african americans "loot", caucasians "find"

It's interest how Race, Class and Disaster intersect.

Looting
http://news.yahoo.com/photo/050830/480/ladm10208301530

Finding
http://news.yahoo.com/photo/050830/photos_ts_afp/
050830071810_shxwaoma_photo1

WTF?

http://www.negrospaceprogram.com/

Big (Mac) Pimpin...

"I like Nike, but wait a minute, the neighborhood supports so put some money in it..." (Shut'em Down) - Public Enemy vs "Pass the Courvoisier"_ Busta Rhymes

Wash Post did an interesting articles on branding and product placement in rap song lyrics and videos and getting paid for it. Honestly i think it kinda of sucks....no it really sucks, especially the products that the artists decide to endorse. In a post Super Size Me world how could anyone endorse a Big Mac.
Although i am not a huge Jigga fan, you have got to admire his sharp business acumen, to invest a company (RocaWear and Scotland-based Armadale Vodka) and then rhyming about it> at the very least hhas figured out a way to pimp the system that attempts to pimp him and get some residual passive income off of it.


Read Wash Post article here

Furious Flower Poetry Documentary @ BusBoys & Poets

First: Furious Flower Documentary of
the legendary Conference Of Black Poetry in 2004.

Featuring Dr. Tony Medina as guest speaker and film discussion

When: Thursday September 1st 2005 @ 8pm

Where: BusBoys&Poets 14th & V Streets NW
(across the street from Reeves Center, right beside Mangoes)

BusBoys and Poets is a brand new
restaurant/coffehouse/bookstore: specializing in politics,
progressive Literature, poetry, and DVDs.
There is a film screening and performance space perfect for poetry
readings, play readings, music, and writing groups .


The next two installments:

Thursday September 8th @ 8pm: "Cross Pollination in The Diaspora"
followed by a writing workshop conducted by BusBoys & Poets poet in
residence, Derrick Weston Brown.


Thursday September 15th @ 8pm: "Blooming In The Whirlwind"
followed by open mic and featured poets.


For additional info on directions, store times, reading opportunities
please log onto Busboysandpoets.com or teachingforchange.org.
Phone:202-387-Poet

Here are some pictures of the Here are some pictures of the Furious Flower 2004

August Wilson diagnosed with terminal cancer

August Wilson diagnosed with terminal cancer

By Mark Feeney, Globe Staff | August 27, 2005

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson is suffering from terminal liver cancer, he told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in an interview that ran yesterday. Wilson, 60, was diagnosed in June. Wilson said doctors told him then he had three to five months to live.

''It's not like poker; you can't throw your hand in," Wilson told the Post-Gazette. ''I've lived a blessed life; I'm ready." Click here to read more

local news

I am not a historian, so i am not sure how from a historical persepective how the "war industry" behaves during war time, but it's kind of crazy to see how all of these jobs are being shifted around and consolidated here in the area. I have not read all the articles nor seen all the facts, but if we can take any cues from the corporate world of the recent past once reorganiztion of jobs starts eventually elimination of jobs, roles and responsilities occur as well. It will be interesting to see how this area (DC Metro Area) will fare if the "war industry" begins to layoff folks. The effects could be very deep given the the high cost of living in this area and i am not sure of the non-government affiliated private sector could accomodate a sudden huge influx of job seekers.

In any event....
Here is a list of all of the affected agencies

DC losing jobs...
The word spread quietly and quickly yesterday over lunch in the third-floor cafeteria, in the hallways near nursing stations and along the grassy knolls of the guarded, 113-acre campus off Georgia Avenue NW: Walter Reed Army Medical Center almost certainly was closing for good.

Most of the D.C. hospital's 5,630 workers had suspected as much since May, when the Pentagon issued its recommendation to shutter the facility. But the news that a federal commission had approved the closing of the premier U.S. military hospital, which has helped heal the broken bodies of soldiers and presidents alike for nearly a century, still hit hard.

