Shock G and the PFunk legacy - Pt.2
Part 2 of the Get Off My Lawn look at Shock G’s legacy and the Digital Underground’s first homage to the funk — Sex Packets!
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Shock G and the PFunk legacy - Pt.2
Part 2 of the Get Off My Lawn look at Shock G’s legacy and the Digital Underground’s first homage to the funk — Sex Packets!
Shock G and the PFunk legacy - Pt.1
HipHop has suffered quite a few losses in the past year with the deaths of MF Doom, Black Rob, DMX, and, most recently, Gregory Jacobs, aka Shock G, aka MC Blowfish, aka Pianoman, aka Rackadelic, aka Humpty Hump.
In part one of this two-part episode J (@HipHopTaliban), Black Cloud (@AndreCole), and the Professor (@abjrphd) look at the legacy of Shock G and Digital Underground through the lens of the group’s classic first album, Sex Packets, examining the way Shock G used his reverence for Parliament-Funkadelic to craft a classic PFunk homage. Along the way, the fellas reach back and listen to some of the original funk and rock joints that set HipHop’s foundation! And the Professor gives a preview of his forthcoming book, For the Culture: HipHop and the Fight for Social Justice.
The Clownish Way to Doom A Generation
By following Colin Kaepernick’s “they’re both the same, why vote” philosophy and skipping the 2016 election, progressives and Black abstainers opened the door for Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell to reshape the federal judiciary in a way that’s set to have dire consequences for Black people and progressives for the next 30 years.
Late in August 2016 as the American National Anthem blared through the Levi’s Stadium loudspeakers, reporter Jennifer Lee Chan tweeted a relatively innocuous photo shot from high above the field where the San Francisco 49ers and Green Bay Packers were set to engage in a preseason contest.
A then minor detail captured in the picture confirmed the impetus for a story Chan’s colleague Steve Wyche had been keeping his eye on for the past couple of weeks. What it showed was 49ers backup quarterback Colin Kaepernick sitting during the playing of the anthem while everyone else in view of the lens stood. In and of itself, standing for the playing of the national anthem before a sporting event is a peculiar ceremonial ritual so boring that it only makes it to the TV broadcast for title games and big-time celebrity performances.
But once Kaepernick explained his rationale for not standing, and eventually kneeling, during the anthem, suddenly those two minutes of pre-kickoff pomp and circumstance became the biggest thing in sports.
As he would later go on to explain many times across multiple platforms, Kaepernick’s decision came in the wake of the police killings of Alton Sterling, Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Philando Castile, Oscar Grant, and the ongoing systemic oppression faced by Black people in America.
"I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses Black people and people of color," Kaepernick told Wyche. "To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder."
From the moment Kaepernick made known the reason for his protests the backlash was as predictable as the outcome, and thus his fate as an NFL quarterback was sealed in such a way that only an MVP-caliber performance could have extended his run. That didn’t happen and he hasn’t played another down in the NFL in nearly four years.
Kaepernick’s on-field performance in 2016 and 2017 left a lot to be desired. After being relegated to backup quarterback he was thrust back into the starting role after the team got off to a 1-4 start. His presence under center didn’t really change 49er-fortune as the team won only one of its remaining 11 games.
While statistics suggest Kaepernick’s performance wasn’t atrocious, it wasn’t good enough for the 49ers to make a long-term investment in him either. At the end of the season, the 29-year-old decided to opt-out of his contract and try his hand as a free agent, a designation that would allow any interested team to add him to their roster.
But despite having guided his team to a Super Bowl appearance just four years earlier and having declining but decent stats, not one of the NFL’s 32 teams took a serious look at Kaepernick. A few coaches and front office people made statements that someone should definitely pick up Kaepernick, just not their teams.
Was his performance poor? Yes. Was his performance so poor that 31 other teams couldn’t find a spot for him even as a third-string quarterback? No. Clearly the controversy-averse NFL owners, even if not overtly expressed, were in cahoots to ensure Kaepernick never received another shot in the league — a theory born out by the fact that in 2019 the NFL and Kaepernick reached a confidential monetary settlement regarding his claims that owners colluded to keep him unemployed.
But that part of the story we know.
They're All The Same?
As the Kaepernick controversy ballooned in 2016, the quarterback became the avatar for everything from the opposition of systemic racial oppression, the opposition of police brutality, and opposition of institutional racism to disrespect of the flag, disrespect of the country, and even (bizarrely) disrespect of the military.
The opportunity to drive a golf wedge into America’s racial fissures and exploit the emerging culture war wasn’t missed by then-presidential candidate Donald Trump who infamously said to an approving crowd of hootin’ n hollerin’ red state whites, “Wouldn't you love to see one of these NFL owners when someone disrespects our flag to say, 'get that son of a bitch off the field right now. Out. He's fired. He's fired!”
With the presidential campaign coming to a head, football season well underway, and the pro and anti-kneeling camps firmly entrenched, reporters asked Kaepernick to weigh in on the race between Trump and Hillary Clinton.
Kaepernick, clearly the most prominent voice in professional sports at the moment surprised many when he said he didn’t plan to vote because essentially all politicians are the same, including Clinton and Trump.
Specifically, he said, “Both are proven liars and it almost seems like they’re trying to debate who’s less racist. At this point, in talking to one of my friends, you have to pick the lesser of two evils, but the end is still evil.
"I think the two presidential candidates that we currently have also represent the issues that we have in this country right now," Kaepernick said. "You have Hillary, who has called Black teens or Black kids super predators. You have Donald Trump, who is openly racist.
"He always says, 'Make America Great Again.' Well, America's never been great for people of color," Kaepernick said. "And that's something that needs to be addressed. Let's make America great for the first time."
And that was the gist of his abstinence rationale —they’re all the same, so I’m not voting.
It’s a relatively juvenile argument most often posited by people who don’t want to do the work required to actually change the reality of their political choices. And not only was Kaepernick not going to vote, turns out he never even registered to vote in 2016 or ever as far as any records show.
However, to his credit, Kaepernick is not your average apathetic abstainer. In the years that he has been out of football, he has become a high-profile activist, highlighting the issues that led to his anthem protest, held forums on a variety of social justice-related topics, and raised and donated millions of dollars for various causes.
He even started the Know Your Rights Camp, a non-profit organization that holds seminars for young people across the country to “advance the liberation and well-being of Black and Brown communities through education, self-empowerment, mass-mobilization and the creation of new systems that elevate the next generation of change leaders.”
He even managed to get one of America’s most beloved brands, Nike, to side with his efforts. According to various financial news outlets, Kaepernick’s partnership with Nike for their 30th Anniversary “Just Do it” campaign resulted in $163 million in earned media, a $6 billion brand value increase, and a 31% boost in sales, which includes the $50 t-shirts and $150 jerseys that routinely sell out in hours, with a portion of proceeds going to charity.
But corporate sales numbers aren’t really the ones that matter.
