Uptown Notes

An video excerpt of a speech from Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr which deals with Black self-determination and Black Self-Love, likely from a 1967 or 1968 speech.

Hip-Hop has been political, you just haven’t been paying it attention. My reflection on the Black August Hip-Hop Project.

Cornel West and Carl Dix tangle at CCNY on Tuesday night.

Over a year ago, controversy over the Kahlil Gibran International Academy unfolded, if you don’t know who Kahlil Gibran was stop reading and click here – yeah, he’s that important, in Brooklyn. The visible battle over the mission of the school, its practices, and its leadership put the academy in the national spotlight for discussions of ethnicity, language, religion and identity. But soon, this spotlight faded and many have forgotten that the school still is in operation. Colorlines runs a great web article by Seth Wessler entitled, “Silenced in the classroom” on what is happening with the school now.

People have been tripping over the corruption of the governor of Illinois and his hair. But for some strange reason [...]

In an age when grassroots Black leadership has become distilled, sanitized, and all too often co-opted, we are often left [...]

So in bizarro world news yesterday, my phone and twitter started blowing up about the commuting of sentence that John [...]

On November 10th, Miriam Makeba b.k.a. Mama Africa transitioned to the ancestral realm. She was a powerful voice both musically and politically. Her work on Black Liberation in her native South Africa and globally beautifully demonstrated the richness and importance of Pan-Africanism and African Aesthetics. May her life in the ancestral realm be blessed for her work on this planet has blessed us all.

This weekend, October 17th-19th City College hosts the first CUNY Social Forum. Come out and have your voice heard and develop plans to make CUNY the university system that it was meant to be.

They can’t be serious…