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Free State Line
By Codell Greywater
(AGR) — Tim Barry is the singer for Richmond, VA - based
punk band Avail. Tim is a long time friend and co-conspirator who
has greatly inspired me musically, politically, and personally. The
interview below is part of a conversation in which we discussed many
issues we’ve talked about throughout the years that are pertinent
to his upcoming benefit performance for the Asheville Global Report.
Tim will be debuting his solo project, Free State Line -- Oregon Hill,
porch-sitting, acoustic, country punk. The show is at the Asheville
Community Resource Center on Friday, Jan. 16. Y’all come on down.
AGR: Your lyrics, although very political, also reflect your own
personal experience. Have you found this way of song writing to be
an effective way of getting political messages to your audience?
Tim: I can only write from personal experience and I can only write
about how I feel… I’ve been an inherently political person
for a number of years specifically because of people who influenced
me in the past. Politics come out even in my personal lyrics. I really
have no intent on influencing people in any way or slanting them in
any way at all. I think if that happens that’s cool, but I just
kind of write stream-of-consciousness and then go from there.
So, if the politics creep out and if people agree with them, or if
it turns them in a specific direction, that’s cool with me. But
for now, and probably forever, that’s the only way I know how
to write and that’s from personal experience. [The lyrics] are
actually journal entries forming into songs. So if I’m coming
back from a protest there might be a lot of political slants to the
lyrics. If I’m ending a relationship, they’re filled with
that carnage.
AGR: But when you do come back from a protest, for example, those
issues are on your mind, and between songs at shows you do talk about
those things that you’re involved in.
Tim: Yeah. Again, I’ve been involved in the activist community
for a number of years, so it’s kind of impossible for me to deny
that part of my personality. So, yeah, it comes out, and it probably
will till the fuckin’ end, or at least I hope so.
AGR: Avail has done a lot of benefits for a lot of grassroots organizations
through the years. The band has funded Food Not Bombs for a number
of years and done other benefits that you were politically motivated
to support. Can you talk a little about what direction the band wanted
to go regarding which organizations to fund?
Tim: Avail started many, many years ago -- close to twelve years ago,
something like that. We grew up in the suburbs of Washington, DC,
in Northern Virginia, in a bizarre planned community called Reston.
DC was a thriving punk scene at the time. This was the late eighties.
We were making music and trying to rip off the great old DC punk bands
like Bad Brains and Marginal Man and Soulside, Kingface, Dag Nasty,
and Three.
AGR: Which were all doing benefits at the time
Tim: Which were all doing benefits at the time. We were emulating
them musically. Well, no, we were straight up ripping them off. Still
to this day those bands are fuckin’ terrific. Rock bands with
ethics. We really looked up to these guys.
Positive Force, DC, is a group that puts on incredible benefit shows
for incredible causes. I don’t know about now, but they often
ended with protests. One of my fondest memories is of seeing a show
in DC that finished and was followed by a rally at the South African
Embassy. This was during the peak of apartheid. And for a teenager,
that kind of action and connection with music and politics really,
absolutely rubs off. I’m glad I was there to experience that
stuff.
[Avail] kind of carried on that tradition. In the earlier years, Avail
spent a lot of time doing benefit shows for various causes, but because
of the economics of touring for half the year, we settled on only
supporting one thing, and that is Food Not Bombs [FNB], Richmond.
From all of our show in Richmond for the last ten years, Avail has
continuously contributed to FNB in Richmond.
The reason we do that is because FNB Richmond is essential to community-building
in this area and that is really important to everyone in the band.
FNB in Richmond takes it to a different level. I’m not even just
talking about the servings. I’m talking about organizing actions,
and splinter groups from FNB becoming extremely politically active
in every essence of the word “active.” Community activism.
AGR: You’re getting a lot of your information from alternative
sources, reading, (say) Indymedia instead of the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
It seems that reading that material would inspire and influence your
lyrics.
Tim: Yeah, it’s undeniable. Not only from Indymedia, but from
piles of pamphlets and other stuff distributed through FNB and the
few anarchist-style collectives in Richmond. Or things like the Asheville
Global Report, which I always try to pick up whenever I’m down
there, because I’ve always felt a connection to Asheville.
I wouldn’t even be coming down there if it wasn’t for the
AGR. Let’s just face it, if there weren’t things like AGR,
or the few other alternative newspapers in the Southeast, where would
we all get our information? You can’t depend on [media outlets]
like CNN, or the Richmond Times-Dispatch and other loads of shit….
