Kyle Mays, who teaches at the African American Studies Department and the Native American Center at UCLA, says Hip Hop “builds solidarity between the two communities,” which share a complex history of slavery, displacement and state violence. Mays is author of the book, Hip Hop Beats, Indigenous Rhymes: Modernity and Hip Hop in North America.Water rights and climate change are connected with larger political empowerment issues. “We need to somehow deal with the issue of returning land to native peoples,” said Mays, who is of Black and Native American ancestry.
If we don’t get serious about stopping the U.S. war machine, we could lose the biggest battle of our lives.
A Pan-Africanist politics is necessary because weak neo-colonial states are incapable of assuring their own survival or of negotiating how their country is inserted into the world system.
As the world ignores the ignominious 500th anniversary of the buying and selling of slaves between Africa and the Americas, historians uncover its first horrific voyages.
Mumia Abu Jamal on the passing of Black music great Aretha Franklin: “She returns to the celestial choir after 76 summers of earthly life.”
