Tikkun Magazine, May/June 2010
Invincible Hip-Hop
Slipping the Medicine In
by Josh Healey
Even in a genre as diverse and controversial as hip-hop, Invincible stands out—and not just for her lyrics. Born Ilana Weaver, she is known as one of the top underground female emcees in the country, despite her famous line, "I wanna be known as the best rapper, period / not just the best with breasts and a period." Growing up in a Jewish family between Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Israel/Palestine, Invincible began making music as a sort of medicine against the ills of gentrification and occupation in her respective homelands. Not confining herself to the stage, she is active in local movements for justice, especially in her current home of Detroit. After being called "every A&R's worst nightmare" due to her reputation for turning down corporate record deals (A&Rs find and nurture artists for music labels), she created her own path to success with her label Emergence Music and now contributes to progressive projects such as the annual Allied Media Conference. I recently talked with Invincible to get her opinion on hip-hop, Detroit, white privilege, and what it means to "boycott Israeli injustice."
Josh Healey: So, you're a popular artist, an outspoken activist, a multimedia journalist. Let me ask you this, especially for those readers who aren't avid Davey D followers: why hip-hop?
Invincible: Hip-hop is one of the main ways I learned English. When I was seven, I wrote down the lyrics to my favorite songs, looking them up in the dictionary and then memorizing them. I had just moved from Israel-occupied Palestine to Michigan. Not only did hip-hop teach me language, but it also introduced me to social justice history and movements that are not widely taught in schools or spoken about in most mainstream media; so I would also look up the names people dropped such as Assata Shakur, Malcolm X, and Shirley Chisholm. By age nine, I was penning my own lyrics.
JH: Going off that, why make music at all? Why did you start? Did you always have the intention of combining your art with political activism, or did you start by wanting to be the freestyle champ of the neighborhood?
Invincible: I started taking music seriously when I was fifteen. I would freestyle daily and sometimes battle too. I met a local DJ who had access to some abandoned buildings in Ann Arbor and we converted the buildings into all-ages venues [open to youth under twenty-one]: my graffiti writer friends painted murals on the walls, we covered up all the windows with black fabric, and set up temporary sound systems. I fell in love with the whole culture and practice of hip-hop.
That same year was when I got involved with my first organizing campaign as well. The KKK was planning to speak in Ann Arbor, on the roof of City Hall at that, so I helped organize a rally against them. After that, I continued writing lyrics that spoke about the injustices I opposed. Since I started working with Detroit Summer [a multi-racial, inter-generational collective], I have been able to connect with more effective organizing projects that address the issues I rhyme about. The music and skill comes first, but the content raises awareness and inspires action. I call that approach "slipping the medicine in."
JH: You rep Detroit as hard as anyone. What does it mean to love a city that is now the poster child for perpetual urban crisis?
Invincible: One of my favorite sayings about Detroit is, "Detroit is what the world has to look forward to." I think it specifically applies to any industrialized area. This was the first city to have an assembly line, highways, suburbs, white flight, automation, outsourcing, and total disinvestment. It was the first city to fully experience post-industrialization. Now it is the poster child for the failure of industrial capitalism, which causes urban crisis. But in that crisis is also an opportunity for people to develop community-led solutions. Not because gardens are cute but out of necessity: there is not a single chain supermarket in the city, so it is hard to find fresh produce. With each crisis, where the government is too broke, or bogged down by bureaucracy and corporate interests to fix it, it provides an opportunity out of necessity for the community to find creative solutions to its own problems.
JH: Your song "Locusts" is basically a documentary-music video about gentrification in Detroit. What does gentrification look like in a city that is 80 percent black? And what does your anti-gentrification work look like as a white activist?
Invincible: My perspective on displacement is shaped by my experiences as a person with both U.S. and Israeli citizenship, because with both places I was raised, my living there was a direct result of someone else's displacement. Gentrification is one form, and while it doesn't happen on the same scale as colonization, the outcome is still devastating. I've created an online project called Emergence Travel Agency that shows these connections.
Detroit is facing a unique type of gentrification: first of all there are tons of developers who are speculating land, meaning they buy low—multiple properties—and just sit on them, waiting until the value goes up so they can sell high. Many of the properties they buy are recently foreclosed.
As a person with white privilege living here, I make sure my role is to amplify the voices of Detroiters most impacted by these issues. When people from the city organize against gentrification and displacement—for example, when they are moving someone back into a house that was foreclosed, or turning an old lot in their neighborhood into a garden—I support them in any way I can. I am not a key decision maker or spokesperson, but instead I intentionally use my art and workshops to highlight the work being done in the community, by the community, and do my best to practice accountability every step of that process.
JH: The U.S. Social Forum (USSF) is taking place in Detroit this June. Are you involved with that at all? Do you see the forum as a potential game-changer for the Left in the United States, or as just another big meeting?
