At the RNC - Day 2

 

Today was my 3rd day in Tampa, 2nd day at the Republican National Convention.  So far it's been a BLAST! First of all, I know maaad heads down here! Mind you, I didn't really know in advance any of these herbs were going to be attending. We've mostly all discovered each other on Twitter & then linked up in person.  Some of these folks are definitely not good Republicans.  I hooked up w/ Baratunde and some cool peeps from WNYC for Cuban food last night & it was like a Communist revival over black beans & rice! Salud Comrades! Pass me another Negra Modelo (I was gonna' write Negro Modelo, but you nerdikins would be so busy correcting me, you'd completely miss the joke).

 

Definitely had a good time w/ the progressives last night & went home w/ a bellyfull of beer & arroz con pollo.  Today, the fates flipped the script on me & I ran into some of my peeps who are doing varying degrees of some real GOP ish. One of them is a key blogger for the Romney Campaign & the other is the big cheese at Breitbart.com. We all shared hugs & took pics and I told them that for the sake of their jobs, they should deny any witnesses who saw them smiling all over me. Baratunde on the other hand outed all of us on Twitter already, so here's the pic anyway:

 

 

As you can see, no one is foaming at the mouth and none of us is beating the other with a large, heavily-bound piece of legislation.  I know there's a lot of vitriol in our political discourse today, but standing around sharing baby pictures & catching up about music, travels & life since our school daze, reminds you how much we all still have in common.

 

Speaking of things in common, I also ran into a gang of my peeps from AJStream! I didn't get a pic of them, but they snapped one of me as soon as we rolled up on eachother:

 

Where am I? And WTF are y'all doing here??

Note the look of surprise as I stumble upon my Al Jazeera crew in the middle of the awesome tunnel of foottraffickery that leads from the media circus building, to the delegate circus building (ie. where all the action is happening). We naturally commenced to ulullating and speaking in Arabic which drew a large & appreciative crowd of Republicans who were excited to meet some real life Muslims, they pulled out their guns & started shooting in the air!

  

Ok only one of us was Muslim (I don't wanna' be like Shaggy on that "it wasn't me," but since I get accused of all kinds of falsehoods anyway, I'll say for the record...it wasn't me).  And no one pulled out a gun, security down here is tighter than a yellow bear huggin' a honey pot.  And we didn't really speak in Arabic (we ain't crazy now...).

 

All in all it was another super fun day.  I ran into a well known GOP commentator who spoke to me off the record about some of the challenges facing the Romney/Ryan ticket, as well as some of the mistakes the Obama administration has made from a political strategy perspective, rather than a partisan one.  It's amazing hearing a Republican operative break down what the administration could/should have done early to defuse some of the criticisms that are dogging them now.  When you turn off the talking points, some of these cats are on some real political Jiu-Jitsu.

 

Something I've been thinking a lot about is the dismal 17% favorability rating for the GOP (72% unfavorable) among African-Americans that was reported in a recent BET News Poll. We interviewed some prominent Black conservatives for Thursday night's broadcast and their comments, combined with some of the off the record conversations I've had, lead me to believe that a significant reason that Black folks have such a dismal view of the GOP is that the party really hasn't made any serious effort to speak to US.  Rather, they've counted on a narrow, xenophobic and often straight-up-racist segment of the party, to drive engagement and play on racial fears to corral and motivate a broader swath of GOP voters, particularly in the South (I know, I know y'all hate to hear me talk about "race" and the "South" but that is where much of this ish goes down so walk up & smell the pork rinds).

 

If the GOP would actually try serious outreach to Black & Latino communities, not just the playtime efforts of speaking at the NAACP while claiming the first Black President is an illegal immigrant, or claiming that Latinos care about the economy & jobs, while encouraging them to self-deport and find those jobs in Mexico - if Republicans would take a moment and seriously talk to these communities that have historically held a bevy of conservative beliefs, our political landscape might be altogether different.  But then the GOP would be an altogether different party, wouldn't it?

 

Good thing the Democrats don't take the Black vote for granted...that would be a fatal error if a genuine alternative were ever to present itself.

 

More to come,

D.N.A

Sweet Mother

Today is a very special day for a number of reasons. I'll try not to be extra mushy about it, but it's my last day on The Stream. Over the last year I've had an incredible opportunity to speak to people around the world about things that they care about. From the challenges facing youth in Bosnia, to the revolutionary change happening in the Arab World, and the rise of Private Prisons in the US. I've been able to catch a glimpse of what moves people to stand up and be counted.

