The fear
Political conventions take place in an extra-Constitutional bubble. This is nothing new, of course, as we were reminded when we played last week’s Chicago 1968 “reenactment” in Grant Park (a picnic — literally for some of us, who lunched on the green — compared to the original). But with the militarization of law enforcement and the empowerment of the national security state in recent years, this dynamic, in which host cities become, in essence, rights-free zones for protesters, has only gotten worse. Nowadays, every city is Chicago, 1968 — a four-day officially sanctioned police riot, more or less.
Thus, as we chugged towards Minneapolis-St. Paul, we began hearing reports of activist houses, infoshops and other centers of organizing for the protests being raided by police with guns drawn, everybody twist-tied and select local activists arrested. The aim: paralyze the protests by putting organizers on ice for the duration of the convention and scaring the bejeezus out of everyone else. We saw similar, if somewhat less selective, tactics at work here in New York four years back. People are arrested for nothing, held for as long as possible and hit with scurrulious charges sure to be thrown out in court, but only years later. The host city will eat some hefty fines, but not before harrassing the crap out of the rabble with the aim of incarcerating them until the circus leaves town and/or intimidating and impoverishing them through legal fees, court appearances, etc.
So we role played police harrassment scenarios and drilled ourselves in rights trainings, and we were ready when our Big Green Gay Bus was detained not once but twice. Through the skill of our onboard lawyers, as well as a little luck and help from the National Lawyers Guild and Coldsnap, the local legal collective, we were able to persuade the cops that these were not the droids they were looking for. Of course, many others were not so fortunate.
These tactics are bipartisan — demonstrators in Denver saw the same shit we did. But fear has long been the entire platform of the Republican Party — fear of people of color, fear of Teh Gay, fear of women’s sexuality, fear of equality, fear of foreigners, etc. Since 9/11 in particular, they’ve had a good run of infantilizing the crap out of us and playing on our fear of terrorism. It’s allowed them to strip us of our civil rights while destroying every international covenant they could get their hands on. Torture is now official policy, war without end the guarantor of the freedoms they whittle away at.
That’s why we went to St. Paul — to tell them, four years after they brought their fetid little circus of hate, greed and fear to our hometown, forty years into their small and tawdry but powerfully destructive backlash politics, that we will not be afraid anymore. We’ll drown out their fascist squawks with our joyous noise.
Minneapolis: IWW/Bail Fundraiser @ Bedlam Theater
Welcome Rude fans, to a backwards look at where we’ve been between our last tour-report post and today’s “we’re alive” post… it’s true, internet has been scarce, and updating the blog has been low on our list of priorities. When you’re spending all your time surrounded by, making food for, cleaning up after, coordinating the day-long movements of, unpacking and repacking, playing 2 gigs a day with, sleeping on a floor with, and squishing onto a bus with 35 other people — not to mention daily food shopping and fuel runs and navigating and bus-guarding and general wrangling — you get pretty exhausted. And it’s not like there’s a ton of room on the bus to use, or even pack, a laptop. However, I’ve just returned to New York because I have to start school tomorrow (while the rest of the band continues until Saturday), so I will take some time to give a little recap for those of you who were wondering what the hell happened to us. Because normal life is just not that exciting in the aftermath of the Big Gay Tour, and if I can’t live in tour mode anymore, I’d like to hang onto the memory of it for as long as possible. Stay tuned for the upcoming NYC Indymedia headline, “Rude Mechanical Orchestra goes on 2-week No More War tour, never returns.”
Anyway.
Sat, Aug 30th — Minneapolis, oh Minneapolis. How long we’ve talked of you, how long it’s taken us to get to you. The longest day on the road yet, clocking in at 8 hours and 10 minutes (including rest stops featuring cheese hats, “Florida” t-shirts and an enormous wooden horizontal cowboy statue), and we arrived mostly on time. After many legal and medical trainings and much precaution, we headed out to our evening show with the Brass Messengers. Who are AWESOME. We played a particularly rousing set at the benefit to support the local IWW/Starbucks union workers and kick off the anti-convention activities set to begin the following day, danced our butts off to the Messengers, and then some of the more daring among us grabbed our instruments from backstage and jammed with our new friends to Mesecina and a few of their other Balkan-inspired songs. I almost busted through my drum head, I played so hard. (I also kept forgetting to watch the band, and a couple of times almost missed a “stop-playing” cue because my eyes were closed. I get really into it.) It was nothing short of ecstatic, and we are so incredibly thrilled to be a part of these communities of musicians and activists.
And then Sunday morning saw the reluctant departure of a few of us, myself included. Stay tuned for further blog entries updated by band members actually still *with* the tour. Maybe someone else can upload photos from these above gigs, or maybe I will someday learn how to do it and attach them later. Thanks for following along, folks!
