Banned in Boston talks with Lee Camp.

Banned in Boston talks Bradley Manning

The big lie we’re told in school is that Rosa Parks just stayed in the front seat of that bus because her feet were tired. She actually was doing it intentionally as a tactic. The organized bus boycotts to follow then brought about huge changes.

The big lie is that MLK died and then the government just felt bad and gave people of color civil rights. Those rights were fought for by people on the streets with a diversity of tactics.

And the biggest lie is that everyone is now equal because of MLK and people who feel otherwise are just ungrateful and will never be pleased.

The people who killed MLK hoped that the world would mourn a leader and then go back to living quietly, because now the civil rights fight is “over”. Don’t let them have their way.

- Lauren Chalas

The crime which you were “mercilessly perused” by the US justice system, ostensibly leading you to take your own life, alone in your Brooklyn apartment,.. was that of sharing millions of for pay academic online journals. Let that Anneal, world; because while I am foolish enough to speak to a deadman as device, my gripe is with you,…and me,…for this is also a letter to my own former/future self,..

Aaron Swartz, your accolades were numerous and your efforts touch our everyday both on the internet and how that interfaces with our real-space lives. You’ll be widely considered instrumental in defeating the Stop Online Piracy Act or SOPA as well as co-fouding topic and discussion forums where millions interact daily, how we receive our information, and most of us, my former self included, didn’t/don’t even realize it. Maybe you knew how abstruse the knowledge you possessed really was, driven to give even the most common amongst us the tools which could only supplement the motivation which you seemed blessed with, along with the drive to do good for everyone, and so young,…was that what fueled you?,… Giving the tools which you knew how to use to whoever could do with them what we all needed be done?

“How scary a concept young man”, this, being the money talking.

It,..your life’s end,.. should, in my opinion, arouse in us that are left a sort of contempt for how we allow ourselves to tread, both oblivious to how the world around us is treating us, but also, and perhaps more so, how it is treating others. Whatever solace we steal from this loss is our own; for myself, I hope, if only, to be able to better see, to actively look around me and notice those with-in my own life and scope of influence who are engaged in the struggle to overcome that tacit soft apartheid of for profit above all, business as usual capitalism, and to continue to try and endeavor to discover new ways to,… well, essentially, free information,…

But more, acknowledge the personal struggles roiling with-in each of us which threaten to take down our own little ships. It is a rough see we are all sailing, we all need to acknowledge each-other.

Sorry again, from just another jerk with a pen, who never even knew you, rest well if you can,… it appears the world lost a friend.
John Ford.

Link to Full Audio of Bands Sets. (Will be added to throughout the day. So check back if the set you want to hear isn’t up yet.)

The Original Local Collective brought out:

The Brunt Of It (RI/MA Punk-SKa!)
BJP
Opposition Rising
Empty Vessels
Neighborhood Shit
& a Special Guest Speaker: Dan Lozzi from The Outlook

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Full Audio 2012 National Day of Mourning.

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When I got a little older, into school-age, I began to feel out the hate I had early picked up on,… one, myself included, could see how easy it would be for any one to fall into such poisonous modes of thinking; it is easier to blame the other religion, other country, the other race, the other political party, your partner in a relationship, or just generally the other person as the cause of YOUR problems,….

The real problems, I feel, begin with the “better than” notion, but then, if that mode of thinking becomes engrained in an individual, there are ample opportunities to get pulled into a subculture based around those shared notions; one with its own language, meeting places, art, literature, and community. I could see this developing even in junior high, where the type of music you listened to, if you choose something over anything, determined to some degree, in my region of the world, the social circle you travelled.

It wasn’t until I began to see this “better than” mentality laid out a bit more bare and prideful, in the lyrics of bands like Skrewdriver, that I began to truly be turned off to the entire notion of “better than” thinking, as a whole,… though, it first took me taking in the image of how ugly its symptoms looked at their best; a bunch of people standing around enjoying each other’s company, somewhat, while rallying around a banner of hate? I never even had to go to a show to know it wasn’t for me, as well as cause me to question things which I had been “brought up with”

As I watched a bygone early youth begin to turn into a cult of negative and violent opinion it disgusted me in a deep way, forcing me to rediscover some of my own familial mis-teachings, as well as to analyze my own cultural identity, and possible culpability, causing me almost immediately to make an active effort to shed the chains of oppressive thinking I had been previously plaguing myself with.

Even the act of removing one decayed leaf from in front of the window which I’d allowed to overgrow my eyes caused my mind to become flooded as if a new way of being, not just thinking, was presenting itself; I made this discovery, when I began to look not at how others were impeding the world I wanted to see, but started to look into how the self I would be would act and think in a more ideal world,… As the ice of prejudice, which could only hold any hope for a better world frozen out of reach, melted away, the reality that the logical conclusion of such “better than” thinking was either apartheid or genocide seemed to be the only solution being offered in application of such a mentality began to set in, flying 100 percent in the face of even the most basic conception of what I thought a “better world” would look like.

In order to grow I must acknowledge who I once was, a bigot, as, once, I held feebly onto the straws of shameful inborn entitlement.

Yesterday, Sunday August 5th, saw a man who I will intentionally leave unnamed, who walked into a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, opening fire and killing 7 people of a thinking and religion other than his; reports would indicate he traveled in racist music circles; I can only hope out of such tragedy, that others are forced to self reflect and acknowledge the destructive nature of such “better than” modes of thinking, because as angry as we all are that the the human race has not overcome our deeply ingrained apathy to create a condition of mutual aid and support, we must, at some point agree that violence generally begets only more violence, while in certain instances death can bring further understanding, only in finding ways to live together under a the banner and framework of “equal to” will we all be able to create, and live, in lasting peace.

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