Friday I went with a few of my friends to a peace rally/poetry reading in Columbus, Ohio. I am from Southern Indiana so it's kind of funny to be traveling all that way for a rally when we could have easily found something just as radical at Indiana University in Bloomington.
The whole reason for this trip was so my friends could play in their band Taft at the rally. Although I went to hear Taft and the Broken Hip (formerly the band Webbed Feet) rock out on a few tunes, I came back with a different message entirely.
There wasn't a big turnout for this event and that surprised me because Ohio State University is located there and the campus is huge. There were probably only 20 people at the rally including my group of six.
The event started off with a strange bearded fellow doing spoken word about his experience at an event where a group of activists tried to imitate what it would be like to live in an internment camp. It was an extremely moving piece titled "Wounded Knee."
Next came the band Taft, named for an obsession my friends have with the obese former United States president. The group played three songs about its anti-war beliefs and dislike for the government. The band's set was fantastic, but too short.
After that, another man came up to do a spoken-word piece about his stance on guns and his experience in the Army. The band played a song that sounded a lot like Tool's "Sober" in the background, which really set the mood.
The man proceeded to give statistics on how many people die from guns per year and also how he was shot in his neighborhood three times but was lucky enough not to be killed.
I believe this was the best part of the evening because his message was realistic and had a specific stance. He simply believes guns should not be a part of everyday life and that government policies should be created to get rid of guns on the streets.
He didn't try to force his message down our throats or ask us to chant "Down with guns." He just wanted to give us some facts and back up his points with his real-life experiences. I enjoyed his piece very much.
The last act was a crazy hippie named Dave who had some radical ideas with no solutions. He is a talented folk guitarist who travels around the United States spreading his message about changing society completely.
My favorite part of his act was when he tried to get the crowd to sing the chorus to one of his songs that says we need to shut all the factories down. He then proceeded to preach to us through song about overthrowing the government, creating a new egalitarian community and then coming together to grow hemp. By that time it was all I could do not to laugh.
Don't get me wrong. I love sharing my opinions on any subject and I am happy to listen to others who do. He had some good points but no real solutions and that is the problem. Come up with some solutions, Dave, and then maybe I won't laugh at all your songs. Isn't that what activism is all about?
I promote peace and coming up with good solutions to end problems but I don't want to try and force people to believe what I believe. I just want to present facts.
If Dave wants to promote egalitarian communities he should quit singing about farming and give some facts on how that would work better than the system we have now. I just want some truthful facts.
It's like Eddie Vedder says, "All we want is the truth, just gimme some truth."
Write to Courtney at sturgeoncourtney@hotmail.com
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