Communicationism

Click on it hommie.

Image From:
Josh Smith

Fresh From Frisko

“Truth comes rolling, heavier than the fog.”

I’d like to direct everyone’s attention to a new blog out there from San Francisco by poet and activist Niki Esko, Fresh Frisko Esko.

The blog is a mix of her poetry and also covers local artists (she already has interviewed one).  The mission statement states:

Fresko City is an art projekt that combines my little camera, my love and support for local artists, and my writing in order to explore scenes beyond the mainstream. Some locations and events will be outside of San Francisco, stretching from the Left Coast to the South, from my backyard to yours. This blog is dedicated to creation and destruction, presence and absence. I want to approach the music, art, and poetry scenes beyond criticisms and technical writing; I am in search of experiences, people, stories, local beauty, and the aesthetically challenged. Support artists & spread the word[s]. Welcome to Fresko City.

I recommend you all bookmark it as it will give everyone an oppurtunity to get a look at the art and music scene in the Bay.

Graphics Against System (G.A.S.)

This is the shit right here.  Mohamed blogs:

G.A.S. or graphics against system is a project I started in working on it long time ago, exactly when I started to feel that I can do real designs that’s more powerful that million words, GAS goal is so simple making designs that have the beauty of the art & the power of swards in order to agitate the people against the capitalist systems every where on this planet.

Workers of the World Unite!

By Mohamed Gaber

Fuck the Capitalists

Fuck the capitalists, fuck the police, fuck Arroyo, and fuck UPS management.

Thanks to Hossam.

For original version click here.

Whtie Privilege on Exhibit

Cross-posted from The Blog and the Bullet.

JJKissinger blogs:

The past few weeks have been absolutely absorbed by an idea that I came up with…an idea I’ve kind of been avoiding, actually. The idea I had was to create an exhibit that would visually and interactively educate people about the idea of White Privilege. Not an easy topic…hence the idea avoidance. But one day, early this quarter, I asked my partner Susie what she thought of the idea. Without missing a beat, she said “let’s do it…we HAVE to do it.” So we did!

…The planning process was intense, thoughtful, fascinating, challenging, and extremely eye-opening. In order for true racial reconciliation to take place on this campus, our majority-white population MUST consider the implications of our whiteness.

[Hat Tip: practical blog]

“Pimps Down, Hoes Up!”

Yet another reason why I’m not a fan of dead prez (I still listen to them and they do have some good lyrical content, just not a fan).  M-1, in a guest slot on the album Party Music by The Coup, states:

When I hear the woop-woop, I be duckin them hoes
I can smell a pig comin, so I stay on my toes
On the low from po-po, so fuck the Ho-lice
Cuz peace to me is loaded under my seat.

(Emphasis mine)

Essentially what M-1 has done here has taken the word hoe and flipped its meaning from that whom is being oppressed to the oppressor.  Hoe obviously, in this male dominated and conservative society, has a negative meaning and so M-1 using the term “Ho-lice” (instead of police) makes sense in the fact that he wants to give the police a negative image.  Yet the fact that he said this shows how ass-backwards he really is in his “revolutionary” character.

A prostitute, or “hoe” if you will, is essentially someone who is exploited: exploited by men, exploited by pimps, exploited by the system to the point where she came to the conclusion that the only way for her to get by was to sell her body and exploit herself for the pleasure of men.  A prostitute is someone who lives in fear everyday of getting beat by her pimp, getting beat (and raped) by her clients, getting pregnant, getting STDs.  The fact that anyone would even consider calling their fellow sister or brother a hoe is unimaginable to me (well, not really, just hyperbowling ya’ll).

Not only that, but by effectivly calling police hoes M-1 essentially is giving a passing nod to the validity of pimps, that is, the oppressor of the exploited.  Pimp is just as much in our everyday vernacular as hoe is.  At my work for example I constantly hear, “What up big pimpin’?”, “He’s a pimp, son! A pimp.” “I’m pimpin’ it,” etc.  Pimp equals cool, pimp equals “being a man.” Hoe equals cop, hoe equals “skank,” (in my opinion men who call women skanks are just jealous that they’ve had way more sex than them) hoe equals negative, etc.

M-1 is just perpetuating this un-revolutionary and ass backwards idea that some how hoes are not our equals and that they are somehow lower than us and a negative thing, as supposed to being oppressed and being folk we need to help out in our struggle for justice.

Instead of calling the police hoes M-1 should have been calling them pimps, because that is what they are.  Police are the pimps of capitalist society.  They oppress people of color, the working class, organizers, union members, etc.

I’m very disappointed, but not surprised, at M-1s lyric.  But, unsurprisingly, Boots Riley, from The Coup, says it best in the song Ghetto Manifesto (from the same album):

Met Donald Trump and he froze up
Standing on his Bentley yelling, “Pimps down, hoes up!”

Hop On the Bus

Comrads, I’ve added a new blog to my blog roll in the right hand column of my blog.  It’s called Guerilla Buasfare by emcee, journalist, and activists EyeASage aka Krish.  I’ve worked with her cousin Andrea who has spoken highly of her moral charector plus she was a former member of LFS-SFSU member (holla!).

Her blog is quite the mixture of politics and music (especially music, she has quite good analytical contextual reviews of hip-hop artists and albums) and what ever happens to cross her mind.  She was also a founding member (I think) of Rhapsodistas, a politically conscious Pinay rap group.

Plus, her husband is Bambu (who blogs here) whom I’ve quoted numerous times in my blog (just search Bambu in my blog)

Thought I’d give ya’ll a heads up, plus Hossam is always done to get more leftist music from the U.S.

