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>
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