2017-08-29
House of Love
The Riot Bootique returned to Bloomington after more than a year away. It was a wonderful Party full of love with people who came to celebrate with us the reunion. I wanted to celebrate what is best about Bloomington and the US and deride what divides us. House of Love is my first set (plus first track of second set), with some political overtones but all about inclusion (first set of the night before DJ Angst). The Riot was full of people; all kinds, all colors, all types of love. DJ Angst and E-Trash, will return to our cybernetic DJing next month. Tracklist and podcast for House of Love available on E-Trash's site (Username: apollo, Password: feelingfree).
Labels: #Disco, #DJ, #Funk, #House, #Music, #Techno
2017-08-19
We don't need this fascist groove thing.
You don't heal a society by tearing down statues. When did iconoclasm heal anything? A more robust solution is to incorporate new values into the existing ones, side by side. Every country with sufficiently long history faces these issues. In the US case, it is not just the civil war and slavery that needs healing. From a Native American perspective, every statue and flag celebrating the USA --- yes, including Washington and Jefferson --- also celebrates their collective loss and annihilation. Are we really going to tear down every offensive historical artifact?
As for the President's role. What a surprise Trump is a racist! More than half of voting white people in the U.S. voted for him despite him saying things like "Mexico only sends us rapists, let's build a wall, etc." To this day, his approval is at 37%, I would imagine most of them from his white base. This means that roughly one in every two white Americans who sees my name probably thinks I'm an inferior human---which is still much better odds than the proportion of northern Europeans who think southern, Hispanic Europeans like me are inferior (hey, the Dutch president of the eurogroup got away with saying southern countries spent their money on women and wine.) Just providing some bicontinental context.
Of course the US would do much better embracing a Mandela when it comes to healing. Obama tried, but reactionary forces, to hold on to power, embraced and assembled the extreme forces with dog whistles; now the wild dogs run the show. Still, we cannot succumb to fight intolerance with more iconoclasm. Let free speech rule; all speech. If all speech is allowed to coexist, the most extreme forces will be more and more in the fringe without an excuse or resentment. But let's never tolerate violence or intimidation.
As for the President's role. What a surprise Trump is a racist! More than half of voting white people in the U.S. voted for him despite him saying things like "Mexico only sends us rapists, let's build a wall, etc." To this day, his approval is at 37%, I would imagine most of them from his white base. This means that roughly one in every two white Americans who sees my name probably thinks I'm an inferior human---which is still much better odds than the proportion of northern Europeans who think southern, Hispanic Europeans like me are inferior (hey, the Dutch president of the eurogroup got away with saying southern countries spent their money on women and wine.) Just providing some bicontinental context.
Of course the US would do much better embracing a Mandela when it comes to healing. Obama tried, but reactionary forces, to hold on to power, embraced and assembled the extreme forces with dog whistles; now the wild dogs run the show. Still, we cannot succumb to fight intolerance with more iconoclasm. Let free speech rule; all speech. If all speech is allowed to coexist, the most extreme forces will be more and more in the fringe without an excuse or resentment. But let's never tolerate violence or intimidation.
Labels: #iconoclasm, #politics
