McKinney or Obama? Don't Waste Your Vote!!

Youngbloods, Elders and Friends:

Why should we vote for Cynthia McKinney and Rosa Clemente? One good
reason is that your vote for Obama will be wasted if you live in New
York, California, New Jersey, Connecticut, Oregon, Washington State,
Washington D.C., Vermont or Illinois, where most of the folks on my
list live. Obama will win all those states by landslides with or
without our votes. The Democrats easily carried New Jersey,
Connecticut, Vermont and Illinois in the last four presidential
elections. In New York and all the other states listed, it has been
at least 20 years since the Republicans carried those states.

All of us would rather have Obama as President than McCain. But most
of us recognize that the Democratic Party and the Republican Party
both represent the same corporate interests that have made the United
States the enemy of people seeking freedom and self-determination
throughout the world. Obama is pledged to continue those evil
policies. Even Obama's so-called opposition to the Iraq war is really
a promise to redeploy troops from Iraq to Afghanistan and possibly
Iran and to continue the U.S. war against "radical Islam." The war
against "radical Islam" is actually a euphemism for American and
Israeli opposition to self-determination in the Middle East and the
rest of the Third World.

We need to build an alternative to the two headed one party system. We
need a party that offers us more than a choice between two evil
imperialist candidates every four years.

During the Democratic convention Cynthia McKinney attended a rally
opposing the occupations of Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Puerto Rico,
Hawaii and North America where the U.S. continues to violate treaties
with the Native Americans. Obama wants to redeploy U.S. troops from
Iraq to Afghanistan, and possibly Iran. He supports the Zionist
occupation of Palestine. Obama calls for the overthrow of Robert
Mugabe in Zimbabwe and Cynthia supports Mugabe's land reform program
to return to Native Zimbabweans land forcibly stolen by European
settlers.

Cynthia and Rosa have consistently supported a foreign policy based on
peace and justice. They support reparations to the victims of
American imperialism in the United States (slavery reparations) and
abroad. They support free public college education, child care, health
care and worker rights.

Cynthia and Rosa won't be elected this year. But they are both young
enough to be elected in 12 to 20 years.

It took 400 years for this country to develop into the imperialist
empire that the United States is today. It will take us more than 4
years to create an alternative.

Cynthia and Rosa need to get as many votes they can in order to show
the Democrats that there are people in this country who will not buy
the lie that Obama is the most progressive alternative we can hope
for. A vote for Obama in New York or any of the other state where he
is guaranteed to win by landslides, won't help him defeat McCain.

On the other hand, every vote for Cynthia and Rosa will do two things.
First, it will show the Democrats (and Republicans) that there is a
growing number of people who won't accept the fact that Obama is the
most progressive alternative we can expect.

Second, your vote for Cynthia and Rosa will help build an alternative
we can believe in. If the Green Party gets 5% of the national vote,
the Party will qualify for millions of dollars of taxpayer matching
funds in 2012. That would change the nature of the political process
since it would end the two party system. The Democrats would have to
negotiate with the Greens or else face the possibility of a third
party continuing to grow and eventually contend for power.

Some of us want to move the Democratic Party to the left and others of
us want to move out of the Democratic Party to create a new
alternative. If you support either of these two goals and you vote in
New York, California or another "Blue landslide" state, the best way
to support your goal is to vote for Cynthia and Rosa.

Nothing can change the fact that Obama is going to win New York,
California and most of the other "Blue" states by landslides. But if
we vote for Cynthia and Rosa we can change the future. Our votes can't
help Obama win those states. But our votes for Cynthia and Rosa will
show the next President that there is a growing third party movement
which the two headed Republican/Democrat ic Party must consider.

Your vote for Cynthia and Rosa will help send a wake-up call to the
Democratic Party. If the Democratic Party refuses to wake up, then
those votes will build an alternative to the two party system that is
leading the United States and the world to more suffering, war and
barbarism.

Vote for the future!
Vote for change we can believe in!
Vote for Cynthia and Rosa!

Ronald B. McGuire

Please feel free to forward to anyone who may be interested. Thanks!

Greetings,

It is with great pleasure that I announce a wonderful program for Black and/or Latino History Months. For many decades Brazil has occupied the imagination of Americans. In recent times, films like City of God have brought that fascination to a younger generation. Within the hip hop generation, City of God has become a constant point of reference much like the film "Scarface" and many others.

It's time to go beyond the images presented in the film. Legendary Brazilian rapper/activist, Eli Efi will be touring college campuses, schools, and community organizations to speak about the realities of Afro-Brazilian youth, violence, drugs, and hip hop. He is available for performances, workshops, and speaking engagements. Panel topics include but not limited to:

* From Samba to Hip Hop: The Black Arts Movement in Brazil
* Hip Hop & Grassroots Organizing in Brazil
* Afro-Brazilian Identity: The 20th Century Black Movement
* Hands on Brazilian Percussion workshop

For booking: bookingeliefi@gmail.com /917-607-8590

BIO:


Eli Efi is a hip hop artist/activist, born and raised in São Paulo, Brasil. In 1988, he founded the politically charged rap group DMN. DMN recorded their first single for the Consciencia Black compilation in 1991. In 1992, they released their first album Cada Vez Mais Preto followed by H.Aço in 1996, Saida de Emergencia in 2001, and Essa É A Cena in 2003.

