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Hip-hop, Money, Youth & Liberation: A Talk with Rosa Clemente
This KPFT/Sexto Sol interview with Black Puerto Rican activist Rosa Clemente was conducted by Ernesto Aguilar in December 2004. In it, we cover everything from Black and Latino tensions to histories of resistance to hip-hop, economics and more. Transcription by Heather Ajani Villalobos.
Ernesto Aguilar: I don’t know if it happens in New York, but it certainly happens here on the Third Coast, where there tends to be a lot of talk in the media about a lot of interracial conflicts, particularly between Latinos and African-Americans. But in fact, there tends to be a history of a united type of resistance there. I wonder if you can build a little bit on that.
Rosa Clemente: I think it definitely differs from coast to coast. It differs depending on what Latino group you may be talking about.
But first, I don’t say interracial because I don’t believe the term Latino or Hispanic is a racial classification and I think that’s a hard thing for a lot of new immigrants into the United States from Latin America to deal with. I also think it’s a very different racial way that Caribbean Spanish speaking folks look at the world as opposed Central Americans and Mexicans and South Americans so we definitely have a lot of differences as to what Latino means. It’s such a diverse culture, but in terms of resistance, you can look at the Cuban and Puerto Rican communities in the early 1900s coming to the East Coast and aligning themselves culturally with African-Americans whether it was through music or educational opportunities or social clubs and then in the ‘40s we’re looking at Mexican resistance in the Southwest and lynching that was taking place out there against Mexicans and African-Americans in the South. People were linking up because of that oppression and racial
brutality. Then really studying the ‘60s and looking at the Chicano movements on the West Coast and African-American/Black Liberation Movement and then on the East Coast definitely looking at the relationship between African-Americans and Puerto Ricans and understanding the Young Lords Party and the Brown Berets, which were both parties that modeled themselves after
the Black Panther Party. I think that’s the very important model to look because I believe there was definitely a Civil Rights Movement, but it was the Black Power and the Brown Power movements that gave the Civil Rights Movement the ability to get these incremental changes that are slowly being taken away from our communities now.
EA: Could you could build more on what you were saying in regard to the differences within the Latino community and different Latino communities because I think that there’s a tendency to want to go ahead and lump this community as one, when in fact, there are a lot of differences beyond just language or even cultural differences, or what not.
RC: Yeah, I think we just have to be very aware that particularly the Puerto Rican experience is a very different "Latino" experience than other Latino groups. Particularly for Puerto Ricans, we’re still a colony of the United States of America. We were forced to be citizens in 1917 to be drafted into World War I. So there’s always been a direct colonial relationship
between Puerto Rico and the United States and us having that American Citizenship, but still being second class citizens, whereas, other Latino groups are 'immigrants.'
We can argue definitely [in the case of] Mexicans and say we understand that Texas and the Southwest is Mexican land that was appropriated illegally by the United States government. So are these people really immigrants or is this indigenous land? I would argue obviously it’s indigenous land and that one day should be given back to those indigenous people that we call Mexicans.
Looking at the Mexican experience and the Puerto Rican experience and seeing how they have aligned — Mexicans and Puerto Ricans have aligned themselves with African Americans — really talks about resisting U.S. colonial
domination, whereas other immigrant countries have indirect colonial domination via U.S. multinational corporations. What we see is whether it's Colombians or El Salvadorans or even Dominicans from the Caribbean [or] Panamanians, [they] come to this country for economic reasons but also political reasons because their countries are strife with civil war and really a breakdown of society because of indirect U.S. colonial domination. I think even talking about those differences and how colonialism effects us differently is very important because we can’t just say that all Latinos are
unified across the board.
We see a lot of political divisions amongst Latinos. We see a lot of racial divisions amongst Latinos, same that you see in any group. Unfortunately, white people have consolidated their power so we don’t see as much as what we would call interracial or interethnic conflict as much as we see between Latinos and African-American groups in the United States. A lot
of that has to do with power struggles. At the end of the day, it all has to do with white supremacy and that white people in this country have the power and we don’t so we sometimes feel very powerless and end up fighting amongst each other for not what should be the ultimate goal but for these little increments — whether it be affirmative action or a couple of spaces
in college universities or who’s going to be the number one talk show commentator for the black community or the Latino community — as opposed to saying, 'we as the majority of folks in the world and essentially the majority of the folks in the U.S., we should not be having to fight, we should be controlling the majority of the air-waves, the majority of anything—the
majority of the government,' which we don’t so to me that always leads to basically power plays amongst our groups.
