Sorry guys, but Trylemma and I decided that we’re gonna take a break from sharing a download this week to speak on the murder of George Floyd and so many others. Trylemma spoke from the heart for you yesterday, and I stand by everything he said. Call that UGF’s mission statement. Fuck racists. We don't want to imply that we’re not staying informed or worse that we don't care by not making that crystal clear.
I also want to say I didn't hear about Blackout Tuesday because I don't use social media, so I apologize for not canceling my post a few days ago. I had scheduled it to go live Tuesday over the weekend, and didn't find out about the protest until I got home that evening. It wasn't that I knew about the protest and didn't care, just that I didn't know about it at all. So that was unfortunate, but this isn't about me.
Trylemma spoke with passion about racism as it relates to underground hip hop. He’s been keeping me in the loop about some truly appalling (and damn confusing, how can you not like Black people but claim to like rap?) statements being made by fans of some artists. We don’t tolerate that shit here. Black people are so often left voiceless, and one of their most creative and informative outlets, music, is being poisoned from within by artists who don’t want to alienate fan bases that basically consist of uninformed, spoiled and arrogant children.
I don’t want to just repeat what Trylemma said yesterday so know that we are of one mind in this. What I want to post really quick is just a show of extreme support and admiration for anyone on the front lines of this issue. The people getting pepper sprayed for having the gall to congregate and stand together peacefully, getting slandered by our orange president for exercising their right to peaceably assemble, a right “guaranteed” by our constitution. We are a country that claims basic human rights for every person including life and we are proving ourselves patently unworthy of that claim.
So what can we do? We can support black musicians and other creatives, as I’m sure you all already do. We can show support for our Black friends and neighbors, if it seems appropriate maybe we can ask them how they've been affected by racism. I believe the polar opposite of racism is empathy, maybe that's one way to help develop it. We can congregate peacefully and make sure we are heard. We can continue to film the police and hold them accountable, history has shown nobody else is willing to do this. We can donate money to organizations that are in the position to do more than we are as individuals. Currently a good use of funds is for bailing out protesters, for those in the US this is a list of places to do that by location. We can re-post, tweet, whatever posts that are valuable and share information, not just optics. What we can’t do is continue to expect this issue to disappear, or make cheap statements online without any actual action behind them.
If you came online today hoping for a download link, I urge you to consider donating to bail funds that free protesters who were imprisoned fighting on the front lines instead. Take advantage of Bandcamp’s donation days (like today, support some Black musicians), they were designed for Covid relief but a number of artists are donating the proceeds to causes relating to the BLM movement and ending police brutality. If you aren’t working, or are able after work, find a place to meet with like minded supporters ("plot, plan, strategize, organize and mobilize" like Killer Mike said). And do everything to remember that, as Trylemma said yesterday while for many of us this is an issue we don’t deal with every day, Black men and women are raised to fear the police because they believe police, who literally WORK FOR every American, are going to kill them. We need to show empathy for our fellow human beings, imagine what that must be like, and make this our issue as well.
Oh and as useless as it seems sometimes, when three million voices are simply ignored because they live somewhere with too many people who agree with them (for those of you outside the states, this is a simplified explanation of the Electoral College and the reason why Trump is occupying the Oval Office when he lost the actual vote by millions), this November DO NOT forget to vote. Our president is a racist, alleged (but let's be real, I'll eat a bag of sh*t if he's innocent) rapist dirtbag who uses weapons against civilians for a photo-op and calls peacefully assembled protesters “lowlife scum” and "terrorists". America will not survive another 4 years of Donnie the Disease. Sorry, but if you disagree then frankly you are encouraged to never visit us again.
Thank you for reading, just one last note. I am a white American, and I admit that I benefit from that. What some people don't understand is that I'm not necessarily expected to accept blame or be ashamed of myself for that alone, I was born who I am and didn't chose it. However, I know I need to understand the reality of white privilege to have compassion and understanding for those without it. That is something the self righteous Caucasian in America often doesn't understand. Nobody (reasonable) blames us simply for being white, but if we deny we benefit from it then we are part of the problem. One more time, empathy is so important, and I guess that's the message I most want to convey with this post.
RIP all people of color murdered by the police.