The group has been nominated for best video and best rap group at the MTV Brazil Video Music Awards, best rap song of the year at the Hutus Hip Hop Awards Festival, and won best music video at the São Paulo Shorts Film Festival. In addition, Eli Efi was one of the founding members of Hip Hop DJ, Brasil's premier annual DJ championship.

In 2004, he left DMN and now continues his musical career alongside DJ Laylo. Blending banging beats with sharp lyrics, Eli Efi & Laylo bring forth the best of Brazilian Hip Hop. Together, they bring hip hop back to a place where MCs rocked alongside DJs to move the crowd but with an international flavor with Eli Efi rhyming in Portuguese and Laylo always finding a way to blend some Samba or Salsa into the brew. They have performed throughout the United States, Brasil, Mexico, Colombia, and Chile and have shared the stage with all the biggest names in international hip hop as well as U.S. based artists.

Eli Efi has become well-known and respected for his hard-line stance against racism, poverty, and injustice not only onstage but in his community as well. Eli Efi has worked in numerous community based and political projects. He is a member of Abevic, a neighborhood association that uses hip hop culture to work with young people to promote critical thinking and cooperative work and offers alphabetization classes to adults and elders. In 1998, he was one of the organizers of the now historic Hip Hop, Juventude, e Lula Festival which brought some of the most progressive rap artists together in support of Lula, the current president of Brasil. Most recently, he was an educator for a series of arts and political education workshops sponsored by Zulu Nation Brasil in São Paulo.

Booking: bookingeliefi@gmail.com /917-607-8590
www.myspace.com/eliefi

Folks this a letter by artists and scholar from the US in support of cultural relation with Cuba. To read and sign go to:

http://www.cubaresearch.info/cubaletter


Letter is below:

> President George W. Bush
>
> The White House
> Washington, DC
>
> Dear President Bush:
>
> We wish to bring to your attention the accompanying letter, dated October 26,
> 2007, received from Alicia Alonso, Prima Ballerina and Director of the Cuban
> National Ballet, and also Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations
> Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Ms. Alonso has
> toured extensively in the United States and her work has long been admired by
> the American performing arts community, cultural critics and the public.
>
> We are writing you as representatives of the cultural sphere in the United
> States. We write you as American citizens. We write to express our dismay at
> your administration's continuing hostility towards Cuba. We write to express our
> opposition to policies that keep us divided from our Cuban counterparts,
> preventing cultural interchange between our two countries. We believe the time
> has come to move towards cooperation and constructive relations with Cuba.
>
> The present policies deny such possibilities of friendship and cultural sharing.
> We further note that cultural interchanges and relationships are also modes of
> communication and expression. In denying us the possibility of engaging in such
> exchanges and relationships, we are being denied our fundamental rights as
> guaranteed by the 1st, 5th and 14th Amendments of the U.S. Constitution.
>
> This reality seems to run counter to other positions expressed by your
> Administration. In September 2006, for example, Laura Bush inaugurated your
> Administration's "Global Cultural Initiative," stating that "One of the best
> ways we can deepen our friendships with the people of all countries is for us to
> better understand each other's culture by enjoying each other's literature,
> music, films and visual arts."
>
> As citizens, artists, scholars, educators and cultural workers from all artistic
> practices, academic disciplines, advocacy and service organizations in the arts,
> we hope you will read and consider the words of Alicia Alonso as we call upon
> your Administration to:
>
> 1. open a respectful dialogue with the government and people of Cuba in accord
> with established protocols supported by the community of nations;
>
> 2. end the travel ban that prevents U.S. citizens from visiting Cuba and allow
> for Cuban artists and scholars to visit the United States, thus eliminating the
> censorship of art and ideas, and
>
> 3. initiate, by working with appropriate members of Congress, a process that can
> result in the development of normal bilateral relations between our countries.

EL CANTANTE.

The Creators of El Cantante missed an opportunity to do something of relevance for our community. The real story was about Hector fighting the obstacles of a non-supportive industry that took advantage of entertainers with his charisma and talent. Instead they did another movie about two Puerto Rican junkies. The impact of drugs in the entertainment industry is nothing new; look at Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan and Whitney Houston today.

I think Hector deserves the recognition the movie pretended to give him. However, as someone who advised the producers, it's painfully obvious that they didn't understand what made him so important. It was the music. It was his talent. They didn't understand or respect the true importance of our music to people around the world. It's difficult to comprehend how two individuals who are in the music business like Marc and Jennifer are not aware of the damage and the consequences of promoting only the negative side of our Latin music culture.

I was disappointed that there wasn't a minimal effort to correct what I felt were serious chronological and factual errors. This tells me that they expeditiously crafted the simplest cliché script in order to just make a film quickly.

