WEEK IN REVIEW, APRIL 27th 2007

A story on hip hop in a major magazine, no big deal, right? Except when the magazine is National Geographic. The article is Hip Hop Planet.

Not since the advent of swing jazz in the 1930s has an American music exploded across the world with such overwhelming force. Not since the Beatles invaded America and Elvis packed up his blue suede shoes has a music crashed against the world with such outrage. This defiant culture of song, graffiti, and dance, collectively known as hip-hop, has ripped popular music from its moorings in every society it has permeated. In Brazil, rap rivals samba in popularity. In China, teens spray-paint graffiti on the Great Wall. In France it has been blamed, unfairly, for the worst civil unrest that country has seen in decades.

Its structure is unique, complex, and at times bewildering. Whatever music it eats becomes part of its vocabulary, and as the commercial world falls into place behind it to gobble up the powerful slop in its wake, it metamorphoses into the Next Big Thing. It is a music that defies definition, yet defines our collective societies in immeasurable ways. To many of my generation, despite all attempts to exploit it, belittle it, numb it, classify it, and analyze it, hip-hop remains an enigma, a clarion call, a cry of "I am" from the youth of the world. We'd be wise, I suppose, to start paying attention.

(thanks scoutbanana for reminding me about this in your diary)


POLITICS

The Democratic Party debate on Thursday had a Historic component South Carolina State University is the nations first Historically Black College to hold a presidential debate. Kudos to SCSU.

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The CBC is still living on a different -planet- universe, I can't believe they are still on this thing. CBC is split over quitting debate on Fox

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) are pushing their leadership to withdraw from an agreement with Fox News to sponsor a Democratic presidential primary debate on Sept. 23 in Detroit.
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The CBC is sponsoring the debate with Fox through the Congressional Black Caucus Political Education and Leadership Institute, of which Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) is chairman. Though the CBC Institute is not affiliated formally with the black caucus, any decisions made by a majority of caucus members would have a significant influence on the institute’s board of directors, lawmakers said.

Four African-American lawmakers sit on the institute’s 14-member board, according to its website. They are Reps. Carolyn Kilpatrick (D-Mich.), Mel Watt (D-N.C.), House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) and Thompson.

One lawmaker who declined to speak on the record about the caucus’s internal decision-making said members could vote to overrule Thompson’s preference for going forward with the debate.

Just as a side note I am going over Bennie Thompson voting record, if I start to notice a lot more "out of touch issues" I think we should consider running someone against him in the Democratic Primary.
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Corporations targeted for doing business with the Sudanese government, which faces sanctions for its complicity in the Darfur genocide, gave more than $580,000 to congressional candidates during the 2006 cycle through PACS. The hill magazine is trying to make more of this then it really is, but it underscores the need for Democrats to raise more moeny from the roots ansd not corporations.

Sudan-linked PACs sent contributions to 13 House members who backed a plan by Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) requiring public companies to reveal the nature of their ties to Sudan and barring them from federal contracts until the ties were severed. Eight of those House members, all Democrats, received contributions from Sudan-linked PACs within two weeks of signing on to Lee’s bill last year.

The timing and beneficiaries of the PAC contributions reveal the discordant reality of congressional fundraising, in which most lawmakers rely on professional fundraisers or campaign aides to field donations, often knowing little about the money’s origins. Several congressional offices were surprised when informed that five PACs of Sudan-linked multinational corporations were active in last year’s midterms, although at least two of the companies have since divested themselves from the regime of Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir.

“This is something we should all be aware of,” said a senior aide to one of the lawmakers who unknowingly received contributions. “Any information we can get about companies and PACs that have an interest in Sudan would be good.”

Another aide to a lawmaker receiving one of the contributions said his boss had no idea that the PAC donation was linked to a corporation operating in Sudan but is relieved that the business has since divested. The office plans to secure a list of corporations still linked to the Bashir government to check future contributions.

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Calif. Rep. Juanita Millender-McDonald, 68, dies April 22 2007

Rep. Juanita Millender-McDonald, a California Democrat whose House district encompassed Compton, Carson, much of Long Beach and parts of south Los Angeles, died of cancer Sunday. She was 68 and had served in Congress since 1996.

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Senator Barack Obama was in NYC to make a big play for the Rev. Al Sharpton's endorsement - and the Black vote in general - saying he's the only Democrat in the race who fought for African-American issues before running for President.

"These aren't issues that are new to me. These aren't issues that I just decided to start talking about as a presidential candidate," Obama told a gathering of Sharpton's National Action Network in a midtown hotel. "They are the causes of my life."

Obama said he agreed with Sharpton that "I shouldn't get the support of the African-American community simply because I am African-American."

Instead, he said he deserves it because he has the best track record.

Obama talked of his work as a community organizer and touted his successes in the Illinois legislature, from fighting "price-gouging" insurance companies and racial profiling to getting health insurance for kids and passing the nation's first law requiring videotaped interrogations in capital cases.

"If there is somebody who has been more on the forefront on behalf of the issues that you care about, and has had more concrete accomplishments on behalf of the things you are concerned about, then I'm happy to see you endorse them," Obama told Sharpton, laying down a gauntlet.

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CULTURE
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This a facinating if hard to describe story by John Ridley -of- for the Boston Globe titled The Lessons of Fat Albert It states Hey, hey, hey! A TV cartoon is going to save black America. That was the message of Bill Cosby's doctoral thesis 30 years ago at UMass, a paper that lies at the root of Cosby's rants today.

In May 1977, an unlikely doctoral candidate at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst – the man who would a few years later become America’s Black Dad – walked across a stage with his familiar smile, shook the hand of chancellor Randolph Bromery, and collected his diploma. And with that, Bill Cosby walked out into the world with a 267-page dissertation that posited an interesting, bold, and ultimately (slightly) controversial way forward for urban education.

