But the key defeating your enemy is to think like they think. Military strategists understood this centuries ago, Dr. King understood this. So, if you go into this with the attitude of not wanting to see their side of it, you may be in for a whole lot of unnecessary head-butting.

Police need to focus on crime and criminals, instead of the types of music criminals play. But a lot of criminals listen to rap music. While that may seem incidental, understanding this is crucial to understanding the police department's approach to this issue.

If a venue plays one type of music, and its patrons cause no problems, then they switch to a different type of music, and the new patrons do cause problems, you tell me what conclusions they are supposed to draw. It may be wrong, but until you can answer that question - not for me, but for them - then you won't get them to change the practice. If your only goal is to get them to stop using hip hop as another word for black, fine, they'll come up with a new euphemism.

What you may succeed in doing is driving their behavior under the table. Next time they won't be stupid enough to have notes. Next time, the neighboring business won't bother calling the police, but might just take matters into their own hands.

Because regardless of whether or not there is racism involved in the motives of the police or the mayor's office, there is a problem. There is a clear increase in criminal activities in and around venues that play hip hop music over venues with other formats. You and I know there is no causal relationship between the two. I'm sure the police know this too.

In their eyes, police hate rap music not so much because it's loud or because they can't relate to it or even because blacks listen to it. In their eyes, where there is rap music, there is violence. The music draws several criminal elements together in one central location, which is a receipe for violence. A plausible response to this would be to keep those elements from congregating. Yes, it would be better to deal with the criminals at the source, whatever that may be. But how? How do you get rid of gangs? How do you get rid of short-tempered people who haven't committed any crimes, yet are likely to do so once they are thrown into tight spaces with other short-tempered people?

I'm certainly not trying to talk you out of a protest. I'm not saying you can't achieve whatever goal you have with this. But there is a real problem that the people, the police and this city needs to fix. And simply telling them their way of fixing it is wrong doesn't help. Someone has to find a way that works.

Please keep me informed as to your plans, either through a post here or by email (redeyefilm@yahoo.com). I wish you guys luck.

RED
(I've got so much more to say, but I gotta go.)