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Breakdwon FM M-1 of dead prez vs Don Imus - & Democracy now report & transcript

Ytzhak | 13.04.2007 21:58 | Culture | Gender | World

M-1: I'm here to represent for African people. I'm here to
represent for hip-hop. I don't have a lot to say, but what I have to
say is important. First of all, I would like to pay respect to the
father of this culture that I'm a part of, sitting right beside me,
Afrika Bambaataa. That's important. That's important, because I think
there's a few things that we do know, and what we do know is that the
media in this country is an organ of the state and the ruling class
state that controls what we're hearing and what we're seeing. I'm
clear on that. So it helps me understand our position. It helps me
understand that this propaganda is part of a war that also exists
against the black and brown community. It's not just a war for oil,
it's a war for the minds of our people.

Breakdwon FM M-1 of dead prez vs Don Imus - mp3 13M


Breakdwon FM M-1 of dead prez vs Don Imus - and Democracy now report and transcript

 http://odeo.com/show/11156593/4/download/BreakdwonFMM-1OfDeadPrezVsDonImus-.mp3

If you missed Fox News yesterday than you missed it when M-1 from dead
prez came on there and shut shit down. It was a beautiful thing and
the only option they had was to try and use Mancow a shock jock, to
try and make jokes after M1 left. Andreas from HipHopdx.com gives th
play by play. Later on had M-1 come on my radio show to expound upon
his points. Yep Fox News picked her wrong dude to mess with..

Davey D

Fox News Picked On The Wrong Negro!

by Andreas Hale

So this Don Imus shit is blowing up right (scary because it's blown up
bigger than the Sean Bell case and somebody died there)? Hip Hop's
detractors have come out in full force acting as if Don Imus was
influenced by Snoop or Too $hort. Every gotdamn hour it's Don Imus and
then something about rap music followed by some shit where they say
"well he said sorry…geeze." The two shouldn't be intertwined in this
instance.

At any rate, the biggest phoney of a news network, Fox News, decided
they needed to attack someone to make their point that hip hop is
fucked up seem that much more vaild. They tried to holler at your boy
Davey D to be on the O'Reilly show but Davey wasn't going for that
shit.

So Neil Cavuto reached out to grab a rapper they could dominate and
apparently the likes of Yung Joc and Young Jeezy were too busy (or too
smart) or something so who did Fox go and get? M-1 from dead prez!

Dude…how stupid do you have to be to challenge someone like M-1 to a
debate? Below I have attached the transcript as M-1 GAVE IT to Cavuto.
He befuddled him to the point where Cavuto had to tap out.

Now here's the funny thing…there is NO TRACE OF THIS ONLINE. Below is
the "transcript" of the interview and it has no trace of M-1 sonning
this cat. I saw it live and you probably won't see it in full again.

 http://mediamatters.org/items/200704130001

There's a link to the video and you'll see how it was cut off. The
shit isn't even on Cavuto's foxnews.com page. Gotta love how they
control the masses minds with swift editing tactics.

From the April 12 edition of Fox News' Your World with Neil Cavuto:

CAVUTO: M-1, I know that this is not your parent company, but NBC
Universal owns Interscope Records, which has, under its employ, a lot
of rap artists who routinely say stuff like you've just said and
worse. And, NBC is OK with that, not OK with Don Imus making an errant
comment. Do you find that, just as an artist, hypocritical?

M-1: No, I don't find it hypocritical mainly because of our
relationship to the system – our relationship with our oppressor. Once
again, with personal responsibility taken at hand here, we're talking
about rappers who are coerced to say things other than what the
reality of our community is and Mr. Imus, who obviously has said
sentiments that come from his personal beliefs. I think you are
comparing apples and oranges here even when you bring the rap
community into the question. And once -

CAVUTO: No, you know, M-1, I don't think I am. I mean, a ho is a ho,
right? So, if Imus uses the expression and then you use the
expression, you've both said "ho."

M-1: Well, no, I don't -

CAVUTO: Well, you've both said it. So, now, you're saying -

M-1: No, I don't use "ho."

CAVUTO: All right, so -

M-1: I don't say "ho." And that's my point exactly. And even the word
"ho" existed way before 1976, when rap began. "Ho" is a relationship
between the pimp and the pimper, the pimpee, if it may. And so—

CAVUTO: So, there's nothing wrong with Imus saying it, right?

