"Coming Back for More"--The Forgotten Legacy of Sly Stone (Trailer)

--From Shadow and Act

What happened to Sly Stone? His Woodstock contemporaries died and went on become legends. Sly survived drug addiction but disappeared from the music scene in the early 80’s. In 2004, after an exhaustive search, director Willem Alkema found Sly living in a house at the end of a dead end street, on a hill outside Los Angeles. 5 years, the documentary, Coming Back For More, was born.

The film features candid interviews with band members and other associates, as well as vintage TV footage from the musician’s highs and lows.

Bombing Capitalism

Bombing Capitalism
by Esther Iverem, editor SeeingBlack.com

On a throwback vibe, you could say that “Capitalism: A Love Story” is the bomb.

By exploring the economic system of capitalism as an evil, Moore fires a salvo into the heart of America’s social machine. Along the way, he explodes some serious myths: Myth #1: that the economic system of capitalism is the same as or tied to the political system of democracy. Myth #2: That to be an American is to be a capitalist and that to be anti-capitalist is to be anti-American. Myth #3: That people of color with bad credit, who bought houses that they couldn’t afford, caused the financial meltdown in the United States. Myth #4: That mainly Blacks and Hispanics are losing their homes to foreclosure.

He also drops other bombshells, such as the internal Citigroup memo declaring that the United States is no longer a democracy but is, rather, a plutocracy, where the richest 1 percent of the country is in charge of the rest of us peasants, and where government has been warped in the past 30 years to serve the rich. Then there is the relatively unknown Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur from Ohio—not one of the usual suspects on talking head news shows—calling the bailout of Wall Street a financial coup d’etat and telling Americans who have lost their homes to become squatters in their homes and not leave. There is the laundry list of Washington insiders who received sweet V.I.P. mortgages from Countrywide, which was a leader in dispensing high-interest “sub prime” loans to homeowners. The explosions go on and on.

Read the Full Essay @ SeeingBlack.com

New Muslim Cool

An Intimate Look at Hip-Hop’s Jihad
by Suad Abdul Khabeer

Real hip-hop heads know that Islam and hip-hop have been longtime friends, feeding off each other’s energy. Muslim ideals of self-respect and social change have inspired some of the greatest emcees, and hip-hop is giving voice to the dreams and daily struggles of a generation of Muslims. This cross-pollination between Islam and hip-hop is vividly illustrated in a new documentary, New Muslim Cool, which premieres tonight on PBS.

Directed by veteran filmmaker Jennifer Maytorena Taylor, New Muslim Cool chronicles three years in the life of Hamza "Jason" Perez, a Puerto Rican Muslim, family man, emcee, interfaith prison chaplain and social activist.

So why is Hamza’s story called the New Muslim Cool? Because he is part of a generation of young Muslims who are coming of age in a post-9/11 America. They are tackling questions of race, faith, freedom and even, as Hamza does, questionable intrusions by the FBI. They unapologetically choose God and country; they are doing American Islam with style.

Read the Full Essay @ The Root