Dear Friends,

Something historic happened yesterday. For the first time since 1877 a member of the House and a member of the Senate stood up together to object to the outcome of a presidential election.

This is the first step on a necessary road toward making sure that everyone is allowed to vote and that every vote is counted (something we did not see in 2000 or 2004) so the next time around ALL of us can be confident, when the election results come in, that they reflect the will of the people, not the whim of mechanical error and human obstruction.

Unlike 2000, when the black members of Congress were told to sit down and shut up, this time a senator had the courage to stand with them, as the law requires, to force Congress to go back to their separate chambers to discuss and debate the issues surrounding the vote count. Senator Barbara Boxer rose to the occasion and stood with Ohio Representative Stephanie Tubbs Jones and 29 other Representatives “to cast the light of truth on a flawed system which must be fixed now.” The ensuing debate, at times, became a debate over me and all of you and the fact that we would dare make the attempt to protect our democracy.

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DEF POERY JAM REVIEW

byLATASH N NEVADA DIGGS
so yeah…this girl said “he fucked me like brooklyn” at a recent taping for
Def Poetry Jam’s fourth session.

so what’s in it for me?

(I) am the voyeur who needs to be viewed w/ parameters. a (hy)brid
mix master of hermit & camera hog. harlem/chicago
cage dancer & green thumb
good days. sour months. wick wick wack poems. analog prose.

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ID RATHER GO BLIND
A RANT BY ANGELICA LINDSEY

Ok, so Macy Gray wants to be a social activist. At least that’s what she wanted the people who showed up at her naked concert to believe.

Yep, you read right, Macy Gray performed in a London concert as bare as the day she was born. Clad in nothing more than a necklace and seated in a gilded chair emblazoned with the words “I’d Rather Go Naked”, Macy Gray did something for the people. Or did she?

The July 5 London concert was staged to raise awareness and funds for AIDS. The infamous Ms. Gray was photographed during the concert in Jimmy Choo stilettos. The photos will be used as part of a media campaign featuring other nude celebrities who are involved in the fight against the AIDS epidemic. Now, I know what some of you might be thinking. “Macy Gray? Nude? I gotta see this!” And that’s precisely my point. While Gray’s intentions may have been genuine, her naked approach to AIDS awareness looks to me to be just another media ploy to use sex as a way of garnering attention.

Was this a progressive, liberating, and creative marketing tool designed to bring awareness to the AIDS epidemic? Or was it little more than a stab at self-promotion by an artist whose visibility in the public eye has been insignificant at best? At a moment when Bill Cosby is lambasted for presenting cogent arguments about Black youth in America, why are we applauding Macy Gray for doing something that has no artistic merit or intellectual value? I mean, after all, couldn’t she just have announced that the proceeds of her concert would benefit AIDS research?

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I know you’ve been thinking it. And if you haven’t, you probably haven’t been paying attention. The art we once called hip hop has been dead for some time now. But because its rotting carcass has been draped in platinum and propped against a Gucci print car, many of us have missed its demise.

I think the time has come to bid a farewell to the last black arts movement. It’s had a good run but it no longer serves the community that spawned it. Innovation has been replaced with mediocrity and originality replaced with recycled nostalgia for the ghost of hip hop past, leaving nothing to look forward to. Honestly when was the last time you heard something (mainstream) that made you want to run around in circles and write down every word. When was the last time you didn’t feel guilty nodding your head to a song that had a ‘hot beat’ after realizing the lyrical content made you cringe.

When I heard Jam Master Jay had been murdered, it was the icing on the cake. A friend and I spoke for hours after he’d turned on the radio looking for solace and instead heard a member of the label Murder, Inc. about to give testimony about the slain DJ’s legacy. My friend found the irony too great to even hear what the rapper had to say.

After we got off the phone, I dug through my crates and played the single ‘Self Destruction.’ The needle fell on the lyrics:

They call us animals
I don’t agree with them
Let’s prove em wrong
But right is what were proving em?

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