Host, Dr. Mark Anthony Neal
OUR COMMON GROUND Voice
Hip-Hop, Religion & The Black Church
Watch as R3 Blogger Ebony A. Utley chops it up with Left of Black host Mark Anthony Neal, Monica R. Miller, and Emmett G. Price III.
via Rhetoric Race and Religion: Hip-Hop, Religion & The Black Church.
From a certain perspective, there is an understandable and even admirable elitism at work. Romney truly believes in his own abilities and — unlike George W. Bush, who was handed every professional success in his life — has justification for his confidence. He is a highly intelligent, accomplished individual.
via The Case Against Romney — Daily Intel.
Civil Rights Icon Joseph Lowery Says “All Whites Going to Hell” Over “Hatred and Bitterness” in Presidential Campaign (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Civil rights icon Joseph Lowery is making waves after he said all “white people are going to hell” because of the “level of hatred and bitterness” inthe presidential campaign. That’s very harsh considering that he wouldn’t want a white person to say all blacks are going to hell. Lowery made the comments at a weekend rally in Forsyth, Ga. He also said “I don’t know what kind of a nigger wouldn’t vote with a black man running.” Um, really Mr. Lowery? Senility setting in?
The Virtual Recovery
Tuesday, 30. October 2012
“The Federal Reserve represents the banksters, not the American public!”
Since mid-2009 the US has been enjoying a virtual recovery courtesy of a rigged inflation measure that understates inflation. The financial Prostitutes spoon out the government’s propaganda that prices are rising less than 2%. But anyone who purchases food, fuel, medical care or anything else knows that low inflation is no more real that Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction or Gadhafi’s alleged attacks on Libyan protesters or Iran’s nuclear weapons. Everything is a lie to serve the power-brokers.
During the Clinton administration, Republican economists pushed through a change in the way the CPI is measured in order to save money by depriving Social Security retirees of their cost-of-living adjustment. Previously, the CPI measured the change in the cost of a constant standard of living. The new measure assumes that consumers adjust to price increases by lowering their standard of living by substituting lower quality, lower priced items. If the price, for example, of New York strip steak goes up, consumers are assumed to substitute the lower quality round steak. In other words, the new measure of inflation keeps inflation
Statistician John Williams (shadowstats.com), who closely follows the collecting and reporting of official US economic statistics, reports that consumer inflation, as measured by the 1990 official government methodology has been running at about 5%. If the 1980 official methodology for measuring the CPI is used, John Williams reports that the current rate of US inflation is about 9%.
via Sibel Edmonds’ Boiling Frogs Post | Home of the Irate Minority.
Andy Newman
The New York City subway system will remain shut for “a good four or five days” and schools will remain closed on Wednesday, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said.
Mr. Bloomberg said he hoped that some bus service would be restored in the city by Tuesday afternoon.
The New York Times
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York on Tuesday raised the possibility of building a levee in New York in the aftermath of major flooding in Lower Manhattan and other parts of the city.
“It is something we’re going to have to start thinking about,” Mr. Cuomo said. ”The construction of this city did not anticipate these kinds of situations. We are only a few feet above sea level. The flooding in downtown Manhattan was really extraordinary and unlike anything I had seen.”
Frank Franklin Ii/Associated Press Damage caused by a fire at Breezy Point is shown on Tuesday.via Tracking the Storm – Interactive Feature – NYTimes.com.
As the St. John Progressive Missionary Baptist Church vans pulled up to the C. Blythe Andrews library polling place to let congregants out to vote, a line already snaked out the voting entrance. A table was set up on one end of the libary’s parking lot where volunteers served fried fish and hush puppies. A DJ blared gospel music that could be heard blocks away. It was after-church Sunday, the first and only Sunday of “Souls to the Polls” in most of Florida, and the second day of early voting. Here in Tampa, early voters, and black voters in particular had already made their statement.
Despite setbacks such as Gov. Rick Scott’s HB 1355, which undercut voter registration drives, reinstated harsh felony voting restrictions and his notorious purge program, voters turned out in record numbers this past weekend: over a half-million people cast early votes statewide by Monday morning. In Hillsborough County, 36,702 early votes Saturday and Sunday—roughly 2,500 of those cast at the C. Blythe Andrews site in Tampa’s historically black College Hill neighborhood. As of last night, over 55,000 voted early.
These numbers far outweighed the historic 2008 election here, when less than 17,000 turned out for the first weekend of early voting, 1,248 at Andrews (then called College Hill Library). Back then, those were considered remarkable numbers. This year, they’ve almost doubled that, despite the odds against them.
After dismal voter turnout numbers in 2010, the year Scott was elected, Get Out The Vote advocates re-tooled and put together an aggressive canvassing strategy that made sure people were registered and “knew their status”—making sure their address was updated, and that any felony convictions were cleared up. In 2008, African-American voters were self-motivated, hype about the prospect of not only electing the first black president, but also finally undoing the eight years of economic and political ruin of George W. Bush.
