okay so here we go....
1. nothing lupe said was incorrect
2. lupe consistently records socially conscious music, which when you have the respect and ears of millions of listeners, is definitely a form of social activism.
plus i dont think anyone here knows the full extent of lupe and his socially conscious activities, so maybe we should all reserve judgement in that regard.
3. he's absolutely right about MLK. if you read the last couple dozen speeches MLK gave before he dies he was moving away from voting and political solutions, to economics-based solutions.
he kept reiterating in his last speeches that although the civil rights movement had been successful in certain regards, that it did not succeed in its ultimate objective and his people did not acquire the full scope of freedom they desired, and to get the kind of freedom black people needed they were going to have to organize economically more so than politically.
but MLK never went all the way with "black people shouldn't vote." that was not his stance either. but i think there is some validity to Lupe saying if MLK could witness our current predicament, he would be moving farther and farther away from "voting" as a solution.
4. the idea of slavery is not meant to be taken in the literal sense as if we are still chained and whipped on plantations.
it's a different form of slavery. it is an economic, political, and social slavery. economic in the sense that it takes money to have certain experiences, and to gain access to certain opportunities, and if you dont have access to money or resources, then you also dont have access to those specific experiences and/or opportunities. so it can be extremely limiting as a human being.
political in the sense that we currently lack the power to change these things for ourselves in this society. so not only do we not have the same access to resources and opportunity that other people do, but we cannot even change or alter the system that has created and sustains this imbalance. so again, we are extremely limited.
and social is a mix of economic and political, so if youre economic and political situation is fukked, your social situation is most likely fukked too.
so this system is incredibly limiting in a lot of regards. and those limits amount to a form of "slavery" in the sense that some people are not free to move like they need to move to sustain themselves and their loved ones in a humane way.
but folks are right, it is not to be taken in the same context as the atlantic slave trade.
5. when it comes to the idea of voting in this upcoming election i have been to both extremes, and now i have balanced myself in the middle.
on one hand i absolutely see the need to be involved in maintream politics to some degree to maintain the proper levels of checks and balances. because as we saw with bush the beast has no problem taking oppression, exploitation, and greed to the extremes.
on the other hand, mainstream politics and the presidential election cannot be the pinnacle of our political activism. so often the majority of people get swept away in the campaigns and lofty rhetoric that we dont keep our eye on the prize, and for a lot of people their political activism starts and stops with these big elections. so what ends up happening is that people spend most of their time and energy focusing on the most impotent parts of our political system.
so to bring it full circle i think we ALL need to better balanced with how we spend our political time and energy, and be better balanced with the activities we decide to undertake, because social activism cannot start and stop with voting, but for most people thats exactly what it does.
and since things are so UNbalanced right now, lupe's extremism is a form of balance... if that makes sense.
. It's no longer white people doing the killing now however, but other black people. Really, the only freedom we got was movement. Unless you've been properly educated and have love for yourself, you are still the 
's slave.
Whoopi strikes again.
Lol at his knee-jerk usage of the nikka word after crying about the same word on his album. 
