Rapper Vic Mensa (Jeremy Scahill, Intercepted)

The Chicago-based hip-hop artist Vic Mensa not only raps about Chicago police killings of black and brown people, about apartheid in Palestine, the poisoning of the water in Flint, Michigan, but he also goes to where the silence is and speaks out.

In the aftermath of the police shooting of Laquan MacDonald, Mensa was in the streets and gave voice to the movement that led to the conviction of second-degree murder for Chicago Police officer Jason Van Dyke. Mensa has traveled in Palestine with the poet Aja Monet, and he has gone to Flint to help amplify the voices of a community that was poisoned and continues to be poisoned. During the Standing Rock movement, he joined to support the water protectors fighting against the Dakota Access Pipeline.

He speaks about his activism, what he saw in Palestine, being a gun owner who supports gun control, and the revolutionary figures that inspire his work.
Interview:
https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/panoply/intercepted-with-jeremy-scahill/e/57345112