Monday, April 13, 2009

Seattle Hip Hop Spring Fest & Green Organizers Mixer


Green Organizers Mixer & Spring Hip-Hop Fest Saturday, April 18th at the UmojaFest P.E.A.C.E. Center

The Umojafest P.E.A.C.E Center's Green Light Initiative and the Race, Justice and Sustainability Project of Sustainable Central District and Sustainable South Seattle invite you and your organization to:

Justice Brunch! Green Organizers Mixer & Spring Hip-Hop Fest Saturday April 18th at the UmojaFest P.E.A.C.E. Center at 24th & Spring in Seattle.

The brunch will take place from 10am – Noon followed by a community celebration of Earth Week featuring live performances, speakers and community organization tables and vendors from Noon – 6PM.

Scheduled performers include Yirim Seck, KHMET, Razpy & The Vigilantes, Ayron Jones the Bluesman, Geneiva Arunga, Suntonio Bandanaz, Korvus Blackbird, Jamil Suleman, M. Famous, Garlandn Green, and other guest performers with music provided by DJ Kuhnex and Zecheriah the Barber and hosted by Wyking & G. Prez.

In celebration of Earth Week, this event is a networking opportunity for groups involved in environmental, sustainability, and justice work to meet, build relationships, and thereby expand the reach of our projects. All brunch participants will be provided tables to stay and share information about their programs.

Confirmed participants include: Seattle Pea Patch, Got Green, Clean Greens Project, Pursuit Of A Green Planet, African American Longshoremans Coalition, Life Enrichment Group, Hip-Hop Congress, Mothers Outreach Movement, Block Teamsters Union, Presidential Media Group, Mint Factory Clothing, The Nia Center, United For Youth Coalition, Association for Africentric Development, Feed The Body Teach The Soul and more.

Saturday, April 18th
10AM – 6pm
Umojafest P.E.A.C.E Center
2314 E. Spring St. (24th Ave & Spring St.)
Seattle, WA 98122

Potluck BBQ (No pork or soda please!).

PLEASE RSVP if you are able to bring something, volunteer or just coming to green@umojafestpeacecenter.com. The brunch has limited space. We look forward to seeing you!

The Green Light Initiative at the Umojafest PEACE Center focuses on the sustainability concerns that offer opportunities for our community to thrive. The group strives to make the resources of the green movement accessible and applicable while reclaiming our historical legacy of healthy and environmentally conscious living. Chair: Amber Croyle, green@umojafestpeacecenter.com.

The Race, Justice and Sustainability Project is an effort by Sustainable Central District and Sustainable South Seattle to build an action agenda at the intersection of justice and sustainability. Please click this link to fill out our brief questionnaire to share your experience and knowledge. Sustainable South Seattle and Sustainable Central District are volunteer-run community groups working to promote sustainability in our neighborhoods through project-based community engagement. For more information contact: Deric Gruen, Deric.Gruen@gmail.com.

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Early April Seattle Hip Hop News


Peace- I'm Julie C, Northwest Regional Director and Editor in Chief for an organization called Hip Hop Congress. We are a national 501(c3) non profit with the mission to provide the Hip Hop Generation and post Hip Hop Generation with the tools, resources, and network to create social, economic, and political change in their communities. Our key partners in this region include such Hip Hop artist, activist, and cultural organizations as 206 Zulu, Umojafest P.E.A.C.E Center, B Girl Bench, Global Fam, and others. We have 80 campus/community hubs across the country. We supplement and support the work of our campus chapters, partner businesses, youth service organizations, and media justice/independent media production groups through consultations, event organizing, trainings, youth programs, advocacy, social media strategy and/or just getting the word out the old fashion way.

