Homegrown Hiphop

On breaks from studying this week, I’ve spent a ton of time watching hiphop videos.  And unless you’re a hardcore fan, this has probably flown under your radar:

chinese rappers battle

The first is a trailer for the documentary “Slingshot Hiphop”, about the hiphop movement in Palestine–featuring rappers like DAM, Sabreena da Witch (Abeer). The second is a pic of an underground rap battle in Shanghai, China–a thriving subculture recently covered in the NY Times..

I love my underground hiphop. “Underground” meaning hiphop music that isn’t that Soulja Boy bullshit that somehow makes onto American radio- we’re talking hip hop straight from the street. Political ish, ghetto ish, stuff that speaks the voice of people without privilege and power–a medium through which you can say what you want and all you need is a mic and your mouth. Unfortunately, I’m of the opinion that’s all but died off in the United States. The true frontier of the culture and music is abroad my friends: in places as far-flung as the West Bank, Palestine and Shanghai, China.

It was really interesting to see the similarities between the two movements. I happened to read about Slingshot hiphop and the article on Chinese hiphop at the same time, and both shared some common threads. The major one was that hip hop was a medium for young people from both these places to describe their experiences of oppression and deligitimization in a dominant society.

For the Palestinians, it’s the Israeli occupation. For the Chinese, its young working class urban youth living under government suppression. For these artists, the personal is political. And their rhymes entertain as well actually mean something–not sex, drugs, money or any combination of the three. Making music in both these places is an act of rebellion against a dominant power that really isn’t afraid to crush dissent.

Palestine and China aren’t the only places with native hiphop movements. France and England, South Africa and Central America and countless other nations have homegrown hiphop. What started as an American medium has gone global–and gone back to its roots. Beautiful irony.

Wanted: George W. Bush

I’d like to notify everyone of a fugitive that we all need to watch out for:

Today, as of two hours ago, George “Bush-shit” Bush ended his last day in office. I’m of the opinion that as he leaves the Oval Office where he’s sat on his ass for the last eight years, that the National Guard arrest him on the way out. No way this guy slinks out of the White House quietly.

For the following crimes, in no particular order:

1) Leading our nation into two bullshit wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan. Both of which have proven disasterous and counterproductive, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives and TRILLIONS of dollars. WHERE ARE THE WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION you asshole? the ones you said justified attacking Iraq?

2) Straight-up Lying to the American People. See above. I thought that was grounds for impeachment? Or prison?

3) Sitting on your ass during 9/11. You had the information that could’ve prevented the attack. Your arrogant group of cronies (Yeah Cheney, Rumsfeld and Condi, I’m talking to you) were too full of themselves to see it. You created groups like Al-Qaeda, and trained Osama, you should know. PS: Where the hell is Osama bin Laden, anyway? Did you find him?

4) Presiding over the most blatant transgression of human rights in America and abroad. Justifying the use of torture and secret prisons and tribunals Creating legal blackholes like Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, where you treated human beings like animals under the banner of American patriotism. Eroding the legal rights of millions of Americans, including Muslim Americans like myself.

5) Making Muslims and Arabs into second-class citizens in our country. Wiretapping our phones, harassing us at the airport, and arresting us at your whim, simply because we have an Islamic name or wear a headscarf. PATRIOT Act, my ass.

6) Hurricane Katrina. Enough Said.

7) Cutting back funding for health care, schools, like veto-ing ScHIP (which covers health care for children). Real Classy. Meanwhile, each rocket you send into Iraq, or ones that you fund in Israel, costs enough money to cover an American kids’ entire college education.

Oh, yeah: failing to prevent that economic crisis. The one that is currently driving this country into a recession. Not to mention debacles like Enron. You really stuck it to the little guy by lining CEOs’ pockets with benjamins. There has to be a law on the books against that.

9) Making us the most hated nation in the world. Americans don’t deserve that. No one deserves that. You and your administration are wholly responsbile for alienating the entire globe.

10) You promised to unite. All you did was divide. You are a blot on American history, but I hope that we all remember you: for those who don’t know their history are doomed to repeat it.

I really hope you do get the legal punishment you deserve, Bush. Don’t let the Oval Office door hit you on the way out.

Slumdog Millionaire: India Unedited, with a Muslim Star

Also known as: the Best Damn Movie to Come Out of India in the Last 25 Years. This is the real deal folks: India–no filters, no editing, some (for lack of better terms) real-ass shit. (by the way: inside joke for any desis reading this: anyone notice the freely flowing “F” words that were conveniently not translated into English? haha)

Why do I love this movie? Because it narrates the quintessential Indian Muslim Experience.

At its heart, this movie is a snapshot of the life that millions of disadvantaged Muslims in India lead TODAY: in the impoverished slums and elsewhere–rising from the ashes of nightmarish communal violence, of grinding poverty, working and begging from childhood. Jamal Malik, the protagonist, could be any one of the million Muslim boys working in the vast urban maze of Bombay. His quest for dignity in the face of deligitmization depicted throughout the film is one shared all who are part of this minority.

I’d never thought i’d see the day when an Indian Muslim kid from Bombay would be the star character in a major Western-produced film. And if I might say, that this kind of movie would come from a Western-origin production team makes it all the more remarkable. There were so many cultural nuances that came across to me by virtue of me growing up with a desi background: the inclusion of the Bombay anti-Muslim attacks, for example- when Hindu extremists descended on the Muslim-area slums (where in the movie-my apologies if you haven’t seen it! Jamal’s mother is killed). Watching those scenes, where homes and people were being torched while police sat idly by–was extremely painful for me, but it is entirely true. And it something all of us need to recognize as reality.

