Spirit in Action
David Rovics - Music for Social Justice
David Rovics is a perpetual activist energy machine with his music, calling attention to the problems that need addressing and recognizing the successes of those working for social justice. He tours extensively in the US and Europe, and occasionally to the Middle East and beyond.
- Broadcast on:
- 09 Feb 2008
- Audio Format:
- other
[music] ♪ Let us sing this song for the healing of the world ♪ ♪ That we may hear as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ ♪ And our lives will feel the echo of our healing ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpsmeat. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service. Hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred fruit in your own life. ♪ Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world ♪ ♪ That we may dream as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ Today for Spirit in Action, I'm pleased to welcome as my guest singer-songwriter David Rovicks. If this progressive cause or notable advance for the people of the globe, David is likely to address it with one of his songs. You can count on David Rovicks to use his music to take to task those who are abusing power or shirking their duties and to champion those who are working for the common good. David Rovicks is joining us today from his home in Portland, Oregon, backed up by his nearly two-year-old daughter, Leila. David, I hope I can interrupt you to take time from playtime with Leila to join me for Spirit in Action. Absolutely, as long as we don't mind Leila's participation. How old is Leila again? She'll be two at the end of this month. And you get to play father with her and be the active, involved parent fair amount of the time, don't you? Yeah, most of the time, she's with me. Her mother's going to medical school, so I go away during her vacations or occasionally line up wonderful anarchist babysitter to take care of her while I go on tour. But most of the time, I'm here with her, playing with Legos. Is an anarchist babysitter one that says no, no, no, no? Or is that just a two-year-old? Oh, no, anarchist babysitter would never say no. Much more permissive than that. No, anarchist babysitters are the best kind for sure. The punk rock anarchist babysitters, they're the most fun. Well, you're back recently from a trip over to Europe. Was there a theme or any particular issues that you were bringing up as part of that tour? Nothing really different. All over the world, there are people who are fighting for the same things, really, and an end to the U.S. Empire, some kind of international cooperation in a serious way to deal with the environment. So many crises that the capitalist world is producing all over the planet with waves of economic and environmental refugees. It's the same issues that people are working on all over the world. And then, there are questions like legalization of cannabis. Something like that has its little following everywhere. You find the same pockets of the same sorts of folks everywhere. Although, in Denmark, there are lots of very specific situations going on there that when I'm there, I'm involved with, especially the struggle for undums who sit the house of youth, which is a five-story, squatted building that existed or did exist from 1982 until last spring when the police raided it and destroyed the house. And there's been a real act of groundswell of primarily youth movement in support of this house and the people that were involved with this center, anarchist social center, basically. So there's that struggle, and there's a lot of other stuff going on in Denmark. They've got a very conservative government right now, and they've got troops in Iraq. It's not to Denmark that many days knew and loved. That is kind of strange. I guess France's government went somewhat more conservative in the election, and Denmark is this a trend in the Europe that you've seen that over these past seven years that they've gone more conservative? Yeah, absolutely. With the exception of Zapatero in Spain and many different countries in Europe, the trend has been towards more conservative governments. A lot of that has to do with fear monitoring around immigration issues, which is a major one in Europe, and misunderstandings on the parts of most Europeans about why there's so much immigration, and what are the reasons for it, and who are these people coming into their countries and changing the face of society. They're blaming the immigrants, a lot of people, and blaming sort of progressive ideas about multiculturalism and stuff, whereas really the ways of immigration are largely economic and are largely war related as well, and most of these economic situations and wars have their roots in institutions like the U.S. Treasury Department and the IMF and the World Bank, and very much including the Western European government, so it's a bit complicated, but people don't often get the big picture, and so I think that's really what's... And people are suffering, I mean, in many ways, I mean economically in Europe, they're following the same trends that the U.S. did only a few decades behind in terms of deindustrialization and rise of the service sector and all that kind of stuff. It's just not as happening as fast as it happened here, because they have more regulation. Problems with immigrants are not new. They're certainly everywhere, and we have them in the U.S., of course there's the immigration issue with respect to Mexico, but minorities in general don't