Category Archives: radio

Asante Sana, New Ancestor Judy Dothard Simmons

Posted on by drumsintheglobalvillage

My friend and mentor Judy Dothard Simmons died over the weekend. She was a good person who happened to be a great writer. A poet, she was a pioneer of Black news-talk radio (New York’s WLIB-AM) and national magazine journalism (Essence, Ms. ).

I thought I’d share a couple of her (group) emails from last year. They say a lot about her.

—————-

From: “Judy Simmons” <dexta@cableone.net>
To: “Judy Simmons” <dexta@cableone.net>
Subject:
Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2006 09:40:42 -0500

Dear Elisha,

It’s Saturday again. The week has flown by since you stopped here and graciously brought the Noni juice. I’m so glad you did that. It not only restored my basic support to me, but it also warms my heart that you are generous and understanding in your wonderful way.

I have decided not to have a laparoscopy. The second thing Dr. Huh said after introducing himself was that he didn’t want to do surgery on me because I would probably die on the table. Only one person, a doctor in Anniston who had never examined me before, raised the specter of ovarian cancer. That set everything rocketing off like crazy.

Then I arrive at UAB and nobody can see through the calcified fibroid tissue all over the place to discern where the womb is, what shape it’s in, or what kind of tissue the “mass” is. This takes us through cat scan, cat scan with liquid (not the dye, something else for contrast); vaginal echo, and ultimately MRI, which was supposed to give the one true answer for where to insert for a needle biopsy.

No dice.

Meanwhile, when they finally take of a couple of liters of fluid, within thirty minutes I have a fully formed stool, which hadn’t happened for a month.

The fluid that was removed does not seem to be coming back, and my bowel (with colace) is working two or three times a day. I have no pain, and my breathing is not labored. I do not have cancer.

Why go looking for a disease I show little sign of instead of looking at the disease I clearly have—congestive heart failure—which is known to produce fluid and symptoms of the sort I’m displaying? So, since surgery is surgery, laparoscopic or otherwise, and the doctor said in my hearing that maybe he could get in and out in 15 minutes and that wouldn’t be so bad, cutting me (invading the envelope) seems more of a risk than the possible diagnosis is worth.

Bear in mind that any mass, cancerous or not-cancerous, would sooner or later require surgery to remove, and it was made clear to me that no responsible practitioners are going to put me under general anesthetic and do the two- to four-hour (or more) operation to remove mass.

Who’s to say that where he goes in for the laparoscopy is going to be any more productive of non-fibroid tissue than all the other tests that showed him he can’t see what’s there anyway?

He talked about needing to find an anesthesiologist who was willing to take a chance on a heart in the shape mine is in, even for a spinal and sedation.

He said that even if it were cancer and he treated it with chemo first, it would eventually boil down to needing surgery and that isn’t an option.

So, basically, I would be submitting to a life-threatening procedure so the doctors can be certain about something that can only degrade the quality of my life by causing me risk, discomfort, and a healing procedure that, right now, my body is telling me in no uncertain terms that it is not up to. And since this good body has always risen to the occasion, no matter how I’ve jeopardized and neglected it, I’m listening now that it says, “Judy, I just can’t make this one. It’s asking too much.”

My Anniston cardiologist had a full-fledged two-year-old temper tantrum yesterday because I told him I would not get a pacemaker (for the ninth or tenth time; by the way, the UAB teaching hospital flower-of-the-south medical-center cardiology gods said a pacemaker would do me no earthly good, as I suspected). Then my cardiology said he didn’t think I had cancer—which is why I was sent to UAB oncology on the say so of a gynecology who had never examined before he stuck is finger into me in the hospital bed and opined with deep seriousness that I really, really, probably had ovarian cancer.

The cardiology told me yesterday he thought the fluid in my abdomen was consequent to right-side heart failure, but he refused to treat me for that unless I had a laparoscopy (which would never have occurred to him if this other guy hadn’t raised the cancer issue).

So, my cardiologist turned me back over to my primary care physician and refused to give me the benefit of his cardiology expertise on how to manage the excess fluid
collecting in the abdomen from diuretics and heart failure. There are medical manipulations he can do—he told me that—but unless I consent to a tissue diagnosis (which, again, we have no guarantee they will get, all other tests having shown no markers for cancer, he won’t help me any further.

