Given the relatively dominant position that
hip hop occupies atop the dizzying
heights of the global entertainment-industrial-complex, it can be easy to lose sight of its humble
beginnings and its enduring role as a source
of revolutionary politics.
I got a letter from the government
The other day
I opened and read it
It said they were suckers
I know this for a fact, you don't like how
I act. You claim I'm sellin' crack
But you be doin' that I'd rather say "see ya"
Cause I would never be ya
Be a officer? You wicked overseer!
Call me Little Bobby Hutton, cause I'm first
to push the button
Rappers don't be saying nothing to the system,
we say fuck 'em
That's why we say “fuck”
That's why we make hip-hop
We don't care about your badge, baton or Glock
Your mind's in shock fucking cop stop
Remember that time passes and never stops
in the clock
Though it didn’t really break out until
the late 70s and early 80s, hip hop’s genesis
story began in the summer of 1973, in the
South Bronx.
At the time, New York City’s northernmost
borough was by all appearances a war zone.
Decades of neglect, ill-thought out public
infrastructure projects, white flight,
racist redlining policies and urban decay
had reduced entire city blocks to rubble.
Rampant poverty and unemployment had created
a vacuum that was filled by street gangs,
with hundreds of small crews constantly battling
over territory, and literally setting large
sections of the city on fire.
Out of this simmering cauldron of social and
economic tension, hip hop emerged as a vibrant
DIY subculture, spread through house parties
thrown by working-class Black and Puerto Rican
youth who were alienated and excluded from
New York’s decadent disco scene.
A catalyzing moment of the emerging hip hop
scene was the formation of the
Universal Zulu Nation, on November 12th, 1973.
...cars continue to change, nothing
stays the same, there were always renegades
Like Chief Sitting Bull, Tom Payne
Like Martin Luther King, Malcom X.
They were renegades of the atomic age
Founded by members of a gang called the Black
Spades, the Zulu Nation built hip hop into
a tool for community organizing – bringing
members of different gangs together, settling
street-level beefs and introducing codes of
conduct, all while imbuing the scene with
formative political values of street-based
community solidarity
and pan-Afrikan consciousness.
The Zulu Nation is credited with constructing
the foundation of hip hop culture, forged
around five core elements:
Mcs, Djs, Graffiti,
B-boys & B-girls,
and the fifth element: street knowledge.
But then I got wise and I begin to listen
To the whack teachers and the wick-wack system
My mother put me in Weusi Shule
Which means
black school in Swahili
And there is where I learned black history
And how to be the best that I can be
We don't talk to police, we don't
make a peacebond
We don't trust in the judicial system,
we shoot guns
We rely on the streets we do
battle in the hood
I was born in the G Code, embedded in my blood
In the decades that have followed, hip hop
has been transformed into a global phenomenon,
and a multi-billion dollar industry in its
own right.
But the five foundational elements have survived
and adapted over the years, providing a sustained
authenticity that has allowed radical artists
to continue to innovate, carve out space,
and even fight back against the industry’s
overall creep towards commercialization.
Over the next thirty minutes, we will explore
hip hop as a potent and persistent source
of revolutionary culture rooted in the oppression,
exploitation and criminalization faced by
youth and particularly poor youth of colour.
Along the way we’ll speak with a number
of grassroots artists who are continuing to
spit truth to power, all while organizing
their communities, tearing up stages and making
a whole lot of trouble.
Hip hop stands for “His or Her Infinite
Power Helping Oppressed People”.
That comes from the temple of hip hop.
Okay so that's from you know OGs like KRS-One
and other people getting together and figuring
how to effectively uplift the more positive
elements of the culture that are based in
community liberation and empowerment.
Hip hop to me is a way to be able to spread
a message of resistance to a large audience.
Hip hop to me is a way to share my story before
anybody else has a chance to twist up my words
or to twist up my experiences.
It is resistance and creativity, that's what
hip hop is to me.