get much esteem, shall we say, from the government. You wrote a song about the situation that happened in New Orleans, following Katrina or around that time. How much was our attitude towards minorities part of the neglect that happened in New Orleans? I think it was central to what happened in New Orleans. Well, I think it was looked on by the government once the floods started happening as an opportunity to change the face of New Orleans, to ethnically cleanse New Orleans, to carry out the kind of sort of neoliberal agenda that they love to carry out whenever they have the opportunity, whenever crises like Katrina or like plant layoffs or whatever can inspire them to be able to try to remake a city in their image. I think that's what they're trying to do, just make New Orleans play ground for the rich and get rid of all the inconvenient people who used to be workers who are now so much of the time have no work to do anymore, because the capitalist system doesn't need them. It's ruthless. But then, of course, I think government incompetence and the way that the whole government has been hollowed out under the Bush administration, I think that has a lot to do with that outrageously, just incompetent as well as racist response to the crisis. It's pretty clear that Layla also agrees strongly with what you said I could tell from her voice in the background. Yeah, well, she likes her play-doh and she likes the dark colored play-doh, especially so that may, you know, say something about solidarity with the oppressed people item now. You mentioned neoliberals. More commonly I hear the phrase "neol conservatives" as describing the Bush government when you're referring to neoliberals, what policies and which people are you referring to. I still have the terminology that's left over from the global justice movement. That's the term that was becoming popularized around seven years ago. But now the term is "neol conservative" and it's the same thing. It's just that everywhere else in the world and inside the global justice movement here, the term "neoliberals" is used like all over Europe and Latin America. That's the term that's understood to mean these people who are in favor of taking an advantage of crises in order to support dictatorships and overthrow democracies and basically do everything possible to increase profits for a few corporations that the against the rest of the planet. Yeah, we know those people as neoconservatives, but around the world they're known as neoliberals. And of course around the world liberal doesn't have the same connotation that it does here. Here we think of Franklin, Roosevelt and Maynard Keynes and people who are feeding the poor. But in much of the rest of the world the term liberal means somebody who favors capitalism. So complicated to speak the international language. Well, tell us a little bit more about your song "The New Orleans". I assume you must have written this sometime around the experience of Katrina. Did you actually have friends or personal experience with New Orleans? I spent quite a bit of time in New Orleans at least as much time as I've spent in most cities in the U.S. because from touring so much I certainly have visited New Orleans at least once, twice a year over the course of many years. I really loved that city and I had good friends there who also loved the city quite a bit more than I did. It was a really special place. At the time that Katrina hit I was actually at Camp Casey in Texas hanging out with Cindy Sheehan and Ryan and all kinds of other wonderful people. Then Katrina hit and then many of them decided to change their tour plans and head to New Orleans. I had a ticket to Beirut Levinan at the time so I was flying over Louisiana when it was being flooded much like Bush was. Except I wasn't. It wasn't a photo op for you. Yeah right. Weird photo op. But yeah I was on my way to Beirut and that was weird too was the irony of being in this city that's been so often destroyed by man-made disasters. Sitting in a hotel room and writing a song about a city that was also being destroyed. North snakes she wants more snakes and then of course a few months later Beirut was destroyed once again. Bye. Disaster about his man-made as Katrina was. No no no she's saying no I hurt her. I don't know which I think she's singing no but I'm not sure if it means anything in particular but she's making my duties clear. It's handing me balls of Plato and telling me to make snakes which is basically when you roll the play to make it longer. Have you performed this song New Orleans down in New Orleans actually David? Well yeah I had a gig at Tulane University that was not really promoted to where I sang for like 15 people so not really you know. I have yet to debut the song in a serious situation since Katrina hit in New Orleans although I've sung the song. So I've sung the song for many many evacuees all over the US and have gotten a lot of very positive responses. When they start crying that's always a good sign. Well I think it's maybe time to make our listeners cry. The song is New Orleans and it's by David Rovicks my guest for Spirit in Action. Everybody knew that it could happen the likelihood was clear the future was coming and now it's here. They had to fix the levees cause otherwise they'd break on one side was the city above it was the lake. It was in the daily papers in bold letters was to rip what would happen when the big one hit. But every year they cut the funding just a little more so they could give it to the army to fight