Inside The Numbers
When the dust settled on the 2016 presidential campaign Hillary Clinton received 65,853,516 votes to Donald Trump’s 62,984,825 but lost the election thanks to the Electoral College, a holdover from a bygone era that lifted two of the last three presidents who received fewer actual votes than their opponent (George W. Bush and Donald Trump) into the White House.
Having long outlived its usefulness and practicality as a means to ensure less populous states have a voice in the election outcome, the Electoral College process has shifted focus away from states with the most people and onto a handful of smaller “swing states” whose election-day results typically determine who becomes president.
In 2016 it didn’t matter that Hillary received nearly three million more votes than Trump because Trump received 306 of the possible 538 electoral votes to Hillary’s 232.
Despite the electoral vote total, a closer look at the numbers shows just how close America was to avoiding the four-year national nightmare/embarrassment/sideshow that has been the Trump presidency.
In Pennsylvania, Hillary lost the popular vote 2,970,733 to 2,926,441, a difference of 44,292 votes that resulted in Trump receiving the state’s 20 electoral votes.
In Wisconsin, Hillary lost the popular vote 1,405,284 to 1,382,536, a difference of 22,748 votes that resulted in Trump receiving the state’s 10 electoral votes.
In Michigan, Hillary lost the popular vote 2,279,543 to 2,268,839, a difference of 10,704 votes that resulted in Trump receiving the state’s 16 electoral votes.
Had Hillary Clinton won these three states, she would have won the presidency, leaving “shithole countries” and kids in cages for the next Mad Max movie instead of the front page of The Washington Post.
A Midwest trifecta for Hillary was plausible because it’s not as if these three states are deep Republican strongholds. Barack Obama won all three in 2008 and 2012.
Exit Stage Right and Not College-educated … and White
Exit polling showed that Donald Trump was able to pull off the biggest political upset since Truman defeated Dewey in 1948 by turning out trailer-loads of Rust Belt whites without college degrees, many of whom had never voted or previously voted for the Democratic candidate.
This so-called silent majority of disaffected white people bought into Trump’s sales pitch and promise to save them from the murderous, marauding hordes of Brown people threatening to rush the border and sack their suburban enclaves while he would simultaneously rewind the hands of time, bringing back jobs technology and environmental regulation had long-since shipped off to the Third World and China. And most importantly, he would “Make America Great Again” — a curious phrase that simultaneously causes his white followers to well up with star-spangled pride, while Black people, women, immigrants, the entire LGBT community, Muslims, and many more wonder just what great period he’s referring to because America has only very recently begun to consider treating us relatively civilly.
And while pundits point to some questionable campaign decisions made by Hillary and the underestimation of her unfavorability among the electorate, Trump’s ability to turn out record numbers of white voters without a college degree was the biggest factor in his victory.
However, an argument can be made that the biggest reason that Hillary lost is that she was unable to turn out voters in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania at the same level as Barack Obama.
In fact, Hillary wouldn’t have needed to worry about the white voters that jumped ship to the Republicans had she reached the Obama threshold with Black voters.
Analysis of the polling data shows that Black voters who previously voted for Obama didn’t cast a vote for Trump, instead a large percentage simply didn’t vote at all — a critical mistake.
Turning Out and Falling Off
According to the Pew Research Center, overall Black voter turnout fell from 66.6% in 2012 to 59.6% in 2016. The 7% drop might not seem like much but it represented the largest turnout decline of any racial or ethnic group in 30 years and was the first time in 20 years the Black voter turnout rate declined. 2016’s numbers represented the lowest Black turnout rate since 2000.
Even among Millennials, voter turnout increased for every single racial group except Black Millennials. The general Millennial turnout percentage increased from 46.4% in 2012 to 50.8% in 2016. The Black Millennial turnout decreased from 55% in 2012 to 50.6% in 2016.
A Slate article analyzing the 2016 election results cited a study by researchers from the University of Massachusetts and Indiana University that found the Black voter drop-off was sharpest in states where Trump’s margin of victory was less than 10 points. In Michigan and Wisconsin, Black turnout dropped by more than 12 points.
The combination of rises in white votes combined with declines for Blacks set the table for Trump to claim the electoral victories in those key states and thus win the presidency.
With all else remaining the same, had Black voters turned out in the same numbers like 2012, Hillary would have won Michigan. If white voter turnout remained at its 2012 level instead of going up, Hillary would have won Michigan and its 16 electoral votes.
In Wisconsin, the turnout rate among Black voters dropped 19% from 74% in 2012 to 55% percent in 2016. Turnout for Asians and Latinos also dropped by 6%. Coincidentally, the 2016 presidential election was the first time Wisconsin’s new voter ID requirement was in effect. Critics of the requirement and multiple studies have found that minority voters are less likely to have a driver’s license or another form of ID that satisfies the eligibility requirement. And this could be the reason Black voter turnout was disproportionately low in the state, allowing Trump to be the first Republican since Ronald Reagan to win Wisconsin.
A study conducted by the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that nearly 17,000 potential voters in Milwaukee and Dane counties did not cast votes due to the voter ID requirement put in place by Republican Governor Scott Walker and backed by the majority of Republicans in the State Legislature. Hillary lost Wisconsin and its 10 electoral votes by less than 23,000 votes.
In Pennsylvania, where Black voters comprise 10% of the electorate, the .2% decline in Black voter turnout wasn’t as sharp as it was in other key states, but it was the only turnout decline recorded among the voting groups identified in the Center for American Progress study of 2016 voter trends. Had Black voter turnout matched its 2012 levels, with all other factors remaining the same, Hilary would still have lost the state because of a 4% increase among white voters without a college degree.
The election outcome proved Trump’s effectiveness at weaponizing white grievance to drive up uneducated white turnout — gains that were not offset by a necessary increase in minority voters and were assisted by the low Black turnout, even though even more Blacks were eligible to vote than in 2012.
All-Star Influencer
In terms of the pro-athlete social activist hierarchy, in late 2016, Kaepernick was king. Even four years later he remains 1 or 1A with LeBron James despite their nearly 116 million combined Twitter and Instagram follower gap. While LeBron is famous for his willingness to tackle topics and causes of importance beyond the basketball court, his legendary basketball feats remain the primary draw. With Kaepernick’s NFL days increasingly far behind him, the activism is the draw.
According to sports marketing and data analytics firm Hookit, in the months before the Green Bay game, Kaepernick was gaining approximately 50 followers per day on his Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook accounts.
In two weeks just after his protest and the rationale behind it were revealed, Kaepernick began gaining approximately 18,000 followers a day — an increase of 35,394%.
According to Hookit, from Jan. 1 to Aug. 25, Kaepernick gained 40,372 followers on Twitter. Between August 26 and September 8, he added 98,730 Twitter followers.
In the same two-week period Kaepernick had seven unique social media posts that were liked, commented on, or shared an average of 46,553 times per post — nearly four times more activity than his posts received prior to kneeling.
