It’s taken me a while to figure out exactly why Allen Iverson is my favorite ball player. When he crossed Jordan, fresh out of Georgetown, I knew kid had game. When he stepped over Tyronn Liu during the NBA finals, I knew he had heart. But when he sat down for a press conference yesterday in Philly, just days before making his return to the Sixers, I was finally able to pinpoint exactly what it was: He’s the most honest guy out there.

Everything about his game is honest. Many have said that you can tell a person’s character by the way they play the game, and Iverson’s never made any excuses: He’s made mistakes. And he’s bound to make more. But he’s only human.

It took a near retirement for me to truly respect what he’s meant to the game over the span of his 14-year career. Dude rocked tattoos, chains and cornrows before they were in fashion. Shit, David Stern implemented a dress code just because of him. He’s hip-hop generation generation politics, dressed in a Sixers uniform, rockin’ the reeboks.

ESPN analyst and former NBA point guard Jalen Rose said it best when he remarked that Allen Iverson has had a bigger cultural impact on professional sports than anyone — including Jordan. Every shot Iverson takes is one small victory for every basketball-loving kid who didn’t make it to the NBA.

…an appellate court annulled New York State’s right to exercise eminent domain on behalf of Columbia University (re: their incursion into West Harlem) today. The ruling doesn’t mean much in terms of stopping CU’s expansion plans (most of the damage has been done; Columbia already owns 90+% of the designated project area). But it could set an important precedent for development cases like the Atlantic Yards and the LES, where the use -or abuse- of eminent domain remains a huge issue of contention.

Also, am real disappointed, but not at all surprised, that Hova is backing all this ridiculousness. And is bragging about it in his lyrics to boot! I’m wagering that he’s joined the ranks of those whose wishful thinking somehow turn clear cut examples of gentrification into programs of “urban renewal”. And real talk who wants the Nets lol?

And another one, on the South:

This reminds me of the land-grab that took place preceding the construction of the Fifth Runway at Hartsfield-Jackson Airport in the late ‘90s. Though the 4,700 acre airport lies 10 miles south of downtown and physically occupies three municipalities—the Airport is wholly owned by Atlanta. The Runway project essentially became a case of one majority Black-governed city—Atlanta—removing the mostly Black, Vietnamese and low-income residents of 2 other municipalities—College Park and Riverdale—to boost its Airport revenue collection (gate fees from airlines, massive vendor sales taxes, etc.). The recent elimination of Atlanta’s public and Federal housing—the oldest in the United States—and the resulting exodus of these Black resident into College Park and Riverdale, is like eminent domain coming full circle.

This kind of thing doesn’t surprise me in GA, since RedStates can be infamously accommodating to outside developers and industries (the deep tax breaks we give to construction companies, movies, and car manufacturers has spurred the decimation of our DFACS and state mental health programs), but I am surprised—or maybe edified by the opportunity for commiseration—to see this happen in New York, especially with all the community and government allies that the anti-Atlantic Yards movement has garnered.

In response to the first comment, Dave Zirin actually wrote an entire book on the matter, using New Orleans’ Post-Katrina Superdome as an example. He also talked about it in a piece in The Nation a while back:

The symbol of deliverance, we were told repeatedly during the broadcast, was the $185 million renovation of the Louisiana Superdome, $94 million of which came from FEMA. Never mind that the Dome’s adjoining mall and hotel are still shuttered or that the city hasn’t seen that kind of money spent on low-income housing destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. The road back for the Big Easy begins in the Dome. As one ESPN talking head solemnly told us, “The most daunting task is to scrub away memories of the Superdome as a cesspool of human misery.” That recalled the time when the football stadium became the homeless shelter from hell for 30,000 of New Orleans’s poorest residents, huddled together in conditions Jesse Jackson likened to “the hull of a slave ship.”

Oh, and just as an aside, happy birthday, Hov

The New Jersey Nets recently broke the NBA’s record for the worst start ever by going 0-18 this week.

All this comes just a week after it was announced that Cleveland-based developer Bruce Ratner cleared his last legal hurdle with the state to go ahead with the massive Atlantic Yards Project in downtown Brooklyn. The project — which has displaced scores of longtime residents, many of whom have organized against it — is pretty much the Manhattanization of downtown Brooklyn.

