The Current Online

by Farhan Zahid

Political sentiments in opposition to the status quo continued to be voiced in music throughout the 1980s, 1990s and the current decade. In the early 1980s, punk and underground metal bands dominated the conscious music scene, but soon the revolutionary proposals of hip-hop and the do-it-yourself aesthetic of indy rock would also make their mark.

The Exploited arose out of the working class slums of Thatcher-era England to become the country’s top hardcore punk band. Armed with two-foot high Mohawks, studded belts and a fiery political agenda, these punk icons unleashed a sonic assault on western imperialism and social authoritarianism. Fusing thrash metal with the hardcore blueprint pioneered by the Misfits, 1982′s Troops of Tomorrow influenced bands such as Agnostic Front, Suicidal Tendencies and Corrosion of Conformity, and spawned a generation of imitators.

Formed in 1981, vegetarian punk band Conflict became spokesmen for the animal rights movement. Increase the Pressure’s cover art focused on the Save the Seals struggle. As their political activism increased and expanded to anti-nuclear organizing, the police started breaking up their shows. Police harassment led to a full-scale riot at Conflict’s 1987 Brixton Academy show.

In the 1980s, metal was absorbed into the counterculture, and quite a few prominent bands, including Metallica, voiced left-wing opposition to the socio-political status quo. Megadeth’s 1984 release-Peace Sells…but Who’s Buying?-was not only a thrash metal classic, but also reflected an enlightened sense of political awareness. Amidst complex and abrasive guitar riffs, the band dissected Regan’s America as a breeding ground of hypocrisy and injustice.

Death metal pioneers Slayer have always been known for their disturbingly dark and morbid musical themes. The reality is that these lyrics simply describe, and critique, the world that we live in – a world in which humanity will soon cease to exist if environmental destruction is continued so that a small number of elites live it up while the majority struggles to ward off starvation. Seasons in the Abyss takes on the American war machine with unrelenting fury. The album’s sound is so heavy that it makes Cradle of Filth look emo. “Blood Red” says, “Peaceful confrontation meet war machine/Seizing all civil liberties/Honest ballotation among banshee/Spilling blood throughout humanity/You cannot hide the face of death/Oppression ruled by bloodshed/No disguise can deface evil/The massacre of innocent people/Deviated lies fear blinding in your eyes/Enforcing their truth through a gun/Aggressive discipline and barbaric control.” The words ring hauntingly true in our time. Slayer warns the powers-that-be of “growing opposition with words as ammunition.”

Rage Against the Machine managed to achieve commercial success in the 1990s, while retaining a no-holds-barred political message. Their explosive music was an innovative synthesis of metal, rap and punk, that railed against corporate America, capitalism and state tyranny. Walking the walk as well, the band has been at the forefront of various activist movements.

Goth legends Christian Death, whose career spanned from 1980 to 1995, had a love for synthesizers that pumped out what could be horror movie soundtracks and gloomy but noisy guitars. They had a hatred, which was the major theme of their music, for organized religion, which they considered violent, a hindrance to human progress and equality and a means of social control. Eager to take shots at the mainstream, their stage performances utilized outrageous shock tactics poking fun at conservatives and conventional morality. The band’s lyrics were amazingly poetic, emotional and intellectual.

Long before MCs were prancing around MTV in blow-up suits babbling about “bitches and hoes,” rap was, as Chuck D said, “the black CNN.” The unique genre poetically narrated the urban and often economically disadvantaged African-American experience. Bursting onto the scene in the mid-1980s, Public Enemy was perhaps the greatest hip-hop group of all time. Chuck D and his oversized clock-wearing sidekick, Flava Flav, rhymed about a plethora of social ills and offering radical solutions. The Bomb Squad, the duo’s production team, masterfully utilized funk, artsy and experimental cut-and-paste methods, thumping beats and unrecognizable samples to construct intricate soundscapes.

It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back (1988) is Public Enemy’s masterpiece. While telling the story of a prison escape, “Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos” charges the prison-industrial complex with racism and classism and equates it with slavery. Black nationalism is espoused on “Party for Your Right to Fight,” saying, “Power/Equality/And we’re out to get it/I know some of you ain’t wit’ it/This party started right in ’66/With a pro-black radical mix/Then at the hour of twelve/Some force cut the power/And emerged from hell/It was your so-called government/That made this occur/Like the grafted devils they were.”