Whenever we have the opportunity, [Avail] will bring a representative
and the Bookmobile from AK Press on our tours. AK Press is a very
far leftist book distributor and publisher from San Francisco. We
do this as a way of maybe opening people up to a different slant.
They carry titles anywhere from Craig O’Hara’s “The
Philosophy of Punk,” to Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, and Emma Goldman.
Just go down the list of anybody who’s changed my life or yours.
I think it’s neat to be able to bring that to punk shows where
there’s often a younger audience who can get turned on to that
sort of alternative in media.
Killjoy mayor turns New York into the
forbidden apple
By Paul Harris
New York, New York, Jan. 11— The bartender leaned over
the counter, folded a beer mat into a crude ashtray, then stubbed her
cigarette out in it. “We call that a Mike Bloomberg,” she
said with venom, referring to New York’s tough-talking mayor.
In this city where public smoking is banned, she was breaking the law
— just one of many stringent regulations which critics claim are
stifling the life of “the city that never sleeps.”
New York was once the place where anything goes, but under Bloomberg’s
reign it is fast becoming one of the most controlled cities in America.
One city newspaper asked last week: “Is Fun City turning into Blandsville?”
Fancy a drink with your picnic in Central Park? Not a chance. Drinking
alcohol in public is illegal. Perhaps you can feed the pigeons there?
Also banned. Even riding your bike with your feet off the pedals is
now against the law. And you’d better have a bell on your handlebars
too, or face a fine.
In Britain, a mobile phone going off in the cinema is irritating. In
New York it is illegal. So is putting your bag on an empty seat in the
subway. Ashtrays are illegal except in private homes. And sex is off
the menu of entertainment after Bloomberg cracked down on lap-dancing
and stripping bars.
All of this prompted Vanity Fair magazine to launch a blistering attack
this weekend on Bloomberg and his laws. British journalist Christopher
Hitchens was dispatched to break as many laws as possible, including
feeding pigeons and taking up two subway seats. He wrote of a “Niagara
of pettiness and random victimization” and said of Bloomberg: “Who
knows what goes on in the tiny constipated chambers of his mind? All
we know for certain is that one of the world’s most broadminded
and open cities is now in the hands of a picknose control freak.”
Even the police have joined the debate. The city’s police union
has spent $100,000 launching a “Don’t Blame the Cop”
campaign to explain that the wave of on-the-spot fines and court summonses
was not their fault. They said they were set performance targets for
fines to raise money for New York’s empty coffers. “City Hall
is trying to turn us into a revenue-generating agency,” said Patrick
Lynch, president of New York City Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association.
Many of the laws are not new but are only now being enforced. This has
led to a litany of bizarre fines. Jesse Taveras was fined $105 for sitting
on a milk crate on the pavement. Yoav Kashida, an Israeli tourist, fell
asleep on the subway and woke to find two policeman ticketing him because
his head had slid into the seat next to him. Elle and Serge Schroitman
were fined for “blocking a driveway” with their car. Never
mind that the driveway was their own. An elderly woman, advised by her
doctor to keep her leg elevated to avoid a blood clot, was hit by a
$50 fine for resting a foot on the subway chair opposite her. Her appeal,
backed by her doctor, was turned down.
Some of the media outrage around the issue is undoubtedly personal.
Graydon Carter, editor of Vanity Fair, has had three summonses for keeping
an ashtray in his office. His office was even raided (and its ashtray
confiscated) after a tip-off to City Hall by a Vanity Fair staffer.
Carter wrote in his magazine: “Under current New York City law
it is acceptable to keep a loaded handgun in your place of work but
not an empty ashtray.”
Bloomberg’s main aim has been to force New York’s finances
back on track. He has largely succeeded but has lost much popularity
by raising property taxes while cutting budgets. At Thanksgiving the
New York Post ran a front page showing Bloomberg’s face morphed
onto the body of a turkey.
Source: Observer (UK)
Who bankrolls Bush and his democratic
rivals?
A look at the presidential race
Washington, DC, Jan. 8— Enron Corporation, the Houston-based
energy firm that touched off a financial, legal and political scandal
when it declared bankruptcy in December 2001, remains the top career
patron of President George W. Bush, whose prolific fundraising in 2003
shattered all previous records for candidates. Enron’s employees
and political action committee have given more than $600,000 to Bush
over the course of his political career, according to a new Center for
Public Integrity book, The Buying of the President 2004 (HarperCollins).
