Christian Scott:

Diversely Cultural

Exactly one month ago today the acclaimed young trumpeter Christian Scott held two performances at Harlem Stage, showcasing some of his new music off of his politically driven album “Yesterday You Said Tomorrow.”  Legendary jazz recording engineer, Rudy Van Gelder contacted Christian Scott personally in order to work with him on this album, and that alone shows the depth of musicianship Christian Scott has attained before he has even reached thirty. Mr. Scott also premiered music from his upcoming albums that will be released in the new year which feature a plethora of sounds, some of which stem from the Afro Native American tradition in New Orleans. I sat down and chatted with Christian before his show and discussed everything from the current state of jazz, to his personal history, and Occupy Wall Street. Scott’s energy is very refreshing. He is vibrant and eloquent young person who is not afraid to share his ideas and discuss important issues. He breathes new air into this new generation of jazz music leading the example for young musicians to be themselves and defy tradition while staying true to that very same tradition.

How do you enjoy living in Harlem?

I love it here. I’m from New Orleans and it reminds me so much of New Orleans. When I was growing up in New Orleans it was almost 99 percent black. And when I moved to Harlem the sea of faces literally looks like the same exact people. The only difference that I see here is that culturally is there are a lot of people from Senegal and Eritrea and the Dominican Republic so it’s like a rainbow of different nationalities of what people look like. It’s been really cool to be around that and see everybody get along. It kind of shows that people from different cultures and different races can live together. So I love it here.

Can you tell us more about your personal history?

I started playing music when I was about 11 years old, I actually started playing because I wanted to be just like my uncle. My uncle is an alto saxophone player named Donald Harrison, and he played with Art Blakey, Miles Davis’ band, Lena Horne and Roy Haynes. When I was growing up I always wanted to be around him so I could be just like him. I wanted to play sax because I wanted to be just like him but I realized if I played trumpet I could be in his band.  My first training that I got was from my mother who would sing to me when I was a child. And my ear training as a child came from my grandfather who is a folk singer. The term that they use for his culture in New Orleans is Mardi Gras Indians or Black Indians but really it is just Afro Native Americans in New Orleans. And my grandfather and the type of music he sang came from that culture. He was actually the only man to be a chief of four different tribes. When you are born into this culture you are given a role in the tribe and you have to masquerade and pay homage to your ancestors. So I’ve been doing that since I was three years old up until now. My grandfather helped me develop my ear. He would play Miles Davis and make sure that I played it back and things of that nature. And that’s how I got started and he was instrumental in making sure that I didn’t put the horn down.

Immediately after that I enrolled in the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts which is an arts high school that Wynton Marsalis, Nicholas Payton, Terrence Blanchard, my uncle Donald Harrison, and Brandford Marsalis went to. My teacher was a guy named Clyde Kirk who was more or less like master yoda for jazz trumpet in New Orleans. He was my grandfather’s best friend so I started studying with him very early on. It was a four year program but I tested out of the curriculum so I started teaching my junior and senior year in high school then I got a full tuition scholarship to go to Berklee. And when I got there I decided I wanted to do film scoring and performance but you can also test out of the curriculum at Berklee and I actually ended up not having to take any theory classes and I ended up getting two degrees in two years. It usually takes about six or seven years to get those degrees.

I was given the opportunity to start my own record label after college so I finished Berklee just turning 20 and I started my own record label selling records at Virgin Megastore and Tower Records. I was approached by Blue Note to do a record deal and declined because I was making enough money selling my own records and eventually Universal Music came knocking at the door through Concord records. The deal they offered me was really great and the only stipulation was that I could  make as much music as possible whenever I wanted to. My band just finished making three records so in the new year we are putting out a trilogy. It’s going to be crazy probably close to fourty compositions; it’s all wide ranging stuff. There’s music on the record that deals with the Afro Native American tradition in New Orleans superimposed on indie rock and Senegalese rhythms, there’s all types of stuff.

 

Can you talk about your the difference between your family home training and your traditional education? Did you experience any difficulty within your institution?