The mind-numbing qualities of television and its role as enforcer of corporate values are critiqued on “She Watch Channel Zero”: “But her brains being washed by an actor/Her brains retrained by a 24-inch remote/Watch her worship the screen/And fiend for a TV ad.”

As the 1990s rolled in, rap had hit the mainstream and transformed into typical pop. Rather than social protest and tales of urban life, materialism, misogyny and violence became the dominant themes. Today, Abercrombie kids jam out to Nelly right alongside N’Sync.

In response to this phenomenon, an independent hip-hop movement was generated. Sticking to the original spirit of the genre, indy rappers shun pop-rap and its corporate messages. Not only do they rhyme about personal, socio-political and economic issues of real concern, but their innovative experimentation is also expanding the musical boundaries of hip-hop.

The eloquent rhymes of Dead Prez’s 1994 release Let’s Get Free lay out a concise and internationalist political philosophy, which aligns the struggle of America’s poor with that of the third world. “They Schools” highlights not only the insufficiency of inner-city public schools, but also how they compare to schools in upper-class neighborhoods-a harsh representation of the American caste system. Dead Prez has worked with Black Voices of Peace, a protest organization set up in opposition to the Afghanistan War.

Featuring the rhymes of Del Tha Funkee Homosapien, the production of Dan the Automator and the turntables of Kid Koala, Deltron 3030 is the most musically innovative and groundbreaking rap album to come out in the last decade. Released in 2000, this brilliant concept album is about rap warriors conducting a revolution to overthrow a corporate-dominated global totalitarian government.

Uncompromising political and community activism, refusing to do interviews with corporate publications, $10 CDs, five-dollar shows and a blurring of the lines separating punk and indy rock are what made Fugazi counterculture icons. The band’s shows became famous for both their wild energy and anti-mosh pit stance. Lead singer Ian MacKaye, now head of the indy label Dischord, spent the 1980s playing in the straight-edge (anti-drug use) hardcore outfits Minor Threat and the Teen Idles. Prior to forming Fugazi with Brendan Canty, Joe Lally and Guy Picciotto, MacKaye was a member of Embrace, one of the founding groups of emo.

In 1990, Fugazi released the brilliant 13 Songs, their most punk-oriented album. The band passionately shouts out a call to arms to left-wing activists everywhere. In “Suggestion,” MacKaye speaks from the female point of view, condemning misogyny, patriarchy and the objectification of women. “And the Same” ridicules people who agree that the world has dire problems that need to be fixed, but are unproductive and don’t do any thing about it and are only concerned with their own lives.

A fervor of musical activism is currently under way as well. Indy rock bands, such as Sonic Youth, the Liars, Locust and Erase Errata have formed Bands Against Bush, whose mission is to “struggle against a world of perpetual fear and violence bolstered by the Bush administration.” Bands Against Bush has more than 20 local chapters, with a directory of like-minded organizations set to participate in various political events. On October 11, 2004, B.A.B. will coordinate indy rock concerts, designed to heighten political consciousness, to occur in New York, Paris, Los Angeles, Boston, Washington, D.C., Seattle, Portland, Dublin and Olympia, Washington.

In the Fall, Audisolave guitarist and former Rage Against the Machine member Tom Morello, along with Billy Bragg and Steve Earle, will launch the Tell Us the Truth Tour. Grunge legend Chris Novoselic, former Nirvana bassist, will be for running this year for state office in Washington.

NOFX’s Fat Mike Burkett, who operates Fat Wreck Chords record label, is leading an effort to rally punk voters to oppose President Bush. The Punk Voter concert tour, which is also being sponsored by Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedys and Brett Gurewitz of Epitaph Records, will feature acts such as Anti-Flag, Bad Religion, the Circle Jerks, Dag Nasty, the Descendents, Mike Watt, Mudhoney, Propagandhi and Tilt. Even relatively mainstream bands, such as Blink 182, the Donnas, the Foo Fighters, Green Day and Tool have jumped on board.