You can be added to the Northwest Hip Hop Congress mailing list. I manage this list personally, and keep traffic very low, down to only one email a week, if that. What you will receive is consolidated updates on us and our partner's activities in this region, along with opportunities to plug into this movement. I hope you stick around, get a chance to read, and respond to some of the youth, artist and grassroots lead efforts happening in the area. If you have any questions, email me directly at juliec@hiphopcongress.com, or you can call me by phone at (425) 223-7787. Thank you and welcome! Enjoy the updates below.
-Julie C


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We start our update this time giving it up to an important member of the Seattle Hip Hop community, Gregory "GCL1" Lewis, and his new book. Gregory “GCL1” Lewis is an often under-utilized and underappreciated link between Seattle’s Hip Hop community and its movement potential. He plays a central role as a Shaka (security) for 206 Zulu and un-official advisor to many artists and activists in the Seattle area. He is also a martial arts instructor, soon to be competing in the 8th Annual Kyokushin Challenge April 18th in Bellevue, Washington at Eastside Christian School. Recently, a collection of his work from the late 1990’s was selected, translated to German, and published in a book by Gabriel of the Anarchist Publishing House in Hamburg. When GCL1 dropped through and showed me the book a few weeks ago, I wanted to take the opportunity to get some of his words down, and pass on some Seattle history to some of us younger folks. View and share the full article HERE!

Next theme we got is independent media, so let's start with a party. Coolout Network has been as a Seattle Hip Hop independent media institution for 18 years strong, and the following video by Coolout TV fan and notable videographer on his own right, Scott Macklin, is footage from the Coolout TV 18th Anniversary Celebration. It features Orbitron and Yze, Draze, Silver Shadow D performing with his son Keith, Gabriel Teodros, Sinsemilla, Lady Tazs, Glo Medina, and more! Sadly, as the video indicates, Scott’s camera fell casualty in the process of documenting the night. but rest assured that even at his own birthday and anniversary event, Mr. Georgio Brown was wielding his camera like a Samurai sword in battle, capturing every minute of the festivities. Be on the lookout for that!

Also, speaking of independent media and anniversaries, Reel to Real: Seattle's 1st Hip Hop Film Festival which went down during the 206 Zulu 5th Anniversary celebration, has inspired a "Hip Hop 'Mini-festival" at Langston Hughes African American Film Fest! They will be rescreening three of the movies from Real to Reel: B-Girl Be - A documentary that takes you inside the all female, all Hip Hop weekend at Intermedia Arts Center in Minneapolis, Who is 206 Zulu? - by Georgio Brown, and Masizakhe by Scott and Angela Macklin of Open Hand Reel. If you missed it the first time, or just need more, don't sleep! For 2009 Langston Hughes Black Film Fest Schedule Information, click here.

In keeping with the media vein, check these musings I rattled off in "A New Era in Hip Hop Cultural Production: What the collapse of the music industry means for artists." It was recently published in the April Issue of the People's Tribune, a Chicago newspaper with national distribution, along with articles from other Hip Hop Congress partners from across the country in a two page spread. Anyone who wants a paper or a stack, I have 200 copies at my house, so give me a call (this issues mentions include Suntonio Bandanaz, Hidmo, Umojafest P.E.A.C.E Center, and more! HHC will have regular access to these pages and hopefully more in the future, so please send any articles on Hip Hop organizing and political action my way. Those interested in being involved with the Hip Hop Congress media coalition, please reply this email and hit me up as well. We're in the planning and development stages.

Hip Hop Congress is also planning to optimize it's network and coalition growth potential for the Northwest at its 2009 Annual Conference to take place in Seattle, Washington from July 29th to August 2nd, in partnership with Umojafest, Universal Zulu Nation, and Dope Emporium, so it's a critical time to reach out and get down right now! Meetings will be commencing with key partners as soon as next week!

-----------------The Bullet Point News-----------------

* Knox Family is performing this Sunday April 12th at the High Dive, 513 N 36th St, Seattle, WA! Come see me rap, too.

* The following Saturday, April 18th, Umojafest P.E.A.C.E Center is hosting "Union Spring Fest," block party style from noon to night, on the corner of 24st and Spring St in the heart of Seattle's Central District, with DJ's OMG and Kuhnex, and performances from Yirim Seck, Rapzy and the Vigilantes (young HEAT in the town, if you don't know, now you know), Geneiva Arunga, and more. Come and celebrate the development of Seattle's very first autonomous Hip Hop youth service and community organizing center in history!

* Speaking of Umojafest P.E.A.C.E Center, co-founder Wyking's presentation at "Keeping it Real, Keeping it Green" a Green Festival panel of the role of Hip Hop organizing in the green movement was met with great enthusiasm, so look out for footage on the event soon. Find out more about the Umojafest P.E.A.C.E Center's green initiatives at the website, and come through to Sunday meetings at 4:00 to find out how to plug in.

