Last night at Pratt Institute, some poor dude asked Spike Lee if he might see “the other side” — that is, the good side — of Brooklyn’s gentrification. While I don’t know for sure that Spike’s sleepy eyes got big and buggy, I like to imagine that that’s what happened as this went down. Read More
I told him that I resented it. That I wasn’t even from D.C. and it still got on my nerves. That the people who had endured the crack heads and the crack-related shootings and the crack smoking mayor wouldn’t be the ones to enjoy the spiffed up buildings and the patio brunch specials. That the freshmen at Howard would probably be more inclined to get money than get involved on campus, because Froyo aint cheap and neither are those bright red Capital Bike Share bikes. And this, I said, and that, I said, and don’t forget about the other thing, I said — just like I had the night before, standing in the exact same spot, with a different homie, off a different kind of Jack.
As we’ve mentioned before, the DC City Council is kind of a hot mess right now. And Council Chairman Kwame Brown (pictured above) is only making it worse. On Monday, Brown announced a shuffle of committee assignments, removing popular Ward 6 Councilman Tommy Wells from his chairmanship of the Committee for Public Works and Transportation, Read More
Say what you will about Spike Lee’s polemics; the man knows how to craft a powerful narrative. Whereas Part One of If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise opened with the excitement of the Saint’s Superbowl win, the opening montage of Part Two—filled with footage of the havoc wreaked by the oil spill—set Read More
We love to see the underdog persevere. It makes us feel good, and like all monumental sports wins, it glosses over truth and makes it seem like progress is immediately possible. It’s telling that Spike Lee begins his Katrina documentary If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise with the Saint’s Superbowl win. There’s Read More
by Syreeta McFadden, x-posted from Bellewether State. ”This is the spiritual capital of the African diaspora. Something had to be done.” IBO BALTON, the housing department’s planning director for Manhattan, on Harlem. February, 2001 Ibo wandered in my office and was flattered that I had a photocopy of his NYT Quote of the Day taped Read More
