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Anybody else see this? http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15489 Soldiers at the Door By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now! March 27, 2003 <http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15489> On March 27, Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman interviewed hip-hop artist Michael Franti on the national listener-sponsored radio show Democracy Now. What follows is a rush transcript of that interview: Goodman: What's happened as you've been on this tour? Franti: Well, what's happened most recently is that we performed at a rally on March 15 in San Francisco and the next day on the 16th ? that rally was out here ? and on the 16th on the East Coast, a band member of mine who prefers to go unnamed, his mother received a visit from two plainclothes men from the military ? and this band member of mine has a sibling who is in the Gulf. And they came in and talked to her and said, You have a child who's in the Gulf and you have a child who's in this band Spearhead who's part of the "resistance"(in their words). They had pictures of us performing the day before at the rally, they had pictures of us performing at some of our annual concerts that we put on that are in support of peace and human rights. They had his flight records for the past several months, they had the names of everybody who works in my office, our management office Guerilla Management. They had his checking account records. They asked his mother a lot of questions about where he was, what he was doing in this place, why he was going here. They confiscated his sibling's CD collection that they had brought over to listen to while they were in the Gulf, and basically were intimidating ? told her which members of the press she could talk to and which members of the press she should not speak to. And basically what this signals to me is that ? I don't feel like we're being particularly singled out or under any investigation for any activity because all the activity that we do is very much above board and all the events where photos were taken out were all public things we were at. But what it does signal to me is that there's a lot of us who are now making a blip on the radar, you know, whether we're organizers at rallies, whether we're musicians, whether we're people who are speaking out, authors, writers, actors. And we're beginning to make little blips on the radar. They're starting to pay attention and collect information about what's going on. You know, more important to me or more important than me you know, being a part of that is the fact that our civil rights are being eroded across the board for every person. [click link for rest of article] -- John von Seggern producer - DJ - researcher email <johnvon at digitalcutuplounge dot com> bio <http://www.digitalcutuplounge.com/newsite/jvsremix.htm> home <http://www.digitalcutuplounge.com> school <http://ethnomus.ucr.edu/jvs/bio.html> --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: idm-unsubscribe@hyperreal.org For additional commands, e-mail: idm-help@hyperreal.org