Hip hop initially rose up speaking to injustices,
eventually it rose into stories speaking to
the issues of the oppressed.
The early days was very humble, there wasn't
a lot of money there wasn't a big budget.
It was kind of put together by people with
whatever they had.
People had come up with this medium of going
through the rubble and putting graffiti up
and break-dancing and MCing and DJing and
you know it was a way of resistance.
The same youth that were throwing bricks and
rocks and pushing back the police, they had
something to say.
For me, hip-hop is a tool for transformation
A culture that has some life principles
And some these are unity, love and respect
But specially, having fun, to fill the need
to defend happiness
There's a quote by DJ Grandmaster Caz
It says that hip-hop did not invent anything
The hip-hop re-invented everything
We peeped the allegory at the campfire listening
as elders shared the stories of the
vampire's victims.
How do I not make the same mistake? Wisdom.
Generate the vision, obliterate the prison.
Freedom's all I wanted but I couldn't
afford it,
my baby's got the spirit, just brilliant and gorgeous.
Oh yes, the self defence endorsement, always
quiet when she about to load it.
Hold it, esa morra's bout to load it.
Oh shit, and the whole barrio support it.
Seen a whole lotta people want friends.
Seen a whole lotta people want Benz.
Seen a whole lotta people can't get what they
want so a whole lotta people pop zans.
They say that means don't justify the ends.
Do the ends ever justify the means?
And would we end all of this hardship if we
just put rich
bigots in the guillotine?
Cuz I can't watch these kids die and then
lie like I give a fuck and not do a fuckin
thing but lie down like I've given up.
So get a gun if you ready, we grippin' on
the machete for anybody involved we got a
problem forgetting.
Thinking for yourself is an expensive luxury
For them it's not convenient that you leave
the herd
They win more if they keep us ignorant
Keep the people poor,
more power for the state
Fuck the parliament, fuck the cops and fuck
the robber baron bosses and fuck their offices,
predominant model of economics and elephant
cock in their ballot boxes.
It came from the Bronx in the 70s in New York
City and now it's world wide.
Hip hop is like folk music, it's very much
a historical record.
These are stories that are telling of the
American empire you know, looking from within.
And I think that's why it's so compelling
and that's why it resonated people may not
know it but I think the reason that hip hop
spread is because they're stories that everyone
needs to hear and is interested in hearing.
Hip-hop is a universal culture
That starts from a context of marginalization
poverty and criminalization
That's a very specific context from 1970's
New York City
That starts from a context of marginalization
poverty and criminalization
That's a very specific context from 1970's
New York City
But that's similar to other problems in other
places
Like exploitation, lack of housing, the lack
of opportunities
It came from people who had been displaced
historically from the continent of Africa
to North America, to Central America, South
America and the Caribbean.
It also came from ethnicities that had been
mixed in the process of the colonial subjugation
and conquest of the so called new world.
That was significant in drawing me in because
we learned that we had a shared story.
We had a story not only of oppression but
of resistance.
We can measure history in terms of what we
know about our experience here in the United
States as descendants of people who were stolen
from the continent of Africa.
But we also have to be able to measure our
existence and our influence on what happened
before that, what's currently happening in
the African diaspora and on the African continent
and struggles for liberation and self determination.
The driving force is just the songs of my
ancestors the songs that they sung to be able
to speak to resistance to speak to fighting,
to speak towards challenging and removing
any and all people that wish to destroy our
people.
Some of the major influences that I've had
musically have been folks who share their
narratives in a really honest way in a really
vulnerable way especially when they go to
represent their anger and their rage with
the way that these systems of oppression are
set up around us.
I recognize first and foremost that I am a
guest in the house of hip hop.
I don't take someone else's experience and
try to whiteify it.
I see things through the lens of white people
and so I feel like it's my job to criticize
white culture in the way that a white dude
can.
So I use my music to confront the shittiest
parts about white culture: imperialism and
colonialism and capitalism and authoritarianism.
