Praise for the Welfare Poets

Blossom Time: Spoken Word Blooms at MACLA's Floricanto Festival
(MetroActive)

The Welfare Poets: Affirmative Actions
(Lambda Upsilon Lambda Alumni Magazine)

A Hip-Hop Commentary: Russell Simmons, You are Not Hip-Hop
(Hip-Hop News)

Broject Blues Record Release Party
(AWOL Magazine)

A Welfare Poet
(Freelance)

Ryme & Reason: Welfare Poets
(Urban Latino Magazine) [Adobe PDF]

Featured Artists
[Creative Latinos.com]

Intercambio Brings Puerto Rican Poetry to the People
[Puerto Rican Herald.com]

“ The Welfare Poets [are] sharpening the sensibilities of their people”
-- Angela Davis, Activist & former Black Panther

“I am a Welfare Poet!”
-- Piri Thomas, Renowned Poet & Musician

“Performing for student groups and cultural movements for over ten years has led to their almost legendary status as true conveyors of a new found sense of self awareness and positive action for inner city youth.”
-- Tom Constable, Lambda Upsilon Lambda Alumni magazine

“We need the ... Welfare Poets and the many Graff artists and breakdancers who speak truth to power.”
-- Rosa Clemente, from Russell Simmons, You Are Not Hip-Hop

09-08-01    craig with some conscious hip-hop links
Dean and I went to see the Welfare Poets and Aztlan Underground at The Point last night. The Welfare Poets are amazing, and their song "The Bullet" (inspired by Malcolm X's speech, "The Ballot or the Bullet") exposes the lies of the "democratic" practice of voting in the white supremacist, colonial united states:

We didn't vote to be colonized and enslaved.
We didn't vote to be tamed.
We didn't vote to suppress our rage.
We didn't vote to be driven insane.
We didn't vote to be disproportionately jailed.
We didn't vote to end fighting for liberty,
for it is still necessary by any means. . . .
We didn't vote to get into this shit,,
we won't vote to get out.