They tryin’ to shut down the clubs that my city rocks / Now Mr. Mayor why would you enforce an ordinance?/
Music it saves lives, these kids out here are supporting it/ And through the artform we’ve learned the importance of community—Macklemore, “The Town” (2009)
In true election season fashion, some “dirt” has been dug up on an incumbent candidate. The “dirt” in question involves a series of tweets Councilor Mitch Green posted throughout 2020 admonishing the police, and even the “pure hatred” he had for them at the time. Simultaneously, Northwest rapper Macklemore has made international headlines after being dropped from Ed Sheeran’s tour for saying “Free Palestine” onstage, after Sheeran received pressure from a small group of ultra-wealthy stadium owners led by Robert Kraft. The respective actions are great case studies into the narrow limits put on dissent of all forms, even when voiced by a pair of White guys.
Before I begin: Notice how this “dirt” appeared immediately following the effort to put a measure on the ballot to hire 400 more officers by raiding the Portland Clean Energy Fund was defeated for the second time this year?
Anywho…
Predictably, the Portland Police’s chief and union head Bob Day and Aaron Schmautz respectively spoke out against Green’s pre-election commentary. Day, however, may have landed himself in some hot water. After calling for Green’s resignation in a press statement, three complaints logged with the Secretary of State accuse him of violating state law by opposing a candidate for office. Day’s statement did not mention Green by name, nor his candidacy—however with election day right around the corner, it will be interesting to see how it shakes out. In any case, Mitch and Macklemore provide a window into the limits that even White privilege provides in addressing power.
Of course, Councilor Green rattling off hot takes as a private citizen online in 2020 isn’t the same as Macklemore’s nightly “Free Palestine” statement on stage—however, what’s important to realize is that blowback from the powerful came down all the same.
This “controversy” was manufactured. It’s a story, because the media decided it was a story after a pro-police political pundit dredged up the posts, and local newsrooms began reporting on it. Of course, it certainly could warrant a story. But as someone who worked in multiple newsrooms for years, I know that reporters play a huge role in dictating the news of the day.
Portland is a “blue” city. Roughly 78 percent of the Multnomah County electorate voted for Harris last presidential election. Many liberal voters say, “Fuck Donald Trump.” But I can’t help but wonder if this would be a “controversy” if Green’s tweets had taken similar aim at Trump during the heart of 2020.
Trump received an endorsement from the largest police union in the country after January 6, by the way.
Anywho…
The media largely tends to frame itself as unbiased—simply an arbiter of the facts. “Unbiased” is quite similar to how Ed Sheeran believes his brand is “apolitical.” Neither are true. It’s precisely why The Story™ surrounding any given issue can vary widely between the pages of Mercury to the Oregonian and any of four TV stations in town. One artform that doesn’t have a long track record of feigning apolitical (nor politically correct) stances is hip-hop. For example, I do not recall NWA saying “Fund tha Police” nor Public Enemy saying “Hug the Power.”
That’s precisely because of hip-hop’s context.
“Hip-hop is not all ‘fight the power,’ nor is it all ‘turn up.’ But the essence of the genre remains a gumbo of Black music traditions, stirred in New York’s melting pot, that came overflowing over beat-breaks and unsanctioned poetry in the Carter and Reagan eras,” I wrote last year in my essay The Drake v. Kendrick Verdict, and the Ghost of 2pac’s Hologram. “In that sense, the heart of the music has always been about the other ‘We’ that wasn’t in mind as ‘The People’ during the penning of the Declaration of Independence. A counter to the establishment.”
Macklemore understands this.
As a White man from Seattle, he has consistently (and yes, at times imperfectly) used his platform to spotlight injustice and platform artists of color. In 2016, he released a part two to his pre-fame record “White Privilege,” where he openly explored his challenges navigating how to utilize his growing star power to curb anti-Blackness, while also compelling his audience to do the same. Crafted in collaboration with Seattle-area activists (and others) during the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, the nine-minute song broken into three acts explores the relationship between the personal and political.