their oil war. National Geographic and the times beginning they forecast the apocalypse said it was coming soon. Preparations must be made they said now is the time it was years ago they shouted in action was a crime. They said the dykes must be improved and the wetlands must be seen. But Washington decided instead they shouldn't be cause balls were more important than people's lives. So put some gold dust in your eyes and hope no storm arrives. New Orleans, New Orleans, New Orleans. Years and years of what no evacuation plan is just that the waters froze. Get out if you can there were no buses no one chartered any trees there was no plan to risk all of those with me. All the people with no money all the people with no wheels all of those who couldn't hotwire what that they could steal. Thousands and thousands of people abandoned by the state abandoned by their country just left to meet their feet. New Orleans, New Orleans, New Orleans. New Orleans, New Orleans, New Orleans, New Orleans, New Orleans, New Orleans, New Orleans, New Orleans, New Orleans, New Orleans, New Orleans, New Orleans, New Orleans, New Orleans, New Orleans, New Orleans, New Orleans, New Orleans, New Orleans, New Orleans, New Orleans, New Orleans. The people died then they died some more they frowned inside their attics than army of the poor. An army of the destitute who couldn't get away and the world will remember those sad awful days when people shouted from their houses. Dying on their roofs when people came to find them they were turned back by the Jews. They died there with no water they died there in the heat they were sucked down by the soldiers for trying to find some food. New Orleans, New Orleans, New Orleans, New Orleans. Now the city is a mass of toxic sea scattered through the nation half a million refugees here we are. In the richest country on the earth where the color of your skin determines what your life is worth. Where oil is the king where global warming is ignored where the very end of life is the place we're heading towards where it's more than just a metaphor the flooding of the dyke and if we don't stop this madness the whole world will be like. New Orleans, New Orleans, New Orleans, New Orleans, New Orleans. [Music] That was New Orleans and David Rovik's who was my guest here. David you talked about that song perhaps bringing tears to the eyes of the people in your audience. How much does it affect you that way or is it mainly with rage that you end up feeling in response to these kind of preventable disasters like New Orleans? Oh I feel all kinds of things, the full range I would say, rage, sadness, hopelessness, inspiration at the wonderful people that are doing all kinds of things in the face of these horrible challenges. Of course the tragedy and catastrophe in New Orleans gave rise to a thriving movement international involving people from all over the US, the common ground collective and the affiliated groups that have been shaking things up in New Orleans and not letting what happened happened quietly fighting against the government's closures of housing projects and all the crazy stuff that's gone on. Of course it's gone on all over the country but in New Orleans the idea of closing thousands of public housing units and when you have this crisis of housing in the city is particularly outrageous but in principle it's no different from the US going into Iraq and the first thing that you do is lay off 400,000 workers who are all in the military. I mean you go into a country that's completely economically destroyed and physically destroyed because you just did it to them and then you lay off massive percentage of the workforce, it's laughable if it weren't so depressing and outrageous. And then we give the jobs that are happening in the country to other companies like Cal Burton. You wrote a song about Halliburton and someone serving over there coming back in just the rage and sense of betrayal. When did you actually write Halliburton, boardroom massacre? I guess it was shortly before the Veterans for Peace Convention in 2005 and sort of inspired by talking with lots of returning Iraq or vets and just the irony of the people so often being involved with an organization called Veterans for Peace but they are not feeling particularly peaceful. They're really upset about being used to fight a war and kill ends in people for oil companies and they realize this and a lot of people feel inspired to take much more drastic action than peaceful protests and of course they do and so often this more drastic action comes in all kinds of indirect ways. I mean like very indirect ways you know like abusing your spouse and that sort of thing which is a massive problem in military towns. It's only a matter of time before that kind of violent energy gets combined with some kind of a political analysis that leads people to do more drastic actions like the one described in that song. It's a prediction. The song is Halliburton, boardroom massacre, a fictitious though very realistic story of someone coming back from Iraq and taking their anger out on part of the people who pull the strings in this country by David Rovicks. I joined the army when high scores threw, I didn't know what else to do. But I take care of that traveling Jones and maybe take out some student loans they sent me away to the land of the dead where I didn't know a word that they said. I got shot at a lot, I was nearly toast but it's the ones I killed that hurt the most, most of the time I didn't know what was going on. The