In 2003, executives of the reorganized Enron — including Joseph
W. Sutton, the company’s chairman — continued to contribute
to the Bush campaign.
Bush has already raised more money than any other candidate in history
in the year before the election, a whopping $85.2 million. That comes
in the context of what has already been a record primary season for
candidate fundraising. Former Vermont Governor Howard Dean opted out
of the public financing system, which limits what candidates can spend
in the primaries, citing the need to challenge Bush’s prodigious
fundraising as his reason; Massachusetts Senator John Kerry followed
suit, relying on his personal wealth to fuel his campaign. Late entrant
Wesley Clark touted the more than $10 million his campaign raised in
its first full quarter of fundraising, and even dark horse candidate
Dennis Kucinich touted his larger-than-expected campaign coffers on
his Web site.
Every major White House contender who has held past elective office
has “career patrons,” or longtime financial sponsors, who
have underwritten his or her political career. And every major aspirant
has used his government position to help his patrons.
The Buying of the President 2004: Who’s Really Bankrolling Bush
and His Democratic Challengers—and What They Expect in Return
by Charles Lewis and the Center for Public Integrity is the only book
to offer investigative profiles of all the major party candidates for
president. The book tracks each candidate’s relationships to his
or her career patrons.
A team of 53 researchers, writers, and editors at the Center for Public
Integrity gathered and analyzed tens of thousands of pages of government
data obtained from the Federal Election Commission, state campaign finance
regulatory bodies, and federal agencies through the Freedom of Information
Act to provide the most in-depth analysis of the large donors behind
those seeking the White House. The money race has its costs. The Center
found:
While he was governor of Texas, Bush relied on Enron and its then-chairman
and CEO Kenneth Lay for more than just campaign contributions. When
Bush needed help launching his education plan, Lay, through the auspices
of a quasi-official advisory group called the Governor’s Business
Council, pledged his support. When Bush wanted to start an internship
program in the governor’s office, Lay followed through with the
funding. And when Lay wanted changes to tort, tax or environmental law,
Bush returned the favors. Bush, who has signaled an interest in Social
Security privatization, and even appointed a commission that concluded
in December 2001 that any reform of the New Deal program should “include
a system of voluntary personal accounts,” numbers financial firms
Merrill Lynch & Co. (his second most generous career patron), Credit
Suisse First Boston (fifth), UBS Paine Webber (eighth) and Goldman Sachs
Group (ninth) among his top ten patrons. All were members of a group
called the Coalition for American Financial Security, which favors privatization
— and the millions of individual stock market accounts (and brokerage
fees to administer them) that would be created. In 1999, while he was
CEO of Halliburton, Vice President Dick Cheney wrote a letter to his
predecessor in that office, Al Gore, opposing more stringent air standards.
“Implementation of these standards,” he wrote to Gore, “would
cause great harm to consumers, my own industry, and the US economy and
will still not deliver the promised significant enhancement of health
protection to the American public.”
As Vice President, Cheney played a lead role in shaping the administration’s
energy policies, which critics charge will lead to greater pollution
and lower air quality. In his letter, Cheney also called on Gore to
address any new standards in “full and open debate”—
an ironic request, given that the secrecy surrounding Vice President
Cheney’s own energy policy task force generated an unprecedented
lawsuit by the General Accounting Office and other suits that will soon
be considered by the Supreme Court of the United States. While governor,
Howard Dean pushed for utility contract provisions that aided the power
companies, but cost Vermont families millions of dollars in skyrocketing
rates. Vermont has the sixth highest utility rates in the country, due
in part to a series of long-term contracts between its major power companies.
