Mic Crenshaw | |
|---|---|
 Mic Crenshaw performing at Black Lives Matter demonstration at Reed College | |
| Background information | |
| Born | 1970 (age 53–54) Chicago, Illinois, U.S. |
| Origin | United States |
| Occupation(s) | Recording artist, political activist, and educator |
Mic Crenshaw (born 1970) is an American recording artist, political activist, and educator living in Portland in the U.S. state of Oregon.
Crenshaw was born on the South Side of Chicago in 1970. [1] He graduated high school in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he argued for social equity and racial justice. In 1992, he moved to Portland, Oregon to focus his anti-racist activism into music and music education. [1] [2] Over the last twenty years he has recorded and produced more than ten albums. Crenshaw recorded and performed with Dead Prez and Immortal Technique, and in 1994 formed the Portland-based hip hop group Hungry Mob as its frontman. [1] In 2001, he won the Portland Poetry Slam and finished as a national finalist. He served as co-manager of KBOO Community Radio twice. [3]
In his teenage years, Crenshaw confronted white supremacist gangs as a founding member of Anti-Racist Action. [2] He co-founded GlobalFam, a non-profit project to create and maintain a computer center for young people in Burundi. Crenshaw uses music to critique American law enforcement as a system that perpetuates brutality against black and brown people. Crenshaw partnered with Education Without Borders (NGO), which supports education, music and art initiatives such as Books to Prisoners. He works with the Black Lives Matter movement and acts as the Political Director of Hip Hop Congress. [4]
In 2004, Mic Crenshaw attended the Economic Justice and Youth Empowerment conference in Rwanda. [1] In 2013, Mic Crenshaw worked with a global group of artists to found Afrikan Hip Hop Caravan, which goes on annual performance tours in Eastern and Southern Africa. During 2013–2015, the Caravan toured a live performance set in Cape Town, South Africa, Harare, Zimbabwe; Arusha, Tanzania; and Nairobi, Kenya. [5] In 2014, Afrikan Hip Hop Caravan produced "Afrikan Hiphop Caravan Collaborations" with Soundz Of the South. Crenshaw is the lead organizer of Afrikan Hip Hop Caravan in the United States. [1]
In 2017, Crenshaw recorded the album Last of a Dying Breed with Micah Fletcher, a survivor of a 2017 Portland train attack in which two others were murdered. [6]
While serving as an artist-in-residence at Benson Polytechnic High School, Crenshaw was awarded a $100,000 fellowship from the Fred W. Fields Fund, to help Oregonians "understand the impact of the opportunity gap on families and communities, inspiring people to help solve it." [7]
In 2020, Crenshaw performed at several George Floyd protests in Portland, Oregon, [8] including Juneteenth in Oregon. [9] During Black History Month 2022, Crenshaw performed with Mt. Olivet Baptist Church Gospel Ensemble in Portland. [10]
Crenshaw co-hosted the KBOO 11 episode podcast series "It Did Happen Here" in 2020. The podcast traced the roots of Portland community-based anti-racist organizing in the 1980s and '90s to the anti-racist group "The Baldies" in Crenshaw's native Minneapolis, and explored the context and aftermath of the 1989 murder of Ethiopian immigrant Mulugeta Seraw. [11] [12] The producers were interviewed about the podcast in an Oregon Historical Society event in 2021. [13] He was also featured in an episode of Minnesota Public Broadcasting's "Minnesota Experience" about the Baldies. [14]
Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice (SHARP) are anti-racist skinheads who oppose white power skinheads, neo-fascists and other political racists, particularly if they identify themselves as skinheads. SHARPs claim to reclaim the original multicultural identity of the original skinheads, hijacked by white power skinheads, who they sometimes deride as "boneheads".
Anti-Racist Action (ARA), also known as the Anti-Racist Action Network, is a decentralized network of militant far-left political cells in the United States and Canada. The ARA network originated in the late 1980s to engage in direct action and doxxing against rival political organizations on the hard right to dissuade them from further involvement in political activities. Anti-Racist Action described such groups as racist or fascist, or both. Most ARA members have been anarchists, but some have been Trotskyists and Maoists.
Volksfront, also known as Volksfront International, was an American white separatist organization founded on October 20, 1994, in Portland, Oregon. According to Volksfront's now defunct website, the group described itself as an "international fraternal organization for persons of European descent." The logo of Volksfront was the Algiz rune, a common rune used as a neo-Nazi symbol common among other organizations such as National Alliance. Volksfront had approximately 50 members in the United States split between four chapters designated as Pac-West, Central States, North East, and Gulf-Atlantic, and an additional 50 members dispersed in other countries including Germany, Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and Spain. The goal of the movement was to create an all-White homeland in the Pacific Northwest. The flag of Volksfront was based on the Nazi flag in the colors of black, white, and red with the Volksfront logo and the slogan was "Race Over All" implying that race mattered over everything else. In August 2012, the United States branch of Volksfront announced their dissolution via their website. Citing harassment and investigations by the authorities, the group said it was disbanding.
KBOO is a non-profit organization, listener-funded FM Community radio station broadcasting located in Portland, Oregon. The station's mission is to serve groups in listening areas who are underrepresented on other local radio stations and to provide access to the airwaves for people who have unconventional or controversial taste and points of view. It broadcasts 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and has been on the air since 1968.