* Hip Hop Congress in Seattle is teaming up with other community groups to support the MAJOR May 30th March for Healthcare this year that will start at 12:30pm at Pratt Park in the Central District. "Welcome to the website for Washington State's largest Health Care Rally EVER. We're gearing up with over 40 organizations (and growing every day) to build the largest ever grassroots mobilization pushing for health care for all and fighting for to win ! " Read more at the link above. Thanks Sunny!

* Thank everyone for their heartfelt reactions to the Hip Hop and Domestic Violence article. I got comments and contributions from women (and a few men) from all across the country. I am so overwhelmed by what everyone had to say either on facebook, email, by phone, or face to face in response, and what everyone is doing in their communitites, there's got to be some next steps on this! I will follow up with each of you soon.

* Much love to members of the BAYAN Regional organizations, PINAY SA SEATTLE and ANAKBAYAN along with other solidarity organizations who recently got back from repping the Northwest at the 3rd Congress of BAYAN-USA and the founding and first assembly of GABRIELA-USA in Los Angeles. We applaud your work in solidarity with the universal struggle for human rights.

* Hip Hop Congress National Partner the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign and HHC's Kentucky spearhead Women in Transition were featured in a New York Times article entitled "With Advocates' Help, Squatters Call Foreclosures Home".

* Toni Hill's new album, "Only Love" is now available for download on iTunes, as well as Amazon, eMusic, Media-Net and Napster. Physical copies are available at Sonic Boom on Capitol Hill and Silver Platters in Queen Anne and Northgate. Check Toni's new video "Rose" on Youtube.

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Okay, although that's far from all, I'll leave you all here for now.

Stay in touch.

Friday, April 10, 2009

A New Era in Hip Hop Cultural Production: What the collapse of the music industry means for artists.

The Hip Hop artist base hasn’t stopped exponentially growing since the inception of Hip Hop culture. Even as the corporate industry fragmented and com-modified Hip Hop’s artistic practices for economic gain, our numbers grew. When consolidated media misrepresented and defamed our name and value, they grew still. As we learned to navigate the information age, we developed ways to get around every barrier thrown in our paths. As we matured, we started teaching classes, running youth programs, and doing element workshops all over the globe, laying down the blueprint for a whole next generation of Hip Hop cultural producers we are now responsible for. In the era of Twitter, Myspace, Facebook, Internet radio and digital downloads, this burgeoning artists base is now not only intrinsically connected by its interests and practices, it is intricately networked, and rapidly developing a powerful collective consciousness.

As the music industry continues to struggle for life, the majority of Hip Hop’s artist base (those of us who rely on a day job or side hustle to sustain our creative endeavors) stand at its deathbed like battered children, mourning an extremely abusive parent. Some of us harbor denial, anger, and regret, others are confused or indifferent. But what we should be clear on now is one thing: the strength of one’s network and one’s ability to maneuver it determines the amount of resources at one’s disposal, and this simple truth leaves us with quite an inheritance if we’re clear.

As independent Hip Hop artists, we’ve learned to navigate around the corporate industry by gaining a wide range of skill sets in a number of overlapping sectors including technology, communications, education, social entrepreneurship, and more. We are an army of highly skilled soldiers, with the ability to develop community-owned alternatives to Sound Exchange, coalitions of Hip Hop broadcasters, media producers, and journalists, teaching hip hop artist unions that advocate for fair wages and healthcare. We have the capacity to really change the game. But for this to work, we gotta cut off life support to the old industry model, and move on. We have to go from asking, “How do I get a break in the industry?” to asking “How do we create a situation where the most deserving (in terms of skill, grind, and contribution) independent artists can get the maximum profits for what they do (be it shows, sales, panels, workshops, whatever) at any given time?” We have to change how we shape our organizations, record labels, businesses, and how they relate to each other as well as changing how our artist selves interact with our day job selves inside our own mental paradigms.

