AMC Registration Deadline Extended
Just a head’s up…
The Allied Media Conference online registration deadline has been extended from July 2nd until July 13th. So there’s still time to get in on this important series of conversations in Detroit. I’m personally looking forward to the conversations about how activists are using social media to organize their grassroots campaigns and to build movements for racial justice.
Word is that Danny Glover will be there. I’m looking forward to asking him some tough questions. (More on this later). Apart from him I expect to meet some brilliant, creative minds and some warring radical souls.
HeadyJones will be in the building. Hope to see you there! 
About that Ricci Decision…
I’m know I’m just catching up on the decision in the Ricci v. DeStefano case. But New Haven has a special place in my heart and I have to weigh in…however late.
Carmen at AOL Black Voices and All About Race doesn’t trust that the city’s decision to throw out the tests was altruistic, and I feel her on that. I’m no huge fan of the DeStefano-led political machine. I think that like most (all?) political apparatuses, the City of New Haven must be made accountable to poor folk and folk of color. Those structures won’t manifest altruism just because they should. But she goes on to conclude that throwing out the tests was therefore unfair, and on that I definitely disagree.
Victor Goode’s post at Racewire makes all the sense in the world to me, as the problem lies with the burden of proof for civil rights cases brought under Title VII from here on out. Winning the “disparate impact” language was a big deal for folks who need to slug out their rights through litigation, and seems especially important as “colorblind” racism has it’s day. Let’s face it. To the powers that would keep you down, point-blank, bald-faced discrimination comes off as old-fashioned and clumsy when there’s that trusty institutionalized racism to do the dirty work. And if the tool is a test whose questions are out of date or subtly infused with cultural assumptions of white and black worth, then there’s plausible deniability to boot. In this context, the ability to fight back on the bases of an employment policy’s disparate impact–without having to prove invidious intent–is obviously necessary. What the Ricci v. DeStefano decision seems to do is make it more difficult to prove that disparate impact exists.
I’ll admit I only took one law school class, but it sounds like an “L” for racial justice to me. Definitely looking forward to reading the full Ginsberg’s dissent, and wishing that the rest of the Court had listened.
Obama Wants the Spooks
Hanging out with my former Black Panther friend a few weeks ago in Harlem, I had an opportunity to met Sam Greenlee. It was cool to be drinking and chatting with a guy who’s radical imagination so profoundly shook the American cultural landscape through fiction and film.
In his 1969 book The Spook Who Sat by the Door, Black nationalist Dan Freeman conceals his political views long enough to become the token Black in the CIA. The government’s ridiculous performance of inclusiveness backfires, however, as Freeman leaves the agency with all of his weapons and communications training and heads for Chicago. He trains young Blacks in the city in violent and non-violent tactics aimed at securing justice and freedom for the people. I have to admit, talking to Mr. Greenlee spoke to that part of me that secretly joneses for that kind of armed uprising.
Just a few days later, a friend (and one of the coolest prison industrial complex abolitionists that I know) forwarded me this from the Washington Post in disgust:
Obama Administration Looks to Colleges for Future Spies
To the list of collegiate types — nerds, jocks, Greeks — add one more: spies in training. The government is hoping they’ll be hard to spot.
In recent years, the CIA and other intelligence agencies have struggled to find qualified recruits who can work the streets of the Middle East and South Asia to penetrate terrorist groups and criminal enterprises. The proposed program is an effort to cultivate and educate a new generation of career intelligence officers from ethnically and culturally diverse backgrounds.
So, Obama wants to recruit “ethnically and culturally diverse” young people to the CIA. Seriously? And through universities by offering competitive scholarships and assistance to those taking the “intelligence” courses? All toward perfecting state violence…likely against those black and brown people most harmed by capitalism and hate in the first place. Lord, no.
I’ll admit that some part of me wants to say that these kids should go ahead, get themselves a scholarship and get on that Spook model. The organizing and fighting impulse that’s at the root of The Spook is exactly right as I see it. And the critique of the state and its corresponding engagement with Black struggle and longing is dead on. But Audre Lorde is right when she says that “the master’s tools will never destroy the master’s house.” Participation in this program sounds all bad to me, and its disgusting that Obama would even propose it.
This fall, let’s skip the CIA courses at freshman orientation and read The Spook Who Sat by the Door instead. We don’t need their tools. We have it in us to build something better.
Joe Turner’s Come Back to Broadway
In case you are looking for something to do for a date night in New York City, you should take a cue from the Obamas who flew in this weekend to see the revival of August Wilson’s “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone.”
