Going Down Under

If it weren't for a very long flight, all the kangaroos and kookaburras, and everyone driving on the left side of the road, I might have thought I was still in the USA.

One of the most interesting things about traveling is how sometimes it can feel like you're traveling in time as well as in space. Like how going to Scandinavia involves so many reminders of what life must have been like, or more like, 60 years ago in the US, when the rich were still taxed, housing was affordable, and higher education at a state school was almost free.

A trip to Australia, by contrast, feels more like traveling back in time about 5 years. It feels more like leaving a place where the figurative skies are growing ever darker, and going to a place where the skies aren't as dark yet, but everything is pointing in the wrong direction, with what feels like the toxic influence of the US and US-driven social media environments spreading, and infecting that country, along with all the other English-speaking countries, and beyond, but especially them.

The ever-present and ever-relevant backdrop of my trip, which began just after the beginning of July and ended on July 26th, included the ongoing daily massacres conducted by Israel and the US against starving Palestinians in Gaza, the ever-expanding famine there, and the ever-increasing ranks of shrunken, starved children dying of malnutrition.

I left Portland after one massacre of starving children, and by the time I landed in Brisbane there had been another one, and it kept going like that, and keeps going like that.

I left Portland on July 3rd, and by the time I crossed the International Date Line it was July 5th.  I completely missed July 4th, by a happy accident.

Life on Earth continued while I was missing Independence Day, however.  By the time I landed in Brisbane I was hearing about scores of people being arrested in London and other cities in England for holding signs saying, "I Support Palestine Action, I Oppose Genocide."

The British Parliament had voted by an overwhelming margin to label Palestine Action a terrorist group, despite the fact that no one acting under the banner of Palestine Action has ever harmed another person, let alone killed one.  But expressing verbal or written support for the group on a piece of paper had become an offense potentially imprisonable by 14 years.

Something else that had just happened before I left the US was a young man I know in California had his home raided by the FBI, which seemed to be entirely due to his involvement with antiwar organizing.  What distinguishes him from so many other activists whose homes have been violently raided by police in recent months is that he is a white, US-born US citizen.

After a little jet lag recovery time and a beautiful drive down the coast from Brisbane, the first gig on the tour for Kamala and I was in Newcastle, New South Wales.

Newcastle is one of at least two cities in Australia that used to have the nickname of Steel City, in the days when there were lots of steel mills.  The opening act was a brilliant old-time fiddle player whose stage name is Steel City Sue, in fact.

That first gig happened in a place called the Resistance Center, located in the center of town, across from a big university building.

There is a profound significance to the fact that the first gig, as well as the one in Brisbane, happened at one of these centers.

Resistance Center is the name used by the left political party most recently calling itself the Socialist Alliance.  The Socialist Alliance is not a cultural organization, it is a left political party that runs candidates, prints a weekly paper, organizes protests and other events.  But this party, both since and prior to its most recent name change, frequently makes use of its Resistance Centers to host touring musicians like me.  In past tours, the numbers of venues I played in that were affiliated with the Socialist Alliance has been an even larger percentage -- long before my singing partner was a member of the party.

Left political parties -- and far beyond the left, political parties more generally, along with unions, corporations, and other organizations -- using their buildings and activating their networks to host musical events is, historically and around the world, completely normal.  In fact, this kind of thing is generally seen as a vitally important element in the project of building and sustaining a party, an organization, and/or a social movement, historically, and still today, around the world -- excluding some of the most prominent English-speaking countries such as the US, the UK, and Australia.

For people from these countries it may seem particularly notable and unusual to hear about a musician performing in the offices of a leftwing political party.  For that matter, for people living in the US, the idea of a leftwing political party having a physical office at all may be surprising in itself.  (I wish that were a joke, but it's not.)

Every one of the gigs we did, from Newcastle on, was well-attended and organized by highly competent organizers that I have worked with before, all of whom come from different sorts of activist orientations.  Some are coming from Socialist Alliance, others coming from groups or networks associated with the rights of refugees, or opposition to the war on Gaza, or from the environmental movement.  All of them support the idea of more music in the movement, for the same reasons I or any other sensible person does.

I accidentally organized our little tour in such a way that we were in Sydney on the weekend of a rally for Gaza there, and we were in the Australian capital of Canberra for rallies the following weekend, that coincided with the opening of parliament for the legislative season.

The Sydney rally, as with the one we sang at a year earlier, was attended by many hundreds of people, roughly half of whom appeared likely to be Muslims or from majority-Muslim parts of the world.  Events on the stage were well-amplified, with people standing on the back of a pickup truck.  We did two sets, before and after the march.  The few speakers that were involved all made powerful points, and came from various backgrounds.

Just two weeks before that Sydney rally a much-loved local activist, Hannah Thomas, was struck by a cop at a protest and was at risk of losing the sight in one of her eyes.  Undeterred, word was she was in the crowd.

