The other day in one of our pre-shift dinner meetings at the Grill, towards the end when the staff is anxious to jump up outta their seats and get back to work, the wizened owner gingerly took a piece of paper up to his spectacles, lowered it, and said to me, “Arthur, tell us about security.”
I’m sorry, but aren’t we living in a post-9/11 world? When someone says the word “security” to me about a million thoughts strum my brain strings. It was hard to find a tune, and so I sat there with a blank expression on my face, empty plate in front of me. I said nothing. The disappointed owner became annoyed. “Alright, nevermind then…” He went on to cover issues such as calling the police or using the bats on criminals. An incident was recalled when a purse stealing perp was chased and tackled.
Again, I apologize. First of all, I do think about security all the time, especially in the world of heightened dangers that is the city. Rarely, if ever, do I worry about foreign acts of terror. Sometimes, watching the evening news or even listening to NPR, witnessing the brutality that takes place everywhere everyday I feel damn lucky to be alive. But as a forward leaning street attorney, as a double major in “keep the peace” and “protect ya neck,” my security protocals are strictly personal.
The vacant eyed stare usually is not the best way to look up to someone who controls your job, especially not when they are in your face with a serious question, but I wasn’t about to spill my secrets for free when its totally unnecessary. Every staff member in that room knew how I roll out or roll back or roll with the punches. In a lot of ways, I kept my mouth shut because I was on the cusp of revealing a waking dream that I’d had the same day regarding security.
My headphones were on and I was computing before work. The album playing in the discman was, “Fishscale,” by Ghostface Killah, whose flow evokes wild imagery for me. New York City defense squads, grime, ambulances, drug issues… in the pre 9/11 world it might have been possible for me to hear about such things in front of a compelling beat without drawing the lines of a larger picture, but in the new world order my brain is reordered.
The terrorists who attacked on September 11 tried to take down the WTC, just as had been previously attempted in the early 1990s, except this time they thought they had found their success. However, being foreign terrorists, they couldn’t find the WTC, especially not in a plane flying at hundreds of miles an hour. Instead of locating and bombing even one of the 36 Chambers they drove those death planes into the largest dullest buildings in the city…
Yes, my mind had made the post 9/11 jump into victory think, flamboyant glorious. The real WuTang Clan was underground in New York that day, in basements, corner stores, living rooms, bedrooms. Safe in studios that savage men from Afghanistan and points Middle East have never heard of. Places that would take their breath away because thats where the real enemy they searched for on the internet and in religious texts is found.
Hip hop, as birthed in New York, whose iron flag is still in the grip of the RZA and Ghostface, is probably the best way known today to get into the heads of the youth of the world, to change their hearts and minds. Its the sexiest and most seductive cultural export to the impressionable young of the world that this country has to offer. It is our sword, and for the aspiring jihadists, it becomes a leering seductress.
Can you focus on jihad when our new culture is making your head nod? Can you see straight to shoot when your ears sieze up in spasms? That’s when you shook, over to the dark side for the beats and rhymes… In terms of who is writing the storyline for the potentially angry youth grown up in the toughest places on Earth, the final showdown is between extremism and hip hop. And to the self-satisfying American censor suckers; which side do you think holds the most potential for present and future positivity?
Hip hop is part of my security. I side with the Shaolin.
This post doesn’t make much sense to me, and in fact angers me.
As the American men and women in Iraq murder Iraqis, they are also fond of listening to hip hop. Hip hip music may galvanize people, but it can just as easilly galvanize the Americans as they imagine simplistically that they are fighting in a video game where they are the hereos and the Iraqis are the bad guys.
We don’t need to send American hip hop to the Middle East. We need to stop murdering the family members and neighbors of young men and women in Iraq. The same young men and women will then be less likely to want to wage a war to the death with America and Western culture. Americans ripped apart the infrastructure on which they relied for the semblance of a stable life, and have murdered what probably amounts to hundreds of thousands of Middle Eastern people now. There is a reason for the anger of the people calling for jihad. To suggest we can win Middle Easterners over to “our side” with hip hop is ridiculous. We need instead to address the rapacious behavior of the Americans in their countries, give the nearly 500 people in Gitmo rounded up in our “War on Terror” a fair and prompt trial, and do what we can to repair the country and the population we have decimated. We cannot bring back dead family members nor give the young people whose education was stopped with the war a new childhood, but these are the things that need attention. Not “making their heads nod” as the 3rd arm suggests.
I respectfully submit that the 3rd arm should apolgize for this post and try to put himself in the shoes of a young person in Iraq now.
Not only am I not apologizing… I have ordered poster sized glossies of my WTC poster from California. More on that next week. The point is not a salve, or a patch to stop the bloodshed anywhere. I do not endorse violence or bloodshed, the war in Iraq or war anywhere. I want people to be kind to one another. Let’s take a step back.
Hip hop is a style of music, no more no less. Music, as I understand it, is one of the most subtle forms of art. It can increase your heartbeat or take your breath away. Hip hop was uniquely American at birth, but now they spit rhyme in the Netherlands. It is the protest music of our time. Spoken words to the head can turn around your thinking cap.
Mos Def’s verse on “Katrina Clap” is exhibit A to the haters:
“Listen homie, It’s dollar day in New Orleans,
It’s where there water everywhere and people dead in the street ,
And Mr. President he ‘bout that cash,
He got a policy for handlin’ the niggas and trash,
And if you poor you black,
I laugh a laugh, they won’t give when you ask,
You betta off on crack, dead or in jail, or with a gun in Iraq ,
And it’s as simple as that,
No opinion my man it’s mathematical fact,
Listen, a million poor since 2004,
And they got illions and killions to waste on the War,
And make you question what the taxes is for,
Or the cost to reinforce the broke levee wall,
Tell the boss he shouldn’t be the boss anymore”
If you don’t know, now you know.
Nice post man.
Tell the truth – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tD5WlQ54Sg0
It seems I mis-interpretted the post. I read an us-version-them arguement into it, where “us” is the Western culture that produces hip-hop and the war on Iraq, and “them” is the group of Muslims so aggravated by this culture that they call for jihad. I listened to the Mos Def song posted above; if you instead meant to express something like its argument, at least the part of its argument that Iraqis are fighing for their pride and their people, then I applaud you.
Doo yoo delight in Pelosi’s visit to Syria?