Lose the Label
A Student Activist Community

posted by jakethorn on April 11, 2007 - 10:09pm

Tags:

• ACT07
• activism
• antiwar concert tour 07
• Iraq

This is just an idea. Please give feedback. It’s not possible to make it happen without massive outside help, but I think it’s good enough to warrant further development.

What if there was a massive concert tour to stop the war? What if it was even more than just music? What if the concerts were tied in with citywide protests and strikes? What if the musicians walked with the protesters?

Like I said, just an idea, but me and some other antiwar activists have been talking about it for a couple weeks now and have a rough concept of what we’d like to see.

The concerts should have a radically different format than others because most benefit/awareness concerts and tours are politically useless lovefests where a bunch of people get together, listen to music and feel good but accomplish nothing.

To solve this, we propose having concerts tied in with protests and citywide strikes. So people ditch work, then go to a concert (possibly at midday), and then take to the streets. This could mean 12:00 concerts at large parks, then stopping the music and massing everyone and walking. Or maybe the stages could go silent one at a time, the musicians jump down and lead their crowd onto the streets.

More people will participate if the musicians walk with the protesters. It’s something that to our knowledge hasn’t happened in our lifetimes (the “we” I keep referring to are mostly under 25). So approachable artists are preferable big-name artists; if an artist is too scared to walk without a security detail, this isn’t the gig for them.

As for how to organize it, our plan is to spread the idea as far and wide as possible (read: INTERNET) so people who’re interested will pick it up and make it happen. In theory, musicians and music industry people who’ve put on tours like this before handle the travel details. National organizers focused on moving the bands would work with local antiwar groups to secure venues, permits, and figure out logistics. Funds are raised via the netroots and then possibly bigger donors as they hear about it.

The objective is to bluntly pressure Bush to stop the war. If cities shut down one by one, he’d have little choice but to admit that the American people are deadset against his policy; it would graphically, explicitly demonstrate what public opinion polls have been saying for years now. But the antiwar groups, musicians, financial backers and other heavy lifters would ultimately articulate the objective.

It would be awesome if the tour ended with an occupation of the National Mall.

Other notes:

• Late summer is a good time.
• It’d be good to have artists from many genres represented to attract people from different walks of life.
• Good headliners for the tour would be Ani DiFranco, Rage Against the Machine, Immortal Technique, Willie Nelson or Neil Young. Other appropriate bands could be Bad Religion, Fugazi, the Black Keys, Kings of Leon, Dixie Chicks, Cold Duck Complex, Regina Spektor, NOFX, Dave Matthews Band, Radiohead or Pink. This part is very fluid.
• Could incorporate black armbands into the idea.
• If the strike aspect is embraced, there should be other programming to keep people engaged. Should be left up to local groups to decide.
• Lose the Label members can help with any of this but the logistics are so daunting that at some stage we'll probably fade into the background.
• It the troops come home, everything is happily canceled.

Alternate ideas (either “instead,” or possibly “in addition to”):

• Planning an entire week of events leading up to a single big protest/concert.
• We could use college campuses for venues.
• Simultaneous concerts in lots of places united under a common antiwar banner, possibly converting already-planned concerts.