California Feminist Blogs

Check this footage of HHC's President Shamako Noble and PPHERC's Cheri Honkala setting up the infamous "Bushville" to highlight and protest the atrocities of the past 8 years put foward through the Bush-Cheney administration

Barack Obama is a civil rights advocate, a regional leader for social justice, a national politician and presidential nominee for the Democratic ticket. He has professed to listening to Jay-Z, has been seen politicking with Ludacris and adopted a theme song penned by Will.I.Am. His relationship to Hip Hop could best be described as "Love-Hate." He admits he loves Hip Hop buts hates when anybody else sees them together.

I myself have a love-hate relationship with Barack Obama. I love the idea of Obama has President and hate the fact that he is an establishment candidate. I love the fact that conservatives try to label him a "civil rights leader" to scare away potential conservative white voters but I hate the fact that it is perhaps an erroneous label.

I have never heard Obama speak on civil rights issues such as the extreme black and brown incarceration rate, the exploitation of illegal immigrants or the gross misrepresentation of disenfranchised and underrepresented communities in the media. I have never heard him take a stance on reparations.

Obama says that he is vying for the highest office to make a difference in the lives of all United States citizens, which I find to be an honorable and respectable goal. But what has he done for Hip Hop lately or ever to deserve such a dutiful following? Considering the way in which we have supported his efforts, celebrated his victories and endorsed his nomination, you would think that we would have something a little more solid to cite for example as to why our community is so elated to see him in this election.

Even I have admitted and still concede that his candidacy is a ground breaking feat showcasing the immense impact that the Hip Hop generation has had on American hegemony and our social psychology.

He is not a revolutionary and his political record is reflective of that. Cynthia McKinney understands, responds to and addresses our communities issues in a sincere and pro-active manner. She is the best person to represent our culture and we should be 100 enough to state this for the record. Obama and McCain should not be the only choices we consider. In the past we have railed against a two-party system. Every other election we claim to be choosing the lesser of two evils, but this election, we have stayed collectively silent, casting disdain over those who refuse to co-sign Obama's bid from the gate. I was once guilty of this and am now being received with disappointment and frustration for my change of heart.

I am all for Obama in the White House. But let us keep it real as we claim we do in Hip Hop. Let us say that we are voting for Obama because we have come to accept that America is a two-party system that we have to navigate through in order to create substantial change. And while I find that a sobering reality I am not surprised that the elder statesmen of this culture have succumbed to the very system that they once rocked the mic, b-boyed, bombed and put the needle to the record to rage against.

While the baby booming generation told us to free our minds to multi-culturalism, we did it and like our fathers and mothers we will once again conform in certain ways and watch our children kill themselves trying to fulfill our progressive fantasies. We have planted the seeds for a multi-party political system and for an economic system that is fair and moral, however, as history dictates it will be our children who push through the dirt to see the light of those dreams.

I can accept that reality. It's a multi-generational truth. But lets just be honest about it.

Recently Rosa Clemente spoke at the Hip Hop Congress (HHC) National Conference in Biloxi, MS. It was a great speech. It was so genuine and on-point that as I said in a previous posting, it allowed me to recognize that I had been caught up in the Obama hype and hadn't been paying attention to the real issues that were afflicting me and my people (i.e.: joblessness, foreclosure, extreme gas prices, poor health care access.)

In her address she didn't just highlight why she accepted the nomination, but she also spoke about how others reacted to her accepting that nomination. She expressed disappointment in the less than enthusiastic response from Hip Hop organizations who would have otherwise embraced her during different times. In fact, at the time of her speech, she stated that HHC and the National Hip Hop Political Convention (NHHPC) were the only two Hip Hop organizations to invite her to speak about her bid for the election.

Anybody who has ever heard Rosa speak knows that she doesn't mince words, even if what she says might make her own friends or family bristle. She is unapologetic about urgently working towards a freedom that includes everybody. And she is confident that Hip Hop can be and has been that entity to push for lasting social justice and social change.

When she spoke at the NHHPC she again highlighted these points going even further to point out that the panel from which she was speaking only had one female on it, herself. She highlighted this truth as an example as to what is going on as a whole within Hip Hop and the larger social change movement: Our inability to accept female leadership.

Furthermore, she expressed her frustration with the fact that the leadership within the Hip Hop organizational community has failed to embrace the reality that finally there is a political party that not only includes social justice in it's agenda but walked the walk when they chose Rosa has their VP.

There are key people and factions within Hip Hop who hate when we divide on issues that have public attention. Hip Hop is a diverse democracy. It's okay for us to have varying opinions. It keeps us honest and uncut.

What if Micheal Eric Dyson had been tapped or Bikari Kitwana? How would have Hip Hop reacted to that?