Days before the rally, federal police raided the home where a 61-year-old Palestinian grandma from Gaza was staying with her son, having arrived from the war zone on a tourist visa.  It was a violent, predawn raid that caused this war refugee obvious emotional trauma.

With no explanation that I've heard of, and after some outcry and some international news coverage, the authorities released her a week later.  (While she was detained I wrote a song about her, but she had already been released by the time we recorded it.)

Similar to the Sydney rally but with a smaller crowd, the iteration of the weekly rally they've been having in Canberra since October, 2023 that we sang at once again was organized by people who enthusiastically welcomed our musical participation -- headed up by a Muslim woman named Diana who deeply believes in the power of music and culture as part of a social movement, and told me so on several occasions during our time in Canberra, where we ran into her everywhere.

At this weekly rally in Canberra they have taken to holding a sort of memorial for someone who died in the war on Gaza, often a memorial for a child.  It's a powerful way to tell the story of the genocide through the example of one person, in one family, in one place, which is the sort of human-scale story we can all relate to so well, as humans.

Following that local rally of the Canberra Palestine solidarity group was a national convergence, as it was being billed, around calling for Australian sanctions on Israel.  At least a thousand people, by my observation, came from all over the country to attend the main rally on Sunday, quite a few of whom stuck around for more events on Monday and Tuesday, involving various workshops and more rallies.

What was abundantly clear from being involved with these events was, on the one hand, there are lots of wonderful people who are desperately concerned about the ongoing genocide they're bearing witness to every day who came to Canberra to do something.  This was a highly select and motivated group of people, beyond doubt, if you struck up a conversation with most anyone.

Kamala and I hosted a workshop on the importance of music and culture in social movements.  What was very clear from that very well-attended workshop was that there were many, many people who came to this convergence with exactly the same sorts of ideas that I and other people like Pete Seeger and so many others are or were always going on about:  that social movements need music and culture to grow and thrive.

After the workshops some young activist musicians led a march around downtown Canberra, where we visited various stores of companies on the boycott list for one reason or another.  At each stop along the way, someone said a few words, and then we all sang two or three songs -- either all together, singalong style, with the use of lyric sheets organizers had handed out, or songs Kamala and I were singing that were generally very recent and not known by folks, but deeply appreciated.

Many people involved with that singing march seemed to be profoundly impacted by it, commenting that passersby were interested in what was happening, rather than put off by it.

The orientation of the people at the workshop and those at the local rallies around culture was in stark contrast to the organizers of the national rallies.  Both Kamala and I were struck by the similarity in tone and content at these national rallies, and the tone and content of what was going on on the stage at the national convergence against the war on Gaza that we had attended together in Chicago a year earlier.

The striking similarities were that there was an almost total lack of live music or any other form of culture represented on that stage.  It was almost entirely one person yelling into the microphone after another.  Very few people spoke at a normal tone, trying to tell an engaging story about the horrors we were all there to protest.  Most shouted, and much of the time it was unclear whether they were directing their anger at the Australian government and its complicity with this genocide, or at the people in attendance at the rally.  As our numbers were naturally shrinking with each passing hour of being shouted at, some of the speakers became that much more animated, blaming the crowd for a lack of enthusiasm, by the time the crowd had dwindled to 20% of its original size.

This was identical to our experience in Chicago.  It's also identical to the program at rallies run by front groups of the Workers World Party that I've had the misfortune of attending in Washington, DC.  Which made sense, since what was happening on the stage in Chicago was determined by the Party of Socialism and Liberation, which clearly has inherited the two-dimensional, sectarian orientation of Workers World.

At these rallies, aside from any form of culture -- in full disclosure, our participation in the main rally was turned down -- what was happening on the stage didn't seem to involve anyone representing either labor or business, and no one representing a church or a mosque.  The closest thing to a representative of mainstream society we got to hear from were Green Party members of parliament and Socialist Alliance representative Alex Bainbridge, who were some of the few speakers who weren't shouting at us, by my incomplete assessment, at least.

Friends from around Australia who I'm regularly in touch with, who were not at the national convergence, were telling me that in their view, this convergence was being run by a group of sectarians.  

By my observation (as I also told them), whoever was making decisions about what was going on on the stage appeared to be very heavily influenced by some of the most puritanical, alienating, and identitarian elements of the Australian left, of a sort that I have rarely encountered outside of the US and Germany.  For example, we were told repeatedly by the MC that if we encountered any media who wanted to talk to us, we should refer them to the official representatives of the rally to talk to.  Why?  It's up to everyone to guess at what disqualifies the rest of us from talking to a journalist, but the implication seems to be if you're not of Palestinian or Lebanese heritage, your voice shouldn't be "centered."  

