Rashard Zanders, Twin Cities, MN – @The Dropkick Murphy's....kudos, props and huzzahs ad infinitum for smacking down Republican Gov. Scott Walker (WI) over his theft and appropriation of your song for his campaign stumps. Groups like you prove that it is okay to think and have a good time in song. For those of you who missed it, the DropKick Murphys are a Boston-based Celtic-Punk band. Upon learning that the anti -humanitarian Koch Brothers' drone had been using their song “I'm Shipping Up to Boston”. The band let the anti-union, anti-teacher, song-stealing man-brat know how they felt about him in this tweet:
“@Scott Walker @ Gov. Walker, please stop using our music in anyway...we literally hate you!!! Love, Dropkick Murphys.”
That's just dope. This is the second time, according to several sources, that republicans have stolen material from the DM's. As CrooksandLiars.com posted yesterday:
“Sadly,
this is the second time a Wisconsin conservative stole their music.
The
first time this
happened, DKM was direct about their feelings on this theft:
We just got word that Wisconsin State Rep and Speaker of the State Assembly Jeff Fitzgerald used "Shipping Up To Boston" as his walk-on song yesterday at the Wisconsin GOP Convention in Green Bay.
The stupidity and irony of this is laughable. A Wisconsin Republican U.S. Senate candidate - and crony of anti-Union Governor Scott Walker - using a Dropkick Murphys song as an intro is like a white supremacist coming out to gangsta rap!
Fitzgerald: if you and your staff can't even figure out your music you might wanna give up on the politics!!!!!”Here is an observation though, and for the purpose of full disclosure I did post an abridged version of this opinion to the DM's Facebook page, and it is in no way a criticism of the band. Here is what I posted below in response to DM's assertion that republicans using their song was equivalent to the KKK opening their rallies with gangsta rap:
“Kudos for putting walker on blast...one observation though...in your statement you equated walker using your song to the kkk using gangsta rap. Actually, the kkk using gangsta rap would be very a propos as gangsta rap celebrates the destruction of Black people and families via misogyny, fratricide, hard drug dealing and basically reflects the values of cut-throat western capitalism.
“A more appropriate analogy would have been if the kkk walked out to songs by Krs-1 or Public Enemy, Dead Prez or Paris or someone like that, groups with a pro-community, un-apologetic Black unity philosophy. That was the hip hop the industry want(s, ed) to destroy...it had the potential to educate and entertain and it did. Thus we were given gangsta rap to stanch that crescendo of positivity, the "edutainment" rappers in Hip Hop. Gangsta rap doesn't represent the voice of the community nor most of the people in the inner cities from which it allegedly springs. Gangsta rap was created for the demographic that buys the most hip hop –white males – and is affirmed by the genre's infatuation with Black death.
“News of distraction, false flags: they happen whenever a movement threatens the wealthy and violent elite, i.e. 2014 ended with more people aware of police brutality and US torture. Those two events alone should have, if they weren't about to, led to a new crescendo of activism and awareness focusing on global inequality and how it is linked to inequality at home. And I believe we were about to see it, until the well-timed Paris shootings at Charlie Hebdo resurrected the current boogeymen of choice, Islamophobia to distract us, and preserve the power of the elite just a little longer. As soon as the world or a community reaches the brink of awareness, we get a false flagged. Gangsta rap, for all the millionaires it did make, helped displace many more positive artists. Believe that.”
Rashard Zanders is a freelance writer “living” in the Twin Cities, MN. He can be reached via email at rashard.zanders@gmail.com or by phone at 872-228-4179.
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