The World is Upside Down
On the neglected legacy of benefit concerts, Nehanda Abiodun and the end of spineless media
The last time I wrote on this platform, the world was still right side up, or at least to those protected from the media walls of the empire, we were numb to only passively know about the freedom struggle in Palestine. Nothing in my life looks like it did on October 1st, and I'm sure that sentiment is the same for you, dear reader. And that is a gratitude I'm still trying to be ok with. I want to apologize for falling off this platform; life has been happening and taking no mercy, but I'm here with a pocket of faith and curiosity for what fighting for the collective(s) and my dreams of freedom could feel like on this platform.
Since the never-ending bombing, starvation, and hunting of Palestinians since early October, an estimated 22,000 Palestinian loved ones have been killed by the state of Israel with our American tax dollars. As of January 7th, 79 journalists have been killed, as reported by the Committee to Protect Journalists, most recently, Wael Al Dahdouh (Al Jazeera Bureau Chief for Gaza City), oldest son Hamza Al Dahdouh (also a journalist for Al Jazeera), was killed while on assignment in Southern Gaza. I hope the unending suffering of this moment is something I don't have to explain, but more so that this serves as a reminder to join the struggle as the holiday fog leaves you. The battle for freedom is still here, and it's been calling us way before October of 2023. We have a destiny to answer it.Â
You can find out how much money your state spends on funding the state of Israel and its occupation of Palestine here via USCPR’s U.S. Military Funding to Israel Map
So many great writers have said things I have been noodling with, so I will happily link to the pieces on the fallacy of the moral high ground, the need for the death of celebrity culture, and why influencers are not morally superior to you.Â
a sneak peek of the Zeba Blay essay you have to read:
I have been struggling with how culture feels lightyears ahead of our political circumstances and how local artistic efforts have felt more impactful than ever before. It's a story that I know too well as a music journalist; the underground leads, and the mainstream follows behind, but these days, I've been aspiring for a simulation where the mainstream never reaches us and where the artists, poets, and cultural workers I get to call friends and comrades see their work make it to their people and not just marketed to the masses for profit.Â
So I found a starting point: the Artists for Aid concert held on January 4th in Newark, NJ, that featured performances by Mohammed El-Kurd, Mustafa, Nick Hakim Safia Elhillo, and many others. The benefit concert raised money for Human Concern International and brought artists from every genre to uplift and support Palestinian and Sudanese aid. While I didn't get to attend, the concert should be archived as a seminal moment in history from the bits of reporting I can find. Just like the Stop Cop City Music Festival led by Awful Records from April 2023, We Raise Our Voices: Writers for Palestine (Philly), or Aja Monet's Why My Love stop in NYC, all of them are mirrors of the radical potential in collective works when we don't look to celebrities or influencers for our meaning-making.Â
The Artists for Aid concert and the limited coverage it's received by legacy music media reminded me that the cowardice of institutions is never-ending, and many of us writers, journalists, and reporters with an ethics to liberation have to work outside the beast to get the stories of our people told. More importantly, it made me think about the legacy of benefit concerts for global struggles that we may or may not know about. The ones that should have been reported on well or seen as too deep in the underground to be counted in the long neo-liberal legacy of aid concerts that amass millions of dollars without ever addressing imperialism as a root cause of suffering.Â
Thankfully, I found some that I hope you dig into further:Â
-Black August Hip Hop Project, led by the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement in support of raising money for political prisoners that traveled for years across the globe, bringing black hip hop artists into global solidarity with comrades in Cuba, South Africa, Venezuela, and Tanzania all led by folks like Monifa Bandele, Nehanda Abiodun and founders of Stress Magazine to build local and global organizing strategy for freeing political prisoners such as Mumia Abu Jamal. Thankfully, dream hampton made a full-length documentary archiving the work that MXGM did to lead that effort with original interviews and footage from shows in the US, Cuba, and South Africa.Â
-On January 12th, 1985, in Johannesburg, South Africa, Concert In The Park was held at the then Ellis Park Stadium with over 20,000 attendees led by Steven Kekana and Johnny Clegg. The concert was a historical feat as it actively pushed back against the cultural sanctions that refused any and all integration.Â
"Internal resistance to apartheid was growing, and the state was stepping up its attempts to repress resistance, as evidenced in the declaration of states of emergency in parts of the country. External resistance in the form of sanctions and the cultural and sports boycotts also impacted the state's paranoia," says associate professor Michael Drewett of South Africa's Rhodes University. Bookended by internal and external pressure, many South African singers and musicians chose exile or packed in their careers."-Pulled from a full-length article on the piece by Emily Boulter at the Forward.
My friends are my political heroes; they organize actions, make zines, love me, laugh with me, hold me accountable, and see a path forward when I'm too clouded by my grief. They persevere when I can't and remind me that my own suffering, heartbreak, and dissociation are connected to a system that feeds on our individual fears of isolation, rejection, and scarcity. Our loved ones have always been braver than any celebrity, platform, or award show could ever be to move us toward our destiny of liberation from white supremacy. I hope you see that loving possibility for political courage in the folks around you and that it keeps you durable for the ongoing fight ahead.Â
Leaving you with words from June Jordan because, duh:
"What I know from my own life after Lebanon is that I must insist upon my own truth and my own love, especially when that truth and that love will carry me across the borders of my own tribe, or I will wither in the cold light of my own eyes." -June Jordan in Life After Lebanon (Oct. 1984)
I’ll be back here but in the meantime here is an essay I wrote with a comrade in October that I’m proud of for Essence Magazine. oh and I have a new personal website finally, clarissambrooks.journoportfolio.com.
Talk soon!