After the premier of El Cantante in Puerto Rico there were several statements of protest by people who had supported and participated in the project until they saw it. Their complaints were not about sour grapes or J-lo and Marc bashing but from a sense of betrayal and disappointment.

We are all invested in the world that this movie represents. For many of us the hope of our story finally being told sank into the horizon with the final version of this film.

Willie Colón

A COMMENTARY BY BYRON HURT
Producer, HIP-HOP: BEYOND BEATS AND RHYMES"

As a response to the Don Imus fallout surrounding his racist and sexist rant hurled at the blameless Rutgers University women's basketball team – and to the dramatic shift and intense media glare on hip-hop's sexism and misogyny – Russell Simmons and Dr. Benjamin Chavis Muhammad, leaders of the New York-based Hip-Hop Summit Action Network, bowed under mounting criticism and pressure, and announced this week that they will make a strong push to have the words "nigger," "bitch," and "ho" bleeped on mainstream public radio stations nationwide.

That is not enough.
As an anti-sexist activist, pro-feminist African-American male, I have had the unique and interesting experience of rolling up my sleeves and working with thousands of boys and men in the United States around sexism, men's violence against women, and homophobia. I have worked with boys and men across race, education, and class lines, and I know how deep and complex these issues are. In my lectures and workshops, I acknowledge my own past as someone who was sexist, and who, as a heterosexual man, behaved badly with women. I am also very candid about how I still grapple with certain gender issues that to this day confuse me. I challenge guys to speak out about sexism, and inspire men to join in the effort to end men's physical, emotional, and sexual violence against women. I show men how all of these issues hurt men as well as women.

Over the past 14 years years, I have been in the belly of the beast delivering this message. I've been in locker rooms with male athletes, on U.S. Marine Corps bases with young Marines, on-campus with black and white fraternity members, and in closed-door sessions with men in positions of authority at colleges and universities. I have also addressed, to a lesser degree, men in law enforcement, and batterers in court mandated battering intervention programs.

My current mission is to engage young men from the hip-hop generation – men who, it seems, are today's lone scapegoats for centuries-old patriarchy, sexism and misogyny. Let the truth be told, hip-hop's misogyny is indefensible and must be confronted. But hip-hop is surely not the only place where boys and men are informed about girls and women. From the recent Supreme Court decision to ban partial birth abortion, to "men's interests" magazine covers donning scantily clad female celebs, to hard and soft-core pornography that subjugate women – men are bombarded daily with messages about gender. Even as a woman, Senator Hillary Clinton, mounts a formidable campaign to become the first female president of the United States, the messages about gender in popular culture are clear – men rule the world, and women are sex objects, bitches and ho's.

Hip-hop's sexism is only a piece of a much larger puzzle.

I am a hip-hop fan. At 37 years old, hip-hop music has been the soundtrack of a huge chunk of my life. But as I learned more about gender issues as an original member of Northeastern University's Mentors in Violence Prevention Program, I began to question hip-hop's ever-present macho themes and images. I grew up with hip-hop, but hip-hop did not grow up with me. I became so weary of hip-hop's testosterone that, in 2000, I decided to do something about it. Over a period of six years, I directed and produced Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes, an award-winning PBS documentary film about violence, sexism, and homophobia. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival to standing ovations in 2006, and won best documentary at the San Francisco Black Film Festival.

The film is getting around. It is being shown on college campuses from Howard University to Harvard University. And last month, Firelight Media launched a year-long community engagement campaign to use the film as a media literacy tool in communities across the country. National and local community partners include: A Call to Men, Mothers Day Radio, YWCA–Racial Justice Project, Gender PAC, Youth Movement Records, Reflect Connect Move, HOTGIRLS, Inc., Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center, Center for Family Policy and Practice, and The P.E.A.C.E. Initiative. Additional events are planned in collaboration with this year's Essence Music Festival, the Congressional Black Caucus, Rikers Island, and the Open Society Institute. The goal is to help young people, using hip-hop as a catalyst for discussion, think critically about the myriad gender issues in hip-hop specifically, and in the larger American culture in general.

The Ford Foundation has also pitched in providing resources for a Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes Historically Black College Tour to further conversations about the gender politics of Hip-Hop culture on black college campuses.

For several years now, the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network has done some great work for the hip-hop community. Through a series of national workshops, panels, and seminars called "Hip-Hop Summits" Simmons and Muhammad have helped register thousands of young people to vote, have confronted the unjust Rockefeller Drug Laws, which disproportionately sentences black and brown men for non-violent drug offenses, and they do much to educate aspiring artists and businessmen before they enter the music industry. As hip-hop entrepreneurs, they do much to give back.

But Simmons and Muhammad's action plan to have radio stations bleep the words "bitch" and "ho" on public airwaves is at best, a Band-Aid solution for a much larger problem. As Jackson Katz, author of The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Men Can Help, says "… if men's violence against women truly carried a significant stigma in male culture, it is possible that most incidents of sexist abuse would never happen." I agree. Men who are not sexist need to send the message to other men that sexism and misogyny is not cool.

