Calle 13 Supports The Student Stikers at UPR

In these videos Calle 13 (and a number of prominent Puerto Rican and Latin American artists through video message) support the struggles of of Puerto Rican students fighting against the privatization of the University of  Puerto Rico and state divestment from education.  This video was super powerful for me and really impressive.

Many scholars of neoliberalism are pointing to the ways in which Latin America is at the vanguard of anti-neoliberal struggles.  This video reminds us that Puerto Rico IS also part of Latin America and is also at the forefront of crucial struggles for social justice.

Education is a right and the students at the University of Puerto Ricans are reminding the world of that.

Que Vivan Los Estudiantes!!!

M.I.A.'s "Born Free" (Trigger Warning!!)

"Telephone" has got nothing on "Born Free" that much is certain.

M.I.A's most recent video is a super violent romp in a dystopic future.  The video has come under a lot of fire for its violence, nudity, and profanity.  Red heads are hunted down, brutalized, and systematically (and graphically) killed/executed.  A very young redheaded boy is shot in the head at close range Nguyen Ngoc Loan style.  Another redhead is blown up by a landmine in slow motion.  A chubby couple gets it on in the midst of the mayhem.  And f-bombs go off more than than landmines blowing up aforementioned redheads.  

It's a doozy. 

The 10-minute video directed by French filmmaker Romain Gavras was heavily influenced by Peter Watkin's Punishment Park (1971) and obviously references a certain episode of  South Park.  The video will be getting the feature length treatment (starring Vincent Cassel who I LOVE!), in (wait for it...) Redheads, Gavras' directorial debut. 

So what to make of it? 

M.I.A. is definitely trying to make a political statement... the references are obvious, insurgency, police and military violence, racism, genocide, take your pick...but is the allegory more powerful than the reality?  That is to say, what do redheads do besides stand in for racialized and occupied people? What makes redheads compelling rather just than actually taking on issues of American military violence and occupation? Besides the novelty anyway?

I guess where I land is here... if M.I.A was trying to make a serious political critique I would have taken it more seriously if I wasn't constantly wondering whether they were hunting down the redheaded men because they didn't have souls. 

Massive Student Mobilization at University of Puerto Rico

By Guest Blogger Claudia Sofia Garriga Lopez

Last Monday, April 19th,  the students at the University of Puerto Rico declared a strike. By Wednesday hundreds of students occupied the university and closed down all five entrances to the university. They are resisting the 100 million dollar budget cuts, the tuition hikes, and the privatization of the school, that has been put forward by the administration for next semester. These cuts are taking place in a university that is already marked by long lines in administrative buildings and students waiting for years to take classes that are required for graduation because they are often full to capacity. It means a freeze on all promotions, and new hires, as well as a salary reductions for faculty and staff. The tuition will increase but the quality of the services available will be seriously reduced.

Since the occupation, which has been called ocup(arte) the students have participated in street theater, as well as mass bench painting campaigns, puppet making workshops, poetry and music gatherings both inside and outside the university. The riot police has been stationed outside the university, but the students have remained non-violent. They have been assaulted mainly with pepper spray and tear gas, there have been several wounded but a surprisingly small amount of arrests. This is definitely a proud moment in student history for the University of Puerto Rico. The students inside the university have had so much support by their fellow students and other community members that they have had more than enough food, and have subsequently donated to food pantries. Classes have been canceled for the rest of the semester and the strike is indefinite. I will keep you posted as events continue to develop.

For those of you who understand Spanish here is a link of the clown police squad performing outside the university in front of the closed gates. Towards the end of the video Lowell Fiet, Chair of the Interdisciplinary Department of UPR storms the clown police in a dragon mask followed by other dragons chanting "dragones unidos jamas seran vencidos." Its kind of an amazing video.

and here are some interviews with students occupying the university on Saturday

Cuarto Día Huelga UPR 2010 from Nuevo Jacho TV on Vimeo.

QUE VIVAN LOS ESTUDIANTES DE LA UPR!

