'Breathe...': A Theological Reflection on The Death of Eric Garner

Eric Garner, an unarmed black resident of New York City, was strangled to death by an NYPD officer. A grand jury ruled that the officer will not stand trial for Garner's death, regardless of the fact that the incident was filmed by a bystander at a few feet away and the death was ruled a homicide by the city coroner. 

For a nation with the history of deep racial and cultural divisions that the US has- with its indigenous population; with those brought here as slave labour; those Hispanic cultures still deeply resentful of the Mexican-American War’s land grab that left many on the wrong side of a border they didn’t help draw- the events have exposed festering wounds that, for many, have never closed, much less healed or even scarred. That all this has happened in the shadow of yet another notorious police shooting of an unarmed black male in Ferguson, MO with an identical grand jury decision, the situation was like pouring salt into those wounds.

Garner’s last words- repeated gasps of ‘I can’t breathe’- have become a rallying cry for many who have taken to the streets in outrage at the events.

Garner said ‘I can’t breathe’…

Those in the streets say, ‘We can’t breathe…

‘We can’t keep living like this.’

Personally, I ask myself, what can I do?

I believe that theological reflection has an important role to play in social transformation, in radical social change.

I believe the role of the radical theologian is to frame the process of social transformation using a spiritual paradigm, as well as helping to push it forward through the moral impetus of that framing.

Like so many others, I’m drawn to Garner’s last words, ‘I can’t breathe.' 

Genesis 2:7- 'God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.' 

Mark 15:37- 'With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last.' 

It is out of the creative love of God that we have our life and breath; it is out of the violence of the state that Jesus' breath- and Garner's- was taken away. 

In John 20:22, after Jesus was raised, 'he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit."' 

Through the resurrection, God overcomes the brutality of the state powers that murdered Jesus and through his restored breath once again blesses us with new life. 

In our own context, breathing is life, the evidence of our life in God, and the presence of the spirit of God within us.

By breathing, we bear witness to the resurrection, God's destruction of the structures of death and oppression. 

The antithesis of the resurrection, of the God of life is, of course, the reality of death- whether that death be immediate or drawn out through oppression, poverty, and marginalization. 

In any case, it is life taken; 

Stolen by oppressive power.

By living a life infused by the breath of the spirit of God- of peace, justice, truth, and mercy- we bear witness to the God of life and build resistance to the structures of death.

In this way, breathing is, in and of itself, civil disobedience; 

Resistance; 

Resistance to brutality, 

To power,

To cruelty...

Psalm 150:6- 'Let everything that has breath give glory to God...'

Palestinian Christians: The Abandoned Sheep

Imagine there was a country- not a small, unstable state, but a 21^st-century modern state, with stable democratic institutions, a thriving, diversified economy, and the fourth-largest military on the globe- with a sizeable Christian minority.

Suppose that Christian minority was being denied basic human rights- freedom of movement, freedom of worship, freedom to live where they chose, freedom to own property….

Suppose they were subject to arrest and detention without trial; 

Suppose their property could be confiscated on a moment’s notice;

Suppose they were subject to segregated schools; suppose there were even roads they were not allowed to drive on;

Suppose this Christian community was under military occupation and the regular targets for military action, economic blockade, and attack.

I don’t know about you, but I imagine that American Christians would be out of their minds. Advocacy groups like Voice of the Martyrs, Christian Freedom International, and Focus on the Family would be incandescent with anger. News outlets like CBN, the 700 Club, and FOX News would be reporting it 24-7. Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly would be screaming for action. There’d be denunciations from pulpits; it’d be all over the cover of Christianity Today, World magazine, and the Christian Post; needless to say, President Obama would probably be on the receiving end of some very pointed questions: ‘these are our Christian brethren! Why were we supporting such a regime? Why were we giving them billions in military aid?!'

But we’re not hearing any of that. The Christian media- at least the Evangelical end of the spectrum- is virtually silent. In fact, it supports the repressive regime, demands it be given more aid, more weapons, more political support.

How can this be? Simply but bluntly, it is because the Christian community in question are Palestinians.

There are about 350,000 Christians in Israel and the occupied Palestinian Territories. They have been there for 2000 years, but in the last 60 years, the number of Christians is dropping- by the day- like a stone. Most emigrate as the occupation continues to strangle the local economy and illegal Israeli settlements continue to expand, confiscating more and more Palestinian land and diverting more and more water.

Nazareth and Bethlehem- Jesus’s birthplace and home town- used to be predominantly Christian. Not anymore. It is not an unreasonable fear that, in a few decades, there might be no living Christian presence in the Holy Land. The most sacred sites in the Christian religion might become mere museums. A Christian community that can trace its lineage to the Day of Pentecost (they are the ‘Arabs’ of Acts 2:9) will be gone.

And the state of Israel will be delighted to see them go.