As men, we are woefully uneducated about gender issues. Many of us, with some exceptions, have never had a serious conversation about sexism. For decades, women all over the country have led the charge to eliminate men's sexism and violence. But largely due to male privilege and sexism, men across racial lines have not listened. We posture, we resist, and we call it male bashing. I know, because I was once one such man. As Don Imus did so cunningly in the week after his transgression, we deflect and push blame onto someone else. In Imus' case, hip-hop, whose face is largely black and male, was the convenient bogeyman. As men, we all need to acknowledge our sexism and take responsibility for our actions, and then work hard to change. Men are conditioned to be sexist, and we can be conditioned to become anti-sexist with education and leadership.

If Russell Simmons and Benjamin Muhammad really want to confront sexism in hip-hop, they have to begin by using their leadership, money, and status to educate the hip-hop community about the roots of sexism, and what we can do to change it. As hip-hop executives, they must own up to their own sexist attitudes and behaviors, and then, firmly reject sexism in hip-hop culture beyond bleeping offensive words. He must ask his cronies in positions of power and influence in the industry to do the same.

If the lyrics are to change, then the sexist attitudes that live on the edge of male rappers' tongues, must change. That is going to take real work over a long period of time. Bleeping sexist words just won't cut it.

Simmons and Muhammad must mount a campaign using artists with credibility, heart, and a strong desire for gender equality (that combination will be hard to find - but is possible) to send the message to all men that sexism and violence against women is – in hip-hop parlance – wack. I challenge Simmons and Muhammad to put their money where their mouth is and use their national "Hip-Hop Summit" tour to address hip-hop's sexism and misogyny in a real and meaningful way. I dare Simmons and Muhammad to organize panel discussions with hip-hop feminists like Joan Morgan, Tricia Rose, Aishah Durham, Elizabeth Mendez-Berry, Carla Stokes, Rosa Clemente, Tracey Sharpley-Whiting, Monifa Bandele, April Silver and others, who have for years, railed against hip-hop's sexism. Put them on the same dais with hip-hop executives and artists. Bring in some of the countries most skilled and experienced anti-sexist male activists to roll up their sleeves and work with male rappers and hip-hop heads. Conduct workshops and training sessions led by men like myself, Quentin Walcott, Don MacPherson, Ted Bunch, Antonio Arrendel, Tony Porter, Kevin Powell, Bikari Kitwana, Mark Anthony Neal, Asere Bello, Tim'm West, Juba Kalamka, and other profeminist men who love hip-hop, but who do not accept its hyper aggression, sexism, and homophobia. Make a real commitment to ending sexism and misogyny in hip-hop, not a paper-thin, disingenuous, and contrived public relations charade.

Not all men are sexist. Not all men in hip-hop are sexist. Not all rappers are sexist. Like me, many men within the hip-hop generation reject the macho and sexist manifestos contained in hip-hop lyrics and in music videos. When men with credibility, status, and a love for hip-hop stand up publicly to denounce sexism with conviction, it gives other men, good men, the space to do the same.

# # #

Byron Hurt, is an anti-sexist activist, writer, college lecturer, and a filmmaker. His documentary "Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes" premiered at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival, and aired nationally on PBS' Emmy award-winning series, Independent Lens. Byron is married and currently lives in Plainfield, NJ. He can be reached at info@bhurt.com. His website is www.bhurt.com.

Hip-hop's socially conscious side

Critics focus too much on commercial rap's racism and
sexism, ignoring the positive messages of most hip-hop
artists.

By Jeff Chang and Dave Zirin

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-zirin23apr23,0,3088270.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail
Los Angeles Times April 23, 2007


[JEFF CHANG is the editor of "Total Chaos: The Art and
Aesthetics of Hip-Hop." DAVE ZIRIN is the author of the
forthcoming "Welcome to the Terrordome: The Pain,
Politics and Promise of Sports."]

April 23, 2007

Much of the criticism of commercial rap music - that
it's homophobic and sexist and celebrates violence - is
well-founded. But most of the carping we've heard
against hip-hop in the wake of the Don Imus affair is
more scapegoating than serious.

Who is being challenged here? It's not the media
oligarchs, which twist an art form into an orgy of
materialism, violence and misogyny by spending millions
to sign a few artists willing to spout cartoon violence
on command. Rather, it's a small number of black
artists - Snoop Dogg, Ludacris and 50 Cent, to name
some - who are paid large amounts to perpetuate some of
America's oldest racial and sexual stereotypes.

But none of the critics who accuse hip-hop of single-
handedly coarsening the culture think to speak with
members of the hip-hop generation, who are supposedly
both targets and victims of the rap culture. They might
be surprised at what this generation is saying.

In his recent PBS documentary "Beyond Beats and
Rhymes," filmmaker Byron Hurt made clear that rap music
can be as sexist and homophobic as it can be positive
and enlightening. Marginalized young women and men have
found their voices in hip-hop arts, gathering to share
culture at b-girl conventions around the world or
reading for each other in after-school poetry classes.
Hurt's film pointed the finger where it needs to be
pointed - at American popular culture, which has
trafficked in racist and sexist images and language for
centuries and provides all sorts of incentives for
young men of color to act out a hard-core masculinity.