Sexism within Hip Hop is not a new topic. Male leadership hates to address it on any real level outside of validating its existence and pointing to the larger white hegemony from which we grew out of as though sexism is merely an extension of white supremacy. A total falsehood. Women have been the most oppressed group of people on the face of the planet since the dawn of time spanning all cultures.

Sexism within Hip Hop is so detrimental to our movement that enemy outsiders are able to stifle and discredit our own voices when they point it out. Combating racism and poverty has been major issues that we have tackled. If the larger highly prejudiced American society can ponder the notion of a Black president surely we can begin to search for a way to deal with the idea of a female leader in our movement.

Obama may be the next president to lead the American people. But who is leading Hip Hop?

Okay, so, I have a confession to make. I might have gotten a teensy weensy bit swept up in the Obama hype. In a previous posting I chastised my revolutionary brothers and sisters who did not embrace the idea of Obama for president as I had. I accused them of not wanting to see the socio-psychological revolution of the mind that was occurring in American society. I went so far as to state that I would not even be considering Green Party Presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney as an option. But then a funny thing happened...Rosa Clemente.

Rosa Clemente, the definition of Hip Hop activism and a woman I admire and respect, was asked to join the Green Party ticket as the Vice Presidential nominee. I have to admit that I was confused by this action. I viewed her nomination as some sort of strategical plot to pull the revolutionary communities away from considering Obama. I was cynical to say the least. I no longer saw her simply as a powerful female voice within Hip Hop. She became a politician in my mind.

Coincidently, she was invited to speak at a conference I was attending in Biloxi on Hip Hop activism. I was very eager to hear her speak. I wanted to know why she accepted the nomination and what she planned to do with her platform. She attended our open sessions and participated as a regular conference attendee. I waited impatiently for her time to speak to the crowd as a campaigning politician.

Finally, after hours of strategizing about organizing and recognizing fellow attendees accomplishments within the movement, Cheri Hankala from the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign (PPEHRC) screened a documentary about her organizations 2004 "March for our Lives" at the Republican National Convention in NYC. I was moved by the documentary, by the guts that Cheri and her fellow protesters displayed when taking to the streets with no permit to show the world that the underrepresented, misrepresented and disenfranchised will be heard regardless of the power elite's efforts to ignore us and paint an image of us that is misconstrued and negative. Needless to say that when Rosa stepped up to the mic the room was already in a mood. Whether she sensed that mood or was a part of that mood doesn’t really matter because when she began to speak truth to power she grabbed my attention in a major way.

She began to explain to the room that she had initially become a Green Party member, leaving the Democratic Party out of disgust, when she saw the governmental non-response to the affected citizenry of New Orleans after the levees broke when hurricane Katrina hit in 2005. After an emotionally internal debate she decided to accept the nomination because she could no longer wait for justice to happen. She needed to push for change, NOW. She told the group that she would be using her platform not to spoil Obama's bid, however, to put forward the issues that mattered to the people the most and to work towards a multi-party political system in which our options were not limited to more of the same. She insisted that Obama was being forced onto Hip Hop and the greater social movement by a white media machine and multi-cultural elites within the Hip Hop Community. She wanted power to the people. Not just symbolic change.

It was not until the next morning when I turned on my internet and saw that the Obama campaign, which had already admitted it would consider keeping several Bush advisors in its cabinet should they win the presidency, was now floating the idea of Ann Venemen, Republican Agricultural Secretary, as a possible Vice Presidential nominee. At that moment the denial I had been holding onto came crashing down around me and I could no longer state that Barack's Black racial identity alone constituted change. While his nomination and probable election into Presidency is in and of it self a socially evolutionary action, it doesn't mean that the class warfare being waged on the working poor people of this country will cease to exist. In fact, the election of a Black president almost ensures that the fight to expose this vicious class warfare will be harder to prove. The idea of racism being used as a tool to oppress will be scoffed at, with a Black man at the helm.

I am not living in a swing state. Most likely California will go to Obama. While the idea of McCain as President terrifies me more than the idea of another 9/11, I am now unsure of who to vote for. I am no longer swept up in the hype. I am now experiencing the reality of joblessness, foreclosure, high gas prices and poor access to healthcare in my own family circle. I am watching families lose their homes, lose their lives and lose their dignity to a system that is broken at the foundation.

In my previous post I believed that the Hip Hop generation should pat itself on the back for pushing the American community to step outside of the box and to see a freedom that embraced everyone. I believed that Hip Hop does not simply speak of or hope for a society that embraces multi-culturalism, we live it out in our daily lives and work towards eradicating a world system that abuses racial and ethinc identity to divide people and keep power and resources in a limited and highly exclusive group of individuals and families. I still believe this. But now I realize that as a revolutionary I can never be satisifed. I must always get free or die trying. I can never let the victories, whether big or small, distract from the larger goal of equal human rights for everybody.