The Short, Tragic, and Instructive Life of Anarcho-Punk

By Jackson Albert Mann

“I don’t think that the politics of anarcho-punk had that much to do with anarchism anyway… more like militant liberalism.”[1]

This is how Ramsey Kanaan, ex-vocalist of the Scottish punk band Political Asylum and founder of left-wing publishing houses AK Press and PM Press, characterized the politics of anarcho-punk, the wave of anarchist punk rock bands that washed over the United Kingdom in the early 1980s. His reflection comes from the final section of Ian Glasper’s colossal anarcho-punk oral history, within which similar sentiments are expressed by many former anarcho-punk musicians. They are right to feel ambivalent. In the first years of Thatcher’s rule, anarcho-punk developed into a surprisingly dynamic politico-cultural movement. Yet, by the end of the decade the movement had disappeared just as quickly as it had emerged, leaving behind a few catchy hooks, some memorable graphic design, but virtually no coherent political culture. For all of its bluster about political commitment, anarcho-punk was a spectacular failure.

Reading through Glasper’s numerous interviews, one is tempted to locate the origins of anarcho-punk’s aimless demise within the movement itself. Indeed, this is what many participants, fans, and scholars believe. According to Punk graphic design scholar Ana Raposo, it was competing “claims for authenticity” within the movement that generated the “cliquey, insular, and negative” attitudes which led to its downfall.[2][3] I would argue, however, that anarcho-punk’s eventual anticlimactic decline was a symptom of something external to the movement; the dire position of left-wing politics in the 1980s UK. To dismiss anarcho-punk without a proper analysis of its full politico-historical context is to do the contemporary Left a great disservice. An exploration of the movement’s rise and collapse holds important lessons for socialist cultural activists now aiming to construct what William Harris recently called “working-class cultural institutions.”[4]

A Political Economic Perspective

Alastair Gordon is one of the very few punk scholars to have analyzed the anarcho-punk movement from a political-economic perspective. In his short monograph on legendary anarcho-punk band Crass, Gordon proposes that the historical material foundation of anarcho-punk’s emergence was the UK’s rising youth unemployment rate combined with the effects of the country’s still comparatively generous welfare state.[5] At the turn of the decade, the UK unemployment rate doubled from six to about thirteen percent and remained around this level until 1987.[6] Lack of jobs created a state of enforced idleness for tens of thousands of young people and due to the welfare state’s material support, they had no compelling reason to protest or change their condition. This produced a social environment in which large numbers of youth began to pursue full-time their interests in a whole host of cultural activities, including music-making. It was this free time and disposable income, more than anything else, that formed the foundation of anarcho-punk’s most compelling structural feature; its economic independence from the UK music industry. Accordingly, the nature of anarcho-punk’s opposition to the music industry went far beyond the rhetorically subversive gestures of its first-wave predecessors such as the Sex Pistols or the Clash, who were branded as sell-outs by anarcho-punks for signing major label deals.

The early 1980s saw an explosion of anarchist-flavored independent, often band-run record labels, venues, and recording studios, as well numerous band- and fan-edited magazines. Punk scholars are correct to attribute much of the impetus for this explosion to Crass. Using the financial resources they gained from their unexpectedly successful 1978 debut album, Feeding of the 5000, the band established their own record label and press at Dial House, an informal artist colony and collective living space north of London, which drummer Penny Rimbaud had been running for almost a decade. It goes without saying that Crass’ do-it-yourself approach to cultural production was an inspiration to many young people in the UK. But, what made the early 1980s unique was the material reality of mass youth unemployment. It was these conditions that allowed the widespread replication of the Crass model by hundreds of young Punk musicians.

Indeed, Crass Records became merely the first in a vast patronage network of loosely-affiliated band-run record labels independent of the music industry proper. Anarcho-punk groups such as Conflict, Flux of Pink Indians, The Mob, Poison Girls, and Chumbawamba, all of which got their start on Crass, went on to form their own labels. Despite the excessive amount of ink that has been spilled to interrogate anarcho-punk’s subversive aesthetics, it was the sustained economic independence of this expanding patronage network that was the truly defining feature of anarcho-punk as an oppositional politico-cultural movement. The movement’s emphasis on its structural-economic autonomy and hostility to the capitalist music industry as the primary elements of its authenticity were in fact its most salient connections to anarchist ideologies, resembling a form of cultural syndicalism. These were advantageous conditions for an emerging oppositional movement of politically committed musicians. So why did nothing much come of anarcho-punk?

The Patronage Network Needs a Patron

In a recent article I co-authored with art historian Patricia Manos on Nueva Canción Chilena, the political folk music revival that swept Chile during Salvador Allende’s tumultuous socialist administration, I claim that for a politically committed culture to blossom, it must be actively mobilized by political groups.[7] In the case of Nueva Canción Chilena, a musical movement that already possessed a certain level of internal organization was actively courted, supported, and finally incorporated into the structure of the Communist Party of Chile (PCCh) and later on, into Allende’s Unidad Popular (UP) socialist coalition government. In both instances this was done through the establishment of political record labels run semi-autonomously by members of socialist and Communist youth organizations.

Anarcho-punk emerged in very different circumstances. The early 1980s were a disastrous moment for left-wing politics in the UK and no militant left-wing organization capable of courting, supporting, and absorbing this wave of young, politically committed musicians existed. The Labour Party, never a bastion of radical leftism, was, nevertheless, entering the first years of a decades-long crisis, a catastrophic period during which the Party was thoroughly neoliberalized by a hegemonic, Thatcherist Toryism. Despite this, individual anarcho-punk musicians and bands did attempt to forge formal connections with issue-based political organizations such as the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), and numerous anti-fascist and anarchist splinter groups. However, these organizations found themselves in a similar position to anarcho-punk: that is, the lack of an ascendant progressive movement left them atomized, often ineffective, and in no position to be the patrons of a nationwide cultural movement.

Attempts were made to mobilize the anarcho-punk movement for political action independent of organizations. Working through the structure of environmentalist NGO Greenpeace’s London office, a coalition of anarcho-punk musicians and fans organized the Stop The City (STC) protest of September 29th, 1983, during which several thousand activists occupied London’s financial district and severely impacted its normal operations. A second STC took place on March 29th, 1984. Notably, while a large trade union demonstration in support of the 1984 Miners’ Strike was held in London on the same day, no effort was made to integrate the two events. Punk scholar Rich Cross believes that anarcho-punk’s inability to develop a meaningful relationship with a trade union movement in the midst of a historic strike “highlighted not only the weaknesses in the culture’s ability to broker alliances, but also… its lack of interest [in] a wider common cause.”[8]

A Lesson In Tragedy

Cross may be right that by 1984 anarcho-punk musicians' interest in building coalitions with left-wing organizations was waning rapidly. A deeper analysis, however, reveals this developing apathy as a consequence of external factors. It was the declining UK Left’s inability to court this musical movement, a clear expression of general political, economic, and cultural discontent within the mass of young people, that led to anarcho-punk’s inward turn. Without the patronage and momentum of an ascendant Left, anarcho-punk became an insular world and its most negative aspects, such as competing claims of ideological purity, fracturing cliques, and anti-political apathy, became its defining features.

Reduced to its angry rhetoric and subversive aesthetic, anarcho-punk may appear as a utopian farce, in which masses of idealistic youths screamed truth to power over crunching chords and pounding drums, but took little interest in real political action. In context, however, the anarcho-punk movement represents something very different; a cultural expression of mass discontent emerging just as the political forces necessary for its development were entering full retreat. Anarcho-punk’s very lack of direction constitutes yet another profound tragedy that took place during a period of British history already filled with bitter setbacks for the working class. In the dark Thatcherist years following the National Union of Mineworkers’ devastating defeat in the 1984 strike, anarcho-punk’s cohesion as a unified politico-cultural movement disintegrated, and what could have been the soundtrack of a heroic left-wing resurgence became the last thing the British working class heard before lapsing into a decades-long neoliberal coma.

Notes

[1] Ian Glasper, The Day The Country Died: A History of Anarcho Punk 1980-1984 (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2014), 446.

[2] Ana Raposo, “Rival Tribal Rebel Revel: The Anarcho-Punk Movement and Sub-cultural Internecine Rivalries,” in The Aesthetic of Our Anger: Anarcho-Punk, Politics and Music. Edited by Mike Dines and Matthew Worley (New York, NY: Minor Compositions, 2016), 89.

[3] Glasper, The Day The Country Died, 410.

[4] William Harris, “Why We Need Working-Class Cultural Institutions,” Jacobin Magazine, July 18th, 2020, https://jacobinmag.com/2020/07/social-poetics-working-class-culture.

[5] Alastair Gordon, Crass Reflections (London, UK: Active Distribution, 2016), 89-90.

[6] James Denman and Paul McDonald. “Unemployment Statistics from 1881 to the Present Day.” Labor Market Trends 104, no. 15-18 (Winter 1996).

[7] Jackson Albert Mann and Patricia Manos, “The Case for a Culture International: Learning from the 20th Century Latin American Left,” Socialist Forum 2, no. 1 (Winter 2020).

[8] Rich Cross, “‘Stop The City Showed Another Possibility’: Mobilization and Movement in Anarcho-Punk,” in The Aesthetic of Our Anger: Anarcho-Punk, Politics and Music. Edited by Mike Dines and Matthew Worley (New York, NY: Minor Compositions, 2016), 143.

Further Reading

Berger, George. The Story of Crass. Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2009.

Beastly, Russ; Binns, Rebecca. “The Evolution of an Anarcho-Punk Narrative, 1978-1984.” In Ripped, Torn, and Cut: Pop, Politics, and Punk Fanzines from 1976. Edited by the Subcultures Network, 129-149. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2018.

Cross, Rich. “‘There Is No Authority But Yourself’: The Individual and the Collective in British Anarcho-Punk.” Music & Politics 4, no. 2 (Summer 2010).

Donaghey, Jim. “Bakunin Brand Vodka: An Exploration in the Anarchist-punk and Punk-anarchism.” Anarchist Developments in Cultural Studies 1 (2013): 138-170.

Gosling, Tim. “‘Not For Sale’: The Underground Network of Anarcho-Punk.” In Music Scenes: Local, Translocal, and Virtual. Edited by Andy Bennett and Richard A. Peterson, 168-183. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2004.

Ignorant, Steve; Pottinger, Steve. The Rest Is Propaganda. London, UK: Southern Records, 2010.

Lake, Steve. Zounds Demystified. London, UK: Active Distribution Publishers, 2013.

Robb, John. Punk Rock: An Oral History. Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2012.

Rimbaud, Penny. Shibboleth: My Revolting Life. Oakland, CA: AK Press, 1998.

Rimbaud, Penny. The Diamond Signature & The Death of Imagination. Oakland, CA: AK Press, 1999.

Rimbaud, Penny. The Last of the Hippies. Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2015.

Savage, John. England’s Dreaming: The Sex Pistols and Punk Rock. London, UK: Faber & Faber, 1991.

What to the African American is the Fourth of July?

[PHOTO CREDIT: BOSTON GLOBE]

By Christian Gines

I. Every time a firecracker pops I think of every pop of a whip that cracked a back of my ancestor
An uncle or aunt
A cousin
A best friend

Every whip that drove my people
Deeper
*Whip*
Deeper
*Whip*
Deeper
Into oppression
Every whip that moved my parents
One step farther from their homeland
And closer to their new land
A land that’s not really theirs
Where they are a troublesome presence
A land where they are 3/5 of a person
“A slave”
“A nigger”
“A coon”
“A boy”
“A negro”
“A convict”
“A drug dealer”
“A thug”
A
ME

II. Every time a firecracker pops I can hear their fingers pop
The blood seeping out
A paper cut
But from thorns
The same color of the white stuff that they make out of trees 
But the white that makes the white people a lot of money 
The pop that makes me want to complain and get Band-Aid 
But the pop that if they didn’t keep picking then they would be DEAD
I think of the crackling heat of that day
Gleaming on their flared backs
“How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes?”

