(ThyBlackMan.com) One of the most beautiful things about this country is the first amendment. As a writer that statement is cliche, but in times of national crisis, outcry, and struggle it rings true.
Congress shall make no law no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
In the wake of the grand jury decisions to not indict the officers involved in the deadly police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and the police involved chokehold death of Eric Garner in New York the press has used and sometimes abused its freedom to give voice to the intense images coming out of these cities. Church leaders have taken it upon themselves to become activists and invoke these men’s names and the name of God in the same sentence to stir up their congregations with a fiery sermon, and we the people have used our own voices to express our anger in speech, assembling (sometimes peacefully, sometimes not so much), and to petition the government for a redress of our racist grievances.
The people, as in your everyday neighbors, have taken it upon themselves to exercise the beauty of the five rights held within the first amendment.
But something is missing. Only when everyday people are gathered en masse is when attention to them is paid. But what about those who don’t have to pay with their life to get attention? Where are they when protests are taking place in their backyards and their cities are burning?
Every time there is a crisis of race the usual group of “Civil Rights” leaders show their faces, make some speeches, do their rounds on the networks and Sunday political shows and then retreat from whence they came until they are needed once more to break out their booming voices as a battering ram of justice. While I do believe reverence and even a degree of deference should be paid to these leaders of the old guard, as a child of the 90s who’s staring at the twilight of her twenties I got more excited seeing Flava Flav marching in Ferguson than I did Al Sharpton and Benjamin Crump. Granted I would have been more excited to have seen Chuck D then Flav, but at least there was someone present who had a hand in shaping some of the most influential parts of my childhood marching to make a statement. He showed up when he didn’t have to.
Now imagine instead of it being Flava Flav marching through Ferguson it was St. Louis’ own Nelly. Nelly taking a stroll down Florrisant Ave. in Ferguson during the height of the protests in August or two weeks ago would have made a much bigger statement about the injustice of the death of Michael Brown than any chant of “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot.” His voice is already well established so by just being present everyone else’s voice is heard that much louder.
The same rings true for protesters in New York angry over the Eric Garner grand jury decision. Thousands shut down the Brooklyn Bridge. In the midst of their protest where was Hov? While Jay-Z and Beyonce did attend a Trayvon Martin rally at the height of that case — and that effort does not go unnoticed — where are they now? Eric Garner was a New Yorker. He belonged to all five boroughs as much as Jay-Z. He can be more than immortalized in a lyric to come on an album yet to be conceived if the self-proclaimed king of Brooklyn laid down in the streets of his home for a die-in. How much more powerful of an image would that be if the man who rapped:
Like a Momma you birthed me
Brooklyn you nursed me
Schooled me with hard knocks, better than Berkeley
They said that you’d murk me by the time I was 21
That shit disturbed me
But you never hurt me
— Jay-Z “Hello Brooklyn”
…protested alongside the demonstrators in his borough and across the country all the way to Berkeley?
When a race crisis bursts open like a festering pimple after it’s come to a pus-filled white head many people take to the interwebs to post memes, status updates, and non-filtered instagram photos of their favorite protest signs. Hashtags are created that go viral and the group think of the #blacktwitter collective goes all the way in. During the height of the Michael Brown police shooting case in August my favorite flippantly defiant yet oh so true statement was born in a tweet.
Since this tweet some people have taken the time to go after artists with a phenomenal following who have made their living off the backs of Black people and the Black experience. My only question is why don’t we the people go after our own artists?
Hip-Hop in and of itself is a form of protest music. How the flower children of children of the 60s and 70s related to Bob Dylan is how I, my generation, and generations after me relate to the head knocking, body rocking beats of today’s musical movers and shakers. The only difference between then and now is that artists of the 60s and 70s, black and white alike did more than make music with their voices. When the time called, and it was often, they used those same voices to incite change instead of just making their coin with a hot lyric, balling bass line, and an 808.
Kudos to Questlove, Diddy, Nicki Minaj, and Mary J. Blige who are at the forefront on some of these crises. But their voices are not nearly enough when there is an entire industry of people that have yet to be heard.
Imagine once more Jay-Z laying down in the middle of the Brooklyn Bridge for 4 and a half minutes with duct tape over his mouth with the words “I can’t breathe” written across them and think about your first reaction if you saw that image roll across your TV screen, your twitter feed, or your Facebook timeline. Your reaction would be the world’s reaction drawing even more attention to a problem and a crisis that the beauty of the first amendment allows all people: young and old, rich and poor, famous and infamous, superstar and supermodel to express.
Sometimes a wave of change is incited by a revolution of thousands and sometimes all that is needed is the presence of one. We have the thousands. Who will be the one?
Staff Writer; Nikesha Elise
Official website; http://Twitter.com/Nikesha_Elise
