break the cycle: #blm protest at #snr

As a for­mer free­lancer for Sacra­men­to News and Re­view, I was not sur­prised by their re­cent cov­er sto­ry – or that they pho­tographed the of­fi­cer in a Su­per­man shirt – this was the of­fi­cer that shot Joseph Mann 14 times af­ter at­tempt­ing to run him over twice with a po­lice car. 

What I was sur­prised by was their ut­ter lack of pro­fes­sion­al­ism in tag­ging lo­cal or­ga­niz­ers and those who spoke in op­po­si­tion to their cov­er choice on so­cial me­dia networks. 

This brand of dox­ing is far more alt-right than arts and lifestyle weekly.

When I start­ed work­ing as a jour­nal­ist in Sacra­men­to, SNR was a high­ly cov­et­ed spot for me. I read Josh Fernandez’s columns re­li­gious­ly and got to know the Sacra­men­to Hip Hop scene through its pages. When Josh left/got fired?/was the coolest jour­nal­ist i’ve ever known, there was a void in cov­er­age for the Sacra­men­to Hip Hop scene. 

I end­ed up fill­ing the void and be­ing the cov­er­age go-to for a few years. I start­ed work­ing for Sol Col­lec­tive and SNR around the same time and was be­com­ing in­creas­ing­ly aware of my own white priv­i­lege and what sys­temic racism looked like. It start­ed to feel re­al­ly gate­keep­er-es­que, but if I wasn’t the Hip Hop plug for SNR then who would be the community’s connection?

In Jan­u­ary 2014, I pub­lished my last free­lance ar­ti­cle for SNR and start­ed ZFG Pro­mo­tions (Full dis­clo­sure: I con­tributed a ‘spe­cial to SNR’ col­umn once in 2015 in the wake of the shoot­ing at the Nipsey Hus­sle show – re­quest­ed by SNR to be­cause they were get­ting a lot of heat sur­round­ing their por­tray­al of Hip Hop cul­ture as vi­o­lent and gang-infested). 

My rea­son­ing for no longer writ­ing for SNR was twofold: The first rea­son is that my af­fil­i­a­tion with the mag­a­zine was hin­der­ing ZFG artists from get­ting coverage/consideration. The sec­ond is I felt that there were enough straight, white, male voic­es rep­re­sent­ed. I wish I could claim those two were the oth­er way around. That is not my truth, but both played a sig­nif­i­cant role in the decision.

I start­ed ac­tive­ly work­ing with youth in me­dia through Sol Col­lec­tive and met an in­cred­i­ble young black fe­male jour­nal­ist named Tay­lor Des­man­gles. I can’t re­al­ly take cred­it for any of Taylor’s tal­ents (she was born mag­ic), but I was able to put her in touch with SNR and she land­ed some gigs work­ing for them and has worked her way up from mu­sic re­views to think pieces while build­ing up her own per­son­al fol­low­ing via a pod­cast, week­ly videos, and work with SacTV and oth­er lo­cal me­dia outlets. 

She is one of the suc­cess sto­ries I brag the most about. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, her’s is a sto­ry that is not told of­ten enough in the pages of the Sacra­men­to News and Re­view or most pub­li­ca­tions. Her get­ting her foot in the door should not have re­quired my in­tro­duc­tion or cosign. They should have come and found her. She should be work­ing on cov­er sto­ries and they should be knock­ing down the doors of some of the in­cred­i­ble young black writ­ers I know.

I wasn’t sur­prised Thurs­day night at the #Black­Lives­Mat­ter protest. This has been com­ing for a long time. What I was sur­prised by was the tears that came watch­ing young po­ets lead chants that echoed like chants their grand­par­ents cried out 60 years ago. 

What I was sur­prised by was jour­nal­ists com­ing out to cov­er, take pic­tures, and tell the sto­ry that didn’t fix their faces long enough to pay re­spects by say­ing BLACK LIVES MAT­TER with the people.

In case you haven’t no­ticed there is a war go­ing on out­side. The pa­pers won’t tell you. They’ll just lock their doors, sneak out the back and sched­ule in­ces­tu­ous press con­fer­ences with each oth­er over craft beer and over­priced cheese platters.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tion mat­ters. For to­day. For to­mor­row. And for gen­er­a­tions to come. Break the cycle.

Thank you for your tire­less work, ded­i­ca­tion, and lead­er­ship Black Lives Mat­ter Sacra­men­to. ❤
 
 

—an­dru defeye

Flom­mist An­dru De­f­eye is the Guer­ril­la Poet Lau­re­ate of Sacra­men­to. Copy­right © 2017 An­dru Defeye.

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