This is part two of my interview with John Sinclair, author of the book Guitar Army which was re-released by Process on May 1, 2007. If you haven't already, please read part one of this interview with John Sinclair.
If only you were 20 now with the current technology that now exists.
Yeah, I always say if we had the internet in the sixties we would have taken over the world. They could do that now. I just saw the most encouraging story yesterday in the New York Times. The people in charge of coding the DVDs to keep you from copying them, their lawyers sent out a stern warning to these people about disseminating this information on the internet, that it was not to be done. So they revolted and now this code is everywhere.
One of our writer's just wrote about the story last week.
Look at what Move On did. You see, part of getting a culture to not make things happen is making them believe it can't happen. In the academic world, all the people who went to college since the Reagan and CIA era started in 1980, or even before that, have been taught that history is dead. That there is a new world order and this is the way it's going to be. Then they have this massive wiretapping and this kind of stuff, and you're supposed to feel like you can't do anything.
So a lot of people feel that way, but there's still a lot of stuff going on but they don't give it the same weight as they do the other stuff. I'll give you an example. I used to go to this thing in Boston called MassCann. It's sponsored by Massachusetts Normal Cann – Cann is short for cannabis. It's a huge legalization rally. It was huge because the FM station endorsed it and it was their major promotion of the year, because all these guys could harken back to the day when you could say these things publicly. Well the EEA and the state police and all these people came to the station, because they were getting 80,000 kids at Boston. And they said, 'We really wish that you wouldn't do this.' And they said, 'Are you crazy? This is our most popular event. It's working for us commercially.'
But when they would have it they would have the counter-rally down the street, the people who supported the laws against marijuana, and even though there were 80,000 people at the other [MassCann] event, the coverage would be fair and balanced. So they would show somebody here, and then they would have an equal amount of time from the counter rally and there were maybe 50 people there. It was totally bizarre. Wayne Kramer was talking to me the other day about going to this thing in Washington against the war, 300,000 people there. You don't get any sense there is that kind of opposition.
Article comments