III. Every time a firecracker pops I think of the popped naps
The naps from the black panther party that uncurled into an Afro
The naps of my people that remains
Un kept
Un picked
Un bothered
To reflect that we are from our homeland Africa
To reflect that we belong here in America
To show that we shouldn’t be defined by our haircuts or our skin color
To show that when we pick our hair it is a symbol of black power
And that power doesn’t have to infringe on anyone else
For some reason I have to say that
But when you’re accustomed to privilege
Equality feels like oppression
When I pop my knuckles I think of all the black women that struggle with their natural hair 
That need to pop their naps to fit into what society preaches
So they can seem intelligent and smart
So they can be accepted into a society that stresses how they can and should look

IV. Every time a firecracker pops I think of the hanging nooses
The nooses that have my brothers head hanging in them 
That pop
One piece of rope at a time it pops
Waiting on the limb to break
POP
There it goes again
Another black boy dead
When I pop my knuckles I think of the gunshots that go off unexpectedly
One that didn’t have to happen
One that makes another black boy disappear from this earth like nothing ever happens
And when I pop my knuckles I think of
99% percent of those gavels that leave those officers convicted of nothing
And how this criminal justice system fails us
Time and time again
And when I pop my knuckles I think of the moment when that time will stop
And a pop will sound but
It will be a firework of equality and justice
Spreading across the world one by one
On a path that will stop only when that pop is a firework on June 19th not July 4th

V. Every time a firecracker pops I think of Thurgood Marshall and his fight for equality
I think of him hitting his gavel as the first black on the Supreme Court of the United States of America
When I pop my knuckles I think of the jails locked forever
The mass incarceration of African Americans
I think of the closing of MLK’s jail cell and the letters he sent from there
I think of the killings of 
Medgar Evers
Malcolm X

Fred Hampton

Patrice Lumumba
Laquon McDonald
Eric Garner
Sandra Bland
Freddie Gray

Trayvon Martin
Stephon Clark

Sandra Bland
Kaleif Browner

Ahmaud Arbery

George Floyd

Breonna Taylor

Oluwatoyin Salau

 VI. Every time a firecracker pops I think of the last poll closing on election night in 2008 
Black people were lynched for this right
I think of the opening of the White House door
And the hope that came with it
The dream that we could become a better America

VII. Every time a firecracker pops I think of Crispus Attucks
The first person killed in the Revolutionary war
A black person
Not even fighting for his own freedom
We have fought in every American war
We are more likely to join the army than any other race
But we're still not seen as American
Yet you still hate us
You brought us over here yet you hate us
We were told once, by virtue of our bondage, that we could never be American.
But like Langston Hughes said
“They’ll see how beautiful I am/And be ashamed —/I, too, am America.”

Art Without a Place, Labour Without an End

By Petar Jandrić

New roads and old milestones

When the coronavirus hit the world, many of us dusted our high-school or college sciences. What is a virus? What are the main differences between linear and logarithmic curves? What does it mean to flatten the curve? We also remembered our history. Spanish Flu, Black Death… how did our ancestors deal with these threats? We suddenly rediscovered movies such as Contagion, and ‘relaxed’ ourselves from horrifying news reports with equally (and often more) horrifying fiction. Those locked in their homes, without access to work, found themselves thinking how to pay the next rent. Those who could transfer their work online, such as teachers and computer programmers, faced various challenges pertaining to working from home. Those whose work was deemed necessary, such as doctors and firemen, found themselves working 24/7 while isolated from their families. We all discovered how to home-school our children, and we all faced the challenge of retaining our sanity locked between our four walls in an increasingly insecure world. We re-learned how to wash our hands. The world, according to social networks and news reports, seemed to breathe as one.   

While we collectively discovered new realities pertaining to our specific positions within the society, an ‘old’ reality just waited to be rediscovered. Those working from lush homes have it much better than those working from cramped apartments. Those working in companies with strong social provisions have it much better than freelancers. Those working in Third Wold countries face dilemmas such as ‘corona or hunger’ (Sanjai and Naqvi 2020). Class matters. Property ownership matters. Social provisions matter. Race matters. On our brand-new road towards discovering what is now popularly termed as ‘a new normal’, we found a good old milestone – Karl Marx.

The coronavirus has created the biggest social science experiment in our lifetimes (and I do hope that it will not be replaced by an even bigger one in near future). Diverse, contextual, and nuanced global experiences of lockdown will surely be described, classified, and neatly foldered in journals, book, project reports, and other academic formats. Together with this painstaking analytic breakdown of the pandemic into it smallest detail, we also need some ‘grand’ over-arching theories to help us make sense of all this. And here I don’t aim at old-concepts-new-clothes semi-prepared attempts such as Žižek’s (2020) Pandemic! Covid-19 shakes the world, but something along the lines of Struggle in a Pandemic: A Collection of Contributions on the COVID-19 Crisis (Workers Inquiry Network 2020). Of course, the latter “collection of short summaries and critical reflections of the policies taken in different countries to deal with the coronavirus pandemic that affect workers and the unemployed” (dВЕРСИЯ 2020) is just an initial take on the problematic. Yet we do need a combination of top-down and bottom-up approaches and theories; it is only at their intersections, that we can make sense out of this global pandemic mess.  

Canary in a coal mine

I am an academic researcher in a transdisciplinary field which is hard to pin-down, epistemologically and practically. Yet my transdisciplinary approaches, just like many others, still pretend towards ‘science’ – while many of us understand that the arts are just as important as the sciences, it is a well-hidden fact that even the most open transdisciplinary approaches often do not give enough importance to the arts (Jandrić and Kuzmanić 2020). At a very personal level, however, I am blessed with a partner who is an active artist. We share our ideas, topics, and interests; our works often intersect at some level which is invisible to our audience but formative for our works. At the very beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic I wrote an urgent editorial for Postdigital Science and Education (Jandrić 2020) and invited post-digital scholars to engage with our present crisis. I issued calls for 500-word testimonies, for shorter commentary articles, for full-length original articles… And at the same time, Ana Kuzmanić issued her own call. She had a previously signed contract to do an artist book for her forthcoming exhibition, and she decided to base her book on testimonies by artists, curators, and cultural workers about the future of the cultural sector after Covid-19. Her call, entitled Art Without Place, starts with following words:   

While the Covid-19 pandemic spreads all over the world, the ban of public gatherings has drastic consequences to many occupations including arts and culture. This is a frightening situation; our lives are endangered directly, but also our material and political existence has quickly become uncertain. Reality has become more fiction than fiction, and the idea of the arts in concert halls, cinemas, and white cubes, has become uncertain. Our profession as artists and cultural workers face major challenges. The idea of radical change in the political economy of the arts is no longer merely a utopian construction; it has become a real and urgent question. In this collective project, we would like to hear about the ways in which you—artists, curators, art critics and all workers in the cultural sector—experience this shift in the moment here and now. (Kuzmanić 2020)

Reading the call, one cannot help but recall conditions in the cultural sector before the pandemic. Artists in precarious positions, moving from one project to another, mostly without permanent employment or social security. Curators, some institutionalized and some not, fighting at the battlefield of commodified ‘cultural industry’. Steep winning curve, in which only a few can make a living from their work. Already before the pandemic, workers in cultural sector were amongst the most exposed to global capitalism. To add insult to injury, some of the strongest sources of income for these people, such as live performances (theatre, music…), exhibitions and showings (visual arts, film), and so on, are heavily place-based. Immediately after lockdown, many of these precarious workers have been left without income. While it is impossible to speak of exact numbers at this stage, global lockdown has put a large percent of the cultural sector on its knees. This can be depicted in a very simple equation:

No music, film, exhibition + no social security = quick bankruptcy   

Ana, and other workers in the cultural sector, are personally interested in their own futures. But for the rest of us working in other fields, it would be foolish to think that we are exempt from their fate – our world is too global, too connected, too intertwined. With their extremely high level of exposure to corona-related disruptions, workers in the cultural sector are not merely an unlucky group to be pitied. More importantly, for all of us, they are canaries in the corona-mines – when the artists stop singing, that means that breathing air for the rest of us is getting thinner and thinner.

Art without a place, labour without an end

All over the Internet, those who are lucky to still have access to paid labour report unimaginable levels of stress, fatigue, and overwork. Artists frantically polish their funding bids; researchers publish more than ever, teachers’ workloads have gone over the roof. While we do all that in our homes, using often inadequate equipment in often inadequate workplaces, employers – who admittedly suffer from significant drops in income – are paying less and less. Only few months into the pandemic, it has become clear that the ‘new normal’ for most of us consists of more work for less pay. For those interested in social justice, the pandemic is an opportunity to rethink our society towards more social solidarity. For those interested in profits, the pandemic is an opportunity to add even more to their already unbelievably large piles of money. Unfortunately, this is not my paranoia but our global reality – as the likes of Amazon now see their profits increase at an incredible speed (Evelyn 2020), billions of people lose their sleep over paying next months’ rent and groceries.

While we try to imagine the new post-corona normal, social sciences should finally expand its scope to take the arts seriously. Our friends and family from cultural industries are more than victims of collateral damage from the coronavirus pandemic – they are also the corona-mine canaries who clearly point towards our global future. There is some truth in these social media memes that we are all in the same social, political, and economic storm of the coronavirus pandemic – and this is where this naïve truism ends. Some of us ride fancy new boats which can sail the current storm smoothly, while others ride old rickety barges suitable for ship scrap-yards. But the sea is always stronger from the strongest boat, and effects of our current crisis are stronger than any protection offered by luckier labour niches (such as tenured positions at state universities). Taking care of cultural industries is taking care of all of us. So let us hear our canary friends’ song, and let us join together in a struggle against those who want to turn word’s increased misery into their profits.

Submissions to Arts Without Place project will be open by the end of May 2020. Please click here to leave your submission: http://artwithoutplace.com/.

References

dВЕРСИЯ (2020). Covid-19: Workers archive. https://dversia.net/5757/covid-19-workers-archive/. Accessed 11 May 2020. 

Evelyn, K. (2020). Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos grows fortune by $24bn amid coronavirus pandemic. The Guardian, 15 April. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/apr/15/amazon-jeff-bezos-gains-24bn-coronavirus-pandemic. Accessed 11 May 2020. 

Jandrić, P. (2020). Postdigital research in the time of Covid-19. Postdigital Science and Education, 2(2), 233–238. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-020-00113-8.

Jandrić, P., & Kuzmanić, A. (2020). Uncanny. Postdigital Science and Education, 2(2), 239-       244. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-020-00108-5.

Kuzmanić, A. (2020). Art Without Place. http://artwithoutplace.com/. Accessed 11 May 2020. 

Sanjai, P.R., & Naqvi, M. (2020). ‘We will starve here’: Why coronavirus has India’s poor fleeing the cities. The Independent, 3 April. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/long_reads/coronavirus-india-poor-fleeing-cities-starvation-a9438401.html. Accessed 28 April 2020.

Workers Inquiry Network (2020). Struggle in a Pandemic: A Collection of Contributions on the COVID-19 Crisis. Workers Inquiry Network.

Žižek, S. (2020). Pandemic! Covid-19 shakes the world. New York: OR Books.

Join in the Grand Industrial Band: Contextualizing Contemporary IWW Cultural Initiatives

By Jackson Mann

“The laboring of American culture” is how historian Michael Denning described the aesthetic effects that Popular Front cultural organizing had on mainstream U.S. performing, visual, and media arts in his sweeping 1997 history of U.S. left-wing culture in the 1930s and 40s. According to Denning, these were the first decades in which the experience, ideas, and language of the working classes came to be represented in mainstream U.S. culture, which was “labored” as a result. This cultural victory was achieved through a coalition of workers’ arts organizations, associations of socialist and communist émigré artists fleeing Fascism in Europe, and industrial unions of creative laborers in the newly-developing Hollywood film industry, all of which were grouped around the then-ascendent labor movement, specifically the political bloc formed by the Congress of Industrial Organizations’ (CIO) association with the American Communist Party. Denning shows that this coalition understood itself as a “cultural front” within the broader Popular Front movement. 

But while “the age of the CIO” may have been the first time the US working class was able to enter mainstream cultural production and discourse, subaltern, working-class culture in the US had been developing for much longer. The organization that contributed the most, perhaps, to the development of pre-CIO, subaltern working-class culture was the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), a militant industrial labor union founded in 1905 by a coalition of labor movement leaders that included Lucy Parsons, Eugene Debs, Mary Harris “Mother” Jones, Daniel De Leon, Thomas Hagerty, and William “Big Bill” Haywood, who represented the union’s original institutional backbone, the Western Federation of Miners. Over the next three decades, the IWW became famous for producing an extensive roster of what Daniel Gross calls “worker-scholar-poets,” rank-and-file organizers who doubled as theorists, songwriters, poets, authors, playwrights, and cartoonists. The IWW cultivated this milieu by operating a nationwide cultural-production apparatus that included dozens of newspapers, journals, and the extensive publication and distribution of sheet music and songbooks. Music was the spearhead of the IWW’s own cultural front, and it is through music that the IWW made its most durable impact on Leftist culture in the United States. Songs written by its organizers and members, and produced by the IWW cultural apparatus through its publications, became anthems of the US labor movement, and remain so to this day. Joe Hill, the Swedish-American IWW organizer, songwriter, cartoonist, and theorist, who was executed by the state of Utah under dubious circumstances in 1915, has become a revered icon in even the most conservative circles of US labor. His songs, written or commissioned for specific strikes or actions undertaken by the IWW, continue to resonate with left-wing labor activists today. Without the IWW, what Denning would later call the laboring of US culture in the 1930s and 40s would not have been possible.

In the popular imagination, the IWW has become the stuff of legend. The distance of history has transformed it into mythology, a process which has been exacerbated by the fact that most scholarship on the union has been conducted by folklorists. And indeed, by 1937, a little over 30 years after its founding, the IWW had become “a shell of an organization…” One would not be wrong to assume that soon after this the IWW disintegrated entirely, hastening its entrance into folklore. 