There’s more than one way of approaching and thinking about conservatory training. I think if someone is looking to go to a school like Berklee at a linear level for example it’s a music college, it might be sterile or there might be a lot of rules but one of the greatest things about going to Berklee specifically was that no one was in my face saying that I had to do anything in anyway which is part of the reason why I went there because I coveted the idea of going there and looking around in the classroom and seeing a guy from Saga, Japan that was wearing Fubu with hash marks under his eyes or he might even have a gold tooth. I was into that type of diversity. There were no rules. And coming from New Orleans it gives you a different mind state musically, because it is one of the places is that every aspect of the music and culture is coveted. Literally from block parties where you will hear bounce music like DJ Jubilee or Juvenile, and you can literally walk three blocks north and find a opera house where the older musicians and the philharmonic are also the old black people from your neighborhood. And so I when I was a little boy I could see people like Danie Barber she use to make a bread pudding called Yum Yum and I was a kid I use to go over to her house. I remember being a kid when I first started to play trumpet. Donald wanted me to have a really firm grasp of things and how to play “Donna Lee “ and navigate changes and play bebop.  But if went Danie Barber’shouse they wouldn’t let you play “Donna Lee” unless you could play the “Tiger Leaf Rag.” So I didn’t learn to play music with a mindset that different forms and styles and genres of music were more valid than the other but at the end of the day it was about playing music with love in in your heart as a means to try to communicate with people.

The other thing that was really cool about growing up and playing music in that community is that you learn about the music from the beginning up until now. Most jazz musicians that I meet now usually learn the music from bebop on. A lot of them skip swing stuff. Where as when I was a kid, you really had to live with “Tiger Leaf Rag” to “Stompin at the Savoy” to a song like Nicholas Payton’s “Concentric Circles.” You learn the entire range of the history of the music. I was learning the music from 1897 to the guys who were doing it in 1997 and I could be learning it in the same day and it might be a guy that is 70 years old that understands all of it. And he might tell me about how what I’m playing is connected to what Little Richard was doing, the stuff that Jimi Hendrix was doing, and we could find things that could come from Chopin and Sartre. Growing up in New Orleans you don’t get an elitist sentiment about music you just learn as much as you can from as many people as you can, cause it’s such a giving culture.

That’s amazing. Your experience is unique because there are a lot of musicians coming up who are merely schooled in jazz in the institutionalized sense, so for them its not really this social music where you are learning from people who are your elders, can you speak about that?

Sure, for me literally three or four days after I could get a note out of the instrument I would go to a place like Donna’s where the older musicians coveted the opportunity to have the younger musicians who weren’t as refined play and have the opportunity to express themselves. So I was fourteen years old getting just as much if not more work experience than the average 25 year old musician gets in in New York. It’s a strange thing I see it a lot in New York, in order to get a chance to play with some of the great musicians you have to have proven yourself to be able to play on one of the highest levels that their is. Where in New Orleans, you can damn near pick up your horn at any contest and no one is gonna tell you to shut-up and put your horn down, because at the end of the day what you have to say even if you can’t play yet is still valid. Growing up in a culture like that where people nurture those things from a very early age it arms you with something a little different.

 

How do you think this has led you to your individuality and sincerity in your music? You also use your music as a space for protest and speaking about political issues, this is hard to find now a days in jazz, why is this important to you?

Well I learned from a very early age. My mom would take us to Preservation Hall and the music the musicians played was about their experience. There would be a blues that was written about a lady who grew up across the street from them and they watched this lady maybe starve to death because of lack of resources or lack of money. And as a kid I watched the musicians in that culture speak about those things and make  art as a means to try and build resources for their community. I always looked at that as the coolest thing you can do through music, to try to help people. So for me I realized that because of the work I put in and the amount of refinement I tried to go about procuring for myself is affording me the opportunity to speak in circles where people from where I from can benefit.

You know I grew up in the 9th Ward and that’s not like the hip-hop hood, that’s the hood. So I saw poverty as a child. For me at my end, it’s my concern to speak on that as a means of  illuminating that these ills are still around as a means of being able to procure the things that can help people. And if I didn’t do that it would be a “how dare you?” moment. For me lots of times in interviews, in the press, and when I’m dealing with people they make it a big deal about the fact that my music is political and the social nature of the music. But if no one hears any of these things then people  are not gonna know that the people in my community are suffering. As a man I can’t really let that stand. I don’t think I’d be worth much if I’d use these resources that I’ve be able to get through my talent just for me and say forget everybody else, and I’m just gonna take it and make music and write songs about whatever I want to write about but I’m not going to deal with anything that I actually saw or actually experienced.