VA gaining and losing jobs...
Fairfax officials said they are not against a new community in their county of more than 1 million people. They're opposed to finding themselves unprepared for 18,000 additional people on the roads near Fort Belvoir and for thousands of children looking for spots in schools that are already at capacity. "We will do the best we can to welcome those people," said Supervisor Gerald W. Hyland (D-Mount Vernon), who represents the area around Fort Belvoir, which is growing faster than any other spot in the county. "But we will be looking to our federal partners to help us."

"Kill Whitey" says a Caucasian DJ in Brooklyn

Deejay's Appeal: 'Kill The Whiteness Inside'
In Brooklyn, a Club Following Feels the Irony

By Michelle Garcia
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 26, 2005; A03

NEW YORK -- The dance floor throbs to the rapid thump-thump of the hip-hop beat. The deejay, Tha Pumpsta, leans against his booth, and a woman slides up from behind, grabs his narrow hips and rubs hard.

Tha Pumpsta hops onto the crowded dance floor of guys in big T-shirts dangling from slight frames and ladies in short skirts and tasseled boots.

"Kill whitey!" yells Tha Pumpsta into the microphone as he bounces to the beat. "What . . . gonna . . . do dance . . ." he raps to the beat. "Kill whitey!"

The kid by the bar busts out with a break-dancing move. Women drop their booties and the guys slide in close. Tha Pumpsta struts around in an all-white outfit from his headband to his high tops, shouting it again: " Kill whitey!"

Tha Pumpsta, who happens be white, has built a following in the past few years by staging monthly "Kill Whitie" parties in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, for large groups of white hipsters. His proclaimed goal, in between spinning booty-bass, Miami-style frenetically danceable hip-hop records that are low on lyrical depth and high on raunchiness, is to "kill the whiteness inside."

What that means, precisely, is debatable, but it has something to do with young white hipsters believing they can shed white privilege by parodying the black hip-hop life. In this way, they hope to escape their uptight conditioning and get in touch with the looser soul within them.

Of course, it also follows a long line of white entertainers, including Elvis Presley, who sought to be cool by emulating black culture. But in doing so, he pioneered something. These newest hipsters aren't trying to be creative -- just ironic. And some think he might be mocking black people.

"I'm throwing this party, and it's obvious that I'm white and I'm kind of appropriating this culture but in an ironic way," said Tha Pumpsta, whose name is Jeremy Parker. The 25-year-old takes his Pumpsta moniker from his high-top sneakers. "Kinda poking fun at myself and my origins and white people in general," he said.

"I'm trying to kill the whiteness inside," Parker added, although his blue eyes, milk-white skin and blond hair might suggest he has some work ahead of him.

A melanin-lacking hip-hop party might be a fact of demographics in a few corners of the United States. But in New York, where hip-hop was born in black and Latino neighborhoods, the all-white parody of black culture can strike a jarring note.

A few months ago, 29-year-old Sharda Sekaran was hitting dance spots with friends when she stumbled into a Kill Whitie party. "There was a bunch of white people acting like a raunchy hip-hop video," she said. "I don't get why that wouldn't be a characterization of black people for the entertainment of themselves." Click here to read more

around my way...

HUD, HOPE VI, D.C. Housing Authority and ...... Def Jam Recordings re-developing Eastgate Gardens?

Appearantly Def Jam is going to be involved in partially funding a community arts center here in The District, does anyone find that alliance a little peculiar?
Anyway, I guess it is good news nonetheless that this once vibrant commmunity is being restored and revitalized.

Read the whole article here.Below are some excerpts from the article: Click here to read more

big ups....

Big ups to Straight, No Chaser Productions, their film Multitude of Mercies won the BET Black AIDS Rap-It-Up Short Subject Competition! It will air on BET in early December! If you see Ms. Charniece Fox (www.genesispoets.com), Mr. Drew "Droopy" Anderson (www.brokeballer.com), Justin Follin or Michelle Sewell (www.thepoetryfix.org/) be sure to congratulate them.