However, like its music, the IWW persisted, albeit mostly in the form of a perpetual rump organization. In 2016, the IWW had a membership of just under 4,000. Given that at its height it could boast a membership of 100,000, this may be seen as representative of the union’s complete marginality. Due to its legacy of cultural organizing, the IWW transformed from a militant industrial labor union into a small, left-wing cultural organization as its ability to organize workers at an industrial scale declined. 

The IWW’s most recent cultural initiative was the Greater Chicago chapter’s curation and release of a punk and hardcore music compilation, titled We Don’t Work May 1st, on May 1st, 2019. Because IWW music is the most enduring aspect of its labor culture, this release is a particularly interesting nodal point for analysis. In fact, this cultural commodity, i.e. this compilation of new original music, represents the possibility of a transformation in the cultural strategy of the contemporary IWW. While the IWW has, for the past several decades, been an organization concerned with re-interpreting and preserving its early-20th-century cultural legacy, the release of We Don’t Work May 1st, an album of contemporary, popular music, might be speculatively connected to the union’s renewed commitment to involvement in long-term labor organizing campaigns, and speak to the resulting changes in the structure, size, and make-up of its membership given the nature of these campaigns, themselves. To show this transformation, however, necessitates a brief overview of IWW cultural history, particularly its music, after the union’s first period.

IWW’s First Period & Second Period Folklorization

In 1948, the CIO had just experienced a disastrous electoral failure in its support for Henry Wallace and the collapse of its organizing initiatives in the South. It was also under increasing pressure due to the “Non-Communist Affidavit Requirement” of the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, and the growing right-wing radicalism of the House Un-American Activities Committee. Moderate elements in the CIO leadership responded to this political climate by initiating a massive anti-socialist and anti-communist purge of CIO leadership, staff, and rank-and-file members. Over the next two years, one million members were expelled from the organization.

While the CIO remained a powerful force even after this self-imposed blow, the IWW was almost entirely obliterated by the same events. Beginning in the 1920s, when the union’s first generation of leaders were either exiled, imprisoned, forced underground, or murdered, the IWW gradually lost strength and the organization seemed doomed to obsolescence by the 1930s. In 1946, however, the union still had a membership of over 20,000, most of whom were metalworkers concentrated in Cleveland, Ohio. But, between 1947, when the national leadership refused to sign the Non-Communist Affidavit, and 1950, the IWW’s remaining locals all voted to leave the union, fearing that the national leadership’s refusal to comply with Taft-Hartley would lead to a crackdown on their ability to organize. In 1955, the IWW “celebrated its fiftieth anniversary unable to engage in collective bargaining anywhere.” 

While it is tempting to see the end of the IWW’s first period as occurring  in the 1920s, when its original leadership was destroyed, it is more helpful to see 1947-50 as marking the end of this period. At this time, the IWW was transformed from a militant, industrial labor union with  a mass-membership, into a left-wing cultural organization. Without the institutional backbone of a working class mass-membership, all that remained of the IWW was its cultural apparatus. And without a mass-membership, even this infrastructure had withered to almost nothing. This distinction is important to understanding second period IWW music because without a mass-membership, the IWW represented no-one and, more importantly, produced culture for nobody in particular. This change in the nature of the organization left the cultural legacy of the IWW open to re-interpretation.

According to Franklin Rosemont, it was not until the 1960s that the IWW saw even a minimal resurgence in membership due to the interest it held for a subset of the youth counterculture movements of the era.  Even with this influx it remained a small, cadre organization. At this time, the IWW leadership began to push these newcomers to compose new songs for the Little Red Songbook, which had grown stale with an “overall lack of contemporary relevance.” Following precedent, attempts were made to write new lyrics to the melodies of contemporary popular songs, though these failed to achieve the mass appeal of the songs produced by previous generations of songwriters.

It was also during this period that the ‘folklorization’ of IWW culture began in both the academic and popular spheres. As a result of the work of prominent re-interpreters of IWW history, particularly folklorist Archie Green and singer-songwriter-activist Utah Phillips,IWW culture became associated with an academic definition of folklore that emphasized pre-industrial, non-economic musical production and oral transmission across generations.

The leaders and members of the IWW’s first period, according to Green, “paid little attention to academic issues in defining their music” which signaled its proximity to a form of extra-institutional cultural production that he would term “laborlore.” Though he never defines the meaning and scope of this designation, Green's insistence on the status of IWW musical production, and its cultural production more generally, as 'lore' paradoxically aligns it with the pre-industrial past.

This project was simultaneously carried out in the popular sphere by Phillips, who recorded or was featured on IWW repertoire records and wrote original songs in the stripped-down style of Woody Guthrie, the Popular Front songwriter-turned-folk-hero whose image would be iconic for the 1960s folk-revival movement from which Phillips emerged. Over the course of his life, Phillips became the most popular outwardly-facing representative of the IWW and its cultural legacy. His emphasis on working within the semblance of an oral folk tradition where he and his collaborators “can’t or won’t read music” had the effect of aesthetically-framing first period IWW music, itself, as folklore. In his reinterpretation of early IWW songs, Phillips also cast the strategy of contrafactum in IWW songs as universal, ignoring numerous songs that had both original lyrics and music. In doing so, Phillips misinterpreted the function that contrafactum originally performed. In his afterword to The Big Red Songbook, Phillips quotes a rank-and-file member who states that first period IWW songwriters “used common tunes that you might have heard in a church or in a bar.” From this quote it might seem obvious that IWW contrafactum should be understood as a use of then-contemporary popular standards as a building block in forging a militant left-wing subculture. However, by interpreting contrafactum as naive, unschooled creativity, Phillips comes to an entirely different conclusion. IWW songwriters were not engaging with the popular culture of the time, but were instead tapping into a pre-existing oral tradition. Therefore, according to Phillips, today’s activist-songwriters and activist-musicians should “learn these songs. Use them. Change them. Put them to work,” referring to a mostly-static repertoire of first period IWW music, itself conceived of as oral tradition.

One particular strategy that both Green and Phillips utilize to bolster this way of framing IWW music is to universalize the experience of one particular subset of the IWW’s mass membership during the height of the first period: the American “hobo.” Hoboes, migrant laborers that were common in the 1910s, were one of the “unorganizable” groups that the IWW worked with and they made up a large chunk of the IWW membership during the union’s most successful period (1910-1920). Much of Hobo culture, which should not be conflated with IWW labor culture, could indeed be described as folkloric owing to the oral nature of its transmission.

While labor leader and early member of the IWW Elizabeth Gurley-Flynn did once refer to Joe Hill’s music as “folk songs,” this was probably in reference to its mass-appeal among working-class audiences rather than the nature of its production, distribution, and transmission. Both Green and Phillips obscure the IWW’s modernist, world-building project by mapping folkloric notions, such as oral transmission, onto music that was semi-professionally composed and professionally published and distributed with the intention of creating a cohesive militant working-class subculture that could contest for subaltern economic power. The IWW music of the second period, then, is marked by the absence of this large-scale production and distribution of new music. Rather, the figures of the second period were engaged in an anti-materialist project of folklorization, which sought to transform the modernist, subaltern culture of the IWW into an oral tradition of folklore. With this historical context regarding the history of IWW music, how it has been framed, and how it has functioned in the popular imagination, in mind, it is possible to see the Greater Chicago IWW chapter’s release of We Don’t Work May 1st as a pivot away from the folkloric project of the past 60 years.

Contextualizing We Don’t Work May 1st

On May 1st, 2019, the Greater Chicago IWW released a 25-song compilation of local Chicago punk and hardcore bands titled We Don’t Work May 1st. The project was spearheaded by Paul Scanty, the Greater Chicago IWW’s Director of Education and Outreach, and Danny “Cheap Date,” the founder of Don’t Panic Records & Distro and a rank-and-file member of the IWW. The compilation was sold through the music distribution website Bandcamp.com and profits from the sales went directly towards a strike fund on reserve for future industrial actions by the Greater Chicago IWW. During an interview with Scanty and Cheap Date conducted by the author of this article, however, Scanty traced the genesis of the project to a period before either he or Cheap Date were IWW members. In fact, Cheap Date had been developing the idea of a Chicago punk and hardcore compilation, to be released by his record label, for several years prior to his joining the union and had mentioned the idea to Scanty at the time. In February 2019, Scanty, who by that point had joined the union, “approached [Cheap Date] about doing the comp [sic] for the IWW.” 

Cheap Date had already designated a number of bands for the compilation before it had transformed into an IWW-affiliated project. After deciding to make it an IWW initiative, however, Scanty and Cheap Date focused on contacting groups whose music was politically-aligned with the IWW’s beliefs. According to Cheap Date: 

“when we [Scanty and Cheap Date] first discussed this it was definitely… well, we want all these songs to be labor songs or, like, political songs or something that’s going to be left-leaning but… we really didn’t have time to ask bands to record songs specifically for this so the guidelines were… we want this to be new music and… we were reaching out to bands that had political songs.”

The majority of the songs do contain explicitly-political themes. These range from topics such as feminist empowerment (Underwire’s ‘Not Dating’ and Payasa’s ‘Muñeca’), anti-fascism (La Armada’s ‘Fire’), anti-racism, and LGBTQ+ inclusion (2Minute Minor’s ‘Unite the Crew’). There is even a song, ‘Written in Red’ by The Ableist, a band in which Scanty sings, written as a tribute to anarchist activist Voltairine de Cleyre, whose writings and oratory were in dialogue with the ideas of other turn-of-the-20th-century leftists, including the first period IWW.

Many of the songs also contain themes specific to labor. For example, pop-punk singer-songwriter Davey Dynamite’s ‘380 Times’ deals with the disparity between the wages of average employees and the giant sums given to corporate CEOs and shareholders:

Well I think this is going too far, I think they are getting away

with our future, our past, everything that we once had

And I work, and I like it, I haven’t had it bad so far

but my degree seems to be worth less than the paper it was printed on

And my friends, and my family, stuck working dead end jobs

what did they do to deserve it, a minimum wage barely helping at all?

Pull yourselves up by your bootstraps, is what they always say

they always forget to tell you, just how the boots get made

They are products of thievery, of telling the poor to be grateful

they are fine with you starving, as long as you’re willing and able

to work, three hundred and eighty times more than they do

to know, three hundred and eighty times more than they do

to starve, three hundred and eighty times more than they do

to make, three hundred and eighty times less than they do

Other songs deal with specific labor rights violations endured on contemporary job sites. For instance, The Just Luckies ‘Bossman’ deals with sexual harassment of workers by management:

Why do you think that you own me

and know me enough to touch my hair?

Creepy bossman with your ancient, ancient hands

creepy bossman with your ancient, ancient hands, oh

Don’t fucking touch me

don’t fucking touch me

keep your hands off my body

don’t fucking touch me

Cheap Date’s own group, The Cheap Dates, are also featured on the compilation. Their contribution, like Dynamite’s song, deals with the poverty wages earned by today’s working class, focusing specifically on the health issues that result.

Aspects of this initiative reveal a break from the folkloric framework that has dominated conversations about IWW music, and its culture generally, since the 1960s. Certain elements of this break represent a return to the modernist project of the first period, which sought to appropriate contemporaneous popular culture for political ends, while others break from it entirely. This is most obviously shown in the formal aesthetic qualities of the music itself. In his press release in the newly-reconstituted version of the IWW’s flagship publication, the Industrial Worker, Cheap Date claims that there “are bands of nearly every style of punk on here. Ska bands, hardcore bands, pop bands, folk bands, and crust bands.” In fact, Cheap Date understates the stylistic diversity of the compilation, which spans the numerous post-punk and -hardcore styles that have proliferated since the early 1980s, most of which remain culturally relevant today. The project’s engagement with culturally relevant musical styles signals a return to the goals of the first period. While we cannot be sure how, exactly, first period songs were performed in terms of instrumentation and performance arrangements, we can be sure that IWW songwriters of this era were attempting to work in contemporary and culturally-relevant styles since IWW contrafactum was “almost all… set to popular song hits of the 1900-1915 period, or to familiar gospel and revival hymns…”

The cultural relevance of the styles represented on We Don’t Work May 1st is the project’s most obvious break with the second period’s folkloric notions of repertoire and the resulting predilection for a historical performance practice that maintained anachronistic stylistic elements. However, while this focus on contemporaneity creates a bridge between We Don’t Work May 1st and first period IWW songwriters and composers, it also produces an element that is entirely novel. While contrafactum was an enormously popular trend in the first period, all of the songs on We Don’t Work May 1st (except for Shots Fired Shots Fired’s cover of Life Sentence’s ‘Problem’) are entirely original. This break in IWW tradition (though it must be stated that this tradition was never an institutionalized facet of the IWW cultural apparatus and was only articulated as such during the second period) can be attributed to the nature of post-World War II musical culture up until the present day, in which the popularity of original musical compositions over “standard” songs has increased.