Now we sit, once again, and watch the Israeli military pound Gaza into rubble once again, with civilian casualties in the hundreds.

Once again, we hear the endless repetition from the US government: ‘Israel has the right to defend itself’.

No, it does not. Under international law, they have one prerogative: withdraw. End the occupation; withdraw to the 1967 borders; dismantle the settlements; build two states on a foundation of real justice and real peace.

I don’t want to get too utopian here, though. Ending the occupation will not solve every political problem in- and between- Israel and Palestine. But I am convinced that it will end about 70% of them. But the occupation should not be ended because it is expedient, but because it is right- and acting rightly allows space for other right actions. 

Israel has the right to exist- but not like this.

Israel has the right to security- but not like this.

The very fact that these sentiments will immediately be read by many as being anti-Semitic or pro-Hamas only shows how dysfunctional most of the discussion and debate surrounding the Israel-Palestine issue has become.

Under international law, an occupied nation has the right to resist its occupation. But all of the rockets Hamas has fired into Israel have not brought them any closer to their military aims. They are symbolic rather than strategic, lacking any semblance of praxis, action for action’s sake. All of their 'resistance' is stupid and criminal. 

Yet it is no less stupid and criminal than the Israeli strategy, and theirs has proven far more deadly.  While Israel has every right to not want violent Islamists living anywhere near them, the occupation- with all of its military, economic, and legislative might- has not been able to subdue the Palestinian insurgents, and while they try, the lives and livelihoods of thousands are destroyed. The occupation has has given Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, and every other violent Islamist organization an enormous issue to hide behind while conveniently advancing agendas that are spectacularly frightening- getting rid of the state of Israel altogether being the most disturbing. Ending the occupation would be one giant step toward exposing these people for who they really are and what they really want- and how few people actually want it.

Regardless of the damage it does and the injustices it perpetuates, the occupation continues and spreads. In this fruitless endeavor, Israel has been lavishly supported by the US government for decades. Any nation over which the US holds enough sway tacitly looks the other way. Theodore Herzl’s Zionist dream is a nightmare for many. And the question that so many of us keep asking is, Is any nightmare justifiable in the name of the preservation of an exclusively ‘Jewish State’?  

It is not merely Palestinians who think this way and are asking that question. There is a growing body of opinion within Israel- proud, patriotic, some even Zionist- who are speaking out.  There is the Parents Circle - Families Forum (PCFF), a joint Palestinian/Israeli organization of over 600 families, all of whom have lost a close family member as a result of the conflict; there is Breaking The Silence, an organization of Israeli military veterans who are publicly exposing the brutality of the occupation, as well as Courage To Refuse, another group of military veterans refusing to go into the West Bank; there was the Shminitsim (‘twelfth graders’)  incident in 2001, where a group of young people resisted their military service on moral grounds; there are dozens of authors, writers, journalists, academics, and activists who are raising awareness, asking questions, demanding answers.

On the Palestinian side, there is the Holy Land Trust, Tent of Nations, Bethlehem Bible College, and Sabeel, working against incredible odds to maintain a positive, empowered, nonviolent, and creative Christian presence in the midst of a violent occupation and harassment.

And in the midst of it all are the Palestinian Christians- fleeing the army, watching their homes being flattened, dying, opening their churches to hundreds of those fleeing the bombardment…  And the silence of their American brothers and sisters in Christ is deafening.

‘But’, I hear over and over, ‘we must support Israel’, to which I constantly answer: no, you must pick which ‘Israel’ you wish to support. Right now, the Evangelical churches in the US have thrown their wholehearted support behind the most militaristic, intransigent, theocratic, and fanatical elements within Israel.  I’ve traveled to Israel and the occupied territories and met dozens of peacemakers- Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and secularists; Israelis and Palestinians. These people are doing incredible work against incredible odds.  If they had a tenth of the financial support, the region would be a much different place.

In John 10, Jesus referred to himself as a shepherd- a good shepherd. The good shepherd, he said, knows his sheep and his sheep know him; it’s a powerful image of the bond that Jesus felt for his followers. In Luke 15, Jesus tells the parable of a shepherd who loses one of his hundredfold flock and does not rest until he finds the one lost sheep, a powerful image of the love that God has for every one of us.

The Palestinian Christians are not ‘lost’; they know who and where they are they are, and so does their shepherd, Jesus.  

Rather, the Palestinian Christians have been abandoned, and abandoned utterly- not by Christ but by a vast majority of their fellow Christians, especially in the US.

Worse, they are being sacrificed.

They are being sacrificed to a particular reading of scripture that equates all references to ‘Israel’ in the Bible with the modern state of Israel;

They are being sacrificed to the notion that any criticism of the modern state of Israel- for any action- is anti-Semitism;

They are being sacrificed to the absurdity that to speak out for justice for Palestinians is support for terrorism;

They are being sacrificed to the most militaristic, extremist, and theocratic dreams of the settler movement in the West Bank;

They have been sacrificed to a failed political vision.