The centerpiece of the project is a multimillion dollar sports arena, slated to be the new home of the Nets. Jay-Z, who’s also a part owner of the team, has played made a massive PR effort to move the team to Brooklyn.

So here’s my conspiracy theory: Management wants the Nets to lose as many games as possible this year, to help smooth the transition across the Hudson to Brooklyn. Bigwigs for the Seattle Supersonics did it before their own controversial move to Oklahoma City. What else can you say about a team that just a few seasons ago had two of the game’s top players, Jason Kidd and Vince Carter, running its offense? Make a team implode, alienate the fanbase, skip town, and leave two city’s to foot the bill.

Brooklyn, who’s population would make it the fourth largest city in the country, has been without a professional sports team since much-maligned baseball owner Branch Rickey moved the Dodgers to Los Angeles in 1957.

The irony in all this the changing face of race and displacement in the US, and the role pro sports plays in all this. Jeff Chang made the argument long ago that Jay-Z is an unabashed capitalist, an “up-from-your-bootstraps”, rags to riches tale for the 21st century. Hov’s made no qualms about his post-rap enterprises, dabbling in high-end development deals, among his many business ventures.

The fact that he’s Brooklyn’s prodigal native son is leading the charge to displace some of its most vulnerable residents underplays the fact that despite rap’s proletariat beginnings, black popular culture — pro sports and hip-hop, specifically — have become major vehicles for gentrification in the past twenty years.

Check out my latest interview with DJ Zita on Wiretap:

Read the entire interview here.

Sure sure to subscribe to Wiretap’s weekly mailing list to get her exclusive new mix: Where My Ladies At: A Tribute to the Queens of True School Hip-Hop.

“We want to convey that the modern-day G.O.P. looks like the conservative party that stands on principles,” Mr. Steele said. “But we want to apply them to urban-suburban hip-hop settings.”

And Mr. Steele, isn’t leaving anyone out, including, he joked, “one-armed midgets.”

Though the newspaper reported that Mr. Steele declined to offer specifics, he plans to put together a public relations team to give the Republican Party the equivalent of an extreme makeover. It’s part of a larger overhaul of the committee that he set in motion several weeks ago.

The new re-branding effort he said, “will be avant garde, technically. It will come to table with things that will surprise everyone — off the hook.”

Funny how gentrification often masks itself as progress. San Francisco city officials are boasting about a new arts district. The district will soon replace what the Chronicle calls “lower Taylor street”, but most city folks know as the Tenderloin (TL). The area is currently known for its mix of low income residents, drug addicts and people dependent on state and federal assistance.

Enthusiasts of the project boast that it’ll be the city’s answer to New York’s SoHo. In the middle of it all is a sparkling new arts foundation, The Grey Center:

It’s one of the seediest stretches in San Francisco, filled with homeless people slumped against vacant storefronts, the stench of urine, graffiti, drugs and crime. Many maps and travel books explicitly warn tourists to stay away.

But the three blocks of Taylor Street just north of Market Street would become an arts district – some say akin to New York City’s SoHo, which became an area of cheap artists’ lofts and studios in the 1960s and ’70s – under a plan being cobbled together by city officials, landlords, artists and Tenderloin-area nonprofit workers.

The transformation gets under way today with the groundbreaking of Gray Area Foundation for the Arts, which is taking over a vacant 4,000-square-foot building that once was a porn theater. The old marquee on the building reads “Art Theatres,” apparently a euphemism that also foreshadowed its future use.

While city officials envision a thriving, high-end arts district, there’s absolutely no mention of what will happen to current residents who call the TL home. Granted, the TL has gained a notoriously negative reputation as a place of quasi-legalized social decay where drugs and sex work happen in the open. But it’s also a place where many of the city’s most fragile populations get assistance — drug rehab, disability housing, low income housing for immigrant families of color. It’s also an area that has historically served as a home for the city’s queer communities of color, most notably trans folks, dating back to the late ’60s.