 

I've had the opportunity to work with an amazing team, who daily put heart and soul into highlighting the untold stories of those who are too often forgotten by global society - to literally give voice to the voiceless and to do so with dignity and honesty and somehow manage to have a good time doing it. In the past year we've challenged the prevailing notions of what broadcast media should be and dived headfirst into the possibilities of what it could be. We've taken heat for doing so, and we've received kudos. I can't tell you how wonderful the feeling is to work with a group of people so fully committed to giving people across the planet a chance to speak their own truth. I want to take this moment to speak a bit of mine.

 

Something that's been particularly moving for me in working on The Stream has been the chance to highlight amazing stories from Africa. Whether the continent's connection to the global Maker Movement, the rise of #OccupyNigeria, or the innovation happening across the continent.  This has been meaningful for me not only because I'm Ghanaian, but because for many years I was frustrated at the limited, skewed and often lazy depictions of who "we are" as Africans. Long before I joined The Stream I decided to make my own statement on that very point, through a music video showing a "day-in-the-life" of my hometown Accra:

 

 

The African continent has a wealth of material, cultural and human resources and I believe we are at a crucial juncture in our history where we have a real opportunity to see our great potential become manifest. In a few weeks I'll be making a visit to Accra to give a farewell send off to my dear sweet Grandma, who helped instill in me the love of my homeland, her people and all we have to offer (if you watch the video carefully you will see her). It was through her legacy and that of all my forebears that I learned the value of knowing when to speak and when to listen - so that others might also be heard.

 

In leaving The Stream I feel proudest that I was a part of helping so many people be heard. So I want to dedicate this special day to two very special women - my dear Mmaa whom I will never forget so long as I live, and the woman she gave birth to, who would grow to teach me the value of living for something greater than myself.  Today I honor you my Sweet Mothers.  I could never have come so far without you.

 

D.N.A

Million Download Campaign - Open Source Music

I got up this morning and spent some time writing about the idea of "Open Source Culture" which I'm going to be presenting at a few different talks over the course of the next few weeks.  Then I show up at the studio and lo-and-behold one of the informants for today's episode of The Stream is referencing open source software in an argument against biopiracy and the application of proprietary patents to food crops. 

I had already decided I wanted to blog today about the open source principles underpinning the Million Download Campaign, but this pretty much sealed it.  Here then is an excerpt from a larger upcoming piece on Open Source Culture:

"...The power of open source software is it enables developers to collaboratively accomplish, not only something that they could not possibly do individually, but in some cases, things that couldn’t be accomplished even by the most successful software businesses.  As I worked on my music business using open source tools I couldn’t help but wonder how open source principles might apply to music.

What I would discover in my time in grad school, is that open source principles were already at work in the music business, just not in the “mainstream” aspect of it.  And the interesting thing was it wasn’t so much in the development process that you saw these principles at play, but rather in the distribution and promotion processes, where one would find alternate models for dissemination of music outside the traditional fee-for-service model.  The traditional barriers to entry in the world of music have been the high costs of Production, Distribution & Promotion.  The advance of technology has radically reduced the first two, but arguably raised the latter as the glut of music available to us has grown into an unmanageable wall of potential sound.  The challenge for musicians today is not how to record or distribute their music, but rather how to make sure someone eventually hears it.

It’s in that area of promotion that I began to see the applicability of the open source model.  What if rather than hiring a PR company or a radio promoter or other business, a company would rather “open source” the idea of promotion?"

I don't know that Open Source music will necessarily supplant the music industry as it currently exists.  Rather, I think these concepts will ultimately expand and help to redefine what we think the music industry "is."  After giving away a million downloads, we'll be in a pretty good position to add some unique perspective to that conversation.  Ultimately this is the beginning of something potentially much much bigger.  Let's make some open source waves together...DOWNLOAD & SHARE!

D.N.A

THE MILLION DOWNLOAD CAMPAIGN

You wanna be down? DOWNLOAD!

DNA on NPR

So in keeping w/ my recent policy of irregularly posting old news (ahem), here's a link to an interview I did a few weeks ago with WBUR's Here & Now. Now having lived in Boston for 50 odd years (give or take a few decades) it was super cool to talk to the folks I used to listen to every day about what on earth I've been up to lately.  In this case we were talking citizen-journalism & the way we roll w/ new-media at The Stream on Al Jazeera. It's definitely a new day in the relationship between those who report the news & those who "are" the news. Check it out & shout outs to all of you who tweeted me about hearing it live! ;)

D.N.A

The Stream - Power to the Audience

Yesterday on The Stream we had our first show built wholly on audience feedback.  It was an awesome experience and one we will definitely be replicating.  If you didn't get a chance to see it, you can see some cool clips including the one above about Saudi Women drivers. We also received a number of great user-created Storifys telling stories from around the world, and we interview 16yr-old Jalal Abu Khater about the story he created:

If you want to get your story on the site or on the air, check out this info on how to submit your own Storify. See you online!

D.N.A