(en) Anarkismo.net: The Emanci-funktion of the Working Class by Bernardo Proletariat

Starting a conversation on anarchism and hip hop ---- In this essay, I'm trying to get the 
ball rolling on a longer-term discussion on the political nature of hip hop from a 
revolutionary anarchist perspective. I'm hoping for a broad range of responses from 
artists and militants, which will allow us to swap notes and build up our respective 
movements. ---- At the ninth annual Trinity International Hip Hop Festival 
(http://trinityhiphop.com) I ran a workshop with a central figure in my city?s grassroots 
hip hop scene, Self-Suffice the RaPoet (http://rapoets.com). Our talk drew from our 
respective backgrounds: his parents, veterans of the black freedom struggle and himself 
carrying on that tradition through cultural work; and me, an anarchist participant in a 
variety of social movements of the past decade and someone on the margins of the local hip 
hop scene.

The festival has been an important date on the calendar for some time now, drawing not 
only an impressive number of artists from around the globe, but many of the big names that 
come to mind when we think of ?conscious hip hop;? KRS-ONE, Rebel Diaz, Dead Prez, and 
this year, Talib Kweli. With my background, and a growing love of the culture, naturally 
this was something I wanted to play a role in besides setting up a literature table, in 
popular leftist fashion.

So why is a white anarchist, raised on rock, all hyped-up about hip hop? Hip hop is a 
genre born of struggle. The lack of money for instruments, and a desire for variety, gave 
birth to the DJ and the human beat box. The pent-up energy of ghetto youth broke out with 
break dancing, and promoted as a grassroots alternative to anti-social violence. Spoken 
word poetry and rap stemmed from the need to communicate common experiences and ideas in a 
way people could easily relate to, after the black freedom struggle (and the broader New 
Left) and its underground press was smashed by the forces of the state. Naturally, radical 
schools of thought quickly found themselves a new home there, breathing new life into 
black nationalism especially (and relatedly, inter-communalism), and giving birth to 
solidly working class movements like the Universal Zulu Nation. But just as important, hip 
hop also arose out of the irrepressible, life-giving, and replenishing act of artistic 
expression. Without that, the communities in which hip hop is rooted might have long ago 
died-out completely from the disease of capitalism. Hip hop is the immune response to that 
oppression. Little wonder then that the Palestinian rap group DAM was so readily 
influenced by Public Enemy, despite major cultural, language and international barriers.

I?m not interested in dedicating space here to listing off the problems with hip hop 
culture. The mainstream press has been doing that every day for the last thirty years, 
with an attentiveness not granted to its peers in other, whiter genres. What I will say is 
that everything wrong with hip hop is in plain sight for everyone to get a good, long look 
at. It is blatant and it talks about whatever is on its mind. Rather than giving into the 
demands of polite society and glossing-over the unpleasantness in our lives, hip hop 
artists push back against the micro-aggressions, passive-aggressiveness, and full-on 
assaults they?re bombarded with when dealing with authority, from the bosses who mess with 
our schedules, to the teachers who police our clothes, to the politicians who question our 
work ethic (while they make a killing making rules for everybody but themselves). The 
blunt, straight forward, real medium is the message. If you wanna critique hip hop, then 
do so from a place of solidarity and participation.

We anarchists do not want to emancipate the people. We want the people to emancipate 
themselves. -- Errico Malatesta

Anarchists are supposed to support what we call the ?self-activity? of the working classes 
as the thing that will break us out of passivity and build us up into something powerful 
enough to overthrow the class system, and create a free socialist society. Like jazz, hip 
hop is enriched through improvisation and greater participation from more and more new 
voices. Like the workers? theaters of the classical labor movement, and the oral folk 
tradition exemplified by Utah Philips, hip hop is fueled not only by lofty ideals, but 
also the first-person voices and lived experiences of the oppressed. One young poet in our 
workshop asked if hip hop is democratic (with a small-?d? of course). As if to answer that 
question, on stage at the end of the festival Talib Kweli told us that if you don?t like 
what hip hop is becoming, that?s on you, because real and conscious hip hop is being made 
every day, and there?s nothing stopping you from going online or out to your local scene, 
and supporting it. His partner Yasiin Bey (formerly Mos Def) recorded a monologue some 
years ago on his album Black on Both Sides, saying

People talk about Hip-Hop like it's some giant livin in the hillside comin down to visit 
the townspeople. We are Hip-Hop. Me, you, everybody, we are Hip-Hop. So Hip-Hop is goin 
where we goin. So the next time you ask yourself where Hip-Hop is goin, ask yourself.. 
where am I goin? How am I doin? Til you get a clear idea. So.. if Hip-Hop is about the 
people and the.. Hip-Hop won't get better until the people get better then how do people 
get better? (Hmmmm...) Well, from my understanding people get better when they start to 
understand that, they are valuable. And they not valuable because they got a whole lot of 
money or cause somebody, think they sexy but they valuable cause they been created by God. 
And God, makes you valuable. And whether or not you recognize that value is one thing. You 
got a lot of societies and governments tryin to be God, wishin that they were God. They 
wanna create satellites and cameras everywhere and make you think they got the all-seein 
eye. Eh.. I guess The Last Poets wasn't too far off when they said that certain people got 
a God Complex.