In context with the sincerity thing when I was a little boy my mom told me the most unique thing you’ll ever experience is being you and I had a conversation with Saul Williams and  he said the same  thing and I was shocked. You know sometimes you’ll hear the same things from different people. For some reason my mother of course when she speaks or says something I listen you know but when I heard it from Saul Williams as well, for me I think this guy, he’s the closest thing you can get to a prophet, he is amazing. When he said that I started to think more in it. I really started to think about that idea, that the most unique experience I’m willing to have in my life is seeing the world through my eyes and my scope and vantage point.

So I need to pay more attention to the way that I deal with things and the way that I react to the things that I see and the thoughts that I have. And if I take the time and do an appraisal of how I feel about certain things and question myself on why I feel this way. Is it based on this experience? Then that will give me a more profound understanding on how to deal with different things in my life and how to endure things, so my coping mechanism will be better. But as an artist one of the things that it does is that it makes you hone in on your personal sentiments about things. We have a lot of artists out here who are amazing but the problem is that they always see the world on the peripheral lens so it’s like they are constantly looking at the side of things instead of looking right in front of them. For me it is paramount that you understand and you take the time to question how you feel about certain things and try to be as honest with yourself and to be vulnerable enough to be honest about your fans. And when you translate those ideas to a musical landscape your expression is more sincere.

Jazz is a very diverse music, it’s inevitable that there are going to be many different people who play jazz. Everyone is involved with black culture at this point and then there is no getting away from that, but not everybody is going to have the social responsibility to go back to black communities and really help people.  How can we move forward specifically as a jazz community now that we have this very large community?

I think about that a lot. And one of the main reasons I think about is because where I’m from jazz isn’t really diverse as it is in other places. In New Orleans the vast majority of the jazz musicians are black people. Even to the point that it almost seems like there is a self segregating thing in some circles in New Orleans based on jazz groups. It’s a strange thing because, don’t get me wrong I appreciate everybody  willing to contribute. The problem for me comes when people claim the music is theirs then try to efface the fact that it is a black music. America has a history of doing that. What America does is they have these musical forms that black people create, and then it is looked upon as marketable and economical, and it is bought and washed down and sold back to the same culture. Once that transformation happens and they try to sell it back, black people say, “no that’s not happening,” and then they change and make a new thing.

Let’s be honest as a culture black people are very creative. So historically that’s what happens and black people move on. I was doing a lecture a few months ago speaking to a group of kids and they were saying that rock and roll was white people’s music, and you get that all the time. It’s mainly because black people are so creative and willing to move on from certain things, that they don’t covet the fact that they created this music. I’m not saying that people can’t contribute, but I’ll be damned if you say a music is your music if it’s not your music. You and I both know that I can’t go to Bombay in a hall where they are playing ragas and take out my b flat trumpet and start playing with them and say I’m a raga musician. They are going to say no you’re not because first off this music has a history and a pedigree in which you have not refined. You don’t exist in this culture you don’t understand this culture you haven’t lived here so how can you say that you are a raga musician. Most people look at that argument that’s actually very valid even though I hear those phrases and I can play in that way and improvise in that way but I’m not going to be accepted in that way.

How come anytime anyone from any other culture decides that they want to put their foot mark in black music it is totally accepted. People approach it as if it’s not specifically jazz, it’s just black music. So you can have a Polish musician come to New York and play jazz music and that is perfectly accepted because black music automatically gets put into the universal column. But I can’t go to Poland and play polka music or else I’ll have people looking at me sideways. Jazz has a specific pedigree and very refined and dense history as well. So at the end of the day if I have to be forced to respect your musical culture and your musical tradition then you should respect my musical culture and my musical tradition. And at the end of the day you’re no more valid than I am, we are both valid. So it is a respect thing for me.

 

You talk about your mom a lot and I read that in your tone you aim to mimic the sound of your mom’s singing voice. It’s scant times for innovative jazz vocalists, and the voice is really the foundation of the blues and jazz sometimes it seems as though the human voice isn’t valid anymore. 