These breaks were not conscious decisions made by Scanty and Cheap Date. When asked about how the IWW tradition of songwriting and musical composition, with all of its folkloric baggage, had influenced this initiative, Scanty stated that neither he nor Cheap Date had thought about this at all: 

“Did we see it in the context of, like, you know, new songs, or, a future generation of songs for the Little Red Songbook? No… Did our heads even go to a place of, like, ‘Oh, hey, this is a part of the history of making music that’s such a big part of the IWW…’ continuing that tradition? No.”

For Scanty and Cheap Date, it was not loyalty to continuing an organizational tradition, but their general knowledge of the IWW’s history of cultural production that led to their decision to transform what began as a general punk and hardcore compilation CD into an IWW initiative. In fact, the only other function of the compilation that was explicitly mentioned by Scanty and Cheap Date, besides raising money for the IWW’s strike fund, was to grow the Greater Chicago IWW’s roster of musically- and artistically-inclined members and organizers. 

Scanty and Cheap Date were not consciously deciding to break with precedent, but the idea that these changes in the cultural framing of IWW musical production were mere chance is unconvincing. A stronger theory pivots back to the earlier argument for placing the transition from the first- to the second-period IWW at the 1947-50 mark: it is changes in organizational activity and membership size and demographics that might be seen as initiating the re-evaluation of the function of cultural production in labor organizing by the IWW. 

Indeed, the past 5 years have seen the IWW actively organize workers for the first time in decades. As recently as October 2019, the IWW-affiliated Burgerville Workers Union, made up of employees of a large Pacific Northwest fast food chain, went on a four-day strike over failed wage negotiations. In addition to organizing workers in the fast-food industry, the IWW, through its Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC), was instrumental in supporting and publicizing attempts by incarcerated workers within the United States’ gargantuan (and now significantly privatized) prison system to go on strike in 2018.

It remains speculative to connect the IWW’s current, renewed commitment to industrial labor organizing campaigns with the reframing of its musical tradition evidenced by the We Don’t Work May 1st project. However, if the IWW begins to transform, through its organizing, from the cadre organization it has been for almost 60 years to a mass-membership, working class organization, it seems logical to assume that new attempts to reframe the IWW's cultural legacy in light of both contemporary political projects and the specificity of contemporary cultural production, consumption, and distribution will arise from within the ranks of the IWW's membership.

Conclusion

IWW culture, its framing, production, and the way it has functioned strategically in the union’s activities has changed immensely over time. This was due to changes in both the size and demographic composition of its membership, going from a 100,000 strong mass-membership working class institution at its height in the 1910s, to a regionally-bound but still robust labor union in the 1940s, to an isolated cadre organization which for decades had, at most, a few thousand members. 

As we have seen, two major cultural frameworks resulted from these periods. From the mass-membership industrial labor union there emerged a modernist project of culture-building which resulted in an enormous alternative cultural apparatus that produced newspapers, journals, and songbooks to disseminate a wealth of literature, visual art, and music produced by rank-and-file members, organizers, and union leaders across the country. From the cadre organization emerged a project of folklorization and invented tradition, where the artifacts of IWW culture were collected and transformed into static repertoires.

What makes We Don’t Work May 1st such an exciting release is that it represents the possibility of a third period of the IWW. The possibility of the IWW’s re-building itself as a mass-membership, working class organization committed to the labor struggle in the long term contains the further possibility for a reframing of its cultural tradition and a change in its contemporary cultural production strategy. Within these changes exists the potential for an entirely new type of militant, working class culture. The particular musical style, content, and formal qualities of first period IWW music were the result of IWW songwriters’ engagement in contemporaneous popular culture. Subaltern intervention into mainstream US culture today, which has changed considerably since the IWW’s heyday, may produce entirely novel results. If the We Don’t Work May 1st project is any indication, this culture has already begun to emerge. 

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Sorry to Bother You with Twelve Theses on Boots Riley's "Sorry to Bother You": Lessons for the Left

By Bryant William Sculos

Originally published in 2019 in Class, Race and Corporate Power.

1.   Films thus far have merely interpreted the world; the point however is to change it….

This would be more appropriate as thesis eleven, but it is a crucial starting point for what follows. No matter how radical, no matter how popular, a critical film is, a film by itself, not even one as prescient and valuable as Sorry to Bother You is, is enough to change the world. Not that anyone would suggest that it could be, but radical films can serve important purposes in the struggle against capitalism and various forms of oppression. A good radical film can inspire and even simply entertain those engaged in struggle—or those thinking about becoming more active. Sorry to Bother You will not change the world, but it can be an important basis for motivation, critical conversation, and necessary enjoyment for those in struggling to do just that.

2.   Tactics should always be informed by an organized strategy.

Sorry to Bother You highlights the difference between pure subversive tactics and an organized strategy for resistance. In the film there is a group of anarchist-types, of what size or of what degree of organization the audience never sees, whose primary role in the film is to highlight the impotence of pure tactics (in this film, this amounts to clever vandalism) disconnected from a coherent strategy for organized opposition. Juxtaposed to these tactics we see the hard work of organizing a workplace and an eventual strike. While the strike may not have heralded the end of capitalism, the audience bears witness to the clear difference in results (including both the response of the capitalist class and their police force as well as the ability of the strike to bring new layers of people into struggle).

3.   As important as the superiority of tactics informed by an organized strategy is, it is perhaps as important how those on the left address their internal disagreements about strategies and tactics.

There is a subtle scene between Squeeze (the labor activist attempting to organize the workers at the telemarketing firm, played by Steven Yeun) and Detroit (perhaps the best radical feminist of color ever seen in a popular US film, played superbly by Tessa Thompson). Squeeze becomes aware that Detroit is part of the anarchist group doing the anticapitalist vandalism and instead of criticizing Detroit’s tactics, Squeeze takes the opportunity to appreciate that they are both on the same side of the struggle. This solidaristic interaction serves as the basis to build deeper, more active solidarity in the future (some of which we see later in the film). It is often difficult for those on the left to ignore or at least put aside disagreements over tactics and strategy, and sometimes it is important that the Left not leave disagreements unaddressed, but Sorry to Bother You provides some insight into how the Left can deal with internal, and interpersonal, disagreements in ways that do not further alienate us from one another. After all, the Left needs all the comrades it can get. What makes someone a comrade is a contentious issue to be sure, but it is an important one that the Left should continue to reflect on.

4.   Solidarity across identities is crucial.

Perhaps one of the most obvious—though no less important—lessons from Sorry to Bother You, with its awesome diverse cast and characters, is that class has colors and genders and a variety of other identities that come with their own unique oppressions that condition the experience of class in diverse ways. Not only does the film illuminate the intersections of racism and capitalism (the “white voices” are the stuff of film legend here), but we also see cross-racial, cross-gender, and even cross- (fictional) species solidarity. If Sorry to Bother You does one thing well (and it does way more than just one thing well), it is expressing the importance of building this kind of intersectional solidarity, as well as how the variable experiences of class can be navigated without chauvinism or exclusion. While the treatment of non-fictional racial and gender solidarity is powerful in its own right, Boots Riley’s use of the (for now…) fictional equisapiens drives the point home. Ending the exploitation of some group at the expense of others can never be an acceptable Left position.

5.   Art can be radical, but not all subversive art is radical, at least not on its own.

Detroit, in addition to her day job as a sign twirler and then as a telemarketer, is an artist. Beyond the politics of Sorry to Bother You, the film also delves into the difficulty of being a subversive artist within the confines of capitalism, which demands that all art be commodifiable in order to be of any value. Despite Detroit’s best efforts to resist this pressure, we see her engage in a powerful and uncomfortable piece of performance art where her audience is asked to throw things at her, including broken electronics and blood-filled balloons. The scene is a bit of a parody of ostensibly “radical” art that is consumed by a primarily bourgeois audience. Subversive art that challenges the commodity-form can itself become commodified, but it can still be useful as a foundation to challenge artistic norms and social conventions, break down the barrier between performer and audience. However, even at its best there is no guarantee that anything will fundamentally change because of these dissensual elements. Sorry to Bother You is a better example of what radical, subversive art can be than the artistic performances it portrays—though neither one is the basis for revolutionary activity. While the critical theorists and postmodernists of the late twentieth century are right to emphasize the importance of aesthetics in radical politics and resist the temptation, embodied most noticeably in socialist realism, to use art strictly instrumentally, art disconnected from organized struggle is bound to be as ineffective as any tactic disconnected from organized struggle. Sorry to Bother You does not provide a clear alternative, but it does provide a powerful basis to think through the question of how art can relate to radical politics, and radical politics to art, effectively.

6.   Material conditions are shaped by ideological conditions, which in turn affect our psychologies.

As the protagonist Cassius “Cash” Green (portrayed by Lakeith Stanfield with incredible complexity and skill to make the audience cringe in every instance they are supposed to) moves up the ladder at the telemarketing company, after living in poverty for years, his perspective on poverty and the plight of workers shifts in perverse but predictable directions. Consciousness is never one-to-one with class position, something that is perhaps still too obvious for the Left to effectively grapple with, but the radical beauty of Sorry to Bother You is how well Boots Riley is able to show how consciousness changes as wealth (though not always identical to class position) increases. Capitalism as a whole dehumanizes even those who benefit from it, though workers and the poor and oppressed should have little patience or sympathy for those who benefit unequally from the exploitation they reproduce. As difficult as it is, it is important to remember this, that even as capitalists and the defenders of capitalism come to personify the evils of capitalism, they too are driven by the heinous psycho-social incentives of the system. While this is, in itself, important to be cognizant of, it is more important to be aware of the process through which this happens to middle class people, and even workers fortunate enough to escape the dregs of poverty wages.

7.   Contacting your elected officials is not nearly enough and can actually be demoralizing and demobilizing.

One of the best scenes in the film, enhanced by the speed with which is begins and ends, is when Cash decides to make public the genetic alteration plans of Steve Lift (CEO of the Amazon-like WorryFree, played by Armie Hammer). Cash goes on an absurd reality TV show and various news programs to tell the world about the equisapien experiments and implores people to contact their elected officials. The montage ends with WorryFree’s stock rising and the general public excited about the new technological developments. Nothing changes. The lesson here is that Cash was relying on the representatives of the system that encourages the kinds of perversity that Steve Lift represents to solve the problem. Cash encouraged people to place their hope in decrepit politicians. The audience experiences the results too quickly. The montage is powerful as it stands, but it is worth questioning whether the full range of critical points here might be lost on even a well-focused self-reflective audience (though I noticed so perhaps I’m the one being too cynical). Cash placed his hope in the automatic negative reactions of people—people who have been conditioned by capitalism to view all technological developments as progressive and liberating—to resist those changes. Back in the real world, while there are some instances where outrage may seem (or even actually be) more or less automatic, there is often unseen or unacknowledged organizing and propagandistic work being done to produce an effective public reaction. The best recent example of this is from the 2017 airport protests/occupations in reaction to President Donald Trump’s Muslim ban. While some of the people showed up at the airports spontaneously, there were also a number of left-wing groups, of diverse politics, working to make these actions effective. It is likely we would not have witnessed the positive results we saw from these actions had it not been for the quick, organized work of activists on the ground. And yet, it all appeared rather spontaneous.

8.  The truth is not enough, and it will not set us free. Truth is not irrelevant, but it is not enough for the Left simply to be “right.”

Related to thesis 7, Cash relies on his exposing the truth to the world to be the catalyst for widespread resistance to the practices of WorryFree. Mind you, this is all taking place in a world where all of the other dehumanizing practices of WorryFree, such as: lifetime contracts for workers, with all room and board provided but without pay, are deemed acceptable. Why would artificially producing human-horse hybrid workers be any different? While there is a vital educational role for the Left to play in providing the factual basis for the need for organized resistance and building an alternative to racist, patriarchal, imperialist capitalism, these facts are not enough. Facts can be interpreted in various ways and perverted by the mouthpieces of capitalism, often most egregiously by the ostensibly liberal vanguard of “progressive” capitalism. The Left needs to not only be “right” but it also needs to provide deeper context and present viable options to pursue. Put differently, in addition to having the truth on its side, the Left needs to be persuasive.

9.   Automation is complicated and likely will not take the forms or have the effects the public are often led to believe it will have.

The world has been browbeaten into thinking that the worst consequences of increased automation in the twenty-first century will be mass unemployment. Sorry to Bother You, believe it or not, provides a glimpse at one more realistic alternative—as well as a basis for a more honest look at the effects of automation. First, as we have seen throughout the history of capitalism, workers themselves, both physically and psychologically, are made into automatons. Second, the worst consequences of automation is not joblessness but deskilling. Part of the automation of human beings is the decreased cognitive and creative labor that more and more jobs will require or allow. Companies, whether it is WorryFree or Amazon, would much prefer the less expensive route of encouraging society, primarily through culture and schooling, to produce less thoughtful, more compliant workers, rather than spend huge sums of money on automation technologies that could become obsolete within a few years. Automation technology under capitalism is expensive. On the flipside, people under capitalism have been made to be quite inexpensive. Maybe we all will not be turned into human-horse hybrids, but given the trajectory of undemocratic automatic in the early years of the twenty-first century, we will not likely be looking at a Jetsons-esque lifestyle for everyone. People will likely continue to be subjected to intense pressures to physically, psychologically, and chemically alter themselves in order to acquire even slightly higher wages.