We also have to recognize that the industry’s death and our survival as artists is not a passive process, it’s a battle front. As legislation on internet broadcasting, royalty collection, and online music sales continues to pass through Congress, the corporate industry, like a zombie, attempts to infect and control the policy shifts through groups like the RIAA and Sound Exchange. While this is going on, DC-based advocacy organizations that originally popped up to oppose this corporate agenda have developed their own interests to protect. These get tied into the nonprofit industry that has sprung up around the media reform foundation base and the new hip hop foundation base, and the mess that results is a matrix that sucks in and eats artists and activists, leaving confusion or indifference in its wake. Sun Tzu said a confused army always loses. In the case of Hip Hop artists, our confusion leads to crabs in a barrel, reinvention and/or spinning of our wheels, or simple ye’ old community fragmentation. We can’t afford any of that anymore. Now is the time to pull the plug, kill the noise, and organize the movement.

Seattle Hip Hop's Minister of Information: Gregory "GCL1" Lewis

Gregory “GCL1” Lewis is an often under-utilized and underappreciated link between Seattle’s Hip Hop community and its movement potential. He plays a central role as a Shaka (security) for 206 Zulu and un-official advisor to many artists and activists in the Seattle area. He is also a martial arts instructor, soon to be competing in the 8th Annual Kyokushin Challenge April 18th in Bellevue, Washington at Eastside Christian School.

Recently, a collection of his work from the late 1990’s was selected, translated to German, and published in a book by Gabriel of the Anarchist Publishing House in Hamburg. When GCL1 dropped through and showed me the book a few weeks ago, I wanted to take the opportunity to get some of his words down, and pass on some Seattle history to some of us younger folks.

These writings were taken from Black Autonomy, a national paper with roughly 1-2,000 distribution. Black Autonomy, initiated by Lorenzo Komboa Ervin, a former Black Panther, former SNCC member, political prisoner, and author of Anarchism and the Black Revolution, began as a joint project of activists from New York, the Bay Area, Detroit, Seattle, and D.C, to report back on community actions and put forward a new revolutionary agenda. “The message we all wanted to convey was that Black people are fighting back and that real leadership is either collective or by example. You can’t wait for a messiah to come and save you,” says GCL1, who put up the money and launched it out of Seattle in 1993. It was published every two months, but after four years, contributors fell off, and feeling like the paper wasn’t reaching the audience it needed to reach, GCL1 finally stopped bearing the financial burden.


(Photo: GCL1 helping emcee Sista Hailstorm "kick" her smoking habit at a demonstration)


“The first time I got involved with Hip hop was 1983, I was in middle school, the scene at that time was violently competitive, so I stepped back, got involved with the metal and grunge rock scenes for a while,” recalled GCL1, who got into activism and movement work in the early 90s because of several factors. “ ‘92 was a big year for direct action against reactionaries and the state,” GCL1 remembers with a laugh. “I moved to the University District, which had a large and highly politicized homeless youth population at the time. They were protesting Mark Sidran(former city attorney for Seattle) and taking over vacant buildings, and I got in with them.” It was there that he learned about Marxism, anarchism, and other various national liberation movement ideologies. In addition, the original George Bush was invading Iraq, and Seattle was seeing some of its biggest protests since the early seventies, including one that blocked freeway traffic on Interstate 5. The city also experienced two nights of Rodney King related burning and expropriation in the downtown business district and on Broadway. “We marched from City Hall up Pike by Seattle Central chanting ‘Wait ‘till Dark!’ As the sun set, the first burning dumpster was pulled out into the middle of Broadway. It was ‘on’ after that,” he recalled.

Neo-nazis were attacking homeless kids, people of color, and gay people. “On Christmas eve of ‘92 Nazis stabbed a Black man on a metro bus on the Ave. We marched from University Heights to an abandoned building behind Dick’s on Broadway the nazis occupying and using as a base to sell heroin and recruit members. Armed with sticks, baseball bats, knives, and brass knuckles, we went into their house, and started going to town on them. My favorite moment was when the Crips and other hood cats came out with tire irons and their fists to fight along side us. The nazis cleared that spot out quickly.”

GCL1 also did prisoner support work for Mark Cook, a member of the George Jackson Brigade, an armed anti-imperialist group that were active from 1970 to 1979, and founder of the Black Panther Party chapter at Walla Walla State Penitentiary. GCL1 was also a co-founder of the Seattle Mumia Defense Committee and Seattle Leonard Peltier Support Committee.

