Back in 2008, Bruce Spring­steen threw him­self vig­or­ous­ly behind Barack Oba­ma’s cam­paign. He played small con­certs on Oba­ma’s behalf, and then wrote on his per­son­al web site that Oba­ma “speaks to the Amer­i­ca I’ve envi­sioned in my music for the past 35 years, a gen­er­ous nation with a cit­i­zen­ry will­ing to tack­le nuanced and com­plex prob­lems, a coun­try that’s inter­est­ed in its col­lec­tive des­tiny and in the poten­tial of its gath­ered spir­it.” Fast for­ward four years, Spring­steen is back at it again, though per­haps with a few more reser­va­tions. This sum­mer, he told David Rem­nick, the edi­tor of The New York­er, that he admired Oba­ma “for the health-care bill, for res­cu­ing the auto­mo­bile indus­try, for the with­draw­al from Iraq, for killing Osama bin Laden.” But, on the flip side, he’s “dis­ap­point­ed in the fail­ure to close Guan­tá­namo and to appoint more cham­pi­ons of eco­nom­ic fair­ness, and .… an unseem­ly friend­li­ness toward cor­po­ra­tions.” [This is The New York­er para­phras­ing his con­cerns.] Aloud, he won­dered whether he could go out there again:

I did it twice because things were so dire.… It seemed like if I was ever going to spend what­ev­er small polit­i­cal cap­i­tal I had, that was the moment to do so. But that cap­i­tal dimin­ish­es the more often you do it. While I’m not say­ing nev­er, and I still like to sup­port the Pres­i­dent, you know, it’s some­thing I didn’t do for a long time, and I don’t have plans to be out there every time.

That was in July. But, fast for­ward to Octo­ber and Novem­ber, and we find the Boss stump­ing again for the pres­i­dent in swing states. Spring­steen appeared in Madi­son Wis­con­sin today (below) and Char­lottesville, VA on Octo­ber 23. You can watch the six-song acoustic set above, which fea­tures “We Take Care Of Our Own,” “For­ward, “The Riv­er,” “Promised Land,” “No Sur­ren­der” and “Thun­der Road.”

There’s not much that’s pos­i­tive about this cam­paign. Every day when you turn on the TV, we’re remind­ed of how spe­cial inter­ests have cor­rupt­ed our politic process, all with the bless­ing of the Supreme Court. But if there’s a sil­ver lin­ing to be found — a free set by the Boss — we’ll take it. Go out and vote tomor­row, no mat­ter which can­di­date you sup­port. And we’ll see you on the oth­er side.

Amid the many dis­turb­ing reports of ris­ing fas­cist groups in Europe comes one par­tic­u­lar­ly egre­gious sto­ry of the small town of Jamel in the east Ger­man region of Meck­len­berg. Accord­ing to The Inde­pen­dent, in the tiny vil­lage of some 40 peo­ple, sev­en of the ten hous­es are owned by mem­bers of Germany’s far right Nation­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty (NPD), mak­ing the vil­lage “almost a pure neo-Nazi strong­hold,” where oth­er res­i­dents and neigh­bors of the town are fright­ened into silence. Der Spiegel writes that the NPD, “which glo­ri­fies the Third Reich,”

has been in the state par­lia­ment since 2006 and neo-Nazi crimes are part of dai­ly life. In recent months, a series of attacks against politi­cians from all the demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ties has shak­en the state. Some­times hard­ly a week goes by with­out an attack on anoth­er elec­toral dis­trict office, with paint bombs, right-wing graf­fi­ti and bro­ken win­dows.

Despite their dom­i­nance in minis­cule Jamel, how­ev­er, the NPD does not go unop­posed. Two res­i­dents, Horst and Bir­git Lohmey­er, have decid­ed to fight back with the most potent weapon they could find: music. The Lohmey­ers, who migrat­ed to Jamel from Ham­burg, seek­ing a rur­al retreat, have instead found them­selves orga­niz­ing a music fes­ti­val in their back­yard to counter the neo-Nazi pres­ence. The short film above, Jamel Rockt, doc­u­ments how the Lohmey­ers were gal­va­nized into action after their town was occu­pied by NPD. The film is full of cap­ti­vat­ing per­for­mances and inter­views.

The Lohmeyer’s mode of protest resem­bles any oth­er small-town out­door rock fes­ti­val, but its sig­nif­i­cance is thrown into high relief by the threat posed by their fas­cist neigh­bors. Kay Sond­gen, of the band Youth Red Cross, sums up the feel­ings of the par­tic­i­pants quite well, say­ing, “if you don’t fly the flag and just look away, then fear gains the upper hand. And lat­er peo­ple will say, ‘It wasn’t my fault. Noth­ing to do with me.’ You have to fly the flag! If every­one does that then extrem­ism, in what­ev­er form, sim­ply can’t gain the upper hand.” Sondgen’s phrase “fly­ing the flag” could mean any num­ber of things. For the rock­ers and fans of the Jamel fes­ti­val, it means coun­ter­ing extrem­ism with art, and refus­ing to be intim­i­dat­ed in a place “where right-wing extrem­ists can do vir­tu­al­ly what­ev­er they want.”