“We recognize that there are no easy answers, any one piece of legislation, or quick fix to undo institutional racism in our country. We wish to support direct organizing and be led by the expertise and experience of those on the front lines as we proceed,” it says on the website he and past collaborator Ryan Lewis created for the song whiteprivilege2.com.
Councilor Green’s crass words came during a similar period of historic unrest. While popular teachings of the Civil Rights Era show people dressed in their Sunday best, singing spirituals, I’m sure folks had choice words for the state’s response to their calls for humane treatment. If social media were available at the time, some of the participants’ posts about the billy clubs, K9s, and fire hoses surely would have been, as Green said about his own tweets, “spicy.” I say this not to liken the councilor to the second coming of John Lewis (he surely would never have become an elected using such rhetoric), but rather to underscore a throughline of brutality underpinning American policing, and their violent authoritarian approach to dissent.
However, maybe the Pre-Social Media Era™ does remind us, not every thought needs to be shared. But I digress.
When I hear the media talk about Green rebuilding trust with the Portland Police Bureau, I can’t help but think about the bureau’s protracted record of sowing discord across this city and beyond.
Kaia Sand’s 2013 project with Garrick Imatani, “The Watcher Files,” gives more insight into law enforcement’s violent tactics beyond stopping direct action. The project is an artistic distillation of surveillance documents that Portland Police Bureau (PPB) maintained on nearly 600 civic groups and activists from the 1960s-1980s. These documents were only discovered in 2002 when an anonymous tip to the Portland Tribune led reporters to an eastern Washington barn following the death of Winfield Falk. Falk, who died in 1987, was a former lead detective at PPB, who had stolen and stashed the documents after retirement. The groups who were spied upon ranged from local radio station KBOO, the American Indian Movement, to the Portland Black Panthers.
The records call to mind similar surveillance efforts commissioned by the FBI at the time, most notably through their Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO). This wicked program—infamous in activist communities—wreaked havoc locally and nationally for decades. Less understood however, is how the program was exposed in the first place….
As a heist.
In Boston Tea Party fashion, eight activists (all White) broke into a FBI field office in Pennsylvania the night of Muhammad Ali’s 1971 prize fight against Joe Frazier, and stole nearly 1,000 classified documents. It was only then, that the blanket, unconstitutional, feckless, and vicious spying and chaos the nation’s top cops unleashed into disenfranchised communities was revealed.
“The purpose of this new counterintelligence endeavor is to expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize the activities of black nationalist, hate-type organizations and groupings, their leadership, spokesmen, membership, and supporters, and to counter their propensity for violence and civil disorder,” FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover said in a secret 1967 memo to field offices nationwide when rolling out COINTELPRO. “When an opportunity is apparent to disrupt or neutralize black nationalist, hate type organizations through the cooperation of established local news media contacts […] in every instance careful attention must be given to the proposal to insure the targeted group is disrupted and not merely publicized.”
Thankfully, COINTELPRO is no longer!
Hey… remember when the Oregon attorney general had to apologize to the director of her own Civil Rights department after it was revealed they were surveilling him just for using the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter in 2015?
Anywho…
Mitch and Macklemore remind us there are few “right” ways to speak out against power. Certainly there are methods that are more effective than others, but rarely is it dissent valued by the state.
A protest. A tweet. A song.
A radio show. An article.
Hell… even become an elected official.
History shows;
Colonial powers cuff, cage, surveil, and silence.
Bomb, gas, assault, discredit, murder.
But history also teaches us that anywhere inhumanity is taking root—revolt also blossoms—as 2pac said, like a Rose from the Concrete.
It’s election season. The point of reviving those deleted tweets was an attempt to further discredit a progressive politician. The real issue of bloated violent policing, however, remains. As the sole progressive in a district dominated by wealth, and with politics dominated by money, it’s important to discern who benefits most from the news about pre-election Councilor Green’s posts.
And in the case of Macklemore, he recently announced an October tour that will travel through three countries: Dublin, Paris, and London. The title: “Free Palestine Tour.” All proceeds will go towards direct aid of the Palestinian people.
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