By: Sacramento Knoxx
“What the world is witnessing is a colonial regime using its deadly power to crush a people’s will to resist.” -Lulu Palestina, Palestinian poet from Oakland in the Bay Area.
I have been doing an artist residency with SOUL (School Of Unity and Liberation) as a cultural worker interning at AROC (Arab Resource & Organizing Center). This instrumental is a part of a collection of cultural work we are collectively producing out here in the West Coast. This instrumental is mixed with speeches and chants from the marches, demonstrations, and protests held in San Francisco led by the Arab Youth in the bay area with amazing support from various organizations and communities of color building solidarity and joint struggle against imperialism as this current project of colonialism in Palestine continues.
When an injustice to humanity is going on and you sit silent, you are taking the side of the colonizer who is perpetuating the oppression. In this case, I’m making loud ass beats and disrupting the avenues of the internet and social media with messages of love and resistance and education to what is happening to human beings across mother earth. This genocide taking place in Palestine is not a war. With the media lying, fabricating, and co-opting the narratives of the people it is important we all tell our own narratives and be self determined in this liberation movement. Even more so, as artists, and as we build our cultural resistance, it is important to create, educate, motivate and inspire the masses to make collective action. Part of my creation is the production of cultural work of media, creative design, music, film & video, poems, spoken word, and rap.
As we continue to unplug people from the matrix with our actions, education, and art, we have to look at the larger picture, and make these connections of our tax dollars that are being used to maximize profits of the oil companies through military weapons, ammunition, equipment, and stores that help with the genocide of Palestinians as Israel is the foot soldier for U.S. Imperialism. Colonization always involves the violent taking of land and the extraction of natural resources, which is the current port area in the Mediterranean Sea next to Palestine with the Zionist occupation. That in turn is connected with private prisons, the criminalization of black & brown communities from the “war on drugs,” dehumanizing Arabs as terrorists with the “war on terrorism,” using “border security” to increase the dehumanizing process and repressive control of “undocumented” peoples in their indigenous home of occupied Turtle Island, and the violent process of gentrification happening in our current communities.
Israel receives $4 billion in “aid” from the United States each year. This money is being used to commit war crimes against the Palestinian people in Gaza.
“600+ Palestinians killed, 3,460 injured, 18,300 have taken refuge in UNRWA shelters, and 43% of Gaza is under evacuation orders/no go zones.” -BBC
This is a historical moment for humanity that will determine if conditions get better or are made worse for people of color and the oppressed.
This is a deliberate campaign to terrorize and break the Palestinian will for self-determination, resistance, and freedom. When our future generations look back at this moment and question us with “what did you do during that horrible part of history?” I hope that we can all say that we stood united, around a vision based on the principles of dignity justice and the liberation of all Palestine.
“We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.” -Nelson Mandela
More info:
In San Francisco, an energized crowd of over 6,000 people flooded and shut down Market Street this past Sunday. This comingSaturday, July 26th, as Israel continues to massacre Palestinians and the Palestinian resistance fights back, the Bay Area is mobilizing to show its support for justice and humanity.
Saturday, July 26th, 1pm
Justin Herman Plaza, Embarcadero BART Station, San Francisco
https://www.facebook.com/events/1480712518836310/
VIVA PALESTINA!
End US Aid to Israel!
Stop the Attack on Gaza now!
End the Apartheid State of Israel!
Free all our political prisoners!
Solidarity with the people of Palestine.
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Knoxx is an Ojibwe/Anishinaabe & Xicano MC, music producer, motion picture artist, multimedia designer, & cultural worker.
With 7 years of foundation in latin jazz, swing, funk, blues, and indigenous music, IshKote Nene also known as Sacramento Knoxx, has brought a hybrid blend of performance & engagement within the digital media arts & the hip hop arts to audiences across Turtle Island & globally through digital spaces!
Through his multidisciplinary artistry, his creations inspire, educate, heal, motivate, engage & reach youth & elders alike in communities of color. Being a prominent music artist from Southwest Detroit with his cultural stories of love & resistance, raw hip hop sounds, and evolving style, Knoxx is a radical composition of a free soul.
“Music Is Medicine”, as Knoxx says, and through this work, his narrative provides a voice for creative expression of identity, love, and healing as his musical pieces creatively challenges & bravely confronts many social ills faced by many communities. As an emerging national artist, @Knockzarelli seeks to leave a beautiful blend of melodies that are harmonic to the next 7 generations for the world through arts, music, and culture.
Bonus Cut 