Monthly Archives: December, 2012

DEC 12, 2012 - Ravi Shankar, one of the first musical activists of modern times, passed away on Tuesday at age 92. He, George Harrison, and other musicians put on "The Concert for Bangladesh", considered to be THE first "large-scale" activist musical concert ever and set the stage for future events like "Live Aid". Ravi introduced Eastern spiritualism to The Beatles, and became a teacher for George Harrison and other musicians who wanted to learn to play the sitar and learn the South Asian musical style. The huge event featured Ringo Starr, Billy Preston, Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan, Leon Russel and the group Badfinger. Ravi and Ali Akbar Khan played a separate set of traditional South Asian music, all to raise awareness and funds for the victims of the 1970 Bhola cyclone, and atrocities inflicted upon eastern Pakistan refugees fleeing war. The concert was a huge success, and raised millions for a UNICEF fund. Help continues to this day through the George Harrison Fund for UNICEF. Read more about his long and eventful life on Wikipedia here.

Read more on Washington Post.com, especially the part about Ravi Shankar fleeing the Monterey Pop Festival when he saw Jimi Hendrix burn his guitar (Shankar thought it was "irreverent")  in a piece by Robert Thomason. (Photo credit: CC/AIgnatenko)

DEC 10, 2012 - Taylor Swift has donated a beautiful signed Taylor guitar to the holiday auction being held to raise funds for the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, an institution dedicated to helping those in oppressed communities, and carry on the work of the great Senator Robert F. Kennedy devoted his life to.

"Some men see things the way they are, and ask why? I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?" - Robert F. Kennedy paraphrasing George Bernard Shaw

"To realize his dream of a more just and peaceful world, Robert Kennedy’s family and friends founded a living memorial in 1968. Today, the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights is one of the foremost international human rights organizations. In the tradition of Robert Kennedy, the RFK CENTER has forged effective collaborations with NGOs, universities, legal clinics, and the media on behalf of oppressed communities."

To check out the full size picture of this awesome guitar in full detail, click on 
READ MORE below, and check out other donated celebrity merchandise in this special holiday auction, such as a guitar from Johnny Cash and more, by checking out the RFKCenter.org website.

DEC 10 - JTMP is excited to announce we have joined up with a great organization called "Americans Against Fracking", joing dozens of other organizations and millions of grassroots American activists dedicated to stopping the environmentally harmful practice of hydraulic fracturing for natural gas, or "fracking". We believe the practice of fracking poses an immediate threat to our natural resources, and we want to preserve our precious natural resources such as air, water, and land for future generations. Read more on JTMP Green here.

DEC 8, 2012 - James Taylor, who played at the DNC in Charlottesville, NC and was a HUGE supporter of President Barack Obama, held a luncheon at the National Press Club yesterday (DEC 7) here in DC and discussed what motivated him to go out and do all that stump work for Obama to try to get him re-elected. “I was hugely motivated … by eight years of Cheney-Bush," adding that he felt the Iraq war was, "unpardonable. I felt that it was inept, corrupt and opaque.” He called the conservative effort to restrict voting as a "solution without a problem", and cites the need for Republicans to work with the Democrats to help us solve our fiscal crisis. But Mr. Taylor does NOT think raising the eligibility age for Medicare, cutting Social Security or other social programs is the way to solve our crisis. "We may have to over the cliff." Read more on TrailBlazersBlog.DallasNews.com here, and also on Go.Bloomberg.com here.  Thanks to C Larson on YouTube for the video below of James Taylor singing "Walking in a Winter Wonderland" at the National Christmas Tree lighting ceremony he was also in town for. (Photo credit: CC/Paul Keleher)

DEC 7, 2012 - The US Supreme Court has decided to take up 2 cases in the 2013 calendar concerning the issue of gay marriage. One case being Prop 8, the law passed in California banning gay marriage that we did a video about back in 2010 (watch below), where we tied the struggles of civil rights to the issue of gay marriage. The other case concerns a woman who was married to her partner in Canada, lived in a  state that gay marriage was legal, yet had to pay taxes after her partner of 42 years died; a tax she would not have to pay if her partner had been a man and the federal government would have recognized her marriage. Read more on NPR.org here.