*Photo Credit: Primera Hora/Andre Kang

RETHINKING RACIAL CAPITALISM – TWO DAY SYMPOSIUM

 

RETHINKING RACIAL CAPITALISM – TWO DAY SYMPOSIUM
Program in American Studies, Department of Social and Cultural Analysis
New York University, 20 Cooper Square, 4th Floor

This symposium is an effort to think through both the past and contemporary history of capitalist development in the United States and beyond. It follows from the recognition, as Cedric Robinson writes, that "the development, organization and expansion of capitalist society pursued essentially racial directions, and so too did social ideology. As a material force then, it could be expected that racialism would inevitably permeate the social structures emergent from capitalism." (Black Marxism, 2) The term "racial capitalism" refuses the idea of a pure capitalism external to, or extrinsic from the racial formation of collectivities and populations. While 'race' may be a key lens through which to consider the relationship between the value-form and the aggregation of socially significant identities in modernity, the term racial capitalism also suggests that capitalism is always more than an economic project. Actually existing capitalism leverages cultural forms, norms and identities: it is lived through the uneven social formations of race, gender, nationality, sexuality and ability, among others. Our goal in this symposium then is to begin to think through relationships between capitalist economy and culture in the United States and beyond, particularly as they develop from histories of racial slavery, colonial expansion, ghettoization, mass incarceration, and overseas warfare, but also as these histories are broadly constituted in the entanglements and intersections of cultural difference.

Thursday April 29, 6-9pm
Introductory Remarks, Andy Cornell

Film Screening and Discussion: "Finally Got the News" and "EP Thompson and CLR James in Conversation"


Friday, April 30th, 9:30am-5pm
9:45-10:00: Opening Remarks, Nikhil Singh

10:00-12:00am: Panel I
David Roediger, Race and the Management of Labor
Alys Weinbaum, Neo-Slavery, Human Reproduction and Biocapitalism
David Kazanjian, Atlantic Speculations
Jennifer Morgan, Comment

2:00-1:30: LUNCH

1:30-3:00pm: Panel II
Betsy Esch, White Rights: What Apartheid South Africa Learned from the US
Penny Von Eschen, Connecting Colonialisms
Michael Ralph, Comment

3:00-5:00pm: Panel III
Marisol LeBron Controlled Access: Mano Dura and the Policing of Space in Puerto Rico, 1993-1997
Stuart Schrader Debt and Credit: Studying Up, Studying Down, and Still Missing Racial Capitalism
Zenia Kish The New 'Scramble for Africa': Food Security, Exploitation, and the Agricultural Land Grab
Comments, Symposium Participants

5:00-7:00pm: RECEPTION


Saturday, May 1, 10am-12pm
10-11:30am: Panel IV
Fred Moten, The Sub-Prime and the Beautiful
Ruthie Gilmore, Life in Hell
Lisa Duggan, Comment

11:30-12: Closing Remarks
Brent Edwards and Nikhil Singh

"Little Freak" Official Video

My colleague and good buddy Elliott Powell sent me the official video for "Little Freak" earlier today.  After watching the video  I think Elliott summed it up perfectly, he said, "what's interesting (or perhaps not) about the video is how absent/forgettable usher is. there are so many shots of women dancing with women (homosocial coreography) and nicki spittin' game, that I actually forgot this was usher's song."

Post Pomo Nuyorican Homo in the News

Check out David Goodman's "Looking Hard at Looking Good" from the New York Times' City Room Blog.  Goodman discusses the protests against Sofia Moldonado's mural and quotes my post and Keysha Whitacker's  post in defense of Maldonado's work.

Check out the comments section.  Talk about classism!

How Do We Make Sense of "Little Freak"?

If you've had your radio tuned to a hip hop station recently I'm sure you've heard Usher's new single "Little Freak" featuring Nicki Minaj.  Minaj, who is openly bisexual, rhymes on the track about "keep[ing] a couple of hos" and seducing a women and bringing her back to  "meet" Usher.

Excuse me lil mama
But you could say I'm on duty
I'm lookin for a cutie
A real big ol' ghetto booty
I really like your kitty cat
and if you let me touch her
I know you're not a bluffer
I'll take you to go see usher
I keep a couple hos
like santa I keep a vixon
Got that dasher, dancer, prancer,
dixon, comet, cupid, donner, blitzen.
I'm hotter than 100 degrees
A lot of bread no sesame seeds
If i'm in yo city
I'm signin them Tig-O-bitties
I'm plotting on how I can take Cassie away from Diddy
The girls want a Minaj yeah they wetter than the rainin
Usher buzz me in
Everybody loves Raymond 

Full disclosure: I really like this song.  Yet, I find myself as a queer women of color and hip hop head trying to make sense of this song and the gender and sexuality performances at play in the song.  