The most bizarre aspect of this particularly toxic rendition of identity politics is that you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone in the actual Arab world who thinks this way.  Anyone in the Arab world seems to know very clearly that everyone everywhere should speak out in whatever ways might best communicate to their people, to stop this genocide.  None of them are talking about "centering Palestinian voices."

This is a form of thinking, in a world with very, very few actual Palestinians in it -- and fewer by the day -- that is completely toxic and counterproductive.  And it is a form of thinking that is quintessentially American, and now Australian as well.  It has its origins in American universities, among members of the privileged American elite desperate to convince themselves that they were something other than what they were.  It's a perspective that leads automatically to atomization and isolation, as little groups continue to subdivide in order to feel more important.  It's the opposite of the kind of inclusive movement-building we so desperately require.

But equally notable to me was the lack of influence of this sort of sectarian thinking on anything else that was happening in Canberra.  Most of those involved with the convergence seemed to be very dedicated activists from various communities, sometimes involved with bigger organizations, usually not, but all passionate people who all seem to think we need more music in the movement (though I'm admittedly a biased source for this sort of observation, since of course it might be disproportionately people who think this way who would be seeking out a conversation with me in the first place).

But certainly my observation applies to hundreds of people who were there -- a large chunk for sure.  How is it that their view on the importance of putting on events that are engaging and help build a movement is so absent among those deciding on the programs on the stages of the national rallies?

It's a question that probably has many answers, all of them correct.

It would be much too simplistic to attribute the dismally alienating and disheartening, totally nonmusical rally program to a small group of dedicated sectarians.  Or even if the situation could be characterized that way, crucially important questions to answer include:  how does a group's leadership develop this kind of orientation in the first place?  How does a group's leadership become so disconnected with society that they think for a moment that this is the way to organize a rally?  How do participants in such a movement get to the point where they're ready to put up with this kind of thing?

I'll define what I mean by "left" for a moment:  those whose thinking is so much more radical on issues around the distribution of wealth, the rights of people, or militarism that they are generally not represented in the legislatures of Australia at most any level of government.  Although participants in the broader convergence and those attending the rallies and marches came from many walks of life, the left, as I've defined it, has become a phenomenon that seems to be, at the level of actual organizing, completely disconnected from society in Australia as well as in the US.

What do I mean by this, or how is this disconnection in evidence?  And how did the alienation of the left become so normalized in the Anglosphere, whereas in most of the world the left is very deeply a part of the society, steeped in the culture of their society and beyond?

In countries where this disconnection hasn't happened to such a degree, or at all, protests or most other big gatherings of people are full of cultural representations of the feelings of the people about the war on Gaza, as the case may be.  They are full of music, and full of people who will readily state what is to them abundantly obvious, whether they're from Asia, Africa, or Latin America, that music is the beating heart of the movement.  In so much of the world, in so many countries less impacted by the corporate music industry, very radical musicians are some of the most well-known and well-loved celebrities

On the stages at such protests in countries where this disconnection has not happened, the people speaking between the performers represent major blocks of society -- unions, professional associations representing farmers or medical workers, leaders of associations of religious institutions like mosques, churches, and synagogues, along with cultural workers of all sorts, famous and unknown.

I would postulate that it's only really possible for a movement or a network like this to become led by people who are basically alienated from most of society because so many of us have been feeling so alienated from society for so long.  And then in practice, we can see how many of the even pre-alienated people attending rallies find the whole thing totally off-putting, and they leave the rally even more alienated than when they came, long before the rally program is over.

What we witnessed earlier this month in Canberra, and last summer in Chicago, and for me on so many prior occasions at different points in the US, was so far from how a functional movement puts on a rally that it would be hard to know where to begin deconstructing the insanity inherent in thinking a movement can be built by people who are yelling at those in attendance about how they're not working hard enough at their anti-imperialism or cheering loudly enough.

Even in the darkest times, in the vast majority of the world, and in past eras in Australia as well as in the US, the left (as defined above) was deeply connected with society, and society was represented, broadly, in the crowds and on the stages.  Most especially on the stages, cultural workers were in abundance.  They are known worldwide to play the role of the glue that holds everything together, without which it all falls apart.

That it all falls apart without that glue keeps on being proven again and again in my lifetime, as I watch one social movement after another drown beneath the weight of its own social alienation, one of the most depressing examples being what happened on so many of the stages at the rallies that the media dubbed the "racial justice movement," circa 2020, which seemed to be driven by a sort of guilt-ridden, tokenistic form of progressive puritanism, designed to alienate all "allies" one group at a time.

In our discussions about the need for more music in social movements -- a phenomenon which Kamala has increasingly come to observe, in her international travels with me -- we started talking about organizing a tour that included not only concerts in Resistance Centers around Australia, but also workshops to help people think about different ways they can introduce more music and culture -- art, food, puppetry, poetry, group singing -- into their activities and events.

