Mark Anthony Neal's Blog, page 1039

"It Refuses to be Dismantled": Angela Davis at #Occupy Oakland

From truthpeaceful:  Angela Davis speaks to the Occupy Oakland rally on the day of the West Coast Port Shutdown. Barbara Becknell (representative of Stanley 'Tookie' Williams) and Angela Davis propose a national day of action in solidarity with the 2.5 million prisoners incarcerated and 3,500 on death row in the U.S. She proposes occupy mobilizations at every major prison in this country to act against the prison-industrial complex plaguing the nation and cannibalizing our education system.

Happy Birthday Ella Baker!

Duke University Professor William Chafe says Ella Baker nurtured the movement alongside Martin Luther King.

FILM THE POLICE - B. Dolan feat. Toki Wright, Jasiri X, Buddy Peace, Sage Francis

DOWNLOAD THIS MP3 FOR FREE on the homepage of http://StrangeFamousRecords.com right now!

B. DOLAN's "FILM THE POLICE" pays tribute to N.W.A.'s infamous "F*ck the Police," serving as a call to action for the digitized media movement while responding to the recent explosion of police brutality all across the world.

This free MP3, courtesy of STRANGE FAMOUS RECORDS, features a reconstruction of Dr. Dre's original beat, brilliantly reanimated by UK producer BUDDY PEACE. Label CEO, SAGE FRANCIS, opens the song by picking up the gavel where Dr. Dre left it 23 years ago, introducing a blistering, true-to-style flip of Ice Cube's original verse by SFR cornerstone, B. Dolan. TOKI WRIGHT (Rhymesayers Entertainment) follows up by stepping into the shoes of MC Ren, penning the people's struggle against cops as a case of "Goliath Vs. a bigger giant." Finally, Jasiri X (Pittsburgh rapper/activist) rounds out the track by filling in for Eazy-E, reminding us that police brutality disproportionately affects poor people of color.

With the Occupy Movement bringing various forms of injustice to the forefront of people's consciousness, "Film the Police" is a reminder that cops have been a continued and increasingly militarized presence in public streets. Thanks to the widespread use of smartphones and video cameras, along with the popularity of social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, the power of the media has been put back into the people's hands as they document the injustices perpetrated by those who have sworn to serve and protect them.

The lyrics are available at: http://bdolan.net/film-the-police-lyrics/
http://facebook.com/BDolanSFR
http://twitter.com/BDolanSFR
http://facebook.com/StrangeFamousRecords
http://twitter.com/SFRupdates

This video was directed by Mason Johnson (Klepticenter Productions) and edited by Weston Woodbury.

"Film the Police" will be included on B. DOLAN and BUDDY PEACE's "HOUSE OF BEES VOL. II" mixtape at http://StrangeFamousRecords.com

Left of Black S2:E14 | Behind the Veil of Lynching and Jim Crow

Left of Black S2:E14 Behind the Veil of Lynching and JimCrow
w/Professor Leslie Brown and Professor Koritha Mitchell December 12, 2011

Left of Blackhost and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal is joined via Skype©by Koritha Mitchell, Professor ofEnglish at The Ohio State University and author of Living withLynching: African American Lynching Plays, Performance, and Citizenship1890-1930 (University of IllinoisPress).  Neal and Mitchell discuss how black playwrights during the early20th century used one-act plays to offer response to racial traumaand violence.  Neal and Mitchell also contemplate why black artists areoften misunderstood in their intent, where their art is often labeled "protestart" when it instead functions as a form of community expression. Lastly, Mitchell analyzes the first generation of black cross-over stars anddistinguishes between Tyler Perry the stage performer and the filmmaker.  

Later Neal is joined via Skype©by Leslie Brown, Associate Professorof History at Williams College and aresearcher on the project Behind theVeil: Documenting the African-American Experience in the Jim Crow South which has been recently digitized at Duke University. Brown discusses the ethnographic research she did to prepare for the archiveand the remaining accessibility gap to materials such as these.  Brownalso discusses the recent interest in the Jim Crow era and what lack ofknowledge of that era says about American democracy.
***
Left ofBlack is a weekly Webcast hosted byMark Anthony Neal and produced in collaboration with the John Hope Franklin Center at DukeUniversity.
***
Episodes of Left of Black are also available for download @ iTunes U

Behind the Veil of Lynching and Jim Crow on the December 12th Left of Black

Behind theVeil of Lynching and Jim Crow on theDecember 12th Left of BlackLeft of Black host and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal is joined via Skype©by Koritha Mitchell, Professor ofEnglish at The Ohio State University and author of Livingwith Lynching: African American Lynching Plays, Performance, and Citizenship1890-1930 (University of Illinois Press).  Neal and Mitchell discusshow black playwrights during the early 20th century used one-actplays to offer response to racial trauma and violence.  Neal and Mitchell also contemplate whyblack artists are often misunderstood in their intent, where their art is oftenlabeled "protest art" when it instead functions as a form of communityexpression.   Lastly, Mitchell analyzes the first generation of blackcross-over stars and distinguishes between Tyler Perry the stage performer andthe filmmaker.   LaterNeal is joined via Skype© by LeslieBrown, Associate Professor of History at Williams College and a researcheron the project Behindthe Veil: Documenting the African-American Experience in the Jim Crow South which has been recently digitized at Duke University's Center for Documentary Studies.  Brown discusses the ethnographicresearch she did to prepare for the archive and the remaining accessibility gapto materials such as these.  Brown also discusses the recent interest in  the Jim Crow era.  
***
Leftof Black airs at 1:30 p.m. (EST) on Mondays on Duke's Ustream channel: ustream.tv/dukeuniversity.Viewers are invited to participate in a Twitter conversation with Neal andfeatured guests while the show airs using hash tags #LeftofBlack or#dukelive. 
Left of Black is recorded and produced at the John Hope Franklin Center of International and InterdisciplinaryStudies at Duke University.
***
FollowLeft of Black on Twitter: @LeftofBlackFollowMark Anthony Neal on Twitter: @NewBlackManFollowKoritha Mitchell on Twitter: @ProfKori
###

Jay Z Talks About Poverty and #Occupy with CNN Money

Bill O'Reilly and the Soul Train Line?