Although it has since spread all around the
globe, hip hop first emerged from, and has
always remained rooted in the lived experiences
of Black and LatinX youth hustling to survive
in America’s inner-city ghettos.
And the so-called “Golden Age” of hip
hop, spanning the late 80s to the mid 90s,
were specially turbulent times.
The flooding of poor, racialized neighbourhoods
with crack in the mid-80s provided the spark
for a rapid surge in street violence, waged
between increasingly well-funded and heavily
militarized gangs.
This, in turn, provided the justification
for the ramping up of Ronald Reagan’s
War on Drugs, a policy framework for the wholesale
criminalization of Black and brown communities
that opened the door to enhanced police repression
and mass incarceration, twin pillars of US
domestic counter insurgency strategy that
continue to this day.
In 1986 a group formed in South Central, LA,
that fed off this raw sense of desperation
and rage, forever changing the face of hip
hop in the process.
That group was NWA, the first successful pioneers
of a new subgenre of hip hop: gangsta rap.
These days, it’s hard to appreciate the
shock and terror that NWA provoked in America’s
white supremacist power structure, and specially
its front-line troops, the cops.
Rap music promotes by its very language and
by its very actions, promotes violence against
authority and consequently violence against
law enforcement.
Songs like ‘Fuck Tha Police’ became rallying
cries for a generation of Black and Brown
youth whose rage would soon find popular expression
in the LA Riots of ‘92.
Fuck the police comin' straight from the underground.
A young nigga got it bad cause I'm brown.
And not the other color, so police think,
they have the authority to kill a minority.
But while NWA provided a megaphone to Black
youth’s widespread hatred towards the police,
they also injected mainstream hip hop with
a violent strain of misogyny and homophobia
that continues to fester to this day.
They also provided the emerging hip hop industry,
largely controlled by the white capitalist
power structure that they were rebelling against,
an opportunity to make millions of dollars
selling records that glorify Black and Brown
youth killing one another over nothing.
A lot of the brothers that were my same age
man, they were involved in the type of shit
where they were killing each other.
You know, they were killing cats that they
grew up with, that they went to church with,
that they went to school with, that they played
ball with, trying to be part of the whole
gang set culture you know what I mean?
Or they were trying to get their money selling that dope and like that's cool, whatever...
But really?
I was living during the crack era and so the
criminalization that began this whole mass
incarceration that we have now, this new Jim
Crow, it was heavily going on during that
crack era all the way through the 90s.
And so of course the theme in the music was
about either fighting against this new drug
that was dropped on to our community or else
using it as a means to get out of the community.
And so it's always been a part of the music
from the very early days.
Let's use the phrase "The Personal is Political"
as a starting point
Because even if we think our actions are personal
They are going to affect our family and our
close friends
Because even if we think our actions are personal
They are going to affect our family and our
close friends
And in the community and the society that
we are part of
There's a difference between telling your
story and glorifying some of the things that
you have to do to get by.
So I appreciate you know, when artists can
yeah maybe talk about the gang-banging past,
talk about the past where you had to sell
some shit, you had to do some shit that you're
glad you don't have to do anymore.
Government plans, fencin' us in,
life in the pen'
For sellin' shit you put in our hood, knowin'
I'll do it
We desperate, starvin' and dyin' to eat, die
in the street
For a fraction of what I get now for a soundin'
fly on the beat
I feel the weight of not glorifying some of
the things I've done in my past because I
see it happening with other artist with their
songs.
Cold gang with the cocaine.
The more money make more rain.
Pourin' up a pint while I'm baggin' propane.
Point blank range give a nigga nose rings.
Skip to my lou with a pack in the cat.
Jiffy, Lube where the bricks where they at?
In hip hop they might call it, bitches, hos,
guns, money, sex, murder and all that but
if you look at the army, navy, airforce, marines,
and the US government, that's all it is.
It's a reflection of the culture
that we live in.