KXJM is a commercial radio station licensed to Banks, Oregon and serving the Portland metropolitan area. KXJM's studios and offices are in Tigard and the transmitter is located in Portland's West Hills. The station is owned by iHeartMedia, Inc., and airs a Rhythmic CHR format.
Gregory Poe, better known by his stage name Illmaculate, is an American battle rapper and hip hop artist from St. Johns, Portland, Oregon. He attended Roosevelt High School in Portland.
Political hip hop is a subgenre of hip hop music that was developed in the 1980s as a way of turning hip hop into a form of political activism. Political hip hop generally uses the medium of hip hop music to comment on sociopolitical issues and send political messages to inspire action, create social change, or to convince the listener of a particular worldview. It was inspired partially by politically-focused 1970s artists such as The Last Poets and Gil Scott-Heron, as well as the Black Power movement and revolutionary politics of the 1960s and 1970s. Various hip hop artists emerged in the 1980s espousing political messages and providing social and political commentary, with the American group Public Enemy in particular establishing themselves as one of the first predominantly political hip hop groups. The genre has helped to create a new form of social expression for subordinate groups to speak about their exclusions, injustices, and lack of power.
Radio23 was a non-commercial, freeform radio station founded by Programming Director Jeff Hylton Simmons and launched in 2009. It was shut down in July 2015. The successor called Freeform Portland went on air in April 2016. Based out of Portland, Oregon, where it supported the local artists and community, the station's goal was to provide an international artistic platform for home broadcasters around the world, and to teach anyone around the world how to create radio with a computer and an internet connection. Radio23 is connected with radio stations that include Cascade Community Radio, Hearth Music, WFMU, KDVS, CKUT-FM, KZME, KBOO, Error FM, and Willamette Radio, and also with the magazine War, Semen and Grooviness.
Rendered was an independently produced American radio program based in Portland, Oregon.
Produce Row Café, or Produce Row, is a restaurant and craft beer bar in Portland, Oregon's Buckman neighborhood, in the United States.
The Blue Monk was a bar, music venue, and restaurant in southeast Portland, Oregon, in the United States. Upstairs featured a restaurant with an open kitchen serving mostly Italian cuisine, while downstairs hosted music performances in a variety of genres, but mostly jazz. The business closed in April 2014 after its lease was bought out by an undisclosed party.
On May 26, 2017, Jeremy Joseph Christian fatally stabbed two men and injured a third after he was confronted for shouting racist and anti-Muslim slurs at two black teenagers, Destinee Mangum and Walia Mohamed, on a MAX Light Rail train in Portland, Oregon. Two of the victims, Ricky John Best of Happy Valley and Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche of Portland, were killed; the third victim, Micah David-Cole Fletcher, survived with serious wounds.
Holocene is a music venue and nightclub in the Buckman neighborhood of Portland, Oregon, in the United States. The venue, which opened in June 2003, is a former auto-parts warehouse with an industrial, modern interior. Holocene hosts a variety of events, and was named the city's "Best Place to Dance" by Willamette Week readers in 2017.
KNUM-LP is a low-power FM radio station broadcasting on 96.7 FM in Portland, Oregon, United States. It is owned by the Community Alliance of Tenants and is known as "96.7 The Numberz", airing a rap and hip-hop format. In 2017, a series of strange noises heard from the station gained popular social media attention and speculation, but has since been reclassified into the rap/hip-hop station it is today.
Boxer is a small chain of ramen restaurants in the Portland, Oregon metropolitan area, in the United States. Micah Camden and Katie Poppe opened the original 30-seat Boxer Raman in Portland in 2013, followed by a second in January 2015. Matt Lynch and Chris Thornton later joined as partners. Boxer Ramen opened third, fourth, and fifth locations in 2016, 2017, and 2018, respectively.
The Liquor Store was a bar, restaurant, and music venue in Portland, Oregon. Established in 2015, the business operated in a space previously occupied by the Blue Monk, a jazz club and restaurant, in southeast Portland's Sunnyside neighborhood. It was named the city's best new bar in Willamette Week's annual readers' poll in 2015 and 2016. The Liquor Store's upstairs had a bar and the owner's large vinyl record collection on display. The downstairs venue hosted live music and disc jockeys, playing a variety of genres, especially electronic music. The Liquor Store closed temporarily in March 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and two former employees filed a lawsuit claiming sexual harassment one month later. Sometimes confused for an actual liquor store, The Liquor Store closed permanently in September 2020.
Rontoms is a bar in Portland, Oregon. It opened along East Burnside Street, in southeast Portland's Buckman neighborhood, in November 2006.
A 4 foot bust of York, the only African American on the Lewis and Clark Expedition, was installed in Portland, Oregon's Mount Tabor Park, in the United States, from February to July 2021. The artist stayed anonymous at first, but after the bust was removed he revealed himself as Todd McGrain. McGrain was a student of Darrell Millner, Portland State University professor of history and Black Studies. The bust appeared on February 20, replacing the statue of Harvey W. Scott, which had been toppled on October 20, 2020. McGrain did not seek city permission to install the bust, which McGrain expected to be temporary; on June 11 the city announced that it would remove the bust.
Fahiym Acuay, better known as Mac Smiff, is a journalist and activist in Portland, Oregon, United States. He is the editor of We Out Here, a regional hip hop online magazine. He is a well known figure in the Black Lives Matter movement, especially for his calls to defund the Portland Police Bureau. Smiff received attention during the 2020 protests following the murder of George Floyd. His work has been published in The Oregonian, the Portland Mercury, and Vortex Music Magazine.