There was more stuff he vented which showed he thinks he has made me live, and that I have had no part in making decisions that resulted in his being able to help me, and preventing him from injuring me.

I grasped his hand in a shake and told him I was grateful to him for his help. Badtemperedly, he shook off my hand and snapped, “Don’t be grateful to me.” I took hold of his hand again, said again that I am grateful to him, and he basically threw me out of his office.

I’m listening to the fine classical jazz collection I’ve amassed over the years, putting my affairs in order, loving my dog and my friends, and generally having a good time for the first time in fifteen or twenty years. I am walking through the valley of the shadow of death and feeling damn good about it. I fear no evil, for I AM always and ever living.

So, for more info, call.

Judy

From: “Judy Simmons” <dexta@cableone.net>
To: “Judy Simmons” <dexta@cableone.net>
Subject:
Date: Mon, 4 Sep 2006 17:53:33 -0500

Sixty-two doesn’t feel the same as thirty-three, and I think folks who say it does are lying. These great Indian seers who don’t breathe earthly air and put on and take off bodies like togas—I guess I’m ain’t one uh them. Also I just figured out that some of the unaccustomed sensations I have been thinking are ill health are signs of a body used for six decades.

I’m sittin’ up here in the house following the U.S. Tennis Open on tv. I listen to these people rattle on—the anchors, pundits, and hosts—and I’m torn between shooting them all with my high-vibration consciousness death ray or plunging back down to the depths where they don’t swim, sharks though they are. The death ray hasn’t worked so far, and being under water has its own drawbacks.

So, here I am, missing my radio show after twenty years, and without any media outlet for my spleen. I really liked being on WLIB AM, NY when it started the news-talk format in the 1980s. Then Philippe Wamba, the chief editor who made Africana.com an engaging web stop, put up with me from 2000-2002. He hired me as staff writer, editor, columnist, and insecure egotist. We both found out I was too old a dog (mid-40s) to do any corporation’s stupid pet tricks. He was kind, and kept me going for two years until he left and died some months later in an automobile accident in an African country. (If it were Europe, I would know it matters which country things happen in, but since it’s the Dark Continent, it’s all the same.)

Okay, so clearly I don’t have enough social life here, so when I want to party or converse, I’m just realizing, I send off one of these mass mailings. I figure the delete key is handy enough, so you shouldn’t get too annoyed, and a few people tell me they like getting what I write. For me, I’m realizing, it’s doing my radio show, which was very extemporaneous. It’s whatever it is that makes me need to be a public communicator (writer, broadcaster, contributor of information and sometimes knowledge).

Why don’t I do a blog? Because I don’t expect people to come to me. I have to be where they can catch my drift, as it were. And besides, this is personal in an immediate way. Feedback comes quickly as people are moved to give some—it’s not required—and I imagine how some of you look while reading this. It keeps me off the streets, and it’s about all the effort I’m up to giving.

And, I’m developing my communications skills. Language keeps changing. Plus, as I enlarge my understanding of how we people operate, I keep an ear out for the rhythm, cadence, and tones of the times. It’s about the gestalt. The way images move nowadays has so much to do with what people see and hear. When I was in psych school back in the day—(I could have said “school a million years ago”) but I think the “back” phrase has a more satisfying crunch; what do you think?)—anyway, when I took psych we talked about gestalt. As I understood it, it meant getting a whole picture that’s more than the separate pixels, stimuli, responses, actions, and so forth put together like a jigsaw puzzle. The individual pieces say “sky,” “grass,” “cloak,” or whatever, but the whole picture calls out emotional, aesthetic, and intellectual responses that are more than cardboard interlocking on a table.

Another question people ask me is why didn’t I stay in media and become an internationally famous personality. Well, seldom is one allowed to do such things on one’s own terms, and refuse to or can’t do them on any other.

So, those are some of my reflections this day. I didn’t rave on about how I can’t stand the most of what’s going on in our culture, given that the sole raison d’etre for much of it is the mindless and soulless pursuit of material wealth. There’s a difference between being the master of money and the servant of it. Guess which most us are.

