As the 2008 Power To The Peaceful festival got into full swing, excellent performances by the likes of Rebelution, one of the biggest new bands on the stateside reggae scene in 2008, and the articulately lamenting rap duo of Oakland pianist-vocalist Kev Choice and Richmond MC Silk-E, were juxtaposed on the main stage by an impassioned speech by Jeff Mackler, the Co-director of the Oakland-based Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal, to not just free Mumia, but also get the troops out of Iraq; the latter sentiment was echoed by underground San Francisco rapper Sellassie in an excellent bit of freestyle after Rebelution's set.
However, Mackler's speech, ended about five minutes after it started by a stagehand's tapping his fingers on Mackler's shoulder, highlighted the only real downside to the festival (besides a lack of portable sinks, programs, and adequate viewing space and long lines for drinks, which should be excused anyway as this was a free admission festival). Power To The Peaceful started as an event dedicated to freeing Mumia, but as Mumia has now spent more than a quarter-century on death row and many more scandals involving government-sponsored human rights violations have come to light, Mackler and the sole "Free Mumia" group left at the event have become marginalized in the festival's programming.
On the other hand, at least Mackler was even able to get up on stage and try to galvanize the crowd for his cause. Again, what made this festival so exceptional (or so annoying, depending on how you look at it), was the multitude of left-leaning advocacy, scientific and protest groups allowed to set up shop on its grounds. As much as I feel that their time would be better spent by doing an infinite number of things-- playing Pong or working as telemarketers, perhaps-- the sight of members of a "9/11 truth" group running through a complacent, five-digit crowd, holding up a blowup of the paperback version of the 9/11 Commission Report strewn with holes in it nevertheless made me proud to have lived near and spent so much of my life thus far in San Francisco. However, conspiracy theorists didn't dominate the scene that day by any stretch of the imagination, and the following shortlist might give a better clue as to the breadth of causes being furthered by representatives at PTTP: Uhuru Solidarity Movement, Food Not Bombs, AK Press, National Board of Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, San Francisco Vegetarian Society, California Clean Money Campaign, and International Solidarity Movement Northern California.
Most prominent among the groups represented at the festival, however, were Code Pink and the Iraq Veterans Against The War, the latter getting a chance to speak to the crowd about the need for withdrawal from Iraq from the main stage. Both groups had been caught by national TV cameras demonstrating inside the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul during John McCain's acceptance speech, though the Code Pink "delegates" made a lot more noise than those of the banner-waving Veterans. When asked about the demonstrations, a representative for Code Pink told me that the cameras wouldn't have even shown the protesters were it not for the harsh treatment the McCain-Palin campaign and the Republicans gave the "liberal media." There had actually been a Code Pink demonstration inside Invesco Field during Barack Obama's acceptance speech, but because of the Obama-Biden campaign and the Democratic National Committee's lack of bashing the media, no one knew that there was any attempt to seriously disrupt Obama's speech.
The range of organizations in force at Power To The Peaceful 2008 included the Uhuru Solidarity Movement, Food Not Bombs, The San Francisco Vegetarian Society and the California Clean Money Campaign.
Besides the booths of all of these self-professed thorns in the establishment's side, there were also several concession stands and stores offering organic and fair trade food, drinks and clothes, but what really showcased the festival as being an event able to back up its rhetoric was the series of talks held in its Action Forum Tent. Having missed the inaugural Rothbury Festival in Michigan this summer, I was disappointed that I wasn't able to attend the activities of its Think Tank, which represents pretty much the only major investment in the "marketplace of ideas" made by organizers of a major music festival in America this year (festivals like the upcoming Coalessence of Arkansas, which will host the herbalist Dennis McKenna and philosopher Daniel Pinchbeck, don't really count in my book, as the organizers of these pay-festivals could simply just be using speeches by pro-psychedelic advocates like McKenna and Pinchbeck to attract a large druggy crowd; Rothbury, on the other hand, was a pro-green festival not more than a skip and a hop away from emission-friendly Detroit, and so a green theme doesn't jive with a profit motive and thus the Think Tank seems less suspect). The speakers at the Tent also, unlike Rothbury, didn't just consist of those worried about the climate crisis-- the list included everyone from Namkha Rinpoche, an internationally-influential Tibetan Buddhist monk whose speech was entitled "Personal Peace," to a panel hosted by Stephen Schneider, a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Co-Director of the Center for Environmental Science and Policy at Standford, which was indeed entitled "Environmental Sustainability."
Tibetan Buddhist monk and spiritual teacher Namkha Rinpoche gave speeches on
attaining peace at both PTTP's main stage and its Action Forum Tent.
I got to hear the speech by Namkha (full name Rigdzin Namkha Gyatso Rinpoche), who has established his own community of temples throughout Western Europe and whose title is bestowed only on those in highest tier of the Tibetan Buddhist hierarchy, after running quickly over pesky picnickers in an effort to get to the tent after Warren Haynes's set. During the speech, the Rinpoche stressed, through an interpreter, that the key to Personal Peace was letting go completely the influence of anger in one's day-to-day life. He held a question-and-answer session afterwards in which I was able to ask him if he thought that there was anyone in North America that he could think of who had managed to control their anger as he had prescribed. He replied that, because fame and money are corruptors of emotional and spiritual integrity, there are very few celebrities, politicians or other public figures who he felt had managed to control their anger completely and maintain a level of adequate personal peace, though he remarked that, while making sure to state that he was not trying to flatter his host, "Michael Franti is pretty special..." Hmm.
While I might be skeptical of the truth in the Rinpoche's response, I don't doubt his good will in coming to the festival, and I do also agree that Franti registers 100 times higher on the spiritual peace-o-meter than the average person. His commitment to peace, as well as the social and political equality and sound environmental policy that are its main prerequisites, was demonstrated to be far beyond that of any American festival organizer this year. Considering Woodstock '99, where the last national-level attempt by organizers to even simply graft peace and love onto their M.O. literally went up in flames, all those who believe in the social potential of festivals should hope that Franti and his team can get the kind of growth in funding, help from promoters and artist management, and attention from major labels and media that he needs to take his soapbox for the criminally ignored non-profits seen at PTTP #10 beyond a primarily-SF audience, and onto the national stage.