So that hifalutin term we use to describe anarchist ideas of organization, ?prefigurative 
politics,? is on full display in hip hop. What that means is that the form our struggle 
takes will determine what we end up with. So when the form is participatory, and the 
participants are on the receiving end of systemic oppression, there?s no mystery as to why 
that artform has always given birth to confrontational, politically conscious content. 
Like those of us organizing in the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World, http://iww.org) 
labor union, we do so in a democratic, participatory manner today in order to run the 
whole of society like that when we overthrow capitalism. IWW members who?ve taken part in 
a meeting with co-workers (formal or otherwise) should readily recognize the similarities 
between that process of sharing common experiences and coming up with a plan of action, 
and the free-style cipher that builds on the contributions of each rapper to come up with 
a dynamic new creation. A good organizer and a good rapper are both good at improvisation.

As anyone with some experience with radical politics or organizing will tell you, it?s one 
thing to talk a good game (as many ?conscious? artists do) but what really matters is how 
the struggle actually looks in practice. For example, Rebel Diaz from the South Bronx once 
said in an interview how they had to avoid becoming ?studio revolutionaries,? akin to 
those ?studio gangstas? who might record some really heavy, dope tracks, but are really 
just capitalizing on a life they?re not at all about. I?m sure we can name some artists 
who pay lip service to social justice when it suits them. To avoid that pitfall, they 
opened an Arts Collective in their hood as a center for building hip hop as a radical 
political force with mass participation. This is very much in line with the Greek social 
centers of the Antiauthoritarian Movement (AK) for whom Rebel Diaz has performed on 
multiple occasions, despite being a decidedly Marxist-Leninist band. Efforts at popular 
organizing like theirs may not be widespread in hip hop, but far from uncommon, or 
difficult to seek out.

There's no such thing as a government / There's only people rulin? over people
-- KRS-One, on The Sneak Attack

My relationship with grassroots hip hop began with offering to reserve my community 
college?s auditorium for a festival, and has continued for many years with a standing 
invitation to have literature tables at shows. Later, when I caught wind of a weekly open 
mic that would soon become pivotal for the local scene, I was inspired by a revolutionary 
spoken word artist named Zulynette Morales 
(https://www.youtube.com/user/zulynettemorales), and started writing and performing a 
little of my own. I also got in the habit of getting on the mic to announce protests and 
political events, which has always been well-received. These small contributions are 
valued as cultural currency to such an extent that, previously, I would have thought of 
the notion as idealistic. Hip hop is the natural habitat of the anarchist. But by that 
same token, hip hop heads should feel at home in anarchist spaces, if only we can be good 
comrades and get past our (white) habits of ignoring or discounting the voices of people 
of color. Political spaces like ours, that champion mass participation and confrontation 
with the powerful, seem like an all-too-obvious organizing vehicle for hip hoppers, in an 
age where the limits of reform and electioneering are becoming clear to everybody.

In closing, I wrote this as a conversation-starter, and I look forward to all sorts of 
responses. Lots of anarchists and other anti-capitalists listen to hip hop, do graffiti, 
appreciate the culture, and some are even regulars in their local scene; but in terms of 
our organizations and our cultural identity, our relationship to hip hop is ambiguous or 
nonexistent. Just to be clear, I?m not advocating for anarchists to go out and start 
rapping (though some have, and not all of it has been completely awful). What I am saying 
is that anarchists should devote some of our creative and organizational abilities to 
supporting their local hip hop scene. This is one of the many things we should be doing to 
break our organizations out of our subcultural ghettos and, more generally, undermine the 
working class segregation that?s been imposed on us. A longer-term project would be for 
anarchists who love hip hop, and those hip hoppers who are sympathetic to anarchism, to 
work together on producing all sorts of new media, aimed at both movements. Together I 
think we can achieve the conquest of white-bread.

Further reading/watching:

Can?t Stop, Won?t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation (2005) by Jeff Chang and D.J. 
Kool Herc

I Mix What I Like! A Mixtape Manifesto (2011) by Jared Ball

The Black Power Mixtape (2011) directed by Goran Olssan

Slingshot Hip Hop (2008) directed by Jacqueline Reem Salloum

Embedded Video Description: Boots Riley interviewed by Kevin Coval: Music and Struggle
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amyePFlj0UE