Invincible: The Social Forum will definitely be a learning opportunity for people from around the country to see the incredible work happening here in Detroit, and for local movements to learn from models in other cities. I will definitely attend with Detroit Summer, the organization I work with. We are also involved in planning the Allied Media Conference, a grassroots movement-building gathering that happens in Detroit annually and will take place in the days prior to the USSF this June. The Allied Media Conference is very hands-on and about leaving with practical skills, and I know the USSF will apply some of those same values since many local organizers I trust and love are involved in planning it.
JH: Let's go international now. You were born in Israel, and your family moved to the U.S. when you were a kid. You're a strong critic of the Israeli government, especially with last year's war on Gaza. Why? What was the turning point for you, if there was one, in your thinking on Israel/Palestine?
Invincible: I was actually born in the U.S., but moved to Israel-occupied Palestine when I was one and lived there until age seven. When we moved to Michigan, many of my classmates were from Arab backgrounds, and one particular friend in middle school was Palestinian. She told me about her uncle, who was a nonviolent resister who was imprisoned and tortured by the Israeli military. Ever since then I've been seeking out accurate information, to unlearn the miseducation I received in Israeli schools, as well as U.S. Jewish schools, about Israel. I especially search for Palestinian perspectives on the matter, to better understand the injustices they experience as a direct result of the Zionist project and the Israeli military. Often Jews unintentionally reinforce the racist dismissal of Palestinian voices by only speaking to other Jews about the issue, or even centering the voices of Jews who speak out against Israel. My focus is to support and amplify Palestinian voices and add mine when it makes sense. Gaza has been occupied, isolated, and cut off from resources for decades prior to last January and continues to be under siege to this day. Last year's attack was a horrifying, magnified example of the injustices Palestinians experience on a daily basis under Israeli occupation, so the world could see more clearly.
JH: In the video for your song "The Emperor's Clothes," which was filmed at a protest outside the Israeli consulate in San Francisco during the attack on Gaza, your chorus calls for "boycotts, divestments, and sanctions" (BDS) against the Israeli government. What does BDS look like to you? And why do you, an Israeli living in America, support that tactic?
Invincible: The call for boycott, divestment, and sanctions of Israel was put out by Palestinian people who were inspired by the boycott of South Africa in the apartheid era, and will continue until Israel tears down the apartheid wall, gives Palestinian residents of Israel full rights, and supports Palestinian refugees' right to return to their homes. The BDS campaign looks slightly different wherever you are. I think the most powerful local campaigns connect injustices happening in our communities to the injustices committed by Israel. For example, in New York, BDS activists are targeting Lev Leviev, who is not only a settlement builder in the West Bank, but also a gentrifying developer in Brooklyn, as well as a diamond jeweler who sells blood diamonds from Angola. They are now forging relationships with people in Angola who oppose his practices as well.
As an artist [BDS] not only means not performing in Israel or doing events sponsored by Israel, it also means supporting Palestinian artists. One of the most important aspects of the boycott campaign is actually to support Palestinian economies that are often choked by Israel. BDS is potentially the most effective way that everyday people can take action, organizing in their community against Israeli apartheid and military occupation.
JH: You've partnered with the Palestinian hip-hop group DAM on various projects and tours. What has that been like? Where do you see any hope for real change and justice in the Middle East?
Invincible: I met DAM through my friend Jackie Salloum, who directed "Slingshot Hip Hop." By helping out with the film, I was able to connect with the growing Palestinian hip-hop movement. It has been incredibly inspiring and a great reminder of the purpose of hip-hop, which is to tell the stories of oppressed and impacted communities who would not otherwise be heard. DAM in particular are the pioneers of that movement in Palestine. Suhell Nafar (of DAM) and Abeer both partnered with me on the song and docu-music video "People Not Places," which speaks about the importance of Palestinian right of return, in contrast with the unjust Israeli law of return promoted through "Birthright" tours.
My hope is that as more people begin to understand that Israel is unsustainable and has been from its founding—it is completely reliant on billions of dollars annually of foreign military aid, it requires daily destruction and oppression for its so-called safety, and it is environmentally destroying the land—they will start to take action toward real change and justice. All we can spend our time and energy on is supporting Palestinians and others impacted by the Zionist project to develop alternatives that are sustainable for the long haul.
For more on Invincible, visit emergencemusic.net or detroitsummer.org.
Josh Healey is a writer, an organizer, and the author of Hammertime: Poems and Possibilities. Featured by the New York Times, NPR, and Al-Jazeera, he lives in Oakland, California, and works with Youth Speaks to empower young artists and activists.
Healey, Josh. 2010. Invincible Hip-Hop - Slipping the Medicine In. Tikkun 25(3): 47
