My Twitter page has been all a-tweet over the past week with news of the new Arizona immigration law. The law makes failing to carry immigration documents a crime and demands that police question anyone who they suspect of being an illegal immigrant, and allowing police to detain these individuals. Several people have compared the law to those of Nazi Germany which required Jews to carry papers or be arrested
The harsh legislation has already received a huge backlash. Students are withdrawing from Arizona universities and Los Angeles City Council signed a proposal that would call for the city to refrain from conducting business with Arizona. Obama has stated that this law will lead to harassment of Hispanics and Mexico has issued a travel advisory for its citizens when traveling through the state. But even more interesting is that bands are boycotting the state.
I saw it on my Twitter feed first and read about it in the news later, my favorite band, Stars of Canada’s Montreal (yes, this band has several contributing members of Broken Social Scene that I wrote about some time ago) have stated that they will not play in Arizona in their upcoming tour because of the law that they deem unfair.
Stars has been posting their grievances in beat poetry and grammatically incorrect obscenities for close to a week now and it seems that they have gotten under the skin of some of their fans, but one thing is certain: they’ve opened a floor for discussion of the bill on the popular social networking site. People are chiming in and Stars seems to be replying, even evoking a dissenting response from fellow Canadian band Fucked Up.
Since the beginning of Stars’ Twitter vendetta against Arizona’s immigration law, they’ve changed from declaring that they will boycott the state in its entirety to challenging their fans to plans a protest concert in the state for them to attend. A tweet posted on April 30 says, “is it possible that protest and boycott are both effective tools? one thing is for sure. read this bill. it’s very very frightening.”
Music in protest is nothing new. Think back to the 1960s when Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin and Pete Seeger used their music to cause an uprising in the American people during a time of unjust war. Music evokes emotions and lyrics evoke thought. When used on a large scale music in protest can bring about change by opening up a dialogue on the corruption at hand.
The members of Stars have good hearts. They see a problem in Arizona’s legislation and believe that they can do something to change it; that belief in itself is powerful. Stars have already raised awareness about the discriminatory law, using the power in their music to further open dialogue will encourage action to take place and make the cries of protest on their Twitter profile validated in the realm of reality.
