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Taken from EarthFirst Journal - Ready for the Fire (March, 2002)
Ready for the Fire
By Turtle and Miss Waldron
 Michael Franti has been speaking truth to power through his music for the last 15 years. His evolution as an artist-from the little-known Beatnigs, to the politically razor sharp Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy and most recently, to the rich hip-hop, reggae and funk-infused sounds of Spearhead-has mirrored his growth as a committed activist.
A visible, six-foot-six presence during both the Seattle World Trade Organization and the Los Angeles Democratic National Convention protests, Franti is one of a small circle of conscious musicians willing to speak out for what they believe in. During Spearhead's most recent tour, we had the opportunity to sit down and chat with him about rage and compassion, inspiration and fear, music and activism.
EF!J: As a veteran of anti-globalization protests and a longtime activist, as well as someone who travels around the country quite a bit, what effects have you seen since September on environmental and social justice movements?
MF: Well, it is just funny when you list off all those things, it sounds like charges pressed against me: anti-terrorist, fundamentalist, you know. I think that it is a big change that's happened.
It's like someone was telling me today, they were reading the FBI's most wanted terrorist list... and at the top of it are "eco-terrorists." It said that these two groups [the Earth and Animal Liberation Fronts] were responsible for $400 million worth of damage, but that's like one day in the forest for Monsanto or one day of treecutting, you know. It is like this whole notion-of who is the terrorist and who the good people are-is totally about whoever is making money off of what they are doing versus people who are conscious about protecting the natural interests of the world and the human interests of the world. So I think that is a big difference, I think it really calls into question what we are doing as activists.
I see activism as communication. That's what we are really trying to do, is to communicate. If our message is a message of peace, love, compassion and of preservation for the Earth, then our delivery has to be that way. As a musician, I think about how it is not just the words that I say but the way that I say them that either draws people to it or pushes people away.
EF!J: A friend of mine told me that since September in the song "Oh My God," you changed the lines from "makes me so mad I want to bomb an institution" to "makes me so mad I want to start a peaceful revolution."
MF: The reason I did that is because I felt that what I was saying in the song was not that I literally want to go bomb something, but that I feel like I want to go bomb something. Because I'm so angry. And yet, I felt that people were misconstruing what I was saying. So I decided to change that lyric because I didn't have time to stop in the middle of the song to explain exactly what I was saying.
EF!J: The fine nuances between property destruction and...
MF: The feeling of that type of rage where you just want to destroy the system, you just want to tear it down by whatever means you can.
EF!J: Do you consider yourself committed to nonviolence?
MF: Well, it is something that I have been thinking about a lot. I'm not really in a situation where I feel like I need to take up arms to protect what I have, but I can't answer for the people who are in that situation. I can't tell the Zapatistas in Mexico "don't shoot back" when people are coming into their villages at night and shooting their families.
At the same time, I think that if we are to choose the path of nonviolence and to choose the path of pacifism, that we understand that it is p-a-c-i-f-i-c-i-s-m. To be peaceful. And not p-a-s-s-i-v-i-s-m. To be a pacifist is to be active and to be civil disobedient, but it doesn't mean that we have to destroy anything.
Property damage is something that I have also been thinking about a lot, because there has definitely been a time in my life where I felt like, "Yeah, let's go out and break the windows at McDonald's" and let's do all these things that are kind of symbolic acts. But at the end of the day, it just gets taken as some crazy people. Our message is lost in the TV footage because they just show the footage, and then they run their headline underneath it. It is like reading a Far Side cartoon at that point.
So, I think that we need to be mindful. You know, when I listen to other liberation leaders from the past, their message is always to be very clear about your intentions, your goals and then to think of ways that will help you achieve them. There is a sequence of things that you do when you are trying to reach a goal. I think that a lot of times when we get angry, we're so frustrated, we say let's just go do anything, rather than thinking about our end vision that we are trying to achieve.
EF!J: Could you summarize what you hope to achieve with your music?
MF: If there was one single message in my music, it would be compassion. I also want to show people-by example-that it is okay to be yourself. Sometimes, people say, "If you change your music this way, you could reach more kids in the hip-hop audience. If you change it this way, you could reach more people over here. If you did this different, you could get more on the radio or on MTV." And I say, "Yeah, but then I'm losing the message." Which is that I am me. You can choose to enjoy what I do or not, you know. It may resonate with you, it may not. But hopefully, you'll understand that I'm being me and that its okay for you to be you.
And then there is also other themes to the music, like acceptance of diversity: cultural diversity, gender diversity, religious diversity, sexual diversity. Also the diversity that exists within each person.
EF!J: Can you comment on the social consciousness among artists, and specifically among musicians, in this time of crisis?
MF: Well, you know, people have asked me that question a lot. They say, "It seems like there are not a lot of artists out there who are talking about what is going on." You know, I'm not sitting around holding my breath waiting for Britney Spears to hold a press conference about what is happening with Bush's foreign policy.
I think that in order for artists to be able to speak out during a time of crisis, they have to have done it their whole life, because in a time of crisis it is really hard to speak out. I feel a lot of fear when I say the things that I do. It takes some courage, and it takes some understanding of the issues that have led up to what is going on to really be able to say something that will resonate with folks.
Just like globalization has affected developing nations economically and environmentally, globalization has infected the music industry. We now have five major corporations who own all of the record labels. These record labels aren't beholden to music, they are beholden to the shareholders at the end of the quarter. They frown upon big-selling artists doing anything that may put their profits in jeopardy.
EF!J: Do you have any words of inspiration to share with all the Earth First!ers out there?
MF: Today, I was telling a story I had heard. I think it is a really important story. There's a tree that has lived for a thousand years, and a little caterpillar on it that lives its entire life in 10 days. A bird comes, sits down and talks to the caterpillar and says, "Is this tree alive or dead?" And the little caterpillar says, "You know, I've been living on this tree the entire 10 days of my life, and I never saw this tree move, so this tree must be dead." Then, the life span of the Earth is like five billion years or something. You go to talk to a man on the top of a mountain, who lives his whole life in 80 years, and he says, "You know, I've been here 80 years and never saw this mountain move once. So the Earth must be dead."
It is about perspective, and time. As activists, we often want to change the world, and we're so enraged at what's happening. We think: God, the world is not changing because we didn't see it change after the WTO rallies. We didn't see it change that much after Julia Butterfly came down from the tree. We didn't see much change after this happened or that happened. But, the thing is that over time, it grows. The movement grows. The movement gains more energy. The movement is in constant interchange.
The other day, a friend told me that he was talking to a friend who said that he had relationship problems. And my friend said, "No, you don't have relationship problems, you're just having some difficult relationship experiences." So it is all how you look at it. If you think of things as being problems, then you get overwhelmed.
But if you think of things as like this is just an experience, that is harder than some of my other experiences. So I'm always encouraging myself to find what is the opportunity in every difficult situation that I come across and not just say, "Oh, I've got problems." That I'm going through some difficult experiences, but I'm going to make it through.
Further, there's nothing that is more virtuous in life than to understanding that we have a responsibility to the seven generations of people that came before us and to the seven generations of people to come to make this a better place. If we think of it in those terms-that we are a part of this lineage-and it is our responsibility today to be caretakers of the Earth so that we can pass it on to other people, to our children and their children. I think that's a really high virtue to be working toward. There's no shame in that.
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