It's the values that we've inherited as part
of the conditions of survival in this country,
to prioritize the things that are going to
get us pussy, get us respect and get us paid
and get another motha fucker to recognize
us you know, and that is some bullshit.
It's been really motivational to me when artists
cast aside all of the parameters of respectability
politics and are willing to speak their truths
without coddling the feelings of
those who are oppressing us.
That's the job of my music, to challenge everything
that has been imposed upon us to say no and
go drastic with it.
Again like, I don't follow the format, the
status quo of hip hop.
I'm also still unlearning a lot because it
wasn't like I grew up in a Native community,
I grew up in a city, because of the fact that
people that came generations before me were
removed from their homelands and placed into
cities.
What you won't find me doing in my music,
lyrically, you won't find me killing niggas,
you won't find me on some exploitative, downgrading
shit about women, you won't find me talking
about killing faggots and faggot this and
faggot that.
There's lots of people saying fucked up shit
in the world of hip hop,
to me I can't have that.
You know I'm not going to throw a show where
I book those guys or I can't do collabos with
them, I can't work with them, I'm not going
to taint the work that I'm doing with this
hate right?
I try to promote the kind of hip hop that
I like to see, I work with people that are
doing the kind of hip hop that I like to see.
No matter what the content
there's a political context from where it
comes from
Becuase there's a need to reclaim our history
And even though it may not seem like "real"
activism
There is an intention to survive a reality
of violence
I feel like it's extremely important that
you are responsible and disciplined and mature
enough to not abuse that platform.
To be predatorial, to escape any accountability
for patriarchal tendencies.
I learned early that I had to be three times
better than the guys to even remotely get
even recognized and it made me already come
out swinging and I never stopped swinging
because I already recognized that I had a
disadvantage or I was already seeing patriarchy
and sexism.
Whenever I do a show and I'm the only woman
on the lineup, we have to call it out, we
have to address the fact that I'm not the
only woman there because I'm the only woman
with something worth saying with something
worth listening to, I'm the only woman there
because we don't listen enough to the women
around us and we don't give up the mic, men
don't give up the mic enough.
I put my face in a book ‘cause my people
are profiled
erased from the books and my people are
told lies
Sky’s the limit? Go fly! Cali green? We go high
I mean back in ‘05, already knew I'd grow wise
Queen and Master of the chaos I inhabit
Sometimes a tyrant, sometimes outlaw
The best battle, is with myself
I'm self government, my flag is anarchist
When I wake up, no makeup, half naked, I feel
like I’m the shit
Pardon my language, but hang ups do not define
the kid
No, I’m not flawless, I’m scarred up and
I’m fine with it
My body art a laundry list of all of life’s
unkindnesses
A lot has changed in the 45 years since hip
hop’s founding.
For one thing, many of the iconic inner-city
neighbourhoods where hip hop first flourished
have been redeveloped, their former communities
scattered to the winds of gentrification.
Far from the dilapidated pressure cookers
of revolt and subversive urban decay that
they were in the 70s, these neighbourhoods
have become homogeneous sites of high-rise
condos, hipster indie venues and Starbucks
franchises.
Which is not to say that this process is a
done deal... and even less so that the social
contradictions that birthed hip hop have disappeared.
The South Bronx is still a largely working-class
area plagued by racist police violence, and
there is tons of vibrant hip hop coming out
of America’s traditional urban centers,
from Baltimore to Oakland.
Bam!
The target of poverty by the white devil
Because I wasn't testing at my reading level
I was testing any of these busters
Yo, where you from? Pare?!
Lola’s like, “Bakit ka nag tatambay dun
sa calle parate?!”
But as urban demographics have shifted, so
too has hip hop’s centre of gravity.
In the United States, this shift has been
most notable with the rise of Southern Rap,
beginning in the early 2000’s, and the emergence
of Atlanta as a new hip hop epicentre.
Similarly, as it has spread to countries all
around the world, hip hop has been transformed
and enriched by countless local culture and
traditions, each of which has added their
own mark, while generally honouring the spirit
of youthful defiance and resistance to authority
that’s been so key to hip hop’s global
appeal.
