Black People : White Corporate America profitting off the Thug Appeal

panafrica

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Aug 24, 2002
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The Diaspora
Once again, a money-hungry corporation is descending on inner-city neighborhoods from coast to coast, gleefully promoting violence for profit. Paramount Pictures, a division of Viacom, has installed giant billboards depicting Curtis (50 Cent) Jackson, a former heroin and crack dealer, toting a pistol to promote next week's opening of the movie "Get Rich or Die Trying," a loose depiction of Jackson's life. The good news is that outraged New Yorkers are taking swift action. Those who want to complain about the billboards should call Paramount's California office at (323) 956-5000 and ask for corporate communications. Another call should go to Sumner Redstone, the chairman of Viacom, at (212) 258-6310.

Do not let the receptionists blow you off. Insist on leaving a message for the corporate suits, telling them how sick we are of their callous exploitation.

Under community pressure, including protests, Paramount has already agreed to yank a half-dozen of the offensive billboards from Los Angeles.

This isn't about censorship. 50 Cent is free to sell lies to his mostly suburban audience about a mythical ghetto where guns, violence and dope-dealing are glorified and respected.

But those of us who actually live in the neighborhoods that 50 Cent fled long ago have freedom of speech, too - and we have to set the record straight.

For me, this is personal. Just last month, a 22-year-old named Mark Gangar was shot to death near my home, where my wife and I are raising a son.

Gangar had survived civil war in Liberia, only to be killed in broad daylight on Nostrand Ave. The idiots didn't even take the $700 Gangar was about to wire home to Africa. A few weeks later, cops say, a 16-year-old named Javaughn Higgins - already on trial for killing a man - allegedly used a fake 9-mm. pistol to steal a man's iPod on my street. The cops who chased Higgins fired 20 shots, some of which narrowly missed terrified bystanders.

In a neighborhood where ministers, parents, police and teachers have spent years struggling to get control of street violence, the last thing we need is three-story-tall photos of an ex-pusher flashing a gun and the immoral slogan "get rich or die trying."

Councilwoman Letitia James of Brooklyn plans to hold a rally Friday at 11 a.m. in front of 1515 Broadway, the Times Square headquarters of Viacom, if the billboards don't come down immediately.

For the sake of our safety and our kids' future, we must condemn the thugs and drug dealers. And we must also hold accountable the entertainment corporations that treat real-world tragedies such as murder, robbery and the soul-destroying degradation of drug addiction as cultural commodities to be sold for cheap laughs and a fast buck.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/col/louis/
 

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