M-1: Well, of course—

CAVUTO: And there's nothing wrong then with rappers - unlike yourself
- saying it, right?

M-1: Well, of course there's something wrong with both of those
relationships. However, what governs that relationship is the
historical relationship of oppression between black people and our
white oppressors in this country, and that's not a racist statement,
that's the reality that we live in.

CAVUTO: But Don Imus wasn't oppressing you or anyone else. He made a
mistaken—maybe a badly phrased comment. He's lost a job on the air as
a result of it. You can continue to make pretty, you know, outlandish
comments for art, whatever you want to call it. It just doesn't seem
right. Does it seem right to you?


 http://odeo.com/audio/11156593/view

or

 http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=15116190&blogID=252947224&Mytoken=8B978898-07B5-4BCF-9F65E95F5BD85A525099591

see also:

Hip Hop Artist M-1 of Dead Prez: "The Media in This Country is an
Organ of the State... It Controls

What We Are Hearing and Seeing"

Thursday, October 26th, 2006
 http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/26/1341225

Last week in New York, hundreds of citizens gathered for a town hall
meeting on the future of diversity in the nation's media. Speakers
included several artists and activists from the hip hop community. We
play a speech from M-1 of the rap group dead prez. [includes rush
transcript]

The owners of Fox News are calling on the Federal Communications
Commission to throw out all of its media ownership rules. In a filing
with the FCC, the company said "It is beyond question that regulatory
intervention is no longer necessary to ensure diversity and localism."
Fox joined other large broadcast companies including CBS and the
Tribune Company in calling on the FCC to allow for large media
corporations to greatly increase its holdings.

Monday was the final day to submit comments to the FCC before it
considers changing its media ownership rules. Meanwhile dozens of
public interest groups filed comments arguing that media consolidation
harms the public. The groups included: Common Cause, the Prometheus
Project, Free Press, the Consumers Union, Children's Media Policy
Coalition, The National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters, the
Rainbow/Push Coalition and Media Alliance.

Last week in New York, hundreds of citizens gathered for a town hall
meeting on the future of diversity in the nation's media. Speakers
included several artists and activists from the hip hop community. One
of them was M-1 of the group dead prez.

* M-1. Hip-hop artist with the group dead prez. He was speaking on
behalf of the REACHip Hop Coalition.

RUSH TRANSCRIPT

This transcript is available free of charge. However, donations help
us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our
TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution.
Donate - $25, $50, $100, more...

AMY GOODMAN: Juan, a quick question before we wrap up the broadcast. A
few days ago, we ran your testimony in the town hall meeting here in
New York around media consolidation, but there are even further
developments now. Can you talk about what's happening in Univision?

JUAN GONZALEZ: Yeah. Well, as some people may be aware, NBC announced
huge cutbacks and layoffs of its network staff and at NBC Universal
about, I think it's 700 jobs, 5% of its workforce. But one of the
things that didn't get much attention is that NBC is planning to shut
down -- NBC owns the Telemundo network, the Spanish-language network,
and it's planning to shut down the news programs, local news programs,
in six major American cities: Phoenix, San Jose, Houston, San Antonio,
and a couple of other -- Denver, as well -- and it is basically
eliminating its local newscast and doing what Sinclair Broadcasting
has done.

It's going to focus -- create a regional news center in Fort Worth,
Texas, and leave only skeleton new staffs in all these major cities.
These are some of the biggest cities in America. And these skeleton
staffs will send to Fort Worth a couple of news stories that will then
be beamed back to those local cities in basically a local news show
that is not local. It's largely canned material. So this is a major,
major impact of consolidation on Spanish-language news. So, in San
Jose, in Phoenix, in Denver, the local Hispanic communities there will
not be receiving locally produced news. And we've got the situation
now that is developing with FOX News. Fox News has called on the FCC
now to eliminate all regulations, of FCC regulations over media
ownership concentration.

AMY GOODMAN: Let's go to the videotape of what happened at the hearing
that took place, where you also spoke. Monday was the final day to
submit comments to the FCC before it considers changing its media
ownership rules. Dozens of public interest groups filed comments
arguing media consolidation harms the public. The groups included
Common Cause, the Prometheus Project, Free Press, the Consumers Union,
Children's Media Policy Coalition, the National Association of Black
Owned Broadcasters, the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition and Media Alliance.
Citizens gathered here in New York at a town hall meeting on the
future of diversity in the nation's media. Among those who spoke were
activists from the hip-hop community. One of them was M-1 from the
group dead prez.