It is never the God of life who demands a human sacrifice; it is the idols of death. The first law given to Moses was specific: ‘You shall have no other gods before me.’ This was the God who revealed himself, first and foremost, as a God of life and liberation. Yet the temptation will always be there to put something- the interpretation, the ideology, the policy, the state- before the God of life.

And when that happens, people die. They always do.  

When I was in The West Bank, every Christian I met was dismayed that their brothers and sisters in America cared nothing for them, and in fact supported their oppressors. Every one of them said the same thing: ‘Tell them about us; tell the whole world what is going on here'. 

I’ve attempted to do that ever since- to bear witness to the Palestinian church; to the Israelis trying to change their country; to Muslims who refuse to be enemies of the other Abrahamic faiths; to Israeli and Arab secularists who are tired of the 'parties of God' having an unconditional veto over peace and pluralism; to the peacemakers…

For God shall call them his children…

Stop the war. End the occupation. Build the peace. 

Orange Crushed: Developing Praxis in North Belfast

Woodvale Road, North Belfast, early morning, 13 July 2013

Last year, 12 July 2013, after an Orange Order parade that had been banned by the Parades Commission from passing the Ardoyne shops in North Belfast was stopped by the police, there were days of serious rioting, dozens of police in the hospital, and (just to change things up a bit) an MP knocked unconscious by friendly fire. That night, I sat in my window on the Crumlin Road, one of the most contentious pieces of real estate on the island, and watched the flames from up the road. The next morning, I walked up to the scene of the standoff between the rioters and the police. The road was an inch deep in shattered glass, bits of brick, burnt wood and plastic, and splattered paint.

As I walked back home, I was deeply frustrated and angry with the Orange Order, who I felt had been incredibly reckless with the lives of their own supporters, the police, and local residents. They had urged their supporters onto the streets to protest the rulings of the Parades Commission, with only the most amorphous messages about ‘nonviolent protest’. After a night of mayhem, they had called off the protests, a day late and a lot of blood and money later.

The Order might reasonably have been asking, what went wrong?  Had they not called for peaceful protests? Had they not made it clear that civil disobedience was what they had in mind? Had they not told those who wanted to attack the police to stay away? It seemed that they’d planned for everything.

It’s now July 2014, and here we go again…

It’s less than a week until the Glorious Twelfth in Northern Ireland, and the Orange Order has yet again been banned by the Parades Commission from marching past the very same Ardoyne shops.

A loyalist protest camp,  festooned with banners of support from loyalists all over the province, has been in place at the site of the march for a full year.

There has been an illegal march every night for a full year.

The policing bill for this is now over £9 million.

This week, every Unionist politician walked out of the most recent round of ‘flags/parades/the past’ negotiations and have promised for more protests in the future.

The PSNI has not yet asked for mutual assistance from other forces in Britain, but they’re keeping the option on the table.

Relations on the ground in North Belfast are as poisoned as ever.

Last year, the day after the Twelfth, I wrote a piece that tried to address where I felt the Orange Order had bungled the situation. I’ve been involved with street protest for over a decade now, with the anti-war movement, anti-globalization and anti-capitalist groups. This doesn’t make me an expert, but I do have some insights from this experience to share. It was written with a year to go until the next standoff. Even the morning after, I was absolutely certain- and so was anyone else with any kind of a sober judgment- that the Parades Commission was not going to allow the parade to go through in 2014 unless there was considerable dialogue between residents and the Orange Order. I figured, well, might as well get cracking early...

Looking at the past 11 months and 3 weeks, the Orange Order hasn’t taken any of my advice.

No matter; hope springs eternal. So, with less than a week to go, here are my ideas of how this year might go better than last.

1: Have a Plan. Organizing an effective protest takes, well, a lot of organizing- A LOT of organizing. Get a hold of any decent history of the American civil rights movement or any other socio-political movement and you’ll see how much work it takes. What do you want to happen? What, in your mind, will constitute a successful action? What’s the message? Who’s involved with you? Are you all on the same page? Is it a legal protest? If so, do you have paperwork and are the police informed? Are you (or anyone around you) planning- at best- civil disobedience or-at worst- criminal activity? Do you all know the difference between those two things? Do you have a plan if you’re arrested?

Last year, the Orange Order had no plan. They called on their supporters to protest the Parades Commission rulings regarding the contentious parade, and told their members and supporters not to abide by the Commission’s rulings... but not to break the law. This was absurd, as the Parade’s Commission is a legally-constituted body. If you don’t abide by its rulings, you are breaking the law. Elected Unionist officials should have broken off contact with the Orange Order at that point. Needless to say, they didn’t, which raises uncomfortable questions for their commitment to the rule of law.