His mentions were also way up, with Kaepernick’s name tagged or mentioned 235,549 on various platforms during the two weeks — nearly 10 times more mentions than in the previous eight months.
And those numbers have only increased with Kaepernick possessing 3.9 and 2.4 million followers on Instagram and Twitter respectively.
But in November 2016, long before reporters rushed to LeBron for comment on the latest racial injustice, Kaepernick was the man at the center of the storm.
With his profile, his voice, his exposure, his activism, and his traditional and social media presence increasing exponentially in short order, it’s even more baffling that Kaepernick would choose not only to not endorse a candidate but to simply not vote at all.
In hindsight, it is a move that was counterproductive and best and wildly irresponsible at worst.
Woke Dummies and The Big Problem
The so-called Woke community of activists, to whom Kaepernick and Bernie Sanders are probably patron saints, is looking to push American society far to the left concerning all aspects of public policy and social life. The progressive agenda includes defunding police departments, abolishing prisons, criminal justice reform, ending fossil fuel usage, free college, healthcare for all, universal basic income, etc.
Depending on where you stand on the political spectrum, these moves can be viewed as either necessary steps to achieve social equity and justice or pipe dreams from people disconnected with theories related to practical application.
The problem for supporters of these issues aren’t the issues themselves, but the fact that enactment of any of them requires a political solution, and when challenged, a legal outcome favorable to the proponents.
By adopting the Kaepernick, “I’m not going to vote because they’re all the same” position, abstaining progressives ceded critical political and legal ground to the Republicans who, in the past four years, have plowed ahead making moves that will entrench their policy positions as law to be upheld by the conservative judges they’ve helped install — for decades to come.
If we reverse engineer the Republican masterplan, we can start with the U.S. Supreme Court, where President Trump has successfully appointed three justices to life terms. With his latest appointment of Amy Coney Barrett, who replaces liberal stalwart Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the balance of the court has shifted 6-3 in favor of the conservative and ultra-conservative wings.
What this means for progressives like Kaepernick is that any law that seeks to fundamentally change or challenge the status quo or anything not rubber-stamped by a conservative think tank is likely to be struck down by a court packed with justices who believe the words written by slaveholding, sexist, landowning, rich white men in frilly tops, writing with quills, are still the standard by which rulings should be made almost 250 years later.
And again, Supreme Court justices are appointed for life, with most serving well into their 80s. The three Trump-appointed justices, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett are 53, 55, and 48 years old respectively, meaning they will likely be ruling against progressive interests for the next 20-30 years, dooming a generation.
But that presumes the cases even reach the high court. The path to the Supreme Court winds through federal courts where Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has been hard at work for the past six years working to ensure his insidious plan to put a conservative stranglehold on the federal judiciary came to fruition.
When Donald Trump began his presidency 105 empty federal judgeships had not been filled by President Obama — and that was by Republican design.
When Republicans won back control of the Senate in 2014 they obtained the final say on who got to fill or not fill the federal court vacancies.
In the two years before Republicans took the Senate, nearly 90% of Obama’s nominees were confirmed. After McConnell and the Republicans took over, that rate fell to 28%.
To achieve this result Republican senators used various tactics to either obstruct or delay the confirmation process. A Democrat-sponsored effort in 2013 removed the filibuster, a classic delay tactic often used by the minority party to continue debating an issue to prevent a vote, as it pertained to nominations to executive branch positions and federal judgeships.
This led to the Senate confirming more of Obama’s nominees at a higher rate because they only needed a majority of senators to vote to end debate and move on to the confirmation vote. While Senate Democrats confirmed many of Obama’s nominees, many judgeships were left vacant because a backlog of potential federal judges was created by the Republican stall tactics.
However, in 2014, when Republicans gained control of the Senate, it became clear that the “nuclear option” to eliminate the filibuster was going to come back and bite Democrats in the ass — and boy did it ever.
When McConnell became majority leader confirmation of Obama nominees ground to a near halt, culminating in the prevention of a confirmation hearing for Merrick Garland, Obama’s pick to replace Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia who died in February 2016.
In what would turn out to be perhaps the millennium’s boldest act of hypocrisy, McConnell justified holding no hearings for Garland claiming that in an election year the American people should have the chance to weigh in on the decision by allowing the next president to fill the vacancy — despite the election being nine months away.
Once Trump was elected McConnell shifted his plans for the federal judiciary into high gear and the Senate began moving to fill every vacancy with what Democratic Senate Judiciary Committee member Diane Feinstein called, “young conservative ideologues, many of whom lack basic judicial qualifications.”
From expressed opposition to everything from the Affordable Care Act to Abortion Rights to equal rights for LGBT Americans to environmental regulations to voting rights, and much much more, Trump appointees check nearly all of the boxes the religious right, conservative fringe, and a sizable number of racists have been waiting for generations to see reflected in the federal courts.
And in the off chance some progressive policy enacted into law in a blue state gets challenged and lands before the Supreme Court, McConnell’s machinations will likely result in the court striking it down with the approval of the six conservative justices, including Barrett, who McConnell saw sworn in just days before the 2020 election, forgoing all that stuff he said in 2016 about not confirming nominees in an election year.
Do you Really Care?
It would be one thing if Kaepernick didn’t care about social justice or Black people or right and wrong. But the fact that he clearly cares about those things makes his “I don’t vote, they’re all the same” position even more infuriating because, again, every progressive idea he supports requires a political and legal solution to be put into effect.
And once they’re put in place, they aren’t necessarily safe from political or legal processes.
For example:
The Affordable Care Act — The Supreme Court full of conservative justices will decide the fate of the Affordable Care Act as Republicans seek to strip away the means through which millions of Americans are able to receive health care during a deadly global pandemic.
Police Abuse — The decision to bring criminal charges against police officers who abuse and murder Black people or any people is made by the district attorney, an elected official, or, as in the case of the killing of George Floyd, the state attorney general, also an elected official.
Elimination of Qualified Immunity — Qualified immunity is the doctrine that prevents government officials, police officers in particular, from being held personally liable for misconduct on the job that would get the average person locked up for life or paying a huge monetary settlement. In 1982 the Supreme Court expanded the definition of qualified immunity ( https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/457/800/ ) and police unions and prosecutors have used it for decades to justify a lack of criminal accountability in scores of cases involving claims of police abuse.
A Reuters investigation examined how qualified immunity has made it extremely difficult to hold police officers accountable for misconduct and abusive behavior.
In one incident, qualified immunity was invoked after a police officer in Utah gave an unarmed man brain damage after slamming him to the ground during a traffic stop.
In 2010 a Houston officer shot Ricardo Salazar-Limon in the back during a traffic stop after claiming he thought the man was reaching for a gun. There was no gun.
Salazar-Limon claimed his constitutional rights were violated and sued the city of Houston and the officer who shot him. In federal court, the defense argued that the officer was protected by qualified immunity, the courts agreed, a summary judgment was entered, and the matter never went before a jury.