If all the overnight anti-hip-hop crusaders really
cared about the generation they want to save, they
would support the growing Media Justice movement led by
hip-hop pioneer Afrika Bambaataa and such outspoken
women activists as Malkia Cyril and Rosa Clemente. The
group contends that such media powers as Emmis
Communications and Clear Channel have corrupted hip-hop
radio.

The critics would engage young public intellectuals
like Joan Morgan ("When Chickenheads Come Home to
Roost"), Gwendolyn D. Pough ("Check It While I Wreck
It") and Mark Anthony Neal ("That's the Joint!: The
Hip-Hop Studies Reader"), who are defining what they
call a new hip-hop feminism.

The gap between the programming on Viacom's MTV and BET
and young people's interests seems never to have been
bigger. According to the Black Youth Project, a
University of Chicago study released in January, the
overwhelming majority of young people, especially
blacks, believe rap videos portray black women
negatively. That's one reason rap music sales declined
20% last year and remain down 16% this year.

Yet sales are a poor indicator of what is really
happening in hip-hop.

Local hip-hop scenes are thriving. Great art is being
made not just in music but in visual arts, film,
theater, dance and poetry. It can be seen in the works
of Sarah Jones, Nadine Robinson, Rennie Harris, Kehinde
Wiley and Danny Hoch. Hip-hop studies is a rapidly
growing and popular field at colleges and universities,
with more than 300 classes offered. In hip-hop after-
school programs, voter registration groups, feminist
gatherings and public forums, the future of hip-hop is
under discussion. These hip-hop thinkers want to take
the culture that unites many young people and channel
it toward political engagement. In 2004, voter
registration campaigns using hip-hop to target youth
produced more than 2 million new voters under the age
of 30.

To confuse commercial rap made by a few artists with
how hip-hop is actually lived by millions is to miss
the good that hip-hop does. If hip-hop's critics paid
attention to the hip-hop generation, they would learn
that the discussion has already begun without them and
that they might need to listen. Then a real
intergenerational conversation could begin.

Copyright 2007 Los Angeles Times

Thought this was really on point and just sarcastic enough to convey the message...the white savior thing is played out.
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Heal the world

Want to make a film about These Troubled Times? Follow our guide to the essential issue-drama devices and you'll be laughing all the way to the Oscars says Steve Rose
Steve Rose
Saturday January 27, 2007

Guardian
The movie business occasionally has good intentions. Once in a while, guided by some freak combination of celebrity pestering, corporate guilt, marketing judgment and perhaps even genuine concern, Hollywood comes out with a movie that attempts to tackle a pertinent issue affecting somewhere beyond the US borders. They used to crop up infrequently, but recently, encouraged by the awards success of Traffic, Syriana, The Constant Gardener, and so forth, they've been coming thick and fast - especially thick. Last week saw the release of the concertedly high-minded Babel - a post-9/11 saga of interconnected global tragedies. This week we have the compromised Blood Diamond, in which Leonardo DiCaprio and Djimon Honsou tackle the trade of conflict diamonds in Sierra Leone. This type of movie is a growth sector in the industry. So join us then as we a present a guide to the best issue-drama cliches. But let's not forget these films are here to help all of us - for we are the world.

Exotic visuals

First up, you've got to establish that you're not in Kansas any more - especially if you are in Kansas, but it's supposed to be Iraq. If you're stuck, you could just shoot the whole thing through a murky yellow filter, like Steven Soderbergh did for the Mexican bits in Traffic. And nothing communicates "really, really hot" like a bleached out colour palette with blinding whites - as if you'd just taken off your sunglasses (see Black Hawk Down). Above all else, though, you'll need a sunset. Preferably setting over a beautiful, natural vista far removed from the strife you're about to depict. It's a way of establishing that this is a land of contrasts. A way of saying, "If there wasn't all this trouble going on, you might want to come here on holiday." But then you have to communicate the trouble itself. The way to do this is to head for the cities and use jerky, reportage style footage shot with hand-held cameras, as if to say, "this place is so dangerous, we couldn't even bring a tripod."

Bad things happen

Of course they do - otherwise you wouldn't be making a film about this place, right? Your story might be based on fact, but if you show what really happened, you'd be making an R-rated atrocity or, god forbid, a carefully researched documentary. Much better to go for a good old-fashioned battle scene with machine guns, big fireballs, squibs of fake blood, and a couple of those mean-looking attack helicopters. People can get behind those.

Blood Diamond director Edward Zwick tellingly pitched the project to Leonardo DiCaprio as "more of an Indiana Jones thing". Even outside the battle zones, danger is everywhere abroad. In Babel, poor Cate Blanchett gets shot just for going on holiday in Morocco, to make matters worse, her children are having a brush with danger down in Mexico. In Syriana Matt Damon tragically loses his son in a freak swimming pool electrical accident, and he's only in Marbella.