EA: About this conflict, you have these different perceptions going on—why does that become such an issue instead of this focus on real political type of thing like white supremacy?
RC: I think it’s definitely oppression and what oppression does psychologically. I think a lot of activists talk a lot about what oppression does on a very practical level. Oppression leads to bad public education, bad healthcare, the death penalty, the prison industrial complex, economics and it's an order used amongst black and brown people, But a lot of us don’t study oppression and what it does to the mind and I think it's just as basic as saying that we now view each other gatekeepers or enemies to each other and find it very hard in our communities unless we are social justice folks to say that there’s racism because particularly the corporate media, has turned it around to the point where any discussion on race is almost always talked about in way of, 'well these black people, these brown people are continuing to fall under victimization' as opposed to saying 'no, there’s structural racism that actually occurs that me talking about it doesn’t mean that I am victimizing myself, it means that I am speaking truth to power.' Especially in the hip-hop generation a lot of us are afraid to say what it is. It’s white racism. It's white power. That doesn’t mean we don’t resist. We’ve always been resisting. If we haven’t been resisting, we would not be where we’re at right now.
It’s very important to call it what it is and to understand that yes, there is racism, there is white supremacy. We need to talk about that. We need to acknowledge that. We can’t be afraid to say it and we can’t be afraid to be attacked by neocons, conservatives and even white liberals when we say that it is racist. You know it would not be happening to me if I had white skin and white privilege. I think our generation has to do a better job and really take the lead of W.E.B. DuBois, who said the problem of the 20th century would be the color line. I don’t think he thought there’d be a problem in the 21st century, but obviously in the 21st century the problem still is the color line and we need to be very honest about that.
EA: You just raised something regarding youth and hip-hop. I know you are a hip-hop writer and are familiar with a lot of those artists who are willing to speak about those issues. A lot of people will say hip-hop has lost a lot of its soul in a lot of respects, but how much of that has to do, in your opinion, with the commercialization, a lot of the mainstreaming that’s going on in the music and the culture?
RC: Hip-hop is a billion dollar industry. Therefore it is an industry and people make money off the culture, and for the most part, it’s white people that benefit from the economic gains of hip-hop. Then you have artists that stay true to their craft and their politics. Dead Prez is well-known in Texas. You [also have] Immortal Technique, a brother from Peru who
talks a lot about U.S. international policies in Central America and intervention. There’s many artists, but to me there’s still not enough and you know I think a lot of it has to do with economic reasons.
I think that hip-hop, the artistry of hip-hop, the music part of hip-hop is male dominated and it’s a place where men, particularly African-American and Latino men can carve out an economic niche that can’t be found anywhere else unless you’re in the NBA or the NFL, So a good amount of African-American and Latino who make it come from the hood and money clouds your political mind after awhile for a lot of people. I don’t ever blame an artist for the music that they put out. I think a lot of them do it because it’s a way to make money and I think the older they get, they begin to realize what they’re doing, but understanding the economic limitations that are put amongst men in the United States. You got somebody who’s sixteen from the
hood who has a hit record, who’s selling a million records at eighteen and then we automatically expect them to be political activists[?] That doesn’t come easy. That takes interaction with the artist, reaching out to the artist and I think it’s completely possible. My organization, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, for seven years we’ve done a political concert that grows every year to highlight political prisoner issues in the U.S. and we’ve had everybody from the most mainstream artists like David Banner or Dave Chappelle, Erykah Badu to a Dead Prez grace our stage every year. Once we can get to the artist and say these are the politics that are going on, the artists respond. I think that was the case in the '60s. The artists weren’t making the music because they were just making it -- the movement was making the music.
So, I’m not an activist who socially critiques artists all the time. I’m saying to us as activists what are we doing to make them want to move the crowd as an MC to make them want to be political? Although at a certain age if you’re thirty, if you’re a Puff Daddy or an R. Kelly, you take responsibility for your actions and I’m not going to treat you like that seventeen [year-old] that you were thirteen years ago. It’s a balance with artists. And lastly, I think we depend too much on the artist or the sports figure to speak about the issues related to the community. Once you’re at an economic status that is not
the same as the majority of the people around you, you have a very different outlook on life you have a different set of glasses, you’re not as worried about money so your counter-view is always going to be warped. There’s very few artists that stay true to the game. A prime example is someone who is, I’m sure, a multi-millionaire and is all over the world: Chuck D.