It’s weird. I understand exactly what you mean. It’s very unfortunate because at the end of the day that’s where it comes from. The voice predates the instruments, let’s just be real about it. As far as jazz is concerned before you were aloud to play clarinets in the fields you could at least sing. What you are talking about is a technique that we call the “whisper technique.” It took me three or four years to try to do this thing but it was incredibly difficult. You are talking about an hour to an hour and half practice just on that damn near everyday for three years. It originally started as me trying to mimic my mother’s voice and through the course of three years I think I kind of lost my way a little bit, and I tried to figure out technical ways to do this technique. And it wasn’t until I realized that the aim of this ultimately was to try to mimic my mom’s voice, and when I went back to what I originally started then I could do it, and it’s never gone away after that.

And in the context of jazz vocalists. It pisses me off. I actually see that a lot and I’ve gotten into arguments with musicians and cats about that. As a jazz vocalist in this day in age if you decide that you are going to have any uniqueness in the way that you approach singing jazz, you are almost automatically shunned. Because a jazz vocalist is supposed to sound a certain way. And to me it’s like is that a joke? If they are all supposed to sound the same then Billie Holiday never would have been Billie Holiday. It’s something that I see a lot. For me I think a lot in the context of resources and a lot of the resources that get disseminated to jazz vocalists. I mean it’s been a long time since I’ve seen a sista’ gets the props that she deserves for her talent in this medium. It’s almost like they have to seek work elsewhere. It t seems like that merely because you have a unique thing going on you will get shunned if you don’t sound like Sarah Vaughn. Don’t get me wrong I love Sarah Vaughn, but Sarah Vaughn is Sarah Vaughn. There needs to be more heart and compassion in this music to allow people to be themselves a little bit more. I think that’s the main thing that is missing in this music that everyone is trying to be what everyone wants them to be instead of who they are.

Visit Christian Scott Online

Interview by Tamara Davidson

2011 Poetry Contest

Poetry Book Includes Contest Winners and all published works. ~ Poetry Contest ~ Essays Featured: Jerusalem by  I. Ferrari ~ Short Fiction Intellectual Property by Andi Newton ~ Fine Writing Tools

For contest updates follow us on  Twitter.com/PiperFC and/or Facebook/Franklin-Christoph Join Our Contest Email List Email:   Guidelines for the 2011 Franklin-Christoph Poetry Contest We will award $2500 in total prizes, including the $1000 cash grand prize. 10 Merit Award Winners will receive $150 Franklin-Christoph writing instruments.   Submission Period Entries accepted Oct. 1st - Dec. 31st, at midnight EST, 2011. This contest is not yet open, and the rules below may change. Please wait until November 15 or later to submit. --> What to Submit Original, unpublished poem of any theme. Limit of 2 entries per contestant. Entries should not exceed 100 lines each. Prizes First Prize, $1,000 cash and publication on Franklin-Christoph.com Ten Merit Award Winners, each to receive a $150 Franklin-Christoph writing instrument, and publication on Franklin-Christoph.com. Winners announced by March 15th, 2012. Entry is Free There will be no fee or other obligation for entering this contest. Deadline December 31st, 2011. Your entry must be submitted online by this date. Preparing Your Entry Submit one copy of your poems by email. Provide your contact information within your email. Be sure to include your actual name and address, as we will not be able to send prizes to alternate names and addresses after winners have been announced. It is okay to use a pen name with the poem as well, and we will review with you how you would like your specifics to read before publication. It is best to avoid complex formatting, such as centered text or italic type, though alterations can be made in this regard before publication. Please make your entry easy to read — no illustrations, fancy fonts or decorative borders. How To Submit We are require all submissions to be via in the body of an email in order to better manage them internally. Email to fcpoetrycontest@gmail.com"> fcpoetrycontest@gmail.com.  Please include your poetry and name and address within the body of the email. Attachments will no longer be accepted. Contact name is Lauren Taylor. Please include your name, address and contact number at the top of your email. We will hold original copies at our headquarters, and submit anonymous copies to our panel of judges. Entries Must Be Original and Unpublished Your entries must be original, written by you, unpublished (either in print or in an online journal), and not have received a monetary award from any other contest. Self-published work is not eligible. Exceptions: Poems posted to the web outside of online journals, such as to a bulletin board, email list, personal web page, critique site or public forums are eligible for entry. Please fcpoetrycontest@gmail.com?subject=Poetry Contest Question" class="someclass1"> email us if you're unsure of eligibility. Our staff will research all submissions for prior publication. Simultaneous Submission Allowed You may submit your poems simultaneously to this contest and to other contests and publishers. Please notify us if one of your entries wins an award in another contest or is published elsewhere. English Language Poems should be in English. Poems translated from other languages are not eligible. Privacy We respect your privacy. Franklin-Christoph does not sell or rent customer or contestant information to third parties, nor do we use it for solicitation of any kind. If you would like to sign up for our fine pen email, you can choose that option, or also follow us on Twitter for all Franklin-Christoph content. Copyright You retain the copyright to your submission. If you place as Merit Award Winner or better, Franklin-Christoph only requests permission to publish your work on Franklin-Christoph.com, in our email publications and in our press releases. Any other potential use will be negotiated with you. Judging Franklin-Christoph will utilize a panel of independent judges from a staff at a local college. Members of the FC Staff, or other economically affiliated persons are not eligible to enter. Neither are family or associates of the panel of judges. Form We are open to poetry in all forms, on all subjects, short or tall, large or small. (within 100 lines) Thank you for you participation, and we look forward to receiving you entry. We will not solicit entrants in any way other than to confirm entry. If you would like to join our Client List for writing contest updates / results, or the general writing instrument Client List, enter above.   Follow us on Facebook or Twitter