rest of the time I knew there was something gone wrong every reason we were there turned out to be a lie. I thought at night each time I saw another person die. I was supposed to stay here, they sent me for four. By the time I got back home, no one knew me anymore. I was a man I once was, there didn't seem to be a trace when I looked me in the mirror, I didn't recognize my face, I wasn't home too long before the time that I took ill. It was like the air was thick as mud and I ain't enough to kill. I didn't know I'd been fighting in nuclear war. Do you use it my blood and I was knocking on this door, I can't tell you how it felt to be betrayed in every turn. Like the earth was spinning backwards, like my heart began to burn, like I had to do something while I still had the strength to stand while I still couldn't run with a machine in my hand. I saw an aliper at the military press and the things they get away with all four they're really classed, but I'm not a pod and I can't just let it be. If I'm gonna die, I'm gonna take some of them fuckers with me. I'll spare you the details. I think what I have to do, there's a border alone to hell and soon I will be too. You can say I lost it, you can say that I'm insane, but me no one ever say that my death was in pain. Before the army, when high school was through, I didn't know what else to do. You mentioned, David, that at the Vet for Peace Convention, there were a number of people there who had been to Iraq. Did I get that right? Yeah, the Iraq veterans against the war are very active in the Vet for Peace now. What kind of numbers are we talking about involved in veterans from the Iraqi war who have become anti-war advocates? Is it 5 or is it 200 or is it 10,000? Well, in terms of the veterans who have become anti-war advocates in one way or another, I'd say it's a large minority, if not a majority of people who have been over there, I'd say it's certainly a majority of combat veterans. In terms of the number of people active with Iraq vets against the war, at the Vet for Peace Convention, I'd say there's usually a couple dozen folks from IVAW, but that means they travel there from different parts of the country, so there's many more each for each one of those. You wrote a song about something that happened in Mexico when we were at war with Mexico. A lot of people don't realize how Texas was originally connected with Mexico and how it took it from them. There have been a lot of incursions into Mexico over our long history. So tell us about the St. Patrick Battalion and what the actual historical basis of this is. The St. Patrick Battalion was a real thing, and it was just around the time of the potato famine, though I guess just before the potato famine in Ireland, you know, during time when to be Irish meant to be a slave to face starvation and live a brutally short life. And they were part of that massive wave of immigration to the U.S., and they got to the U.S., and they were told that they had to join the U.S. Army and go invade a poor Catholic country called Mexico. They got there, and they thought, "Oh, this looks awfully familiar, except we're on the wrong side here," and they were also suffering from all kinds of abuse and discrimination for being Irish and for being Catholic in a predominantly Protestant and non-Irish military. And they, 200, two of them, deserted from the U.S. Army, but they formed a battalion, and they joined the Mexican Army. It became the Mexican Army's only foreign legion. They had their own flag, and they were talked about a lot in Mexico at the time because it was a great propaganda tool to try to inspire the Mexican people to resist the U.S. invasion. And to say, "Hey, look at these people who have joined us voluntarily, unlike the rest of you, Slavs who are joining the military because of the draft." I think for our listeners, we're going to remind them, we're talking with David Rovicks, and we're listening also to his daughter, Leila, who's almost two years old, who really wants to be part of the conversation with Plato and Legosa as her weapons of choice, I think. Yeah, and the song, she's singing a lot as we're talking. I think we should listen to St. Patrick Battalion play it for our listeners and for Leila, and see how much we all enjoy a really powerful glimpse of something that happened in the history of the U.S. and its relations with Mexico, St. Patrick Battalion by David Rovicks. Give me a T. Give me an R. Give me an E. Give me an A. Give me a S. Give me an O. Give me an N. What's that spell? What's that spell? One more time. You're all going to get arrested. My name is John Riley. I'll have your ear only a while. I left my dear home in Ireland. It was death, starvation, or exile. When I got to America, it was my duty to go. Enter the army and slog across Texas to join in the war against Mexico. And it was there in the Pueblos and hillsides that I saw the mistake I had made. Part of a conquering army with the morals of a bayonet blade. And there amidst all these poor dying Catholics, screaming children, the burning stench of it all. Myself and 200 Irishmen decided to rise to the call from Dublin City to San Diego. We witnessed freedom denied, so we formed the St. Patrick Battalion, and we fought on the Mexican side. We formed the St. Patrick Battalion, and we fought on the Mexican side. We marched beneath the green flag of St. Patrick, emblazoned with erring old bra. Right with the harp and the shamrock and libertad para mejicada. Just 50 years after Wolfton, 5,000 miles away, the