The caucasian angel

Wherever you are in the world, especially in the greatest depths of dark-skinned human suffering, you're sure to find a smokin' hot white woman. Usually she'll be struggling to rectify the situation single-handedly on behalf of her uncaring compatriots, carrying the conscience of the western world on her shoulders, and bravely maintaining immaculate skin tone despite the absence of cosmetics. Jennifer Connelly's righteous journalist in Blood Diamond or even Rachel Weisz's ghetto-cruising diplomat's wife in The Constant Gardener are recent examples, but they're nothing compared to Monica Bellucci's voluptuous, semi-unbuttoned nurse in Tears Of The Sun. She refuses to board Bruce Willis' helicopter out of war-torn Nigeria unless he takes her patients too - she's like a combination of Mother Teresa and Melinda Messenger. Soon to join this saintly sorority is Angelina Jolie - albeit in "browned up" form. She's plays Mariane Pearl, wife of reporter Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped in Pakistan in the forthcoming A Mighty Heart. Director Michael Winterbottom, he of respectable immigrant docudrama In This World, recently said of Jolie, "She has a lot of the same strengths that Mariane has, and the same sort of ability to draw people together." Get that halo ready!

Life is cheap Where life is cheap, extras are cheap. And most issue dramas call for a huge crowd of people at some stage. Usually they're destined to become "collateral damage" in the epic battle or massacre scenes (see Bad Things Happen). If you were a canny Rwandan, you could have earned a pretty decent wage in the last couple of years by re-enacting the recent slaying of your own people in Hotel Rwanda, Shooting Dogs, TV movie Sometimes In April and French production Un Dimanche A Kigali. Beyond the wages, Caucasian lives are considerably more valuable on screen. Did anyone keep count of how many nameless dark people were wasted so that the US could get their boys out in Black Hawk Down? Or mown down at the beginning of The Interpreter? (Luckily Caucasian angel Nicole Kidman spills the beans on that one). The pattern continues in Blood Diamond, where, in contrast to the innumerable Sierra Leonean cannon fodder, one white person dies with meaning. Meanwhile, in Babel-world, the wounded Cate Blanchett spends the entire film in a dramatic state of thespian-enhanced decline. But when one of the Moroccan boys who shot her is later gunned down without mercy by the local police, it's more a case of, "So, that happened. Anyway, what's Brad Pitt doing?"

White man's justice

Sometimes, these films do actually do some good, or at least they say they do. Blood Diamond, for example, prompted a concerted PR campaign by the diamond company De Beers, which insisted it was in no way the inspiration for the film's fictional diamond cartel Van Der Kaap. The film also makes much of the Kimberley Process, the international agreement design to stop the trade of conflict diamonds. As a result, Blood Diamond's website can brandish links to respectable institutions like Amnesty International and Global Witness, who didn't necessarily have anything to do with the movie. Like so many others, Blood Diamond also closes a few scenes in which justice is seen to be done - not in Sierra Leone, but in a nice European or American courtroom. Things in Sierra Leone probably aren't a whole lot better, but at least audiences can go home reassured that another global problem in a far-flung country has been fixed thanks to the movies. Maybe now they can go on holiday there.

· Blood Diamond is out now

Why Aren't We Shocked?
The New York Times
October 16, 2006
By Bob Herbert, Op-Ed Columnist
"Who needs a brain when you have these?"
.. message on an Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirt for young women

In the recent shootings at an Amish schoolhouse in rural Pennsylvania and a large public high school in Colorado, the killers went out of their way to separate the girls from the boys, and then deliberately attacked only the girls. Ten girls were shot and five killed at the Amish school. One girl was killed and a number of others were molested in the Colorado attack.
I
n the widespread coverage that followed these crimes, very little was made of the fact that only girls were targeted. Imagine if a gunman had gone into a school, separated the kids up on the basis of race or religion, and then shot only the black kids. Or only the white kids. Or only the Jews. There would have been thunderous outrage. The country would have first recoiled in horror, and then mobilized in an effort to eradicate that kind of murderous bigotry. There would have been calls for action and reflection. And the attack would have been seen for what it really was: a hate crime.

None of that occurred because these were just girls, and we have become so accustomed to living in a society saturated with misogyny that violence against females is more or less to be expected. Stories about the rape, murder and mutilation of women and girls are staples of the news, as familiar to us as weather forecasts. The startling aspect of the Pennsylvania attack was that this terrible thing happened at a school in Amish country, not that it happened to girls.

The disrespectful, degrading, contemptuous treatment of women is so pervasive and so mainstream that it has just about lost its ability to shock. Guys at sporting events and other public venues have shown no qualms about raising an insistent chant to nearby women to show their breasts. An ad for a major long-distance telephone carrier shows three apparently naked women holding a billing statement from a competitor. The text asks, "When was the last time you got screwed?" An ad for Clinique moisturizing lotion shows a woman's face with the lotion spattered across it to simulate the climactic shot of a porn video.

We have a problem. Staggering amounts of violence are unleashed on women every day, and there is no escaping the fact that in the most sensational stories, large segments of the population are titillated by that violence. We've been watching the sexualized image of the murdered 6-year-old JonBenet Ramsey for 10 years. JonBenet is dead. Her mother is dead. And we're still watching the video of this poor child prancing in lipstick and high heels.

