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September 11, 2012
Jay-Z's Got 99% Problems, and a Barclays Center Protest Is One
The Atlantic Wire
by David Wagner
Jay-Z has drawn the ire of Occupiers yet again, this time over quotes he dropped in his Zadie Smith-penned The New York Times T Magazine profile. This isn't the first time Jay-Z and Occupy have feuded. Last November, Jay-Z pissed off the Zuccotti Park set by selling Occupy Wall Street knock-off shirts without donating any profits to the movement. OWS called the rapper a "bloodsucker," but Jay-Z emerged from the spat mostly unscathed. After all, Occupiers were too busy trying to not get kicked out of their campsite to focus on Jay-Z too much. But this time, the 99 percenters have a more targeted plan of attack for shaming the rap mogul. They're taking their beef to Jay-Z's big opening-night concert at the Barclays Center, turf he partially owns.
Jay-Z has always seemed somewhat supportive of the Occupy movement in theory, but he questions its goals and rhetoric. "What’s the thing on the wall, what are you fighting for?" Jay-Z asks in the quotes that reignited the feud. "I don’t know what the fight is about. What do we want, do you know?" As a firmly-established member of the 1 percent, Jay-Z is most bothered by Occupy's demonization of everyone in the top-tier. "Yeah, the 1 percent that’s robbing people, and deceiving people, these fixed mortgages and all these things, and then taking their home away from them, that’s criminal, that’s bad. Not being an entrepreneur. This is free enterprise. This is what America is built on."
Funny, we don't remember Hova having even one problem with New York State taking people's homes away to make room for the Barclays Center.
Occupy-affiliated group Guitarmy took to Tumblr to set Jay-Z straight about what they're working towards. They write, "We have spent one year on the streets organizing for exactly the things Jay rapped about in his early days, ending urban poverty, ending Stop & Frisk and police use of lethal force, of returning dignity and hope to the everyday people of New York City." Guitarmy plans to make sure Jay-Z gets the message by protesting his grand opening concert at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn on Sept. 28th.
NoLandGrab: What do we want, Jay? We want a travesty like Atlantic Yards to never happen, ever, anywhere.
Related coverage...
Pitchfork, Occupy Wall Street to Stage Teach-In at Jay-Z Concert After Jay Questions Movement
As the one-year anniversary of Occupy Wall Street approaches, the movement's Guitarmy group has announced a teach-in for September 28 outside Jay-Z's concert at the new Brooklyn arena, the Barclays Center. (You may remember the Guitarmy from this spring's May Day protest.) Jay-Z is a part owner of the Nets, the basketball team that plays at the Barclays Center.
Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, Barclays Center, A Great Monument to Crony Capitalism, Invites Protest
Hold it right there Hova. Surely, with Jay Z's 1/15th of one percent ownership of the Nets and 1/5th of one percent ownership of the arena the rap mogul is aware that his partners, Forest City Ratner with the help of a raft of Governors and Mayor Bloomberg used eminent domain against people to do just that—"take their home away from them"—all for the benefit of one of the ultimate one-percenters Mikhail Prokhorov.
Posted by eric at September 11, 2012 12:03 PM