It's been thirty years since a teenager in New York spray-painted Taki 168 on a subway, and still no one can agree on what exactly graffiti is. A desperate cry in urban anonymity? An anarchist revival of primitive cave painting? Or is it a multi-cultural political movement?

William "Upski" Wimsatt, a minor graffiti writer-turned-activist, has no doubt that graffiti, and by extension hip-hop, pertain to politics. A lot has changed since Upski wrote his book about graffiti Bomb the Suburbs in 1994, which is probably why his new one is called Please Don't Bomb the Suburbs. His first book became a street culture classic. Its flashy yellow cover and dripping marker tag title were often found in the hands of aspiring spray can artists, starved for information about the nebulous but exciting world of graffiti.

Bomb the Suburbs became so popular, in fact, that Wimsatt became something of a hip-hop icon. Soon he was touring the U.S as a university lecturer. His talks, focusing on journalism and hip-hop, naturally progressed into political discussions, the ideas of which he collected in his second volume, No More Prisons, published in 1999. The book even drew some mainstream attention, including that of journalist N.R Kleinfeld.

At the time, Kleinfeld was at work on a series of articles about race in America. The result of various interviews was an exposé titled ¨Guarding the Borders of the Hip-Hop Nation.¨ In his interviews, Wimsatt spoke frankly about white prejudice, but according to the author: "[Klenfield] spun it … and turned my self-critique into a virtual expose." Kleinfeld's article made the front page of the New York Times. Wimsatt explains: "By the time he was through with me, he had painted a thoroughly convincing portrait of a confused David Duke-type character who mocked and exploited black people and black culture." Some of his activist colleagues of color stopped talking to him in response to the article.

Please Don't Bomb the Suburbs is not only about Wimsatt; it's also about activism. After 9/11, Wimsatt became involved in a number of grass roots initiatives. Despite the national political shift to the right following the terrorist attacks, there were a series of political "explosions" of a different persuasion: Online Organizing Explosion, Vote Explosion, Blog Explosion, Democracy Alliance explosion, Plumbing and Wiring Explosion, Obama Explosion, Translocal Alliance Explosion. These "explosions" allowed for fast, grassroots organizing, with very little central structure. Wimsatt's own League for Pissed of Voters was a case in point: a group of hip-hop activists looking to engage disenfranchised voters in urban areas. Not only was the venture successful, but it became part of the Unity '09 umbrella alliance. Although Unity collapsed after Obama was elected, the author believes the story still evidences new possibilities for youth in politics. Likewise, Wimsatt believes that "we"—those born between 1970 and 2000—won the election. Wimsatt says this is because we are a particularly "progressive" generation.

Obama's victory was due in part to youth organizations, but that does not necessarily mean that the generation in question is somehow a particularly politically optimistic or enthusiastic generation. Perhaps we were voting for other reasons. For one, the multicultural curriculum taught to us—converting cultural tolerance to multicultural exuberance—would predictably have exalted an Obama figure, of mixed ethnicity, who had risen because of his merit.

And this is the elephant in Wimsatt's book. For all of his generational contextualizing, he leaves out the political movement most central to his activism: identity politics. So many years after its inception, it remains the greatest factor shaping anyone left of a centrist. Even Wimsatt himself identifies everyone by ethnicity (including his own Jewish heritage). Isn't "hip-hop activism" just another way of saying "majority non-white political organization"?

And here political organizers in the United States, for whom this book was presumably written, are offered some practical advice. For starters, Wimsatt proposes that one must have some semblance of a self in order to be politically active. On the other hand, as the recent movement in Egypt shows, you don't need much money to do so. Wimsatt discusses the organization MoveOn, which, unlike so many other NGOs, has no mission statement, nor does it have donors who have contributed more than $5,000, and yet despite all of that is the most successful movement of its kind.

Unlike "Upski," Please Don't Bomb The Suburbs is unsure of itself. A progress report? A manifesto? A history? A political manual? A better title might have been "Three Habits of Highly Effective Progressive People." Wimsatt makes what he calls the "super movement" sound so simple: "1. Be good. 2. Get power. 3. Don't do things that mess up your life." But what exactly is meant by "good"? And wouldn't that determine how to go about "getting power"?

If nothing else, Wimsatt is right about one thing: the revolution will be digitized. Where it will take us is an altogether different and more relevant question.

Jesse Tangen-Mills is a writer and translator in Bogotá, Colombia, where he collaborates with local arts and culture magazines. His writing in English has appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, Guernica, The Brooklyn Rail, and other publications.

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