yanks called us a legion of strangers. And they can talk as they may, but from Dublin City to San Diego. We witnessed freedom denied, so we formed the St. Patrick Battalion, and we fought on the Mexican side. We formed the St. Patrick Battalion, and we fought on the Mexican side. We fought them in mathematical models, where their volunteers were reaping the nuns. In Monterey and Cerro Gordo, we fought on as Ireland's sons. We were the red-headed fighters for freedom. Amidst these brown-skinned women and men, side by side, we fought against tyranny. And I dare say we'd do it again, from Dublin City to San Diego. We witnessed freedom denied, so we formed the St. Patrick Battalion, and we fought on the Mexican side. We formed the St. Patrick Battalion, and we fought on the Mexican side. [music] We fought them in five major battles. Chudobo Sko was the last, overwhelmed by the cannons from Boston. We fell after each mortar blast. Most of us died on that hillside, in the service of the Mexican state. So far from our occupied homeland, we were heroes and victims of fate. From Dublin City to San Diego. We witnessed freedom denied, so we formed the St. Patrick Battalion, and we fought on the Mexican side. From Dublin City to San Diego. We witnessed freedom denied, so we formed the St. Patrick Battalion, and we fought on the Mexican side. We formed the St. Patrick Battalion, and we fought on the Mexican side. [applause] David, you told me in song of song of interview that I did with you recently, that your mother's Quaker and pacifist. This last song, the St. Patrick Battalion, while very validly pointing out the injustice of our incursion into Mexico, it then glorifies the military on the other side as long as you're fighting for the other side. How do you feel about that? I mean, I always think we're on questionable ground when we glorify militarism of any sort. Well, you're a pacifist, I imagine. If you're a Quaker, you're probably a pacifist, right? That's certainly my stance, yes. Right, right. I think the people that are of the opinion, which is often the face-based thing, I think that the only solution is violent revolution and stuff. I think these people are really misguided because, actually, reality is much more complex than that. There's all kinds of different strategies that can lead things forward, including nonviolent resistance, including electoral politics. But I think while violence is full of all kinds of basic inherent problems, it's also true that around the world in so many different situations, some element of violence within social movements or rebellions that have moved things forward for a lot of people, there's often been some element of violence involved. And I would certainly not be one to condemn anyone using any kind of a violent strategy of resistance, because if people feel like this is the only way that's going to lift people out of poverty and be able to take on the oppressive forces that are arrayed against them, I think in many cases, they're probably right. I mean, Ulo Chavez, for example, came to power by being elected, but he came to the public attention by attempting a left-wing military coup that did not result in many people dying by coup standards, certainly not by revolution standards. Certainly people died, and certainly there was violence and the threat of violence involved with his rise to popularity, though not necessarily to his rise to power, which actually came about through nonviolent electoral means, but I think it's great that he tried to launch a left-wing coup against the dictatorship years before that. I think that's perfectly reasonable response to the situation that most Venezuelans are facing. But certainly I think a nonviolent mass movement of civil disobedience could have been also a good response, and perhaps it would have brought things forward, too. I don't know. I don't feel like I'm one to say, really, because it's easy and sensible in a lot of ways to have certain kinds of principles, but it's kind of tough to kind of remove all the cards from the table when you're talking about the lives of life on Earth, basically, that's at stake here. Are we going to be able to save life on Earth through nonviolent civil disobedience? I hope so. But if preventing the destruction of life on Earth, which is what we're facing now, if that might require other means of resistance, then I think that they should be sported. So is it fair to say, David, that you are not a pacifist, although you'd prefer that? How would you describe your position? Yeah, I'm not a pacifist. I'm not a violentist either, but I'm not a pacifist. Where do you think you get your values from? What are the basic principles that guide you the source of your values? I don't know if it's any one thing in particular, but I think just having my eyes open and living on Earth and looking around and reading and writing and talking with people, certainly there's been a lot of different thinkers and writers and people in my life who have had a lot of influence on my thinking. When people are struggling and people are making such huge sacrifices and especially when they're actually making progress, this kind of thing is inspiring and the Zapatistas, Hugo Chavez, Carl Marx certainly has lots of different inspiration. You've got another song for us, because really what you do is you go around and you sing, and you sing an awful lot of songs that are about struggle. Troubles are happening and we need some solutions. We need to change policy. You've got any other songs of that sort that you care to share with our listeners today, David? