Not by our hearts - will we allow whole peoples

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Not In Our Name

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Press Release

The West Coast Hip-Hop Underground takes on George W. Bush

Think back…way back. The year was 2001. A vibrant, growing underground music scene was sweeping across the West Coast. Combining hip-hop, Latin, Funk, and Spoken Word elements, bands such as Ozomatli, Blackalicious, Dilated Peoples, and The Coup were creating new music and building audiences. The L.A. Times called it “Positive Hip-Hop,” others preferred “Conscious Hip-Hop”. Whatever the moniker, the infectious new music spoke to the disaffection and rebellion roiling through their generation.
Then came September 11.

Not in our name
Will you wage endless war...

Nothing was the same. Fear, uncertainty, reaction set in. Virtually unopposed,the government began rounding up immigrants, passed draconian new laws, and launched a massive invasion of the poorest country in the world. “People should watch what they say” was the “advice” the Bush administration gave to artists, as Bill Maher and others were driven from the airwaves. “You are either with us or you are with the terrorists!” intoned the president of the United States.

...will you invade countries
bomb civilians, kill more children...

Ozomatli’s new CD, released on September 11, was buried in the patriotic onslaught, and the West Coast Hip-Hop Underground found itself struggling in the new reality. Had they become historically irrelevant?
Do they now face the choice of "Get with the program" or dissolve into oblivion? What could be done

...letting history take its course
over the graves of the nameless...

Their answer was obvious. Hold a concert! On Mother's Day, May 12, 2002, as bombs were raining down on Afghanistan and the future plans for Iraq were still a deep secret, an event took place in Hollywood that began to broach those questions. Before a sold out crowd of 1,800 at the legendary Palace theater, a disparate group of Hip-Hop, Latin Funk, Spoken Word and Visual Artists–rising stars and unknowns–created and produced what would become the first antiwar concert of the new millennium, ArtSpeaks! Not In Our Name...Not by our hearts
will we allow whole peoples

http://www.sirnosir.com/