You can understand Chuck is a 40-year old man who comes out of the Black Panther movement in the '60s in Long Island and has always been a political figure, so he’s very rare and I don’t think we’re going to see a lot of Chuck in the future, not the way the corporate music and conglomerates are right now.
EA: I want to go ahead and make mention of that concert. It is the Black August Concert. Correct me if I’m wrong, [but] I believe the website is
blackaugust.org
RC: Right, or people could go to MXGM.org and it
happens every second week in August and this year will
be our seventh year. We’ve also done international
exchanges where we’ve gone to Cuba, South Africa,
Brazil, we might go to Europe this year, because, as
people know, there are Africans who live in Europe.
It’s been an amazing event and it grows every year.
It’s a well respected event and what it does is it
merges hip-hop with the politics of political
prisoners and that is a reason that a Talib [Kweli] or
Mos Def or Erykah Badu or Dave Chappelle [joins]. On
some of his shows, [Chappelle's] done sketches on race
and political prisoners because they’ve been informed
through our organization and I think that’s the key;
it’s really forming the community from the place that
they’re at. Our community, as a generation, is in a
place where they engage and love hip-hop culture, so
we bring that culture to the stage and infuse it with
the politics of political prisoners—all political
prisoners.
EA: It’s an intriguing position too, because I think
the first desire is to go ahead and critique an
artist, decide, well they’re making this kind of music
or that kind of music and they should be criticized
for it but the position that you’re talking about is
you can’t expect these people to necessarily be
political activists who are highly conscious or
whatever else. You need to do outreach, you need to
speak to them, you need to really work with them and
show why this stuff’s important above and beyond just
sort of appeal to just morality, simply.
RC: If you’re really an activist and a social justice
person, one of your ideals should never be to critique
because we can say 'well. what is Jay-Z doing?' I
can’t say what’s the majority of people in the hood
doing, you know? The only difference we critique them
more [is] because they have access to wealth and
money, but we can go into our communities and we can
talk to brothers and sisters on the street all the
time so what makes an artist different at the end of
the day? I think that’s how we have to treat them. At
the end of the day you’re still a human being that
functions. I need to give you information because it’s
being kept from you obviously and that’s my job as an
organizer. If I’m going to call myself a true person
that seeks true social justice and is committed to
liberation, then I committed myself to educating
people in whatever form that comes.
I don’t like when the left or the people who call
themselves organizers consistently don’t educate. I
don’t see a problem with critiquing, I critique people
in the hip-hop. I critique the power players. I
critique the Russell Simmons and Puff Daddies and even
the Jay-Zs because I feel they’re older men. I don’t
feel they’re young kids anymore who need to be taught.
Russell Simmons purports to be a social justice leader
and may not do some of the things that are social
justice-like, I have a reason to critique him. When it
comes down to it, he’s 42 years old. I feel you’re a
grown man, you should know better than to do certain
things as opposed to the 17-year-old up-and-coming
hip-hop artist who is blinded by money like all
17-year-olds are, for the most part, in America. It’s
individual how you deal with people. It’s how you deal
with [the] community and what kind of work and effort
you’re willing to put out there.
EA: How much of that is a function of internalized
oppression though? People want to critique the person
with money as opposed to the money system?
RC: Yeah! I don’t see it necessarily as a problem with
people making money. One of my mentors in college
always said we don’t need any more poor black and
brown people. We don’t need any less of us in college.
It’s not a badge of honor to say, well, 'I didn’t go
to college, I’m just social activist that got all my
grassroots training through the street.' That’s great
if you did, but some of us did choose to go to college
and some of us did choose to get a Master’s. But not
just choose, but had an opportunity and what we saw in
college and what we learned led us to say, 'no my work
and my degree is going to be dedicated to public
policy or social justice activism. I’m not just going
to work in corporate America.' In saying that, it’s
not about critiquing.
