Supreme Court rules 5-4 against school desegregation.

Democrats.org has a post called "Supreme Court Rules In Landmark Decision Against School Desegregation" that's worth checking out...

Supreme Court rules 5-4 against school desegregation.

Now's the time to become an ACTIVE voter...No C.P.T. with this one!

2008 Elections, We need to have a head start!!! Okay, my response is pretty long too. But, you know what they say about hiding stuff in reading materials. Prove them wrong by reading all of this!

GET OUT THERE!!! If you don't understand something that you read at these sites, you've got a multitude of choices. You can ask someone you know, ask someone you don't know, do some research, call their campaign headquarters and ask the staff, blog and ask, visit blogs, WATCH THE NEWS NETWORKS, or any other sensible thing that can help you to make your decision. The thing is this, we must become a well informed group of people if for nothing more than to know what we want and need for our future! We can't sit by complacent and whine about what's not right and then make ourselves void of the process. I know that there are tons of people that are disenfranchised; but there are also tons of elderly people that marched for voting rights and find it difficult to make it to the polling places on Election Day. I took time the last two elections so that I could vote at 7:00 a.m. and then go around the hood, knock on doors and ask if people needed a ride to the polling places… FOR FREE… don't charge ya'll, it's for a good cause.

Then, you can help your peeps be more informed. If you know someone who CAN vote, and they just don't know what to do; you being more informed can tell them what the deal is with candidates helping them to make a decision. Be honest and non-biased, they need to make up their own minds. We gotta make it happen ya'll, there's really no other choice now but to do it!

Vote Smart (Non-partisan election information)
http://www.vote-smart.org/election_president.php

Below are a couple of democrats that I am (of course) considering. If you look at Vote Smart for their issues and stances, they've refused to answer the questions. Don't let that deter you; actually that's a smart political move. Answering the questions is too restrictive. It places candidates in a box and they are held accountable for information that could have recently changed but reflects past opinion. Like I said, just DO YOUR RESEARCH!

Senator Barack Obama (D)
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/

Senator Hilary Clinton (D)
http://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/

Here's some other pertinent info....

Washington Post Rundown of Candidates
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/2008-presidential-candidates/

Voter's Self Defense Manual (Require's Adobe Acrobat)
http://www.vote-smart.org/pdf/vsdm2006/vsdm-2006.pdf

"Grown Folks" always talking smack!!

SO!!

I started a block club here in Roseland community in May. Keesha and I canvassed the neighborhood in an effort to enlist people to bring about change in our community. Directly following our first meeting; I met with Alderman Beale regarding some of the problems that residents here are facing. I got results in one week. We got a community owned camera that is recording drug activity that will be used in court cases against offenders. We've had assessors out to see how our curbs can be raised to to prevent the flooding in our area. We got the Alderman to give us a vacant lot that we requested. The trees have been trimmed, the streetlamp wattage increased, and a few other things.

At the next meeting, (we've got a total of 7 members), I began planning a Juneteenth celebration to be held on June 16th. This celebration will be held in honor of the boys and men of this community and will also be used as a tool to do the same thing Juneteenth had done on June 19, 1865. It will be used to posed the question, "What do we do now?" I'd hoped that people would be enthusiastic about revitalizing our community, but so far I've met a hefty set of road blocks on the path to freedom.

Right from the beginning, I'd written a press release, visited places on my 20 minute break at work and gained the support and committment of resources from places like Hyde Park Art Center, Boys and Girls club, Boy Scouts, and others. Alderman Beale was supposed to be here to dedicate a garden to our community so that we could build the W.E.B. DuBois Uplift Community Garden. Members of the community were supposed to provide music, entertainment and more!

