Vote for "Can't Hold Me Back" as the 2013 People's Choice Winner

I had the honor of befriending Betty Bastidas when I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Ecuador. She was filming "DreamTown," a piece that speaks to how Afro-Choteño youth rely on fútbol ("soccer" for you crazy Americans,) a one in a million opportunity, as their only way out of poverty. I admired her talent for capturing the voices of people who were often overlooked by society. Her new piece, "Can't Hold Me Back" is yet another reflection of this talent.

Set in Detroit, MI, this documentary "follows Fernando Parraz as he becomes the first in his family to earn a high school diploma — his ticket out of the struggles of inner-city poverty and violence. With a mountain of roadblocks stacked against his educational achievement, Fernando finds support from an unlikely figure: his father — a former gangster who has suffered the costs of his own mistakes."

I hope you enjoy this piece and vote it as 2013 People's Choice Winner at http://www.pbs.org/filmfestival/vote/

Watch 2013 Festival | Can't Hold Me Back on PBS. See more from PBS Online Film Festival.

This is What rEVOLution Sounds Like

“If you surround yourself with the good and righteous, they can only raise you up. If you surround yourself with the others, they will drag you down into the doldrums of mediocrity, and they will keep you there, but only as long as you permit it.”

Mark Glamack

This is not only true about the company you keep, but is also applicable to the music you listen to. I can't take the lyrically/musically weak, socially reckless, substance-less material that people of today call music. Radio is out of the question, Pandora starts off great, but always manages to mix in something crazy, and downloading music is a thing of the past. Thank God for Spotify. 

I've created several playlists, but I wanted to share one in particular. With so much injustice in the world I think it is important to always keep the struggle (past and present) in mind as well as hope for a better future. And from this simple idea I created This is What rEVOLution Sounds Like, a playlist of 600+ inspirational songs and speeches (in English and Spanish) that tell tales of injustice, fight and victory. Sample selections include

• Angela Davis - Who Pays, Who Plays
• The Cranberries - "Zombie"
• Los Fabulosos Cadillacs - "Matador"
• Green Day - "American Idiot"
• Janet Jackson - "State of the World"
• Lauryn Hill - "Every Ghetto, Every City"
• Lupe Fiasco - "American Terrorist"
• Malcolm X - Ballad of the Landlord
• Martin Luther King, Jr. - On Viet Nam 
• Panteon Rococo - "La Carencia"
• Soul II Soul - "Keep on  Movin'" feat. Caron Wheeler
• Humanwine - "Our Devloution is Televised"

I hope you all enjoy it and use it as a source of reflection and entertainment. If you have any suggestions for songs or speeches that should be in this collection, please share them in the comments field below. In the meantime, enjoy the playlist. I embedded it on the blog.

Peace!

Image from http://marinasleeps.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/music-revolution-t-shirts_design.png