Love, Judy

May 10 UPDATE: Here’s the official death announcement.

Judy Dothard Simmons

Judy Dothard Simmons, a noted poet, journalist, author and broadcaster, died on Sunday, May 6 in Anniston, Alabama from heart complications.

Since the 1970s, Judy’s thought-provoking writings and broadcasts had won her national acclaim. She had been a senior editor at Essence and Ms. magazines. Also, she had been managing editor for the NAACP’s Crisis magazine, a columnist for Harvard University/Time Warner’s Africana.com, and an editor at Black Enterprise. During the early 1980s Judy had a popular radio talk show on New York’s first Black commercial talk station WLIB and also on Pacifica’s WBAI. Her articles had appeared in The Village Voice, American Legacy Woman, and others. Also, she had been a guest on Donahue.

During the 1990s, Judy returned to Alabama and was a columnist for The Anniston Star. A celebrated poet, she was a Revson Fellow at Columbia University and did graduate work in poetry. Judy was the author of several books of poetry and essays including Decent Intentions, Judith’s Blues, and A Light in the Dark. She was also a contributor to the book Wild Women Don’t Wear No Blues. Her vibrant voice will be sorely missed.

Arrangements are being handled by Ervine Funeral Home in Anniston, Ala.: (256) 237-1717.

"It's Men's Attitude, Stupid!": A Commentary About Imus, Hiphop And Sexism

Posted on by drumsintheglobalvillage

Just got this from Akila Worksongs.  

“It’s Men’s Attitude, Stupid!”: A Commentary About Imus, Hiphop And Sexism

By Byron Hurt

April 24, 2007

As a response to the Don Imus fallout surrounding his racist and sexist rant hurled at the blameless Rutgers University women’s basketball team – and to the dramatic shift and intense media glare on hip-hop’s sexism and misogyny – Russell Simmons and Dr. Benjamin Chavis Muhammad, leaders of the New York-based Hip-Hop Summit Action Network, bowed under mounting criticism and pressure, and announced this week that they will make a strong push to have the words “nigger,” “bitch,” and “ho” bleeped on mainstream public radio stations nationwide.

That is not enough.

As an anti-sexist activist, pro-feminist African-American male, I have had the unique and interesting experience of rolling up my sleeves and working with thousands of boys and men in the United States around sexism, men’s violence against women, and homophobia. I have worked with boys and men across race, education, and class lines, and I know how deep and complex these issues are. In my lectures and workshops, I acknowledge my own past as someone who was sexist, and who, as a heterosexual man, behaved badly with women. I am also very candid about how I still grapple with certain gender issues that to this day confuse me. I challenge guys to speak out about sexism, and inspire men to join in the effort to end men’s physical, emotional, and sexual violence against women. I show men how all of these issues hurt men as well as women.

Over the past 14 years years, I have been in the belly of the beast delivering this message. I’ve been in locker rooms with male athletes, on U.S. Marine Corps bases with young Marines, on-campus with black and white fraternity members, and in closed-door sessions with men in positions of authority at colleges and universities. I have also addressed, to a lesser degree, men in law enforcement, and batterers in court mandated battering intervention programs.

My current mission is to engage young men from the hip-hop generation – men who, it seems, are today’s lone scapegoats for centuries-old patriarchy, sexism and misogyny. Let the truth be told, hip-hop’s misogyny is indefensible and must be confronted. But hip-hop is surely not the only place where boys and men are informed about girls and women. From the recent Supreme Court decision to ban partial birth abortion, to “men’s interests” magazine covers donning scantily clad female celebs, to hard and soft-core pornograghy that subjugate women – men are bombarded daily with messages about gender. Even as a woman, Senator Hillary Clinton, mounts a formidable campaign to become the first female president of the United States, the messages about gender in popular culture are clear – men rule the world, and women are sex objects, bitches and ho’s.

Hip-hop’s sexism is only a piece of a much larger puzzle.

