(G1)

 

See I gotta draw the line I cant take it  no more

If you aint down with revolution what you waitin for

Makin money for suckas and our communities poor

Rippin flags off of coffins man this aint our war

Colonized and terrorized by the worlds biggest killers

the US government the biggest weapon and drug dealers

Fillin prisons with children incarceratin the future

Myspace and facebook they got us stuck on computers

Stuck on stupid bumpin music that's the abusive to the shorties

And the nonsense that you spittin they just listen and absorb it

Ive been dormant ive awoken im a giant im ready

Im with the APPO in Oaxaca and we holdin machetes

 

WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?

 

CHORUS:

WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?

Chi city!!!

WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?

South bronx!!!

WHICH SIDE ARE YOUON?

Oaxaca!!!

WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?

Palestina!!

 

(RodStarz)

I rock hard like palestinian children holdin slingshots!!!

Im with every single kid that's down for hip hop

For the culture the life what it really stands for

This music is resistance it's the voice of the poor

Im on the side of the workers, the teachers and lunchladies,

on the streets with brown mommys  raisin our brown babies,

im with youth organizers cleanin up the bronx river

im like jaime escalante when I stand and deliver

im with evo morales man he runnin bolivia

distribution of the land so they could all live bigger

im with hugo and fidel, grandmaster and melle mel,

with the Panthers up in queens justice for sean bell,

im with camacho negron, im with ojeda rios,

freedom for oscar lopez time to get an appeal,

im with abu jamal im with assatta shakur,

im with the compas in Immokalee getting a penny more!!

 

 

(Lah Tere)

 

im with elvira arellano im with Rudy Lozano,

im for a world without borders and a better tomorrow.

Im with Mothers on the Move Im with sistas on the rise

Im with La Pena del Bronx, keepin culture alive

Im with the kids at the Batey watchin a beat battle

Mean muggin all these yuppies in shorts and brown sandles

Im with parents everywhere fightin for good schools

And for all these good women to find some good dudes

 

 

Im with Salvador Allende Man Im Super Anti Momio!

Con el pueblo en la Havana grito Viva Cuba Cono!

Im for immigrants, activists, unions and freelancers

For djs mcs bombers and breakdancers

Im with editors, engineers and indy media

Im with my family and my crew Rebel Diaz

Im with Dj Disco Wiz a Latino Pioneer

Cuz its its dope when the elders break bread with the kids..

 

 

 

(G1)

 

Im for tellin the truth exposing the lies

Think about the dead soldiers when youre  drivin your ride

Them people died for the oil and Daddy Bushs revenge

Im with the widows the children and the lonely best friends

Im with Families Stayin Together as ONE

Im Not for the Raids and the Deportations!!

Im with Victor Toro and The M.I.R.

So watch out for those snitches in that unmarked car!

And for Lil Saulito, we gonna fight for your moms..

So we gonna shout her out, twice in One song..

Im for twelve million workers and Elvira Arellano

Im for a world without borders and a better tomorrow

 

WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?

 

CHORUS:

WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?

Chi city!!!

WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?

South bronx!!!

WHICH SIDE ARE YOUON?

Oaxaca!!!

WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?

Palestina!!

HERES THE LINK:

http://www.villagevoice.com/2008-07-09/news/cops-rip-up-rappers/

The NYPD Rips Up Rappers
Rebel Diaz and their hip-hop politics run afoul of the cops
By Tom Robbins
Wednesday, July 7 2008


On June 18, a pair of brothers named Rodrigo and Gonzalo Venegas decided to take a friend visiting from Chicago for a city tour. The brothers Venegas, who comprise two-thirds of the activist hip-hop group known as Rebel Diaz, are big on the Bronx, and one of the sites they wanted to show their pal was the wonderful wall mural dedicated to the late rapper Big Pun on Westchester Avenue in Hunts Point.

Gonzalo Venegas, 22, whose rap name is G1, tells what happened when they reached the corner of Westchester and Simpson Street: "We see police picking up boxes of street vendors' product and throwing it away. This one vendor was looking all bewildered and helpless. We approached him, and he says in Spanish that he doesn't understand why they are taking his stuff."