In the past couple of weeks, I've been calling to confirm the attendance of various people and organizations. Out of a total of 15 forms of entertainment or resources, I've only got 8 left. The rest of them backed out this past week. Also, after confirming with Alderman Beale's office TWICE, I've been told (yesterday 6/13) that they're not sure if he's gonna come. I've got to call his scheduler today to make sure that he has time. We were also told that they can't provide road barricades for us because they don't do that anymore, 'Maybe we can call the CAPS program at the police department and get some crime scene tape'. We're like "Uhhh, NO, why the heck would we want crime scene tape at something that's supposed to be uplifting to our people!?" YOU KNOW WHAT I'M SAYIN'??? Keesha was calling people to remind them of what we're doing this weekend. We got the numbers from the list of people who signed up to be a part of the block club as we were doing our canvassing. You know what the general consensus was? "Awww, noooo, the street is gonna be blocked of?" or, "I hope people don't trample all over my grass" or, "well, I don't think that's gonna work to get people involved". It's been a hellish nightmare of stupidity from the very beginning.

With all of this said, you may be wondering why I'm writing this. For one, Keesha has been verbalizing what I've been thinking for a few days now. That is... 'One monkey don't stop no show!'. She is telling me this and I don't think she realizes how close I am to the edge when she says it. Everytime she does, it reels me in and makes me remember why we started this whole thing. I know that is probably in the plans of blacks and whites to do whatever it takes to make us quit. But, I'm no quitter. I REALLY want my people to have and do better. I want better for these innocent babies. I don't want the records to show 34 deaths of CPS students next year, or to be an even bloodier number over the summer. We all have blood on our hands people, and I won't continue to pretend it's not there or stop trying just because the road becomes stony.

The other reason I'm writing is to say this. You know how multitudes of people are blaming the youth for all of the violence and destruction in our communities? Well, I already KNEW it wasn't all their fault. But I want to be the first adult to say, look at the example that's being set by adults! Look at the fact that we as adults talk really loud, but don't say a damn thing. Look at the fact that trivial BS like grass, parking and 'being tired' keep us from making a way for our youth. Don't talk about what they're not doing when you're not doing anything yourself!

NOW, what?!?

Can We Save Hip Hop/Rap? SOS!! By Chuma Christopher Ogene

This is by far the most profound piece that I've seen in a long time! Please support this brother. Join the cause... Pass it on....

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CAN WE SAVE HIP HOP & RAP? (SOS!) By
Chuma Christopher Ogene Blog

With Russell Simmons and community leaders, activists, artists and music lovers clamoring for change in the rap game... do you think we can turn this Narcissistic, violence/crime/money and sex-preaching trend around 4 THE BETTER? I think we can, we need to make it happen. Dont blink... read on.

What can we do to achieve this? Personally, I was a young adult growing up on the cusp of the 70's/80's with the birth of Electro-Funk and Rap. We loved to uprock and breakdance to the Fat Boys, Sugar hill Gang, Grandmasters Flash & Melle Mel (and the furious Five), Kurtis Blow, Afrika Bambaata and many more.

The concept was to take the pain, poverty, conflict (petty beefs) and desperation and turn them into vast canvases onto which pictures of HOPE and DEFIANCE were painted in streaming, acrobatic and humorous lyrical mastery. Gang related crime actually went down because brothas and sistas were too busy having fun with tight graffiti, all night street parties and 'battles' for creative and athletic street credibility. Where did this ghetto paradise vanish to?

Even with the hard work and longevity of conscious (and mostly clean) rappers like Mos Def, Common, Cee-Lo, Pete Rock & CL Smooth, LL Cool J, KRS-1, Chubb Rock, Chuck D and many others... there still exists the vile disease of commercialization and profiteering that industry execs (I believe) introduced to the game. The concept of rags 2 mega riches by all means necessary.

In the late 80's with the rise of drug activity, gang related crime and the now famous East Coast/West coast beef, an opportunity to cater to the darker side of the hip hop culture was created. All of a sudden sounds began to change with the background of gunfire, helicopters hovering, sirens wailing and indescribable curses of pain, torment, intimidation and explosive resentment.

