History Detectives Come to the Bronx

Tonight, after those of you with cable tune into to BronxTalk, move the digital dial over to 13.1 for History Detectives. The PBS show will, among other things, investigate the birth of hip hop at 1520 Sedgwick Ave.

For those of you not familiar with the show:

History Detectives is devoted to exploring the complexities of historical mysteries, searching out the facts, myths and conundrums that connect local folklore, family legends and interesting objects.

Traditional investigative techniques, modern technologies, and plenty of legwork are the tools the History Detectives team of experts uses to give new - and sometimes shocking - insights into our national history.

The Bronx African American History Project and Dr. Mark Naison of Fordham University will be featured in the segment. Here are the details:

BIRTHPLACE OF HIP HOP
AIRING: Season 6, Episode 11
THE DETECTIVE: Tukufu Zuberi
THE PLACE: New York City
THE CASE:

A hip hop enthusiast from New York City has always heard that 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx is the birthplace of hip hop.

The story goes that on August 11, 1973 DJ Kool Herc, a building resident, was entertaining at his sister’s back-to-school party, and tried something new on the turntable: he extended an instrumental beat (breaking or scratching) to let people dance longer (break dancing) and began MC’ing (rapping) during the extended
breakdancing.

This, the contributor believes, marked the birth of hip hop. The music led to an entire cultural movement that’s altered generational thinking – from politics and race to art and language.

History Detectives sets out to examine an inner city environment that helped lay the foundation for a cultural revolution.

More on 1520 Sedgwick here.

Also, check out Manny Fernandez's piece in the Sunday Times about illegally partitioned apartments in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens. With the affordability crisis and the economic downturn/implosion following the burst of the housing/credit bubble, dividing up apartments and subletting rooms isn't about to go away anytime soon -- often with deadly consequences.

Stop Hatin' on Community Organizers!

Opinion by Gregory Lobo Jost
In case you weren't watching last night, a political party repeatedly degraded the role of community organizers at their convention.

Former mayor Giuliani (laughing): "Maybe this is the first problem on [Obama's] resume... he worked as a community organizer!"

VP nominee Sarah Palin: "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a ‘community organizer,’ except that you have actual responsibilities.”

Regardless of whether you are an Obama, McCain, McKinney, or Barr supporter, these comments denegrate important contributions made by thousands of (mostly) young women and men during the past 70 years, in both urban AND rural America. To say the very least, if not for the work of community organizers, redlining would still be official bank policy and the Bronx would still be burning. And what about empowering low income and working class people to stand up and fight for their neighborhoods, take pride in their communities, and make REAL changes in our society? Is this a job without responsibilities? Indeed it is a job that is difficult to perform properly, requires long hard hours, is often thankless and pays very little! Certainly for the millions of Americans who have benefitted from the work done by community organizers (myself and the other 1.4 million Bronx residents) it is nothing to laugh at.

I may be over-reacting, but I take these insults very personally (and I don't even qualify as a pure organizer). Sure, these comments are made for calculated political gain during a campaign, and I expect no better from the former NYC mayor. But to hear it over and over again on national TV (PBS no less!) without any counterpoint just made my blood boil.

Has any other profession been repeatedly ridiculed like this at a political convention before? Could you imagine if this was said about YOUR LIFE'S WORK to millions of viewers with no rebuttal?

Update: David Gonzalez of the New York Times has posted a column, Bronx Organizers React to G.O.P. Punchlines, featuring the work of two past local community organizers still active in the neighborhoods.

2nd Update: A new site has sprung in response to these attacks on organizers, and the initial post (also available on the Indypendent) features west Bronx organizer Jackie del Valle of New Settlement Apartments/CASA!

Community organizers across America, taken aback by a series of attacks from Republican leaders at the GOP convention in St. Paul, came together today to defend their work organizing Americans who have been left behind by unemployment, lack of health insurance and the national housing crisis. The organizers demanded an apology from Alaska Governor Sarah Palin for her statement that community organizers have no “actual responsibilities” and launched a web site, http://organizersfightback.wordpress.com/, to defend themselves against Republican attacks.

Also, this entry on the Huffington Post features the Center for Community Change's official response to the remarks.

Latino Pols Take Aim at PBS

So, this is more interesting than what's usually in the pile of press releases we get on a Friday afternoon:
A raft of the city’s Latino state legislators is up in arms over an upcoming 14-hour PBS documentary by Ken Burns on World War II.
The lawmakers say the film, set to air this fall, ignores the Hispanic American experience in the war.
“We had hoped that as the leader of the nation’s taxpayer supported educational television network, you would embrace your core educational mission,” the legislators wrote in a letter to Paula Kerger, president of PBS. “To first ignore and then relegate to an afterthought, the contributions of more than a half million Latino GIs who fought and died in Europe, North and Asia, and of our families who supported the war effort on the home front represents a stunning failure to educate.”
The officials also said they were troubled by “what appears to be a pattern with similar Ken Burns PBS projects like “Baseball” and “Jazz.”
Firing a shot across the Network’s bow, the legislators said they and their colleagues in local and federal government should examine their funding of PBS, and focus their energies on nurturing “alternative educational television networks, producers and program[ing] which authentically comes from and serves our community.”
Among the Bronx lawmakers who signed the letter, were Assemblymen Jose Rivera and Luis Diaz, Assemblywoman Naomi Rivera, and State Senators Efrain Gonzalez and Jose M. Serrano.
We're waiting for a response from PBS. We'll let you know what they say.