I am a hip-hop fan. At 37 years old, hip-hop music has been the soundtrack of a huge chunk of my life. But as I learned more about gender issues as an original member of Northeastern University’s Mentors in Violence Prevention Program, I began to question hip-hop’s ever-present macho themes and images. I grew up with hip-hop, but hip-hop did not grow up with me. I became so weary of hip-hop’s testosterone that, in 2000, I decided to do something about it. Over a period of six years, I directed and produced Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes, an award-winning PBS documentary film about violence, sexism, and homophobia. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival to standing ovations in 2006, and won best documentary at the San Francisco Black Film Festival.

The film is getting around. It is being shown on college campuses from Howard University to Harvard University. And last month, Firelight Media launched a year-long community engagement campaign to use the film as a media literacy tool in communities across the country. National and local community partners include: A Call to Men, Mothers Day Radio, YWCA–Racial Justice Project, Gender PAC, Youth Movement Records, Reflect Connect Move, HOTGIRLS, Inc., Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center, Center for Family Policy and Practice, and The P.E.A.C.E. Initiative. Additional events are planned in collaboration with this year’s Essence Music Festival, the Congressional Black Caucus, Rikers Island, and the Open Society Institute. The goal is to help young people, using hip-hop as a catalyst for discussion, think critically about the myriad gender issues in hip-hop specifically, and in the larger American culture in general.

The Ford Foundation has also pitched in providing resources for a Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes Historically Black College Tour to further conversations about the gender politics of Hip-Hop culture on black college campuses.

For several years now, the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network has done some great work for the hip-hop community. Through a series of national workshops, panels, and seminars called “Hip-Hop Summits,” Simmons and Muhammad have helped register thousands of young people to vote, have confronted the unjust Rockerfeller Drug Laws, which disproportionately sentences black and brown men for non-violent drug offenses, and they do much to educate aspiring artists and businessmen before they enter the music industry. As hip-hop entrepreneurs, they do much to give back.

But Simmons and Muhammad’s action plan to have radio stations bleep the words “bitch” and “ho” on public airwaves is at best, a Band-Aid solution for a much larger problem. As Jackson Katz, author of The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Men Can Help, says “… if men’s violence against women truly carried a significant stigma in male culture, it is possible that most incidents of sexist abuse would never happen.” I agree. Men who are not sexist need to send the message to other men that sexism and misogyny is not cool.

As men, we are woefully uneducated about gender issues. Many of us, with some exceptions, have never had a serious conversation about sexism. For decades, women all over the country have led the charge to eliminate men’s sexism and violence. But largely due to male privilege and sexism, men across racial lines have not listened. We posture, we resist, and we call it male bashing. I know, because I was once one such man. As Don Imus did so cunningly in the week after his transgression, we deflect and push blame onto someone else. In Imus’ case, hip-hop, whose face is largely black and male, was the convenient bogeyman. As men, we all need to acknowledge our sexism and take responsibility for our actions, and then work hard to change. Men are conditioned to be sexist, and we can be conditioned to become anti-sexist with education and leadership.

If Russell Simmons and Benjamin Muhammad really want to confront sexism in hip-hop, they have to begin by using their leadership, money, and status to educate the hip-hop community about the roots of sexism, and what we can do to change it. As hip-hop executives, they must own up to their own sexist attitudes and behaviors, and then, firmly reject sexism in hip-hop culture beyond bleeping offensive words. He must ask his cronies in positions of power and influence in the industry to do the same.

If the lyrics are to change, then the sexist attitudes that live on the edge of male rappers’ tongues, must change. That is going to take real work over a long period of time. Bleeping sexist words just won’t cut it.