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's certainly a popular theme for me, and I like to try to write songs about inspiring social movements or situations like Hugo Chavez coming to power. I think it's really important to also talk about those kinds of things, and I probably should have included a song like that in this list of depressing songs that I've come up for you. But waiting for the fall is about the occupation in Iraq and it was specifically inspired by a wonderful article by Robert Fisk, who's just a spectacular journalist and author, and he wrote an article I was reading and talking about comparisons between being the US occupation in the green zone of Baghdad and the Crusaders, however long ago that was, who were also in Baghdad, and the similarities where the Crusaders were inside their castles and looking out at the population through turrets, whereas the US, its machine vents, but there's also hiding inside their little fortress and looking at it, their population in fear. And he was saying, "Well, everybody in Iraq is just wondering, when is this and then it fall apart?" A helicopter missiles launch, ground rumbles, apartment complex shakes, just before it crumbles, children scream and die wrong, time wrong, please. A woman wears a shawl that hides a scar upon her face, a boy looks into a pool of blood, praises him day, when the armies of the infidels will once more goldenly, and everybody's just waiting for the fall outside the green zone through the machine gun turrets on the other side of the wall. A white spot again, the sizz swelters in the heat, a thousand ghosts are weeping, amid the pockmarked street, no food in the market, you can't regrain and you can't sow, a no man's land, the red cross, doesn't dare to go, a soldier shoots at everything packed in like the master race, all the while wondering, what he's doing in this place, where everybody's just waiting for the fall outside the green zone through the machine gun turrets on the other side of the wall. No gas in the gas tanks, lines of my alarm, a nation turned a rubble, where everything's gone wrong, death squads roam the alleys, looking for the eye of anyone that dares to see, a lie is just a lie. The torturers are torturing in a prison cell, flushing corns down the toilet, sitting all praise me to shell, and everybody's just waiting for the fall outside the green zone through the machine gun turrets on the other side of the wall. [MUSIC PLAYING] Humping fires, someone fires back, a sound that lets you know you're somewhere in Iraq, a surgeon's with no medicine, wonder what to do and ask how things might be, if the outside world knew it, and ivory tower in Texas, they're toasting the new gear, not knowing there's a country far away from here, where everybody's just waiting for the fall outside the green zone through the machine gun turrets on the other side of the wall. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] That was David Rovik's song, Waiting for the Fall. David is my guest today for Spirit and Action. I'm your host, Mark Helps-Meet of Northern Spirit Radio, coming to you from Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Back to the phone now to singer-songwriter David Rovik, accompanied by his two-year-old daughter, Leila, for this Spirit in Action interview. Do you have any values or goals which you consider to be kind of the absolute thing to be pursued? I think there's so many things that so many people can pursue that are valuable, but it seems to me that the biggest crisis on the planet today is whether humans are actually going to be able to survive as a species. And to me, that seems to be really tied into the whole question of whether a few corporations are going to be able to run the world for their profits or whether there's going to be a flourishing of democracy, real people's control of their economies and political realities around the world. The conflict around the world is basically between dictatorship and democracy, and I'm for democracy, and I think we need democracy. The people need to be able to have control over the fate of their countries and the world. That means fighting against the power of the multinational corporations. That's the enemy. I'd say that's where I'm at. I want humanity to survive. I think people are beautiful and life on Earth is beautiful. I love it, and I really can't stand the fact that a few extremely rich people have created an economic system that makes the destruction of life on Earth inevitable if they allow it to continue. Since that's happening all over the United States, it's obvious that those kinds of influences have to be present in the Middle East, too. We've watched a sorrowful situation unfold for many decades, particularly in Palestine and Israel and that area. You wrote Janine about that. What do you think are the influences causing this situation to be so intractable to cause the suffering to go on for so many decades? I hate to say it's complicated because that's what everybody says about it, but in some sense it is complicated because, of course, you're talking about a country, Israel, which is largely populated by people who are survivors of the most horrendous trauma that's ever been inflicted upon anybody. The Holocaust, which, of course, Palestinians had nothing to do with, but here they are, all these trauma survivors, all these people with post-traumatic stress disorder who are trying to run a country, and then they are