I don’t think necessarily making money the reality is that we live in 2004 we don’t live in 1964. We’re not living in communes. We’re not living in rent-stabilized apartments. We’re not living in a time where rent is 100 dollars a month. We’re living in a time where a one bedroom costs $1,000, where a loaf of bread costs $3.37, a gallon of milk -- where there’s some real economic things that are keeping us economically oppressed. I’m not opposed to people making money. What I’m opposed to is how do we develop communities and if people are creating wealth -- like these hip-hop artists, or NBA players or entertainment figures, celebrities making multi-millions of dollars – [and] how can they funnel that money back into their community and develop their communities and have economic stabilization and employ people in the community. That’s what white people do well. Whether its Rockefeller, Marriott, Trump, they’re building wealth, they’re acquiring land, they're building housing developments and who is living in them? White people! If they can do that, we have the ability to do that in our own communities. We just don’t we spend our money outside of our communities instead of developing our community. I think that’s the next phase of our civil rights, black and brown power movement: how do we begin to funnel this money that we know is accessible and make community development and have factories and have jobs to offer people. If we don’t deal with economic development, we’re going to be where we were in 1964. We’re going to be at a standstill when it comes to economics and we’re going to consistently depend on white power structures to give us jobs and give us housing and give us healthcare and etcetera.
EA: But how do you think that’s going to be possible when someone, particularly a black or brown person, gets into the system
or plays by the rules and they’re looked at as criminal?
RC: I have to say I’m stumped on that one. (laughs)
EA: Yeah, it’s a challenging question. Suge Knight, who by no means is political but certainly has made his money more or less legally selling records, has been targeted solely for the fact that he has a criminal record and [had] houses searched or whatever else. Of course the NYPD has a big scandal regarding their tracking of hip-hop artists there in New York City, people who aren’t really doing anything but exercising their right to try to make a living and as a result of that, their lifestyles are targeted or they are personally targeted because they’re Black or they're Brown and that’s basically it. They’re assumed to be criminals because of who they are or what kind of persona they embody through their music.
RC: Just think of Scarface from Houston obviously has been targeted. Over here we have Irv Gotti of Murder, Inc. being targeted. I think it’s just another facet of white supremacy that we have to deal with. Especially within hip-hop we have to really look at and learn the lessons of COINTELPRO in the '50s and '60s. Whereas COINTELPRO then was trying to stop a movement and stop the next 'black messiah,' the counter intelligence that’s taking place now within hip-hop is very real and it’s hitting us exactly where you said, in the economics.
Whether we disagree with Suge Knight or Scarface or Irv Gotti, the fact is that they’ve built these multi-million dollar empires. But the interesting thing is that if they aligned themselves with social justice work or activists, we’d have their backs and vice-versa, they could have our back. I would love to have a conversation with Suge Knight and be like,'look, you have the ability to make all this money, we have the ability to back you up and developing communities and making sure that this money is legally and rightfully used, how can we work together.' Same thing with Master P. When Master P was trying to buy land in New Orleans, there came a time when the city council began to stop him because he was acquiring blocks of land in New Orleans where he wanted to build housing developments. If he had aligned himself with a housing social justice group things could have been very different, so I think that’s something we could really look at and really study and I think its possible.
I don’t think that 10 years ago people would have thought, 'how is hip-hop going to talk about political prisoners' and 'how are we going to get the issue of political prisoners on MTV and BET and have Erykah Badu say something short at the Grammys about a political prisoner,' you know so I think how we plan things, how we organize, how we get to these artists [is important].
EA: I also kind of wanted to go back to another thing you brought up in regard to hip-hop as a means of empowerment, as a means of economics for a lot of young men, A lot of people tend to forget that there are still social inequities that have going on for the last 30, 40, 50, 100 years that weren’t done away with in the '60s. They weren’t done away with in the '70s. You still have issues of racist hiring practices. You still have issues with the lack of affirmative action and educational opportunities. What does this represent in hip-hop in terms of opportunities for communities where the economic change really hasn’t happened yet in a lot of ways?
RC: I don’t think hip-hop itself is going to solve the issue of economics. It’s going to take a strategic economic development, community development, plan. Hip-hop being hijacked by the multi-national corporations. You have a limited number of young people that have access to money within hip-hop, but for most young people, they don’t have that access and I think we’d be better off having conversations about how people can acquire education, what’s going on with public education, how we can raise minimum wage across the country, and how we can have gainful employment for young people with this next generation.