Anyway, the Orange Order said not to break the law or attack the police. What should supporters do? The Order said nothing specific.

This was never going to end well.

2: Don’t do anything when you’re angry. Not one thing. Nothing. An angry crowd does one thing and one thing only: damage. Telling people who are angry- and the Orange Order and every Unionist politician who could get himself in front of a microphone tells us over and over and over how ANGRY everyone is- to get up and hit the streets is never going to lead to anything constructive. Now, lots of historic change begins with civil disorder. But no real social transformation starts to happen until people calm down and start organizing (see point 1).  

So… If your people are angry, UNLESS YOU WANT TO HAVE STUFF DAMAGED, you make sure they stay off the streets. You issue a statement that says, ‘I know everyone is angry, so stay off the streets today and tonight. When we’re not angry, we’re going to plan our next move.’ It’s not very sexy and people who love to do damage won’t vote for you, but unless you want a whole lot of people injured and arrested, it’s what you do.

But I think you see where I’m going with that: violence gets you noticed. But it doesn’t lead anywhere constructive- certainly not in North Belfast, and if they haven’t figured that out by now, the leadership of the Orange Order is wilfully ignorant, truly devious, or spectacularly naive. On top of that, they were dangerously reckless with the lives and safety of others.

3: Know the Law. The conventional wisdom about protesters is that ‘they have no regard for the rule of law’ or ‘all they want to do is break the law’. This is a very clumsy stereotype. Activism of any kind very often demands an intimate and encyclopedic knowledge of the legal code- what you can and cannot do, what the authorities are allowed to do, what the penalties are, etc. Most of the activists that I’ve worked with over the years know a staggering amount about the legal code and can recite it, section and clause, to a police officer, a reporter or a security guard at a moment’s notice. Believe me, if a cop is trying to confiscate your camera because you took a picture of his land rover, you’d better be able to very quickly and clearly- and in as calm a voice as possible- quote the law as it is written. He might still take your camera and you’ll have to say it all over again to a magistrate trying to lock you up or fine you for doing something perfectly legal. Trust me on this.

That said, the fact that the Orange Order in 2013 called on their supporters to disobey the Parade’s Commission’s rulings, BUT not to break the law, is a stunning lack of an understanding of the law. Again, the Parades Commission is a legal body and its rulings are legally binding. If you disregard them, you are breaking the law. You might decide to go ahead and disregard them, but you’d better understand what that means. And make sure you’re supporters know what that means. They might decide to go ahead and ignore the rulings, but you can’t then say, ‘I did nothing wrong’. Well, yeah, you did. In 2003, four Catholic Worker activists cut through a fence at Shannon Airport, broke into a hanger and took a hammer to the nose of a US war plane that was contravening Irish neutrality and was a tool in an illegal invasion of a sovereign nation. It took 5 years of trials for them to finally be acquitted of any wrong-doing. And a thorough knowledge of Irish and international law was absolutely vital. Again, trust me on this. 

4: What’s the Next Step? This is related to point 1, but it needs to stand on its own. This relates to one of my favourite things: praxis. Praxis is an ongoing process of reflection and action, followed then by more reflection and then more action. They need to go together. Reflection on its own is just navel-gazing and theorizing. Action on its own is just, activism, 'doing stuff'. But praxis is how progress happens. Reflection on a problem helps to analyze and crystallize the problem. Out of this, an action can be undertaken. After the action, we reflect again. What was accomplished? What was learned? What happened that was totally unexpected? How can we act better in light of what we originally wanted to accomplish and what actually happened?  

If 12 July 2013 taught the Orange Order anything it’s that a.) you shouldn’t reflect when you’re angry, and b.) you sure as hell shouldn’t act when you’re angry.

But no use crying over spilled milk and wounded cops- especially a year late. They acted, and now they must reflect. How did it go? What went well? What didn’t go well? What was learned?  Are we any closer to the stated goal?

It is now less than a week until the Twelfth. If the Orange Order doesn’t want a repeat of 2013, I’d suggest getting started on it soon. It’s  not too late… yet.

Cluster Headaches: Doing Theology with an Agonizing Head

For the past 20 years or so, I’ve suffered from a neurological disorder called cluster headaches. The name comes from the fact that attacks tend to come in ‘clusters’, usually at the same time of year and at the same time of day. For me, it is usually in the summer or early autumn and at between 3am and 5am, lasting about one to three hours. A 'cluster' used to last about two weeks. Recently, they've become longer... a lot longer. I live in terror that, one day, the 'cluster' will simply not end...