Read the article here

Is rap tomorrow's jazz?

Thaddeus Russell deals with this in his Opinion column piece in the LA TIMES. read it here
(THADDEUS RUSSELL is a professor of history and American studies at Barnard College)

I find his line of arguments pretty interesting, but I am not sure totally agree. i will probably discuss my issues a little later, in the meantime check out the article

Moore Black Press Legacy Tour 2005

Big ups to jessica CARE moore (poole) kicking off the 2005 MOORE BLACK PRESS LEGACY TOUR!

Arizona
August 19th
African American Men of ASU
presents: Welcome Black Poetry!
Featuring jessica Care moore-Poole
5pm-8pm MU Union Stage

Brooklyn
August 27th
The Subtle Art of Breathing
asha bandele
Book Launch Party!! Suprise Guests!
334 Grand St.
Corridor Art Gallery
DJ Lumumba Spins
7-11pm FREE! (Refresments)
Special Thanks to Danny Simmons Click here to read more

Are the Southern Connecticut Vegetarian Society and PETA buggin? You decide!

PETA in their latest protest campaign and tour have used images of the suffering, dehumanization and torture of African Americans, Jews (during the Holocaust) and Native Americans juxtaposed with images of animals being held in captivity, sold and killed. They are on a tour that has been here to Baltimore and to DC.

Here are some excerpts from the what organizers have said about the event, particularly as it relates to the significance of starting the tour in New Haven, CT:
"New Haven is important because of the Amistad. This is a place where slaves were brought. What happened here was very important for abolition. The next great liberation movement is animal liberation," Carr said (Dawn Carr, PETA’s director of special projects)

more excerpts and comments from organizers:

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, a national animal rights group, posted giant photographs of people, mostly black Americans, being tortured, sold and killed, next to photographs of animals, including cattle and sheep, being tortured, sold and killed.

"I think it is an apt comparison," said Josh Warchol, 26, of Wallingford, president of the Southern Connecticut Vegetarian Society, which is aligned with PETA.
---------------------------

"I am a black man! I can’t compare the suffering of these black human beings to the suffering of this cow," said Michael Perkins, 47, of New Haven. He stood in front of a photo of butchered livestock hung next to the photo of two lynched black men dangling before a white mob.

"You can’t compare me to a freaking cow," shouted John Darryl Thompson, 46, of New Haven, inches from Carr’s face. "We don’t care about PETA. You are playing a dangerous game."
------------------------------

A photo showing a concentration camp inmate with a number tattooed across his emaciated chest was juxtaposed against a shot of a monkey in a laboratory with a number branded across its chest.

"I have relatives who were in concentration camps," said Alex Reznikoff, 47, of Newtown. "I think this detracts from PETA’s message. It doesn’t make me think about animals at all.

Read the whole article here

here is a link to a banner for the campaign that is causing the controversy: Enslaved and here is what Ingrid Newkirk had to say about people who are criticising the campaign (click here)

Big ups to Avery Tooley @ Stereo Describes My Scenario for blogging about this....

are you Black?

The Struggle To Think Outside The 'Black' Box

By Donna Britt
Friday, August 12, 2005; B01

Admittedly, a hotel lobby packed with people attending last week's National Association of Black Journalists conference in Atlanta is an odd place for two African American writers to discover a surprising, shared secret:

They aren't really black.

So what if one has waist-length dreadlocks, and the other a Michael Jordan-like shaved head? Their honey-brown skin and hundreds of columns analyzing, questioning and celebrating the black experience? Meaningless.

Chatting at NABJ, Boston Globe columnist Derrick Jackson and I admitted the unadmittable: We aren't "really" black-- or, as Jackson later explained, "really black in the eyes of some people."