Of late, the Cos has been a lightning rod for controversy as much as a source of levity. His views on the failures of some blacks are deemed so extreme that a few in our community have all but excommunicated him from the race. What happened, some wonder, to that rubbery-faced comedian who frequented The Tonight Show? What became of the characters that he transmogrified into the “angry black man” who rarely viewed the world except from behind smoked glasses? What transpired between Cosby then and Cosby now?

Or did anything? If human nature is a constant, did Bill Cosby simply become more of what he always was?

If there is a source code to the man, it’s likely to be found in words, ideas, and ideals he himself had written 30 years ago in that dissertation. And beyond the illumination it offers to those who believe they know Cosby, the operative question going in is: Does the plan he expressed for black America then hold up to scrutiny now?

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D.C. Picked As Top City For Blacks

The magazine asked visitors to its Web site to rank their satisfaction with a long list of cities, and then applied economic, census and labor data to come up with its annual analysis of the 10 best metropolitan areas for African Americans. Although Washington is regularly near the top of the list, this is the first year it has come in first. Atlanta and Houston led the list in the previous two years.

Among the statistics cited: Twenty percent of the area's black households earn annual incomes above $100,000 -- the highest on the list. Washington has the lowest level of black unemployment at 6.2 percent. And among the metropolitan areas analyzed, it had the highest concentration of black-owned businesses -- 48.4 per 1,000 residents.

The magazine pointed to some paradoxes, particularly in the District: The city's crime rates have fallen, but its improved image has led to gentrification that prices out some middle-class African Americans. The area's black population also has a higher level of education than the other cities, but the thing that most survey respondents criticized about the city was its schools.

The Washington area includes suburban counties as well, and the magazine featured Hank Williams of Beltsville, a senior regional sales manager, and his wife, Vicki, a chief staff officer for multicultural affairs. The couple bring home more than $400,000 a year.

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Recommendation to the Recording and Broadcast Industries:
A Statement by Russell Simmons and Dr. Benjamin Chavis on behalf of the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network. Russell Simmons announces changes in what hip hop radio will broadcast but not in what it will made and sold. Some people think Mr. Simmons is being responsiable, some thinks it's all a marketing ploy? You decide.
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INTERNATIONAL
Nigeria's troubled presidential election has lead to many headlines like this. Africa’s Crisis of Democracy

Nigeria’s troubled presidential election, which came under fire on Sunday from local and international observers and was rejected by two leading opposition candidates, represents a significant setback for democracy in sub-Saharan Africa at a time when voters in countries across the continent are becoming more disillusioned with the way democracy is practiced.

Analysts said the Nigerian vote was the starkest example of a worrying trend — even as African countries hold more elections, many of their citizens are steadily losing confidence in their democracies.

“The picture in Africa is really mixed,” said Peter Lewis, director of the African Studies program at Johns Hopkins University, who was among the researchers who conducted the Afrobarometer survey of African public opinion. “Some countries have vibrant political scenes, while other countries go through the routine of elections but governance doesn’t seem to improve.”

African voters are losing patience with faulty elections that often exclude popular candidates and are marred by serious irregularities, according to the Afrobarometer survey, published last year, which sampled voters in 18 countries, based on interviews with 1,200 to 2,400 people per country. While 6 in 10 Africans said democracy was preferable to any other form of government, according to the survey, satisfaction with democracy dipped to 45 percent from 58 percent in 2001.

The threat to Nigeria’s fragile democracy was underscored on Sunday by government officials, who dropped dark hints warning of a possible coup attempt, and said election critics were welcoming a military putsch by inciting violence.

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In France's troubled suburbs, voters motivated by chance to stop unpopular Sarkozy

France's housing projects have suffered riots, joblessness and a presidential campaigner who called troublemakers from their neighborhoods "scum." Sunday was their turn to fight back — through the ballot box.

Many blacks and Muslims from troubled neighborhoods voted for the first time Sunday, saying they were motivated by one desire: to stop law-and-order, tough-on-immigrants Nicolas Sarkozy from getting into power.

Conservative Sarkozy is the front-runner after Sunday's first-round vote, is deeply unpopular in housing projects populated largely by second- and third-generation immigrants, many of them Muslims from former colonies in North Africa, who live mired in poverty and joblessness.

Voters punished him in several poor districts, favoring Socialist Segolene Royal. His campaign has been haunted by the word "scum," the term he used to describe young delinquents days before the riots. Some youths took Sarkozy's comment as a declaration of war.

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HEALTH
Ads urge minorities to donate organs. About two-thirds of the nearly 20,000 Californians on transplant waiting lists belong to one of three minority groups.

Nearly a year after Kaiser Permanente's troubled kidney-transplant program in Northern California was shut down by state regulators, the HMO is funding a media campaign encouraging minorities to register for organ donation in the event of their deaths.

Since the program closed in May, all of Kaiser's Northern California transplant patients have been formally transferred to other transplant centers and have taken their rightful place on official waiting lists for the organs they need, state health officials said Monday.

Only 174 of the roughly 2,300 patients who were transferred have received new kidneys since the program ended, said the California Department of Managed Health Care, which regulates health-maintenance organizations. That's because of an overall lack of donated organs, said Cindy Ehnes, director of the HMO watchdog agency.

At a news conference Monday, Ehnes and other officials highlighted the new $3 million media campaign encouraging African-Americans, Asian-Americans and Latinos to register for organ donation in the event of their deaths.

The campaign, which began April 1, is being financed by Kaiser Permanente, which paid a state fine of $2 million and donated $3 million to sponsor Donate Life California to make amends for its handling of the program.

The kidney transplant program was shut down after reports of bureaucratic bungling and delays in care that endangered patients' lives. Patients were transferred