faced with this situation that the people that founded their country did so by burning down Palestinian villages and driving them out, and then they're lying to everybody about what happened. And many people don't actually know all the details about what happened. There's a lot of real effective brainwashing that goes on. The situation, what it is, if you back up and take an overview of it, what the situation is, is a colonizing movement from Europe, predominantly people invaded the Middle East. They kicked out the indigenous inhabitants and they created what is essentially a colony of the West, and it's its own country. It's sovereign, too, but that's its origins. That's the origins of the Zionist movement. It wouldn't have been able to happen without the Holocaust, so that's in a way a real complicating factor, because you can't just blame Zionist for Zionism. You have to also blame fascism for Zionism, and you have to blame U.S. inaction during the Holocaust. But what it is is an occupation of somebody else's land, and it's going to be a cause of all kinds of horrors, and strife, and wars, and bloodshed, and broken hearts until there's an equitable solution, which has got to be a solution that gives Palestinians either their own country or equal rights in a country that's not a Jewish-run country, but is a democratic, multi-religious country, not with Jews having privilege over everybody else. You wrote about a specific event, a specific place in this conflict in the Middle East, Janine. Tell our listeners what happened there, and of course you're going to sing about it in just a moment, too, but tell them about what you know about that experience. I don't want to describe exactly what the song's about, better if we just hear it, but in terms of the background to it, it was written soon after Israel invaded many of different towns in the West Bank, including Janine. And in Janine, they killed dozens of people, and bulldozed about a quarter of the refugee camp, completely destroying thousands of homes, and there was also a very militant resistance against the Israeli invasion at the time, which was particularly successful in Janine. By resistance standards anyway. There's an awful lot of children there, and this song by David Rovik's is addressed to the children of Janine. It is called Janine by David Rovik's. ♪ ♪ Child, what will you remember ♪ ♪ When you recall your 16th year ♪ ♪ The horrid sound of helicopter gunships ♪ ♪ The rumble of the tanks is they drew near ♪ ♪ As the world went about its business ♪ ♪ And I burned another tank of gasoline ♪ ♪ Dow Jones lost a couple of points that day ♪ ♪ Did they even give your parents warning ♪ ♪ Before they blew the windows out with shells ♪ ♪ While you hid inside the high school basement ♪ ♪ Amidst the ringing of church bells ♪ ♪ As you watched your teacher crumpled by the doorway ♪ ♪ And in England they were toasting to the queen ♪ ♪ They were so far from the thoughts of so many ♪ ♪ Puddled in the sea of Janine ♪ ♪ Were you thinking of the taunting of the soldiers ♪ ♪ Or of the shit they smeared upon the walls ♪ ♪ Were you thinking of your cousin after torture ♪ ♪ Or Tel Aviv and its glittering shopping malls ♪ ♪ When the fat men in their mansion say that you don't want peace ♪ ♪ Did you wonder what they mean ♪ ♪ As you saw amidst the stench inside the darkness ♪ ♪ In the shattered city of Janine ♪ ♪ What went through your mind on that day ♪ ♪ At the sight of your mother's vacant eyes ♪ ♪ As she lay still among the rubble ♪ ♪ Beneath the blue, middle eastern skies ♪ ♪ As you stood upon this bulldoze building ♪ ♪ Beside the settlements and their hills so green ♪ ♪ As your tears gave way to grand determination ♪ ♪ Amidst the ruins of the city of Janine ♪ ♪ Then why should anybody wonder ♪ ♪ As you stepped on board ♪ ♪ The crowded bus across the green line ♪ ♪ When you reached inside your jacket for the cord ♪ ♪ Were you thinking of your neighbor's buried bodies ♪ ♪ As you made the stage for the scene ♪ ♪ As you set off the explosives that were strapped around your waist ♪ ♪ Were you thinking of the city of Janine ♪ That was Janine to the children of Palestine. And we've got a child right there over in Portland where you're loving. She's pretty enthused about all this music, isn't she? Yeah, she likes the music for sure. She likes music. Yeah, she sings. Now she's decided she wants to play with my telephone, so that might be... Hopefully I can distract her with something else. Have you actually done any concerts over in the Middle East? Yes, in 2005 when Katrina hit, like we were talking about I flew to Beirut and had a really wonderful week in Beirut being shown around by a friend of mine, played a concert there, and then went to Amman and did a concert there, spent a few days there, and then spent a couple of weeks in the West Bank. And I did about 10 concerts in different towns all over the West Bank, and one in Israel as well. What is your reading on the people there? I assume you've also had contact with a number of Israelis. Of course, half my family's Jewish, and so I've known lots of Israelis. But I also visited Israel years before I ever visited anywhere else in the Middle East. Well, David, I think we better let you get back to interacting with Leila. Of course, maybe it's nap time, too. I don't know if she seems to be running down. It's so wonderful that you could take the time to be with us and go around energizing people in the U.S. and Europe and Middle East. Have you got any big journeys out into the world