Or sometimes, in our own eyes. My possible inauthenticity as a black person dawned in elementary school, when I suspected that most of my classmates hadn't read "Little Women" 10 times or plopped before the TV, notebook paper in hand, to record lyrics from Rodgers and Hammerstein's annual "Cinderella" telecast.

Jackson -- a 2001 Pulitzer finalist whose searing columns have won four NABJ commentary awards -- figured things out early, too. "I can't play basketball," he begins. "I've been told I don't talk right and can't swear right. . . . I couldn't even say 'Right on' right, no matter how many 'Free Angela Davis' buttons I wore. Friends tried to give me dance lessons in college. . . .

"They said, 'Derrick, I'm sorry -- I don't think you're going to make it.' "

We laugh about it, but questions about racial identity feel serious, especially to the young. Questions of identity, period, are tricky. Who hasn't at some time felt, "I don't really belong"-- in their family, gender, social status, age group or even century? In this brutal, baffling world?

No wonder, Jackson says, "every one of those 'you're not black' moments sticks in your memory." Click here to read more

Hustle and Flow....Cash Flow that is

My boy Emil King Im'ed me this article from Fortune today about this cat Terence Bradford, who by day is a sales manager for Citi Mortgage, by night he is Billy Shakes, aspiring rapper who takes Wall Street to the mic. This is a cat who came out of Caste Hill Houses projects up in the Bronx to become first a stock broker and now a sales manager for Citi Mortgage.

I am not posting this article to advance his music per se, because i have not heard it; because it is highly possible he may resort to some of the same trite, commercial, (insert adjective describing the state of popular hip-hop and rap here) "ghettoric" that we have all come to hate. However, the idea using Rap to spread the gospel of financial and economic self-determination or to flip the idea of what wealth really is and to shed another light on perceptions and realities of wealth; is a dope idea. In the same way that my man Gabe is using Rap to as tool for investigating and applying diferent methods to teaching and fostering literacy.

Below is an excerpt from the article.

The Rap on Wall Street
Citigroup banker by day, hip-hop performer by night, Terence Bradford says, "Trust me, it's all the same hustle."
FORTUNE
Tuesday, August 9, 2005
By Julia Boorstin

In an underground hip-hop club on Manhattan's Bowery, a twentysomething crowd grooves to a heavy bass. The emcee introduces the next amateur rapper: "Give it up for Billy Shakes!" A compact 30-year-old in a baggy white T-shirt and oversized jeans takes the stage:

Your coke illegal ever' day of the year.
My Coke I buy legit at $20 a share.
You a gangsta? Then go get your paper.
I'm a paper gangsta getting stock quotes on my pager.
Stocks and drugs both the same in my eyes.
More buyers than the sellers cause the market to rise.

Audience members nod their heads in time to his punchy delivery. "Oh, yeah," says a girl in a Billy Shakes cap.

I know y'all out there really click-clackin' your guns.
Hang wit' me I'll have you stik-stackin mutual funds.
Thousands on a whip [car] don't make you a star.
I'm buying options on the companies that makin' them cars.
Come on! Get stocks and bonds.

This is not a parody of Bentleys-and-bling raps that embrace conspicuous consumption. Billy Shakes is a sincere preacher of personal finance to a demographic he believes needs to hear his message. By day he is Terence Bradford, former stockbroker, now an area sales manager for Citi Mortgage. He travels around New York and Connecticut promoting mortgages and giving financial advice to salespeople for Primerica, a division of Citigroup that focuses on low- and middle-income families. The rest of his time he spends writing lyrics and hanging out at rap clubs, performing a couple of times a month. He recently spent $50,000 recording a demo called "Money Back Guaranteed."

"Trust me, it's all the same hustle. It's just that mine is legal,"

Read the whole story here

around my way...

A Transformed Neighborhood Awaits Stadium
Around Nationals' Future Home, Developers Step Up to the Plate

By Dana Hedgpeth
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 15, 2005; A01

Money is on the prowl at M Street and New Jersey Avenue in Southeast, looking for opportunity as plans for a new baseball stadium two blocks away steadily advance.