“What you look like with an AK bullet hole across your back!”

I’m in the music mood today. I originally blogged on this song a while back; here it is in its entirety.

“Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy, Aaja”

I just got the M.I.A. album Kala today on my iTunes and I heard a song that I could have sworn I had heard somewhere. Luckily enough I jogged my memory and recognized it from a Bollywood film I remember listening too a few years back (never saw, just heard the music) called Disco Dancer.

The song “Jimmy” by M.I.A. is a remix of a song, from the 1982 movie, called “Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy, Aaja.” First, here is the M.I.A. song “Jimmy,” the lyrics are based off her encounter with a journalist who offered to take her on a tour in Rwanda and show here the areas affected by the genocide, the lyrics include:

When you go Rwanda, Congo

Take me on your genocide tour

…

Got to get your safe at home

Got to get you safe at home

And here is a 10 minute segment from the film Disco Dancer, the song starts up at 3:02 (or -7:09). But for context, for those who want to watch the whole clip, essentially what is going on is Jimmy is suppossed to take first place in a international disco dance competition but his mother was killed by an electric guitar (I know, I know, but there is some weird shit in American films too, don’t hate!) and he has developed a fear for guitars that his competition (the dude mocking him with the guitar) has exploited, so Rita is trying to get Jimmy to dance in the competition.

This was a song that M.I.A. used to dance to, and perform for company, when she was a kid.

Image From:
Hong Kong Cinema: View from Brooklyn Bridge

Anti-War Rally in San Francisco

While on the subject of photography here are some photos from the anti-war rally I attended with the Streagnth in Unity contingent in San Francisco. Photos provided by Pete “PJ Mac” and Jamison Boyer.

At the beginning, gathering up.

Me contemplating, “What would X-Pac chant?” Fellow Double Consciousness blogger (and friend since first grade) Carlo Montemayor in the background to the right of my head, smirking.

Those who gathered early practice chants as Elaine, from babae, leads.

Now off to the protest (this pic is provided by the San Francisco Chronicle).

One of the windiest marches I’ve been on, a lot of turns.

Hmmm…I believe that’s me discussing the finer points of Ric Flair’s figure-four leg lock while Carlo (left) holds the main call banner.

The main call banner for the Strength in Unity contingent.

Brandon holding the League of Filipino Student-SFSU flag with Rupert, lead singer of Echo of Bullets, to his left.

Me talking to Mike, the Vice-Chair of League of Filipino Students (LFS-SFSU).

LFS-SFSU posing for a post-march pic.

The main page for The League of Filipino Students (based in the Philippines) is here. LFS is apart of the progressive umbrella organization BAYAN which has it’s US branch which LFS-SFSU is apart of.

Philip Jones Griffiths Dies

As a photographer I’ve always been in awe of Griffiths work. It touches upon the suffering and humanity of us and our world. The New York Times reports:

While critical of the way the United States was conducting the war, Mr. Griffiths also included in his book many humanizing images of American soldiers at a time when they were often being demonized back home. One of the most stark showed an American offering a canteen of water to a Vietcong fighter who had survived a stomach wound for three days, holding in his intestines with a cooking bowl…

“There were some bad G.I.’s who did terrible, terrible things,” Mr. Griffiths said in a lecture at the Frontline Club in London in January. “But for the most part they were kids who were confused. They were not the enemy, to me.” The enemy was usually governments and bureaucracies, he often said, and he saw photography as one of the best means to bear witness against their failings.

“Virtually the whole of society believes in what they believe not by direct experience but by what they’ve been told,” he said. “We photographers are in this exalted, privileged position of actually going out to find out for ourselves, and that’s why we’re so dangerous. Because we were there. We saw what happened.”

Image From:
New York Times

Opposites

Cross-posted from Double Consciousness.

I’ve been listening to a lot of the work from the group The Last Poets recently and thought I’d share one of their pieces called “Opposites” from their 1971 album “This is Madness.”

“Understand,” said the old Black man,
“That everything works in opposites.”
…
“Understand that Black is true and false is white.
Understand that Black is right and white is wrong.
Understand the white is weak and Black is strong.
Understand that white is suffocation and Black is a deep breath.
…
Understand the Blackness is reality and whiteness but a game.
…
Understand that whitey steals your future and lies about your past.
…
You understand what it means to be a free Black man.”

Image From:
The University of Buffalo Mathematics Dept.

Ike says “it’s water under the bridge. I have no regrets of my life.”

Cross-posted from The Blog and the Bullet.

But the Angry Black Woman blogs:

I am tired of people using the “But he was a great artist” line whenever someone who is, otherwise, a despicable human being, writes a song or a book or a poem that they like. I hate to break Godwin’s Law here, but even Hitler wrote some nice poetry and drew some pretty pictures (and he was nice to animals).

“America Don’t Love Ya/All She Want is da Money!”

While listening to a song by Bambu (a militant Marxist Pilipino rap artist from Los Angeles) and Do D.A.T. from the Oakland based militant Black rap group The Attik, Do D.A.T. skillfully states:

America don’t love you,
all she want is da mon-ay!
…
been pimpin’ sine the seventeen-hundreds!
…
invade our neighbors,
got this country built up off of our free labor.
Pimp the motha land,
out of all our resources.
People starvin’ aroun’ the world,
we all ridin’ ’round in Porches!
Diamonds on my neck,
black gold on my tank,
You can easily get ganked,
thinkin’ it is what it ain’t.
Capitalism, big pimpin’ by description,
same difference.