M-1: I'm here to represent for African people. I'm here to
represent for hip-hop. I don't have a lot to say, but what I have to
say is important. First of all, I would like to pay respect to the
father of this culture that I'm a part of, sitting right beside me,
Afrika Bambaataa. That's important. That's important, because I think
there's a few things that we do know, and what we do know is that the
media in this country is an organ of the state and the ruling class
state that controls what we're hearing and what we're seeing. I'm
clear on that. So it helps me understand our position. It helps me
understand that this propaganda is part of a war that also exists
against the black and brown community. It's not just a war for oil,
it's a war for the minds of our people.

And I've been a part of this. My group, dead prez, has been
existing in the hip-hop industry for about twelve years now, and I got
an incredible education to understand what it takes for the voice of
the people to be heard, because ultimately that's what we're trying to
do, is let the people's voice be heard, chiming in live from Brixton,
where I'm just in from, and Mexico City, 25 million people. The voice
of our people here is extinguished. We are voiceless. The image that's
being reported to the people outside of America about what's going on
here is false. It's just like my brother Omawale reported from the
Grassroots Artists Movement, and I'm here to balance the scales. And
it's only free voices that will be able to balance the scales.
Serious. I'm a citizen of [inaudible].

I'm here to say that we're sick and tired of not having voices
that reflect exactly our reality in our community. We're are sick and
tired of that. And we're also sick and tired of being bombarded with
senseless and useless and meaningless messages that don't do anything
but drive forward this capitalist machine and get us to spend more and
more. That's not what we want to hear. That's not what we want to
hear.

I work for the people. The streets is my office. I put my ear to
the ground, and I hear our movement. That's not being reported on the
radio. It's not what's being seen on the TV. That's what I do, you
know, as a social animal. And right now, I'm here to say that the word
for today is "self-determination." That's what we need:
self-determination. That's what -- inside this meeting, outside this
meeting, over our lives, and it's being reflected in what's happening
to our brains.

What would Huey say? On the 40th anniversary of the Black
Panther Party, what would Huey P. Newton say? "Community control."
Just like my partner here said. If we ain't talking about complete
community control, if we're not about the people being able to govern
the voices that's coming into our community -- our elders, our
ancestors, our leaders. Like we say in hip-hop, let the poppers pop
and the breakers break. In other words, let the leaders lead, and let
that be the filter for what's being heard in our community, the real
that need to be heard in our community. And, you know, basically I'm
gonna put it like that.

Shout out to the Grassroots Artists Movement, which is an
organization that's -- a union that's unionizing in hip-hop to fight
for the ownership of our art and our culture. And either that or turn
off the radio. Turn off that bull----. Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: M-1 of dead prez, testifying at the town hall meeting on
media diversity and ownership in New York.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Yes, and this continues with the News Corp., as I
mentioned before, the owners of Fox News are calling on the Federal
Communication Commission to throw out all of its media ownership
rules. In a filing with the FCC, the company said, quote, "It is
beyond question that regulatory intervention is no longer necessary to
ensure diversity and localism." FOX joined other large broadcast
companies, including CBS and the Tribune Company, in calling on the
FCC to allow for large media corporations to greatly increase their
holdings.

And, you know, this is -- part of the problem is, I was mentioning
with the NBC-Telemundo thing, when NBC took over Telemundo several
years ago, they promised the FCC that the merger was going to allow
them to provide resources to expand news coverage for the
Spanish-speaking community in the United States. And now, six years
later, what they're doing is they're basically dismantling the little
local news coverage that there was. And the thing is, as has been
pointed out by several Latino organizations in the past week, if this
is good, this kind of regional broadcasting that NBC is creating, why
isn't it doing it for its English-language programming? Why isn't it
shutting down the news operations of NBC in Boston, in Philadelphia
and Hartford and doing a regional newscast from New York City, and
then beaming into the local news to all those cities? Because localism
is a clear requirement of FCC laws, that local broadcast stations must
provide local services. And so this mass production of news is a
critical question now.

AMY GOODMAN: And we should say, Juan, the NAHJ, National Association
of Hispanic Journalists, is very involved with this, in protesting
this, and you're the past president of that national association.

www.democracynow.org

Ytzhak
- e-mail: montfu65@hotmail.com
- Homepage: http://odeo.com/audio/11156593/view