Jello Biafra speaks his mind
A middle-aged punk rocker rallied on Thursday to ignite a progressive revolution in a room packed with community college students from conservative-minded Spokane.
“What can we do,” Jello Biafra asked the estimated 300-plus crowd at Spokane Falls Community College, “to keep ourselves (from) being dragged any further down the road to ruin and off a cliff and down the toilet by a Bush, a Dick and, until recently, a Colin?”
As the founding frontman of seminal punk rock band Dead Kennedys, Biafra (real name Eric Boucher) is no stranger to political activism. He incited social angst in the band’s first single, 1979’s “California Uber Alles,” and he still hurls his spoken-word tirades at any audience that invites him to do so.
“Don’t believe the hype. We are patriotic citizens, too. Because we are the ones who care enough about our country to rise up and fight a crooked government when they break the law and treat the Constitution like the Twin Towers. … After all, it wasn’t a Democrat riding in on a white horse that stopped Vietnam. We stopped Vietnam. We got the Civil Rights Act through.”
While most members of Thursday’s high school and college-age audience were born long after those conflicts, the cheers from the crowd made clear that Biafra’s “we” includes and resonates with anyone who shares his human rights mind-set – a school of thought he claims is in the majority but has been forced underground by a culture of corporate control, right-wing conspiracy and middling quasi-Democrats he believes are no different than Republicans.
References to the president, whom he calls “King George Bush the Second,” and jabs at Hillary “Weird Hybrid of Darth Vader and Bugs Bunny” Clinton were met with laughter and applause.
No one was safe from Biafra’s attacks during his two-hour tirade. For example, he railed on FEMA, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bill Clinton, George Nethercutt, Dick Cheney, John Kerry, Toby Keith, the Spokane-based Teen-Aid abstinence group, what he calls Nazi-esque state-sponsored torture, Bill O’Reilly, non-voters and the constant distractions caused by the media.
The United States, Biafra said, is a “government of the people, by corporations, for corporations,” because minds get hijacked by unimportant issues, such as the fate of the Gonzaga Bulldogs basketball team.
“Who’s gonna win the basketball championship, now that’s important,” Biafra said. “Oh, Gonzaga and those four, five, six guys on the basketball court. Much more important than whether people are actually getting educated there.”
One thing he didn’t cover during the performance was the Jim West scandal.
“I have never heard of Jim West,” Biafra said during a post-show interview. “Oh, that guy. … I think it’s a great reality show, ain’t it? I mean, ‘Twin Peaks,’ live in Spokane. And why not?”
Many might think the region is too conservative for a shock-and-influence progressive thinker, but some fans were hungry for Jello.
“It’s good to have opposition,” said Joel Nelson, a 21-year-old in a yellow T-shirt for former Washington, D.C., hard-core punk band Bad Brains. “… There aren’t too many older people who don’t share conservative views in this area. Mostly just hard-core Republicans, you know. We have a lot of golf courses here.”
And though Biafra was preaching to the choir with many fans in attendance, not everyone in the SFCC crowd shared his views. One observer, as he shuffled out at the halfway point, muttered “can’t stand this guy” under his breath.
SFCC student Lisa Pratt, 24, sat on a bench outside in the hallway before the event, oblivious to what was going on.
“I don’t know anything about it, I guess,” Pratt said, referring to Biafra. “I’m just sitting here waiting for a class.”
Pratt returned shortly before Biafra went on.
“I just went (to class), and it said on the board to come to this,” she said. “Some people aren’t coming, but I decided to come.”
Perhaps Pratt left with the early crowd, but she may have stayed to hear Biafra’s final call to voter-driven revolution:
“Now it’s your turn.”