Miley Cyrus' new radical video

Look, I know what most people are thinking already. I know many people's first instinct is to not care that Hannah Montana is on the side of Occupy Wall Street protesters. But, I actually think this is a pretty big deal.

I mean, this is definitely not the best sounding pop-song ever, and the lyrics are very simple, but the video to this song, ("Liberty Walk"), is fuck'n great!

First of all, the video starts with these words: "This is dedicated to the thousands of people who are standing up for what they believe in..." How can you be against that?

Secondly, the video is nothing but footage from recent protests from all over the world, of people standing up to their governments, corporate greed, and even capitalism. Most of the footage is actually of the Occupy protests around the U.S. (like New York, Oakland, Davis and other cities).

Obviously, Miley's image has been very well crafted by Disney to make them millions, so it's astonishing to me that she's been allowed to make a pro-protest song, and even more that the video contains footage that exposes police brutality. If anything, this video is worth tripping out on. (The last final seconds are very nice).

Original source: Dangerous Minds

Tom Morello at OccupyLA

The LA Weekly's West Coast Sound blog had a good piece today about Tom Morello's recent visit to Occupy LA this past weekend. He was there performing as The Nightwatchman on Saturday as part of a music festival to celebrate the one-week occupation of City Hall.

The author of the post mostly gets into the role of music in protest -- specifically in this Occupy movement that started in Wall Street (NYC) and has spread to hundreds of towns in cities and towns across the nation. (The Nightwatchman is also set to perform at OccupyWallStreet tomorrow).

Morello had some great lines in the interview, like: "I think that music's combination of harmony, rhyme, truth and groove speaks to the reptilian brain of human, in a way that's different from the written or spoken word...Check the historical record -- you don't win unless you've got an excellent soundtrack."

There were many other musicians at the festival, but Morello was probably the most popular. (In fact there has been a lot of cool bands playing at OccupyLA since day one and I hope to blog more about these bands next week).

Here are links to a few official videos from the Occupy LA media team: The Nightwatchman performing Maximum Firepower and Worldwide Rebel Song.

By the way, Morello has been pretty busy lately. He had a new Nightwatchman album recently released, and today was the official release of the first issue of a comic book he is writing, (which I hope to review soon)!

Poets Also Occupy Wall Street

The mainstream media is going out of their way to make sure you haven't heard about a movement going on in New York City called Occupy Wall Street, but that has been slowly changing. And, although I don't see this movement as a revolutionary movement, I do think it's a great thing that is going on and it could lead to some very interesting things!

The other day, I was very excited to find out that poetry has now become a part of the #OccupyWallStreet movement. They started a poetry page on Facebook and it seems like they are organizing events and even established a Poetry Corner at Liberty Plaza where many people are camping out (for 12 straight days now).

Below is one of the short statements they have posted up:

"The poetry corner is now open on the northeast corner of the park. It is a public, democratic site. Anyone can organize a reading or event there as long as it is done through consensus with those present. This is leaderless movement. We would like to be the community we seek. Please respect everyone through the use of a vote. Ask for permission from others to speak. Listen to one another. Let everyone’s voice be heard. In doing so, we’ll perform not only poetry but true, participatory democracy."

Original Source: Harriet Blog