At this stage, by my estimation, in much of the English-speaking world it has been two decades since the last time having music fill up half of the program at a rally was standard procedure.  While there is lots to criticize about past movements everywhere, the decision to include music in their rallies is not one of those things.  That was one of the things they were generally doing right, once upon a time.  Not just since the Sixties, either -- this is not a generational question.  The nonmusicality of the left in the Anglosphere today is, as far as I know, a new phenomenon, one that was not at all an issue in the Sixties, or in the Thirties, or in the beginning of the twentieth century before that, all times that saw seismically massive and massively musical social movements, all of which changed the world in dramatic ways.

In the past, the degree of emphasis on the arts as a tool for organizing has varied widely, from movements that used it brilliantly and so effectively, along with those that didn't, so much.  But the general assumption that it should be part of things was widespread -- as it still is in most of the world today.

Now that this is no longer the case -- now that it has been for many young people their entire lifetime that so much of the organized left has been essentially nonmusical -- it has been occurring to both Kamala and I, among others, that an important job for cultural workers like us at this point is to reintroduce music and its relevance to the left, under the assumption that people can't make use of things they aren't thinking about as useful, or that somehow or other they have become convinced is something frivolous or trivial.

We need to reconnect ourselves with culture, with music, with the vital importance of things like singing together, eating together, and turning protests into festivals of resistance -- which are more like festivals than what we Anglospheric mutants think of as protests.  These are the kinds of protests that have a history of growing, rather than shrinking -- while they're happening, as well as over time.  It's not a guarantee, but what is a guarantee is the nonmusical protest movements will tend to stagnate and die.

When I hear well-meaning left intellectuals talk about different strategies for building an effective movement to oppose wars and authoritarian governments and whatever else, I feel like shouting, but wait a minute.  We are so far from being in a position to effectively think about implementing such strategies, in this anemic state.  They're talking about doing things that are very necessary.  Either way, it seems obvious to some of us that for a real resistance to get off the ground, first we need to grow, which will require learning how to use culture, and learning how to stop systematically alienating everyone who comes to our biggest rallies.

I don't believe in omens, necessarily, but whether there's meaning to be derived from it or not, I left Australia on July 26th, Australia time, and by the time I landed in Portland on the evening of July 26th, US time, one of the most influential musicians for left movements in the Arabic-speaking world and one of the most influential musicians on the English-speaking left both died.  Ziad Rahbani in Lebanon, son of Fairouz, died at the age of 69, and Tom Lehrer died at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts at age 97.

Another thing that happened on that very day of July 26th?  When Reiko and the kids picked me up at the airport in Portland, we went to visit our eldest daughter where she works, which happened to be right smack on the route of the annual Naked Bike Ride.

I've lived in Portland now for 18 years, but I had never gotten around to either participating in or witnessing this annual event.  Sure enough, as I had heard, the street had been taken over by naked people riding bicycles.  My kids and I watched as they went on and on, many thousands of them -- incidentally, a larger group of people than I've ever seen at a protest in Portland.

I don't know if everyone who participates in a naked bike ride is up for civil disobedience to oppose a genocide, but if you can get thousands and thousands of people to violate social norms as well as nudity laws and risk the opprobrium of elements of the public, I'd say this would be a good bunch to work on recruiting, and that is almost certainly a task for well-placed music and art, not for people shouting at them, judging from the vibe.

Two days later, another white male US-born US citizen had his home somewhere near ours violently raided by the FBI.  This pacifist was told he was being charged with assaulting a police officer at a protest at the ICE facility in town.  Along with so many, many noncitizens who are receiving even worse treatment, every day I was on the road in Australia, and every day since I returned, including on many occasions in this city and its suburbs, now the FBI raids are apparently becoming more commonplace for certain citizens as well as everyone else.

And the famine in Gaza is worsening exponentially, while the western world wrings their hands and exports more arms to Israel.

This would sure be a fine time to make the left great again.  We can start, I'd suggest, by reviving that feeling of community, that well of perseverance, and even that sense of optimism that can come from collective cultural activities such as putting on festivals of resistance that live up to such a name.  We can start by showing we're here, and that our ranks might be ones any sensible, life-loving person would naturally of course want to join, not run away from. 

Of course, the future is unwritten, and everything could soon start moving in a much more positive direction than my observations on the state of the Australian left might seem to indicate. We are talking overwhelmingly about good people trying to do good things, regardless of the outcome of their efforts. While it's impossible to share an account of my recent travels in Australia without being critical of certain political tendencies and other things, I hope any individuals that feel like they're being singled out here understand that, at least in my view, no one should hold them responsible for the state of the left in Australia, or any other trends like that.  It would be utterly pointless to make these observations in order to assign blame or make anyone feel guiltier than they already feel.  I only make these observations in the hope that we can together overcome our current state of what often feels like a collective paralysis born of collective social alienation.