When the case reached the Supreme Court, a majority of justices agreed with the granting of qualified immunity to the officer.
In the dissenting opinion Justice Sonia Sotomayor was joined by Ginsburg in stating, “Only Thompson and Salazar-Limon know what happened on that overpass on October 29, 2010 … What is clear is that our legal system does not entrust the resolution of this dispute to a judge faced with competing affidavits. The evenhanded administration of justice does not permit such a shortcut.
“Our failure to correct the error made by the courts below leaves in place a judgment that accepts the word of one party over the word of another. We have not hesitated to summarily reverse courts for wrongly denying officers the protection of qualified immunity in cases involving the use of force. But we rarely intervene where courts wrongly afford officers the benefit of qualified immunity in these same cases.”
Restrictions to the application of qualified immunity would require the Supreme Court to hear a related case and come to a different conclusion, thereby setting a precedent for lower court rulings.
Voting Rights — Efforts to suppress the votes of Black people in particular and people of color generally have deep roots in America. In recent years Republicans across the country have led efforts critics have said are specifically aimed at suppressing or denying the votes of African-Americans. The reduction of the number of polling places in predominantly Black communities leads to hours-long waits to vote. Voter ID laws disproportionately impact minority voters who are statistically less likely to have the necessary documentation. The attempt to reduce the number of ballot drop-off locations in densely populated urban areas disproportionately impacts minority voters. Solutions and corrections to all of these issues require a political or legal solution and sometimes both.
Gerrymandering — Gerrymandering is the process by which politicians draw voting district lines to create districts in which one party is all but guaranteed to hold power indefinitely and doesn’t need to be responsive to anyone other than members of their own party. This has been a crucial tactic for Republicans looking to maintain power even as political shifts show more people moving away from their party. Bringing an end to gerrymandering or even drawing districts in a more logical, straightforward fashion requires a political solution that will almost certainly be challenged in federal court.
Abortion — This is the Holy Grail for conservatives who have been waiting for nearly 50 years to get enough right-leaning justices on the court to reverse the landmark ruling that protected a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion. With a court now full of conservative Catholics, that dream is closer to fruition than ever.
The Census — Conducted once a decade, the U.S. government uses the census to count the number of people living in the country. The census results determine how many representatives each state has in the U.S. House of Representatives, how an estimated $1.5 trillion a year in federal funding is distributed for the next 10 years, and how many electoral college votes each state is allocated. The Trump administration made repeated attempts to undermine the census, most notably by trying to add a citizenship question to the census intended to scare undocumented people away from participating, thus driving down the population totals in key Democratic states such as California and New York, diminishing their political power. Even though COVID-19 and social distancing restrictions made collecting census data more difficult the Trump administration successfully fought to cut the count short. That decision was upheld by the Supreme Court despite the argument that the decision will prevent a fair and accurate count.
Felons Voting — In 2018, Florida voters passed Amendment A that restored voting rights to people convicted of a felony who served their sentences. Many expected that a large portion of the 1.4 million newly eligible voters would vote Democratic but we may never know because the Republican governor and lawmakers quickly passed a law in response to Amendment A requiring people convicted of felonies to fully pay back fines and fees to the courts before they become eligible to vote. Depending on the person, the cost could range from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars — effectively nullifying their voting rights.
The ACLU filed a lawsuit claiming the new law was unconstitutional because it created a financial barrier for people attempting to exercise their right to vote. In 2019 a federal judge sided with the plaintiffs and agreed that the law amounted to a poll tax and was unconstitutional.
But in September 2020, just two months before the presidential election, a federal appeals court overturned the previous ruling that will prevent any former felons who have not paid all of their back fines and fees from voting. Five of the six votes to overturn the ruling came from federal judges appointed to the court by President Trump.
Republicans know that Florida is arguably the most crucial state in their bid to capture the presidency. If Joe Biden or any other Democratic presidential candidate were to win Florida, the handwringing over states like Michigan and Wisconsin goes away because of the Sunshine State’s 29 electoral votes. Hillary Clinton lost Florida by 112,911 votes, a number that seems minuscule if you consider a pool of 1.4 million new voters, a majority of whom may lean Democratic.
Good intentions Meet Reality
While Colin Kaepernick is clearly well-meaning and puts his time, energy, and effort behind the causes he supports, it was unimaginably negligent of him to brag and boldly promote the fact that he does not vote, didn’t intend to vote, and voting doesn't matter because all the candidates were the same.
The margin of victory was so narrow for Donald Trump that there is no reason to think Kaepernick couldn't have moved the needle by choosing to use the soapbox upon which he stood in 2016 and the social media megaphone he wielded to push and encourage his hundreds of thousands of supporters to vote.
Is it improbable to think that the most prominent and popular politically active Black athlete could not have convinced a large number of Black people to cast a vote instead of sitting the election out?
And if you still think voting doesn’t matter, consider this as we continue to live altered lives under the cloud of a deadly global pandemic: In 2009, after multiple recounts and legal challenges, Al Franken became the certified winner of the Minnesota Senate election by 312 votes and became the 60th Democratic senator, a key number that allowed Democrats to end the Republican filibuster and vote to pass the Affordable Care Act aka Obamacare aka the only reason many millions of Americans have healthcare access.
Every single progressive cause Kaepernick advocates for can be broken down to a simple equation:
Progressive Idea + Progressive Activism + Progressive Political Action + Progressive Legal Victories = Progressive Laws that move America closer to the fair, just, and equal society we should all be aspiring to.
Remove one part of the equation and things fall apart.
The idea that voting doesn’t matter and all politicians are the same is a position that is factually wrong, strategically incompetent, and downright imbecilic. That position makes Kaepernick and the abstainers just as responsible for Trump’s 220 judges and the decades of judicial beatings liberals and progressives will face as the MAGA hat-wearing racist Proud Boy.
Do not make the same mistake twice.
Do not be that stupid.
Go vote!
Verzuz Everybody - Part 2
In this episode J (@HipHopTaliban), Black Cloud (@AndreCole), and the Professor (@abjrphd) get into a lively discussion on the recent Verzuz battle between Snoop and DMX and whether the matchups are fair contests. From there the temperature gets turned up as the fellas discuss the hypothetical dream Verzuz matchup between Prince and Michael Jackson. Also on deck is Talib Kweli getting banished from Twitter for harassing Black women and Black Thought continuing to make his case for the top spot on the all-time MC greats list.
Verzuz Everybody - Part 1
In this episode J (@HipHopTaliban), Black Cloud (@AndreCole), and the Professor (@abjrphd) get into a lively discussion on the recent Verzuz battle between Snoop and DMX and whether the matchups are fair contests. From there the temperature gets turned up as the fellas discuss the hypothetical dream Verzuz matchup between Prince and Michael Jackson. Also on deck is Talib Kweli getting banished from Twitter for harassing Black women and Black Thought continuing to make his case for the top spot on the all-time MC greats list.