planned anywhere in the near future? Well, next month I'll be playing in Missouri, Texas, New Mexico, and in March I'll be going to Japan. People should probably just go to your website to check that out, DavidRovics.com. Mm-hmm. Thanks again for joining us, David, and giving me energy up for so many good people in the world. Thank you, Mark. Keep it up. Well, I've hung up the phone on David Rovics, but it appears I still have several minutes which I could fill with some more of David's music. So I think that's what I'll do. One of the things David does with his music is to let us know about some of the alternative heroes who haven't or won't make it into our history books. So I thought I'd add a couple to the St. Patrick Battalion song that you've already heard. Let's start with one about a woman championed by some, much maligned by others. Here is a song for Cindy Sheehan by David Rovics. Casey was a good boy. He treated people well. His mom allowed him. Anyone could tell. She'd send him off to school, pack his lunch with care, and when he came back home, she hugged him, with her fingers and his hair. Cindy, she loved Casey, and when all is said and done, she's every mother, and he was every mother. Casey was a little older. He spent his time each week in that church back in the service of the meeting, in the service of his city, in the service of the Lord, with his mama in the pence. All the time he could afford. If their love alone could save us, then the world wouldn't be one. She is every mother, and he was every mother's son. He before the priesthood was married someday, so some folks were surprised. When he joined the army, the recruiter told him, he didn't have to fight. Cindy hoped this was the case, and prayed for him every night. That was before they sent him to the desert with a gun. She is every mother, and he was every mother's son. His truck had no armor, and when it came under fire, it didn't have the soldiers in it. Became a funeral pyre. Cindy, she was sleeping. The moment Casey died, and she knew she'd never seen him, standing by her side. There was no consolation, no safe place she could run. She is every mother, and he was every mother's son. The President he told her, he died for a noble cause. Now Cindy's wondering, exactly what that was, cause they never found the weapons. And now that Casey's gone, it seems that oil is the game, and Casey is the party. Cindy's got some questions, yes and so does everyone. She is every mother, and he was every mother's son. ♪♪ ♪♪ That was David Rovik singing about Cindy Sheehan and her son Casey. We've got time for one more of David's songs, and I thought it might be good to end with one dedicated to some of the common laborers whose struggle for labor rights did so much to redress some of the imbalance of riches in this country. We'll finish off with David Rovik's Ballad for the year 1921, the Battle of Blair Mountain. ♪♪ 1921 was the year, seems like yesterday to me. Let me tell you about what happened then, back in the mine country. We were fighting hard to build a union, cause at 40 cents a ton, there was no way to feed a family when the mining day was done. The strike had lasted for a year when they shot down smiling, said he was a long man who stood up for us miners. That's the only crime he ever did. A hundred miners locked up with no trial. They're in Mingo town, but the last straw came in sharpels when they gunned the women down. Now we're marching on to Mingo, 10,000 men and counting here in the hills of West Virginia. Hit the Battle of Blair Mountain. ♪♪ We shouted through the hillsides in every union hall. We're marching on to Mingo, teach them a lesson once at all. Come and dear to every free train, Julie can tuck a line, took every car that crossed our path. All the guns and ammo we could find. The union leaders tried to stop us, mother Jones told us to turn back, but we had learned ourselves from the gun thugs. There's a time to talk, and a time to attack. We had no leader, we didn't need one. We all knew our way through Logan County. We all knew once we got there. We're gonna hang shift cheapen from a sour apple tree. We're marching on to Mingo, 10,000 men and counting here in the hills of West Virginia. Hit the Battle of Blair Mountain. ♪♪ For three days and nights we fought them. The front was ten miles wide. Every cop and scab in West Virginia was there on the other side. They dropped explosives from their airplanes. Such a thing you never saw. They shot us with machine guns. It was the operator's law. We dug trenches and wore helmets that we brought from the yard on. All the way from France to Logan. We fought from dusk to dawn. President Harding sent in the army, and we left our line to them. But the hills of West Virginia will long remember when we were marching on to Mingo, 10,000 men and counting here in the hills of West Virginia. ♪♪ That was singer-songwriter activist David Rovix. Again, you can track down his music and his musings, sometimes quite extensive, on his site, DavidRovix.com. Or you can just pull up my NorthernSpiritRadio.org site and follow the links from there. The theme music for this program is Turning of the World, performed by Sarah Thompson. This Spirit in Action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio. You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website, NorthernSpiritRadio.org. Thank you for listening. I am your host, Mark Helpsmeet, and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along, and our lives will feel the echo of our healing.