Very rarely are residents voices heard on why they love the neighborhood. The past summer, 17-year-old Edgar Mendez, a senior at International Studies Academy, wrote in an article with the Bay Area Multicultural Media Academy (BAMMA) about why he loves to call the TL home:

Though there are numerous amounts of mentally ill and drug-addicted on the streets, the community is also thriving with culture and is home to a large Vietnamese and Latino population…

The beauty of the Tenderloin may be hidden, but because of the work of the residents and various organizations, some have found it and appreciate it.

Read more.

We need more stories like this.

Excellent news in San Francisco. June Jordan High School for Equity, a relatively new alternative public school in the city’s Excelsior district, has one of the highest college acceptance rates in the city. From New America Media:

June Jordan is a bold experiment that is six years old, with the kids that most people think don’t have a chance. In a state where fewer than half of low-income students graduate from high school, this school is taking the mantra of “high expectations” to another plane. In an era where accountability through test scores is seen as the pathway to success, June Jordan is focusing on curriculum and an alternative method of assessment that looks at students’ ability to write well, think deeply, and present their thoughts in front of adults.

The school made headlines earlier in the  year after two students, Jorge Hurtado and Josh Cameron, were murdered within weeks of one another. Classmates turned their grief into action when they held a march and rally to bring attention to homicides in the city, urging public officials to think of community-based alternatives — instead of controversial gang injunctions.

The school’s success also comes on the heels of massive underenrollment  in the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD). The district has traditionally enrolled predominately working and middle class students of color. In recent years, increasing numbers of those students and their families have fled the city (PDF) in search of more affordable housing and better performing schools. The low numbers have led to several school closures and teacher layoffs.

*See photos of the June Jordan High School for Equity demonstration against violence (from HOMEY)

The fallout from the Alex Rodriguez steroid scandal could have far-reaching effects on low-income workers in The Bronx.

By now, everyone has probably heard that Yankee third baseman Alex Rodriguez admitted to using steroids while he played for the Texas Rangers. In a pouty-lipped interview with ESPN, Rodriguez admitted to using performance enhancing drugs from 2001-2003 — although he doesn’t know exactly what he took — because of the tremendous pressure to succeed. 

But now real questions are being asked. Namely, what will the Yankees do? It’s unlikely that they’ll get rid of their $270 million megastar, despite his tarnished image. But the Yanks were counting on marketing Rodriguez as the “clean” version of Barry Bonds, set to chase baseball’s illusive homerun record and sell seats in the team’s new multimillion dollar stadium.

The controversial new Yankee stadium is slated to open this spring. Already, the project has been mired in bitter disputes with neighboring residents and city officials. First, stadium contractors bailed out of important parts of a community benefits agreement that would have guaranteed the majority of the stadium’s construction jobs go to local residents. Then it was uncovered that developers allegedly fabricated real estate numbers and duped city officials into agreeing to publicly finance part of the stadium’s costs. Now, the project is almost finished and in our already failing economy, it’s uncertain whether the seasonal stadium jobs promised to local residents will actually pan out.

Rodriguez certainly isn’t to blame. As sportswriter Dave Zirin pointed out in a recent column, the blame goes primarily to Major League Baseball’s owners who pushed the 1990′s homerun boom:

The reasons for the home run boom extend far beyond the steroid dealer. The boom reverberates in every urban budget, every underfunded school and every library that closes early. In the past twenty years, more than fifteen publicly funded baseball parks have been built in the United States. They are supposed to be fan-friendly–that is, unless your child happens to go to a school whose shrinking budgets were paying the tab. The shorter fences at these parks are engineered to yield more home runs.

Zirin continues to talk about the rise of publicly financed stadiums, which promise jobs but too often open the pathways to the redevelopment of historic communities of color.

But are steroids really the biggest drug problem in America? Katt Williams doesn’t think so. And neither do I. As a sports fan, I’ve always pondered the irony of professional baseball’s ominous silence during the cash-cow days of uber drugged Mark McWire and Sammy Sosa’s 1998 homerun chase. It brought millions of dollars and fans back to the game after the strike in ’94. But as a regular ass person, I have to wonder: what’s the big deal? Besides, Jose Canseco called this months ago. When I see our senators arguing over ways to fix our crack cocaine and crystal meth epidemics, then I’ll consider it progress.

*For more, check out the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition’s 2008 report: Boom for Whom? How the Resurgence of the Bronx is Leaving Residents Behind (PDF)

Many of his fellow street artists think so.

