By Anne Ream and R. Clifton Spargo
Saul Alinsky was right.
The late Chicago community organizer wrote in “Rules for Radicals”—a user’s manual for those seeking to overturn the status quo—that when it comes to social movements, “it doesn’t matter what you know about anything if you cannot communicate it to your people.” In the absence of a clear message, “you’re not even a failure,” Alinsky warned. “You’re just not there.”
Apt advice, perhaps, for Occupy Wall Street. Buoyed by a growing public consensus that our economic system was either broken or perhaps built from the start to take from the many to benefit the few, the Occupy movement had history and hope on its side. What critics on the left and right soon asserted it didn’t have was a consistent message. Movement organizers have variously called for an end to wealth inequality, capital punishment, police intimidation, corporate censorship, joblessness, meat-eating, American imperialism, war and most recently and perhaps perplexingly, the art world’s Whitney Biennial. When reliably liberal publications such as Mother Jones note that the Occupy movement “lacks focus” and takes too much of a “kitchen sink approach,” we sit up and take notice.
To the rescue rock ‘n’ roll? Sure, rock itself has often been characterized as rebellion without focus. But there’s a time-honored tradition of protest music written into that history of rebellion, and it’s laid down the backbeat for some of the last half century’s most powerful social movements. So, a humble suggestion for the Occupy movement: fine-tune the message and keep the focus on a system that serves the 1% to the detriment of the 99%. In that spirit, we’ve mined the protest canon for its greatest anti-capitalist anthems. Part populist rallying cries, part odes of sorrow for a system serving the few rather than the many, these songs have never felt more urgent—or more necessary—than they do right now. Read the rest of this entry »
43. Styrofoam, “A Short Album About Murder” (Morr Music, 2001)
Driving eighteen hours and 1,200 miles from Chicago to Austin, Texas for the annual mayhem that’s the South by Southwest music festival seemed like an insane idea. Since I’d procrastinated on purchasing a plane ticket a few weeks ago, the price had reached an implausible amount. I’d never been to the fest and wasn’t going to let money hinder me from experiencing one of the greatest musical weekends of my life. With our iPods fully loaded, I, my boyfriend and our French-Canadian friend depart Chicago in the middle of the night and head southwest. During the expedition, we escape a speeding ticket, experience the surprising beauty of Arkansas, drive through the R.E.M.-inspiring city of Texarkana and eat dreadful fast food at Bush’s Chicken. At 3pm, we arrive in warm and verdant Austin. Spring has definitely sprung in The Lone Star State. I can’t stop thinking about the scene in “Pee Wee’s Big Adventure” when Pee Wee incites the Texans to sing “Deep in the Heart of Texas.” 
It’s 2pm outside of Los Angeles, and Sam Spiegel, aka Squeak E. Clean, is cruising down the freeway after a late breakfast with his girlfriend. “Late night, actually,” he explains. “We went out, had some drinks and got wild.” You can’t blame the guy for feeling a bit celebratory. After all, his new NASA project with buddy DJ Zegon (Ze Gonzales) has just released its debut album, “The Spirit of Apollo,” after five-plus years of conceptualizing, collaborating and recording.