Dustbowl Fugee

I went up to New Haven today for the CORD rally and saw Wyclef rock a crowd of workers for the third time in less than two years. This time he gave us a little Fu-Gee-La to go with our "Ready Or Not." He also played a reggaefied, Freddie McGregor-esque "Knockin' on Heaven's Door." I kept shouting out "Levin's" door when appropriate, but it didn't catch on. Also they played the Sharon Jones record on the PA while we were waiting for Wyclef to come on stage, which was awesome. And the Nation Drill Squad was in the house and on stage with Wyclef, which brought back fond memories of watching them "fly" around the corners during the March 3, 2003 community march to tear down Yale's walls. The whole thing today took place on the empty lot at the end of the route 34 connector, right next to Career high school, in a big pile of dust. The location was thus appropriately symbolic of the past consequences of Yale's imperial expansion in the city.

The hospital campaign is so crucial and so inspiring, for all that New Haveners have already won and for all the victories yet to come. And it was really great to see Grrr for the first time since i moved out of the apartment a year ago, and great to see Justin and Autumn. (And Emily, Thomas, Lauren, Amelia, Matt, and a crapload of GESO and 34 and 35 and 1199 and CCNE people.) Congratulations to all the folks who are graduating this weekend.

I finally finished There Ain't No Black In The Union Jack on the train today. It's an interesting book, even more than a decade and a half after it was published and some two decades after many of the events and social movements Gilroy analyzes rtranspired. There are moments when Gilroy as music scholar is absolutely incredible - see the chapter on Diaspora, Utopia, and the critique of capitalism, and his reading of Culture Smiley and comments about Gordon Sumner and his band of appropriators and on Eric Clapton's admiration for English anti-immigrant racist Enoch "rivers of blood" Powell - and moments when he is less convincing - lumping Madness in with Bad Manners as a racist expropriation of Ska for white folks (I'll buy it from Buster Bloodvessel&co., but Madness's debt to Prince Buster was more than publicly acknowledged -- not only did they name their band after and cover one of his songs, they also wrote a song ("The Prince") in an explicit tribute to the ex-bodyguard turned Jamaican popular music legend. I also have written elsewhere about my disagreement with Gilroy's overly simplistic dismissal of KRS-ONE's BDP-era ouevre as "self-conscious racial pedagogy." I'd also like to post something looking at the rationale by which he arrives at his conclusions about how we need to rework undertandings of the role of class in social movements, though i have no idea when i will be able to get around to this. I'm about fifteen pages into George Yudice's (how do you do accents on blogger?) The Expediency of Culture and i'm finding it provocative and intriguing thus far.

Music:
Prince Buster: "Shaking Up Orange Street" - should be the soundtrack for all New Haven mobilizations. I don't care if it's actually about his studio in Kingston.

McFadden & Whitehead - "Ain't No Stopping Us Now" - because Boogie Nights was on TV tonight and this song is somewhat germane.

happy birthday Lauren