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

Coura­geous fem­i­nist punk band Pussy Riot has received more pub­lic expo­sure than they ever could have hoped for since three mem­bers were arrest­ed after a Feb­ru­ary 21^st per­for­mance at Moscow’s Christ the Sav­ior Cathe­dral and charged with “hooli­gan­ism.” The band formed last Sep­tem­ber in direct response to Vladimir Putin’s deci­sion to seek the pres­i­den­cy again in March 2012, and they have demon­strat­ed against his rule ever since, stag­ing con­fronta­tion­al, but non-vio­lent, protest per­for­mances in Red Square and oth­er Russ­ian land­marks. They draw much of their ener­gy and inspi­ra­tion from work­ing-class British Oi! bands of the 80s, the Amer­i­can fem­i­nist punk of the 90s Riot Grrrl move­ment, and from the stal­wart Son­ic Youth, whose three decade run has put singer/bassist Kim Gor­don in the spot­light as a musi­cian, artist, and icon.

In the video inter­view above from Explod­ed View, Gor­don offers her take on Pussy Riot’s sig­nif­i­cance and their rel­e­vance to the polit­i­cal strug­gles of women in the U.S.. Gor­don reads Pussy Riot as “dis­si­dent art… tar­get­ed as a weapon” against a sys­tem, and its author­i­tar­i­an leader, that has wide­ly sup­pressed dis­sent. Like the noto­ri­ous online col­lec­tive Anony­mous and their end­less­ly pro­lif­er­at­ing Guy Fawkes masks, Pussy Riot eschews the trap­pings of indi­vid­ual fame, wear­ing bal­a­clavas to obscure their iden­ti­ties. As they state in a Vice Mag­a­zine inter­view before the arrests, “new mem­bers can join the bunch and it does not real­ly mat­ter who takes part in the next act—there can be three of us or eight, like in our last gig on the Red Square, or even 15. Pussy Riot is a pul­sat­ing and grow­ing body.” The band keeps its focus on the body, as a grow­ing col­lec­tive or as a sym­bol of resis­tance to patri­ar­chal con­trol. One mem­ber explains the band’s name in the Vice inter­view:

A female sex organ, which is sup­posed to be receiv­ing and shape­less, sud­den­ly starts a rad­i­cal rebel­lion against the cul­tur­al order, which tries to con­stant­ly define it and show its appro­pri­ate place. Sex­ists have cer­tain ideas about how a woman should behave, and Putin, by the way, also has a cou­ple thoughts on how Rus­sians should live. Fight­ing against all that—that’s Pussy Riot.

The choice of name—which has forced dozens of news­cast­ers to say the word “pussy” with a straight face—is, in all seri­ous­ness, a point­ed ref­er­ence to what Gor­don calls a “fear of women,” which may explain what near­ly every­one who has an opin­ion on the case char­ac­ter­izes as an extreme­ly dis­pro­por­tion­ate sen­tence for the three con­vict­ed mem­bers. As Gor­don says above, “Clear­ly Putin is afraid.” Relat­ing the events in Rus­sia to the back­lash against women’s leg­isla­tive gains in this coun­try, Gor­don says, “what’s going on in Wash­ing­ton is real­ly indica­tive of that [fear],” and she won­ders “why there aren’t more men who aren’t con­cerned about it or bring­ing it up. It’s beyond a women’s issue.” Nev­er­the­less, she strong­ly implies that the U.S. is ripe for a “pussy riot”—a new punk-rock women’s movement—since “women make nat­ur­al anar­chists and rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies because they’ve always been sec­ond-class cit­i­zens and had to claw their way up.”

Pussy Riot has cit­ed Son­ic Youth’s “Kool Thing” (above) as an influ­ence, a taunt­ing fem­i­nist retort to male come-ons that asks its tar­get “are you gonna lib­er­ate us girls / From male white cor­po­rate oppres­sion?” The unstat­ed answer is, no, he isn’t. As Gor­don implies above, and as Pussy Riot explain in an inter­view with The Guardian below, the only response to so-called “wars on women” every­where may be a “fem­i­nist whip”:

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

Yes­ter­day was­n’t par­tic­u­lar­ly a good day for the free­dom of expres­sion in Rus­sia. On the same day that a top court banned gay pride march­es in Moscow for the next 100 years, three young mem­bers of the punk band Pussy Riot were sen­tenced to two years in a penal colony. Their crime?  Stag­ing an anti Putin protest on the altar of the Cathe­dral of Christ the Sav­ior in Moscow. Protests sup­port­ing Pussy Riot were held in 60 cities world­wide (includ­ing one in the cap­i­tal where chess cham­pi­on Gar­ry Kas­parov was beat­en by police); West­ern gov­ern­ments called the sen­tence dis­pro­por­tion­ate; and already the band has released a new sin­gle called “Putin Lights Up the Fires.” The Guardian has cre­at­ed an accom­pa­ny­ing video. Watch it above.…

via Boing­Bo­ing