EDITORIAL on Is winning a battle important ?

Down through the years there has been much controversy on who does and dosent win Locking battles ,recently on our Lockerlegends Facebook page , a decision was challenged and a internet argument ensued over the Finals Locking Battle at the KOD canada event. I posted my response on the page and below is the continuation 

continue from Lockerlegends/lockers united Facebook post dated 1-24-16

In the post an opinion was also expressed on who was qualified to judge this contains my response to that , and why Judging of competitions are in the state they are today. there is a history in our efforts to bring integrity to judging and we tell of that story & why we think those efforts did not succeed in this article

I know plenty of original era pioneers , one who is even in a wheel chair , who I would have confidence to see and identify whether a person has fundamental foundation. WHY because they lived and breathed those foundational factors & I also know plenty of New School popular creative locking style dancers who couldn’t determine fundamental origin in someone’s creative locking if it slapped them in the face

Can people learn to make those determinations YES they can ! But most ( not all ) DON’T WANT TO , because they see they do not need a foundational connection to become popular & famous in today’s locking dance world .. They DO NOT want any criteria , Until They LOSE that way they can complain and attempt to set their own ..

Subjective Competition in the olympics found the same problem , until a criteria was set , where the competing countries score was thrown out , why because each country was attempting to make their style the dominant style , by attempting to set & control the criteria for what or who is great ,
once upon a time the criteria in locking was if you dressed like and danced just like members of the lockers group , you were assured favor in judging ( especially if members of the lockers were judging ) they were settling the standard , until the staged performance was found to not be the only essence of a street dance, and that was needed because the entertaining clownish attitude of the performance , was not going over too well in Streetdance events , where the true Streetdance attitude of Popping & Breaking was more appealing & dominant in that setting. This almost ruined the credibility of Locking as a Streetdance , until it’s history as a movement in the streets was finally exposed ..
In history we see that The International Olympic committee had to be created to set criteria for judging in their subjective events

And I tried to establish the same for locking , most recently back in 2008 , where I met with some of the prominent players at the time while at the who is who in France . but the new school did not want to form an international organization because fears the old school would dominate the criteria , and they did not want that , but I asked not just who, how , when and where set the ORIGINAL Foundation, well at least they did not want an organization they could not control until they could establish theirselves and attempt to set their own criteria. And that’s what began to happen right after that. An attempt to establish a criteria using the newly found street locking history that was prior to the entertainment era was now being used to establish a new school organization position in history. But the old school and the bickering by the Ogs are not also at fault . I realized that the true foundation lies in what the people & pioneers of the original era could establish before they are gone. So I called several meetings with both well known & unknown authentic pioneers of the era , in an attempt to put an organization together , that would eventually work with the new school to establish a foundational based criteria , which could authenticate a base. But again the conversation was based on not the issues but the controlling of a commodity , with the establishing concept subject to the historical feuding of the commercial world of locking wanting their criteria placed over the street history & the street essence , which was now saving locking at the Events . So here we are who is right ? The new school who realized that the old school would want to send the criteria back to the entertainment attitude that would kill the repretation it was building with street credibility .. Or the old school who sensed that the new school was attempting to control the criteria for foundation , by writing themselves in , by using the street history before locking became an act or performance.

But then there was another factor that both new school battlers & old school celebrity performers both was afraid of and that is the connection through the social party dances & music to Soul Train & Botha connection to the civil rights era , lockings connection to both those. Exposed a purpose beyond an individual’s simple desire to be famous. Therefore the voice was now in the communities hands & not one single person or group , but it belonged to everybody who took part in the struggle through music & dance. And both the ambitious in new school & the fearfulness that the new school would no longer look at the famous and well known as the absolute voice scared the old school , many fearing that they would lose international support & jobs if they supported locking as connected to the African American struggle .. So they denied the connection to the delight of of some of the new school international scene . I personally was told by a few of pioneers that I should drop the black historical connection , and that we don’t want to be considered militant . And that infuriated me , to deny your culture and the truth in history for personal economic gain may be considered business in other communities but has and always will be looked at as selling out by the black community , and I could not do that .

Peace & Truth

Og Skeeter Rabbit