As a part of the Women of Color Travel Project (WOCTP), we invite you to submit your work for potential publication in our new book.  This anthology aims to capture stories of women of color who see the world as their playground to explore and enjoy.

OVERVIEW:

The concept of  this anthology is transformation through travel.  We seek stories from women of color from whom their passports have been a gateway to true freedom: freedom of expression, freedom to explore oneself and the surrounding world, freedom to dream, freedom to love limitlessly, freedom to care for oneself, and ultimately the freedom to just be. 

We want to take your travel stories – bold, inspirational, transformational, and/or comedic–and create a standing piece of work that will inspire others to get out and see the world.   

PURPOSE:  

Traditional travel guides and books are designed for the general market, but the images and the text do not frequently reflect the unique  experiences of women of color and our desire to learn more about the world around us. We encounter the world like no other. Our sex, gender expression, skin complexion, body shape, hair texture, accent, clothing, view of the world and society's perception of us play a vital role in how we are able to move through the world.

This anthology will focus solely on the travel experiences of women of color: their experiences with different cultures, the ways in which their trips shaped their view of the world, themselves, their community and how, upon their return home, their lives were transformed. 

We are not looking for advice on what hotels and cafes to frequent. Rather, we want to hear how, through travel, you, as a woman of color, were able to connect with yourself.

Click here to submit your story!

As a part of the Women of Color Travel Project (WOCTP), we invite you to submit your work for potential publication in our new book.  This anthology aims to capture stories of women of color who see the world as their playground to explore and enjoy.

OVERVIEW:

The concept of  this anthology is transformation through travel.  We seek stories from women of color from whom their passports have been a gateway to true freedom: freedom of expression, freedom to explore oneself and the surrounding world, freedom to dream, freedom to love limitlessly, freedom to care for oneself, and ultimately the freedom to just be. 

We want to take your travel stories – bold, inspirational, transformational, and/or comedic–and create a standing piece of work that will inspire others to get out and see the world.   

PURPOSE:  

Traditional travel guides and books are designed for the general market, but the images and the text do not frequently reflect the unique  experiences of women of color and our desire to learn more about the world around us. We encounter the world like no other. Our sex, gender expression, skin complexion, body shape, hair texture, accent, clothing, view of the world and society's perception of us play a vital role in how we are able to move through the world.

This anthology will focus solely on the travel experiences of women of color: their experiences with different cultures, the ways in which their trips shaped their view of the world, themselves, their community and how, upon their return home, their lives were transformed. 

We are not looking for advice on what hotels and cafes to frequent. Rather, we want to hear how, through travel, you, as a woman of color, were able to connect with yourself.

Click here to submit your story!

