By All Means, Spy On Us

Recently, many of my fellow activists here in the Twin Cities were targeted by the FBI in what can only be called a witch hunt, in the most classically political sense of the term.  Eight homes of antiwar, anti-capitalist, and human rights activists were invaded in Minneapolis and Chicago.  Their houses and offices were ransacked, computers and all forms of information storage stolen, and several of them were subpoenaed to testify in a grand jury investigation in Chicago.  The organizations that these people work on behalf of were, among others, the Anti-War Committee, SDS, the Palestine Solidarity Group, the Columbia Action Network, and the Freedom Road Socialist Organization.

I'll invite you to guess which of those groups most interested the FBI.  But that's beside the point.  Add to this list the Weather Underground, the USA Communist Party, the Black Panthers, and a few others from history, and you have the exact same witch hunt that was exercised on the American people during the McCarthy era, when communism was the big threat to capitalism.  Today, as was the case back then, the agents come to your home or your office, riffle through your personal belongings like pigs on a truffle hunt, and tell you it all has nothing to do with your personal ideologies and beliefs; that they are doing an investigation that involves "national security".  At least back during the McCarthy era, they didn't lie about it; they just went right at you and tried to figure out if you were a "communist sympathizer".  Today, they have the Department of Homeland Security, a nifty little term the George W. Bush Administration borrowed from the Nazi Party.  And like the Nazi Party, they - and now the Barack Obama Administration - utilize it to conduct searches of people they think might pose some kind of challenge to the ruling elite, regardless of whether or not they can prove a single thing.

These people, and many others we have yet to hear about, are being targeted for one reason only: they represent a growing anti-establishment movement in the United States; one that is quickly becoming larger in number, bolder, and much more organized about which particular American government abuses they choose to go after.  They are labeled terrorists, and are guilty until proven innocent.  They are being charged with "material support of designated foreign terrorist organizations".  It is important to note here that the grand jury has been used by the American government as a tool for political suppression since before the Civil War, so let's not get on our high horses and claim that is some outlandish overreach by our already criminal government.  There is nothing new about this latest effort on behalf of the ruling fascists of America to suppress the public's right to dissent.  What is new about this latest front in the fake war on terror, is that there is nowhere near the rate of political activation today as was present during the McCarthy era, or the uprisings of the 1960s, nor the Progressive Movement of the 1930s.  In fact, the movement we are experiencing today is extremely small in comparison, and is only just starting to gather some steam, partially as a result of the FBI pigs snooping around.

Today, it actually takes FBI raids, illegal wars, illegal wire-tapping, censorship in the mainstream media, rampant chauvinism, the corporate take-over of the Internet, corporate thievery of our common natural resources, the slashing of all programs that work to lift the least among us out of disparity, and a long, long list of other anti-humanitarian measures to even get an anti-establishment movement worth its salt off the ground.  We should all, collectively, as citizens of the American Empire, be disgusted, fed up, and violently radicalized by this point in the game.  We are not, and yet here come the thought police.

While I have the utmost respect for all my fellow warriors in the Anti-War Committee, Socialist Alternative, Freedom Road, SDS, and all the other groups I try to work with, either as an individual, or with Junkyard Empire, I have to say something that they might not necessarily agree with:  The FBI, or any of the other dozen plus major limitless budgeted programs of the United States government, can and will spy on us.  They always have, and they always will.  In fact, I would argue that the FBI just might be most benign of them all.  Again, the Nazi's had nothing on what would become the America of today.  The only difference between them and us is that we are not - as far as I know - systematically executing anyone based solely on race or ethnicity.  Strike that.  I'm pretty sure we are.

The point here is that they will spy on us, no matter what we do.  Nothing we say here on the Internet, in private email, or on any kind of phone, will ever be safe from the snooping eyes and ears of the American secret police state.  And frankly, we know that the mainstream media will go out of their way NOT to cover any of the actions of civil disobedience being done every day in this country, nor will they make any effort whatsoever to represent the radical, leftist, socialist, call it what you want view of the American social and political establishment.  This became evident when such treasures of American dissidence as Daniel Ellsberg, Chris Hedges, and Colleen Rowley were all arrested, along with 120+ others, at a protest against the Afghanistan War in front of the White House on December 16th last year.  Not one single story in the mainstream press.  We are talking about some of the most radical whistle-blowing journalists and activists this country has ever known, all being arrested on the same day, and not a single story about these people protesting a currently escalating war that has already gone on longer than Vietnam.

