Hip Hop Radio’s Profiteers and Enablers,” by Ohio political prisoner, Jason Goudlock.
During rap music’s infancy in the early 1980s, nearly all the poetic rap songs, the boom bap music, played on hip hop radio stations, have lyrics about social struggles within communities of color, or events like basketball games and neighborhood parties. But not today.
Now, most rap songs on the FCC-regulated airways of urban radio glorify the criminal lifestyle, the drug dealers, pimps, robbers, and murderers. Gangsta rappers, hip hop radio stations, large corporations, and even small businesses, are all guilty of promoting these invitations and justifications for mass incarceration.
The gangsta rappers, and the audience of hip-hop radio, being overwhelmingly African-American, it’s ironic that African-American leaders are silent about rap songs that glorify the violence often tearing our Black neighborhoods apart.
When unarmed teenager Michael Brown was shot by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, African Americans nationwide mobilized to proclaim Black Lives Matter. The leaders who spoke out against Brown’s murder in 2014 have nothing to say about the commercial promotion of the criminal lifestyle. Shouldn’t the lives of young African-Americans [inaudible] by crime friendly lyrics matter, too?
If affluent white communities were being decimated by crime, the FCC surely wouldn’t be being quiet about crime glorifying rap songs being played by these day on radio stations. It would be considered akin to allowing television stations to air nonstop pornography. And the FCC’s response to Jenny Jackson’s partially exposed breast, during CBS’ broadcast The Super Bowl 38, we do know how that would go. Just a hint of nudity at the Super Bowl with 2004 quickly cost CBS $550,000 for its airing of indecency.
Because the FCC is not willing to even try to protect their African-American communities from the around the clock brainwashing of songs that praise selling drugs, committing murders, robbing, and pimping, it’s absolutely imperative Black leaders and community activists speak out in opposition to this destructive influence and antisocial socioeconomic decimating other communities.
[Inaudible] all of humanity, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King dedicated their lives to speaking out against injustice. They were the antithesis of the enabling leaders of today. And if they were alive, they would surely not be being quiet, while their fellow brothers and sisters are being socially eradicated by way of a methodical and commercialized act of genocide, delivered through the vehicle of the hijack culture of hip-hop.
Learn more about this Ohio political prisoner, who is the subject of the feature length documentary film, Invisible Chess: The Jason Goudlock Story. As well as the author of the novel, Brother of the Struggle, by logging onto freeJasonGoudlock.org. That’s free Jason, G-o-u-d-l-o-c-k dot org.
(Sound of a cell door closing.) These commentaries are recorded by Noelle Hanrahan of Prison Radio.
![Prison Radio is sharing an abbreviated version of a press release covering recent racist incidents at SCI Rockview in PA and the organizing to demand accountability. We are reaching out to people incarcerated at Rockview as well as recently transferred folks, inviting them to call, in hopes of hearing commentaries from them.
Benner Township, PA.-
On November 24th, 2023, imprisoned people at SCI Rockview found two nooses hanging in the CO’s office, displayed visibly for many prisoners to see. When the prisoners asked the staff why the nooses were hung, they were told it was a joke.
By December 4th, prisoners filed a grievance to document what they saw, noting that the hanging of the nooses was “unethical, racially motivated, hateful, [a] deliberate debasement of black inmates" and “unsafe for inmates, staff, [and] the whole prison in general.” In the grievance, they demanded that Sgt. Mosser and CO Richard be fired and investigated for a hate crime, and for CO Kirchner to get therapy. Captain Andrews, the head of security, denied the grievance.
The sergeant and COs are still working in the prison to this day, with no repercussions...
As of March 10th, prisoners have reached out to Pennsylvania officials at the Dept. of Corrections in a letter campaign, sending 100 copies of the grievance. Copies of the letter also were mailed to Governor Shapiro, Senator Fetterman, Senator Street, and various advocacy groups. The demands for relief in the original grievance have now become the platform of demands for this campaign. About 20 of the 100 letters were withheld by the prison.
Activists on the outside are joining forces with prisoners to elevate their demands, flooding the phone lines of DOC offices, assisting with outreach to media, and circulating the stories of prisoners who have found unity in opposition to the facility's virulent institutional racism.
In any other workplace, hanging a noose would be grounds for immediate termination. However, Nicki Paul, the superintendent's assistant and "grievance coordinator" informed the public that they self-investigated their staff and found they did nothing wrong.
Read the full article at i
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