What have we learned since then? That there's big money to be made from thongs, spandex tops and sexy makeovers for little girls. In a misogynistic culture, it's never too early to drill into the minds of girls that what really matters is their appearance and their ability to please men sexually.

A girl or woman is sexually assaulted every couple of minutes or so in the U.S. The number of seriously battered wives and girlfriends is far beyond the ability of any agency to count. We're all implicated in this carnage because the relentless violence against women and girls is linked at its core to the wider society's casual willingness to dehumanize women and girls, to see them first and foremost as sexual vessels .. objects .. and never, ever as the equals of men.

"Once you dehumanize somebody, everything is possible," said Taina Bien-Aim.., executive director of the women's advocacy group Equality Now.
That was never clearer than in some of the extreme forms of pornography that have spread like nuclear waste across mainstream America. Forget the embarrassed, inhibited raincoat crowd of the old days. Now Mr. Solid Citizen can come home, log on to this $7 billion mega-industry and get his kicks watching real women being beaten and sexually assaulted on Web sites with names like "Ravished Bride" and "Rough Sex .. Where Whores Get Owned."

Then, of course, there's gangsta rap, and the video games where the players themselves get to maul and molest women, the rise of pimp culture (the Academy Award-winning song this year was "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp"), and on and on. You're deluded if you think this is all about fun and games. It's all part of a devastating continuum of misogyny that at its farthest extreme touches down in places like the one-room Amish schoolhouse in normally quiet Nickel Mines, Pa.

City of God, the film: A Bag of Crimes

Written by Katia Santos
Translated by Loira Limbal aka DJ Laylo

One day in December of 1988, I stayed up talking with my mother until 2 am and at 6 am without any signal or notice she was dead. Destiny. At that moment I decided that nothing in life was important because life would always play a trick on you at the end. The first target of my revolt was my mother.

The first thing I did when we got back from her burial was to move things around in the house, do everything opposite from what she liked: I threw out the horrible kitchen cabinet, took down the tacky living room chest and gave out the horrendous porcelain decorations to my neighbors. I transformed my pain into anger trying to continue existing, but it didn't really work. The house just ended up feeling emptier without her or the things that marked her "style." One of the last things I got rid of was a blue plastic bag that she guarded with all the care of a collector, full of newspaper clippings of crimes committed in our neighborhood, our "community": City of God.

When I found the blue bag, I sat down for a while and went through the clippings. I recognized the people. I wasn't able to stand the sad sequence and didn't even make it half way through the clippings. I put them back in the bag and went straight to the trashcan. I had never liked that sick collection. I was finally getting rid of it.

All of this to say, that that was the same sensation I had when I watched the film City of God. It was like they had opened the blue plastic bag and given life to the pieces of texts and the images. The only difference was that now I didn't have any power over the blue bag, I couldn't stop the twisted and macabre sequence. It didn't help either that the sequence was now being presented to me in the North American mold of cinematography with its beautiful images and special effects. Like all "great" North American films, I would have been okay missing this one. But, I was at the movie theatre with a friend that was "entering" into the City of God for the first time through that huge authoritative movie screen. I couldn't leave her in the middle of all those shoot-outs.

Since I wasn't in Brasil when the film was released (I've been in "intellectual exile" in another country for two years), I read a lot about the film, talked about it through email, and everyone always had good things to say. Up until then, however, I hadn't heard the opinion of people from City of God. When I found out that they were going to screen the film in City of God, I wrote my brother and asked his opinion and how people had reacted. He is one of those people who is very economic in his writing and this time wasn't any different: "I didn't see it and I'm not going to. They screened it. The people that saw it hated it." What do you mean hated it? That information did not match up to everything I had read. I was intrigued. But in reality, it wasn't too hard to imagine why there was that difference of opinions. Some residents of City of God were somewhat satisfied with the existence of the film because it gave them some visibility. Now they could give all the details of those crimes to the lay people. A few people who lived there during the time period liked it and even found it funny. I still hadn't consulted a person that for me serves as a sort of thermometer for the City of God: the rapper MV Bill. He didn't go beyond what I had read in some papers, " Listen, the film is aesthetically well-done, everyone is saying how the photography is this and the other, but it is a film totally devoid of love, without hope, with no signals of life aside from crime." I was even more intrigued.

I was in Brasil in December and spoke with many people about the film, but wasn't able to watch it. In January, a whole controversy started when MV Bill decided to publicly state that the only result of the film had been to carve into stone the stereotypes contained within it. He was demanding that this place of so much misery also receive some sort of social benefit after the ultra-negative exposure that its residents .. the ones who have no involvement with the drug trade, or in other words, the overwhelming majority- were subjected to as a result of the film. I started thinking about all the wonderful things I heard from friends who don't live in City of God or any other similar place. My question was: what had led MV Bill to assume such a contrary position from the general opinion? He was clear, "You can't understand because you haven't seen it. Watch it and then we'll talk. You live here, you will know what I am talking about." I didn't have a choice. In the beginning of February, I watched the film and instantaneously returned to my mother's blue plastic bag.

