Tag: justice

MAR 10, 2014 - Eric Snowden will be speaking at the SXSW Festival today via videoconference to discuss a topic that is HUGE right now: surveillance and online privacy. Today at 11:00 AM CDT (12:00 PM EST) Snowden will have a discussion with Christopher Soghoian, and moderated by Ben Wizner, director of ACLU's Speech, Privacy & Technology Project. Watch the live stream of the even courtesy of The Texas Tribune.

MAR 4, 2014 - The David Lynch Foundation, an organization that promotes daily meditation to youth to bring about a more positive world, honored the great musical producer Rick Rubin last month with the "Lifetime of Harmony" award. Rubin is behind all the great songs you have heard for years, and as the director David Lynch described Rubin in a Variety article, "He has the ability to tune into each artist's talent and bring out the best they've got. The list of bands and artists that worked with Rick is so long, it'd be morning if we read out all the names. And it is a heavy duty list. Rick Rubin has great ears and a great mind between them." Russell Simmons, who founded Def Jam Records with Rubin and uses meditation in his daily life and stresses the use of meditation in public schools in his new book, "Success Through Stillness",  is a great friend of Rick Rubin. In talking about Rubin he said in the same Variety article, "I'm amazed that he is willing to accept any accolades. He's never taken his Grammys. I don't know where the fuckin' Grammys are. You can sell them, give the money to the David Lynch Foundation." Simmons talks about when he first met Rubin and said, "All of us are trying to calm the noise. At the time I had one route and it was through drugs. I couldn't relate to anybody who was sober because they had so much noise, except Rick, who was totally sober, but he exuded the kind of freedom that I was seeking. He seemed to have a stable and lasting hold on it." Simmons credits daily meditation by Rubin to be the key in this and his own success and stresses you can achieve success too with daily meditation. Rubin was also in instrumental in helping the Dixie Chicks with their career after reactionaries attacked their free speech, and they were on hand for the event and performed one of their very few U.S. shows in the last few years. No video yet but JTMP will post them if they come out.

Read more about meditation and visit the David Lynch Foundation website. Start your first meditation session right now with Rick Rubin and Alison Chemick in a short film titled "Music and Spirituality" from NOWNESS on YouTube below. Read more about Rick and the event on Variety.com here.

FEB 25, 2014 - JTMP has discovered a great Asian musical-activist somewhat off the radar, and one I think needs to be on everyone's radar; that artist is Bambu. Bambu is a Filipino-American who used to be in a gang, but got out of that mess and now uses his rap music to sow a social justice-conscious society. He is very politically active, and is not afraid to stir up controversy with strong political statements with the artwork on his album cover. One album has a Ku Klux Klan member being hanged, and another has Jesus as a child with an automatic weapon in his hand. Watch a video of his song "Like Us" below, and check out Bambu's website here.

JAN 31, 2014 - The heavy metal band Skinny Puppy found out that the US government was using their music to torture detainees in Gitmo and they were pissed. So pissed in fact they sent an invoice to the US government and billing them for their "musical services". Read more on Independent.co.uk here.  (photo credit: zimpenfish/flickr/cc)

JAN 28, 2014 - JTMP is in shock and in mourning today, for we woke up to the news that we lost American folk music legend and Great Grandpa Musical Activist that started it all, Pete Seeger. Pete is a personal inspiration, for I attend a "Sing Out Jam Out" folk music circle (find one on MeetUp.com!), and we use the "Rise Up Singing" song book that he helped out with and contains many of his songs. His passing will affect millions and he will have an impact on America and the world for years to come.

Pete was born in New York in 1919, and died in New York in 2014, at the age of 94. His musical career started in the 1940s and 1950s and he enjoyed a successful musical career, and even performed with the band the Weavers, who were blacklisted during the McCarthy era. He is considered by many to have started the activist folk music scene in the 1960s, and Pete and his music became a staple of protests and rallies from the 1960s to today.

JTMP joins the mourning of the passing and celebration of the life of the American activist folk music legend, Pete Seeger. Below is Pete and the Weavers reunited for a concert at Carnegie Hall singing the folk classic, "Wimoweh", or "The Lion Sleeps Tonight", and read about this amazing man on NPR.org here. Rest in Peace Pete, we will carry on the struggle for civil rights!  (photo credit: LOC/CC)