Even though hip-hop is a billion dollar industry, I don’t know how we regain that industry from white power. I really don’t. I’ve never seen an entertainment industry where the artists or the celebrity themselves at the end of their career are wealthy I mean we can look at hundreds and hundreds of stories from the '40s, '50s, '60s, '70s to now of artists who are multi-millionaires and then three years later have nothing. Who are these managers and these lawyers and these agents, the people that we never see? The same with the NBA. Who are the owners of these teams who are making so much more money than players themselves? We get more mad at the player for demanding money and never question, well, who owns the team, how much are they making? We have to switch the context of the whole conversation and really talk about employment and what is going on with corporations – from those going overseas to what’s going on with the expansion of Wal-Mart. We really need to study Wal-Mart and see what Wal-Mart is doing in the United States of America. We need to study all these corporations that are coming together and still paying their workers minimum wage, which is like known not to be able to sustain two people and a family. We really got to get to these multi-national corporations and hit them more as opposed to saying, 'why don’t these artists give money?' Again, I think the artist should give money, but I’m more interested in the expansion of Wal-Mart, and what they’re doing around the country and putting tens and tens and tens of thousands of people out of work on a yearly basis, not having healthcare, being racist, being sexist in their management process and things like that.
EA: Not allowing them to organize and such.
RC: Yeah, you know, we don’t have as many Wal-Marts in New York, as out in the Southwest.
EA: We got a lot here!
RC: It’s crazy. People are forced literally to go from 20 dollar an hour factory jobs to making $5.25 at Wal-Mart. What does that do to an entire community so you can get something 50 cents cheaper, but it was okay when it was 50 cents more when you were making 15 dollars more an hour? For our generation in particular, we have to switch the whole paradigm and context in how we talk about economic development.
I’m not an economist. I never thought in my years of organizing of economy. Up until two years ago, the economy was not an issue for me, which is crazy to think about, how could that not be an issue. But when I was going to rallies or other things that I do around organizing, I never thought about economics and what really keeps people from organizing. People have three jobs, how they going to go to a rally? What kind of privilege did I have to not work for a year and just live off my parents and go to police brutality rallies or organize, or go to anti-war, anti-NAFTA and all those types of rallies. I never thought about it. I think about it now because I’m in a monetary situation where I haven’t been able to gain employment and things like that, so now I’m going oh, you know it’s the economy, stupid, that’s really keeping us from doing the work that we need to do.
EA: Why do you think that there isn’t a real substantive discussion about economics and economic opportunity? I’ve had this discussion with people before and it stumps me that you have many social movements that are very concerned about various issues which are all very important, but there isn’t a real clarity in terms of the importance of economics and the importance of creating those opportunities for people so they can still participate but keep their families fed.
RC: It’s almost a taboo among activists to talk about money and I think when you’re 16 to maybe 30, you’re living with room mates -- three, four in an apartment -- you’re okay with eating one meal a day, you’re okay living paycheck to paycheck or from conference to conference and getting in a car and traveling to a conference six in a car and that’s all part of you building your character and the person you are but, yeah, when you get to the point where you’re going to begin a family and bring a child into the world, you begin to think about economics.
There was an interesting book I read a couple years ago. I think it’s how to teach your kids about money. You know, it was a white author and you know he talked about white culture and basically how from the time white kids are little, the whole culture of money is discussed and credit is discussed and saving money is discussed and I remember growing up that money was never discussed, it was there in the household, but my parents never taught me about how you open up a bank account, don’t take out too many student loans, your credit is going to get messed up and I don’t know why us folks of color, we have problems having those conversations with our children. There was also a good article in the Village Voice recently called "Generation Debt" that talks about the 18-35 year old generation and how we are the most indebted generation, especially around student loans and credit cards because our parents didn’t have these conversations with us.
I think sometimes we’re just to afraid to talk about money, like it’s not a real issue. I’ll go to a meeting and people have all these great ideas and I’ll say 'how are we going to fund this,' and people are like, 'the money will come.' How’s the money just going to come? It’s not going to fall off a tree. Do we have to have a fundraiser? How many do we have? We could look at Pacifica Radio and how many times do we have to fundraise a year at WBAI, KPFT, to get money because we’re not ever going to take corporate funding, that’s not ever going to be our mission, but how do we develop philanthropy in our communities? How do we develop money giving? How do we have a honest conversation about money and say there is a level of poverty and that, you know what, it’s not cool to be poor, and it’s okay if you don’t want to be poor. And what does that mean? I think that we just have to have some really serious conversations about that and really teach people how to manage their money. White people do that very well and that’s a lesson we could really learn from white people, how do you stay out of debt. How do you we see these white couples at the age of 26, just coming out of college, able to buy a house or a condo. We’re 32, still living in an apartment. These are very real conversations we have to have. We can’t be afraid to say 'I’m not cool with living a poverty stricken life.' I don’t think that’s necessarily a badge of honor either. It also goes to what is the ideal social justice activist: what does that person look like, and what are the stereotypes that make you a social justice activist and give you your badge of honor?