F**K Peace
How Riots Came to Be Black America’s Most Effective Agent for Systemic Change
As the video moves forward, something deep down inside of me keeps hoping this is the time that someone, anyone, any of the dozens of train passengers and bystanders will put down their cellphones and intervene somehow, in some way before transit policeman Johannes Mehserle shoots a defenseless Oscar Grant in the back, puncturing his lung, killing him as he lay face down in the Fruitvale BART Station.
As the video moves forward, something deep down inside of me keeps hoping this is finally the time that someone, anyone, any of the bystanders will intervene somehow, in some way before NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo compresses Eric Garner's neck using a chokehold that forces him to the ground before four officers swarm in on his back, compressing his chest and leaving him motionless on the sidewalk, an hour before he was pronounced dead at Richmond University Medical Center.
As the video moves forward, something deep down inside of me keeps hoping this is the time that Walter Scott will somehow outrun the bullets fired by North Charleston Police Officer Michael Slager that will soon pierce his back and drop him to the ground in the field where he will be pronounced dead.
As the video moves forward, something deep down inside of me keeps hoping this is the time that Samuel DuBose has his driver's license and University of Cincinnati Police Officer Ray Tensing doesn't have to fabricate a story about being dragged by a moving car to justify the fatal shot he fires into DuBose's head at point-blank range.
As the video moves forward, something deep down inside of me keeps hoping this is the time that paramedics arrive to save the life of Philando Castile before his life slowly slips away opposite the barrel of St. Anthony Police Officer Jeronimo Yanez's gun, now four bullets lighter, as four-year-old eyes watch the grim scene play out to her mother's heart-wrenching narration.
As the video moves forward, something deep down inside of me keeps hoping this is finally the time the pleas of onlookers and the desperate cries of “I can’t breathe” trigger some level of humanity in three Minneapolis Police Officers standing by indifferently as officer Derek Michael Chauvin drives the full weight of his body into the neck chest and spine of George Floyd, as he becomes increasingly unresponsive, eventually being pronounced dead at Hennepin County Medical Center an hour later.
It's a pointless exercise. The facts never change. The outcomes remain the same.
What I'm left with a toxic mix of the deepest sadness and the most furious anger at not only the injustice of it all, but the prescient knowledge that I could be looking at any of the men closest to me — cousins, uncles, friends, my son, or even myself.
And I am far from alone or unique. It is this fear, this anger, this sadness, this outrage that permeates the collective Black community from coast-to-coast, that gave birth to the Black Lives Matter Movement, that has been the ominous cloud of injustice that has shaded our journey since being brought to these shores. It is the persistent, insidious idea that you are less than, that you are not worthy of dignity, respect, and decency in the eyes of those with the ability and authority to snatch your life away at a moment's notice with or without cause.
In too many communities police officers are the foot soldiers reinforcing this message daily to Black men — whether through demeaning language intended to incite, verbal and physical intimidation and threats, or any number of other modes of interaction that underscore just where the authority lies.
But here we are at a unique point in time when technology has allowed us to stitch together the bruised and bloodstained patches of our police abuse quilt to expose a pattern of harassment from the mighty mountains of New York to the curvaceous slopes of California. Our pain and suffering are being put on display for all the world to see. Black Lives Matter has grown from a hashtag to a powerful movement with a fundamental relevance that now has the world's attention.
But the gulf between attention and corrective action has only seemed to widen. Because we've had the world's attention before.
When the grainy footage of LAPD officers beating Rodney King flickered across our low-definition TVs 29 years ago, there was a collective sense in the Black community that we finally had the proof to vindicate and validate the claims of police abuse and harassment we had been making for decades.
But the powers that be saw things differently. A narrative was spun about the video not telling the entire story and had King simply complied with the officers, the beating never would have happened. The officers were acquitted.
And it is not to say that no punishment is ever meted out in these brutal encounters between Black men and the police. The officers involved in both the Walter Scott and Samuel DuBose cases were indicted for murder. The problem is that despite the growing number of videos, eyewitness accounts, and civilian complaints, there have been no widespread changes in police policy that have been prompted by the public release of abuse and harassment videos.
Each video creates a social media frenzy for a time until the public's diminutive attention span moves on to Twitter's latest trending topic.
And then what?
Through a combination of benign neglect of Black communities, obstinate refusal to entertain the concerns of activists, and callous indifference to generations of complaints about police harassment and abuse, police departments, politicians, and various public officials have given tacit endorsements to the methods the police employ. But what they have inadvertently done is create a situation whereby the most effective means for Black people to get a redress of grievances is a riot.
Are riots the best solution? No.
Are riots they the most efficient solution? No.
Are riots the safest solution? No.
Have riots produced more immediate tangible changes in personnel and policy than all of the solemn marches and candlelight vigils combined? Without question.
In short, riots work ... to a degree.
“THE CONSEQUENCE OF INACTION”
Watts, California — 1965
After what should have been a routine traffic stop spiraled out of control, six days of rioting ensued that led to 34 deaths, more than 1,000 injuries, 4,000 arrests, and the destruction of more than 1,000 buildings, resulting in $40 million in damages.
It was only after the Watts Riots in 1965 that the McCone Commission was convened to investigate the root causes of the riot, spending three months interviewing hundreds of people and compiling documents, statistics and information to produce a report that determined the root causes to be, among other things, unemployment, poor education, inferior healthcare, housing, and transportation, and poor police-community relations.
The commission made recommendations to the California governor and other powers that prevailed at the time stating, “Improving the quality of Negro life will demand adjustments on a scale unknown to any great society. The programs we are recommending will be expensive and burdensome. And the burden, along with the expense will fall on all segments of our society — On the public and private sectors, on industry and labor, on company presidents and hourly employees.
“We recommend that law enforcement agencies place greater emphasis on their responsibility for crime prevention as an essential element of the law enforcement task and that they institute improved means for handling citizen complaints and community relationships.
“The consequences of inaction, indifference, and inadequacy, we can all be sure now, would be far costlier in the long run than the cost of correction. If the city were to elect to stand aside, the walls of segregation would rise even higher. The disadvantaged community would become more and more estranged and the risk of violence would rise. The cost of police protection would increase and yet, would never be adequate.”
Although the commission’s recommendations, while met with some criticism, went largely unimplemented on the scale they advised, the detailed examination of the underlying socioeconomic conditions that set the table for the riots would not have taken place absent the riots.
Most importantly, the commission’s findings regarding the lack of healthcare access led directly to the creation of Los Angeles County Southeast General Hospital, later to be known as Martin Luther King Jr. General Hospital — a facility that despite serious problems that forced its closing in 2007, has been reorganized and rebuilt and continues to serve area residents to this day.