10.  People, especially workers within capitalism, are willing to accept very little money or benefits in exchange for their labor and even their lives.

Capitalist exploitation and oppressions degrade people. Capitalist ideology convinces people that they are merely worth whatever some boss is willing to pay them—and they are fortunate to have what little they have. After all, there are plenty of people with less. This reality puts impoverished workers in a terrible situation when bosses try to buy them off to undermine labor organizing or threaten a worker with firing for talking about politics at work. This reality is also part of the root cause of conservative labor union practices, which often sacrifice anything beyond moderate gains in wages and benefits for worker compliance. The promise of a more lavish lifestyle, new clothes and a new car (or really just a car that is reliable) is what motivates Cash to sell-out. Scabs may indeed be the scum of the Earth from a labor organizing perspective (and there’s no reason to think otherwise), but they are motivated by the very same things that motivate workers to sell their labor for a wage in the first place. So really, besides the immediacy of the betrayal, what is the difference between a scab and worker who refuses to join their union or a worker who does not vote to support a strike? The results and the motivations are fundamentally identical. This is not a defense of scabbing (as if such a defense were actually possible), but it is a lesson that needs to be learned. Capitalist ideology is extremely powerful, and it compels us all in various ways to become subjects of our exploitation and the exploitation of others. Scabs and other types of non-class-conscious workers are as much a product of capitalism as the credit card is.

11.  Sorry to bother—and even betray—you, but apologies and forgiveness matter.

Even after Cash betrays his fellow-workers and friends by crossing their picket lines multiple times, once he realizes his grave error and is determined to join them in struggle, his friends forgive him. They accept his apology. The apology does not change what Cash did, but it reflects his commitment to doing the right things moving forward. This might be one of the hardest lessons for the Left to learn from this movie. How does one forgive someone who has betrayed them, especially when it was not just a friendship that was betrayed but an entire movement? However, put differently, how can the Left ever be successful moving forward without the capacity to forgive and work alongside those who have actively worked against the Left in their past? Where is the place for former liberals (or even former conservatives or reactionaries)? Where is the place for former scabs? Sorry to Bother You argues that despite the awfulness of one’s past positions and actions, the answer to these two preceding questions is: among the Left. Very few people are born into radical politics, and almost no one holds the right views from the start, and so people need time to learn and grow. Sometimes it is a very longtime filled with egregious beliefs and behaviors—but if the Left is to ever be effective, it will be populated mainly by these kinds of people.[1]

12.  The first win (or loss) is only a beginning…

Sorry to Bother You ends with a victory of sorts. A small one. Without spoiling too much, the lesson here is that strikes, whether successful or not, can only ever be the start of a revolutionary movement. Same for protests. Protests in and of themselves are not going to bring down a government or a political-economic system. Strikes will not either. There is plenty of debate on the Left about whether a mass general strike could do that, but even with something as powerful as a general strike (which is really only practically imaginable with preliminary strikes and protests preceding it) it would be unlikely on its own to replace capitalism with socialism (or whatever your preferred label for a democratic, egalitarian form of postcapitalism is). Revolutionary transformation is not something that can be won or lost overnight, with one victory—nor can it be lost with one loss, by one strike that fails or never happens, by one protest that has low turnout or fails to motivate further actions. Hope is crucial, but it must be tempered by a realistic pessimism regarding the struggle ahead. There will be many loses and hopefully many more wins—but the struggle continues. Even if capitalism were successfully dismantled, what replaces it will also be an object of struggle, one that will require that we learn as much as we can from all the struggles that precedes it.

Bryant William Sculos, Ph.D. is Visiting Assistant Professor of global politics and theory at Worcester State University. He was formerly a Mellon-Sawyer postdoctoral fellow at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and 2019 Summer Fellow at the Institute for Critical Social Inquiry at the New School for Social Research. Bryant is the Politics of Culture section editor for the open-access journal Class, Race and Corporate Power and contributing editor for the Hampton Institute. Beyond his work for the aforementioned outlets, his work has also appeared in New Politics, Dissident Voice, Truthout, Constellations, Capitalism, Communication, & Critique (tripleC), New Political Science, and Public Seminar. He is also the co-editor (with Prof. Mary Caputi) of Teaching Marx & Critical Theory in the 21st Century (Brill, 2019; paperback forthcoming July 2020 with Haymarket Books).

Notes

[1] Although she was writing about how socialists should deal with liberals at Women’s Marches, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor’s writings served as crucial inspiration for this point. See: “Don’t Shame the First Steps of a Resistance” in Socialist Worker, Jan. 24, 2017. Available online at: https://socialistworker.org/2017/01/24/dont-shame-the-first-steps-of-a-resistance.

Decolonial Resistance in Hip Hop: Re-Colonial Resistances, Love, and Wayward Self-Determination

By Joe Hinton

Although many forms of black expressive culture contain elements of political resistance, hip hop is a form that has been recognized by numerous scholars for its unique, complex, and nuanced forms of offering political discourse. As Damon Sajnani notes, the origins of hip hop are inherently political, specifically rooted in the politics of the "decolonization of local urban space". Hip Hop today, the most popular genre in the United States (if not the world), is quite disconnected from these political roots in a radical anti-colonial politic built through creating livelihood out of structure-based psychological pain.

What is the nature of resistance in hip hop, and what do scholars have to say about its current status? Many note that hip hop has been co-opted by a white-controlled market and has been manipulated so as to promote limited narratives of Blackness, many of which are derived from minstrel tropes. Sometimes, these tropes can be manifested as partial resistances to white-supremacist, capitalist, patriarchal settler-colonialism. Sometimes, when they rely on European notions of political resistance that are either inherently capitalistic or statist/nationalist, they reify colonial structures and are thus re-colonial. Sometimes they flip the narrative of oppression or expose it for what it is, as Tricia Rose notes, but do so in a way that constitutes a solid first step to resistance but does not completely answer the question of how one wants to exist and live in a world beyond the reality of this oppression.

In my eyes, the only types of resistant expressive culture that can actually spur Black liberation must create alternative visions that denounce resistances that rely on other closely related forms of oppression and toxic psychologies. Building off the ideas of Cornel West, Zoe Samudzi, and William C. Anderson, these visions must be centered in both collective love and individualist, wayward, and deviant lifestyle choices. By wayward and deviant, I mean prone to reject the boxes imposed by American culture and its depictions of Blackness. I draw on the idea that Black and indigenous people in the United States exist liminally, not as citizens. This means that as the state is functioned to precipitate our extinction and/or suffering and to prevent our full integration into the benefits of society, and that our existence as colonial subjects, regardless of socioeconomic advancement, renders our status perpetually ambiguous and subject to a constantly uncertain chaos and threat of violence that reinforces a spiritual feeling of collective subordination. This chaos can be overcome by a moment of creation and establishment of what the state deprives us of and excludes us from: self-love. Hip Hop originally sought to achieve this, but it has been co-opted by the market and the limited narratives it promotes, with some notable exceptions. Once based in love, and dedicated to the creation of love-based communities, these forms of culture can help spur mobilization against white-supremacist, capitalist, patriarchal settler-colonialism (WSCPSC) to defend ourselves against it and eventually overthrow it; or, more immediately, find a way to create communities that employ social rules and customs that promote Black and indigenous love, rather than relying on the false promises of liberal reformism and partial resistances.

Although it remains true that hip hop has been co-opted by a powerful white media establishment, it also remains true that hip hop is an inherently resistant genre in that it constantly engages with the "politics of having fun," a framework that can be perceived as seemingly apolitical, but is actually quite focused on the psychological effects of socio-political hierarchies. Where songs can be differentiated in their political efficacy is the degree to which they promote a liberational Black politic. As Cornel West notes, a truly liberational Black politic is committed to fighting racism at its root: capitalism. And is also determined to end all associated forms of oppression that result from capitalism and colonialism: homophobia, sexism, ableism, and transphobia. Within hip hop, although the 80s and 90s featured a number of artists for whom the legacy of Black Power reigned eminent, the modern mainstream genre is primarily full of either market-driven resistances, partial resistances, or their associated re-colonial resistances.

Partial resistances vary as to the terms to which they reify colonial resistances, but most do to one extent or another. N.W.A's "Fuck tha Police" emphatically decries the historically biased and anti-Black prosecuting tendencies of the City of Los Angeles quite creatively while also reifying the colonial oppression of gay people by using homophobic slurs. The sexual domination narratives promoted by Cardi B and Nicki Minaj take a step towards a less subordinate position for Black women and do promote positive narratives that Black women can be proud of their sexuality, but also reify the objectification and exploitation of the Black female body by offering limited options for how a famous Black women is to present herself and her body. This is not to say that other options are not presented by other Black females; to do so would be myopic. I am rather emphasizing that the female rappers with the most prominence do not fit these narrow images, coincidentally; they are approved by a white-controlled media elite that has never shied away from aligning Black female exploitation and lucrative profits. In the wake of the death of Nipsey Hussle, an LA rapper known for his generosity and devotion to community uplift, Jay Z exclaimed that Black people should look to gentrify their own neighborhoods before white people can. Given that gentrification is fundamentally aligned with the same ideologies of settler-colonialism and economic exploitation that hip hop was founded on alleviating and eliminating, suggesting such a notion is especially re-colonial. All of these are examples of when artists in hip hop use their platforms to promote the advancement of an oppressed group, but somehow reify a hierarchy that exists to make Black people and Black women suffer.

Then how can hip hop be completely resistant and neither partial nor re-colonial? As Sajnani notes, the diasporic nature of Black nationalism is an effective liberational alternative to the pain of WSPCSC, a nationalism distinct from its European analog. This nationalism has been referred to vaguely by scholars such as Bakari Kitwana, specifically to his conception of a Hip-Hop Generation, and was cited positively by West in his analysis of Morrison's Beloved. Many arguments regarding Black self-determination usually rely on this statist conception. Sajnani's analysis of the Black national bourgeoisie, of which Jay Z is a prominent member, is particularly revealing. He claims that partial resistances are often performed by prominent Blacks as a means to receive compensation from the white cultural gatekeepers while Black exploitation is upheld by the national order. To Sajnani, to support the American Dream is to ignore economic stratification, which in the US is always a racial topic. Black capitalists, especially in hip hop, engage in the rhetoric of the American Dream quite regularly, relying on a misguided bootstraps ideology. But even if Black capitalism can't be a true form of resistance to WSPCSC, can diasporic nationalism constitute a more complete resistance? As Zoé Samudzi and William C. Anderson propose in their powerful novel on the anarchism of Blackness as Black as Resistance,

"attempting to reclaim and repurpose the settler state will not lead to liberation, and it will not provide the kind of urgent material relief so many people desperately need, though electing empathetic officials sometimes can arguably mitigate against harm. Only through a material disruption of these geographies, through the cultivation of Black autonomy, can Black liberation begin to be actualized."

As such, a legitimate response to WSPCSC must not consider the future of Blackness as reliant on a statist solution. Although Sajnani's support of a somewhat re-colonial nationalism, no matter if distinct from European nationalism, is misguided, his emphasis on "resisting the appropriation of Hip Hop and elaborating its original mission" (I would replace appropriation with misappropriation) is quite relevant to establishing a liberatory Black politic through hip hop. What is the next step?

While resistance in Black politics today often calls for criminal justice reform instead of radical restructuring of the industrial-prison complex, 2018 saw some powerful forms of resistance enter the mainstream, most notably Childish Gambino's "This is America." Gambino's Grammy-award-winning song and video effectively criticizes the current state of hip hop and minstrel tropes. As Frank Guan notes, "It's a tribute to the cultural dominance of trap music and a reflection on the ludicrous social logic that made the environment from which trap emerges, the logic where money makes the man, and every black man is a criminal." Gambino's work helped bring a critical element of reflection into the mainstream of pop and hip hop: that the limited, minstrel-reproducing narratives of Blackness in popular culture contribute to past and present forms of social subordination. It is a crucial step towards finding a liberatory politic and is quite close to a complete form of resistance. Where it falls short however is along two fronts: an explicit embrace of a collective love ethic, and a moment of creation that accepts the reality of Black liminality and becomes devoted to a deviant determination of one's self that allows for the complexity of Blackness to live freely and waywardly, away from the psychological boxes imposed on us by WSCPSC.