The term ‘headache’ might seem self-explanatory, but I actually hate that part of the name.  When the average person thinks of a headache, they think of a dull ache, a nuisance, something that makes other tasks that little bit more difficult. But please believe me when I say that the word ‘headache’ does nothing to convey the severity of the pain of a cluster headache, which many medical researchers have described as the most severe pain a person can experience. I’m in the midst of a wave of attacks now, so they’ve been front and center in my mind for over two weeks now- yes, this cluster is longer than previous ones. For my own sake, I have tried to come up with a description:

The pain is centered in the left eye, specifically in the tear duct and the right-hand top of the bone of the eye socket. Attacks come on extremely suddenly, within a minute or two, usually waking me out of a sound sleep. The sensation- as best I can describe it- is of a small centipede, about an inch long and the diameter of a coffee stirrer, with a hard, sharp, bony exoskeleton and sharp, grinding mandibles, gnawing at the bone at the top of the eye socket. The insect then burrows its way into the skull of the forehead right above the eye, gnawing as it goes. While this is going on, I cannot think; I cannot speak; I slur my words; I can’t keep still but it is agonizing to move; my mouth contorts into a wide grimace and my jaw feels locked. I can feel myself making noises at the back of my throat but I don’t really ‘hear’ them. My left eye begins to tear profusely and my nose runs excessively.

Treatment, for me, involves lying flat on my back with an ice pack tied tightly over my left eye with a bandanna. I’m also helped immensely by a range of medications called ‘triptans’, used for certain migraines and cluster headaches. They take between 15 and 30 minutes to work, and they are so effective it’s almost eerie; they literally turn the agony off like flipping a switch. The centipede's exoskeleton disappears, leaving it soft and white. It’s still moving but it is swimming rather than burrowing, and it makes its way around the back of my face and is gone.

An attack leaves me feeling physically and emotionally drained. It also can leave me slightly irrational; if I fall back asleep, the first feeling I have when I wake up is a slight panic, a desperate attempt not to think about the attack, a fear that thinking about it will in some way ‘anger’ it, ‘wake it up’. This passes as I gain a fuller consciousness, and I feel merely weak and listless, not particularly interested in getting out of bed. 

So yes, ‘cluster headache’ is a rotten term. Words that do come to mind, in a free association sort of way are:

Screaming;

Agonizing;

Terror;

Grinding;

Bone;

Raw.

Beyond what the attacks do to me physically, part of the pain is what my attacks do to my family. My wife has a hard time sleeping with me when I’m in the midst of an attack, usually ending up on the couch. She’s incredibly understanding about it and very caring, but it’s upsetting to me. I homeschool my daughter, and now that summer is here, my son is out of school and home as well;  if I’m down with an attack, they’re basically alone until I recover. Moreover, this wave of attacks has been much more sporadic than ones in the past- day, night, more and less severe- and this wave has been longer. I’m into the third week, which is very unsettling.

Finally, this wave of attacks has been made much more difficult for all of us as we now live in the US and I have no medical insurance. I took myself to the doctor at the beginning of this wave ($120) and she gave me a prescription for a box of nine pills ($30). This might not sound like a lot of money to some, but it’s a very significant expenditure to us. Simply put, an ongoing chronic illness is not in our budget. On top  of that, in the US you’d  better make sure you’ve phoned around a number of pharmacies and done some price comparisons of the meds you need; they were $30 at one, over three times that ($98) at another! In Northern Ireland, the doctor visit and the meds would have both been free. Dealing with chronic illness was so much easier with that social safety net; It was such a load off my, well, head…

As I lay in bed, unable to sleep after an attack, I began theologically reflect on all this. I was reminded of Matthew 25:36. In this parable of Jesus regarding the judgment of God, the righteous are told by Christ, ‘I was sick and you comforted me’; the unrighteous are told that ‘I was sick… and you did not comfort me.’ The only difference between the two, according to the biblical text, was not ideology, doctrine, or beliefs; everything hinged on what they did and did not do. The message is clear: beliefs can only be judged by their practical implementation in our daily lives and in how we treat our neighbours. Our beliefs about God, the Bible, faith, righteousness, and Jesus are essentially meaningless on their own; they only become worthwhile in light of what we do for  others.

In James 2:15-17 we read: 

'If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, and one of you says to them, "Go in peace, be warmed and filled", and yet you do not give them what is  necessary for their body, what use is that?  Even so our faith, if it has no works, is dead...'

The Christian Gospel must have a social outworking or it ceases to be in any way ‘good news’.

We must constantly ask ourselves, ‘what would be good news to those around me? Those that are hungry, ill, homeless, imprisoned?’ But even more importantly, we need to ask the hungry, ill, homeless, and imprisoned themselves what would be good news to them.  It is in that communion between humanity that the Gospel of Jesus becomes alive and powerful. In doing so, we open ourselves to be converted to Christianity- by those who may or may not even be Christian.

