Rage with the Occupation

“What better place than here? What better time than now?”

The words roared through the frosty air around St Paul’s last Wednesday as anti-capitalist rocker Tom Morello led campers and student demonstrators in a literal rage against the machine.
Morello, best known for playing guitar in activist band Rage Against the Machine, joined the occupation after the November 9 student march through the city.

He played an acoustic set outside the kitchen to a enthralled crowd, and spliced his set with commentary on the global occupation movements between songs – told using the human microphone technique (when the crowd repeats what he says, so all can hear).

After the concert, he told press OccupyLSX was the ninth occupation he has visited across the globe. “I’m on my occupy the planet tour at the moment to express my solidarity with the people of London who are part of the 99 percent who are standing against the corporate Malthusians that have torpedoed the global economy.’’

He said the movement represented the “stock and trade” of what his musical career has been about. His music urged direct action, social and political reform and was often about injustice through the world. Morello said that every successful struggle for social justice needed a good soundtrack and he was doing what he could to provide one. “It (protest music) puts wind in the sails of the struggle, it’s something that speaks truth to the reptilian brain in people in the combination of melody, rhythm and rhyme.”

He had been to eight other occupations and said people are learning that “in order to change the world, walk out your front door and just do it.”

By Stacey Knott