 
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Michael Eric Dyson and James Braxton Peterson discuss Bill O'Reilly's dated notions of Black America on MSNBC's The Ed Show.

Intellectuals and Politics

Edward Said
Intellectuals and Politics by Gary Guting | New York Times | The Stone
The rise of Newt Gingrich, Ph.D.— along with the apparent anti-intellectualism of many of the other Republican candidates — has once again raised the question of the role of intellectuals in American politics.
In writing about intellectuals, my temptation is to begin by echoing Marianne Moore on poetry: I, too, dislike them. But that would be a lie: all else equal, I really like intellectuals. Besides, I'm an intellectual myself, and their self-deprecation is one thing I really do dislike about many intellectuals.
What is an intellectual? In general, someone seriously devoted to what used to be called the "life of the mind": thinking pursued not instrumentally, for the sake of practical goals, but simply for the sake of knowing and understanding. Nowadays, universities are the most congenial spots for intellectuals, although even there corporatism and careerism are increasing threats.

In his "Republic," Plato put forward the ideal of a state ruled by intellectuals who combined comprehensive theoretical knowledge with the practical capacity for applying it to concrete problems. In reality, no one has theoretical expertise in more than a few specialized subjects, and there is no strong correlation between having such knowledge and being able to use it to resolve complex social and political problems. Even more important, our theoretical knowledge is often highly limited, so that even the best available expert advice may be of little practical value. An experienced and informed non-expert may well have a better sense of these limits than experts strongly invested in their disciplines. This analysis supports the traditional American distrust of intellectuals: they are not in general highly suited for political office.
But it does not support the anti-intellectualism that tolerates or even applauds candidates who disdain or are incapable of serious engagement with intellectuals. Good politicians need not be intellectuals, but they should have intellectual lives. Concretely, they should have an ability and interest in reading the sorts of articles that appear in, for example, Scientific American, The New York Review of Books, and the science, culture and op-ed sections of major national newspapers — as well as the books discussed in such articles.
It's often said that what our leaders need is common sense, not fancy theories. But common-sense ideas that work in individuals' everyday lives are often useless for dealing with complex problems of society as a whole. For example, it's common sense that government payments to the unemployed will lead to more jobs because those receiving the payments will spend the money, thereby increasing demand, which will lead businesses to hire more workers. But it's also common sense that if people are paid for not working, they will have less incentive to work, which will increase unemployment. The trick is to find the amount of unemployment benefits that will strike the most effective balance between stimulating demand and discouraging employment. This is where our leaders need to talk to economists.
Knowing how to talk to economists and other experts is an essential skill of good political leaders. This in turn requires a basic understanding of how experts in various fields think and what they might have to offer for resolving a given problem. Leaders need to be intelligent "consumers" of expert opinions.
Our current electoral campaigns are not very good at determining candidates' understanding of relevant intellectual issues. "Pop quizzes" from interviewers on historical or geographical facts don't tell us much: those who know the answers may still have little grasp of fundamental policy questions, whereas a good grasp can be consistent with a lack of quick factual recall. Nor does reading sophisticated policy speeches that others have written or reciting pre-programmed talking points in interviews or news conferences tell us much about a candidate's knowledge. Even quick-thinking responses in debates may indicate glibness rather than understanding.
The best evidence of how capable candidates are of fruitfully interacting with intellectuals would be to see them doing just this. Concretely, I make the follow suggestion for the coming presidential election: Gather small but diverse panels of eminent, politically uncommitted experts on, say, unemployment, the history of the Middle East, and climate science, and have each candidate lead an hour-long televised discussion with each panel. The candidates would not be mere moderators but would be expected to ask questions, probe disagreements, express their own ideas or concerns, and periodically summarize the state of discussion. Such engagements would provide some of the best information possible for judging candidates, while also enormously improving the quality of our political discourse.
A utopian fantasy? Very likely — but imagine a race between Barack Obama and Newt Gingrich, two former college professors, and who knows?
***

Religion Scholar Obery Hendricks Discusses "Class Warfare" on the Ed Show with Michael Eric Dyson

 

Obery Hendricks is Visiting Scholar at Institute for Research in African-American Studies and Department of Religion at Columbia University and the author of the recent The Universe Bends Toward Justice: Radical Reflections on the Bible, the Church, and the Body Politic.

Religious Scholar Obery Hendricks Discusses "Class Warfare" on the Ed Show with Michael Eric Dyson

 

Obery Hendricks is Visiting Scholar at Institute for Research in African-American Studies and Department of Religion at Columbia University and the author of the recent The Universe Bends Toward Justice: Radical Reflections on the Bible, the Church, and the Body Politic.