Tenants in the neighborhood known as Near Southeast -- a car mechanic, a small cab company, an after-school program for kids at risk of getting into trouble -- look out their windows and watch. They watch as two 14-story buildings -- one for a hotel, the other for co-ops -- rise amid barren lots, shoved against an abandoned two-story building, crowding out an open-air drug market. They know that glam will not be denied, and that they are in the way.

A city-led redevelopment effort started to transform the decrepit patch south of Capitol Hill in the late 1990s, but it was the 2004 decision to place the Washington Nationals' baseball stadium in the neighborhood that launched a full-scale land rush. And the explosion of development that has surrounded MCI Center in Chinatown provided an enticing blueprint.

"They give such a hard time to everybody around here to try to get them to sell," said Davood Mirzaiee, a mechanic, talking about developers on the hunt as he fixed a cab's front end alignment. He bought a small lot at First and K streets SE last year for $250,000 and built a repair shop, calling it A-1 Tires Alignment Auto Service. In the last six months, he said, he's gotten a couple of offers from developers -- one who said he was willing to pay as much as $1.5 million for Mirzaiee's lot, about the size of a large two-bedroom apartment. Click here to read more

big ups....

I just wanted to give some props to my man Theodore (Teddy) A. Harris for his exhibit at Haverford College's Hurford Humanities Center's Web Gallery. He is the featured artist for their inaugural exhibition.

Check out Teddy Harris's exhibit The Truthoscopic Collage Art of Theodore Harris.

Click here for more info

Harris is the artist that did the art work for Dr.Tony Medina's latest poetry book "Committed to Breathing" (Third World Pres).

Click here to read more

Raheem and crew on Jimmy Kimmel Live

For those of you who are not nightowls or vampires and may have missed it Raheem, Bilal Salaam, K'Alyn were on Jimmy Kimmel Live

Realplayer :
http://www.3030radio.com/08082005-raheem.rm

Windows Media Player:
http://www.3030radio.com/08082005-raheem.wmv

MP3:
http://www.3030radio.com/08082005-raheem.mp3

http://abc.go.com/primetime/jimmykimmel/concert/streaming.html

Black elite faces school-choice dilemma.

*****this article is from a series of articles about "the new face of affluence" emerging in the Dallas Forth Worth area, it is a vey interesting read because i think in some ways mirrors affluence that has been going on for some tie in Prince Georges County< MD and the surrounding area. The series can be found here http://www.dallasnews.com/s/dws/spe/2005/bpc/*****


Black elite faces school-choice dilemma

Should they stay to improve district or switch?

08:31 AM CDT on Monday, June 27, 2005

By HERB BOOTH / The Dallas Morning News

With a child set to enter seventh grade this fall, attorney Aaron Ford has decided to uproot his family from Cedar Hill for Coppell. He's searching for a better public school.

Meanwhile, Dr. D.G. Edwards overcame his initial skepticism about Cedar Hill schools and proudly watched his daughter graduate this year. She had been home-schooled before transferring to Cedar Hill. In bypassing big cities like Dallas to pursue the suburban American Dream, the Ford and Edwards families represent the dilemma some upwardly mobile black households feel as they try to find the best neighborhoods and schools for their children.




In some school districts where black affluence has increased so has poverty, raising new challenges for schools and questions for families. Do they stay and try to improve the public schools? Or do they use their financial resources to transfer their children into academically superior schools?

That quandary may be most evident in southern Dallas County, where cities and school districts have been transformed over two decades by a steady increase in the black population and, more recently, a rise in affluent black households.

According to a Dallas Morning News analysis, the number of black households earning at least $100,000 in the Dallas-Fort Worth area tripled during the 1990s, putting the region among the fastest-growing places for high-income blacks. Click here to read more

RIP

John Johnson, Publisher of Ebony and Jet, Dies at 87

upcoming events

A benefit for Mawonaj's FREE childrens breaksfast Program! click on the flyer for more details.