I have come to learn that hip hop has an extremely high potential for being politically resistant to WSCPSC, but it is going to take a lot of work to return it to what it once accomplished. Very few forms of hip hop are directly engaged with a love ethic nor with an explicitly deviant rejection of WSCPSC based in self-determination. Two legacies of Black expressive culture will serve as my examples for such a cultural politic in this section: Toni Morrison's Beloved, as cited and analyzed by West, and the work of Prince, a genre-less Black artist whose influence on and connections to hip hop are understated. These forms of culture are committed to examining how Black people can create their own worlds under oppression, and even as they strive for radical changes, they are pragmatic and understand that a complete rejection of WSCPSC would constitute a violent revolution. As such, they utilize Black art as a means of peaceful resistance and alleviation of colonial pain, as hip hop once did. West noted that Morrison's Beloved was an active buffer against the pain of Black nihilism derived from WSCPSC, stressing that "Self-love and love of others are both modes toward increasing self-valuation and encouraging political resistance in one's community."

Black literature's emphasis on self-love and reflection must be replicated in hip hop. Prince understood that "Transcending categories however is not synonymous with abandoning ones' roots." After his death, Alicia Garza, a BLM founder noted that he "was from a world where Black was not only beautiful, but it was nuanced and complex and shifting and unapologetic and wise." Prince does not allow the chaos of Blackness (as constructed by WSCPSC) to render him a slave to reifying some form of colonial oppression, rather he recognizes that "it's about being comfortable in an unfixed state while improvising the topography of your life and music as you go along." Such a mindset and perspective are directly derivative of African religious culture. Thus, a liberational politic must be Afrofuturist. It must avoid the categorical labels offered by WSCPSC because of how much they limit us and function to constrict us. Perhaps a contemporary example of such a wayward, liberational politic comes in Saidiya Hartman's Wayward Lives: Beautiful Experiments, in which she reimagines the deviant and radical lifestyles and love-ethics of early 20th century upper-middle-class Black women. When Black people have the socioeconomic privilege to be able to transcend the limits of WSCPSC's social construction of race using a collective Black love ethic and staying true to the root cause of Black uplift, a promotion of a more plentiful array of types of Black existence can proliferate. And the commodification of Black art can start to dissipate, pushing more and more colonial subjects to reimagine their humanity away from internal colonialism.

This is the future I see for hip hop, one that returns it to its political roots. I understand that the pull of the market is strong, and that hip hop's decolonial future will require some serious changes in cultural discourse. Hip hop must return to its basis as a means of cultural self-defense, of engaging with the politics of having fun in a way that is more cognizant of decolonial motives. Taking down WSCPSC will require both explicit and implicit resistance, most of which will be anti-capitalist. Black expressive culture and its dynamism, specifically with regard to hip hop, have extreme potential for creating radical Black communities in the United States that are neither re-colonial nor based in the European need to monopolize violence, and embrace the duality of Black liminality, the complex nuances of double consciousness, and consider Blackness on one's own determined set of terms.

Notes

Berman, Judy. "'This Is America' 8 Things to Read about Chidish Gambino's New Music Video." New York Times, May 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/08/arts/music/childish-gambino-this-is-america-roundup.html.

Gordon Williams, James. "Black Muse 4 U: Liminality, Self-Determination, and Racial Uplift in the Music of Prince." Journal of African American Studies, vol. 21, no. 3, Sept. 2017.

Rose, Tricia. Black Noise Rap Music and Black Culture In Contemporary America. Wesleyan University Press, 1994.

Sajnani, Damon. "Hip Hop's Origins as Organic Decolonization." Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education, and Society, 2015, https://decolonization.wordpress.com/2015/04/02/hiphops-origins-as-organic-decolonization/ .

Samudzi, Zoe, and William C. Anderson. As Black as Resistance. AK Press, 2018.

Sehgal, Parul. "An Exhilarating Work of History About Daring Adventures in Love." New York Times, Feb. 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/19/books/wayward-lives-beautiful-experiments-saidiya-hartman.html.

West, Cornel. "Nihilism in Black America." Race Matters, Beacon, 1994.

Black Feminism and the Rap/Hip-Hop Culture: I Don't Want the "D"

By Asha Layne

"I was born to flex (Yes)
Diamonds on my neck
I like boardin' jets, I like mornin' sex (Woo!)
But nothing in this world that I like more than checks (Money)
All I really wanna see is the (Money)
I don't really need the D, I need the (Money)
All a bad bitch need is the (Money)"

- Cardi B

With the advancement of technology, more specifically social media platforms, the plight of women of color has been widely discussed thanks to the Me Too and Say Her Name movements which challenged and revolutionized the thinking of dominant culture. Of profound importance, the inclusion of Black women and women of color in these social movements contested the sweeping generalizations of 'traditional' feminism. This would later lead to a widespread rejection of popular feminism ideologies, thus making way for a new wave of neo non-conservative ideologies on feminism.

This deviation between traditional and non-traditional feminism can be traced back to the Women's Liberation Movement in the late 1960s. During this period, the conditions and concerns of White middle-class women took center stage and addressed issues that inhibited their (White women) ability to live fully free lives rid from patriarchal oppression. This perspective would continue to serve as the backdrop on a series of feminine-related issues such as equal pay, sexual harassment, sexual violence, and violence against women. Not surprisingly, given the US's racially contentious history, it (Women's Liberation Movement) shamelessly ignored the different culturally-significant spaces that Black women (and women of color) occupied, leaving Black feminists to repeat Sojourner Truth's riveting question: "Ain't I a woman?" This essay explores the evolution of Black feminism through the lens of female rappers, who I argue add to the discourse of feminism, and more specifically Black feminism.

As a theoretical construct, feminist theory claims of being woman-centered historically has ignored the narratives and standpoints of women of color. Despite the popular question, "What about the women?" that has long served as the impetus behind the development of feminist theory, the answers to this question have traditionally focused their attention solely on the experiences of White women. Anchoring this sentiment is the emergence of Black feminism and Black feminist thought, which both sought to place the experiences of Black women at the center of its analysis, therefore offering a starkly different knowledge from that of mainstream feminism. According to Collins (2000), Black women in the United States can stimulate a distinctive consciousness concerning their own experiences. Collins, like other Black feminist scholars, understood that this knowledge produced by the narratives of Black women would transform how feminism is defined and understood by Black women (and women of color). Similarly, Kimberle Crenshaw also understood that the experiences of Black women could not be explained by race and gender alone but should also include the intersecting identities that shape their identity as a Black woman. This is best demonstrated by Black women (and women of color) in the rap/hip-hop industry.

Female rappers have (and continue) to take a melodic stance to verbally disseminate information on social issues and struggles that women of color face, such as: white supremacy, sexism, self-esteem, misogyny, patriarchy, sexual harassment, and gender-based violence. One can hear this in the music of both contemporary and non-contemporary female artists, who by applying Collins's theoretical framework share their narrative through standpoint theorizing. Standpoint theorizing is a sociological feminist framework which explains that knowledge of women's experiences is best understood from their social positions in society. In Yo-Yo's 1991 debut hit, You Can't Play with my Yo-Yo she explores what it means to be a woman in a male-dominated environment. She raps:

"If you touch, you livin in a coffin (word to mother)

I'm in the 90s, you're still in the 80s right

I rock the mic, they say I'm not lady like

But I'ma lady, who will pull a stunt though

I kill suckas, and even hit the block

So what you want to do?"

In listening to the words of female rap/hip-hop artists, the audience is able to recognize the nonconventional form of activism which has added to both the discourse of Black feminism and the music industry. In the above lyrics, Yo-Yo also explains that as a female in a male-dominated industry, gender often takes precedence over race and consequently adds to negative experiences Black female MCs in the industry often grapple with. Women of color in the rap/hip-hop industry have inarguably exemplify Collins's concepts of: standpoint theory, outsider-within, and matrix of domination, sidestepping any mention of scholastic sources or prominent experts in the field. One can easily identify these acts of black female activism in the rap/hip-hop industry in the work of contemporary artist, Cardi B. This is particularly well exemplified in Cardi B's debut album, Invasion of Privacy. In her song Be Careful, which explicitly examines infidelity and the double-standard concerns it raises, she raps, "I could've did what you did to me to you a few times. But if I did decide to slide, find a nigga fuck him, suck his dick, you would've been pissed." In Money, Cardi B colorfully explains that money and not a man's penis will meet her needs. She raps, "I got a baby, I need some money, yeah I need cheese for my egg." This album unapologetically proclaims that despite her (un)popular gender non-normative approach that she will be heard and respected regardless of anyone else's opinion. Therefore, demonstrating that, just like her female rap/hip-hop predecessors, she too unconventionally exemplifies black feminist activism.

Patricia Hill Collins's Black Feminist Thought explains that race, gender, and class are oppressive factors that are bound together. In relation to rappers, the commodification of female rappers in the industry and the hypersexual images of Black female rappers speaks to not only this intersection of race, class, and gender but also to the systemic cultural nature of exploitation that is inherent not only to the industry but also within dominant American culture. In both spaces (the industry and American culture), masculinity is directly related to power and violence, and reminds us of the pervasiveness of the White perspective in social institutions. In White-Washing Race, Brown et al. (2003) explains that the White perspective is not the product of salient characteristics, such as skin color, but of culture and experiences. The lyrical narratives shared by female rap/hip-hop artists demonstrates how women of color actively grapple with the many issues, concerns, and questions they experience culturally, socially, and politically.

Is the emergence of the outspoken, gender-bending, highly independent, and sexy female artist a new phenomenon for women of color? Collins highlights how the role of Black women always contradicted the traditional role of women in mainstream society. Collin states, "if women are allegedly passive and fragile, then why are Black women treated as "mules" and assigned heavy cleaning chores" (2000, p.11)? The placement of Black women as 'objects' and 'tools' for production under capitalism is intrinsic to the social, political, and economic arrangements of power in the United States. Black feminism deconstructs the established systems of knowledge and arrangements of power by showing the masculinist bias that frames these arrangements of power from a cultural lens.

The radical changes exhibited in the bodies of work of contemporary female rappers engenders the thesis of Black feminism through frequent displays of gender non-conforming behaviors while embracing the beauty of being uniquely deviant. No longer are women of color minimizing or editing their unique experiences, behaving in gender-conforming ways, or are ashamed of being labelled a 'bitch' for the sake of being accepted by mainstream culture and appeasing their male counterparts. Contemporary Black female rappers, similar to classic rappers such as MC Lyte, Queen Latifah, and Roxeanne Shante, continue to redefine not only gender identity but Black female identity in patriarchal structures.

Both gender identity and Black female identity are socially constructed through interaction and socialization. Following the tenets of symbolic interaction, gender and racial identities emerge out of social interactions which helps to define an individual's self. The formation of self is unique to women of color because of the location and situation they occupy in many faces of oppression. The marginalization, exploitation, and feelings of powerlessness are all too common in the tropes of women of color. Therefore, the gender-social identification of women of color does not examine solely "doing gender" but instead considers key factors that obfuscates women of color from "doing gender."

Women of color in the rap/hip-hop industry continue to demonstrate the spirit of Black feminism through nonconventional methods. Today, Black female artists (and women of color) have changed the way we define women's empowerment. The popularity of female MCs embodying androgenic characteristics through feminine appeal supports the narratives of many women who have mastered the proverbial quote, "think like a man." To condemn the hypersexual behaviors and language used by Black female artists is to ignore the historical truth that Black women (and women of color) were never defined by the traditional standards of being a 'woman.' Black female MCs have and will always continue to redefine what 'doing gender' is from a cultural standpoint, therefore adding to the Black feminism discourse.

Bibliography

B, Cardi. (2018). The invasion of privacy. CD. New York: New York. Atlantic Records.

Brown, Michael K., Carnoy, Martin, Currie, Elliott, Duster, Troy, Oppenheimer, David. B., Schultz, Marjorie, M., and Wellman, David. 2003. White-washing race: The myth of a color-blind society. Berkley and Los Angeles, California: University of California Press.

Collins, Patricia Hill. (2000). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge.

Yo-Yo. (1991). Make way for the Motherlode. CD. New York: New York. EastWest Records America.

Challenging the Music Industry's Commodity Complex: An Interview with Punk-Rock Guerilla, Justin Pearson

By Mimi Soltysik

This interview originally appeared at The Socialist , the official publication of the Socialist Party USA.

"Would the owner of an ounce of dignity please contact the mall security?"

- The Locust

What Justin Pearson has done and continues to do as an artist isn't going to be for everyone. It's a challenge. Perhaps it's a threat. Notes and shrieks spray like bullets through the speakers. Our attention, so thoroughly bombarded by the mass marketing of apathy, pacification, and complacency, is the target. While critics fawn over his work with The Locust, Dead Cross, and RETOX, Justin's resume reads (and sounds) like a massive "fuck you" to a dying music industry's lowest-common-denominator commodity complex. As a longtime fan, I'm here for it. A passive discussion with Justin Pearson might be possible. But when you have a minute with a punk rock guerrilla, why go passive?