The pair asked the police if it was all right for them to translate. The cops, Gonzalo says, didn't seem to have a problem. One of the officers explained that there were health-department violations, but others became belligerent, he says, and told the brothers to butt out. This degenerated further when the brothers asked for badge numbers.

It is important here to understand that in addition to being rappers, the brothers Venegas—whose Chilean parents fled into exile after Pinochet's coup—are also organizers. In fact, the slogan of their group is: "If Hip Hop organized, the whole world would be in trouble." It is not a coincidence that one of their big tunes is a rap version of the old labor standard "Which Side Are You On?" This is sung with the familiar, ominous minor-key drone of the title, while hip-hop lyrics pound alongside: "This music is resistance/It's the voice of the poor." Rebel Diaz, which, along with G1, include 27-year-old Rodrigo ("RodStarz") and Teresita Ayala, a/k/a Lah Tere, see their music as an organizing tool. One of the areas they focus on is police behavior—hence the brothers' decision to ask about the officers' identities.

"This one officer started to get a little agitated," says Gonzalo. "He says, 'Back up. Get back on the sidewalk.' We said, 'Well, we will be on our way when we get the badge numbers.' One of them puts his hand over his badge so we couldn't see it. I pull out a piece of paper and a pen and begin to write down the number. At this point, the officer goes to grab my arm, and all of a sudden, there is this rush of police."

Thanks to the miracle of modern gadgetry, what followed was recorded by the friend from Chicago on the video device on his cell phone. The resulting video, visible on YouTube and the Rebel Diaz website, shows police grappling with the brothers, pinning them down, and cuffing them. "They were on top of me," reports Gonzalo. "One cop is sticking his knee on my back and jabbing me with his baton. That felt great."

The brothers insist they did nothing wrong: "At no moment did we physically try to obstruct them," says Gonzalo. "We were not belligerent, and we did not lay a hand on them."

The brothers were taken to the 41st Precinct, where they were held for 10 hours and charged with resisting arrest and obstruction of justice. If not for the video, the Venegases believe they would have been charged with assault, since one officer injured his hand during the arrests. Meanwhile, more than 150 protesters demonstrated outside the precinct. "When I found out they got arrested, I was like, 'What is going on?' " says Wanda Salaman, the executive director of Mothers on the Move, an organization that has worked with the rap group. "I know them. They are not troublemakers or gangbangers. What they do is help kids in the neighborhood use music to express themselves. They don't talk about killing or shooting everyone."

This incident might have quickly faded away, just another collision between police and the policed, if not for what occurred a few days later. At 2 a.m. on June 24, Gonzalo Venegas was up late working in his East Harlem apartment when four uniformed police officers burst past his unlocked door, guns drawn. The police ordered Venegas, his roommate, and a friend who was staying over onto the floor, shouting questions at them, according to Venegas.

"They were yelling, asking who we were, what we were doing, pointing the guns at us. They said, 'If we find out you are fucking lying . . .' It was like from a movie, except it was completely over the top. It seemed like a scare tactic." The police said they were in pursuit of a fugitive, but they didn't search the apartment and left after a few minutes.

The next day, Venegas called local precincts, where he was told no one had any knowledge of the raid. "It is hard to believe that what went down in my apartment is a coincidence," says Gonzalo. "Were they really looking for somebody? What we are into right now is not a joke."



At police headquarters, a spokesman said there were no 911 calls regarding Venegas's building that night and "no need for police activity at this location at this time." But he said he recognized the brothers as the same troublesome duo who had recently had a run-in with cops in the Bronx.

"Yeah, they were pains in the asses at certain points. They got involved with some police action," said Detective Martin Speechley. "Two wannabe hip-hop guys decided they didn't like someone being written a summons. And they got involved, and they tried to fight us, and they went to jail for it. Kind of what happens when people are idiots."

This is not how the police usually talk about arrests, but take it as an indication of the kind of animosity that simmers barely beneath the surface these days. The attitude is troubling to Norman Siegel, the civil-rights lawyer who is representing the brothers. "The middle-of-the-night visit by NYPD is very questionable," he says. "We have to get answers to who ordered it, and what was the rationale."

