[Ppnews] The NYPD Rips Up Rappers

[Political Prisoner News]

The NYPD Rips Up Rappers




Rebel Diaz and their hip-hop politics run afoul of the cops

http://www.villagevoice.com/content/printVersion/506776


By Tom Robbins


published: July 09, 2008

<http://www.villagevoice.com/photoGallery/?gallery=506776>
Rebel Diaz's RodStarz and G1: The music is resistance.

<http://www.villagevoice.com/photoGallery/?gallery=506776>


Rebel Diaz's RodStarz and G1: The music is resistance.

On June 18, a pair of brothers named Rodrigo and 
Gonzalo Venegas decided to take a friend visiting 
from Chicago for a city tour. The brothers 
Venegas, who comprise two-thirds of the activist 
hip-hop group known as Rebel Diaz, are big on the 
Bronx, and one of the sites they wanted to show 
their pal was the wonderful wall mural dedicated 
to the late rapper Big Pun on Westchester Avenue in Hunts Point.

Gonzalo Venegas, 22, whose rap name is G1, tells 
what happened when they reached the corner of 
Westchester and Simpson Street: "We see police 
picking up boxes of street vendors' product and 
throwing it away. This one vendor was looking all 
bewildered and helpless. We approached him, and 
he says in Spanish that he doesn't understand why they are taking his stuff."

The pair asked the police if it was all right for 
them to translate. The cops, Gonzalo says, didn't 
seem to have a problem. One of the officers 
explained that there were health-department 
violations, but others became belligerent, he 
says, and told the brothers to butt out. This 
degenerated further when the brothers asked for badge numbers.

It is important here to understand that in 
addition to being rappers, the brothers 
Venegas­whose Chilean parents fled into exile 
after Pinochet's coup­are also organizers. In 
fact, the slogan of their group is: "If Hip Hop 
organized, the whole world would be in trouble." 
It is not a coincidence that one of their big 
tunes is a rap version of the old labor standard 
"Which Side Are You On?" This is sung with the 
familiar, ominous minor-key drone of the title, 
while hip-hop lyrics pound alongside: "This music 
is resistance/It's the voice of the poor." Rebel 
Diaz, which, along with G1, include 27-year-old 
Rodrigo ("RodStarz") and Teresita Ayala, a/k/a 
Lah Tere, see their music as an organizing tool. 
One of the areas they focus on is police 
behavior­hence the brothers' decision to ask about the officers' identities.

"This one officer started to get a little 
agitated," says Gonzalo. "He says, 'Back up. Get 
back on the sidewalk.' We said, 'Well, we will be 
on our way when we get the badge numbers.' One of 
them puts his hand over his badge so we couldn't 
see it. I pull out a piece of paper and a pen and 
begin to write down the number. At this point, 
the officer goes to grab my arm, and all of a 
sudden, there is this rush of police."

Thanks to the miracle of modern gadgetry, what 
followed was recorded by the friend from Chicago 
on the video device on his cell phone. The 
resulting video, visible on 
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJ-_1b6AO6w>YouTube 
and the <http://www.rebeldiaz.com/>Rebel Diaz 
website, shows police grappling with the 
brothers, pinning them down, and cuffing them. 
"They were on top of me," reports Gonzalo. "One 
cop is sticking his knee on my back and jabbing 
me with his baton. That felt great."

The brothers insist they did nothing wrong: "At 
no moment did we physically try to obstruct 
them," says Gonzalo. "We were not belligerent, 
and we did not lay a hand on them."

The brothers were taken to the 41st Precinct, 
where they were held for 10 hours and charged 
with resisting arrest and obstruction of justice. 
If not for the video, the Venegases believe they 
would have been charged with assault, since one 
officer injured his hand during the arrests. 
Meanwhile, more than 150 protesters demonstrated 
outside the precinct. "When I found out they got 
arrested, I was like, 'What is going on?' " says 
Wanda Salaman, the executive director of Mothers 
on the Move, an organization that has worked with 
the rap group. "I know them. They are not 
troublemakers or gangbangers. What they do is 
help kids in the neighborhood use music to 
express themselves. They don't talk about killing or shooting everyone."

This incident might have quickly faded away, just 
another collision between police and the policed, 
if not for what occurred a few days later. At 2 
a.m. on June 24, Gonzalo Venegas was up late 
working in his East Harlem apartment when four 
uniformed police officers burst past his unlocked 
door, guns drawn. The police ordered Venegas, his 
roommate, and a friend who was staying over onto 
the floor, shouting questions at them, according to Venegas.

"They were yelling, asking who we were, what we 
were doing, pointing the guns at us. They said, 
'If we find out you are fucking lying . . .' It 
was like from a movie, except it was completely 
over the top. It seemed like a scare tactic." The 
police said they were in pursuit of a fugitive, 
but they didn't search the apartment and left after a few minutes.

The next day, Venegas called local precincts, 
where he was told no one had any knowledge of the 
raid. "It is hard to believe that what went down 
in my apartment is a coincidence," says Gonzalo. 
"Were they really looking for somebody? What we 
are into right now is not a joke."

At police headquarters, a spokesman said there 
were no 911 calls regarding Venegas's building 
that night and "no need for police activity at 
this location at this time." But he said he 
recognized the brothers as the same troublesome 
duo who had recently had a run-in with cops in the Bronx.

"Yeah, they were pains in the asses at certain 
points. They got involved with some police 
action," said Detective Martin Speechley. "Two 
wannabe hip-hop guys decided they didn't like 
someone being written a summons. And they got 
involved, and they tried to fight us, and they 
went to jail for it. Kind of what happens when people are idiots."

This is not how the police usually talk about 
arrests, but take it as an indication of the kind 
of animosity that simmers barely beneath the 
surface these days. The attitude is troubling to 
Norman Siegel, the civil-rights lawyer who is 
representing the brothers. "The 
middle-of-the-night visit by NYPD is very 
questionable," he says. "We have to get answers 
to who ordered it, and what was the rationale."

One fan of the group who spread the word about 
the arrests is Mark Naison, professor of 
African-American studies and history at Fordham 
University. Naison met the brothers when they 
were performing at a Bronx high school a few 
years ago. This year, he took Rebel Diaz to 
Berlin to perform at a conference and in 
immigrant neighborhoods. "Their 'Which Side Are 
You On?' is the most powerful use of hip-hop for 
politics I have ever seen," says Naison. "These 
are extraordinary young people."

Naison introduced the group to Nancy Biberman, 
director of the Women's Housing and Economic 
Development Corporation, which hopes to create a 
community center for Rebel Diaz in a new 
low-income housing complex that will open this 
fall at Intervale Avenue and Southern Boulevard. 
"These guys are sensational," says Biberman. 
"They seem to be able to pull in the most 
disaffected young people and get them on track." 
Which is something you'd imagine that police wouldn't have a problem with.




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