Mimi : The first time I saw you perform was with the Locust back in 2000 at the Smell in L.A. At the time, it sounded to me like the audio companion to systems collapse. I mean no offense when I say that. It felt like a storm was brewing and the Locust was going to be the soundtrack. Eighteen years later, it seems to have been somewhat prophetic. Since then, we've had the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the financial crisis, incredibly bleak news about climate change, and of course, Donald Trump. And all of this happening at a point where, with social media, we're seeing the collapse in real time. I'm wondering what you were feeling, as an artist, that led to that sound? What was your environment like? Was there a relationship between the socio-political environment and what you were creating musically? How does an album like "Plague Soundscapes" fit today?

Justin : Thanks for the analogy of our sound. I think you are pretty accurate in that description. I think that music in a much broader platform, perhaps addressed just as art in general, can draw from non-musical aspects. Where one would ask a band what their musical influences are to understand what pushes them to do what they do, it might be just as important, or maybe even more important to address the things outside of music that are influential. Of course, what we do is subjective and anyone can interpret it how one wants to. And even with that being said, most of the time, for me at least, I am not even aware of what might have influenced something I was part of when it's coming to life. So with The Locust and probably a lot of stuff I'm part of, influences come from social politics, culture, economics, and then it also brings in science fiction, absurdity, subversion, and probably a million other elements that helped shape what we do. I do feel, unfortunately in 2018, something like The Locust's "Plague Soundscapes" is relevant, both musically and lyrically. Perhaps even aesthetically still relevant too. I grew up thinking that it's the job of artists to reflect what the world that they live in consists of, and with that, it's also their job to change it or influence change. But with all that being said, it's just music, or just art. It's not like we are great revolutionaries in the world. However, it is music that transcends certain things such as age, gender, language, geography, etc. It speaks to people, it enables people to do certain things, and at times, keeps people alive. But a lot of the stuff you mentioned, such as the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as stuff like climate change and possibly the overall destruction of the planet, were already on our radar. Those were things that we were aware of at the time, so I wouldn't call it prophetic, but more accurately just being aware of the world as a whole. Sure, before Rump managed to get into office, it seemed impossible and extremely absurd. But if you were to consider a lot that has happened previous to that, such as Vietnam, the assassination of Kennedy, the Nixon administration and Water Gate, even Reagan, a crappy actor, becoming President, it all seemed unimaginable.

On a basic musical level, I have always been drawn to what some might see as non-traditional musical elements. I grew up with stuff like PIL, Septic Death, This Heat, and even more known artists like Cecil Taylor, or maybe even Sigue Sigue Sputnik. So stuff like that coupled with not having a proper musical education possibly translated into the general realm of what I have been part of. And with those musical influences, they all seem to have depth to what they did. It wasn't the run-of-the-mill lowest common denominator music that is often what is marketed on a larger level. I grew up really resonating with stuff that people thought was garbage.

Mimi : I think that the piece about the impact that outside influences can have on songwriting might be overlooked a bit. I'm glad you brought that up. Would it be safe to say that, with something like the new Dead Cross EP, we're hearing that impact, or is there a concerted effort to put something together that has a specific sound? And shit, how are you feeling in 2018? I don't know that I see many cases where artists are asked how they might be holding up emotionally. It's such a big consideration within organizing and activism circles. How are we taking care of ourselves? Are we supporting another? Seriously, how are you?

Justin : I wish there was an easy answer. For me, what I end up doing, or being part of, usually stems from my subconscious, or comes from something that might include elements that I am not initially aware of. It's the retrospect where I can fully study the outcome of something that I was part of. I can breathe and dissect it with ease and in peace (with myself). I think over the years, while everything that happened, tons of weird energy was exchanged and moved. It made sense to some degree, but it took time to really see the broader picture or possible understand the magnitude of something. I'm not sure if that makes sense or not. I suppose, the simplistic way to answer that part of this question would be that fortunately things seem to come organically, for the most part. However with that being said, organically doesn't mean that it's a simplistic way, or a peaceful experience, or that it comes from a natural space. So moving into the later part of your question, about the era that we are in, it's grim in many respects. It's more and more absurd. I feel a great deal more anxiety than what I felt in recent years. It seems that time might be running out. I can feel the tension in the air, and smell the shit that is lingering. But with that being said, I can see new ideas, I feel rad power from people, and change is being birthed and evoked in a lot of creative and powerful stuff. Man, this is a massive, massive topic to try to articulate and nail down in a simple answer. I guess over all, I see things being polarized. I do think that might be what was and is needed, to avoid the stagnation that seemed to keep everything at bay. For so long, I could see that nasty band-aid on everything was gonna fall off eventually. It sure seems to have fallen.

Mimi : The band-aid metaphor really strikes a chord, no pun intended. From where folks on the radical left stand, capitalism is a cancer that is consistently growing. Reforms are essentially band aids, providing some minor relief and perhaps offer a veneer of progress. But with each band aid applied, the cancer grows. It seems like we're getting to a place where the band aids no longer offer that veneer, that hope. I mean, for so many oppressed communities throughout the world, there's been no band aid. And I'm seeing little hints here and there that some are in the U.S. are becoming aware of that. In that context, do you have feelings about the potential impact of your music, whether it be RETOX or Dead Cross? Your audiences are living in that context. Do you feel any sense of responsibility to play a role in how we move forward? To how your audience perceives your output and where they might go with that perception? And I do acknowledge that, when I'm asking this, I know that this is some heavy shit. I know of very, very few artists who would be willing to engage in this kind of dialogue and I have tremendous respect for you in agreeing to participate.

Justin : It's so interesting to do this interview. I'm also doing some press for the Dead Cross EP that just came out and to be honest, most of the questions I get are garbage, have no substance, and are not challenging aside from challenging me to figure out how to write something interesting to a vague irrelevant inquiry. So thank you for providing the opposite of that stuff.

As for the concept of responsibility, you are correct, that is a massive topic. I'm not trying to take the easy way out, but I don't feel that I'm responsible for anyone aside from myself. When someone creats art that is in the public sector, it can reach one other person, or a million other people and I still don't think that the artist is responsible for anyone outside of themselves. Maybe that is the part of me who identifies with the concept of anarchy. But for me, I feel I have aligned myself with people to communicate certain things, or even just one certain general thing. We then say what we have to say, maybe over and over each time we play, or with each album, and so on. We are calculated, educated, and aware, for the most part. Once we create that art, we can also learn from it, and adjust it, for the next attempt. Then we grow on our own, and hold ourselves responsible for our own actions and words. Or perhaps we adjust that thing being communicated and see if we can speak differently, and possibly set things straight outside of ourselves. A song is something that might not be linear, it's not physical. It's energy and that energy at times goes beyond language, class, race, geography, gender, etc. I think I might be going down a wormhole here, trying to figure out how to address the responsibility on an artist, but it might be the artist who are reflecting the world that they live in. It could be the world's voice. At least it is for myself. So maybe the responsibility could be placed on the world that we live in, which is what created the art.

Mimi : Why do you think that questions posed to artists are frequently garbage? What do you think fans lose as a result? I mean, I know there are probably many who feel that's "just the way it is" or that "it's the nature of the beast", but does it have to be that way? I also wanted to ask you, as someone who has been involved with the music business for quite some time, albeit not necessarily in the employ of the major labels, how do you think the music business might be different if it was run on a socialist model, where the workers owned and controlled production, where they had democratic control over process, and where the full value of their labor couldn't be exploited from above?

Justin : I assume there are a few reason why interviews are garbage. For one, the person conducting the interview isn't always invested in it. Perhaps there is some sort of need to get a piece about a band's new album, so the publication just assigns the interview to whoever works there. I really don't care to talk about how Dead Cross started, or what the date was when we put the band together, or why we play hardcore. You can Google those answers. And with questions like that, it's void of conversation and substance. You can tell, even out of ten or so questions, where there isn't one thing that is unique or specific to the band, that they are just uninterested. It's almost like it makes more work for the band to come up with a way to spin something that won't come off as boring and general just to locate some sort of substance. I'm not sure that socialism would play into making an interview be better for a certain publication. I think more so, it's just people being lazy, or being told what to do, or people being uneducated, or perhaps it's part of some facet of a broken industry. I have done way too many fill-in-the-blank interviews over time to really understand why they even still exist. You'd assume with the internet, and blogs, that people would be able to create new things and communicate about genuine things by people who are genuine. There are really awesome publications out there and great interviews do exist. But at the end of the day, I'm not in a place to pass up interviews, since they could help with a show, or a tour, or perhaps equate to at least one new listener.

Mimi : When did Dead Cross start? Just kidding. At the end of the day, while what you do is art, it's also how you make a living. Do you feel that artists, and you specifically, are treated fairly for the work they do? And how do you think a broken music industry can repair? Is it possible? If Justin Pearson was tasked with fixing the music industry, what would he do?

Justin : Good one! Make a living? Another good one. You are on a roll here. I often reference this thing that John Waters once said to me, something like, if you want to make art that is legit and by your own standards, you have to intern for yourself for roughly forty years before you make money. So I'm half way there by those guidelines. But as far as fixing something like the music industry, shit. If I had an answer to that I wouldn't be doing this interview. I'd be a wealthy philanthropist and my intern could answer this for me. But maybe there is no need to fix the industry, or at least no need for me to come up with a way to do so. It's done a great job at killing itself over the past few decades. It's been rude and arrogant. But with that being said, to me, the industry as it's perceived, is becoming more and more irrelevant. I see music in a much larger picture. Music is more than sound for me. It's part of something bigger that fits under the umbrella of art. There are aspects that are part of music, such as intellect, chance, aesthetic, and so on, that are never the industry focal point. Making profit was never an objective. And with that, we can take it a bit further. It wasn't something that was done for fun. It was a necessity in our lives. It still is that very same thing.

Mimi : You wrote on your label's website that you "started Three One G in hopes to better the quality and creativity of stuff that I was part of, as well as the music culture that I am part of - something obtainable, tangible, and real." Would you say that, to achieve that goal, that hope, ownership (not in some sort of greedy "it's mine, asshole!" way, but in a direct involvement way) of the process is necessary? And as possible advice for artists who might have an interest in taking a similar approach, what are you doing to realize that vision? Are there artists that may have forged a path that you've been following?

Justin : I mean, the creator of something is the owner. Or we could use a different term I suppose. Something less capitalistic, ha! But nonetheless, we own what we create in my opinion. Nonetheless, the concept of obtainable, tangible, and real is basically something that my ethics are derived from. You know, the basic ideals behind what "punk" was born out of, and what later became known as DIY. We all can do this stuff. I'm not special. We can all own our creations. We can also give that stuff away for $8.99 or for gas money, or a floor to sleep on, or whatever it is that we need to survive. Whatever we feel is suitable. As for artists who steered me on a path, I would say that Dischord was easily one of the biggest influences on my early life in the world of music. Then Ebullition, which I ended up releasing records on. And then later, perhaps Gravity. I think those tree labels are what have collectively made Three One G what it is.

Mimi : Dischord was probably the first time I'd seen some sort of ethics introduced on what might be called the "business" side of things. I still look at what Dischord's done - frequently - and find inspiration. It's like Ian MacKaye found a way to say "fuck you," in a really empowering way, to the gross excess of corporate music. You mentioned a bit ago that you see these glimpses of power coming from the people. Are you seeing those glimpses in the music community? Are there things you might be seeing from your side of things that the rest of us aren't quite yet? Where do you think music might be headed? Where might the industry overall be headed? I hear arena rock artists like KISS (fuck Gene Simmons, by the way) say that they might not make full-length albums any longer because there's no money in it, that they won't be paid fairly for their work.

Justin : My reference to power might be misconstrued. Power definitely has a negative or oppressive element to it. But I think I meant power more along the lines of energy that humans exchange, and sometime though music, and therefore, a positive concept. I suppose my terminology comes from stuff like The Stooges "Raw Power," other than some bullshit spewed out by Ian Stewart. As for the music community, just like the music industry, I'm not sure I have answers there. I think outside of those guidelines. And again, if I knew where things were headed, I would prepare myself. I just have no idea where most things on this planet are headed.

Mimi : I just gotta ask. What does "punk" mean to you? Is punk inherently an expression of resistance or rebellion? If it is, do you think it's a good sign when a band like Motley Crue covers a Sex Pistols song?

Justin : Awe, the "what is the meaning of life" question. I can certainly tell you what punk doesn't mean to me, which is Sid Vicious, or the commercialized image of nihilism. To me, it's cultural, political, social, progressive, and a million other things. Punk is James Chance deciding to wear a suit and play a sax since punk was said to be the opposite. Punk is The Weather Underground, pet rescues, re-purposing the bourgeoisie's trash, the Me Too movement, sustainable living, Planned Parenthood - it's everywhere.