So, what would be ‘good news’ to me, someone who lives with a chronic health condition, working at a job that provides me no health benefits and living in a state that provides me with no  health care? Well, it would be nice if the state of Montana would accept the Medicare expansion offered by the federal government to ensure that people like me have access to basic healthcare. In a fit of ideological pique, Montana's state officials turned it down, leaving me- and thousands like me- in the lurch, dealing with any number of medical issues on our own. It’s infuriating and deeply troubling; every time I drive by a political poster for a candidate promising ‘more freedom and less big government’, I read ‘pay for your medication yourself; new windshield wipers for the car or meds. Hey, freedom of choice! THAT’S America!’ I realize that in thinking that, I’m putting myself at odds with probably everyone in my Church, most of whom are socially-conservative and upper-income bracket. That in itself often makes for an alienating worship experience…  

I’m not advocating for one political party or another; I’m advocating for a theological outlook that transcends ideology and puts the needs, the hopes, the dreams, and the lives of people first. Our theology must begin with people; everything else follows on and is necessarily secondary. In the biblical text, humans were created in the image of God; the way we best mirror that image is when we become more human. Jesus was not the perfect image of the Father because of where he came from but from what he became- a man, a carpenter, a poor villager, part of a family and a community. The divine spark in us is precisely that part of us that is most human. 

Anyway, I got another nine pills today- another $30. I don’t know how long they’ll last. But I’d give anything to be able to take one every time I needed one and not try to gauge if the attack is severe enough to merit one.

THAT would be real freedom. That’d be real Good News…

My Top 10 Political Albums

Either Berthold Brecht or Brendan Behan would probably talk all night- particularly if you were buying- about how all of art is essentially a political statement, and they would have a point. Politics is, after all, about the organisation of human relationships and how resources should be divvied up amongst the people having those relationships. But a lot of our ideas about what is and isn’t political are often just a matter of perception. Paul McCartney’s 1972 song ‘Give Ireland Back to the Irish’ was considered so inflammatory that the BBC banned it from the airwaves and he received no end of vitriol for ‘mixing pop music with politics’. But is ‘Don’t Stop Moving’ by S Club 7 any less political for suggesting that partying the night away, dancing and drinking and hopefully getting lucky, oblivious to the state of the world around you, is a reasonable course of  action? Both tracks, after all, suggest a course of action in response to current events, but one got banned and the other got almost wall-to-wall airplay. Things that make you go ‘hmmmm’…

Anyway, I’ve always been drawn to political music. The band that changed my life was the Clash, who actually rarely espoused explicitly political issues but always gave off a very implicit politically-conscious aura; they were the soundtrack to an activist life, the playlist for changing the world. Beyond the Clash, the punk scene I was drawn to as a teenager was always the political end of that movement rather than the hedonist end. Ever since, I’ve always wanted my music to be about something- something I cared about. Don’t get me wrong: there’s a lot of music that I absolutely love that’s not about anything in particular- Girls Aloud, Aqua, Scooter, Def Leppard… But at the end of the day, it’s what I might call ‘Praxis music’- stuff that makes you reflect and act- that sustains and inspires me.

So  I thought I’d  share 10 albums that stand out to me as works of political musical art. This isn’t a definitive list of politically-orientated music- I could’ve picked from dozens- nor do I necessarily think these are the most important albums out there, even by the artists in question. But this is some of the music I keep coming back to when I need my activist batteries topped up. These are the albums that truly shifted my perception in one way or another. And finally, it’s stuff that, if you haven’t heard it already, I think you should seek it out.

As such, it’s obviously a very personal list, so don’t get in touch screaming ‘What?! No Dylan? No Neil Young?!’ This is my list; make your own.

So, in no particular order…

Bob Marley and the Wailers- Survival 

The impact of Bob Marley on worldwide popular culture is incalculable. A tireless advocate for the downtrodden and the disaffected before his death from cancer in 1981, he created a powerful body of work and a charismatic persona that was as much righteous prophet as music star. Marley’s Rastafarian faith and political beliefs were birthed in the poverty-stricken and brutally violent slums of the Kingston, Jamaica of his youth. With Survival, his outlook broadened to the rest of the colonized world, particularly Africa. It’s perhaps one of his lesser-known works, unfortunately overshadowed by so many undisputed classics. On their own merits, though, tracks such as ‘So Much Trouble in the World’, ‘Africa Unite’, ‘Babylon System’, and ‘Zimbabwe’ display purpose, authority, and yes, vision. This is Marley making all struggles his own, declaring his worldwide citizenship. There was no one like him, before or since. All respect to him. 

The Clash- Sandinista!