Student Essay Contest   Students,   Submit your essay today to compete in the NCBS Annual Student Essay Competition!  Winners will be recognized at the Student Luncheon.   Click here to see how you can get free Student Luncheon and conference registration tickets.     UNDERGRADUATE WINNERS: 1st Place - $350.00 2nd Place - $250.00 3rd Place - $125.00 GRADUATE WINNERS: 1st Place - $450.00 2nd Place - $350.00 3rd Place - $225.00  ESSAY GUIDELINES: Essays should focus on any aspect of the Africana experience, i.e., art, education, history, literature, politics, psychology, social and policy issues. Must bet typed in MS Word, 12-18 pages in length, double-spaced with one-inch margins left-to-right and top-to-bottom. Students are asked to document sources using either MLA or APA style guide. Submissions must be mailed to the address below.  Faxed or electronic essays are not accepted! Please include the following information on your cover sheet only: Name Mailing address Telephone number Email Address Name of college or university Class status (Freshman, Sophomore, Junior, Senior, Graduate Student) Name of Faculty Advisor Do not include the above information on any subsequent pages of the essay other than on the cover sheet.  DEADLINE:  January 20, 2012 (must be received by this date)     Send all manuscripts to:   National Office, NCBS Africana Studies Department University of Cincinnati P.O. Box 210370 Cincinnati, OH 45221-0370   Street/Overnight Address: National Office, NCBS Africana Studies Department University of Cincinnati 2815 Commons Way, 3616 French Hall, West Cincinnati, OH 45221-0370 Student Essay Contest

Art Spotlight:

Renée Stout

26Nov2011 

Source: africanamericanculture.org

Renée Stout was born in Junction City, Kansas, in 1958. However, it was her Pittsburgh upbringing rich in art and lore that helped shape her worldview. Stout comes from a family that worked creatively with
a variety of materials. Her mother did needlework and her father, a mechanic, tinkered with tools.

Stout began her career as a photorealist painter, but later expanded her work to include mixed media sculpture and installations using found and collected objects. Wood and metal, glass jars, and
material culture artifacts are combined in Stout’s assemblages. Her process channels the spiritual traditions of the African Diaspora into contemporary works of art.

Stout earned a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University in 1980 and in 1985, moved to Washington, DC, where she lives and works. She has been a featured artist in many solo and group exhibitions. Most recently, Stout was awarded the 2010 David C. Driskell Prize from the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, GA.

Report:

Americans Pay More,

Receive Less Health Care

by Shane Roberts Nov 28, 2011

Why is American’s health care so expensive? Well, that is the question the 34-nation Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) seeks to answer with their newly released report. The U.S. healthcare system is more effective at delivering high costs than quality care.

According to the report, the structural defect in our system is an effective government mechanism that acts to keep prices down, says Mark Pearson, head of the OECD health division.

The report states that Americans spend 7,900 per citizen for health care but die earlier than their peers in other industrializes nations. And to make matters more depressing, the nearly eight thousand dollars we spend doesn’t go towards actual care.

Comparatively, Switzerland, which has a similar per capita income and also relies substantially on private health insurance, citizens pay sixty-two percent less than Americans and have stay alive longer by six years on average.

According to the OECD, the problems with America’s health care system are as follows:

• An “underdeveloped” U.S. primary care system is plagued by shortages of family doctors and high rates of avoidable hospital admissions for people with asthma, lung disease, diabetes, hypertension and other common illnesses.

• U.S. life expectancy of 78.2 years ranked 28th – just behind Chile’s and well below the average of 79.5 years among member nations.

• The growth in U.S. life expectancy over the past half century is also below average, gaining only 8.3 years since 1960 compared with an 11.2-year OECD average.

• The United States was ranked fourth from the bottom for premature mortality, which focuses on deaths among younger people.

• Americans have fewer doctors and hospital beds, make fewer doctor visits, go to the hospital less often and stay for shorter lengths of time than about three-quarters of the other OECD countries.

• America is at the top of the cost chart for a number of procedures including caesarean sections, which are almost twice as expensive in the United States.

• Pharmaceuticals also cost about 60 percent more than in a range of European countries.

On a slightly better but particularly misleading note, America leads the world in cancer treatment and survival primarily because of the attention to paid to costly early detection procedures like MRIs and X-rays.