After years of pushing for Central Vermont Public Service Corp. and
the smaller utilities it held to absorb the excess costs of their expensive
contracts, Dean’s Department of Public Service agreed to let ratepayers
be billed for more than 90 percent of the excess costs — which
could soar into the hundreds of millions of dollars. Central Vermont
Public Service Corp. donated more than $10,000 to Dean’s Fund for
a Healthy America PAC — a hefty contribution in a state that limits
campaign contributions for statewide offices to $400. Securities and
Exchange records show that Acxiom, a company that was seeking Homeland
Security contracts, agreed to pay General Wesley Clark hundreds of thousands
of dollars for his help in persuading the government to buy the company’s
wares. Clark was a registered lobbyist while he served as a military
analyst on CNN, and was still a lobbyist when he declared his candidacy
on Sept. 17, 2003. Representative Richard Gephardt tried to lower taxes
on alcohol at least five times over the years, much to the pleasure
of his largest career patron, Anheuser Busch, which has given him more
than $517,000 over the years. Senator John Kerry wrote letters to the
FCC asking it to delay its spectrum auction, keeping in line with his
brother’s law firm, which represents the telecommunications industry
and has given the senator more than $210,000. After receiving hundreds
of thousands of contributions from biotechnology companies, Senator
Joseph Lieberman hired the industry’s top lobbyist for his staff
and went on to introduce and co-sponsor bills for which this sector
lobbied.
As previous editions of the book illustrated in 1996 and 2000, big money,
special interests and large contributors pre-select the candidates for
president before a single primary vote is recorded, and they influence
the policies and platforms of the candidates seeking the nation’s
highest office.
The Buying of the President 2004 also provides new information
about the “Top 50 Patrons” of the two major political parties,
which illuminates the relationships between the presidential candidates
and their respective parties. For example, the top “soft money”
(large, unlimited contributions) donor to the Republican Party since
1991 has been Philip Morris, contributing $10.3 million. The top “soft
money” donor to the Democratic Party since 1991 has been the American
Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), contributing
$16.5 million.
The book includes chapters on the bitter primary battle Bush campaign
workers waged against John McCain, and looks closely at the Florida
recount of 2000 and how President-elect Bush failed to reveal the names
of hundreds of donors on his disclosure forms, including that of White
House strategist Karl Rove. The book also profiles the Republican and
Democratic parties, and offers an in-depth look at the first years of
the Bush administration.
The Center for Public Integrity will continue to update its information
on the candidates and their career patrons throughout the 2004 campaign
on our Web site.
In 1996, the Center released the first edition of The Buying of the
President, a month before the first caucuses and primaries. It became
a finalist for the Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) annual
book award. As part of its continuing look at the 1996 campaign, the
Center broke the “Lincoln Bedroom” campaign finance scandal
involving the Clinton White House; its Public i report won the Society
of Professional Journalists “Public Service” newsletter award.
In The Buying of the President 2000, which was also a finalist
for the IRE book award, the Center was the first to identify Enron as
Bush’s top career patron.
Source: The Center for Public Integrity
The ublic’s struggle for the airwaves
By Kent
Jan 14, (AGR) -- For years access to the FM radio band has been
restricted to the very public that supposedly owns it. Community radio
has yet to make a come back from what it once was, after almost two
decades ago the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) tipped the scales
with the elimination of the low-watt class D license, Even the staple
“college” radio station has seen a decline in the past years.
Corporations like NPR, once hippie start-ups, have become lead opponents
of low-power licenses. In the name of market consolidation, NPR fought
alongside one of the wealthiest communication lobbyists in Washington
and the National Association of Broadcaster (N.A.B) who both tried to
prevent new low power FM (LPFM) licenses from becoming a reality.
But, the then chairmen of the FCC William Kennard continued to feel
pressure from radio pirates and citizen advocate groups. The micro-radio(or
pirate radio) movement picked up steam and successfully brought the
issue to the lips of politicians, musicians, and community advocates.
Despite lack of expensive equipment (compared to the average 1,000 watt
commercial station) their low-watt signals reaching from 1-10 miles
at the most, rang a sharp tone in the ears of the powers that be.
The work paid off as applicants were able to file for LPFM licenses
for the first time in at least fifteen years. Many Pirates jumped ship
at the opportunity to go legit following an FCC request to cease and
desist only to be told they couldn’t apply for the very legistration
they helped create.
The LPFM licenses were officially halted a year later; the licensing
opportunity failed to reach all fifty states. This largely had to do
with FCC Chairman William Kennards replacement Michael Powell —
Collin Powells’ son. Several organizations got their feet in the
door many being Christian groups and NGOs.
Locally, two organizations were granted LPFM licenses last year, Mountain
Area Information Network’s (M.A.I.N) 103.5 FM WPVM and The Empowerment
Resource Center of Asheville’s 100.7 FM WRES. These stations along
with the local vetran pirate radio station Free Radio Asheville 107.5
FM have given people the opportunity to take back the airwaves in Asheville.
In the comming weeks I will be writing about the three low-power stations
that grace Asheville’s FM dial.
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