Conventional wisdom insists that this, the Clash’s much-derided triple-disc fourth album was (and I quote) ‘too long’. Fair play, but then, so were Ulysses, War and Peace, and Das Kapital. And while it is probably overstatement to class a mere rock album with such literary classics, the one thing that the Clash shared with Joyce, Tolstoy, and Marx was a stubborn refusal (or inability) to simplify their vision. Here we have the Clash completely shucking off the already worn-out pose that punk had to be thuggish, simplistic, and short. Weighing in at a staggering 36 tracks (which admittedly run the gamut from brilliant to rubbish), Sandinista! took in standard-issue punk, but also rockabilly, dub reggae, and even swing, gospel, and rap. And while a single (or even double) album would have been more focused, Sandinista! gave the best snapshot of the depth and breadth of the Clash’s socio-political, world-conscious humanism. And now that it’s on CD, it’s easier to skip the dodgy bits. And don't- absolutely do not- download individual tracks; you will completely miss the point. This is an album that begs to be explored as a whole. 

Gang of Four- A Brief History of the Twentieth Century 

This career spanning best-of is a strong testament to Gang of Four’s artistic vision and musical innovation. Combining jagged, slashing guitar noise, funk bass, and obtuse rhythms with a cogent political dialectic, they made music that was both powerful and thought-provoking. Lyrically, they described the world as a gray, Kafka-esque dystopia; where there was no free will, no choice, no breaking out of roles. Their song’s protagonists never see the powerful, unseen hands that pull their strings, but live their lives in a constant state of unease and confusion, too exhausted to be angry. This is powerful and influential stuff, and highly recommended for Radiohead fans interested in hearing the source from which Thom York (I’d argue) nicked his entire creative output.

Public Enemy- Fear of a Black Planet 

The greatest rock music has been and will always be perceived as a threat to the establishment, and few bands ever scared white America more than this New York-based rap crew. By 1988, Public Enemy had already produced the nearly-flawless It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back and this 1990 offering actually builds on that momentum. At turns brutally negative, intelligently positive, and hysterically funny, Fear of a Black Planet addressed black stereotypes in movies (‘Burn Hollywood Burn’), emergency services that couldn’t seem to locate black neighborhoods (‘911 is a Joke’), and, of course, racism (the title track and just about everything else). But it’s the towering statement-of-purpose ‘Fight the Power’- perhaps the finest hip-hop song ever- that truly makes this a classic. Even if you don’t like rap, your music collection is incomplete without this.

Rage Against The Machine- Evil Empire

Any band audacious enough to release their first independent cassette in riot-torn Los Angeles with a match taped to the inner card needs to be taken seriously. Storming out of that scarred city in the early 90’s, RATM had a sound that was the audio equivalent to watching a building burn; a blistering mix of punk, funk, metal, and rap. Vocalist Zach de la Rocha embodied an almost pristine sense of anger, and it manifested itself in lyrics that were spit rather than sung. A revolution that you can dance to, taking on the forces of neo-liberalism and multinational globalization head on, this, their second album, is worth owning simply for condensing Marx’s thousands of pages of output into one line of the song ‘Down Rodeo’: ‘Fuck the G ride/ I want the machines that are makin’ them.’ Burn, baby, burn...

Asian Dub Foundation- Enemy of the Enemy

Rarely did an album need to made as much as this one. The aftermath of the events of 9/11 saw a great drought of political dissent. Many artists and media outlets either joined the ‘neo-conservative’ parade or stood aside in frustrated silence. And that makes this, the fifth release of the London-based musical collective Asian Dub Foundation, such a revelation. Armed with fiery intelligence and a powerful mix of bhangra, rap, dub, dancehall, and electronica, ADF got out of the post-9-11 gate early and put out perhaps the definitive dissident musical statement on the ‘war on terror’. ‘Blowback’ throws withering criticism at US foreign policy; ‘Fortress Europe’ takes immigration policy to task; ‘Basta’ fires a broadside at the G8; and the seething title track takes racial profiling personally (‘At 50,000 feet…your eyes meet my skin/ See the terror on your face/ Do you want it to stop?/ Put yourself in their place’).  ‘Fear of a brown planet’? Indeed…

Fela Kuti- Zombie

There’s so much hyperbole in writing about the arts that one immediately becomes cynical when the phrase ‘It is difficult to overstate the importance of (artist)…’ appears. But out of the handful of artists whose impact it truly is impossible to overstate, Nigerian Fela Anikulapo Kuti qualifies for that accolade in spades. A true musical genius who invented his own genre- ‘afrobeat’, an intoxicating blend of rock, funk, jazz, R&B, and African styles- Fela’s work was the quintessence of revolutionary, socio-political agitprop. A true political dissident and an honest-to-God outlaw, he mercilessly derided the ruling dictatorship throughout his career, and was hounded, beaten, tortured, imprisoned, and nearly killed several times. Out of his more than fifty(!) albums, at least fifteen are indispensable masterpieces, and Zombie (1977) is a perfect place to dive in. In the wake of the album’s release, the Nigerian military government decided to silence him for good. 1,000 soldiers attacked and set fire to his home compound in Lagos, preventing fire crews from responding. His recording studio, including his master tapes, were destroyed. Fela received a fractured skull and his 82 year-old mother was thrown from a second-floor window and died of her injuries. Fela survived and never shut up, finally succumbing to AIDS in 1997. 

