Thursday, December 1 This session was organized by groundWork, a South African environmental justice and service organization. The panel began with a presentation by Mithica, a worker with the Pan-African Climate Justice Alliance, a coalition of African civil … Continue reading “groundWork – building social movements in and beyond Durban”
Thursday, December 1 It’s pouring down rain with a tropical vengeance at the moment after several days of clear skies and fierce heat. This rain reminds me that it’s important to remember what climate change means for the 99% here … Continue reading “And the rains came…”
Wednesday, November 30 What is Climate Finance? The idea behind this is that the wealthy, polluting nations of the world need to pay poorer, less polluting countries – which also happen to be the ones getting it in the neck … Continue reading “Climate Finance”
Wednesday, November 30 Just came from an amazing event of the South African rural women’s movements. There were nominal speakers, but the real focus of the event were the groups of women who trooped in, dressed in traditional clothing, singing … Continue reading “Capitalism is Organized (Environmental) Crime”
Wednesday, November 17 COP17 — the 17th annual Conference of Parties, aka the Conference of Polluters — began on Monday in Durban, South Africa. The Kyoto Protocol, to which most attendee nations (but not the U.S.) are signatories, is widely … Continue reading “Climate Justice Durban – Arrival”
Introduction: The Making of a Hip Hop Globe Pedro Alberto Martínez Conde, otherwise known as Perucho Conde, was probably the first rapper to compose a hit song outside the United States. A poet and comedian from the inner-city Caracas … Continue reading “Close to the Edge: In Search of the Global Hip Hop Generation (Book Excerpt)”
I didn’t realize how claustrophobic Wall Street’s Liberty Park was until I arrived at my home Occupy in Oakland. Rather than the jumble of tarp-covered shelters that grew and morphed rhizome-like through Liberty Park, Occupy Oakland’s colorful tents felt positively … Continue reading “We interrupt this dispatch … Occupy Oakland and the General Strike!”
As plenty of proud nostalgic discourses locate the residues of hip-hop culture circling the drains of sample exhaustion, scene fatigue, patched-in cameos, or the same old cushy R’n’B, people world over just keep going about inventing new worlds of musical … Continue reading “"In One, All": Senegalese Women Freestyle Artists Unify the Global Ghetto”
Kabu verdi / Nu bai / Gosi nu sta na Portugei / Nu bai / Es ta ben y sai / Chullage “Cape Verde / Let’s go / Now, we’re in Portugal / Let’s go / They [my people] … Continue reading “Bearing Witness and the Challenges of Community in Global Hip Hop”
Sujatha Fernandes’s Close to the Edge explores a variety of contexts in which hip-hop is practiced around the world, and draws them together with the thread of Fernandes’s personal experiences. My own work has been based on the ethnographic … Continue reading “"Wherever I Bless a Microphone": Ethnographic Perspectives on Hip-Hop's Transnational Flow”
One of my earliest recollections of the contradictions inherent in hip hop’s global spread happened in July 1995 when I, rather suddenly, noticed my friend Marwan’s younger brother Samir pointing at me and singing “I said Hello Everybody” from … Continue reading “Leaping Towards The Edge”
Under Review: David Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years. Melville House Publishing: NY, 2011 ‘Tis to be a slave in soul, And to hold no strong control Over your own wills, but be All that others make of ye. –The Mask … Continue reading “A History of Debt”
If you have spent anytime with Occupiers, you have seen people (sometimes by the thousands) hold their hands above their heads and wiggle their fingers. Jazz hands? Cult sign? Known as “twinkling” when it expresses a positive sentiment, the hand … Continue reading “The Ritual of General Assembly and the Bureaucracies of Anarchy”
In her 1966 book Purity and Danger, anthropologist Mary Douglas famously explains dirt as “matter out of place.” Dirt does not index an objective category of pathogens or pollutants she suggests, but rather the designation of “dirt” indexes a contravention to a social order, and by extension, its boundaries.
“Mic check!” The shouted exclamation punctuates the days at Occupy Wall Street (OWS). A lone voice yells it from somewhere in the crowd, soliciting the hoped-for response, “mic check!” yelled back by all within earshot of the initial call. Often the response is weak the first time around. Maybe the caller is surrounded by people new to the movement, who aren’t yet familiar with the rituals, or don’t yet feel comfortable making them their own; maybe the voices around her are tired, from so many days and weeks of the people’s microphone. But with a second, often more insistent call, “mic check!” the surrounding voices rise in response, “mic check!”
