Tag: Issue 09-24-2012
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Letter From the Editor: Arts & Activism
After the re-election of George W. Bush, I was done with America. Less than a year into Bush’s second term, I left the United States for the first time. At the tender age of 34, I moved to Paris to be like James Baldwin. With money from a writing fellowship, I was confident that I…
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Lost Scriptures of Hip Hop
Old and white, and I still get it. Saul Williams creates a miracle book pretending to be something else. He re-writes history exclusive to change, except the way you see it when you read it. Beginning with “The Confession”, Saul Williams takes you deep into the catacombs of the New York City Subways’ abandoned tunnels.…
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Orwell's Economy
The Price of Inequality, by Joseph E. Stiglitz (W.W. Norton & Company). While reading The Price of Inequality, one seems confronted by a society that was merely imaginative in Jack London’s 1908 dystopian novel The Iron Heel. Rampant poverty, political and economic imbalance, entrenched class divisions, and middle class evaporation, all engendered by an oligarchic…
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Strike Up the Chorus
“Who wants to read a poem?” Saul Williams asked the audience. The crowd gathered at the Brighton Music Hall in Allston, Mass., was small, just a couple hundred people, but it appeared to be made up of devout fans. Many people clutched dog-eared copies of Williams’ books of poetry to their chests. The audience froze…
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A Controlled Dangerous Substance Act (Part Five-Conclusion)
Start at the beginning with A Controlled Dangerous Substance Act Part I (Everything is about to go crazy. The cops screwed up on the charges and Dean’s play for the cops with Frost Pharmacy is no good and they want him to do it again. The four are all drunk and the run into Mickey,…