Living in the Shadow

….walking in the valley of the shadow of death, I carry the past and feel it’s weight on my chest…

Right now there are more people in chattel slavery then at any other point in human history. They work in every industry imaginable from the diamond and the copper mines of africa to the sweatshops of asia and the americas, and their blood is the grease of the modern capitalist machine. Meanwhile, in the “free” and “enlightened” rich and “developed” nations of the Capitalist West, the vast majority of us live 2 paychecks or less away from homelessness,  have far more debt then assets, and are forced to sell our lives in a modern sharecropping system based on credit card debt and wage slavery. Here – in the richest nation on the planet – literally thousands of people are slowly freezing to death on our streets; a daily reminder to the rest of us just how precarious our balance is.

Meanwhile, centuries of violently enforced assimilation, segregation, and structural racism have left the majority of us ignorant of our own histories and cultures, with the only permissible identities being those tied to skin tone, occupation, income, and consumption. Americans do not have cultures, we have Brand Names; we do not have communities, we have competitors. Even our families are fragmented and broken as elders rot slowly in nursing homes unable to pass on their stories and their wisdom and children turn to television to fill the gap. Our very identities have become chains to enslave us. We are a broken people, unable to even remember who we are, and living completely at the mercy of predators that grow fat on our blood and tears.

Here in the “land of the free and the home of the brave” we breath polluted air, eat food saturated in poison, and drink contaminated water. One in four of us will die from cancer, half of us display symptoms of clinical depression, and millions of our children – who have not yet learned to abandon their dreams and take orders – are forced to spend their days doped up on Ritalin and other drugs designed to sap them of their energy and creativity so they will sit docile in classrooms that teach them to be slaves. We own nothing – the
average American has more debt then assets – and we work longer hours and have less recreation time then people in any other industrialized country. At this moment the United States of America has more people in prison – per capita and in total numbers – then any other nation in the history of the planet; and that includes Nazi Germany, Maoist China, and Stalin’s Russia. In this modern plantation system prison labor is contracted out to the highest bidder, the overwhelming majority of prisoners are people of color, and virtually all of them are poor or working class. Even outside the walls of the American Gulag, we are still held prisoner by a political and economic system designed to prevent any meaningful freedom of choice – you can buy any of hundred brands of sneaker, but all of them are made in sweatshops.
Our civil liberties are not at risk, they are fiction; and the Attorney General has declared human rights “obsolete” and “irrelevant.” We are not free. We do not even know the meaning of the word. We live our lives in the shadow of power, in the shadow of empire, and in the shadow of history.

As Malcolm X put it, “You can’t have a revolution without bloodshed, and [we’re] afraid to bleed.”

But there is still hope, however remote. If we look deep enough, remember far enough, we can find another history, another power, and an antidote to empire. For a hundred generations working class people all over this earth have dreamed of a better world and manifested those dreams in Revolution. In every nation, in every corner of the world, wherever there has been oppression there has also been rebellion against it. No empire lasts forever, no throne goes unsmashed, and no matter how hard it is to imagine freedom we carry it in our blood, in our DNA, and it will not – can not – be suppressed forever.

This is music for dark times, music for days when the sun never rises and nights where the stars are invisible behind the smog. Music for a people and a nation living in the shadow of it’s own destruction, and music for those of us determined to fight back.

Power concedes nothing without a demand, so demand everything and accept nothing less.

………………………………………..

Special thank-you’s on this album go out to my father for teaching me early on the power of music, storytelling, and history, to my mother for putting up with me as I was growing up -I know it wasn’t easy for either of us, to my sisters and my brothers for their love and solidarity. and for the privileged of being your big brother, to my partner Laura – I love you more then i can say, and to my grandparents for listening when i needed a friend and for sharing your stories with me. Thanks you’s also go out to Dub Cee, DJ Phoney and Kdubbs who all contributed beats to this project. I also owe a tremendous thank you to Shamako and Persia, Pasha, Labrie, and the entire bay area conscious underground. Big ups to Carlos, Mongo, Boulevard, and all my Mechistas, to the Collaboratiive Artists Insurgency (CAI) and the 16th and Mission crew. Big shout outs also go to the Anarchist Library at City College, RTS, Anarchist Action, Direct Action to Stop the War, Food Not Bombs, and a dozen other acronyms that all point to the same beautiful troublemakers – thank you for inspiring me, we’re gonna change this world ya’ll, never doubt that. And of course thank you to all the folks who’ve downloaded, bought, burned, and shared copies of my previous albums – and to everyone who’s taken the time to send email and say that you like my music. Without your encouragement and support I’d have given up a long time ago, so thank you for giving me the strength to keep speaking out.

At it’s core, this album is a collection of stories from my own life. It is my attempt to confront the darkness head on and find something beautiful, so I dedicate it to all of the people who’ve helped me find that beauty and to everyone who is working, fighting, and struggling to light the darkness.