A scene I found particularly poignant is when the Jamal and his brother Salim end up at the Taj Mahal, where they look upon it and wonder….if it is some kind of hotel! It was both funny and bittersweet that the two of them couldn’t recognize India’s most famous symbol, a lasting reminder of the influence of the Mughal Empire and the legacy of Islamic culture. Yet it perfectly captures the paradox of our existence: that Muslims occupied two ends of the spectrum: desperately poor and noble-rich–one wedded to history and the former completely divorced from it.

All in all, this movie is something that I will treasure not only for bringing the light the Indian Muslim story, but also for depicting India without editing anything out– and entertaining me in the process.

By the way: mad congratulations to Allah Rakkha Rahman (AR Rahman) for his Golden Globe win for Best Composer. You are a musical legend and you did our people proud. And all those other Golden Globes were richly deserved.

Resistance Lives

January 10th Protests in France against Israel’s war on Gaza

More videos of the January 10 protests against Israel’s war on Gaza: http://rawstory.com/news/2008/London_riots_over_Israels_Gaza_campaign_0110.html

Today I finally got to live out every antiwar protestor’s dream: I marched on the White House in DC and gave Son of A Bush (and Obama too…I’ll get to that later) a piece of my mind on the Gaza conflict. And man…it was ridiculous! TEN THOUSAND PEOPLE…at last count! crazy!

The event was a mass demonstration organized by ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism), the Muslim Students Association, Code Pink, and a wide array of antiwar groups. My friends and drove hours down the Eastern corridor to join more than ten thousand folks to protest Israel’s war on the Gazan people.

I’ve organized and been involved in a ton of antiwar demonstrations, but this one was crazy huge. And I didn’t mention the fact that during the entirety of the march, it was raining. And about 30 degrees. And one point it even snowed. By the end of the march, I could barely feel my arms and legs because my clothes were pretty much soaked through.

But seemingly, that didn’t stop anyone–me and the people I was with included. We marched through the cold, umbrellas dripping and signs sagging from the rain. But spirits remained high. Especially when we got in front of the White House and took the message of “Free Palestine” to the Top Pig himself, Senor soon-to-be not President Bush. Not the Obama was let off the hook- the march stopped in front of his temporary residence and chants of “heyyy Obama: We want change in Gaza” went for a good ten minutes.

I told a few people I was going to this rally, and reactions were mixed: some thought it was cool, others were indifferent, some wondered why the hell I would spend my entire Saturday out in the DC cold. Some asked me whether there was any point to attending a demonstration that “doesn’t achieve anything”.

I can see that to a non-activist type, attending a protest rally can seem rather pointless. That is, until you consider history. In the twentieth century, we’ve had a number of major human-rights focused mass movements-

Women’s Suffrage (Voting) in America

Satyagraha aka the Quit India Movement

The American Civil Rights Movement

anti-Vietnam War Movement

anti-Apartheid in South Africa

and this list goes on. What did these all have in common? Protests. Demonstrations. Rallies. Without them: we would’ve been living in a much more grim reality than the one we live in today. I’m not saying that any one protest is guaranteed to change the world forever. But without gathering like-minded people to make noise and draw attention to a cause, you don’t have a foundation on which to demand mass change. Consider this: corrupt and belligerent governments love silence. silence means the lack of dissenting voices. It means that they can do whatever the hell they want without incurring the wrath of the people whom they ostensibly serve. Resistance, ladies and gents, in order to get started–needs to be taken to the streets.

So as I was standing for hours out there in the rain, fist in the air under the “books not bombs” banner, I didn’t feel like I was wasting my time. Yeah, I felt joy.

The Shministim

Shministim, in Hebrew, means “Twelfth-grader”.

In Israel, when you reach the age of 18 and graduate from high school,  you are given a choice: join the military- or face the consequences.

Those consequences include a) an unspecified number of jail terms b) being forced to wear a military uniform while in prison and c) if you refuse to do B, being put in solitary confinement. Those who choose to refuse military service on the ideological grounds choose these consequences. They are called, then the “Shministim”–Conscientious Objectors.

I was struck particularly by the story of one girl, Omer Goldman, pictured here:

Omer Goldman is the daughter of the deputy heads of the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service.     She’s 19 years old and has been in jail twice.

Her statement of refusal was (in her own words)

“I refuse to enlist in the Israeli military. I shall not be part of an army that needlessly implements a violent policy and violates the most basic human rights on a daily basis.

Like most of my peers, I too have not dared to question the ethics of the Israeli military. But when I visited the Occupied Territories I realized I see a completely different reality, a violent, oppressive, extreme reality that must be ended.

I believe in service to the society I am part of, and that is precisely why I refuse to take part in the war crimes committed by my country. Violence will not bring any kind of solution, and I shall not

commit violence, come what may.”

This girl is only a few years younger than I am. Still a teenager. She could be any of the beautiful young women sitting next to you or me in class or walking in a local mall or street. Instead, she made the choice to not only defy her family, but Israeli law because of her beliefs. And unfortunately, she is one of the young people jailed by their own country because they refuse to engage in the wholesale oppression of a million Palestinians.

I wonder, sitting here comfortably far from the war zones of the middle east, could any of us young American people make the same decision Omer Goldman did. What if Bush had called for a draft for Iraq? How many people would submit to jailtime rather than participate in a war that they don’t believe in?

It’s easy to think that conscientous objection was a tale of the sixties and seventies. In reality, young people are facing this very real dilemma. They don’t deserve to go to jail–they deserve to freely choose to not take part in wars manufactured by older people who refuse to sacrifice themselves to the fight.