He came to fame in the early ’90′s and has since become one of the most recognizable — and profitable — street artists in the world. He’s mostly known for his OBEY GIANT street art and a clothing line by the same time. Most recently, he’s gained acclaim for his iconic Obama posters:

Fairey eventually struck a deal with the Obama campaign and the posters became official Obama ’08 artwork, selling millions of copies and becoming synonymous with Obama’s political ascension and the political hopes of a generation.

Unfortunetly, Fairey has a very troubled past in the world of progressive printmaking. Oakland-based printmaker and political activist Favianna Rodgruez recently pointed out that, contrary to his aim to forward social movements in the US and abroad, Fairey’s most noticeable artistic trait is plagarism.

In fact, in an article by artist Mark Vallen, co-reasearched by Rogriguez and two other artists, published to coincide with Fairey’s Los Angeles solo exhibition in December 2007, numerous examples of Fairey’s alleged plagarism come to surface. You be the judge:

[ Left: Political power comes from the barrel of a gun - Artist unknown. 1968. Chinese poster from the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution period. The title of this poster quotes the famous pronouncement made by Mao Tse-Tung. Right: Fairey's plagiarized version titled, Guns and Roses. The Chinese poster's central motif of hands bearing machine guns was plainly digitally scanned without any alteration. Fairey, or his assistants, then applied a modified sun-burst background, placed clip-art roses in the gun barrels, and released the imitation in 2006 as a supposed original work.]

[ Left: Black Panther - Pirkle Jones. Photograph. 1968. Portrait of an anonymous Panther at a political rally in Oakland, California. The Panther photos of Ruth-Marion Baruch and Pirkle Jones are internationally famous and have long been available in book form. Right: Fairey’s street poster, which neither credits Pirkle Jones nor makes any mention of the Black Panther Party.]

[ Left: Liberate Puerto Rico Now! - Young Lords Party. Silkscreen poster. 1971. Right: Fairey’s rip-off, "Wage Peace: Obey", which neither credits nor makes any mention of the Young Lords Party.]

[ Left: Libertad para Angela Davis (Freedom for Angela Davis) - Félix Beltrán, Cuba, 1971. Original silk-screen print created by Beltrán in solidarity with Angela Davis when she was a political prisoner in the US. Right: Fairey’s plundered version as a street poster, which neither credits Beltrán nor identifies Angela Davis.]

read more.

As Vallen points out, it’s not unusual for artists to be inspired by the work of the past. But it is problematic when that work goes uncredited and for profit:

What I am concerned with is the brazen, intentional copying of already existing artworks created by others – sometimes duplicating the originals without alteration – and then deceiving people by pawning off the counterfeit works as original creations.

Judging from the images above, it’s obvious that these allegations of plagarism have racist undertones. Fairey is a white artist, born in the one of the bastions of North American racism, South Carolina. Many of the artists whose work he’s appropriated are artists of color, often with direct involvement with political movements to end the social and economic subjugation of their communities.

Fairey has responded to some criticisms. In an interview with Mother Jones in the March/April 2008 issue, he said the following:

“I met a girl who was Mexican, who got totally in my face about my parody of Che Guevara’s image, which was based on the fact that it’s already been really exploited to the point that it’s become somewhat meaningless. And she was like, ‘You desecrate my companero.’ I was like, ‘For one thing, he wasn’t Mexican; he was Argentinean …’ It’s like me saying that you insulted someone from Europe and I’m of European descent. It’s such a stretch. She wasn’t in the mountains with Che eating squirrels. It’s just ridiculous.”

I’m sure he didn’t bank on that “Mexican girl” reading Mother Jones, but she did. Her name is Aura Bogado, who responded with her own scathing critique of Fairey’s selective memory.

My apologies: did I say you only got one thing right in your rant? It seems I left something out – you mentioned that I said that you desecrate Che. I will write now what I said then: your work disrespects icons of color. That is what I remember about our conversation, I was trying (and obviously failed) to explain the way in which you culturally appropriate the images of icons of color, like Che and others, for capitalist gain.

But of course Fairey’s actions aren’t racist. He’s friends with Chuck D!