SUNDAY BRUNCH

Hip Hop Cops
By Salim Muwakkil,
 In These Times.
http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/19192/
 
 
Law enforcement conflates rap stars with gang members merely because most of them are young black men.
 
 “Even before recent revelations of hip-hop surveillance units, in March 2003, The Source declared in a headline: "State of Emergency: Hip-Hop Under Attack." The magazine, the country's largest hip-hop oriented publication, sounded the alarm about attacks from the increasingly influential cultural right and more intrusive police scrutiny. It featured an interview with a New York City cop who admitted that a special unit existed specifically to monitor, even harass, hip-hop figures. The unidentified cop told The Source that these efforts were aided by an increased focus on security after 9/11, which "opened up avenues for the government to change laws and violate public rights."

DISMANTLING THE ‘BLING’: Another Look at Hip-Hop by Reynard Blake Jr.
http://www.blackcommentator.com/99/99_hip_hop.html

“Back in 1967, Stokely Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton (Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America)  provided an analysis that could be crucial to today’s African-American hip-hop artists:”

”Those who would assume the responsibility of representing black people in the country must be able to throw off the notion that they can effectively do so and still maintain a maximum amount of security.  Jobs will have to be sacrificed, positions of prestige and status given up, favors forfeited.  It may well be--and we think it is--that leadership and security are basically incompatible.  When one forcefully challenges the racist system, one cannot, at the same time, expect that system to reward him or even treat him comfortably.”
“On one hand, the diminishing control and role of African-Americans and Latinos in hip-hop is the natural progression of an international art form; as more cultures become part of hip-hop culture, they will add the uniqueness of their native culture to the art form. Conversely, as hip-hop is distributed by corporate media, its gatekeepers will increasingly define the art form, and only allow certain acts to reach the mainstream.” 
“Most of the rules I learned as a child in the ‘60s and ‘70s have been corrupted or rewritten.  Hip hop, just to take the most obvious example, has spread from the urban underground where I found it in my early story on Kurtis Blow [a hip-hop artist and pioneer – RNB], to white – or at least well-heeled – suburbia.  During this same period, breakthrough black superstars made more money than ever in history – most of it helping to subsidize multinational corporations that reconfigure black artistry into reproducible formulas.”
“Corporate control of hip-hop also presents a serious threat to its significance.  As corporations promote a sort of hip-hop opium or mind-numbing art that does not address issues, its authenticity and relevance become suspect. Jeff Chang underscored this concept in 2003:

”Today, the most cursory glance at the Billboard charts or video shows on Viacom-owned MTV and BET suggests rap has been given over to cocaine-cooking, cartoon-watching, Rakim-quoting, gold-rims-coveting, death-worshiping young 'uns. One might even ask whether rap has abandoned the revolution.”

“Furthermore, corporate control of hip-hop becomes an exercise in the replication of exploitation; the models in marketing used by the corporation are now assumed by the artists; the outsourcing of product development (clothes and other items) to foreign countries, paying those employees or independent contractors far below living wages, and selling those products to anxious global markets with astounding product mark-ups.  In short, the hip-hop semi-conglomerate learns the following equation: E=MC2, which I translate to Exploitation=Mass Consumption, where the work of underpaid people is used to feed the North American penchant for spending (doubled).”

Child Labor: A Worldwide Danger
YOUTHNOISE
http://youthnoise.com/page.php?page_id=1651
 
The International Labor Organization says that approximately 250 million children between the ages of five and fourteen work in developing countries, at least 120 million on a full time basis.
 
“Child labor currently helps support the economies of many developing nations. According to reports by such groups as Human Rights Watch, some cases of child labor may also be supporting American corporations. But who is supporting the children?”
 
“All over the world, poverty forces kids as young as four-years-old into hard labor. Child laborers often work long hours, are given dangerous tasks, and are paid extremely low wages. Furthermore, labor obligations frequently prevent young workers from receiving an education. These illegal working conditions deprive kids of their childhood and ultimately endanger their lives.”
 
“The case of El Salvador has recently been investigated by Human Rights Watch. The 139-page report found that the 30,000 Salvadorian children who work in the sugarcane fields are constantly subject to severe injuries. The job of cutting sugarcane, considered the most dangerous of all agricultural work, leaves kids with deep cuts and gashes from the machetes and knives they are required to use. Further health risks are attributed to smoke inhalation and burns, because the sugarcane is often burned before it is cut.” 
  

FEELING THE NEED TO ENGAGE YOUR LIFE?
 
A campaign of Circle of Life
http://www.circleoflife.org
ACTIVISM IS PATRIOTISM.ORG
 
SEAC (Student Environmental Action Coalition)
http://www.seac.org
 
SEAC, pronounced "seek," is a student and youth run national network of progressive organizations and individuals whose aim is to uproot environmental injustices through action and education. We define the environment to include the physical, economic, political and cultural conditions in which we live.
By challenging the power structure which threatens these environmental conditions, SEAC works to create progressive social change on both the local and global levels.
 
United for a Fair Economy
http://www.faireconomy.org
 
United for a Fair Economy is a national, independent, nonpartisan, 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. UFE raises awareness that concentrated wealth and power undermine the economy, corrupt democracy, deepen the racial divide, and tear communities apart. We support and help build social movements for greater equality.
 
Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
http://www.wagingpeace.org
 
The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation is dedicated to innovative thinking, broad public education, and committed action. Since 1982, the Foundation has sought to enhance the security of all people by working to reduce the threats posed by nuclear weapons. One of the Foundation's specific campaigns is empowering student leaders and supporting student efforts to oppose the increasing militarization of their schools including student mobilization at the University of California, which has managed the nation's nuclear weapons laboratories for 60+ years.
 
Voice Yourself
http://www.voiceyourself.org
 
“Founded by well-known actor Woody Harrelson, Voice Yourself is a lively communication hub that promotes simple organic living through conscious consumerism, the sharing of ideas and information, as well as encouraging social change through peaceful civil disobedience. We believe all life on earth is sacred. Voice Yourself promotes and inspires individual action to create global momentum towards simpler living and to restore balance and harmony to our planet.”
 
“There is now little doubt that there is a close correlation between the "war on drugs" (and on "gangs") and the growth of the prison industrial complex.  This "war" was officially launched by President Reagan in the mid-1980s when he promised that the police would attack the drug problem "with more ferocity than ever before."  What he did not say, however, was that the enforcement of the new drug laws "would focus almost exclusively on low-level dealers in minority neighborhoods." Indeed, the police found such dealers in these areas mainly because that is precisely where they looked for them, rather than, say, on college campuses.”
 
“The results were immediate: the arrest rates for blacks on drug charges shot dramatically upward in the late 1980s and well into the 1990s.  In fact, while blacks constitute only around 12% of the U.S. population and about 13% of all monthly drug users (and their rate of illegal drug use is roughly the same as for whites), they represent 35 percent of those arrested for drug possession and 74% of those sentenced to prison on drug charges.”
 
“Sentencing in the federal system for drug offenses shows some startling changes during the past half century.  Between 1945 and 1995, the proportion of those going to prison for all offenses rose from 47 percent to 69 percent, compared to a decrease of those granted probation (from 40% to 24%), while the average sentence has risen by over 300 percent.  The changes in the sentences for drug law violations are most dramatic.  Whereas, in 1945 the percentage of drug offenders going to prison was high enough at 73 percent, by 1995 fully 90 percent were going to prison!  And the average sentence for drug cases went from only 22 months in 1945 to almost 90 months in 1995, an increase of 300 percent!”