RIP

Keter Betts, Jazz Bassist

Ibrahim Ferrer, Cuban Singer

Peter Jennings, Newscaster

Blair says "Get Out"

Blair to Institute New Deportation Measures
Britain Could Deport and Exclude Foreign Nationals for 'Fostering Hatred'

By Kevin Sullivan and Fred Barbash
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, August 5, 2005; 10:45 AM

LONDON, Aug. 5 -- Prime Minister Tony Blair, responding to last month's deadly bombings in London, outlined a series of unprecedented steps that would allow Britain to deport and exclude foreign nationals who promote or incite extremist violence or are "fostering hatred."

Among those excluded would be non-citizen clerics "not suitable to preach." In addition, Blair said the government was preparing orders allowing the government to shut down places of worship used as centers for "fomenting extremism."

Some of the steps may require legislation or court involvement. Others can be done by government order. Blair acknowledged the potential controversy that could arise from the proposals. Click here to read more

around my way...

On Soccer Stadiam in Anacostia Barry says:

"The soccer stadium is misdirected," said Barry, whose ward includes the proposed stadium site. "This is an ideal spot for housing, entertainment and shopping -- and maybe some office buildings. It would be great to have housing overlooking the river. And that's what I'm going to push the mayor on doing."

and....

"This is valuable land we have," he said. "We ought to be very careful how we use this land."

Others says: Click here to read more

Fighting to Protect a Fragile Foundation

Fighting to Protect a Fragile Foundation
Woman Files Suit to Save Childhood Home From Invasive NW Development

By Yolanda Woodlee
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 5, 2005; B01

The red-brick rowhouse in the 200 block of N Street NW sits vacant in a neighborhood with soaring property values, but Donna Barriteau has resisted an offer to sell it. It's the house she grew up in, and the place has been in her family since before the Great Depression.

But development is nonetheless threatening the family homestead -- and not in the way that Barriteau had expected.

A contractor last year started excavating on the vacant lot next door to build a three-story, two-unit apartment building and, in the process, dug under the basement of her house. Her chimney has cracked, and Barriteau is worried about the building's foundation.

She filed suit against the owner of the lot, providing the court with a letter from an architect that said the construction pit was so large and deep that her house was "in imminent danger of collapsing." A D.C. Superior Court judge halted the construction June 30 and ordered the owner to pay Barriteau $26,000 for repairs and attorney's fees. But Barriteau said she has yet to receive any of that money and contends the construction work is still going on. Click here to read more

oh the irony?

If Rep. Henry Bonilla has his way 16th St NW would be renamed Ronald Reagan Boulevard. Then again maybe it is more symbolic than ironic, being that Ronald Reagan's politics divided so many people i guess it is only fitting that the street that geospatially ( and at one time economically, socialy and culturally) divides this city in half is named after Ronald Reagan.
Furthermore, I am sure most DC residents would see the irony of having Ronald Reagan Boulevard be the home of the affectionately known Malcolm X Park (officially known as Merdian Hill Park. However DC Mayor and Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.) appears to have a good grasp of the issue. Read the full story here

around my way...

Williams Proposes Moving Metro Offices to Anacostia

By Debbi Wilgoren
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 4, 2005; A01

Development east of the Anacostia River got a shove yesterday from Mayor Anthony A. Williams when he proposed that the Metro system sell its valuable downtown headquarters and build an office complex on empty land at a rail station in Southeast Washington.

Williams (D) said he also wants the city to build a mid-size municipal building at the Anacostia Metro station. Together, the projects would bring more than 1,300 daily workers to an area that is a 10-minute drive or train ride from downtown but is desolate, save for the morning and evening rush of commuters through the station.

The proposal comes at a time of unprecedented focus on the economic development potential of the Anacostia River, the waterway that has served as a painful socioeconomic dividing line. Click here to read more