Politics – Page 4 – The Designer Monologues

December 15, 2011

Advent of the Insurgent Creative: SOPA

I’m interrupting the Advent of the Insurgent Creative series today, folks — I’m currently spending the day following the House Judiciary Committee hearings on the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). Anybody who depends upon the Internet for digital delivery, production, reaching your audience, or getting paid for your work (in other words, any Insurgent Creative) needs to pay attention to this, because our livelihood depends upon it.

For an overview of why SOPA is a Very Bad Thing, see this comprehensive post at Techdirt.

You can watch the hearings streamed live here, and follow on Twitter via the hashtag #SOPA.

Congress legislating technology that they don’t understand, entirely at the behest of large corporations, contrary to broad-based bipartisan opposition from pretty much everyone, is an inevitable result of our culture of anti-intellectualism and the corruption of money in politics.

Any legislator who votes in favor of this has permanent lost my vote — plus I will donate and volunteer for their opponent.

If President Obama does not promise (AND follow-through) to veto #SOPA (or the Senate version, PROTECT-IP), I will withhold my vote, my time and my donations in 2012.

Enough fucking around.

Sorry for the interruption in the series, folks. I’ll make up for it with two entries tomorrow.

September 9, 2010September 9, 2010

Burning Need: A Counter-Protest

UPDATE: It’s now breaking that the nutjobs in Florida have agreed to cancel their book-burning — with some language about an apparent quid-pro-quo with the group behind the Park 51 Center agreeing to move their location, despite denials of that claim from Imam Rauf — but I’m still leaving this open. I feel that the donation to Islamic Relief USA is still merited, not just to send a message about our true values, but also because of the need for aid in Pakistan. Please feel free to join me.

By now, you’re all familiar with the story. Terry Jones, the pastor of a tiny Florida church, has garnered worldwide attention for his plan to burn more than 200 copies of the Qur’an on September 11th, 2010.

Despite universal calls for these extremists to cancel their event, Jones says that his hateful display will go on. Opposition to this event among US politicians is absolutely united and bi-partisan, with everyone from Sarah Palin to President Obama agreeing that it is counter to American ideals. Yet these small-minded fanatics are bound and determined to go ahead with their disgusting display of hatred.

So I’ve decided to do something about it.

Taking a page from the outdoor clothing company Patagonia, who in 1990 fended off anti-abortion protesters by donating money to Planned Parenthood for every person who picketed, I’ve decided to turn the extremists’ own actions against their goal.

They plan to burn 200 copies of the Qur’an. So I’ve decided that I will donate 1 dollar for each book they burn to Islamic Relief USA, to aid (among other things) relief for the flooding in Pakistan. I will make this donation on Friday, October 1st.

If you would like to add your voice to mine, please feel free to donate in any amount, no matter how small, via the button below. I will update this page regularly with the total raised to date, and on October 1st will deliver the total to Islamic Relief USA, in the name of all of us actually believe in the ideals of brotherhood and respect.

July 1, 2010July 1, 2010

Henry Rollins

Laura and I went to Liberty Hall here in Lawrence last night to catch Henry Rollins on his latest spoken-word tour (is it even really necessary to qualify “tour” with “spoken-word” for Rollins any longer? He’s pretty much stopped doing music, right?)

At 8pm, he strode out on stage, far grayer than either the tour posters or his recent stint on “Sons of Anarchy” would have you expect, wrapped the mike cord around his hand a few times, took up his familiar one-foot-forward coiled-energy pose, and proceeded to talk, non-stop, for three hours straight. Without so much as a pause or a single sip of water.

He bounced from topic to topic, largely sticking to his recent experiences in filming “Sons of Anarchy” and then the 3-month travel stint that followed the filming and immediately preceded this tour, which took him around the world, from Saudi Arabia to India to Sri Lanka to Mali and more. He briefly touched on current events (Not to expect BP to have to pay any real consequence for the Gulf disaster because, as he pointed out, Union Carbide pretty much got away with killing 12,000 Indians in the 80s), American politics (“Barack Obama speaks in perfect 12-point Helvetica.”), and even our local shame, the funeral-picketing “God Hates Fags” Phelps clan (“The best way to defeat them is to give their kids a Ramones album.”).

All the while, he spoke of “staring down the barrel of 50” — Rollins is 8 years my senior, and I found a lot of his commentary around aging particularly topical for me (“I was creaking and popping in places that I will now creak and pop for the rest of my life — because at this age, those injuries? You get to keep those.”).

The night was fascinating, not just for the narrative (I mean, who doesn’t love a story of flipping off Burmese dictator Than Shwey to his face?), but for a look at the mental processes of a fellow creative who thrives when he’s busy and gets bored and depressed when he’s not.

Really excellent show — if you get a chance, go see him.