The Hip Hop Resistance In Ferguson

I have seen American flags burned at anti-drone protests in Pakistan, and seen them stamped on after air strikes on the Gaza Strip, but this weekend the Stars and Stripes were set alight by furious civil rights activists in Missouri.

It is more than two months since a police officer in Ferguson shot dead 18-year-old African American Michael Brown. The media gaze may have turned elsewhere, but the almost daily confrontations with the police continue.

“We don’t feel American,” says St Louis hip hop artist Tef Poe. “When you look at a mother whose son was murdered by the people supposed to protect us and serve us, how can you feel included?”

“It’s just a shame that they would bring tear gas and tanks against their own citizens,” says Tef Poe, referring to the armored heavy-handedness by Ferguson police which boasts some 53 white men and only 3 African Americans in the force.

“How could you feel included in a system when they treat you so badly for speaking out against the injustices that they committed?”

It is a sobering start to a road trip down the so-called “Blues Highway”.

Over the course of a week, the journey from St Louis to New Orleans through the richest stretch of land in American music history, will look at some of the country’s biggest issues and the way they are reflected in the music of today.

Here in Missouri, they are talking “hip hop resistance”. Rappers who feel that little has changed since Brown’s death have come together for a protest concert in St Louis.

“Ferguson, Missouri, became Ground Zero for a wider protest movement,” Talib Kweli said. The internationally renowned hip hop star had flown in from New York to be at the event.

“In America, a lot of energy is spent getting a lot of young black people in prison. To do that, you have start by making them feel that their lives don’t matter, but this community is motivated to change things now,” says Kweli.
“As artists, we have a responsibility to speak about these things. We have a platform and we’ve got to use that platform for something righteous,” says Tef Poe, who helped organise this event.

Like blues music, hip hop has become one way in which African Americans express their struggles.

To some extent, hip hop has been part of the confrontations that have taken place between young people from the area and the police. We saw that two months ago in the immediate aftermath of Brown’s death, and we saw it even this weekend.

There was the same tension as protesters looked into the eyes of law enforcement officers close to the Ferguson police station.

Last time we were here, a voter registration table had been set up close to the spot where Brown died in Ferguson.
It was much talked about at the time that African Americans of the area had a very low election turnout, and as such denied themselves influence on the way Ferguson was run.

Just two months later, with elections at hand, we encountered a great deal of skepticism about the idea that change could come through the ballot box.

“It’s a distraction and a mistake to think that voting is going to solve all your problems,” says Talib Kweli.
He notes Brown was killed even as a relatively liberal African-American man sits in the White House.

Politicians are fighting these elections on a vast range of local and national concerns. Will we stumble upon the same type of apathy from other communities as we look at a different issue each day this week, travelling through Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana?

We will be tracing back the route taken by blues musicians in the 1930s and ’40s as they journeyed (in the opposite direction) from the Deep South to cities like St Louis. Here they found audiences that embraced the African American tunes derived from aching ballads, labour songs and spirituals. It quickly led to a music revolution in America.