[Dynagroove] RE: Protect your music! Protest tomorrow...

[James Curley]

You have a point, but it's not THE point.  The point is that they want to prosecute venues AND NOW PROMOTERS for the acts of sovereign individuals in attendance at their events.  They've already tried to say that the simple act of selling water instead of booze or having glowsticks as a fashion item or whatever prove reasonable cause to shut events down.  
They're going to use that same criteria and who knows what else to say that people should have had a reasonable idea that drugs were being used at the event and then when they find somebody smoking pot, doing coke, taking a pill, or passed out on GHB, they're going to come after the promoter saying that it was his/her fault and have the legal authority to put them in prison for 20 years, because the music they like happens to have a "drug culture mystique".  
...And just to play devil's advocate -- just because something starts as one thing, doesn't mean that it stays in that same form.  What I mean by that is, think about the band Pink Floyd -- when you listened to that group for the first time, many of you (including myself) were probably 10 or in your young teens -- most likely, you weren't using drugs when you heard them.  Most likely, you never had any sort of drug connection with them except you might have heard that it was "tripper music" back in the day.  What you've come to appreciate about that band is the music, not the drugs once associated with the band.  Same deal with Velvet Underground... are you automatically a heroin addict in the eyes of the government if you listen to them?  How about if you went to see some crazy re-hash group of them?  Does that mean everybody in attendance is on heroin?  I don't think so. 
Why isn't it the same for our culture and our music? 
There are many people now going out that were not even in their teens yet when the "rave" movement began.  There are many people going out now that do not have the same associations with electronica/house/techno/breaks/whatever you want to call it that people did when this whole thing began.  There are many people that go out for the music.  This discussion list being a PRIME EXAMPLE of those types of people. 
It's not fair that just because people "look a certain look" or listen to a certain style of music that they be pigeonholed into the stereotype of drug abuser.  It's not fair that a normal, law abiding citizen who throws events should have to be worried about being labelled "drug-user enabling promoter" and then further down the propaganda rhetoric line a spew we hear everyday, a supporter of terrorists because this person threw a party that somebody got arrested smoking dope at so he must therefore be a supporter of drugs and of course anybody that supports drugs supports the entire terrorism underworld financial network and is therefore a terrorist themselves.  Okay, long run on sentence, but you can see how the line of hysteria works... where does it all end? 
People throwing events are not guilty of using drugs nor of running "crack-houses". 
Electronica is just the next big musical style of an up and coming generation to fall under the eye of big brother. 
When we have kids in their 20's, it will be something else. 
We can't give in to this bullshit.  Don't fall victim to the shtick that they're trying to lay on you.  It's okay to go to parties and okay to throw them.  
Don't allow them to take their paranoid line of thinking and turn it into actualized law.  Then it will be harder to say that it's okay to do these things.  Then people will stop doing these things.  Then people will one day believe it's bad to do these things.  And then they'll work on taking away some other new thing that's been deemed as "bad" by somebody you don't know.  Right? 
I mean, there was a time in our nation that drugs were legal.  There was a time that one could in effect throw a drug party without thinking twice and have it not only be legal, but in some circles completely moral.  It's not until people in power start legislating morality that all of a sudden somebody else's ideals are forced down our throat.  So, imagine, back then, this never would have been an issue -- but people at that time gave into the "drug" hype -- Reefer Madness and all that propaganda... soon, the option of using drugs as a sovereign individual were taken away.  
Now, practically a century later, people have accepted that moral/ethical standard on drugs and they're trying to push the mental infiltration deeper.  Now they're trying to say that people that use drugs support the terrorists.  You wanna tell me how smoking some pot that somebody grew in Oregon is supporting any fucking terrorist organization?  Then they try to tell us that people that throw parties are somehow going to be guilty of selling dope in some crazy guilt by association clause... it's fucking nuts!!!  Do you see how little by little the chip away at our minds and chip away at the laws that govern us to slowly create this ever more repressive, paranoid level of change within our society? 
The only thing we can do is nip this thing in the bud and support however possible. 
I forwarded the press release to our editor in chief and at New Times and also our music editor and he said that he'd be sending out one of our writers to cover the protest.  Hopefully some more people take an hour or two off work and at least show their faces over there - I know that I am going to. 
That's all... 
Jhymn-bro-land. 
 Peter Natividad <236 at mail.com> wrote: i think a lot of people are overlooking a big issue here and that 
is all ages events where under 18 kids are poppin pills like 
flintstone vitamins. it's become too blatant and now parents are 
involved. how is the dance community going to police its own 
so to speak. thats why the dance community is under attack. 
maybe for the ones who are older this isn't their problem, but 
the younger ones? this bill won't really effect events like ozfest 
where it's ok to thrash on each other and get ripped drunk. 
these people aren't poppin' e which is the issue here. so how 
do convince the politicians that it isn't about the drugs?



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