Public Enemy - "By The Time I Get To Arizona"
Now that Arizona has legalized racial profiling - I mean passed a law "cracking down on illegal immigrants" - the question is: what do we do? Many people are calling for a boycott of Arizona, its convention centers, and pro sports teams. This is not the first time the Grand Canyon State was the state known for institutional racism. In the 1980s, Arizona was the last state to recognize Martin Luther King's birthday as a holiday. In response, Public Enemy, the greatest rap group of all time, released this track. The boycott worked, MLK Day was recognized, and luckily (for the governor's sake) Chuck D didn't have to go to Arizona himself to make himself clear. Let's hope we can make that happen again.
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CURRENT ISSUE: FEBRUARY 2012
Inside the Occupy Movement
| We visited nearly thirty occupations in twenty states in two months.
What I got at Occupy Wall Street
I spent seven weeks in Zuccotti Park, and here is what I got.
Danny Glover
| The Progressive Interview | March 2012 issue
To Wed or Not to Wed
| March 2012 issue
Progressive Matt
The Koch Brothers Conspire to Buy the White House
The Spoken Word and Progressive Politics
Howard Zinn, the beloved people's historian and longtime Progressive columnist who died on January 27, 2010, was a brilliant storyteller. He told the stories "not of the heroes and achievements of traditional history, but of all those people who were the victims of those achievements, who suffered silently or fought back magnificently": the labor radicals, the early feminists, the anti-war soldiers. Zinn also believed in people telling their own stories in their own voices. He believed in the power of artists to reshape the larger political narrative towards social justice and solidarity.
Today, a new generation of artists and activists has emerged, using their words as weapons for radical discourse and political empowerment. Coming out of the era of Reaganomics and gentrification, in the traditions of Amiri Baraka and Lenny Bruce, a movement of spoken word artists is speaking up. They combine elements of free verse, hip-hop, stand-up comedy, and soap-box preaching, but connecting them all is a diverse, democratic art form that demands participation. Spoken word is about the call and response, re-definition and self-determination, the street corner and Capitol Hill.
In this series, we are going to present a range of spoken word artists, musicians, and storytellers, all of whom are using their voices to rewrite the American narrative -- one story, many people at a time. As Howard would say, "Let the people speak."
— Josh Healey
Spoken Word Editor for The Progressive
