DJ Sojal Takes 'em To Church.

Sean Bell: Guilty!

Before I read the linked article below, over the last day since the cops were acquitted I had been having conversations with friends about the signals that this unconscionable verdict sends to Black men in New York City. (1) You are a probable danger. (2) The science of probability is imperfect. (3) Our bad.

"The trial provided some answers on why the police officers fired: They mistakenly believed there was a gun in Mr. Bell’s car. But the case did not explain how anyone could have expected him to know that he was being approached by a police officer at 4 a.m., and indeed, the judge, Arthur F. Cooperman, said that did not matter under the law. 'It was necessary to consider the mindset of each defendant at the time and place of occurrence,' the judge said, 'and not the mindset of the victims.'"
-NY Times, 2/26/08

In the end, it wasn't the cops who shot Mr. Bell who were on trial. It was the deceased man himself.

Like An Activist Touched for the Very 1st Time? Madonna Speaks!

Okay so I have to admit that when I throw shade at any pop star, the first reference point is always Madonna. Think: Kabala, Malawi, etc etc etc.

But check out this intervew in nymag. To me it sounds like she's just tryin to do her thang in the world, as imperfect as it might come across she concedes. Here are my fav snippets from the Q & A article:

Speaking of the eighties, you were one of the first pop stars to talk about the AIDS crisis. But I’ve never heard you discuss any connection between that and your work in Malawi. Is there one?
There are a lot. One is that I myself feel like a motherless child. I grew up that way. But also the idea that I felt so helpless by the AIDS epidemic that seemed to sweep through Manhattan and claim the lives of so many people that I loved. And I saw how stigmatized the gay community was, and that freaked me out.

You’re now something of an expert on Malawi. But when the activist Victoria Keelan first called you about getting involved, you said, “I don’t even know where that is.” And she hung up on you. Not too many people hang up on you, do they?
I thought that was rather cheeky. She found me quite impertinent in the beginning. Like, “You’re asking the stupidest questions—do you want to help or not?” And she was absolutely correct.

In the movie, you look at one ritual in which a young woman is told she must have sex with a man three times in a day, in order to “cleanse” her.
It’s not my place to judge that tradition. But to have a conversation with a village headsman and say, “Do you realize this is spreading a deadly disease?” and have him say, “Yes, but there’s nothing I can do” is mind-bogglingly frustrating. But we drop bombs on children during wartime, so you think, Well, who’s practicing black magic?

- New York Magazine, full interview at http://nymag.com/movies/profiles/46189/

Hmm... ;)

Not all Smileys: Unpredicted Collateral Damage

John Edwards. New York. The Clinton Brand. DMX.

If you had told me in December '06 that any of those would become collateral damage of a successful Barack Obama campaign for President, I would have nodded in probable agreement. And as my good friend Kennyboy reports, Obama and Wright knew even a Black Church broadside was likely. But if you would have said Tavis Smiley, I woulda' smack you like I was your grandma!

Don't you say that in my house, youngin'!

Tavis Smiley is not just a name in my house. He is an autographed book - What I Know For Sure - sitting on my shelf. He's a devout Black activist/commenator who stood up to Bob "Coon for Clinton" Johnson in a famous contractual dispute.

But after over a year of ugly tensions between Obama and Smiley, I am in disbelief that their spat has gone on long enough for one of 'em to pay an unfortunate price. Not to be too dramatic or anything. Smiley still has his nightly TV show and still his Convenant with Black America work. But he and Joyner have been through the fire with each other over the years, particuarly over the Johnson dispute. Him leaving the Joyner show now is of no small significance.

I think many of the Obama-maniacs will be quick to throw Smiley under the bus. To some degree I think they have a point. Eric Wattree's recent column in Black Star News provides perspective on this. But are we Obama-maniacs so delusional that we don't expect our man's feet to be held to the fire? Yes, it was a smart political move, but was it the right one for Obama not to attend Smiley's State of the Black Union? And to the Smileys, I ask the inverse to you all: Yes it was right for your man to question Obama's commitment to Black America, but was it a smart move? What was gained?