GCL1 drifted back into the Hip Hop scene in the early 90’s, during the tail end of the Golden Era. “I met Specs One, Silver Shadow D, Merciful, Jace and the 4th Party, Amilcar Navarro from Union Of Opposites, and many others,” said GCL1, who had just turned 21, became a bouncer, and was coming to know and admire the work of many local artists in the scene. “In ’93 I met Merciful at Seattle Central and he turned me on to the struggle for Coleman School and the African American Heritage Museum and Cultural Center in the Central District. Through Merc, I met Omari, Wyking and others who gave me more education on Nation of Islam, the 5% , the Black Liberation Movement, etc. Merc introduced me to most of the Hip Hop community.”

GCL1 attempted to get activists from the North End involved with the struggle in the Central District, but was often met with indifference or outright hostility. It seemed to GCL1 that although the white activists would go to various church congregations seeking support from the Black community for their agenda, they didn’t want to see Black people with real institutionalized power and therefore would not support a Black-led organization or its agenda.

GCL1 turned his energy to co-founding Copwatch 206 with dRED.i’s Merciful, being active in the AAHMCC struggle as a board member, participating in the WTO protests as a member of the Seattle IWW, and emerging victoriously from both a physical and legal altercation with the Seattle Police Department and the City of Seattle in which he used his karate skills to save his own life from a murder attempt at the hands of a police officer.

“Seattle Hip Hop connected me to people of all walks of life, made me feel like I was part of something bigger than myself,” says GCL1, “Hip Hop is a lot more fun than the chore of activism; a lot of the people in the ‘movement’ are unpleasant people, unhealthy, negative, and cynical; Hip Hop is generally more outgoing and hopeful, and social. Hip Hop is going to teach the activists how to relate better to the people. It is up to the activists teach the Hip Hop heads how to be more disciplined, organized, and analytical. Hip Hop also provides the soundtrack to the revolution.” (Photo GCL1, left, with King Khazm, Chapterhead of 206 Zulu)

But GCL1 also has his frustrations with the community. “In Hip Hop, I see a lot of people saying one thing and doing another, not following through on what they say, and treating others like pawns. The big lesson is that the people you meet on the way up are the same people you meet on the way down. Treat everyone with respect, and if they aren’t worthy of respect, take them off the planet. If you’re not willing to do that, then you must respect them. You don’t have to like someone to respect them. How is it we can hold our nose and deal with people we don’t like at our day jobs, but we can’t learn to work with people we may not like within the Hip Hop scene?”

When I prodded him to apply some of the organization and leadership theories from his book to Hip Hop organizing, he responded, “Hip hop is currently not organizing for revolution, it’s organizing for reform. They don’t want to transform the world; most are only interested in transforming their own individual economic situation. People keep doing things to replicate and reinforce the current political system of capitalism and white supremacy. The currently accelerated collapse of the capitalist economic system is the best thing that can happen for revolutionary progress, yet most fear the final outcome of this. We must be the ones to shape the final outcome!”
(Artwork by Daniel Strzelczyk)

On the role of hip-hop activists operating in the community, he said, “What really separates us from the Masons, the BoulĂ©, Skull and Bones, and all these secret society types is being upfront about who you are, your agenda, and what you do. Anything else is rank opportunism and deception of the worst kind.” GCL1 continued, “There’s always a hierarchy of knowledge. Nothing is unknown, people are just unaware, indifferent, or unable to synthesize and move forward with the information they have. Those of us who know have a responsibility to teach those who do not know.”

For GCL1, the intersection between Hip Hop and movement work is not just the message in the music, it’s his community and his life. “I don’t do activism ‘cause I enjoy it, I’ve never enjoyed it, I do it because I know it’s needed and necessary. If I don’t do something the universe will punish me. That’s not just a belief, I’ve seen it happen. Indeed, it’s happening now.”

For more, check these articles GCL1 on Illvox.org:
"Session Notes: Self-Defense"
"Mythology of the White-Led “Vanguard”: A Critical Look at the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA"
"Use No Way As A Way: An Interview with Gregory Lewis"