2013-05-20T18:12:21-04:00 Stephan Jenkins http://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=stephan-jenkins Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Stephan Jenkins Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1839576 2012-08-29T10:58:55-04:00 2012-10-29T05:12:04-04:00

Stephan Jenkins http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephan-jenkins/
Playing private parties is standard for many musicians. If you have the dosh, The Rolling Stones, Jay-Z, or Journey, for example, might play your private event. We are minstrels after all, and we sing for our supper.

The Republican National Convention is not a private event, though. It's a public sales pitch, and everyone is supposed to held deliver the script:

Day One - Rail against the president by also-rans

Day Two - Vice-presidential candidate throws red meat

Day Three - Candidate's wife talks about puppies, pretends to be inclusive

Day Four - Candidate comes down to save us

The End.

This whole hustle is peppered with music bits meant to wed policies like forced births of rapist's babies and minority voter suppression to song. Even the private party my band was asked to play at the RNC is not some innocuous event. Though I am happy to play for Republican fans, like my life-long Republican mom, playing the RNC convention is a tacit endorsement of the Republican presidential candidate and his party platform, and this is not my mom's Republican Party anymore.

Mitt Romney says he wants to have an open and welcoming convention. Wow. Open and welcoming to whom? Students who need Pell Grants? My gay Republican cousin who wants to get married? Brown people from Arizona who forgot their ID? People who like roads, air traffic controllers, and disaster funding for hurricanes -- you know, all that stuff Republicans think is wasteful spending? The over three million Americans who got working again because of the stimulus? Women who want fair pay or choice with their health? I mean really, who do they actually welcome??

They are in fact, a party dedicated to exclusion. No where is this more clear than their stop-people-who-don't-vote-for-Republicans-from-voting-at-all-Voter ID law. They now seek to subvert the democratic process itself because they no longer think they can win by adhering to basic tenets of our democracy like the Voting Rights Act. I call that craven. For that reason alone, if I came to their convention, I would Occupy their convention.

The Republican party is on the wrong side of Lilly Ledbetter, fiscal responsibility, unions, civil rights, climate change, evolution, the Big Bang theory, stem cells, Medicare, and me, and that's why we will let them be, in their government-funded event center, to sell their song and dance without me.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1313821 2012-03-01T14:25:15-05:00 2012-05-01T05:12:02-04:00

Stephan Jenkins http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephan-jenkins/
The old entertainment conglomerates (who have been ripping off musicians forever) and the new tech establishment (who's just learning) had a fight recently, and free speech won -- sort of.

Musicians stayed out of the clamor, though. It's hard to get excited when said free speech is, in fact, your song, and the companies "respecting" its freedom make a buck off it being free.

But musicians are used to not being respected. We're not really a respectable bunch by nature. It's our job to stand outside institutions so we can feel and say things that those inside can't. For this, we receive worship, but not respect. So there's little reason for us to pick a side.

The real reason musicians stayed out of the SOPA debate is that no one likes a whiner -- that's really it. We've always been on the side of the pirate ('cept the ones Obama shoots in the head).

So what do we say when some well-meaning techie entrepreneur informs us "music wants to be free, bro"? How to respond when told that a song you made possesses the capacity for desire, and said entrepreneur knows what that desire is, and that desire is for you to get took?

Here might be an answer. Musicians should say, "Yes, by gum, music does want to be free. And so do computer products, and fresh peas, and everything at the hardware store. So let's take it!"

No inflammatory writ, no siding with our corporate masters. No sir. Let's just head down to Union Square and free up some Prada.

That's right, what I am mock-advocating here is for musicians to hold others to the new standard: It wants to be free!

This new policy is going to be hard for me. My mother raised me right, and I have yet to steal anything in my life -- save for the occasional AC/DC riff (little did I know I was inhibiting market innovation).

However, my favorite local rock star, Luisa Black, said her New Year's resolution is "do more crime." She's an inspiration.

So what am I actually getting at, besides a fun new rationale for shoplifting?

Nothing really. I'm excited about this! But while I'm at it, SOPA seems dumb, and maybe even destructive. Neither party in the debate was concerned about music. Until music and the musicians that make it get respected, expect us to stay out of the fight.

Meanwhile, I'll see you all at the Apple store. Bring a real big bag. ]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.1106352 2011-11-21T18:03:33-05:00 2012-01-21T05:12:01-05:00

Stephan Jenkins http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephan-jenkins/ needed to be hospitalized. It was unquestionably an act of proactive violence by the police.

Yet it was the students of UCD who showed themselves to be the true tough guys on the scene, and by tough guys, I mean Rosa Parks, Gandhi-style tough guys -- the kind who have the courage to wield the power of nonviolence. These students sat there and took it in the face when others would have moved. The rest of the protesters neither rioted nor backed down, instead they came together as one voice, a stentorian moral authority, that shamed the cops and their thuggery right of the quad. It gave me chills to watch.

A chief purpose of a police force is to keep public spaces safe for peaceful assembly.

This fundamental first amendment fact seems to be misunderstood by the police, and treated as a threat rather than an opportunity to teach by chancellors.

The UCD incident is another in a growing list of police brutality toward Occupiers, and it is noteworthy because in one event, we see egregious behavior met with the best response. So what can we learn from the brutality and beauty of UCD last week?

First, we are reminded of the compelling power of nonviolence. No other force could have won the moment. No other method can convey the fierce decency of those protesters.

Conversely, every time a protester throws a bottle at a police officer, or breaks a window, or spray paints a tree, he or she does exponential damage to the Occupy movement. Non-violence leaves bullies quaking in their boots. As Occupiers develop new ways to protest and communicate, they will achieve their ends with peace, especially when it is met with brutality.