Different languages spoken on common soil, can bring progress only with mutual understanding.

Keep the faith.

Battlestar Gallatica, meet Donnie, Rev. Wright, and Hurricane Katrina.

One week after becoming completely sucked into the BSG universe I know this to be a fact: art culture can examine our times from a safer repose than political discourse and media talking heads can. What other medium could in one fell swoop tackle nuclear apocalypse, racial angst vis-a-vis human/cylon hatred and a flawed criminal justice system *without* provoking any reactionary partisan discord?

I'm waiting...

But this post ain't about Battlestar Gallatica, my new favorite TV show (OK, so Friday Night Lights and The X-Files reruns come in a close second tie). What this blog entry is about, however, is how and why the month of March brought madness to the 24/7 news world. How and why some cultural mediums can challenge American hegemony when the good reverend can't.

Last month, America, it seemed, discovered that Black Americans hold a different view of American history than White Americans. Mainstream papers unequivocally positioned Reverend Wright and his words as hate speech, merit-less, and a 60s throwback (an argument which calls out their hollow support for what the 60s brought this country). Here's a case in point:

Reporters, talk-show hosts and others will keep asking about Obama's close and long-standing relationship to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whose most bombastic comments came to dominate the Democratic presidential contest recently, the strategists predicted in interviews. -USA Today

Meanwhile back on the planet, Safe Reposia, Donnie's new album and video "911" is sucking up all the good juices of critical acclaim and hardcore fandom after several months of airtime on Myspacetv:



My, my, my those are all some pretty charged images, aren't they?! Klu Klux Klan? Genocide? Creepy white room with black bombs squirming out of the walls?! What in the devil's name are you spreading, Donnie?

Four years ago, Donnie’s The Colored Section was the most provocative soul-fueled social commentary since the days when Curtis Mayfield, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder and Donny Hathaway routinely offered biting analyses of current events. These days, the real daily news continues to give him plenty to talk about, which he does with wit and insight. It’s nice to be reminded that there is more to R&B than preening and pickup lines. - USA Today

Oh. Well in that case, right on, brother!

Seriously though, could this disconnect between cultural criticism and news analysis be explained with the argument of the objectivity of "news" folks and the merit-based criticism of the arts? The Front Page vs. Leisure and the Arts departments?

* * *

Last week I saw a show at The Flea, Lower Ninth, a play about three men, one already dead, who are trapped on top of a roof during Hurricane Katrina. One of the most powerful and tear-inducing moments in the play for me was when the elder character retold the biblical parable of Noah's arc. A familiar story to most folks, but what was unfamiliar was his second retelling of the story which had a decidedly Black-perspective. In that telling, Noah and his family were not the only survivors. There was another family who survived the floods after climbing up a tree. Their skin peeled away from sun exposure and bitter and full of angst from having to endure the flood, they would become the descendants of Whites who control the disparity filled world that these Katrina-survivors have come to know all too well.

Let me make this point clear: what upsets many Blacks about the Reverend Wright "controversy" is not that the mainstream press and Whites have disagreed with his views, but that his views and the historical events that shaped his words have been illegitimatized or conveniently forgotten to win an argument. This episode has awakened the Black masses from our own Safe Reposia (Hip Hop, Dave Chapelle, Broadway's Color Purple, etc.) to publicly defend the Black worldview. I mean, damn so much of Black culture has been pimped out that the tenets of our Safe Reposia way of life would surely start to be understood by everybody else, right?

March proved that logic wrong.

All of this is a lot to wrap one's thoughts around, I know. As an playwright/director, one direction I feel like I'm moving toward within my work is nuking Safe Reposia and, like the true BSG bandit that I am, flee to our long lost brothers and sisters of the 13th Colony on Earth.