Being honest and having conversations and being educated, learning how to manage your money, learning how to work in communities doing grassroots work, is what makes an activist an activist. Not necessarily saying, well, I’m going to be poverty stricken or I’m going to be going to every rally that I can go to, or I’m going to be doing these kind of things that are kind of stereotypical or superficial things as opposed to doing the work that’s really at the end of the day, when you’re 65 or 70, the contribution I wanted to make.
EA: There is somewhat of a romance, particularly with the white middle class activist milieu, towards poverty. If you’re talking to a person of color, particularly someone who came from that, that’s not something people want to aspire to and I think it’s something that people need to be real clear about and be honest to say, 'look we don’t necessarily want to have a movement where people are all in abject poverty.' Nobody necessarily wants that for their children. You want to go ahead and hopefully have a better life for your children or for the next generation, than even you yourself had, I think that’s pretty much natural for a lot of people.
RC: I definitely grew up more as a middle class person and went through that stage myself. With a lot of my friends, that was more of a personal reflection of a lot of us as opposed to if you grew up in that abject poverty, you spent a lot of your time trying to get out of it and you’ve never romanticized being poor. I think that’s definitely a middle class perspective that I have because that’s what I came out of for the most part -- really being poor until the age of eight and then my father getting this great opportunity that catapulted us to a whole different economic level allowed me, when I was in my mid-20s, to kind of live that abject poverty and say that’s my badge of honor. For a good percentage of activists, we come out of that kind of background.
EA: Indeed. Wrapping up, we’ve been talking a lot about economic opportunity and such, and certainly you’ve written about this extensively as well. The military has unfortunately become a source of employment for a lot of black and Latino youth and certainly work by Malcolm X Grassroots Movement and other organizations is trying to counter that. Can you talk about some of the work that’s going on to try to educate people and reach out to them to talk about different options that people have.
RC: What’s happening now is that we have this ongoing war, obviously, in Iraq, and I’m sure an impending invasion of Iran -- as we see these military people who just got the medal of honor from the president are building up now to Iran. Possible conflict in North Korea. Unfortunately, unless there become huge employment opportunities for young people, we’re going to see a draft for one, but we’re also going to see willingly many African-American and Latinos going into the military and that’s because there is no choice right now.
In New York, the African-American and Latino unemployment rate is 51 percent. So, one out of every two African-American and Latino men who are looking for jobs cannot find jobs. So here, particularly where I live in Brooklyn, you can go and you can see in the streets and in the hood, military recruiters and
people lining up. The places where they go to be inducted are full with these young men and I don’t know how we’re going to stop that. I know we need to be out on the streets now talking about this backdoor draft. We don’t have a draft per se right now, but we’re clear that we have a backdoor draft.
With the Bush regime being elected again there’s a lot of conversations I’m seeing taking place, I’m seeing a lot of young people becoming involved in much political discussion. Here in New York, we have a November 2005 mayoral election. New York is for me like Texas and Cali. Our budget for New York City is the same budget as would be a third state in the United States of America, which means we as young people have the opportunity to elect a mayor that speaks to the people. I’ve never seen the type of organizing that is infusing electoral politics with grassroots on-the-ground organizing like it's taking place here for us in New York. Young people [are] really saying, 'we have to take over this electoral political system and then still be grassroots.' We’re going to have a big hand in the mayoral election and our city council races but also in the dialog that takes place. We’re going to see is a lot of young people stepping up against the next invasion. I just see young people doing a lot of amazing work and really organizing. Also really organizing with independent media to get their message out and I think that’s an amazing thing.
