2011 March Archive at END:CIV

What’s worse than driving for 20 hours with a lot of personal shit on your mind?

Driving for 20 hours with a lot of personal shit on your mind without music.

Yep, my van’s stereo broke somewhere between Flagstaff and Austin. But I’m being a little over dramatic, because I only drove for a few hours without music, before digging out some headphones and dutifully rocked out while breaking state safety laws. Fuck it!

One of the things I can always count on when I feel my personal life is in shambles, is how truly fucked the world is. As soon as I was able to download some news into my ipod, I suddenly realized that even though I felt pain in my heart, my problems are puny in comparison.

Yep, Japan has been in my mind. How many more nuclear accidents must we endure before we end this insane way of generating energy? I know the answer to that question. Nuclear energy will not stop unless we stop it ourselves.

As I was listening to a podcast about the meltdown, I was driving past an area of Texas with thousands of windmills, and I mean as far as the eye can see. Every so often I could see an old oil pump chugging away. Out with the old, in with the new.

Wind and solar are the new saviours of our lifestyle because they are “clean.” But when evangelists of new “green” tech, pump out press releases, they never mention how much resource extraction must be done in order to build these new energies. Mining has to be one of the most destructive activities man is perpetrating on the planet. And it’s usually poor brown people who take the brunt of the work or the decimation of their land.

Nope, there are not panacea’s to our current clusterfuck. So with that said, instead of depressing the shit out of you, here’s a list of what’s been keeping my ears happy during my long lonely drives.

Calle 13, Flying Lotus, The Fugees, Amon Tobin, Radio Ecoshock, Al Jazeera, Learn French with Michel Thomas, Democracy Now!, The Arcade Fire, Neko Case, Ice Cube, Bill Hicks, David Cross, Blackalicious, Rage Against the Machine, Miles Davis, Radiohead, Common, The Smiths, Damian Marley, Portishead, Eminem, Erykah Badu, Gotan Project, Holy!Holy!Holy!, John Coltrane, Stephen Williams, Mads Jacobsen, The Pixies, The Pharcyde, Pink Floyd, Promoe, POP Defect Radio, The Roots, The Streets, Test Their Logik and Tricky.

Peeps have been sending me music and mixes and it’s helped a lot. If you got some hot shit hip hop, audio books or anything that will help me pass the time on the road just upload to sendspace.com and send me the link.

I’ve been on the road for 5 weeks now. I’m in a motel somewhere between Denver and Albuquerque enjoying some downtime before the next gig. I need a shave, a haircut, and to reply to about 1 billion emails. I have no idea how many miles I’ve driven, but the distances between gigs in this part of the world are huge, with my shortest drive being 5 hours. The southwest of that area now called the United States is beautiful. Seems so “untouched.” Probably because it’s a fuckin desert. But that will not stop industrial civilization. Just like the maniacs who are turning sand into oil in Alberta, shale oil is the new bounty of the capitalists who boast that there enough oil in Utah and Colorado to rival the Saudis. That oil, of course, will come at the high price of severe ecological destruction.

In 2008, Tim Dechristopher bid on 22,000 acres of land during an government auction for the drilling rights for oil and gas. Tim was found guilty by a jury last week. He faces 10 years in prison for his act of monkey wrenching. This is about the same amount of time Jeffrey Luers served for torching SUV’s in Eugene Oregon. Both gentlemen where fighting for the same thing, the protection of the environment. Both acts were non-violent because not single living being was hurt. Both acts were meant to make powerful statements. But Dechristopher’s act gets the approval of the left, while Luers’ act gets labeled as eco-terrorism.

What we have to keep in mind when looking at these acts of courage, is that the state makes no distinction, and chooses to strike with as much force as possible to discourage anyone who attempts to disrupt the flow of capital.

Jeffery Luers introduced END:CIV during the screening in Eugene. After spending nearly a third of his life in a cage, Luers remains as militant as ever as he understands what’s at stake. He has used his stature as a political prisoner to tell the world that we must do what we have to if we want to maintain life of the planet. Below is his intro.

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I was in Salt Lake City during the first day of Tim’s trial. Several hundred supporters gathered outside the court house to sing songs in solidarity with “Bidder 70.” In the crowd I ran into my host, Wes Osborne with a ladder and a megaphone. Wes is a fearless independent videographer who has been arrested several times while witnessing police brutality during the RNC and the Oscar Grant rebellions. I have spot in my heart for Wes, because even after being on the receiving end of state approved violence, he continues to get out there to get the story. Today Wes was the story.

During a break in the singing, Wes stood on the ladder and started to make a speech titled “We need a revolution.” The organizers of the protest were not happy and instructed some of the singers to block the megaphone and sing as loudly as possible to drown out Wes. Some of them even tried to block my camera. One organizer asked me not to amplify Wes’ voice, that this is not what this protest was about, that covering Wes’ speech was disrespectful etc. My blood started to boil and I came short of telling the wrangler to fuck off. Instead I told him that Wes was part of the story and that I found it shameful that they would not give him 10 minutes to say his piece. Wes finally gave up. That night after the screening I gave Wes the 10 minutes that the Bidder 70 protest organizers would no give him. The speech is below.

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So with that said, here are a bunch of uncollated thoughts and highlights from the last four weeks.

While driving south on Highway 1 on the way to Santa Cruz, listening to Captain Beefheart is a must.

The best gig by far has been in Portland. The energy of the crowd followed by the insurrectionist sounds of Holy!Holy!Holy! made it a night hard to top.

I’ve had screenings with as little as 12 people to as many as 150.

The best tacos so far have been in Bellingham.

I miss my friends in Vancouver.

I’ve been learning French while i drive.

The Seymores have provided me with the best mixes to listen to while I’m driving.

I keep getting inspired by the people I meet. Folks everywhere are working on projects for the betterment of their communities.

Social spaces have to be one of the most important projects people need to work on. If it wasn’t for these, I would have not screened my film in half the places I’ve visited so far.

During a San Francisco screening, the crowd yelled in unison: “Hey Frank, how the fuck are you?” Blew my mind.

The road can be very lonely. I’ve cried a few times.

The road also provides time and space for deep reflection.

I hate driving.

I love driving.

I love tacos.