The shocking truth

about the crackdown

on Occupy

The violent police assaults across the US are no coincidence. Occupy has touched the third rail of our political class's venality

• 
• • Naomi Wolf
  • guardian.co.uk, Friday 25 November 2011 12.25 EST

Occupy Wall Street protester Brandon Watts lies injured on the ground after clashes with police over the eviction of OWS from Zuccotti Park. Photograph: Allison Joyce/Getty Images

US citizens of all political persuasions are still reeling from images of unparallelled police brutality in a coordinated crackdown against peaceful OWS protesters in cities across the nation this past week. An elderly woman was pepper-sprayed in the face; the scene of unresisting, supine students at UC Davis being pepper-sprayed by phalanxes of riot police went viral online; images proliferated of young women – targeted seemingly for their gender – screaming, dragged by the hair by police in riot gear; and the pictures of a young man, stunned and bleeding profusely from the head, emerged in the record of the middle-of-the-night clearing of Zuccotti Park.

But just when Americans thought we had the picture – was this crazy police and mayoral overkill, on a municipal level, in many different cities? – the picture darkened. The National Union of Journalists issued a Freedom of Information Act request to investigate possible federal involvement with law enforcement practices that appeared to target journalists. The New York Times reported that "New York cops have arrested, punched, whacked, shoved to the ground and tossed a barrier at reporters and photographers" covering protests. Reporters were asked by NYPD to raise their hands to prove they had credentials: when many dutifully did so, they were taken, upon threat of arrest, away from the story they were covering, and penned far from the site in which the news was unfolding. Other reporters wearing press passes were arrested and roughed up by cops, after being – falsely – informed by police that "It is illegal to take pictures on the sidewalk."

In New York, a state supreme court justice and a New York City council member were beaten up; in Berkeley, California, one of our greatest national poets, Robert Hass, was beaten with batons. The picture darkened still further when Wonkette and Washingtonsblog.com reported that the Mayor of Oakland acknowledged that the Department of Homeland Security had participated in an 18-city mayor conference call advising mayors on "how to suppress" Occupy protests.

To Europeans, the enormity of this breach may not be obvious at first. Our system of government prohibits the creation of a federalised police force, and forbids federal or militarised involvement in municipal peacekeeping.

I noticed that rightwing pundits and politicians on the TV shows on which I was appearing were all on-message against OWS. Journalist Chris Hayes reported on a leaked memo that revealed lobbyists vying for an $850,000 contract to smear Occupy. Message coordination of this kind is impossible without a full-court press at the top. This was clearly not simply a case of a freaked-out mayors', city-by-city municipal overreaction against mess in the parks and cranky campers. As the puzzle pieces fit together, they began to show coordination against OWS at the highest national levels.

Why this massive mobilisation against these not-yet-fully-articulated, unarmed, inchoate people? After all, protesters against the war in Iraq, Tea Party rallies and others have all proceeded without this coordinated crackdown. Is it really the camping? As I write, two hundred young people, with sleeping bags, suitcases and even folding chairs, are still camping out all night and day outside of NBC on public sidewalks – under the benevolent eye of an NYPD cop – awaiting Saturday Night Live tickets, so surely the camping is not the issue. I was still deeply puzzled as to why OWS, this hapless, hopeful band, would call out a violent federal response.

That is, until I found out what it was that OWS actually wanted.

The mainstream media was declaring continually "OWS has no message". Frustrated, I simply asked them. I began soliciting online "What is it you want?" answers from Occupy. In the first 15 minutes, I received 100 answers. These were truly eye-opening.

The No 1 agenda item: get the money out of politics. Most often cited was legislation to blunt the effect of the Citizens United ruling, which lets boundless sums enter the campaign process. No 2: reform the banking system to prevent fraud and manipulation, with the most frequent item being to restore the Glass-Steagall Act – the Depression-era law, done away with by President Clinton, that separates investment banks from commercial banks. This law would correct the conditions for the recent crisis, as investment banks could not take risks for profit that create fake derivatives out of thin air, and wipe out the commercial and savings banks.

No 3 was the most clarifying: draft laws against the little-known loophole that currently allows members of Congress to pass legislation affecting Delaware-based corporations in which they themselves are investors.