Mimi : There's been a lot that you've said that would be fairly-well in alignment with what we might call "radical." The interesting thing about radical ideas, to me, is that when you say them out loud, they appear to be common sense, like they are just expressions of care and support. Yet, in the U.S., those ideas are packaged as being subversive or worse. Do you think we'll see the day in this country where we'll penetrate the propaganda surrounding radical/revolutionary politics and shift toward models that see people, not profit, as the priority? I mean, I think we can understand why the rich would have an interest in protecting their power and systems of exploitation and oppression. Do you feel like it's a foregone conclusion that they will maintain that power? You're going to have fans that will read this. What message would you have for them about the roles they might play in fighting that oppression and exploitation?

Justin : I do think ideas that were once looked at as radical are the norm now. It just takes times. Unfortunately too much time though. It's like that saying, change comes one funeral at a time. When I was fifteen, and had to stick up for LBGTQ+ friends as well as myself, or when I decided to have a plant based diet, or even when I started playing music, all of that stuff was so out there, and people thought it was crazy. Now, all of it seems normal. Homophobia is not acceptable by any means, you can get vegan food just about anywhere now, and my first band sounds like stuff you hear on the radio or on TV now. It just takes a lot of time, but it will change. I'm not sure it's necessarily a class thing though. I do feel that there are wealthy progressive people, who do good for the people. However, it's the oppressive forces in charge who use the idea of having people hate downwards to keep others oppressed. We've seen it first hand, in our faces recently, with the white middle class hating the poor. But as far as a message to send, in relation to oppression and exploitation, I'm not sure. That is a massive space to try to fill with one's ideas. I do think, no matter what class one falls into, it's extremely important to pay attention where you spend your money and what it's going to. That is the real way to vote, by how you spend, or don't spend your money. We can bring down corporations by being smart and funding progressive entities and not the garbage ones out there.

Mimi : Before we wrap up, I want to thank you for doing this interview. I've seen very, very few artists agree to engage with a radical publication. Why do you think that is? And why did you agree to do this?

Justin : Perhaps a lot of artists are scared to make not be known where they stand on things. Or they don't care to discuss such topics. I agreed for a couple reasons. I'll pretty much do any interview that someone wants to do with me. I'm grateful for that in itself, being aware that someone cares to some extent about the stuff I am part of. But with you, I was pretty psyched to get into an interesting conversation. If anything, it's a honor to have you want to talk with me about the stuff we have covered.

Mimi : Again - many, many thanks. I really appreciate that you've taken the time to do this. In parting, I think there are going to be a lot of radicals/revolutionaries reading this who are just learning about what you've done. What about you, as an artist, do you feel is the most important piece or takeaway that folks walk away with? Any parting words you might have for the comrades?

Justin : Speaking of how interviews pan out, the parting ways last words part is so fucked. Especially to fellow comrades. Ha! There is a lot that we should be discussing, and a lot that I could, or should say, but where do I start or what is punctual enough to wrap this up? I guess I can leave it with a quote that I reference almost daily.

"The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference" - Elie Wiesel

Thank you for taking the time to talk to me.

The Question of Art: An Interview

By Devon Bowers

In a written portion of my series "The Question of Art," I talk to artists Johnny Bentanamo and Kelly Ann Gonzales Boyle about art and its importance to society. Part 1 is can audio portion and can be listened to here .

What kind(s) of art do you do? What/who got you into art in the first place?

Johnny: I specialize in musical recording & performance art as well as mixed media visual arts.

Essentially, I write music on an acoustic guitar as well as accompanying lyrics that I perform live as a soloist, I also compose noise records {that I refer to as "grind-pop"} which I release online. As far as the visual arts go, I mostly use found items to create impressionistic & abstract paintings.

When I was 8 years old, I was downstairs at my Grandparents house & put on the MTV where I saw the music video for Guns N' Roses "Welcome to the Jungle"...that was the moment when I knew what I wanted to do with my life & it's been a struggle ever since. Besides that important moment in my life, I've had many great friends that have doubled as teachers over the years & I own to them much thanks.

Kelly: I am a writer. I have been a writer since I first learned to read and write. Since I was a child, I loved nothing more than curling up and getting lost in a great book, and when you get lost, you often find yourself. My father always encouraged me to be an avid reader, writer, and lover of art. Each time he got me a book, he'd sign it, "Never stop leaning. Love, Papa."

I grew up in New Jersey, and my dad grew up in NYC, and he always wanted me to experience the city by bringing me to art museums. I tried my hand at drawing and painting, but while it's a medium I love and appreciate, I never quite honed my talent into it unlike writing which came much more naturally.

Why do you think that people nowadays seem to devalue art? We seem to live in this paradox where people will argue that art isn't important, yet they enjoy music, movies, theater, and the like.

Johnny: I think art is largely devalued by many because they don't see the most popular mediums as art. Things like that popular tv show, big budget films, & major label musical releases are made to make money & have little to no artistic value because they lack the intention to invoke emotion or challenge contemporary ways of thinking. The people that seek out art for the sake of art can find it, but it takes research & I think that that's a little bit too much work for the common person who is consumed w/ work, school, family, etc.

Kelly: Art is a series of contradictions. It's like life. Moving, terrifying, strange, and sometimes just downright boring. Art, like life, is misunderstood. We can hate art like we can hate our lives, but we can choose to say, "You know what? Not for me today. Not for me right now. Let me try again tomorrow." The same art I may have passed by in a museum ten, five, maybe even one year ago, can have a totally different impact on me today. Just based on new experiences or my mood for the day.

I don't think that people devalue art. I think people value and crave art more than ever before. People want to be connected and to feel something. The advent of social media is an example of this. We can sit here and lament the dehumanizing aspects of social media, or we can appreciate its ability to teach us something about each other, even if it's just parts of each other.

We all make choices each day to say to others and to ourselves whether or not we want to live our lives to the fullest. Art helps to enrich our lives through music, movies, theater, and so forth.

What does art do for you, if anything, on a emotional and psychological level?

Johnny: For me, art is therapy, plain & simple. If I didn't have a creative outlet I would be a miserable person to be around. I grew up in a physically & emotionally abusive house so I have some "demons" that I battle on a daily basis & whenever I'm feeling lost or overwhelmed I can just pick up my guitar or paint brushes to wash away those negative feelings...I've become a much calmer & centered person since I began creating more consistently about 7 years ago. Art is also a way to supplement my income since working a full-time job is not conducive to my medical disabilities, which are extensive.

Kelly: We are all part of a grand universe, and art is a means of connecting our selves to the world around us. Whether it's a fresco painting on the ceiling of a chapel or a black square on a large, white canvas, art speaks. It can speak a loud and grandiose volume for all to know its behemoth presence, or it can simply murmur and let its nearest passerby know that it's standing on the corner, too.

Art makes me feel everything. It has made me laugh and cry. It has angered me and plainly disgusted me. It keeps me begging for more and I find myself seeking out stranger and grander things. To better myself. To learn. To be a part of something greater than myself.

What is the most fun and most difficult part of being an artist?

Johnny: The most difficult part of arting for me is also the most fun part...performance. I give everything I have in me during a live performance, it's like some otherworldly entity is channeled through me. It is the most cathartic thing I have ever experienced but w/ that said, afterwards I hurt & usually need to sit or lay down for a hour or more. The most rewarding part of performing is not what it does for me though, it is what it does for others. I'm a naturally open & overtly expressive person, which most people are not, so when attendees approach me after I'm off stage & express to me how the things I did or said spoke to them or made them feel like they weren't alone, I know I did something good...even if it comes from a place of selfishness as I do not make art for anybody but myself.

Kelly: I once argued with someone I dated--and I suppose you can already guess that the brief relationship ended quite rapidly--about whether or not writing was an art. He believed writing was simply a skill that could be taught and refined. I believe it was both an art and a skill. You learn the skills of the grammar, punctuation, and the nuisances of the language. The art of writing is a different and impatient beast.

The most difficult part of being a writer is like exercising. To get up each day and committing yourself to doing it continuously. You can write or exercise in private and no one will know the wiser, but eventually you may find yourself stepping out into the world where a stranger may glance at your open notebook or laptop. You coworker will comment on your new weight loss. You are flattered.

Then you are also terrified. You want the compliments, but with compliments come expectation and criticism. The opportunity and the realization that there is more. There is always more.

The fun part is also the terrifying part. Recognizing the difficulty of putting yourself out there and keeping up that momentum. The thrill of jumping out of a plane at 30,000 feet only to hurtle downwards with a parachute. That is writing. That is art. It's all part of the process.

In your opinion, what is the purpose of art, if any?

Johnny: Art has many purposes & can mean different things to many different people. For me, as I stated earlier, art is therapeutic. I create so that I can tolerate living but for many others it is simply something to decorate your house with or wear out to a fancy restaurant.

In The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde says "We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless." Now I don't agree w/ this sentiment but that's not the point, the point is that, what art is or what it does is completely up to the observer, it's relative to the person that is beholding the creation. In summation I would say that the purpose of art is to create something that was never there so that all of existence can become a richer & more evolved place. Art is life & just like all things, the individual works eventually cease to be.

Kelly: The purpose is to exist. The definition is up to the artist. Same thing with life. Don't think too hard about it.

Examine life in its present moment, but then move on. Don't overthink it. Just do. Keep going. Don't stop. Go live your life. Stop reading this and go make some art.

Mr. Bentanamo's art can be viewed here and here .

Mrs. Gonzales Boyle is the author of the novel Video Games and is readying a forthcoming novel tentatively titled, Through An Opaque Window.

Young, Gifted, and Black: Art's Power for the People

By Corinna Lotz

Outside the door opening up to the Soul of a Nation exhibition at Tate Modern screens offer vintage news footage of Black leaders Martin Luther King, Stokely Carmichael, James Baldwin, Malcolm X and Angela Davis.

These men and women - two of whom were assassinated - shaped the political landscape of the 1960s and 1970s. The echo of their voices lends resonance to Nina Simone's call for artists to reflect their times.

In the wake of white supremacist brutality in Ferguson and Charlottesville, revisiting the Black power movement in America has gained a new urgency.

Soul of a Nation shows how artists were swept up in the struggle against the oppression of the institutionally racist US state. Through determined resistance, self-organisation, self-education and study of revolutionary theory, the movement and its artists asserted the possibility of a non-racist and revolutionary culture.

Support for Black power arose out of frustration with the pacifist orientation of the Civil Rights movement led by Martin Luther King. Leaders like Malcolm X called for justice "by any means necessary".

Bobby Seale and Huey Newton founded the Black Panther Party in October 1966 to defend victims of police violence. The party championed Black self-determination. At the same time, its 10-point programme was distinctly anti-capitalist and socialist. It appealed to all oppressed and working class people to unite against the ruling classes and the state.

But the US state struck back. Under its chief, J Edgar Hoover, the FBI's counter intelligence programme (COINTELPRO) targeted Black Panther leaders. Police backed by FBI agents murdered Black Panther leaders around the country. Amongst the first to be killed in this way was the BPP's 21-year-old deputy chair, the talented and popular organiser, Fred Hampton. After being drugged by an FBI agent, Hampton was shot whilst asleep in his bed. It was an act of extreme brutality commemorated by artist Dana C Chandler in his reconstruction Fred Hampton's Door.

David Hammons' multi-media Injustice Case (1970) leaps out of the wall: shadowy body marks move around like ghostly x-rays on a white background, framed by the Stars and Stripes. Hammons used imprints of his own body on paper in this cry of anger against the treatment of Black Panther Party co-founder Bobby Seale. Seale was bound and gagged by the trial judge when he was accused of conspiracy after anti-war demonstrations during the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago.

Emory Douglas became the Panthers' Minister of Culture designing a remarkable series of propaganda posters and back covers for The Black Panther newspaper. Large-scale outdoor murals gave artists a chance to reach out to large numbers of people. The famous Wall of Respect, which 14 artists painted on a derelict building in Chicago's South Side in 1967, commemorated Black heroes and heroines including Muhammad Ali, Aretha Franklin and Martin Luther King. It was part of a nation-wide mural movement.

Black and Asian photographers made a special contribution. They celebrated the streets and inhabitants of Harlem as well as engaging in more abstract and lyrical subjects - musicians and singers in performance, still lives and nudes. Just waiting to be re-discovered is a 1955 photo book, The Sweet Flypaper of Life. It is a miniature gem of a story by Langston Hughes accompanied by Roy DeCarava's photographs.

Controversies arose about whether Black art had to be figurative or openly propagandist or whether the artist could work in an abstract idiom. Some like Jack Whitten used abstraction to pay homage to Malcolm X and African American history. British-Guyanese painter, Frank Bowling, took part in these debates. His magisterial Middle Passage features in the second to last space. A superb display of his work is currently at Munich's Haus der Kunst .

The last space at Tate Modern takes on a new spirit of joy in the inventiveness of Lorraine Grady who involved hundreds of people on a parade celebrating Harlem's African American Day Parade.

This is a knock-out show. Go and see it.

Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power will be on display at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Arkansas at the beginning of 2018 and at the Brooklyn Museum in New York from September 18, 2018.

This article was originally published at the Real Democracy Movement