Joan Morgan

 

Tricia Rose

Simmons and Muhammad must mount a campaign using artists with credibility, heart, and a strong desire for gender equality (that combination will be hard to find – but is possible) to send the message to all men that sexism and violence against women is – in hip-hop parlance – wack. I challenge Simmons and Muhammad to put their money where their mouth is and use their national “Hip-Hop Summit” tour to address hip-hop’s sexism and misogyny in a real and meaningful way. I dare Simmons and Muhammad to organize panel discussions with hip-hop feminists like Joan Morgan, Tricia Rose, Aishah Durham, Elizabeth Mendez-Berry, Carla Stokes, Rosa Clemente, Tracey Sharpley-Whiting, Monifa Bandele, April Silver and others, who have for years, railed against hip-hop’s sexism. Put them on the same dais with hip-hop executives and artists. Bring in some of the countries most skilled and experienced anti-sexist male activists to roll up their sleeves and work with male rappers and hip-hop heads. Conduct workshops and training sessions led by men like myself, Quentin Walcott, Don MacPherson, Ted Bunch, Antonio Arrendel, Tony Porter, Kevin Powell, Bikari Kitwana, Mark Anthony Neal, Asere Bello, Tim’m West, Juba Kalamka, and other profeminist men who love hip-hop, but who do not accept its hyper aggression, sexism, and homophobia. Make a real commitment to ending sexism and misogyny in hip-hop, not a paper-thin, disingenuous, and contrived public relations charade.

Not all men are sexist. Not all men in hip-hop are sexist. Not all rappers are sexist. Like me, many men within the hip-hop generation reject the macho and sexist manifestos contained in hip-hop lyrics and in music videos. When men with credibility, status, and a love for hip-hop stand up publicly to denounce sexism with conviction, it gives other men, good men, the space to do the same.

Byron Hurt is an anti-sexist activist, writer, college lecturer, and a filmmaker. His documentary “Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes” premiered at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival, and aired nationally on PBS’ Emmy award-winning series, Independent Lens. Byron is married and currently lives in Plainfield, N.J. He can be reached at info@bhurt.com. His website is www.bhurt.com.

Activist Groups Plan, Organize For Low-Power Radio Station In S.C.

Posted on by drumsintheglobalvillage

This press release has been making the e-rounds. Glad to find the news this morning.

WMXP-LP  /  95.5 FM
The Voice of the People
Community Radio for Greenville, South Carolina
321 W. Antrim Drive,  P.O.Box 16102, Greenville, SC 29607
Tel. 864-239-0470;  Fax  864-242-2560  

E-mail  mxgrm@aol.com
 
   
For Immediate Release

Contact: 

Efia Nwangaza, mxgrm@aol.com,
864-901-8627

Siyade Gemechisa, siyade@prometheusradio.org,           
215-727-9620 ext.505
 
Malcolm X Grassroots Movement and Prometheus Radio Project Build Greenville Community Radio Station

Groups Across the South Organize to Build Rare Civil Rights Radio Station

Greenville, SC   June 8-10
 
GREENVILLE, S.C.—WMXP-LP (95.5 FM) is Greenville’s only non-commercial, volunteer, grassroots, community owned and operated radio station.


 
“Over the weekend of June 8-10, the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (MXGRM) and Prometheus, like Habitat for Humanity, will build a community radio station from the ground up and train local community members to maintain and operate it.  We will bring together hundreds of local and regional volunteers to build an entire, brand new, low power, FM community radio station,” said Efia Nwangaza, co-coordinator for the radio barnraising.


 
More than 40 workshops will be conducted over the weekend; from hands-on building and maintenance, programming and production, to management.  “‘WMXP-LP, the Malcolm X Experience, The Voice of the People’ is radio of, by, and for the people not profits,” she added.
 
From April 10-18, to help recruit volunteers and build momentum for Greenville’s “radio barnraising,” Prometheus media activists Siyade Gemechisa and Emily Geddes will travel throughout the South. They will make stops in North Carolina, Georgia, eastern Tennessee, as well as South Carolina. 

Spreading the news of Prometheus Radio Project’s eleventh collaborative radio station barn raising, and Greenville and the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement’s first, Prometheus will connect with dozens of social justice groups, media activists and partners in the struggle to put the people’s voices on the people’s airwaves. The tour will also provide an opportunity to meet with organizers up to a twelve-hour driving radius of the Greenville barn raising and have face-to-face conversations about media issues that effect almost all groups involved in social activism.

“The tour is special, not just because the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement is offering a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for regional supporters to build a station and be there for its first moments on the FM dial, but because the people who meet with us will serve as the regional support network for a newborn station, growing, empowering and supporting its community,” said Gemechisa, Prometheus event director and major co-coordinator for the barnraising. 