Hip hop culture is an expression of oppressed
people's reality.
Hip hop is so global now that literally every
neighbourhood, every community is representing.
I see people doing hip hop in Palestine.
Native artists are just really standing up
globally and representing and telling a story
that really needs to be heard and it reminds
me of the early days of hip hop.
It's not like packaged and pretty and fake.
Just raw truth and raw facts so big ups to
all my native comrades out there holdin' it
down with hip hop.
We never even knew what it was like to be
poor until money was shown to us in the first
place, we didn't know what poverty was and
so we're always trying to catch up to something
that really we don't belong to, that in fact,
our culture is at odds with, our traditions
are at odds with.
Let's remember that a lot of art is elitist
That it sometimes comes and it's valued in
certain places
But hip-hop allows that from from the streets
from the ghettoes, from marginality
These voices can be created
I feel like music is, specially important
in sharing political ideals with youth, taking
care of our people, to maintaining our identities.
So it's absolutely like, foundational.
What is black?
Black is a response to white supremacist categorization
of human beings.
Something that doesn't even begin to encompass
the vastness of history and cultural reality.
When I'm in Zimbabwe as an 'ambassador' if
you will for hip hop, I encounter people that
are Shona, people that are into balée, people
that are of these different cultural realities
doing hip hop.
South Africa is big right now with the resistance
music.
Y'all we've been colonized, it's not a lie,
working class let's start to organize.
I believe the masses will arrive, revolution
will rise and decolonize.
It is time to mobilize...
For people all over the continent to have
taken hip hop, not in an exploitative, oppressive
way, but in an empowering way.
Taken Black culture born in the united states,
created as a result of the separation from
the continent of Africa, taking that back,
reinterpreting it and it being a bridge for
Black people all over the fucking planet Earth,
that's a powerful thing man!
Anti-establishment feelings that I have, it
could have been harnessed by a million things
but it was harnessed by good, radical, politics,
through music.
Music has an opportunity to word things that
are hard to say, music has a way of cutting
through to the heart of something it has the
power to give voice to a situation or to paint
a picture about a situation in a way that
writing doesn't.
Every time that you're doing a show you have
to carry that message regardless if it's two
people, or two hundred people or a thousand
people in the crowd.
I think smaller shows become more intimate
so you have the ability to be able to interact
with people there and also to be able to not
just do the show and not just be the entertainment
but also to have the conversation with people
and talk more about resistance afterwards.
I want to connect with people that are doing
real work and doing radical work and doing
revolutionary work and I want to bolster their
movements and I want to use music
to be involved in that.
That's what I love most you know, when I get
to play at an actual site of resistance.
It's like taking it back to the roots of what
the music was created for.
The free shows we do for the youth, the ghetto
youth, are always the most powerful shows
because they don't have the constraints that
the commercial shows do.
The truth rests upon the lies, our people
been traumatized, so donald trump ain't no
different than barrack obama in our eyes.
They are part of the system that wishes we
was gone and history talks with forked tongues
so the misery goes on in this illegally occupied
territory of death.
A number of shows that I ended up doing outdoors
at standing rock had the same kind of energy.
It was powerful in what that was coming together
and the spirit of resistance and then we've
had a number of shows with just a bunch of
kids on the res, the same kind of energy.
We the survivors, we the up-risers, yea we
them savages banging on the colonizers, yea
we them savages banging on the colonizers
we are finally facing the end of the cycle
an end of the terror fueled by the bible...
join the struggle, or live in denial.
There's a bunch of indigenous communities
that are rapping in their language
There's mural art that's intersecting with
graffiti
and the old scriptures
Now we see a meeting between past cultures
And newer cultures
But what hip-hop allows
It's that you can incorporate into the current
reality
Something that was being lost
There's a difference when I'm on a reservation
or when I'm at like an inner-city program,
doing a show for kids who might also be undocumented
you know, doing a show for young women that
have never been on stage but would like to
be or have poems that they wanna write or
whatever.
