Monthly Archives: August 2010

If Fat Beats must close, let it go out with a boom.  From last Friday’s in-store by Hawdwerk & Jansport J.

Hawdwerk & Jansport J High Power Moves album:  hawdwerkjansportj.bandcamp.com
Hawdwerk Off The Clock mixtape:  hawdwerk.bandcamp.com

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Odds are if you have been around Los Angeles, you have seen his work. Among the entertainment capital’s omnipresent billboards and bus ads for the latest studio mush, little deposits of his artwork spring out of the urban marketplace like willful foliage to wink at you on your commute. Some call it vandalism, some are incapable of even seeing it, and some will pay hundreds for an original.

Digable Planets ‘ emcee Butterfly once declared, “The city’s a museum with its posters and graffiti.” While the urban gallery of Los Angeles exhibits colorful murals and tagging scrawled in the city’s margins, there is a subculture that lurks in the dead of night to adorn utility boxes, street signs, dumpsters, and unclaimed walls with paint, posters and paste, in the pursuit of what is simply known as “street art.”

Less than a year ago, the recognizable Monopoly Man figure began appearing around town plastered against traffic light boxes, lampposts, and building tops. The tuxedoed icon would be recognizable with his pocket watch and top hat, but now he was spinning turntables, or needing healthcare. In an era of billion dollar bailouts for banks that already own the country and moguls decrying regulation as un-American, the re-contextualization of the childhood symbol of success and wealth almost needed no explanation. Read More »

Okay, this, I have not seen before: a hip hop video about the microloan program of the Grameen Bank, as seen in the upcoming film Bonsai.  Please give them a vote here to help them win a grant from American Express and Take Part!

The money it takes to run for office makes candidates beg, borrow, and steal.

www.pay2play.tv

Please, donate a quick couple bucks to our all-or-none fund raising effort on Kickstarter:

Maybe if Target hadn’t been the first major corporation to donate to campaigns in the wake of Citizens United v FEC,  plucky protesters with tubas would have had to set their sights on a business much harder to assemble in, like Lockheed Martin.  Now Target likely wishes it had sat out the Minnesota governor race, at least a little while, because in this day and age, this is obviously what people do in response.

On Tuesday, August 10, dozens of citizens assembled in front of Congressmen Henry Waxman’s Los Angeles office as part of a national coordination by MoveOn to protest corporate influence in Washington. Demonstrators with colorful signs urged Rep. Waxman to take charge of the fight on a number of fronts in the wake of Citizens United, from campaign finance reform to collecting corporate taxes to ending lax oversight of industry. As Target has felt the ire across the country from its decision to donate in Minnesota to an ultra-conservative candidate for governor, the debate has grown over the consequences corporations will face under public scrutiny. This protest suggested that people are very aware and energized on this issue of corporatized democracy.

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…or not.

Street Art just up on Melrose.

While Wednesday’s landmark ruling in U.S. Federal court decided that California’s Proposition 8 was unconstitutional, an appeals process will likely take the showdown over gay marriage all the way to the Supreme Court. Legal scholars believe that based on the court’s intent under Chief Justice Roberts, the case will achieve a milestone by granting the equal rights provided through marriage to corporations, at last.

“The Court ruled in Citizens United vs. Federal Elections Commission that corporations are in essence individual people with the same rights to free speech, and that as free speech actually means ‘purchased media,’ corporations have more free speech than individuals,” explained Rick Steadman, a legal scholar versed in the issues surrounding the case. “The prevailing rationale in the Court is likely to extend the right to marry to corporations as well, but with their combined resources, expect the formation of ‘mega-marriages’ that are so vast, large numbers of the population will be required to attend the wedding, send a gift from the corporate registry, and clink their drinking glasses with their silverware if they wish to see any courtesy corporate canoodling.” The Court may clarify that states have their own jurisdiction to address the logistics required for their populations to do the electric slide.

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