All of a sudden the Word Nigger turned into Nigga and became cool. So cool in fact, that it lost its warmth as a term of endearment for one of your closest confidants/friends – and became a symbol of derision, hatred and everyday disdain as it once had been on plantations everywhere… before many of our forefathers spilled their blood to rid our society of the name. We seem to running backwards for dirty dollars. Soon after, it became cool to call women hoes and bitches, to preach killing 'snitches' and worshiping riches. It was no loner about who could rhyme better but who had the bigger guns or rowdiest entourage or posse. All of a sudden getting drunk, high and disruptive became the norm for our celebrities in the same clubs our grandfathers wore suits, wingtips and fedoras to – escorting lovely ladies in feathered hats and elbow length white gloves with tennis bracelets. Courtship and courtesy turned into contempt, callousness and commercialism.

Then the shit really hit the fan. The globalization of rap into a multi-BILLION fashion, music, video, automotive, dance and lifestyle commodity sent Marketing execs into a crack-like stupor and convinced them that the only way to milk this cow was the exploit it as deeply as possible, using the 'Popular Culture' advantage of inner city youth. And that was all she wrote. Next thing ya know, kids that could recite their ABC's or 1,2,3 could recite almost every popular rap video by heart, and gyrate in every writhing, sexually explicit move that video vixens would make. And you expected everything to stay normal. Oh no ma'am. You made this happen just the same way they did.

So now we stand here realizing that our daughters are getting pregnant, shot, beaten, insulted, raped and devoured by mere boys who are thrown into jail, raped and tortured by prisoners and police alike in their pursuit of ICE, dubs, cash, sex and alcohol. Where did they get these ambitions: Rap City, BET, Yo! MTV raps, MTV Cribs and all the other philanderers that turned this conscious culture into a whorehouse. Now these same fools that have profited off the mega business want to whine about offensive language. OK, so lets deal then...

What do we do? Tell Method Man, Ice Cube, Xzibit and others to clean up the foul mouth while still paying them millions to star in Movies and TV? What kind of leverage is there? I believe it can be done and SHOULD be done to liberate Hip Hop culture from the snares of this multi headed monster. Several things we could do.

(A) Clean up both the language and content. Our Rappers need to substitute words like MF, Nigger, Bitch, Hoe with creative (and industry accepted) bleeps or other devices like a scratch, a car horn, simple silence, a bicycle bell, a phone ring etc. These sounds are in sync with the beat and groove and actually challenge the listener to fill in the blanks with the appropriate (if offensive) word of choice. How hard is that, all you mega-producers?

(B) The imagery needs to change. Stop glorifying drugs and murder. That's demonic. All this talking about killing and u wonder why folks re spraying bullets and taking lives of scores of people on college campuses and malls around the country. Stop this culture of attacking the police and intimidating informants. Stop this madness of half dressed girls with drinks in their hands gyrating all over men in EVERY flipping video on the box!!!!! Is that all we can say about our lives and our clubs? Good grief!

C. Do some hard core community activism, lets have a Rap/Hip Hop summit or march nationwide to address these issues and get kids to RELEARN this game from the ground up. Have a code of ethics much like the 'code of the streets' on subject matter that is poisoning our community, and steps we can take to creatively rap about them (literally) to craft a solution that is uplifting to our urban Black/Latino/Native/Asian/White/Multiethnic youth.

D. Have a long-term approach. Hip Hop isn't going anywhere… we all know it. So, how can we elevate this game for our sons and daughters and their children, so that they are as proud of us – as we are of our Jazzy forefathers and mothers of song from the Harlem renaissance. This revolution will also not be televised, unless we have vision. TALK 2 ME. Say something. Vote for this blog. Pass it along.

DO SOMETHING! Thanks 4 reading, thanks 4 your time… but let me thank you only if u participate. Peace!

Chuma Christopher Ogene