Bush being elected again really lit fire under a lot of people who were really down and out. I do believe people still are dismayed but to me, the people I see more dismayed about Bush being elected are the white liberals. I don’t see that coming out of African-American and Latino communities, because I don’t even think we expected that even if Kerry won, things would get better. I think people were expecting if Kerry won, we’d still be out there doing our work. Bush winning just makes it more urgent and necessary, so I don’t think we’ve fallen into how the white liberal left has fallen almost dejected over movement building. Now it’s infused us even more to be movement builders. I just see a lot of work being done in the next couple of years that could eventually turn electoral politics around. People may say, 'I don’t see that, how is that going to happen?' I see it happening, and I see independent media as a means to it happening and it’s very important people support community radio because as we know, the corporate media gets more and more disgusting there’s no other
way to put it.
EA: Definitely
RC: There’s all these great community opportunities for media, whether it’s the Internet or Pacifica radio, your local station, independent newsletters, indymedia.org, grassroots media conferences, I really see people taking media very seriously and that’s the only way you get to the hearts and minds of people. That’s been the way it was in the 1800s when we had African-American newspapers, the North Star, many Mexican independent papers, we need to keep pushing that and get our message out and then people will listen. People’s stories from community to community are amazing and inspiring and we have to keep continuing to tell them.
EA: Beyond the election, there needs to be an effort, or a continued effort to shift that agenda in a lot of ways and shift the discussion.
RC: We have to be in it to win it. We no longer as Latinos or African-Americans depend on the Democrats as we’ve depended on them for 40 years, and we can’t even depend on the Howard Deans and the Ralph Naders who don’t speak to the interests of our people no matter how liberal they might seem. They seem liberal because the Democrats are completely right wing now. We could look at the Democrats right now as an example and see the pushing of the PATRIOT Act and the new intelligence bill, how they’ve been completely silent. We need to know that it’s completely time to abandon them, and that doesn’t mean we run to the Republicans or these so-called moral values within the Latino community. We have to have a very real discussion about Republicanism and religion and why is it that we have Latinos voting for Bush based on gay marriage or abortion. Why is it that 1,500 African-Americans three days ago marched to Martin Luther King’s grave, opposing gay marriage as that is not the issue. Those are issues that are severely important when talking about human rights and civil rights, but what is it that’s making parts of our communities all of a sudden be so into morality that is based on abortion and gay marriages as opposed to morality based on housing, economic opportunities, health care, the death penalty? Where’s the morality to speak on those issues? I think it’s up to young people to particularly say, 'look, you can have your opinion on abortion, you can have your opinion on gay marriage but is that more important than developing economies than developing strong communities? Are you really worried about who is marrying who or if a woman’s choosing to have an abortion as opposed to your next job, to your public education system, to your healthcare?' What is the real issue? We can’t let this morality issues be hijacked by neocons. We’re talking about the most immoral people in the world.
EA: Indeed
RC: Antonio Gonzalez. He’s Latino, yes, but you know, he’s called the second executioner. Look at all the death penalty cases that he helped George Bush push through. What is his take on the PATRIOT Act? Let’s have these very real discussions! Lastly, let’s talk about issues and ideology and politics and align ourselves with those people. Let’s not just align ourselves with people because they’re Latino or African American or Republican or opposed to abortion or gay marriage. Let us align ourselves with people who have the ideology that living as a human being in the United States is a basic right and we need to fight for that. All over the world people are rising, fighting for their human rights we have to understand in the United States we have very serious human rights violations happening and we have to frame it like Malcolm said: what is going on in our communities are violations of human rights that are criminal behavior and we have act as such. Just as police act as such towards us or the government will say 'well this is criminal behavior, gangs are criminal behavior,' you know what? So is George Bush. You’re a criminal too, and so is Rumsfield. We have to have that frame of mind and we have to say what it is. We have to not support Condaleeza Rice just 'cause she’s a black woman and we cannot support Antonio Gonzalez just because he’s a Latino man. Young people are on the forefront of saying we’re not just going to support these cats anymore just 'cause they have our same color skin.
EA: Rosa Clemente speaking on it! Any contact info? Mention Malcolm X Grassroots website one more time.
RC: Yeah, Malcolm X Grassroots website is MXGM.org, and anyone can feel free to email me with comments
knowthyself@mac.com and just feel free to email me, I’m home and I write and I love to talk to people and
debate, so again it’s knowthyself@mac.com.
[Ernesto Aguilar can be reached via apoc@illegalvoices.org]
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