Nothing About Us, Without Us! – Interview with Leroy Moore

I originally published this in Left Turn Magazine, October 2007.

Leroy F. Moore, Jr. is a radical Black organizer in the disability and racial justice movements. He works with Disability Advocates of Minorities Organization, Poor Magazine, and Harambee Educational Council, an organization for parents, advocates and young adults focused African Americans with disabilities. Long a fixture in the anti-police brutality and homelessness efforts nationwide; he is now taking on the hip-hop industry with a groundbreaking compilation of disabled rappers: Krip-Hop. He is also a member of the Molotov Mouths Outspoken Word Troupe.

Leroy

LT: Tell me a little bit about your background, what led to your politicization?

LM: I was born with cerebral palsy into a family that was and still are activists. My father was a Black Panther and my mother was an independent thinker. I had no choice but to be an activist.

My experiences in both communities-Black and Disabled, and how they treated, or better yet, not treated both of my identities gave me a real eye-opener on how society treats Blacks and other people of color with disabilities.

Racism in the disability movement and services for people with disabilities became clear when I was mainstreamed from my all Black Special Education class to a majority White non-disabled mainstream class. From that point onward, I had the question of race and disability in my head.

LT: You talk about the “intersection of race and disability” How exactly are these entwined? Some present disability as color-blind, something that could happen to anybody.

LM: The reality of race and disability has been with us since day one. Disability is a part of our fabric of our being, just like race, all the way back to Moses. People of color have found themselves in situations where the onset of disability is delivered by the oppressive society we live in. From robbing the land from Native Americans to slavery to the Tuskagee Experiment, to today’s budget cuts in mental health, hospitals, and the violence we seemed to live in at home and abroad, this country’s action and policies have helped increase disability in POC communities.

Italian Street Art

(Milan)

Travelling through Italy, it was a kick to compare and contrast the Street Art (Spray Paint Grafitti, stencils, stickers) to the ancient murals and statues of the Roman Empire and Vatican Inc. Politically, the two art forms couldn’t be farther apart: one commissioned by power and the other committed on the fly. However, both are comments on empires past and present.

(Venice)

North American lefties can often romanticize Europe as an oasis of tolerance and enlightenment. However, xenophobia and bigotry against North African immigrants and Arabs runs pretty high there too. In Rome, I witnessed Italian police chasing African immigrants all around the Vatican City area for the crime of selling knock-off Prada bags on corners.

(Venice)

A variation on a stencil that I think originated in North America.

(Milan)

The issue of Blood Diamonds is very much in the public awareness in Italy.

(Bologna)

Portions of an incredible 400-foot mural in Milan dedicated to Carlo Giuliani.

Finally, some apolitical eye-candy…

Dogs of War

(Picture of Mr. Noam Chompsky)

Last Wednesday, Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick was indicted by a federal grand jury for illegal dogfighting. The pictures weren’t for the faint of heart. It seems as if in the games Vick refereed, the loosing dogs were hung by trees. That is, if they managed to live that long.

If the allegations are true, this of course is disgusting. Truth in advocacy here: I’m a pushover for dogs, and I have two of them at home. The thought of one of their cute loving faces mangled by Pitbull or Rotweiler boils my blood. You don’t need to be a robe-wearing pacifist to concur with Ghandi on the subject: “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”

However, something even more disgusting is at foot here; truly an even greater marker of the moral progress of the nation: the continuing appeal of racism.

Talk-radio and the blogosphere practically exploded with calls for Vick to hang from a tree himself. A sample culled from a simple Google search last Friday:

• “Someone should take him and hang him from a tree.”
• “If it were up to me, I would put Michael Vick in a pit with some dogs and see how he mother fucking likes it.”
• What if we hung the Atlanta Falcons the next time they loose a game?”
• “Well, he is from the South after all.”

These are just some of the more printable reactions. Needless to say, such comments can only be taken in context.

The context of advocating hanging a black man from a tree.

The context of sicking dogs on a black person.

The context of the south.

The context of war. What does war have to do with it?

On the same day Vick was indicted at least 103 Iraqis were killed by American forces in Iraq and the death toll for American service mean reached 3,632. Beyond the normal alternative media outlets that note these things, discussion was scarce.

Vick creates reprehensible deed against man’s best friends. The cyber gloves come off and suddenly thousands of people have a pass to advocate lynching. The War Without end take the lives of more Iraqis and Americans and…

You can hear a pin drop in the far corners of cyberspace.

If convicted, Vick may, and should, spend quite a few years in prison. Yet the true dogs of war seem headed towards comfortable retirements at the Bohemian Grove–a quiet indictment of the moral progress of this nation.

Hegemony Circus: Breaking Down Fox’s 24

This month, Fox’s greatest piece of propaganda, “24″ returns, and by all accounts is going to be a hurricane of yellow menace stereotypes. For this review I managed to sit through an entire season of nationalistic, racist and unintentionally hillarious episides. Where else can you watch a story unfold that actually blames a terrorist attack on Arabs, Chinese and Queers all at the same time? Guess without Russia to blame it on anymore, Hollywood has to go the extra mile in the scapegoating game. Anybody remember Red Dawn?

The television show “24,” is a fast paced roller coaster of a spy series scripted so that every screen minute is corresponds to an actual minute-and each episode represents an hour in a day. The show made its debut shortly after the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center. As a melodrama, the show has held a mirror up to the mood of a nation at once deeply paranoid but also confident that it has the bad guys in the crosshairs.

From Music to Movement: An Interview with “From Monument to Masses”

 

This is an interview with From Monument to Masses I recently did for for Left Turn magazine.

From Monument to Masses (FMTM) proves that creating politically engaged music doesn’t mean sacrificing artistic form. Their complicated, textured music in virtually lyric-less opting to sample political speeches and soundbites from the global intifada. Left Turn sat down with Sergio Robledo Moderazo and Matthew Solberg just after a US Summer tour to talk about the rock and roll and revolutions past and future.

LT: FMTM rips apart the basic formula of a protest song-lyrical, anthemic, and direct and replaces it with long, textured songs with samples of political speeches and rallies. How does this break with tradition help you get your message across?

SERGIO: Well, on an artistic level, it helps because it sort of sets us apart stylistically from much of what’s out there in terms of popular music, whether we’re talking about protest music or otherwise. This is always a good thing when you’re trying to get people’s attention.

From a political perspective, there’s something to be said about presenting the words and people’s movements, organizations, and activists using samples…actually letting people hear them in their original voices. There’s something immediate and “real” about that. Much of the perspectives and voices that we feature in our samples have been left out of mainstream politics in general and definitely out of popular culture. I like the idea of re-inserting them…featuring these unheard voices and perspectives when no one’s looking. It’s like we’re sharing the stage and the airwaves with people’s struggles all over the world.