“TWO SOCIETIES”
Detroit, Michigan — 1967
Following the 1967 Detroit Riots that began with a police raid on an illegal after-hours club and culminated with 43 deaths, more than 7,000 arrests, 1,400 buildings burned, and approximately $50 million in property damage, President Lyndon Johnson convened the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, otherwise known as the Kerner Commission, to examine the causes of disturbances in Detroit and other cities between 1965 and 1968.
Several months later the commission came to the conclusion that “Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white — separate and unequal. … Discrimination and segregation have long permeated much of American life; they now threaten the future of every American. This deepening racial division is not inevitable. The movement apart can be reversed. Choice is still possible. To pursue our present course will involve the continuing polarization of the American community and, ultimately, the destruction of basic democratic values. The alternative is not blind repression or capitulation to lawlessness. It is the realization of common opportunities for all within a single society. This alternative will require a commitment to national action — compassionate, massive, and sustained, backed by the resources of the most powerful and the richest nation on this earth. From every American, it will require new attitudes, new understanding, and, above all, new will.
“Segregation and poverty have created in the racial ghetto a destructive environment totally unknown to most white Americans. … What white Americans have never fully understood but what the Negro can never forget — is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it.”
The Kerner report provided three primary recommendations, similar to those from the McCone Commission:
- Mount programs on a scale equal to the dimension of the problems
- Aim these programs for high impact in the immediate future to close the gap between promise and performance
- Undertake new initiatives and experiments that can change the system of failure and frustration that now dominates the ghetto and weakens our society.
Along with the searing report, identifying “white racism” as a root cause of the unrest, the riots in Detroit led several years later to the election of Coleman Young, the city’s first Black mayor who integrated the city's overwhelmingly white police force. Young began his two decades of service with an inauguration address that didn’t shy away from the issues raised in the report and experienced by the people in the community.
“We must build a new people-oriented police department. And then you and they can help us to drive the criminals from our streets. I issue open warnings now to all dope pushers, to all rip-off artists, to all muggers: It’s time to leave Detroit. Hit Eight Mile Road!" Young said. “And I don’t give a damn if they’re black or white, if they wear Superfly suits or blue uniforms with silver badges. Hit the road!”
“TINDERBOX”
Los Angeles, California — 1992
In April 1992, within an hour after a jury acquitted five officers of assault and the use of excessive force in the videotaped beating of Rodney King, the L.A. Riots began. By the time the dust settled and the 4,000 National Guardsmen arrived with automatic weapons and armored vehicles, 54 people (mostly Koreans and Latinos) had been killed, 2,499 people were injured, 6,559 people were arrested, more than 7,000 fires were set, and more than 1,100 businesses were damaged (94-percent of the destroyed buildings were commercial), at a cost of $1 billion in property damage.
In the aftermath, the California State Assembly issued a report entitled "To Rebuild is Not Enough." Similar to the reports issued by other commissions in the wake of riots, the California report featured numerous recommendations, including:
- Creating a California Community Reinvestment Act to meet the credit and capital needs of low and moderate-income communities
- Supporting small business development in the impacted areas
- Supporting neighborhood family service organizations to help low-income families gain access to and control of the delivery of social services resources available in their communities
- Increasing the number of minority judges within the county court system
- Creating a California urban community relations agency to provide funding for research, conduct seminars on current community conflicts and resolution strategies, and to develop models for organizing in diverse communities.
Rebuild L.A.
In the days following the riots Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley announced plans for Rebuild L.A., a public-private partnership designed to leverage the power of private-sector businesses to help rebuild the impacted area physically and re-equip residents for new workforce opportunities.
The project revolved around four strategies designed to encourage inner-city investment:
- Creation of new jobs and local business ownership
- Improvement of workforce skills
- Improvement of access to capital
- Support for community-based organizations and programs.
Rebuild L.A. raised an estimated $300 million and had some successes to show, but just two years in a massive earthquake devastated the Northridge section of Los Angeles, causing 20 times the financial damage of the riots, and diverting attention, money, and resources away from South Central, leaving a mixed legacy. Despite lingering criticism, Rebuild L.A. represented the most significant socioeconomic investment in long-neglected South Central and laid the groundwork for the area’s late ’90’s retail renaissance fronted by former NBA superstar Magic Johnson.
The Christopher Commission
Perhaps the most significant development to come in the aftermath of the ’92 riots was the beginning of long-overdue reform of the LAPD, one of the most notoriously villainous police forces in the country.
Following the release of the Rodney King beating video Mayor Tom Bradley established the Christopher Commission to investigate the police department and its practices. He also called for the resignation of LAPD Chief Daryl Gates. Gates refused to resign and was not obligated to do so as a result of civil service protection he was afforded, even though the Christopher Commission pointed to his removal as a key part of reforming the department.
The commission also found that the use of excessive force was rampant in the department and was exacerbated by bias and racism and essentially endorsed by a departmental management structure that rendered public complaints meaningless. Between 1986 and 1990, less than two-percent of excessive force complaints were upheld.
The Justice Department and Civil Rights
The day after the riots began the Justice Department announced it would be investigating the officers involved in the Rodney King beating, contending that the officers violated King’s civil rights. This strategy would be repeated in the years and decades to come, especially in cases involving police abuse, to try and blunt the potential for rioting by having federal officials announce that the Justice Department would be bringing civil rights charges against the accused.
This strategy was two-fold — Provide evidence to an angry citizenry that something proactively punitive is being done to move toward justice, and offer a backstop against another verdict similar to the King beating trial that could lead directly to rioting.
The Webster Commission
The Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners ordered the convening of the Webster Commission to investigate LAPD performance during the riots. The final report concluded that it was a combination of factors that created the conditions that preceded the riots and laid out 16 basic recommendations to prevent future riots that included changes to LAPD structure, planning, and procedures. Additionally, the report highlights the underlying social problems that turned L.A. into a “tinderbox.”
“I THOUGHT HE HAD A GUN”
Cincinnati, Ohio — 2001
Outside a Cincinnati nightclub in April 2001 an off-duty police officer approached 19-year-old Timothy Thomas who had a warrant for his arrest related to at least a dozen traffic citations. Thomas began to run, leading to a pursuit involving additional officers that culminated when officer Stephen Roach turned down an alley in pursuit and fired a single gunshot that struck Thomas in the heart, killing him at the scene. In the subsequent investigation, Roach claimed that he thought Thomas had a gun and was reaching toward his waistband to pull it out. No gun was found. Thomas was unarmed and was the 15th Black male shot and killed by the Cincinnati Police in the five years preceding the incident. The shooting led to six days of riots, hundreds of injuries and arrests, and approximately $5 million in property damage.
Community Action Now
Less than a month before the riot a federal class-action lawsuit was brought by the ACLU and Cincinnati Black United Front alleging decades of racial profiling by the Cincinnati Police Department. The presiding judge ordered a mediation between the plaintiffs, the city, and the police department to produce a solution she believed litigation could not achieve.
