ShahidButtar.com / About me /

Who I am

I'm a hip-hop and electronica MC, civil rights lawyer, poet, national non-profit leader, dancer, independent columnist, and grassroots community organizer committed to helping kickstart countercultural evolution. Inspiration flows fairly freely from my various surroundings, and I do my best to reflect it for the people with whom I'm blessed to share time.  

Where I come from

From Rosebud to St. Louis...

My family hails from Pakistan-via-England, and after immigrating to the U.S. in the late seventies, camped out in rural Missouri until I turned ten. 

 

...to Chicago...

Six years in a suburban oasis recalled shades of Different Strokes, after which I moved to Chicago to start a personal crusade for my undergraduate education that lasted ten years.  The first several years were painfully challenging: I didn't have a place to stay for about a year, often ate food that would repulse most people (and even myself, now I'm no longer driven by hunger to dig through trash cans), and had just about lost my last vestiges of hope in my future before stumbling into a full-time career in investment banking that lasted six years. In Chicago, I discovered multiculturalism, struggle, the first and second of my periodic vaults across the socio-economic continuum, hip-hop, the urban melting pot, electronic and house music, party & rave culture, and my identity.

...to Northern California...

The U.S. Department of State recruited me to serve in the Foreign Service shortly before I graduated from Loyola University Chicago in 2000, but I ended up attending Stanford Law School instead.  Before graduating in 2003, I served as a Teaching Assistant in Constitutional Law and a political science course focusing on International Security in South Asia, as well as Executive Editor of the Stanford Environmental Law Journal.  I also received an arts award & grant with which I started the first of several artist collectives I've organized since, as well as the Fourth Annual Asian-American Graduate Student award for my combination of scholarship and community organizing.  

Each autumn seemed to flip my world upside down. Bush v. Gore was decided over the course of my first semester in 2000; the 9-11 attacks literally woke me out of bed in 2001; and the neoconservative fascists who hijacked the U.S. started beating their war drums in 2002. By 2003, I'd more or less ditched law school in favor of organizing non-violent resistance to the corporate war and colonial occupation of the cradle of human civilization. On the west coast, I honed and expanded my skills, overcame the shame and disappointment I'd internalized from my struggle for my undergrad degree, fulfilled various fantasies, and enjoyed the wild & wacky campus experience I never got when I was younger.  These were three of the best years of my life so far....

...to Washington, DC...

After graduating from law school in 2003, I moved to Washington, DC.  I worked at a law firm for two years, where I organized the first impact litigation seeking marriage equality for same-sex couples in the State of New York (which the New York Court of Appeals ultimately rejected, to our surprise and disappointment), and worked on behalf of the campaign finance reform community on (an ultimately successful) appeal before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit challenging lax federal regulations. I left private practice in 2005 in order to join the public interest community. 

Until early 2008, I ran the communications and outreach operations of The American Constitution Society for Law and Policy, a national non-profit network of over 10,000 lawyers, law students, legal scholars and judges dedicated to defending principles including human dignity, individual rights and genuine equality.  My job at ACS included several components, including legal journalism, media outreach, non-profit management, launching and managing the groundbreaking ACS ResearchLink program and liaising with other legal organizations.

When I originally moved east, I conceived my mission as helping to build an assertive politicized counter-culture, the kind that dominates places like Northern California.  As it turned out, it was already in full effect by the time I arrived, and while we haven't yet reached the point of dominating the local and institutional landscape, I've seen the community flex hard since 2003, with new grassroots groups emerging to address various local needs and spread skills among engaged activists.  The momentum seems only to grow with every passing day....

...back to Cali...

I moved back to San Francisco in February, 2008 to launch a program addressing racial & religious profiling for Muslim Advocates, a non-profit advocacy group launched by the National Association of Muslim Lawyers.  It offered a welcome opportunity to defend the canaries in our social coal mine at a time that I happen to be one of them, and I enjoyed both diversifying the methods I employ as a lawyer, as well as focusing my legal work on substantive issues relating to civil liberties and religious freedom.  

Returning to SF was also one of the best things I've ever done for my music.  The scene there is incredibly energetic and supportive, I started recording again, and I was privileged to perform with some mind-blowing DJs for crowds as energetic as I imagine I'll ever see.

Finally, moving back also offered a chance to reconnect with my many old friends in the Bay Area, whom I missed dearly while on the east coast.  When I finally returned, it felt as if I'd never left -- except that now I have a new group of friends and allies from DC for whose presence I pined from time to time.

And, of course, SF rocks.  I had a lot of fun and felt blessed to meet amazing people every day.

...and back east again

I moved to Northampton, Massachusetts in May, 2009, where I was excited to use "summer" as a verb for the first time in my life.  Coming back east was somewhat terrifying, but the opportunity to lead The Bill of Rights Defense Committee was too scintillating to pass up.  I'm fascinated by the issues we address, my astounding colleagues, the tremendous opportunities the organization offers to the public at large, and the always inspiring energy of our grassroots supporters and allies across the country.

DC opened its arms to me again that fall, when I returned after having been gone for 18 months.  Living in the Montessori Monastery after four years in the Belmont House, and a year in SF in between, has offered a new lens on the city and I'm excited to feel like a newcomer again.  I'm also excited by the expansion and deepening of my various communities here, which have grown both larger, and more funky, since I left last year.

What I do

I basically yap and write...a lot.  In addition to my commentary, I also reach out to allied groups and organize coalitions, manage projects, craft opportunities for grassroots activists to raise their voices, and support their efforts.  

As an artist, I feel most comfortable on the mic and love to rhyme and beatbox.  I can spin vinyl passably well, and capoeira has led me to pick up some basic breakdancing.  Paint feels increasingly comfortable in my hands, so I feel like a bona fide hip-hop generalist...even though I don't really listen to the genre and may be the world's most essentially illiterate MC.

My grassroots work has focused on creative popular education; reclaiming public space; building (generationally, ethnically, and occupationally) diverse communities; and organizing performance artists to serve as "art-tillery" in the battle for hearts & minds against agents of violence and oppression. Here's a random tidbit to tickle, tantalize and testify to how I -- and other Guerrilla Poets around the country -- roll.  It's from a "lyrical ambush" on my front porch in 2006.  

I've played a central role in organizing several independent groups of socially conscious artists on both coasts: the Stanford Spoken Word Collective, which I co-founded with Mark Otuteye in the fall of 2002; the SF Collaborative Arts Insurgency, which I helped pull together during the summer of 2003; the DC Guerrilla Poetry Insurgency, which I launched within a few weeks of moving to DC in the fall of 2003; the Belmont House, an intentional community of diverse artist-activists in the heart of Adams-Morgan in DC; and ShantiSalaam, an international arts & activism project I envisioned and organized with fellow artist-activists v:shal and Hawah in 2006-07.