Usher's lyrics tell ladies that if they're "really fucking" with him they better be "little freaks" down to be with other women and have threesomes.  Nothing new there, pretty much par for the course in contemporary hip hop and r&b.  Nicki Minaj's lyrics, however, both play into and complicate the common trope of women engaging in sexual activities with each other for the benefit of a male partner or spectator.  When placed into conversation with Ushers lyrics it would seem like her actions are for his pleasure, but based on Nicki Minaj's lyrics and her rendering of the scenario on its own it's clear that everything she's talking about is for her benefit and enjoyment [and maybe her partner's].  If its more complicated than the easy dismissal of queer female intimacy for male pleasure, the question then becomes, how do we make sense of a female artist enjoying her sexuality and talking about having the "hos" on lock?

Some critics, and feminists cut of a certain cloth, will say that Minaj is trying to gain power and privilege in a male dominated space  (hip hop, and the music industry in general) by acting like a "female chauvinist pig." It's seductive theory, but I've always found that argument to be too facile, slightly racist, and very heterosexist.  That being said, is it useful to think of Minaj as part of a long line of queer women playing with and eroticizing power relations?  I want to say yes but I also want to  acknowledge there there are some problematic things going on as well.   

I'm also interested in how Nicki Minaj's high-femme aesthetics allow her to perform queer female sexuality within hip hop.  While Minaj has definitely provoked a number of homophobic inquiries and comments, for the most part she remains commercially viable and successful.  My hunch is that if Minaj was an AG dyke from the Bronx "Little Freak" might be far more controversial (that is if it even made it to the recording booth in the first place).  How is Minaj putting the prescribed narrow confines of female sexuality within hip hop to work for her?

All that is to say that clearly I have no idea how to make sense of "Little Freak," nor am I sure that we should even be trying to make it "make sense."  But I'd love to know what other folks have to say about the song, Nicki Minaj, and female sexuality and gender performances in hip hop.

"Latin Female Artist Draws Criticism for Times Square Mural"

Check out Keysha Whitaker's  post about the controversy surrounding Sofia Moldanado's Times Square Mural over at Single Women Rule. Whitaker astutely asks,

"Is it possible that we suffer a secret shame induced by our short-skirt, fake-nail, breasts coming out with the belly fat hanging over, Doobie-rocking gals? By the hood chicks? The ghetto-style supergirls, proud to be themselves and will punch you in the eye if you suggest otherwise? I would say yes. And when that shame is magnified, by say 92 feet, our first reaction is to cry, “Take it down! I can’t stand to see.” Or maybe, “Take it down so the good white folks don’t see our shame.”

Check out the rest of Whitaker's awesome post here

*Mural by Sofia Maldonado . Photos by Alex Mateo, www.mateophoto.com

Sofia Maldonado's Times Square Mural Under Fire

Raquel Rivera sent me this video about the current controversy surrounding Sofia Maldonado's new mural on 42nd Street.  The Times Square Alliance is now dealing with calls to take the mural down because it "degrades" women of color by depicting them as "ghetto."  

The most striking thing to me about the video and article was the conflation of working-class/poor women of color with "prostitutes."  That people were able to argue that these women with their "long finger nails" were sex workers of Times Square's heyday was really complicated and problematic.  It speaks volumes about the degree to which Times Square is not a space for "certain types" of  New Yorkers, but rather a sanitized Disney version of New York City.  In that respect I appreciate Maldonado's claim that her mural makes visitors confront an image of NYC that they much rather ignore.  Maldonado said this about the mural:

“The mural illustrates strong New York City women as a tribute to the Caribbean experience in America. Inspired by my heritage, it illustrates a female aesthetic that is not usually represented in media or fashion advertising in Times Square. It recognizes the beauty of underground cultures such as reggaeton, hip-hop and dancehall and incorporates trends such as nail art and Latina fashion. Green organic forms represent the imaginary land that third generation immigrants create in their minds about their countries of origin. I represent the characters and happenings that tourists usually do not see in Times Square, even though it could be a frequent scene in the other boroughs of New York City. These women are strong single mothers or wives who enjoy life and have overcome tough experiences living in and immigrating from a third world country.”

Me personally, I rather look at this than a mural of a bunch of Latinas in business suits holding cell phones and briefcases.  

*image from Times Square Arts

Pursuit Of Happiness

An alternate version of KiD CuDi's "Pursuit of Happiness" featuring MGMT and Ratatat.  To see the original version click here