The effort, given an additional sense of urgency by the riots, was ultimately approved by the plaintiffs, the city council, and the police union, eventually led to the development of Cincinnati Community Action Now (CAN). Comprised of community, business, and government representatives, the organization’s goals were to create substantial and sustainable change that reduces disparities; build upon successful programs in Cincinnati and elsewhere; and be inclusive, seeking viewpoints from all segments of Greater Cincinnati.
While it acknowledged frayed police-community relations as the precipitating issue, the organization identified four areas that needed to be addressed to tackle the underlying causes that led to the riots:
- Police and Justice System Improvement - a new relationship between police and community to reduce crime and replace adversarial relationships with a true partnership.
- Economic Inclusion and Development - more and better jobs for the most disadvantaged residents.
- Opportunities for Education and Youth Development - programs targeted at higher academic achievement, and the successful education of at-risk children.
- Housing and Neighborhood Development - better housing through increased homeownership and availability of affordable, quality housing for inner-city residents.
One year later the collaboration produced The Cincinnati Collaborative Agreement, arguably one of the most comprehensive plans enacted to improve police-community relations. The five-year agreement had five primary objectives:
- Establish police officers and community members as proactive partners in community problem-solving.
- Build relationships of respect, cooperation, and trust within and between police and communities.
- Improve education, oversight, monitoring, hiring practices, and accountability within the police department.
- Ensure fair, equitable, and courteous treatment for all.
- Create methods to enhance the public’s understanding of police policies and procedures and to recognize exceptional service to foster support for the police.
While there were difficulties faced regarding implementation and early police resentment, the results achieved speak for themselves:
- Training officers in hard to manage situations, like the “dark alley” where the triggering incident occurred
- Training in how to recognize possible mental health issues in suspects and to better handle mentally ill people
- Computers in officers' cruisers to provide access to a person's detailed and complete criminal record
- Foot pursuit policy changes to require that officers assess whether a pursuit is appropriate, considering the seriousness of the offense, whether the suspect is armed, and the ability to apprehend at a later date
- In late 2003, the City bought updated tasers for all officers after the death of an African-American suspect.
- Officers are now required to fill out "contact cards" when they stop vehicles. The cards include details about those in the car, including their race. The cards grew out of allegations that Cincinnati officers stopped more minority drivers than white drivers.
- A Citizens Complaint Authority was created in 2002 to conduct independent reviews of all serious uses of force by police officers.
After CAN completed its work in 2003, a coalition of 14 corporations and foundations came together in 2003 to create Better Together Cincinnati to provide resources for key projects and to explore ways to continue to address the issues raised through CAN’s work.
“UNCONSTITUTIONAL POLICING”
Ferguson, Missouri — 2014
On August 9, 2014, 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot and killed by Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson following a confrontation that ensued after Brown left a market where he had stolen a package of cigars. The accounts of what happened before the shooting vary depending on whom you believe. Forensic evidence showed Brown was not shot in the back, his hands were most likely not raised at the time of the shooting, and a struggle of some type occurred between the two at the officer’s vehicle which was stopped approximately 150-feet from where Brown was fatally shot.
The following day peaceful protests eventually gave way to rioting that lasted more than a week. In retrospect, some of the contributing factors to the violence were the multiple claims that Brown was shot and killed while surrendering or shot in the back while fleeing — all of which were considered plausible due to the deteriorated state of police-community relations.
Similar to other cities, it was the rioting and the attention brought to Ferguson that eventually exposed a legacy of police corruption and abuse directed toward the Black community.
It was the attention brought by the riots that prompted President Obama to address the incident, giving it national and international prominence.
It was the attention brought by the riots that led Attorney General Eric Holder to launch a Justice Department investigation that revealed widespread, institutionally sanctioned racial profiling.
It was the attention brought by the riots that prompted a review of federal programs that provide military-style weapons and equipment to law enforcement agencies across the country.
It was the attention brought by the riots that led to the resignation of five city officials.
It was the attention brought by the riots that exposed racially-biased, profit-driven law enforcement in Ferguson.
It was the attention brought by the riots that led to an overhaul of the local court system that used arrest warrants to extort residents.
It was the riots that ultimately led to the resignation of the former Ferguson Police Chief, Thomas Jackson, and made improving community relations a top priority for incoming Police Chief Delrish Moss.
It was the riots that prompted President Barrack Obama to request $260 million in government funding to pay for 50,000 body cameras and police training.
It was the riots that led President Obama to convene the Task Force on 21st Century Policing to identify problems and make recommendations to improve policing practices nationwide.
Multiple investigations and a grand jury found officer Wilson acted in self-defense.
The Justice Department investigation found “the emphasis on revenue has compromised the institutional character of Ferguson’s police department, contributing to a pattern of unconstitutional policing … police and municipal court practices both reflect and exacerbate existing racial bias, including racial stereotypes.”
“EXPLICITLY DISCRIMINATORY”
Baltimore, Maryland — 2015
On April 12, 2015, 25-year-old Freddie Gray was arrested by Baltimore City Police officers and placed inside a police transport van. Video of the final moments of Gray’s arrest shows Gray facedown on the sidewalk with two officers holding him in place as he repeatedly screams out in pain. When additional officers arrive moments later, Gray is lifted and dragged to the van as his right leg hangs limp the entire time.
What occurs next is a mystery, even if you believe the claims made by the Baltimore Police Department. How many stops did the van make between Gray’s arrest and the time it reached the police station? Two? Three? Six? What was done to Gray en route to the police station? Why did it take the van 45 minutes to reach a station four blocks away? What happened before the video recording began? Was he tased? Why were certain eyewitnesses never interviewed? Did Gray ask for an asthma inhaler? How did Gray end up unconscious, not breathing, with a nearly severed spinal cord?
What is not a mystery is that Freddie Gray arrived at the West District police station and was treated by paramedics before being taken to the University of Maryland Medical Center in a coma. He died on April 19.
Protests were held in the days following his death, but as more information, accurate and conflicting, was revealed tensions mounted. On the day of Freddie Gray’s funeral, that tension boiled over and turned into a full-blown riot that led to 250 people arrested, 144 vehicle fires, and approximately $9 million in damage to businesses.
While the six officers involved went unpunished following unsuccessful attempts to win convictions, a Justice Department investigation and report that followed outlined widespread discrimination and other abuses by the Baltimore Police Department, finding that “supervisors have issued explicitly discriminatory orders, such as directing a shift to arrest 'all the black hoodies' in a neighborhood,” and “(Baltimore Police Department practices) "perpetuate and fuel a multitude of issues rooted in poverty and race, focusing law enforcement actions on low-income, minority communities" and encourage officers to have "unnecessary, adversarial interactions with community members.”
Other findings included:
- Police too often stopped, frisked, and arrested residents without legal justification, disproportionately impacting Black residents, even though police were more likely to find illegal guns, illicit drugs, and other contraband on white residents.
- Police routinely and intentionally misclassified citizen complaints about racial slurs used by officers.
