By The TimesLedger
Among today’s young people there is no force more powerful or influential than hip-hop music. Television, movies or church cannot compete. The popularity of this music is no longer confined to the streets of the inner-city. But is it possible to take a music that has been dominated by anger, violence, drugs and the celebration of irresponsible sex and turn it into a force for positive social change?
Charles and Randy Fisher believe that their Queens Village-based Hip-Hop Summit Youth Council is doing just that. Randy, the executive director of the council, said he grew tired of seeing teenagers using the negative images in hip-hop as an excuse to deal drugs or live out the personas created by their favorite rappers. He recently announced a program that will bring young people from southeast Queens into the studio and teach them about music production and video as well as the recording industry.
The program, scheduled to start this fall, will be open to students from Districts 28 and 29. Teens will be recruited from IS 192 in St. Albans, IS 8 in Jamaica, August Martin High School in Jamaica and Campus Magnet High School in Cambria Heights.
In Philadelphia, the Hip Hop Summit Action Network, headed by Russell Simmons, another native of Queens, conducted a get-out-the-vote drive last week. Simmons claims that the Summit registered 1,100 new voters.
But the problem is that outside of a few specific goals such as reforming the Rockefeller drug laws, it is not clear where the Summit hopes to go or what it wants to represent. Rap music is notorious for its promotion of drugs and gang violence and its degradation of women. Many, certainly not all, of the rappers have made their fortunes by pumping ideological poison into the veins of impressionable children.
Can the Fishers and Simmonses harness the power of rap and turn it in a positive direction? To have any hope of accomplishing this goal, they will need a clear set of values and goals. It is not enough to get young people to vote — remember Rock-the-Vote — unless one also persuades them to take the time to learn about issues, candidates and the political process.
The first challenge of the Hip-Hop Summit is to demand accountability in the rap music industry as they started doing last fall. Put the light on industry leaders who have made millions of dollars selling producing music that is both violent and degrading. If they can do that, they will have accomplished a great deal.
Sometimes you can fight City Hall. A coalition of elected officials representing northeast Queens succeeded last week in persuading the city to restore funding for privately run pre-K school programs.
Parents in District 25, which includes Flushing, Whitestone and College Point, were left in a desperate situation when nine community-based organizations said without city support they would have to close their doors. The programs had received notice from the Department of Education that their contracts would be terminated in 30 days.
That’s when Councilman Tony Avella (D-Bayside) got together with state Sen. Frank Padavan (R-Bellerose), state Assemblyman Brian McLaughlin (D-Flushing), Councilman John Liu (D-Flushing), Assemblywoman Ann-Margaret Carrozza (D-Bayside) and Councilman David Weprin (D-Fresh Meadows). Together they persuaded the Education Department to restore funding to the privately run programs.
The residents of northeast Queens should take comfort in the knowledge that the men and women who represent them know the meaning of constituent service and the art of building powerful bipartisan coalitions.
Stop swatting.
Put away the spray.
Yes, indeed, ladies and gentlemen, what we have here is the latest thing in high-tech mosquito protection. You’ll smile when they say West Nile if your neighborhood is equipped with the Mosquito Magnet. Approved by U.S. Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-Jackson Heights), and the Queens parks commissioner, this gadget is guaranteed to attract the little critters with a plume of carbon dioxide. Then it sucks them into a bag where they die a slow and painful death. Take that, PETA.
The Parks Department plans to test this whiz-bang device in Flushing Meadows. Each Mosquito Magnet can clear about one acre of the blood suckers and will cost about $1,000. No Queens family should be without one.
Until that happens, we trust the city will keep spraying.
Where were the people of southeast Queens more than 24 hours after the lights went out? You know the answer: in the dark.
For what has been described as technical reasons, the power plants serving southeast Queens were the last to come back up. Hundreds of Con Ed employees and others worked round the clock and we trust that they did the best they could under very difficult circumstances. Likewise the residents of Queens performed remarkably. But in the end the small businesses of Queens racked up $56 million in losses.
Con Ed claims it will not pay for the losses of small businesses and private power users because the blackout originated in Ohio. That's a cop-out. At some point federal investigators will decide who is responsible for the blackout. That is when the decision should be made whether Con Edison should pay or not.
