8/13/06
by Allen Lang
At the beginning of this summer, World Can’t Wait joined Van’s Warped Tour as part of the efforts to mobilize for a national day of resistance planned for October 5th. The tour brought World Can’t Wait organizers around the country for three months and had a transformative effect; both for the organizers and the people they met on the road.
The image of the world engulfed in flames featured in a new full page ad The World Can’t Wait placed in the New York Times this past week profoundly captures the moment humanity is facing and underscores the urgency for the resistance of millions. Would you have predicted- or tolerated- the defining moments of this past summer, five years ago? The U.S. has given Israel the green light to destroy Lebanon, brutal massacres like the one in Haditha have brought home the realities of the U.S occupation of Iraq, and Howard Dean is bowing down before Pat Robertson declaring “The Democratic Party platform from 2004 says that marriage is between a man and a woman.” Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” has become a national phenomenon and artists like Pink and Neil Young belt out anthems condemning the President and his policies.
There’s something happening here.
Earlier this June, a van full of youth left right off of a World Can’t Wait student activist training session to travel with nearly all of the Van’s Warped Tour dates and mobilize for the National Day of Resistance planned for October 5th. These youth were fairly new to political organizing, and brand new to World Can’t Wait, yet they leaped into the tour’s break-neck pace and learned how to mobilize along the way. This is how history is made.
What if I don’t want anything to do with their system? And if I refuse to give myself to the beast that’s brought death to millions, killed of countless cultures and raped my earth. If I denounce the system does it make a difference?
-from Against Me!’s “Does It Make A Difference?”
The politically charged lyrics of the band Against Me! was met with an enthustastic response by this year’s warped tour crowd and their cheers echoed the importance of World Can’t Wait deciding to travel with the tour over the course of the summer. The Van’s Warped Tour has been bringing punk rock music and the “punk ethic” to dozens of cities for over a decade. The tour reaches 500,000 people and showcases a revolving line-up of 100 bands. Warped Tour has drew mixed opinions from fans and critics who view it as symbol of Punk Rock compromising its underground integrity for a wider, mainstream audience. However, at a time when the Bush Regime is destroying the planet and creating an intimidating atmosphere of blind patriotism, the critically rebellious spirit of bands like NOFX and Against Me! is needed more than ever-especially right now, millions need to hear what these bands have to say, and millions need to be introduced to World Can’t Wait and it’s Call to Drive out the Bush Regime.
The World Can’t Wait Crew
World Can’t Wait organizers are no strangers to the Punk scene. The World Can’t Wait activists currently on the tour have repeatedly found refuge from small town boredom in local Punk communities in the past, and have also formed bands of their own. I had the chance to catch up with Mike [an organizer on the tour] who described his hometown; “It’s basically an unemployment ghetto. A lot of people lost their jobs when a TV factory shut down. The only thing that really keeps it alive is Indiana’s Wesleyan University (a private, conservative Christian University). Budweiser was going to open a plant, but Indiana Wesleyan put an end to that–no way were they going to allow a brewery to open up near a college that is supposed to be a training grounds for Christian fundamentalist values, even if it would produce 5,000 jobs. There’s not a lot for kids except drugs, stuff like meth.” This is the living reality of a town where 25% of the population lives below the poverty line.
The tour brought the World Can’t Wait crew all around the country, over the course of three months. Organizers even got a chance to visit Tijuana on a day off while they were in Southern California.
“I have never seen anything like Tijuana”I think we were directed away from the tourist parts of town. There were people living on top of each other, kids packed into in little shacks and fires pouring out of rusted barrels. It was weird to be in Mexico, on the border, a place where everyone from back home complains all the jobs went to, and then to see what it was like first hand was eye-opening.” – Joe, World Can’t Wait organizer
At the Table
Day after day, town after town, World Can’t Wait organizers tabled in the Take Action tent; distributing thousands of calls, organizing kits, signing up people to be part of this movement, and then packing up and moving on to the next town. Denver, Dallas, L.A, Atlanta, Charlotte, Cleveland”They developed skits to draw overwhelmed crowds over to their table and created a survey to learn more about the people signing up for the e-list. Despite working with a shoe-string budget, the four organizers determinedly sold stickers and t-shirts to make it from one town to the next.
Most of the kids who go to see the Warped Tour are in High School or are just starting college. The war in Iraq was a burning issue for this generation. Many people we met knew someone in the military–some were even in the military–and virtually everyone had an opinion on the war. The war was illegitimate in the eyes of tens of thousands of concert-goers, but there was a lot of confusion about why the U.S was really in Iraq. “They wouldn’t go through all of this just for oil, there has to be more to it than that” remarked a youth at the New York show. There was even greater questioning and outright anger over Israel’s massive bombing campaign and possibility of a World War III. Why is the U.S in Iraq and why are they willing to risk so much? Confusion does swirl around these issues if one were to look at them through the lens of the U.S engaged in a ” War on Terror”, or even a war for oil. The reality is the U.S. has launched a war for empire and this war is part of a larger agenda of torture, theocracy, the destruction of the environment and a culture of bigotry that constitutes a facisitic remake of society.
“I think it’s also important to keep the perspective that the United States has been bombing Iraq for twelve years now”.People are really hungry to hear dialogue about it and to hear something more than CNN has to say. So I think there definitely is a receptive ear to that…”
-Warren Oakes from Against Me! ( from www.inpunkwetrust.com)
The war has hit home for this generation, as many have come of age in a time of war with no end. The pre-911 world is a faint history for millions of youth who have spent nearly all of their high school careers witnessing their government launch illegal wars around the planet and living under a regime dragging the country towards fascism. Surely, this generation must be a force that galvanizes millions of people to break out of the current political confines paralyzing people from moving on their deep felt hatred for this administration, pushing them into the streets in massive protest.
A New Road
As the Warped Tour concludes, World Can’t Wait organizers are planning to stay on the road and launch a mini-Bus Tour that travels through Indiana. The Warped Tour crew are only a handful in the huge reservoir of people outraged by the crimes of the Bush Regime and fed up with the Democrats” capitulation. The difference is they came into contact with this movement, and have since thrown their lives into its goals of driving the Bush Regime out of office.
With the 2006 elections less than three months away, the country will reach another fork in the road. Given the current framework, voters will be forced to choose between the Republican or Democrat road; which can be boiled down to either: Facisism or Facisim-lite. Are these the only paths we must settle for? NO! A movement from below must and can blaze a new path- one that refuses to compromise with war criminals and theocrats and acts with the moral certitude needed to move millions of people on to this new path. With less than two months away from the planned demonstrations on October 5th, we all need to be urgently carving a new path and begin looking forward to a different future.