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"This isn't about one corporate executive, or even about one corporation," declared Rev. Delman Coates, pastor of Virginia's Mt. Ennon
Baptist church. "It's about holding corporations, their executives, their investors and
their advertisers responsible for the product they issue and the
lasting harm it does to our people."
"Everywhere
I go" said one young black man who took part in the demonstration
"people think I'm a thug because of what they see. (on BET)"
"BET
and I are the same age, 27." declared Carla Brooks. "It's high time
for BET to grow up and start acting its age. We demand that BET become
responsible, be accountable to the black community, and that it offer
unique and varied perspectives on issues relevant to the black
community."
This
is a heavy and significant demand, one that corporate media will
stubbornly resist until forces in our communities raise the price of
business as usual to unacceptable levels. Picket lines at the homes of corporate execs are just a start. Rev. Coates is a spokesperson for the Enough Is Enough Campaign. He
said they began by asking for a meeting with Lee, and had been
rebuffed, till he announced the demonstration in front of Lee's home.
"Several people, intermediaries reached out to us. We got a calls from our congressman, Stenny Hoyer and others." Eventually Bob Johnson himself called. "He was worried," Rev. Coates said, "that a rally in front of Lee's home would make us look bad in front of white people."
Given what we see on BET every day, that should be the least of Bob Johnson's worries.
What
should keep him, and the rest of the black entertainment/minstrel show
industry up late at night is the prospect that grassroots black
activists is beginning to find common cause with the growing movement for a
just, fair and democratic media. When that happens their demands will
expand to the inclusion of locally driven black-oriented news
programming on BET and black radio stations in hundreds of markets, and
the opening up of the airwaves to low power and other noncommercial
broadcasters that carry local artists and quality content to compete
with the minstrel show garbage.
Bob
Johnson's worst nightmare would be for a black movement for media
justice to capture the creativity and energy of the
urban youth that corporate culture so viciously caricatures and for
those black activists to recall their almost forgotten spirit of
impolite local initiative and civil disobedience. If that happened,
protesters demanding a wholesale reshuffling of the media deck would
suborn relations between advertisers on black radio, on MTV and BET by
convincing them that buying time on stations and outlets that don't do
news but manage to air plenty of disrespect is bad business. They
might
routinely picket "live remotes" and other out-of-studio public
appearances of broadcast personalities.
BET
is set to hold its annual star-studded and blinged-out 2007 Hip Hop
Awards in Atlanta on October 13, for airing on the 17th. We asked Rev.
Coates of Enough is Enough whether he and thousands of concerned
citizens planned to show up at the Atlanta Civic Center that day uninvited.
"We're
in touch with a lot of people, including some in Atlanta who might like
to do just that," he said. "Se we expect to make a major announcement
on our plans for that within the next week. Meanwhile we expect to be
back at (BET CEO) Lee's house next Saturday afternoon. Those who want
to join us, or just to be informed should check us out online at
www.enoughisenoughcampaign.com."
We
think it's time for Bob Johnson, Deborah Lee, MTV, Radio One, Clear Channel and the rest of the
minstrel show industrial complex to be afraid. Very afraid. And for the rest of
us, it's time to be hopeful.
- Reprinted with permission from Black Agenda Report
- www.EnoughIsEnoughCampaign.com