But City of God is not my mother's blue plastic bag of crimes; it is not only a mound of crimes and criminals.

I know that the argument could be made that there wasn't room for anything else in a film that was already so long. So what? Does that mean that we cannot express our anger? If the film were a documentary about Zé Pequeno-, which would have been more appropriate because of the emphasis on him- , the anger would still be there. He didn't have parents? He didn't have family? He did, of course he did, and they were well known. Even though he was the center of most of the narrative, there wasn't room for those details. There might have not even been enough time to check his life story because Pequeno, if I'm not wrong, died during an attempted "invasion" of an apartment after having lost the local drug "post."

And since we're talking about invasions and family, I do recall that in the middle of a shootout where he challenged the local power, realizing that they were not coming after him, he leaned against a wall and shouted to someone, "go get my grandmother, kid." His request was granted quickly and his grandmother showed up. She was (or I don't know if she is still alive) a small, black woman who was very quiet. At that moment he looked to all sides, put down the guns he had in both hands, and said "Your blessing grandma? Don't worry. Everything is fine." Then he hugged her, never letting go of the guns.

That probably only lasted three minutes. We couldn't hear what his grandmother was saying from our windows. But I never forgot that scene. It was very bold. In the middle of a shootout, both of them could have died right there, him and his grandmother, during their hug. But he wanted to see his grandmother and she responded to her grandchild's plea, who happened to be Zé Pequeno, but he was also her grandchild. Even though some may not like to accept it, people who are involved with crime, do have families that love them.

That is one of the gravest sins of the film City if God .. the dehumanization of everyone and everything, disguised as fiction based on reality. Things are not quite like that, we know better. Someone birthed Dadinho. Someone cried for Zé Pequeno, the criminal. But the impression the film gives you is that Black people sprout from the ground, they just appear from nowhere with guns in their hands. Everything was exactly like my mother's blue bag of crimes. In that blue bag, there also wasn't anything about the criminals or the victims' backgrounds. Aside from the son of the fish vendor, no one had a family in Fernando Meirelles' City of God. There was just a bunch of Black people dying or killing. I guess all that extra information doesn't sell newspapers or movie tickets.

And since we are talking about Black people, I was also intrigued by the casting choices. Bené, who was the good guy, was light skinned. Zé Pequeno, who is undoubtedly the "bad guy" was as dark as night. It's interesting because in real life they were both very light skinned. They physically looked alike. And what was the criteria for the choice in casting? Coincidence? Chance? Sure, Sure.

While, Bené was still alive on the big screen, we had some refreshing moments. I even thought I would see the little park where we used to play. On summer nights, some mothers, including my own, would come down to the park. They would all talk but in reality they were there watching us. The park was beautiful filled with people. Everyone very tanned .. everyone, black people, white people and all the nuances that exist between those two colors. And everyone was always attentive to any movements that might lead to a shootout. The drug dealers would be on one side of the park and we on the other. Back then, the dealers didn't exhibit their guns. We would just know because of the bulk under their shirts. What was really sad, though, was when the mothers started singing that old song "it's time to go, let's go, I have to go to work tomorrow and you are going to wake up late for school." Those that remained in the park after the collection were there because they were starting to "get involved" in some way.

I thought we were going to be able to have a truce during Bené's going away party. I thought finally, they are going to show how the residents' led their life. Believe me, this would have contributed a lot to a film that intended to be a picture of a community since the name of the film wasn't The Saga of Zé Pequeno, but rather City of God. Unfortunately, that side did not interest the directors. They knew that their "target audience" would not be as interested if the film showed that people who live in favelas or shantytowns have pretty regular everyday lives. I know, it just wouldn't have been as interesting. But I don't accept that!

And don't come tell me that you cannot argue with fiction. When a director puts guns in the hands of children under the age of 10 and gives out the addresses of those children, fiction is invading reality. In which case, fiction can be invaded by reality too. In real life, none of the kids that took over after Zé Pequeno were under the age of 15. But what has more shock value, a six year old with a gun or a 15 year old? One of the most shocking scenes of the film is when one child is pressured to shoot another. I am not saying .. unfortunately- that that scene may not be happening right now. But if we are talking about the era of Zé Pequeno, the scene is not accurate.

The people who are "in love" with this film, just like those who were involved with it need to understand that we are talking about a population that exists, is very much alive, and that is entitled to have reactions. According to general opinion, it is not surprising when some favelados (those who live in shantytowns) close down a street and burn some buses, after all they are favelados. It is shocking, however, that those people would dare to criticize a cultural product of the category of this "our" national and international success. Well, I am very sorry! The times, when that said favelado was spoken about as if "it" were from other planet, are long gone. We are right here, real close, watching and hearing everything. And if we don't like something, we will say it. That's democracy. And it needs to be broad and unrestricted! It is there for Paulo Lins, for Fernando Meireilles, for MV Bill and for Dadinho's mother as well as for the family of Zé Pequeno. Just like it needs to exist for any resident of City of God that feels marginalized by the film and wishes to put their mouth on the bullhorn.

Written by Katia Santos
Translated by Loira Limbal

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