Jay-Z’s recent criticisms of Occupy Wall Street in his recent New York Times interview caught the attention of Def Jam co-founder/business mogul Russell Simmons. After tweeting a response over the weekend, he posted a lengthy Op-Ed write-up to Jay’s comments earlier yesterday.
In the Global Grind piece titled “Jay-Z Is Right 99 Times, But This Ain’t One,” Simmons details the reasons behind Occupy Wall Street, its campaign for improvements, the structure, and his own experiences at Zuccotti Park. Read some excerpts from the blog post below.
Everyday, there was a new protester with a new sign, fighting for the rights of the under-served. There was never an official agenda or media-friendly talking points. Zuccotti Park and the Occupy camps that sprung up around the country were places for any and every person to come and share ideas about how to better perfect our union. Our democracy."
For example, the prison lobby paid politicians to create a so-called "War On Drugs" that resulted in a prison economy that disproportionately locks up black and brown people, including many of your friends and mine. They took drug-infected, diseased people, locked them up, educated them in criminal behavior and dumped them back into our community, thus producing a jail culture for our streets. There are more black people under correctional control (prison, jail, parole, probation) today, than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War.