I leave you with this thought: PLEASE SPY ON US.  I personally welcome the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, and all the other operations I don't even know the name of to spy away.  Read every god damned thing all my radical compatriots and I write.  Listen to our conversations too.  Come to our teach-ins and our organizing meetings.  Nothing we say on a phone, or write in a virtual context will ever be the full story.  There will always be events, plans, and actions of civil disobedience that you and your fellow pigs will never know about.  What you should really be afraid of is the reality that the American people are starting to wake up from the slumber you and your armies of capital have somehow lured us into.

We're coming to get you, and we're not gonna stop.  Surrender while you still can.  Your banks and your corporations cannot function without the willing slavery of the American people, and the cognitive dissonance that goes along with it.  The revolution is coming, ready or not.

Live Music in the US: Is it on its way out?

I am old enough to remember when the big fight in the music world - among musicians at least - was between that of "taped music" versus "live music". The debate usually raged among those of us who were making our living playing in casinos, on broadway musicals, on cruise ships, etc. I still remember the first time they cut a show from our schedule on board one of the ships I was playing on. At first it was nice that we had one less show to play each week, but then two months later, they fired half the band, making it a small combo of only 7 players, down from a a 15-piece orchestra. They used recorded music for the whole show, and the show sucked as a result. Did the audience notice the difference? Not really, because the musicians huddled behind the stage in the "orchestra pit" were never really showcased anyway.

Eventually, the debate between taped music and live music took on a different locale, being the club. It became DJ's versus a live band. Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, a once legendary live music scene, producing the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Starship, Santana and on and on and on, the scene all but dried up completely in the late 90's. On the short list of reasons for that is the massive growth in DJ's brought on by massive growth in heavily monied young, upwardly mobile snobs associated with the "dot-com boom" of the early to mid 90's. But that's a story worthy of a book I am too lazy to write. However, what I can say clearly is that is the first instance in my life as a musician when I realized that our problems were way beyond "taped music versus live music."

Move forward to the year 2009, at the Turf Club in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Three artists/bands: Junkyard Empire, Kristoff Krane, and No Bird Sing, all three the kind of artists that blend multiple styles of music and do it extremely well, while being entertaining too. You would think that on a nice warm Friday night in Saint Paul, Minnesota, you could get at least 100 people to come out and see this music for $5 at a club that the night before hosted a solo concert by the one and only Gene Ween. If I had to estimate how many people came to the show, I'd lean toward about 40 people. I guess I could point out that Michael Larson a.k.a. Eyedea from the nationally known Eyedea and Abilities sat in with all three bands, and at one point Eyedea, Joe from No Bird Sing and Kristoff Krane all jumped up on stage to play with Junkyard Empire during their set, with the goal of shunning those who didn't come out to the club that night. But, let's face it, nobody gives a shit. Or least that's what it seems like.

When I was growing up, cutting my teeth on live acid jazz, progressive live hip-hop, funk, and blues everyone I knew - and not just the musicians - went out every weekend with the goal of hunting down the hippest and best live music one could find. I'll be honest and say, I don't know anyone who does that now; at least anyone who isn't a musician, taper, or some kind of enthusiast. I've heard all kinds of excuses as to why this is the state of affairs here in Minnesota, such as weather, an over-saturation of live bands with not enough people to support them, and the common refrain of "we need like 100 more clubs to support all the music we have here in Minnesota" or something to that effect. Sure, that may be true, but the bottom line is, there aren't enough people going out to see live music as it is, so why would it make any sense to have more live music venues? What we really need is like 2000 more people going out to see live music every weekend night. And, we need to bring back what seem to be old world values, like good live music is worth going out to see even if the band is not already famous.

I don't know, maybe I am just trying to rationalize my abject anger at the American public for being so unsupportive of live music, while so obviously supportive of useless ventures like corporate television, cars, debt, and meaningless trends. Afterall, it is this love of all things material, virtual, and instantly gratifying that leads Americans toward a life of ass-sitting, ultimately ushering in an almost anti-live music existence. But, no, I'll refrain from getting into bashing American materialistic, debt-ridden, me-first culture. Instead, I'll just ask the question: HAVE WE NOW GOTTEN TO THE DREADED DEBATE OF "LIVE MUSIC VERSUS NO MUSIC AT ALL?" I fear we have.

Or, to offer a completely glass-half-full approach to the question, have we gotten to a place where there is so much underground talent in the live music world that there just aren't enough venues and people to support it? If that's the case, will we see a resurgence of the hobby of going out to see some music? I sure hope so, because the band I'm in just signed a record deal, with the hope of getting the hell out Minnesota at some point, so that we can ironically come back home to a sold out house, which seems to have happened to a great many artists from this area.