- Police fail to meaningfully investigate reports of sexual assault, particularly for assaults involving women with additional vulnerabilities, such as those who are engaged in sex work.
- Police officers often used excessive force in situations where it was not warranted.
- Police officers routinely used excessive force against individuals deemed to be verbally disrespectful towards police.
- Police officers routinely used excessive force and engaged in “unnecessarily violent confrontations” with individuals with mental health issues.
- Police officers routinely used the same excessive force tactics against juveniles that they used against adults.
- Police officers were not given adequate supervision or training and systemic problems were allowed to go unchecked.
- Failures in the areas of recruitment and retention were also allowed to go unchecked, creating circumstances under which officers were “forced to work overtime after long shifts, lowering morale, and leading to officers working with deteriorated decision-making skills.”
The Justice Department findings led to a court-enforced consent decree, an agreement that would hold the city accountable for making policing reforms and subject it to federal monitoring for years to come.
“DON’T KILL ME”
Minneapolis, Minnesota — 2020
On May 25, 2020, after he was accused of passing a counterfeit $20 bill, Minneapolis Police officers attempted to take 46-year-old George Floyd into custody. As bystander video begins, Floyd is seen lying handcuffed, facedown in the street with officer Derek Chauvin’s knee pressed into his neck for nearly 9 minutes, the last 3 of which Floyd is unresponsive. Two other officers out of camera view are also involved in keeping Floyd pinned to the ground while a fourth officer ignores pleas from onlookers to check on Floyd’s condition.
During the incident, Floyd can be heard repeatedly stating, “I can’t breathe,” and “don’t kill me” until he becomes unresponsive and is taken to Hennepin County Medical Center where he is pronounced dead less than two hours after the initial incident began.
On May 26, following the release of the video, as public outrage began to grow, all four officers involved in the incident were fired.
On May 27 as calls grew for the officers to be arrested, rioting began.
On May 28 rioting expanded with multiple businesses damaged and the Minneapolis Police Department Third Precinct building burned down.
On May 29 Hennepin County’s prosecutor announced charges of third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter against Chauvin.
Despite the arrest rioting expanded to more than 100 cities across the United States as protesters demand all of the officers involved in Floyd’s death are arrested and charged.
Your move America.
White on Whitey
We would have let this early 2000’s battle between Eminem and Everlast slide off into the rap archives until Whitey Ford offered up some revisionist history in a recent interview with Kweli, forcing us to dig into what was a minor skirmish until Marshall went full scorched earth and created a HipHop classic. … Now what was the name?????
The ONE Album - Part 2
In the second part of this episode The HipHop Taliban (@HipHopTaliban), Black Cloud (@AndreCole) and The Professor (@abjrphd) discuss the one album they would give to a non-HipHop Head that best represents the music and the culture — De la Soul - 3 Feet High and Rising, The Roots - Things Fall Apart, Rawkus Records - Soundbombing 2, and whether or not you can be the greatest MC having never had a high-profile battle or a dis record.
The ONE Album - Part 1
In this episode The HipHop Taliban (@HipHopTaliban), Black Cloud (@AndreCole) and The Professor (@abjrphd) discuss the one album they would give to a non-HipHop Head that best represents the music and the culture. But on the way to that discussion they discuss the ups and downs of the recent Instagram producer battles featuring RZA, DJ Premier, Babyface, and Teddy Riley (aka OGs vs. The Internet), the Chicago Bulls documentary, and whether or not you can be the greatest MC having never had a high-profile battle or a dis record.
Quarantine Edition - Part 2
In Part 2 of the Quarantine Edition J (@HipHopTaliban), Black Cloud (@AndreCole), and The Professor (@abjrphd) dive into the recent Public Enemy controversy involving the firing of Flavor Flav and the Jay Electronica album that had been more than a decade in the making. And we inch closer to the beginning of the Battalog!
Quarantine Edition - Part 1
After a 22-month hiatus, it only took a global pandemic and forced quarantine to get The HipHop Taliban (@HipHopTaliban), Black Cloud (@AndreCole) and The Professor (@abjrphd) back in the studio and shakin’ fists at COVID-19, the Jay Electronica album, RZA vs Premier, D-Nice, Public Enemy, and getting into a beef over Beef! But the convo was too big for one episode, so be sure to catch part 2!
Part 2 - Heel up, Wheel up, Bring it back, Come Rewind
A lot of HipHop happenings have occurred since the end of the last podcast. East Coast Dre (@AndreCole) and The Professor (@abjrphd) are in the house with J (@HipHopTaliban)for part two of what ended up being a nearly 3-hour episode covering topics including Nasir, Black Thought, Childish Gambino, domestic abuse, Kanye, Pusha T vs. Drake, Bill Cosby, Big Pun, and determining just how many luxury accommodations are required to get an old HipHop head out to a show!
Heel up, Wheel up, Bring it back, Come Rewind Pt.1
A lot of HipHop happenings have occurred since the end of the last podcast. East Coast Dre (@AndreCole) and The Professor (@abjrphd) are in the house for part one of what ended up being a nearly 3-hour episode covering topics including Nasir, Black Thought, Childish Gambino, domestic abuse, Kanye, Pusha T vs. Drake, Bill Cosby, Big Pun, and determining just how many luxury accommodations are required to get an old HipHop head out to a show!
This is Calrissian — See it in HD at ThaLiberator.com #ThisIsAmerica #ThisIsAmericaArt #StarWars #Solo #StarWarsBlackSeries #LandoCalrissian #StopMotion #StopMotionAnimation #ActionFigurePhotography #DonaldGlover #ToyPhotography #UncleSam #ChildishGambino
Battalog Rules
It's been a long time coming but not only have East Coast Dre (@AndreCole) and The Professor (@abjrphd) returned to the podcast, but we FINALLY come up with the rules for the long-anticipated battle of HipHop catalogs ... aka the Battalog!
But along the way to the rules we hit topics from superheroes, graffiti writers, and Movie Pass to face tattoos, The Chi, and the TR-808. We also get into a debate over whether Large Professor is a victim or a villain in the Main Source classic Looking at the Front Door.
BHN featuring Snoop
The Get Off My Lawn podcast's most controversial segment, Busted His Nut is back! This time we look at Snoop Doggy Dogg and identify the exact moment when he exhausted his lyrical reservoir. Plus, in the wake of Best Buy's decision to kill off CDs, J reminisces on the dawn of the dawn of free music. And we discuss 50 Cent's brutal Rick Ross deathbed diss.
• 04:07 — 50 Cent
• 10:41 — RIP CDs
• 30:15 — Busted His Nut: Snoop
Black to Business
It's been too long, but the Get Off My Lawn podcast is back, and J (aka @HipHopTaliban) is reflecting on the two greatest HipHop things he's ever heard, the most gangsta cinematic outro of all-time, paying some overdue respect, and catching up on five months worth of fist shaking!