifacts are symbolic, and may seem threatening, but for entirely different reasons.

A du-rag is a product born out of the desire to conform to hegemonic Euro-centric ideals of beauty and fashion.  Black folks in the 1920’s needed to protect their relaxed / treated hair while sleeping.  While some undertook this painful chemical process for cosmetic reasons, many found it necessary in order to gain or maintain employment, since kinky hair was (and still is, to some extent) perceived by (white) America as savage-like and uncouth.  While du-rags and wave caps serve a similar function today, they have resurfaced as a fashionable accessory in the current age.  Du-rags have become a staple ‘hip-hop’ fashion accessory worn by people from a variety of cultural backgrounds, and are associated with urban masculinity (not unlike certain types of jeans, hoodies, and other clothing/accessories).  Because of this, they are perceived as threatening.

The confederate flag is threatening because it represents a time in our nation’s history where racism was codified into not only culture, but law.  It represents lynching. It stands for enslavement.  It harkens back to Jim Crow, domestic terrorism in its most pathological form.  It defends the complete and utter degradation and abuse of people of color and their families, shipped here against their will.  It stands for Chattel slavery and much of the wealth of our country has accumulated since the colonies were founded.  If this pre-history truly imbues you with pride, I have news for you.

LL Cool J plays himself and does listeners a disservice by being an apologist of white supremacy, nevermind Paisley’s ignorance as a ‘misunderstood’ white man.  There is nothing ‘accidental’ about a creative work that masquerades as one that ‘speaks truth to power’ when in fact it emboldens a white-washed a-historical narrative of race relations in this country that absolves guilt, pays no mind to white privilege, white supremacy, and institutional and structural racism that persists today.   We’re not going to see significant change in this country around issues of race, class, and gender by not talking about them (or the structural forces which shape them). How we talk about them is just as, if not more important than having the conversations themselves.  Until then, I guess we’ll have to settle for Corey.

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Alykhan Alani will most likely graduate from the University of Rochester this spring.  Revel in his musings on socio-political life on Tumblr, or tweet him @DJALYKHAN. 

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Two years ago a group of mostly retirees and grandparents formed out of concern for the future of their children and grandchildren. The threats identified were out of control corporate greed, income inequality, the the eroding of our cities, neighborhoods, and environment. Since then the group could be seen with signs most Mondays at noon in front or a local bank protesting the use of taxpayer funds to bail out big banks, only to have them to continue to foreclose on homes, often illegally. They have joined forces with other activist groups like Take Back the Land, Occupy Wall Street, Metro Justice, Rochester Red and Black, Rochester Against War and local labor unions to call attention to the misappropriation of our tax money to the benefit of the wealthy and well-connected.

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Recently the focus has shifted to opposition to "austerity" and proposed cuts to Social Security and Medicare. On Mondays now the group is more likely to be seen in front of the Federal Building on State Street with their message. The Federal Building is home to Senators Schumer and Gillibrand, as well as Representative Louise Slaughter's offices.

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In a recent editorial Rebel member Mike Connelly wrote "The national mythology about the economy given by the mainstream media can be summarized as a discussion whose terms are “austerity” and … “austerity.” Not “versus full employment” or “jobs” but how much austerity, when, and for whom." There are alternatives that are not even on the table to discuss. For instance ending the war in Afghanistan, ending drug prohibition, ending subsidies to profitable corporations like Exxon-Mobil, or canceling orders for military aircraft that the Air Force says it doesn't need. Any one of these measures alone could make up for the proposed cuts.

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Another important message that news media is refusing to report is that Social Security and Medicare have nothing to do with the deficit. Both are funded by a separate payroll tax. Using Europe as an example, many leading economists warn that austerity will cost jobs, not create them. These economists like Joseph Stiglitz, Paul Krugman, and Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Reich, are outcasts in the corporate-run "news." The complete text of Connelly's article can be seen here:

http://band-of-rebels.com/2013/04/11/rebels-speak-out-austerity-or-jobs-...

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Band of Rebels was started by senior citizens but is not limited by age. Anyone interested is encouraged to join and participate. This is about our future, not our present.

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April 15, Tax Day, falls on a Monday this year. The Rebels will be out in front of the Federal Building at noon and would like everyone to join them. Let your elected officials know. We need jobs not cuts. Hands off Social Security and Medicare. The group's web page has additional resources plus an easy way to contact your elected officials.

http://band-of-rebels.com/

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