Have I made sense this morning? I don't know, but I feel a little better. At least I can say that I played a concert last Friday night that was awesome, and some world class folks sat in with us. The 20 people that were left in the club to witness the events got some seriously hip music thrown at them in a truly intimate way. I still wish there were a lot more people there, and I know that we - like a great many other bands - will only be playing in the area like 1 time per month, because we know there are only that many people out there who will support what we do. What does this mean in the grand scheme of things? What is the future of live music? Will there have to be a global economic meltdown and then a grand rebuilding process before live music makes a comeback? I hope not. Either way, I will still be there with my trombone.

Thoughts on a Global Pandemic

"GLOBAL PANDEMIC!" Yeah, that's kind of frightening. Especially if one is sitting in a hotel room in Washington DC, the epicenter of governmental paranoia. That's where I was for the first half of this week, Washington DC. There is something really freaky about hearing the words "global pandemic" when you are in the belly of the beast. If I was at home in Saint Paul, I wouldn't be so creeped out by the warnings and the increases in "threat level", because I would still have plenty of control of my own destiny. However, as I sit here in Washington National Airport, minutes before boarding my flight back to Minneapolis, I get the feeling that I am narrowly escaping what could have been an absolutely terrible experience.

When the words "global pandemic" are heard on my hotel television while in Washington DC, visions of spooky government folks sheathed in impenetrable isolation suits rounding people up for some kind of "quarantine" rush through my head. [Shit, a woman right next to me with a baby just sniffed!] The visions remind me of one of those really bad made-for-TV movies that gin up some crazy strain of the flu that threatens to kill everyone on the planet Earth in a matter of days, unless the handsome, but mysterious doctor can come up with the virus in a matter of minutes; most likely this movie has the word "monkey" or "strain" in the title. Anyway, you get the drift. It is always in Washington DC where the spooky white-suited dudes are dispatched, the airport is promptly shut down, and everyone goes bananas because they are basically imprisoned there. Not that I am panicking or anything, but in truth, the more I think about what the world might be like if there was an uncontrollable spread of an extra deadly flu strain, the more I want to get the hell back home.

According to the USA Today, that wonderfully trustful paper that gets left outside your door at every hotel in the country (probably the only paper still bringing in a profit), we are now at a "Level 5" on the "flu pandemic rating system." What does that mean? "Significant human-to-human spread in multiple locations." Level 6 is the highest, which means "human-to-human spread is efficient and sustained." The phrase "efficient and sustained" is extra frightening.

In short, it's a little unsettling to think about what the government can and theoretically do with the ability to just lock folks up because they got sick. The vast majority of the people who would contract and die from some kind of pandemic like this are the very same folks who can't afford the necessary preventative healthcare, and will therefore be only going to the hospital if it is literally a matter of life and death. And that's because they know very well how much the private corporations who run most hospitals are going to charge them for what those of us with medical coverage call "basic services." Nothing exemplifies the disparities between the rich and the poor than uncontrollable disaster or epidemic. The poor are the first to die because they are last to receive and/or seek services. And when they die it is kept quiet, because it is shameful, and everyone knows it, but doesn't want to take on the task of changing that reality. When wealthy folks die from a flu outbreak, the government agencies and private hospitals will immediately snap to attention and get the job done. It's the same reason we don't help Darfur, but we are more than happy to support Israel, or any number of other countries with which we have a special understanding they when we help them, we get some of their resources or can use them to advance American hegemony in the region.

What's all this have to do with the Swine Flu? Simple. It is the job of government to take advantage of every possible situation to advance policies that it sees fit for the American voting public. For the Bush Administration, than meant cutting the budget of the Army Corps of Engineers (what I would argue made Katrina inevitable) and passing any other policy they could that took money away from branches of government that were put together to see to the goal of basic economic justice. And so on, and so fourth. In other words, the government, by its very nature, will set out to advance the agenda that it thinks we the people want, and in many cases, what we the people need, according to them.

Perhaps this will not be a problem with Barack Obama in office. However, I am not convinced that our government is prepared for the worst on this one, and because of that, I do fear what they may end up doing with the additional power they inherit from such a situation, in which they - like the people they will be tasked with helping - are underfunded and over-armed.

In any case, I am very happy to be back home and not at the airport in freaky DC. I don't plan to do a whole lot of hanging out in enclosed, heavily secured and policed places like airports anytime soon, as long as I can manage to stay clear of them. I suggest you do the same. And while you're at it, cover your mouth when you cough, and don't be what our dear friend Seinfeld calls a "close talker."

I sense a new kind of online concert becoming a cool, virtual underground thing to do if and when the "global pandemic" becomes real. "Junkyard Empire, LIVE from the Basement! Log in here!" Hmm. Let's think about this.