The Punk Voter tour will begin later this year and will be funded by proceeds from the Rock Against Bush compilation CD released this month. Punk Voter’s goal is to register over a half-million new voters for the 2004 election, and will be focusing on swing states. For more information on the project, visit punkvoter.com

Top 10 albums to play while overthrowing the government (1980-2004)

1. Fugazi, 13 Songs

2. Deltron 3030, Deltron 3030

3. Dead Prez, Let’s Get Free

4. Slayer, Seasons in the Abyss

5. Sonic Youth, Dirty

6. Public Enemy, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back

7. The Exploited, Troops of Tomorrow

8. Metallica, Master of Puppets

9. Christian Death, Only Theatre of Pain

10. Rage Against the Machine, Rage Against the Machine

by Farhan Zahid

You’ve seen them before-decked out in dyed black hair and funky thrift-store clothing, attending anti-war protests, discussing obscure music and lurking around coffee shops and art galleries-they’re called hipsters. Beatniks, hippies and punk rockers-these were the hipsters of yesteryear. The American counterculture is not only still alive but is now in resurgence, and a new generation is forming its own unique identity. Throw out the Abercrombie & Fitch clothing, George W. Bush memorabilia and Britney Spears CDs because Longview students are about to find out how to go from square to hip.

The easiest way to identify hipsters is by their clothing. Some dead give-aways are black horn-rimmed glasses, studded belts, Chuck Taylor Converse shoes, girls with legwarmers or ripped fishnets and guys with boys-size t-shirts and womens-size pants. A plethora of hip fashion styles exist-and most people mix and match styles as often as possible-but the common denominator is that the clothing is out of the ordinary and bought at thrift stores. Fashion is how hipsters who are strangers recognize each other as fellow members of the counterculture. Clothing from Abercrombie & Fitch, Tommy Hillfiger, the Gap, Fubu, Armani and malls, and those that objectify women are all square.

Rejecting the idea that one should hold beliefs or lifestyles simply because they are dictated by conventional society, elites, the government or parents and peers, hipsters pride themselves on being the opposition to the status quo. They have a propensity to be bookworms and intellectuals, abiding by a “think outside the box” attitude, and many are activists working for a variety of causes. The first hip rule of thumb is to be a leftist, in terms of political, social and economic viewpoints.

Hipsters tend to be involved in artistic and creative endeavors and pastimes, music being perhaps the most prominent of these. Since “mainstream” is a curse word in hip lingo, MTV, Top 40 and pop music in general is scorned. Instead, hipsters listen to and create underground music, often (but not always) recorded on independent non-corporate labels, whose focus is quality and innovation rather than commerce. While the two most popular hip genres are Indy rock and Punk, other favorites are independent Hip-Hop, Neo-Hippie, Metal, Goth-Industrial, Emo and Electronica. Many people suit their fashion style to reflect their musical taste. For example, fauxhawks (Mohawks with hair remaining on the sides and back) and small zip-up hoodies adorned with sew-on patches of band names and political statements (such as opposing the war or advocating socialism) are associated with punk; and messy dreadlocks and Birkenstocks with neo-hippie.

Art is a vital part of the scene, and most artists and students at art colleges are hipsters. Parties are often held at galleries, where the hip observe art work, socialize, mock any thing considered mainstream and try to figure out if the president really has a lower IQ than Forrest Gump. Legwarmers are popular with this crowd’s females, while the males often seek out clothing that provides for maximum androgyny-both have a love for the early 80s indy rocker look.

Beatnik retro is being popularized in San Francisco, where many poets and writers have a fetish for all black attire, berets, goatees and any thing that would get airport officials to mistake them for being French.

Nightclubs are square, so hipsters meet and socialize at coffee shops such as Midtown Kansas City’s Broadway CafÈ (4101 Broadway). Hence, to observe these growing trends in culture and fashion, head to your local non-corporate coffee shop.

Kansas City’s Local Comic Book Scene Raises Political Awareness

by Farhan Zahid

Comic books are not just about spandex-clad vigilantes with super powers saving the world and defending their respective metropolises from crime and mayhem. Elite Comics, owned and operated for the past 10 years by William Binderup, is determined to prove that with its emphasis on non-corporate, intelligent and political comic books.

