Not sure how many of my fellow Daily Kos readers and writers are hip-hop fans, but I found a recent song and cause I stumbled upon extremely interesting and worth sharing. Entitled Another Man Down, the site which has been around since late August but has not attracted significant attention, aims to address systematic abuses of human rights and racial profiling perpetrated by the police recently, bringing attention to several "senseless murders" from the past.
The site lists its goal as:
Another Man Down is a phrase to bring awareness to all mankind; from all walks of life and ethnicities. This is a movement formed to put an end to the on-going brutal assault against the human race.
This is not a race issue!
This is a human rights issue!
This movement is to ensure freedom in commerce without being racially profiled by another citizen or policing authorities.
In the song that plays with the site, also entitled "Another Man Down", while a rapper mentions that he's tired of watching "mothers pick up their kids' bodies in a world full of madness where killing's a hobby" and about victims like Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, and Dylan Taylor, a female singer sings in the chorus:
Hands up, don't shoot, man down,
Hold the trigger, now my life is in your hands now.
Only God can judge us, so why you want to hurt us?
While a lot of what I've written dealt with specific anecdotes when it came to abuse of power or brutality by police, I decided to cover something differently this time. I feel that it's time that we also brought attention to recent community efforts, like this one, to become part of the solution we want to see.