“I don’t think there was a GOTV strategy in 2010,” says Belinthia Berry, a political strategist who works with the NAACP and the National Coalition of 100 Black Women, who was on hand for the Souls to the Polls outing at Andrews. “This year we really made a conscious effort to actually canvass, knock on doors—people actually know GOTV now, pushing people to vote, as opposed to 2010 when I didn’t even know. Nobody knocked on my door or pushed me to vote.”
Florida Early Voters Show Up in Huge Numbers Despite Suppression Effort – COLORLINES.
Debt collectors are notorious for using hard knuckeld tactics to get consumers to pay their debts. Most recently, a disabled veteran was 
told by a debt collector that he should’ve died in the war since he couldn’t pay his debt. But for the first time in American history, the debt collectors are coming under federal control. Meaning that very soon , debt collectors will be monitored by a federal government agency.
Allgov.com reports:
Starting in January, theconsumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) will oversee large debt collection agencies and work to prevent the use of aggressive tactics against Americans struggling to pay off loans and other monies they owe. About 30 million Americans are currently being pursued by debt collectors, with the average amount coming in at $1,500.
The biggest question is what kind of latitude the CFPB will have over the debt collectors and whether the organization will have any real power. Many people believe that if the agency had been headed up by Elizabeth Warren, who is now running for Senate in Massachusetts, the administration would’ve had a much better chance at being effective. Obama passed Warren over for leadership position at the new agency.
Richard Cordray, the CFPB’s director, said, “Sometimes collection methods involve harassment or deception, and they are typically illegal. Intimidation, abusive tactics, profane language, or threats of arrest are widely known to be out of bounds. Even placing certain kinds of calls–such as calls at unusual hours–is unacceptable and against the law. Wherever we find unlawful practices, we will take steps to eliminate them, thereby helping to protect consumers and, again, supporting those collectors that take care to comply with the law.”
EXCLUSIVE: Romney Campaign Training Poll Watchers To Mislead Voters In Wisconsin | ThinkProgress.
OPINION
The Price of a Black President
Bruce Davidson/Magnum Photos
Young men joined the march from the Selma to Montgomery, Ala., organized by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in March 1965. More Photos »
By FREDRICK C. HARRIS
Published: October 27, 2012 92 Comments
WHEN African-Americans go to the polls next week, they are likely to support Barack Obama at a level approaching the 95 percent share of the black vote he received in 2008. As well they should, given the symbolic exceptionalism of his presidency and the modern Republican Party’s utter disregard for economic justice, civil rights and the social safety net.
via The Price of a Black President – NYTimes.com.
“You Your Best Thing,” Paul D relays to a grief stricken and traumatized Sethe at the end of Toni Morrison’s most touted novel Beloved.
“You Your Best Thing,” Paul D relays to a grief stricken and traumatized Sethe at the end of Toni Morrison’s most touted novel Beloved. The physical embodiment of black women’s self-sacrifice( she kills her daughter to protect her from experiencing slavery), Sethe responds incredulously–“Me?Me?”–as if the very idea that she held value beyond her role as a caregiver and nurturer for someone else was beyond comprehension. The fact that Morrison puts these powerful words in Paul D’s mouth is certainly no coincidence
via Nation of Cowards: “You Your Best Thing”: The Other Side to the Black Abortion Debate.
Hip-Hop, Religion and the Black Church on the October 29th Left of Black
In the Spring of 1991, Black Sacred Music: a Journal of Theomusicology (Duke University Press), published a special issue of the journal, “The Emergency of Black and the Emergence of Rap,” edited by Jon Michael Spencer (Yahya Jongintaba) and featuring essays from William Eric Perkins, Angela Spence Nelson, legendary religious scholar C. Eric Lincoln and a young Michael Eric Dyson. Though the Nation of Gods and Earths were part of the fabric of Hip-Hop culture from its earliest years, the special issue of Black Sacred Music was one of the first examples by scholars making connections between Hip-Hop culture and religious and spiritual practices—at a time when there were still few examples of mainstream scholarship on Hip-hop Culture.
Two decades later, scholars Monica R. Miller, Ebony A. Utley and Emmett G. Price III published ground breaking books on Hip-Hop, religion and the Black Church within months of each. Professors Miller, Utley and Price, join host and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal on Left of Black via Skype to talk about their books Religion and Hip-Hop (Routledge, 2012), Rap and Religion: Understanding The Gangsta’s God (Praeger 2012) and The Black Church and Hip Hop Culture: Toward Bridging the Generational Divide (Scarecrow Press, 2012).
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Left of Black airs at 1:30 p.m. (EST) on Mondays on the Ustream channel:
http://tinyurl.com/LeftofBlack
Viewers are invited to participate in a Twitter conversation with Neal and featured guests while the show airs using hash tags #LeftofBlack or #dukelive.
Left of Black is recorded and produced at the John Hope Franklin Center of International and Interdisciplinary Studies at Duke University.
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