It's so much more of a reciprocal occasion
when it's folks who share identities.
It's like one of the last things that we have
is our ability to speak out.
Even if we feel powerlessness, hip hop makes
us feel powerful.
Island woman rise, walang, makakatigil
Brown, brown woman, rise, alamin ang yung
ugat
They got nothin’ on us
Nothin’ on us
Nothin’ on us
Nothin’ on us
Within revolutionary circles, often times
we can get bogged down in abstract theoretical
debates, and lost in what can seem like an
endless cycle of protests,
actions and organizing campaigns.
And while these engagements are essential
and should not be dismissed, it’s also important
to keep in mind the vital role that culture
plays in building effective movements of resistance.
At the end of the day, capitalism and the
state are not just material forces, but ideological
systems as well.
This is something our enemies are well aware
of, which is why they devote so much time,
energy and resources towards creating propaganda
– much of it masquerading as entertainment.
From the countless high budget TV shows and
Hollywood movies glorifying police and the
military, to music promoting frivolous consumerism,
a look at the dominant forms of cultural production
can tell you a lot about the values being
promoted by the powers-that-be.
But thankfully, we have the ability to fight
back, by producing and promoting subversive
countercultures that promote our own values
of solidarity, mutual aid, direct action,
and antagonism to capitalism and the forces
of the state.
Let’s not squander the opportunity.
Here we go yo, here we go yo, so what's the,
what's the, what's the scenario?
Here we go yo, here we go yo, so what's the,
what's the, what's the scenario?
Just don't sell the fuck out man, it's simple,
just stay true to what the fuck you represent
and don't change up
Haters are always going to exist
But the need to do it
It's what's going to motivate us
Be ready to do it against all odds, be ready
to do it by yourself, but also be very intentional
about building community with others.
Don't be afraid to link a network with people
that aren't in your neighbourhood, you gotta
connect and you can't just preach to yourself,
you can't just talk to yourself you have to
connect with people.
If you want to make it, yeah you can
upload something to soundcloud, but to get
the full experience of the art and for people
to hear you, to get exposure, you're gonna
have to go out there and perform, and you're
gonna have to go out there and link up with
other people.
Backpack smacker, testament dropper, Amaru
respecter, been to the hotter, kin to Assata,
studied it all, past to the present, resurrected
You have a duty if you're making radical music,
you need to help build the foundation in your
community for radical music to come in.
So you have to help book the shows, you have
to help find the spaces, you have to get the
sound systems, you have to help facilitate
that.
You're not just making music and radical music,
you need to help with fostering
radical music community.
The term is 'many hands make light work',
we can get more done together than we can
by ourselves in certain formats.
And then sometimes, less is more, sometimes
you have to cut dead weight and you have to
step away from people who don't have the same
priorities as you and you have to be okay
with doing that.
You also have to be very observant of your
reality
Stop and look at what's going on
Listen and open your ears to hear
what's going on around you
Becuase using words comes with responsibility
And if you are going to use them you have
to be honest
as to who you are and where you are coming
from
And it adds value to your community
nobody's gonna do this for you you know, look
at the D.I.Y ethic of punk music, it needs
to be applied to hip hop more, and we need
to do for ourselves, and we need to build
up our own spaces, our own community, our
own networks and we need to share that amongst
each other and everybody can rise together.
The goal of my making music isn't to explain
myself to someone who
doesn't understand my background.
The goal is to connect with the folks who
share that same path and who find strength
and healing in hearing their story being told,
who may otherwise feel very much alone.
It's cold because I can probably only speak
to indigenous MCs based on an indigenous message
because for me I understand that talking about
resistance, talking about decolonization,
talking about revolution, whatever it may
be, the average person does not like to hear
the indigenous perspective, the true indigenous
perspective of resistance because it challenges
even their existence.
