Don't Let Our Minivan Fool You
We have 1200 miles to drive and a minivan to get us there: our fall ‘08
Drop Beats Not Bombs tour includes 15 stops in 6 states, launching in
Minneapolis and ending in New York city. But the minivan is only the
cover of this book and not to be judged: inside we are hip hop, we are
action, art, community across borders, a laboratory of resistance and
visions of another world that is possible, a world that is being
formed, built and created as we speak.
We come from Detroit, Colombia, Minneapolis, Oakland and DC. We are:
Invincible, a hip-hop emcee and community activist, Paula Galeano, a
Colombian conscientious objector of the Red Juvenil, US
counter-recruitment organizer Isaac Martin and FOR artists/activists.
Armed with LCD projectors, stories, microphones, scrap paper, guitars
and photos, our tour aims to train and empower youth to support each
other in resisting militarism through creative action, and to build the
international conscientious objector’s movement.
This tour is innovative in its conception, because we are connecting
art and struggle, we are making the links between the local and the
global, and seeing the war at home and the war abroad as two faces of
the same unjust system. But this tour is not only about what we are
against. It is also about what we stand for. We are objecting to
militarism, we are opposing war and we do not accept a world in which
the only option for young people is to join the military or an illegal
armed group in order to survive. Our consciences will not let us live
in a world where talented, intelligent, energetic youth are killed
every day in the wars of the elite and powerful, who only care to
secure more profits. To resist these realities, we offer our voices and
our bodies, our beats and lyrics, our stencil art and street theater.
We offer this creative resistance to build our visions into existence.
And this is our travel blog — here we will post our reflections,
pictures, interviews and videos of these 20 days we will spend on the
road together. Our first stop will be at Hamline University on November
5th, a day after the Presidential elections. Either way that turns out,
we know that our work will be far from done.
So look out your window — you might see a minivan. You never know who’s inside.