One fan of the group who spread the word about the arrests is Mark Naison, professor of African-American studies and history at Fordham University. Naison met the brothers when they were performing at a Bronx high school a few years ago. This year, he took Rebel Diaz to Berlin to perform at a conference and in immigrant neighborhoods. "Their 'Which Side Are You On?' is the most powerful use of hip-hop for politics I have ever seen," says Naison. "These are extraordinary young people."

Naison introduced the group to Nancy Biberman, director of the Women's Housing and Economic Development Corporation, which hopes to create a community center for Rebel Diaz in a new low-income housing complex that will open this fall at Intervale Avenue and Southern Boulevard. "These guys are sensational," says Biberman. "They seem to be able to pull in the most disaffected young people and get them on track." Which is something you'd imagine that police wouldn't have a problem with.

PERSONAL STATEMENT FROM G1 OF REBEL DIAZ:


Early this morning, at around 2am, I, Gonzalo Venegas aka G1 of Rebel
Diaz, was in my home in Harlem, working on my computer in the living
room, when several police officers burst into my unlocked apartment,
with guns drawn, ordering us to get down and put our hands up.

I was
in the apartment with my roommate DW who was in the adjacent bedroom,
and my friend MM, who slept on the couch nearby.

Both were awakened by
the home invasion and were witnesses to the events occurred.

The
uniformed police officers did not knock, nor announce themselves, nor
verbally identify themselves before or during their entry into my
apartment.

They pointed their guns at us the whole time as they
verbally barraged MM and I with questions as to who we were and what
we were doing there.

As I lay on the ground with my hands up, I
replied loudly and clearly that I lived there, and that everyone in
the house was supposed to be there.

They replied incredulously,
repeatedly yelling their questions as to who we were, with threats as
to what would happen to us if I was found to be lying.

After various
other taunts and threats, including accusing us of harboring a
fugitive criminal suspect, they departed just as quickly as they had
arrived, down a side stairway adjacent to my apartment.

They did not
stay to search me or my roommates, or the apartment for any signs of
the supposed fugitive they were looking for.



After a few seconds of disbelief and shock, I decided to follow the
officers outside in order to fully understand what had just happened,
and to document their identity.

One police van sped off as I came out
of the side door of my building.

The remaining police squad car was
pealing off when I ran into the middle of the street to flag it down.

They stopped the car, as I respectfully asked for their name and badge
numbers.

Both police officers allowed me to walk closer to them, as I
verbally noted their name and badge numbers.

The officers quickly got
back into their squad car, provided no explanation for the home
invasion, and sped off.

I was left in a state of shock and terror, as
I frantically asked some of my neighbors outside if they knew of why
the police had entered my building- and specifically my apartment-
without justification.

I received no conclusive answers from the
residents outside.



As of 10:30pm EST on Tuesday June 24, 2008,I have not received any
official explanation for the events occurred, neither from the police
precinct nor my building manager or owner, despite numerous calls and
requests for an explanation.

Both the 25th and 23rd NYPD precinct,
which patrol my block, have denied that the officers involved are from
their command.

The questions as to why several armed police officers
mysteriously and violently invaded my home without any clear legal
justification remain unanswered.

One is left only to think that the
occurrences of this morning are not a coincidence of mistaken
identity, but a direct response by the NYPD to an incident of police
brutality I was involved in last week in the South Bronx.

Until we
have a clear understanding of the causes and the people behind this
morning's home invasion, Rebel Diaz will engage in limited
communication outside of our legal representation.

We are not looking
for the next NYPD scare tactic to turn into a tragedy.



For more information regarding the incidents of police brutality
against G1 and Rodstarz of Rebel Diaz last week, and the pending case
them, please visit www.rebeldiaz.com

     But despite all the memorable experiences on my Trip to Berlin, the event that had a greatest impact on me was the workshop Rebel Diaz did for the young men of the Gangway organization. Anytime someone says that hip hop is too compromised by misogyny and violence to be a force for justice, I will think of how Lah Tere's performance opened the minds and hearts of a group of tough working class young men and enabled them to see women as allies in their quest for recognition and respect and as exponents of an art form that  allows them to express   what they feel inside.   This was Hip Hop at its best, brought to life in Berlin by a group of artists and political activists from the Bronx.   It is the most powerful instrument we have to reach disfranchised and marginalized youth, and we turn our back on it at our peril.