The store is located in the heart of suburbia at 118th and Quivira in Johnson County, one of the nation’s wealthiest counties. It seems almost out of place amidst a bourgeois mass of elitist “look-how-rich-I-am” consumerism and the subsequent conservative politics.

Elite Comics carries a vast array of critically acclaimed independent comic books such as Stray Bullets and Strangers in Paradise. These comics, while apolitical, are innovative and intelligent adult reading that focus on creative and artistic expression rather than cheesy good guys vs. bad guys cliches that sell out racks. Elite also carries collections of political cartoons, such as Lloyd Dangle’s Troubletown: Axis of Trouble, that take pot shots at the Bush administration and American imperialism. Mainstream comic book series published by the big boys Marvel, DC, and Image are also available and carefully archived.

A local comic book section, carrying titles such as Joshua Cotter’s Skyscrapers of the Midwest, is also on display to peruse. Kansas City has a vibrant and innovative indy comic book scene that is spearheaded by the midtown-based Comic Book Creators Network. Paying testament to this phenomenon is Show and Tell #1, an amazingly diverse 220-page anthology of comic stories from 62 KC writers and artists, published this fall by Gladstone’s Void Pulp Press.

Wake Up! Productions is Binderup’s self-published line of political comic books available in Elite Comics. Recently it has published PATRIOT 5000, written by Binderup with digital art by Mike Gardner, a hilarious satire of the Iraq War, the Republican-led attack on civil liberties and blind patriotism. The main character is the Department of Defense’s anti-terrorist robot, the Patriot 5000, whose job is to “make money for defense contractors and scare the oil out of the brown people the world over!” The robot’s hands are guns that have been programmed to kill people and annihilate infrastructure while leaving oil wells and ministries intact. It is also equipped with a prayer amplifier and a microchip that broadcast the Fox News network. In this spoof, the robot is paid for by eliminating Medicaid, Social Security, Head Start, AIDS research, public schools and Christmas.

Free the Angola 3, featuring the creative art of John Schuler (who does not accept payment for this work) and the radical writing of Binderup, is Wake Up! Productions’ most popular political comic. Schuler is an Independence junior high art teacher who also operates a studio downtown. The comic narrates the story of Black Panthers activists Albert Woodfox, Herman Wallace and Robert Wilkerson, whom it labels as political prisoners. Binderup said, “The Angola 3 are real-life superheBinderup said, “The Angola 3 are real-life superheroes.” Upon arriving at Angola State Penitentiary in 1971-72 for unrelated robberies, the three began conducting an organized campaign to challenge the prison officials’ corruption and the violent inmate social order. They demanded that prisoners be treated with dignity and not subject to human rights violations and slave labor.

Not long after that, enraged prison officials framed the three for various murders and they were sentenced to life without parole in solitary confinement without any concrete evidence. In Wilkerson’s trial, the other defendant, Grady Brewer, testified that he was guilty of the murder – yet the Black Panther Wilkerson was still convicted. After 29 years of legal struggles and solitary confinement, the Fifth Circuit Court overturned Wilkerson’s sentence in 2001. In a blatant violation of the Geneva Convention, which makes six months the maximum allowable amount of time a prisoner can be held in solitary confinement, Woodfox and Wallace have remained in solitary at Angola for the past 31 years.

Louisiana’s Angola State Penitentiary was built on the site of a former slave plantation and its inmate population is 75 percent black. An estimated 85 percent of Angola’s prisoners will work there for near-slave wages (for example, 25 cents a day) until they die.

A self-described “super-duper museum quality liberal,” Binderup explains that comic books can serve as a fun and entertaining medium, in contrast to dry news reports, to deliver social and political messages.

“Instead of reading a 300-page case document on the Angola 3, people can quickly read our 12-page comic, which tells not only the story, but also what you can do about it,” says Binderup. At the end of the comic, there is a section on how to get involved in the movement and get your voice heard.

Skip Godley, assistant manager of the Longview Bookstore and regular Elite Comics customer, admires Binderup, Schuler and others involved with the comic shop and Wake Up! Productions. “It’s important to spread social messages through art and music,” said Godley. “They’re taking their trade, their medium and working from there.”

