It is or was rather 4am on Friday night. at my house now. We have been beaten, lied to, pepper sprayed, arrested, chased, and interviewed to near exhaustion for the last two days. All just because we were peacefully protesting the FTAA. We are sitting around my dining room table. In the wee hours of the morning Too tired to open our eyes all they way but too wired to go to bed yet. so we are talking three of us from three different cities in America. Obsessed with activism and obsessed with social change. We all share in between yawns. Red from XXXXXXX is some kind of mad genius who goes to all these different events and enables and coordinates all the different people coming together from all over the country and working the media to tell the people’s side of the story, rather than the corporate bought mainstream medias’ side that we normally hear about. I tell him in exchange for what I have provided in the last four days all I ask is that I am able to video an interview of he and I and Thoreau (from Connecticut) discussing this  revolution that is brewing in America. We agree that in the morning when we are all awake and semi-refreshed we will make a video to share with my fans and friends on Transcendent Television. More people in our generation need to know that this is happening. He quietly and passionately tells us that he got involved in activism because he could just feel many years ago that there was going to be a massive shift, some kind of revolution in our generation. What the activists in the sixties were not able to accomplish we will in the coming years. Thoreau and I both agree. All three of us could feel the same thing in our own private corners of America over the last few years and here we were sitting in the dark of my dining room never having met before three days ago. but united in this one quest: to break all the world’s citizens free from the brainwashing of the Matrix and the clutches of corporate run governments all over the world.

Later today. It’s the afternoon now. Saturday. We are all meeting. All the different leaders from all the different groups to fill everyone in on what's going on. Sharing all the different things we have heard. And what needs to happen. Evidently some of the 394 people who are now in jail from protesting are being tortured. Mainly the ones who refuse to give their names, nationalities, or cities they came from. there are hundreds of injuries. Many in the hospital. People being denied access to food. Some of the people who are in jail now are attorneys from the ACLU, or from legal observers, or retirees who were protesting, or union labor leaders, people from all walks of life.

one of the people with us is a Cannes film festival award winning director. he is documenting this whole week for an political activism film. He is not just a documenter, but one of us. just like at this point I am not just a singer, but one of us. [I continue to silently question this within myself: how much am I just a singer and wish to be outside of all of this, and how much am I actually completely a part of it now?] We are all starving and no one has any money for food. There are about thirty of us, from every city in America. This is amazing how no one knows each other, just from different orgs and events around the country over the last ten years. when you read about acres of rainforests getting saved or oil rigs getting blocked, or the WTO meetings in Seattle getting stopped, or innocent human rights activists getting freed from jail, it is because of many of the people who are gathered in this room here today, and many others. I am honored to be a witness to this. I am not arrogant enough to consider myself part of it. but more of an admiring observer. all just activists from different cities who have two major goals to accomplish in the next two days before everyone leaves town for their respective homes: one, to try to free the people who are in jail now and make sure they have adequate legal counsel; and two, to try to control the media spin here in Miami and with the national and international media to make sure that the people are made aware of the issues: The importance of stopping the FTAA from going through and its dangers, and how what we have evidenced in Miami in the last two days is a sign of the police state that America is turning into.

I must admit I am still in shock by all of it. I have spent the last three years voraciously studying American history. And so I have learned that our country was founded on this kind of activism. The very foundation of our constitution was created because of this kind of peaceful and sometimes forceful opposition to the status quo by the people in order to defend and protect our rights as people. so it is true, that I am in shock by seeing peaceful protestors and demonstrators attacked so brutally, and also by the kind of bias slant in the media that I have seen in the last three days. I really had no idea that there was going to be such a flagrant cover up of the truth. Is real American patriotism possible anymore in America? or is America really a secret dictatorship like many Europeans say it is? I wonder now.

We now have video footage interviewing locals around Miami who were paid by the police before the meetings began to rob anyone they saw in the streets in their neighborhoods who had cameras or video equipment. There are five video cameras in total missing now from the independent media team. Stolen by locals. [does one believe this? out of a movie right? I'm watching the footage myself. Some of the cameras have been returned now because the locals feel bad after seeing the police beating people up on TV last night.]

The meetings continue. After ten minutes I leave. I am too emotionally boggled by this. I am not an out and out activist per se and I am not used to activism. Half of the things that they talk about I don't even understand. I don't know the lingo well enough yet and I am not well versed enough in the legal jargon to participate fully. I tell Red that I need to take some time to myself and just write in my diaries for a few hours. I am freaked out and paranoid and feel weird. I am sure that writing will bring me back. but right now all I can think of is getting away from all of this. I find myself thinking about playing my guitar, or the soft touch and smile of a beautiful girl. So I sit down on the floor by myself and just start writing. for hours. I write. And for hours upstairs they meet. They email the world press. They talk on the phone to prisoners, to attorneys, to police captains, to activist groups around the world, and to members of the press. And I just keep writing. I am a singer and a songwriter and I have to keep reminding myself that. of what my own role in all of this is. part of me feels guilty for not just jumping in the moment and joining in but again I just need to remind myself of who I am and what I do best. Throughout the day the guys from my band keep calling me to make sure that I am o.k. and to just talk shop---telling me about the last guitar they bought on eBay. This makes me feel really good. evidently I was on the eleven clock news on every TV station last night in Miami. I gave so many interviews that now I don't even remember it. but I stayed calm and just told it like it was. But now I just tell myself to remember who I am and what I do. I'm a writer. I'm a singer. and man some of those news reporter ladies were really beautiful. I hope I got their phone numbers because it would be really cool to make it with a news reporter. O.k. that's more like it. I'm coming back to myself.


The Journey
We're going on a journey
We all know what time it is
We're going on a journey
We all know the time has come
Take it back
As told by Nostrodamus
Take it back
Like the writings on the wall

we're going on a journey
we'll be making history
we're going on a journey’
on which  side of the Matrix, will you be?

take it back
take back all our freedom
take it back
to a state of liberty

this is a wake up call mother-fuckers
we're not going to take it anymore

Break: “you don't build a bridge
that you can't drive your car on.
How am I supposed to support a
government that don't support me?”

Do it do it do it……

I’ve heard it said that rock and roll is dead
And man I think I read it some magazine
But rock and roll will never die
as long as you and I keep buying
It will always fit in somewhere in between.
We can take our music anywhere
Revolution's in the air
I hope you’ll evolutionize with me
Just as music changes rearranges
So can our minds
And then society
They can take their royalty their CIA and FBI and shove them up their a-s-s
A new generation is rising up baby and here we come
We're rising up fast
If you're like me
You're sick of all this lunacy hypocrisy
And all the lies that we've been told
I ain't saying it is easy
But to really change the world
Our actions must be bold

Give love…

Do it do it do it….

First they killed Kennedy and covered it up
Then they killed the King and they covered it up
Killed a million in Nam and they covered it up
Then they framed Nixon and they covered it up
Buying guns for the Contras and they covered it up
Burning down Waco and they covered it up
Setting up Saddam and they covered it up
Shaking hands with China and they covered it up
Who’s next?
What’s next?