When I saw this list – and especially the last agenda item – the scales fell from my eyes. Of course, these unarmed people would be having the shit kicked out of them.

For the terrible insight to take away from news that the Department of Homeland Security coordinated a violent crackdown is that the DHS does not freelance. The DHS cannot say, on its own initiative, "we are going after these scruffy hippies". Rather, DHS is answerable up a chain of command: first, to New York Representative Peter King, head of the House homeland security subcommittee, who naturally is influenced by his fellow congressmen and women's wishes and interests. And the DHS answers directly, above King, to the president (who was conveniently in Australia at the time).

In other words, for the DHS to be on a call with mayors, the logic of its chain of command and accountability implies that congressional overseers, with the blessing of the White House, told the DHS to authorise mayors to order their police forces – pumped up with millions of dollars of hardware and training from the DHS – to make war on peaceful citizens.

But wait: why on earth would Congress advise violent militarised reactions against its own peaceful constituents? The answer is straightforward: in recent years, members of Congress have started entering the system as members of the middle class (or upper middle class) – but they are leaving DC privy to vast personal wealth, as we see from the "scandal" of presidential contender Newt Gingrich's having been paid $1.8m for a few hours' "consulting" to special interests. The inflated fees to lawmakers who turn lobbyists are common knowledge, but the notion that congressmen and women are legislating their own companies' profitsis less widely known – and if the books were to be opened, they would surely reveal corruption on a Wall Street spectrum. Indeed, we do already know that congresspeople are massively profiting from trading on non-public information they have on companies about which they are legislating – a form of insider trading that sent Martha Stewart to jail.

Since Occupy is heavily surveilled and infiltrated, it is likely that the DHS and police informers are aware, before Occupy itself is, what its emerging agenda is going to look like. If legislating away lobbyists' privileges to earn boundless fees once they are close to the legislative process, reforming the banks so they can't suck money out of fake derivatives products, and, most critically, opening the books on a system that allowed members of Congress to profit personally – and immensely – from their own legislation, are two beats away from the grasp of an electorally organised Occupy movement … well, you will call out the troops on stopping that advance.

So, when you connect the dots, properly understood, what happened this week is the first battle in a civil war; a civil war in which, for now, only one side is choosing violence. It is a battle in which members of Congress, with the collusion of the American president, sent violent, organised suppression against the people they are supposed to represent. Occupy has touched the third rail: personal congressional profits streams. Even though they are, as yet, unaware of what the implications of their movement are, those threatened by the stirrings of their dreams of reform are not.

Sadly, Americans this week have come one step closer to being true brothers and sisters of the protesters in Tahrir Square. Like them, our own national leaders, who likely see their own personal wealth under threat from transparency and reform, are now making war upon us.

• This article was amended on 30 November 2011. The original said incorrectly that the Committee to Protect Journalists was one of the organisations that filed a Freedom of Information Act request to investigate possible federal involvement with law enforcement practices that appeared to target journalists. The article also referred to "kale derivatives"; this was a typographical error for "fake derivatives", amended on 1 December 2011

Saturday, November 26, 2011

Black Pilgrim Stirs Controversy,

30 Years On

WBUR | 96.3 | Here & Now

 

by Kevin Sullivan

 

Was there a black pilgrim breaking bread with the Puritans in the 1620s?

 

That question caused a huge controversy in the 1980s when the Plimoth Plantation in Plymouth, Mass. hired a black actor to portray a pilgrim.

 

The Plantation reproduces the pilgrims’ 17th century village, complete with period buildings, food and role-playing interpreters, who speak as though it were 1627.

 

In 1981, Bob Marten was the museum’s director of programs. He said that the museum had begun receiving federal funds, and that required them to advertise as an equal opportunity employer.

 

An African American applied for a role playing job, and Marten hired him. He said there had been black people in Plymouth at the time of the pilgrims, so it seemed logical.

 

But some historians and descendants of pilgrims balked, and the museum decided if there was going to be a black pilgrim at the museum, he had to be based on a real person.

 

Marten said that for more than 100 years, historians had referenced a black pilgrim, named Abraham Pearse, who came to Plymouth in 1623.

Download black-pilgrim-puritan.mp3