Don't be afraid, don't cut yourself off, and
don't listen to people who say
“this hasn't been done so you can't do it” or
“it's weird and it's different”.
Some of our best artists were doing something
that nobody else was doing before and it's
okay, it's alright to not rap in the same
cadence that everyone else is rhyming in,
it's okay to mix your music with other genres,
it's okay to be different and to not sound
like everyone else.
Sometimes people aren't going to want to fuck
with you you know, but stick with it because
eventually what happens is, after years and
years, you get better about what you're doing,
you get clearer about what you're doing, you
learn from your mistakes, and when that is
combined with a sustained sense of joy in
relation to why and how you work, you're unstoppable.
If you're going to try and build a radical
current towards indigenous resistance, you
can't waiver, you can't switch up based on
the fact that you're not getting support.
You're not going to get support.
There's going to be so much stacked up against
you, you have to be uncompromising because
everything that you represent is problematic
to the average person, even those people that
suggest they support indigenous resistance.
Stop inviting women to just the
'all-women events'.
Don't be embarrased when we grab the microphone
and rock it in your circle full of guys.
When people start to look at diversity in
that way of inviting people to the table so
that we all can break bread and do this thing
that we call our culture, it'll change.
And if they don't open the door, break the
fucking door down, kick it open, fuck asking.
These record labels slang our tapes like dope
You can be next in line and signed and still
be writing rhymes and broke
You would rather have a Lexus or justice,
a dream or some substance?
A Beamer, a necklace, or freedom?
Still a nigga like me don't playa-hate,
I just stay awake,
this real hip-hop and it don't stop
'Til we get the po-po off the block, they
call it
hip hop, hip hop, hip hop, hip
It's bigger than hip hop, hip hop, hip hop
As we continue to resist the resurgence of
far-right reaction, further entrenched inequality,
gentrification and an increasingly repressive
state apparatus, it is very important that
anarchists build and strengthen connections
with those outside our immediate circles.
Part of this requires that we actively spread
our politics through popular subcultures like
hip hop, that resonate with millions of people
who share our hatred of police and capitalist
society, but won’t necessarily be inclined
to come out to all our meetings, rallies or
reading circles.
And the other part involves listening and
learning from established histories of resistance
and struggle, in order to better understand
and identify points of affinity and possible
collaboration.
Thankfully, there are lots of amazing individuals
already doing this important work...
but we need more of them.
So at this point, we’d like to remind you
that Trouble is intended to be watched in
groups, and to be used as a resource to promote
discussion and collective organizing.
Are you a hip hop head interested in helping
to contribute to your local radical scene?
or looking to build one in a town where it
doesn’t exist?
Consider getting together with some comrades,
organizing a screening of this film, and discussing
where to get started.
Interested in running regular screenings of
Trouble at your campus, infoshop, community
center, or even just at home with friends?
Become a Trouble-Maker!
For 10 bucks a month, we’ll hook you up
with an advanced copy of the show, and a screening
kit featuring additional resources and some
questions you can use to
get a discussion going.
If you can’t afford to support us financially,
no worries!
You can stream and/or download all our content
for free off our website:
sub.media/trouble
If you’ve got any suggestions for show topics,
or just want to get in touch, drop us a line
at trouble@sub.media.
If you want to hear some tracks from the artists
featured on this episode, check out the latest
Burning Cop Car, our radical hip hop podcast,
at sub.Media/bcc.
Just a heads up that since subMedia is a fully
crowd-funded project, we’ll be starting
our annual fundraiser drive soon, to make
sure we can keep cranking out videos year
round.
This episode would not have been possible
without the generous support of Todd, Marius
and AvispaMidia.
Stay tuned next month for Trouble # 16, as
we take a closer look at the trial of the
so-called J20 defendants, who were mass arrested
in the streets of DC, at the historic protests
against the presidential inauguration of US
War Criminal in Chief, Donald J Trump.
No one wanted to just show up and just show
out, like there was a definite message about
disrupting the inauguration.
Now get out there…. and make some trouble!