Easterhouse- Contenders

Sounding a bit like a darker, bleaker communist version of the Smiths, Liverpool’s Easterhouse- named after a notorious Glasgow housing estate- made rock music that sounded like it had been drained of all colour. Yet despite the grey texture, the music is powerful and inspiring, outraged rather than simply angry. ‘Out On Your Own’ takes the Labour Party and the trade unions to task for their fecklessness in opposing Margaret Thatcher; ‘Nineteen Sixty-Nine’ lamented government incompetence and cruelty in Northern Ireland, as well as having another go at the Labour Party (‘House-trained socialists/ the lowest form of hypocrite/ who talk, but when the chips are down/ stay loyal to their king and crown’); ‘Get Back to Russia’ sought to define a new patriotism that could critique British society to the bone; and ‘Inspiration’ is a blackly beautiful song seeking to stay afloat and positive amidst the Thatcher regime. Easterhouse was probably a bit too didactic for mass acceptance- the aforementioned Smiths were a bit more adept at getting at the same issues without sounding preachy- but their existence points to a thriving, politically-conscious indie rock scene in 80s Britain that is long gone and was never really replaced.

Laibach- Let It Be

Decked out in 30s-era totalitarian chic and playing a decidedly Teutonic-flavoured brand of Fascist-sounding industrial noise- full of horns, martial drums, massed choirs, Wagnerian orchestrations and videos that looked like they were directed by Leni Riefenstahl- many condemned this Slovenian group as neo-Nazis, and while you’d be completely forgiven for missing Laibach’s point, the truth about them was much more complex and interesting. Playing their first gigs in Ljubljana in 1982 and naming themselves after the German name for that city, Laibach were part of an art collective called Neue Slowenische Kunst, or NSK, which sought to creatively critique both their own Communist government and Western pop culture. Believing that modern pop concerts were no different from Nazi rallies- and were basically selling the same thing- Laibach re-worked famous pop music to sound like a soundtrack for the Nuremberg rallies. Their 1988 album Let It Be is a track-for-track re-imagining of the Beatles last album and, admittedly, it’s more interesting than actually listenable. But stuck in the middle is their mesmerizing take on ‘Across the Universe’, a beautiful- if vaguely disturbing- rendition performed with only a female choir and a harpsichord.

But that was nothing compared to Laibach's most spectacular performance art piece a few years later. Bob Marley might have revolutionized his genre and Fela Kuti might have invented his own, but did either of them create their own country? Yes, as Yugoslavia disintegrated into civil war and genocide in the early-90s, Laibach and the NSK actually declared themselves an independent state (basically figuring, hey, everybody else in the neighbourhood was), complete with passports that could be stamped at any NSK event, now referred to as ‘embassies’. As war enveloped the region and many borders suddenly became completely arbitrary, reports of people actually navigating their way around the chaos on an NSK passport began to surface. Take that, KISS Army…

Billy Bragg- Talking With the Taxman About Poetry

The humblest Englishman in England, Billy Bragg is a true ‘folk’ musician. It's not because he works in a traditional folk milieu- he doesn't really; his formative musical experience was the Clash, not Martin Carthy- but because his work is so concerned with the lives of ordinary people- romance, work, humour, politics, play- that there’s really no other term for it. Bragg seamlessly interweaves the personal and the political; sure, he’s a socialist who wants a stronger trade union movement to better represent the interests of workers, but he’s also a boyfriend trying to get on with his girl and a supporter of England in the football. Bragg’s real talent is in deftly inferring that all those topics inform each other, and organically rather than as some great sociological model. Bragg’s first two albums were simply voice and electric guitar; his third album, 1986’s Talking With the Taxman About Poetry- its title taken from a work by Russian poet Vladimir Mayakovsky- was richer and more nuanced, adding trumpet and piano now and then, while still being as straightforward as the earlier two. He includes two rousing political anthems (‘There is Power in A Union’; 'Help Save the Youth of America’) along with beautiful and emotional human interest stories (‘Levi Stubb’s Tears’; ‘The Home Front’), all of it with grace and realism. But what keeps Bragg's music from falling into the trap of sounding either pompous or precious that afflicts so much political music is that he has enough humility and sense of humour to know that there’s only so much that mere music can accomplish in a complex world. Reflecting on his life against those of striking Polish workers in Gdansk, who at the time were taking on the might of the Soviet Empire, he concludes, ‘they’re out there making history/ in the Lenin Shipyards today/ here I am in the Hammersmith Hotel/ wishing the days away’. That level  of self-awareness in a socially-conscious artist might not be considered essential, but Bragg shows that it is at least damned refreshing.