Today’s video of the day comes from the greatest hip hop group of all time (yes, i said it!), Wu Tang Clan. The song, “Take It Back,” is the latest single from their new album 8 Diagrams

Tonight I will be appearing on the O’Reilly Factor w/Bill O’Reilly. The show airs at 8:00PM. We’ll be talking about Michelle Obama and her recent comments about “being proud of her country for the first time.”

No hacemos nada con dar libertades que son solamente teóricas. El derecho a escribir, muy bonito; pero el que no sabe escribir no puede tener derecho a escribir. El derecho a hablar libremente, muy bonito; pero el analfabeto que no ha abierto un libro nunca en su vida, porque no le dieron oportunidad, no puede tener derecho a hablar. Los derechos, desgraciadamente, son más relativos que lo que el ideal humano desea: que los hombres fueran más libres todavía.

Yo quisiera que los hombres fueran más libres todavía. La gran verdad es que el hombre aun si sabe escribir y sabe hablar no tiene dónde hablar ni dónde escribir. Luego, la gran verdad es que esos derechos, por los cuales ha sufrido tanto la humanidad, son más restringidos de lo que parece y lo que deben los hombres verdaderamente democráticos es tratar de ampliar esos derechos a todo el mundo (…)

America’s Potential
Matt Birkhold

Political problems experienced by Americans today such as unemployment, access to health care, and the war in Iraq can largely be attributed to the American tradition of placing profits before human beings. Beginning with the extermination of Native Americans and the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, colonists began a process of placing profits before human beings that is still practiced.  In order to create lasting social change we must understand this contradiction and create ways to counter it.

In 1776 an extraordinary group of people got together and forever changed world history by creating anti-colonial communities, standing up to a colonial government, and declaring themselves independent from it. After winning the revolutionary war with Britain however, these new Americans continued to perpetuate this contradiction by omitting any reference to African slavery in the constitution of the new nation. Then, in 1860, because national economic progress required that inefficient slave labor be eradicated, the chance to resolve this contradiction arose.

The US Civil War lasted five years and ended with the emancipation of 4.8 million black workers. During Reconstruction, black workers were given the opportunity to work freely, vote, and run for government office. This they did with great success and, as a consequence, opened several free public schools in the South and created a new democratic way of life in the US. Unfortunately, this democratic way of live was short lived.

Because it radically reversed the democratic way of life that immediately followed the Civil War and sent blacks, in a very practical way, back towards slavery, what historians generally call the Hayes-Tilden Compromise, W.E.B. Du Bois called the revolution of 1876.  The impetus behind this Revolution was the belief of Republican senators that the rights of former slave owners to private property was more important than the wellbeing of African Americans.  This contradiction between private property, or the ability to accumulate profit in general, and human wellbeing has remained American democracy’s central contradiction.  Many Americans have suggested that this contradiction could only be resolved by the creation of a new politics that provides an alternative to racism and capitalism.

While Barack Obama is certainly not anticapitalist, he has said that America needs a new type of politics.  For Obama, this new politics must combine the dark aspects of our nation’s past with its best traditions.  It must also understand how we got to a place where politics is regularly thought of as a dirty business and filled with bitter partisanship.  On top of this, according to Obama, we will need to remind ourselves that, despite our differences, we share common hopes, dreams, and “a bond that will not break.”

Currently, our common bond is only a desire to change the direction George Bush has led the nation.  To create lasting change, we must move beyond this place of reaction and do two things.  One, we must sacrifice our personal wants to the needs of our communities and our nation.  While doing so, we have to decide that human beings are more important than profits.  If we gather this courage to create real change and build community, we will also create the radical revolution of values described by Dr. King and create a bond deeply rooted in love for one another as human beings that will not break.

Matt Birkhold is a Brooklyn based independent scholar, educator, and writer.  His work appears regularly in Wiretap and has also appeared in The Nation and Mother Jones as well as other places.  He is founder of Political Education Outreach Collective and editor of the forthcoming National Hip Hop Political Convention publication, Elements.  He can be reached at birkhold (at) gmail (dot) com.
Matt Birkhold is a Brooklyn based independent scholar, educator, and writer.  His work appears regularly in Wiretap and has also appeared in The Nation and Mother Jones as well as other places.  He is founder of Political Education Outreach Collective and editor of the forthcoming National Hip Hop Political Convention publication, Elements.  He can be reached at birkhold (at) gmail (dot) com.

The idea that liberated women don’t prepare food — because they are too busy having sex and building their careers — is just plain wrong.

Is Feminism Compatible with the Kitchen?
By Vanessa Richmond

“I don’t cook. So I made my eat-in kitchen a fabulous walk-in closet,” announces a young, attractive woman in the newest Citibank ad.

It’s part of a $93 million campaign called “Tell your story,” that’s appearing in print, magazine, TV and online.

“My name is Grace and I live in a small apartment in a big city,” the ad continues. “And since I enjoy a day of shopping far more than, say, cooking, I decided to do a bit of home remodeling. So with my Citi card in hand, I set out to get some closet organizers. I bought a shoe rack for the oven, sweater boxes for the lower cupboards and some 12-inch baskets for handbags up above. I saved room for plates, glasses and silverware. And one large drawer stuffed with take-out menus.”

Citibank is so confident that women will identify with “Grace’s” sentiment, they’re even running the ad in February’s issue of Gourmet Magazine.

Their assumption, I guess, is that even a good number of Gourmet’s readers (who are mostly women) don’t actually cook; they’re just sampling the food porn.

This idea — that liberated women don’t prepare food — isn’t one that Citibank just cooked up. In fact, as one female friend of mine quickly pointed out, it’s still part of the Sex and the City cultural hangover. Carrie Bradshaw, of course, famously used her oven as a shoe cupboard far before Grace, as a kind of feminist triumph: she likes sex and (therefore) doesn’t like to cook. Shopping, friends and men sustained her instead, along with the occasional restaurant meal.

Last of a breed?

But since Sex, the phenomenon has heated up. Recently, I talked to a middle-aged male film director about a dinner he had just cooked for friends. When I subsequently told him about a meal I’d made, he raised his eyebrows. “I don’t know a single other woman who cooks — or at least admits to it in public!” he exclaimed. “You’re like a relic!” His male friends all cook, he said. But no women of his generation or younger that he knows prepares food.

For the rest of the story, click here.