Second, we need better police and we need to be willing to pay them, and pay to train them.

Officer Pike, who sprayed those kids, does not know what his job is. He either has poor training, poor judgment, or both. He certainly has poor leadership from his superior Chief Spicuzza, whose excuse was a cliché: "Hindsight is 20/20," when she was hired to have foresight.

We need to take care of our cops so that they can take care of us. Ironically, that is what some of the Occupiers are protesting for: protection of pensions (including police pensions) from banksters, and the need for social services, like police. They really are on the same side!

I should say though that UCD does not fit neatly into my narrative of 'If only we paid them and trained them more...' UCD police are comparatively well-paid and educated. Sometimes, there is just no excuse.

That brings me to my third takeaway, keep the cameras rolling. Bearing witness is in itself a agent for change.

In these discouraging times of obstructionist Republicans and feckless Democrats, these students remind me what a great people Americans are and what strong unyielding sense of themselves they have. The hopes of the progressive movement are not squandered. These students are going to win.

But perhaps it is a misnomer to label this a progressive or liberal movement at all.

Where Fox News sees radicalism, I see patriotism. I see the ire of people who are not so cynical as to believe the political system needs to be fixed. I see a through-line in almost all of the myriad Occupy complaints: the slide of America into oligarchy will not be tolerated; indeed, it will be reversed, and the remedy to oligarchy is to restore democracy. Not to play with words here, but what News Corp does not understand is that Occupy could just as easily be called a conservative movement.
]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.905697 2011-07-28T14:47:55-04:00 2011-09-27T05:12:01-04:00

Stephan Jenkins http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephan-jenkins/
Then W. put the United States on a suicidal path. Too strong a word? Observe:

- two meaningless bungled wars whose price measures in thousands of deaths and trillions of dollars borrowed from China, to pay for torturing, tapping and renditioning us right out of our shining city on a hill.

- rich people and corporations were given lots of money and then promptly fired workers by the hundreds of thousands and then fiddled while our schools and bridges retreated into third world entropy.

- and then nurtured a bankster culture that fleeced about one fifth of the net wealth of the United States.

Ta da!

Now the Right, while obstructing Obama's clean up, complains that he is not doing it fast enough, and they want to get even more corporate tax cutty deregulatey (read self destructive) than W. Any candidate who doesn't get right on this party line is clearly consorting with Kenyans and will be run out of town by the Fox/Tea Party (same thing) forth with.

We need better enemies. Someone who can tell Fox & Friends to go drown, and with enough money to keep saying it. We need Larry Ellison.

Now, I don't know Larry well. I know that he is piloting a ship at a time when President Obama is governing without a rudder. I've sat next to him at enough dinner parties to know that he neither a moron nor a nihilist which already puts him at the head of the field.

The problem, as Carly, our trusty editor, has so rightly pointed out, is that Larry is not a Republican. No worries mate! Ronald Reagan (debt raiser in chief) isn't a Republican by today's standards either.

Further, I have five reasons to believe Larry would make the kind of moderate Republican we need:

1. He has beard -- very Berkeley.

2. He lives here, which immediately makes him a Commie like the rest of us.

3. He has a Japanese themed house -- susceptible to foreign influence.

4. He sails -- very Kennedy.

5. His company, Oracle, has a name right out of The Matrix and they're all liberals except for Morpheus who believes things in spite of facts, which is very Republican (and also got him killed).

What I don't know is whether he has developed a platform that is counter to the race-bating, science hating, hillbilly-sitting-on-his-porch-in-boxer-shorts-with-shot-gun-who-is-actually-a-corporate-mind-slave platform that is the coin of the Republican realm these days.

So I, avowed lefty liberal that I am, have, for country, decided to cross party lines and be Larry's brain trust and provide this ten point Republican make over:

REPUBLICANS LOVE

1. Order and free markets: let's put 'em together and have fair markets. It would be like loving the sheriff in the western -- totally Republican.

2. Minding their own business. Legalize weed, and while we're at it, doing shrooms at burning man. Come on!

3. Family. Marriage is about two people entering into a contract and Republicans love contracts. Lets get all those LGBT couples married so they're not running around on the loose!

4. Republicans hate taxes more than they like war. Let's tax every war in real time. That would mean a trillion dollar tax hike for the last adventure. Watch that tax bill turn those neo cons into doves.

5. Putting the C in conservation: TR liked to preserve open spaces so he could shoot the wild life in them. Nixon was happy to trade clean water for covert bombing missions. It worked before, it will work again.

6. The magic of the markets. So let's do business with countries like Kenya and Ghana. The party of trade not aid. Even Orin Hatch would like it.

7. Ending big government -- let's cut the military in half, it's socialism!

8. National security -- it comes from being smarter than the other guy, so let's invest in schools.

9. Invading! Let's invade Detroit. Let's win mo-town's hearts and minds with factories that make solar panels that we sell to the Chinese.

10. Being on the winning team. So let's get the best players. let's get all those smart engineers from other countries and give them work visas.


There you are Larry. You're welcome!

Of course you won't win -- people will vote for a Mormon before trusting anyone in a mock turtle.

But here's my point -- someone needs to come along and call out the Republican Party for the fundamentally self destructive non sequitor that it has become, and it needs to happen from someone on the inside.

If our Constitution is really a road map for developing wealth and security for the masses (not corporations), then we need a Republican candidate who actually wants to achieve those aims, and is willing to run and lose just to say so.

A good foe helps define where the common ground for governing is.

So we can stop careening between feckless and totally insane. A good foe could help Obama find that rudder when he wins handily next time. Sounds like an America's cup to me.]]>