Binderup says that one problem with the mainstream media is that they are too concerned with making profits and are owned by large corporations whose wishes play a major role in what does and doesn’t get discussed. He cites the corporate factor and the reluctance to question the administration’s official line as evidence that the media has forsaken its mandatory role as watchdog over government and the powerful.

“Why won’t the media push to find the Iraqi death toll or provide coverage on the 4,000 injured American troops?” he said.

Elite Comics has set up at comic book conventions is cities such as Chicago, San Francisco and Maryland. The crew also attended the Alternative Press show in Maryland. A few months ago, Binderup held a fund-raising event for the legal defense of Woodfox and Wallace (the two Angola 3 activists that remain imprisoned) in a West Bottoms art gallery. Free the Angola 3′s original artwork was displayed and attendants socialized in a laid-back atmosphere.

“Television gives you the press release version of America,” Binderup says. “Alternative media, such as Wake Up! Productions, is necessary to shine the spotlight on issues the corporate media refuses to cover.”

by Farhan Zahid

A proposed measure to narrow the far-reaching powers of government surveillance and law enforcement enacted by 2001′s PATRIOT Act, the Security and Freedom Enhanced (SAFE) Act, bill S. 1709, was introduced in the U.S. Senate and House last month. The SAFE Act would provide stronger standards for judicial review and oversight.

The PATRIOT Act was pushed through Congress by the Bush administration in a matter of days, with little debate and few dissenting votes in the wake of the Sep. 11 terrorist attacks. The PATRIOT Act permits the use of “sneak and peek” measures and delayed notification searches, in practically any criminal investigation. The deadline for notifying the subject of the search is indefinite. The bill was followed up with a plethora of similar executive orders, regulations and policies, such as establishing military commissions not adhering to due process norms and denying the right to a fair trial for citizens and non-citizens labeled “enemy combatants.” The Justice Department asserts that these extra measures are necessary to thwart terrorists before they strike.

The new bill has broad bi-partisan support. Sponsors in the senate include Democrats Russ Feingold (WI) and Ron Wyden (OR) and Republicans Larry Craig (ID) and John Sununu (NH). In the house, sponsors include Democrats Dennis Kucinich (OH) and Barney Frank (MA) and Republicans Butch Otter (ID) and Ron Paul (TX). Liberal and conservative organizations alike, sharing a mutual concern for civil liberties, are advocating the SAFE Act. This includes the American Conservative Union, American Civil Liberties Union, American Library Association and Gun Owners of America. Lara W. Murphy, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office, says on the organization’s website that the strong bi-partisan support is indicative of the vast extent to which the Bush administration has strayed from our traditional system of checks and balances against overreaching government authority.

The SAFE Act would allow the “sneak and peek” authority to be used only in circumstances in which a federal judge rules that without the delayed notification, an individual’s physical safety will be endangered, someone will flee prosecution, or evidence faces destruction. The notification deadline would also be changed to seven days.

However, law enforcement would be able to seek indefinite extensions issued on a weekly basis by a federal judge. The proposed law also requires a semi-annual report to congress from the U.S. attorney general in regard to the status, permitted or denied, of delayed notification searches and extensions. Moreover, the SAFE Act has a provision that repeals its sneak and peek power in 2005, only to be reinstated if voted for in Congress.

Among the most controversial provisions in the PATRIOT Act is section 215, which grants the FBI permission to obtain Americans’ business, library, medical and genetic records without probable cause. Under the SAFE Act, the government must prove to a federal judge that the suspect is an agent of a foreign power to receive this privilege.

The house version of the bill goes further than its senate counterpart by replacing the PATRIOT Act’s broad and vague definition of “domestic terrorism,” which could cover some acts of civil disobedience by non-violent political protestors. The new definition associates domestic terrorism with serious violent crimes such as bombing, kidnapping and hijacking.

More than 200 cities, towns and counties in 34 states, including Chicago, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Oakland, Seattle, Detroit and Baltimore, with a combined population of around 26 million, have passed resolutions in opposition to the PATRIOT Act and declared themselves “civil liberties safe zones.” Local police are forbidden to engage in racial profiling, enforce immigration laws or participate in federal investigations that violate civil liberties. Dozens of state library associations have also passed-anti-PATRIOT-Act resolutions.