“There is no limit to what positive changes can be made when this community builds an outlet for self expression, to share its talents, to discuss and impact the issues it is facing.”
 
With increased media consolidation, many southern community groups like the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement have found tremendous difficulty in getting their voices on the airwaves. 

“There are particular issues of importance to the South that many groups look forward to discussing – lack of public transportation, for example, is a recurring one. Social justice groups will have a space for public discourse on this and other issues through their own community radio station,” continued Emily Geddes, a longtime Prometheus volunteer and partner.

“This barnraising also has the potential to catalyze the southern social justice network around the upcoming opportunities to launch new outlets on the FM dial,” she said.
 
Prometheus Radio Project, based in West Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, works to build and expand access to community radio in the U.S. and around the world.  Prometheus workshops are different in every town – and are tailored to a communities’ needs!  Prometheus has built radio stations from New Hampshire to Mexico to Tanzania, East Africa – with farmworkers, civil and human rights organizations, community groups, youth collectives, and more.  For more information on the upcoming tour and radio barnraising, contact Siyade Gemechisa or Emily Geddes at the email and telephone number listed above.  Visit here to plug into our work!
 
The Malcolm X Grassroots Movement is a coalition of individuals and organizations committed to defending and advancing the human rights of New Afrikan people.  It promotes capacity building for community self-determination and empowerment through the use of technology and the arts from a human rights framework.  Visit here for more information.  

Four Years Later, CBS' "60 Minutes" Discovers The "Stop Snitching" Movement…….

Posted on by drumsintheglobalvillage

…………coincidentally enough, a week after airing a report on the I-Mess.

As usual, hiphop was blamed for Everything That Has Gone Wrong With Black People. Although at least there was some acknowledgement last night that money talks, and that the rappers are just doing their part to make it (for the white corporations).

Checking out tonight’s story, I heard no more than two sentences and one sound-bite about police-Black community relations. Not only was the shrift short, that history wasn’t even acknowledged by “60 Minutes”‘ Special Correspondent Anderson Cooper until two-thirds into the story—after the socio-racial pathology had already been established. Oooh-kay.

I’m not offering any excuses for anyone. It’s better to just provide info. So here’s a longer history.

APRIL 27th UPDATE: From EUR:

CAM’RON CLARIFIES  ’60 MINUTES’ COMMENTS: Rapper hires PR firm to deal with backlash following Sunday’s telecast

Rapper Cam’ron has drawn a barrage of criticism and outrage over comments he made during last Sunday’s “60 Minutes” segment on “snitching.”

During the show, the artist said that his street credibility, and ultimately album sales, would suffer if he were to ever cooperate with police in bringing criminals to justice.  He told correspondent Anderson Cooper that he wouldn’t even alert cops if he knew a serial killer had moved next door.

“I wouldn’t call and tell anybody on him—but I’d probably move … but I’m not going to call and be like, ‘The serial killer’s in 4E,'” Cam told Cooper.

According to Allhiphop.com, Cam’ron hired publicity firm 5W Public Relations to help deal with the backlash caused by his controversial comments on the news program. He told the Web site in a statement:  “In 2005, I was a victim of a violent crime. I was shot multiple times without provocation by two armed men who attempted to carjack my vehicle. Although I was a crime victim, I didn’t feel like I could cooperate with the police investigation.”

“Where I come from, once word gets out that you’ve cooperated with the police that only makes you a bigger target of criminal violence,” Cam’ron explained. “That is a dark reality in so many neighborhoods like mine across America. I’m not saying it’s right, but it’s reality. And it’s not unfounded. There’s a harsh reality around violence and criminal justice in our inner cities.”
     
Despite this reality, Cam’ron adds: “My experience in no way justifies what I said” on 60 Minutes. “Looking back now, I can see how those comments could be viewed as offensive, especially to those who have suffered their own personal tragedies or to those who put their lives on the line to protect our citizens from crime.
     
“Please understand that I was expressing my own personal frustration at my own personal circumstances. I in no way was intending to be malicious or harmful. I apologize deeply for this error in judgment.”