Remaking “By the Time I Get to Arizona”

Given the exploding coal mines in West Virginia, apocalyptic oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico, and the volcanic ash cloud from the Eyjafjallajökull glacier that stranded millions of people over the last month, and the Arizona immigration law, it’s been a strange, and almost surreal group of connected events. I wanted to make a music track about some of the issues facing progressives in this era, and me and Chuck D from Public Enemy ended up re-editing a classic Public Enemy track of his called “By The Time I get to Arizona”—we’ve had thousands and thousands of downloads of the song, and I wanted to remind the list about the track. CHECK IT OUT!!

I first started thinking about “By The Time I Get to Arizona” after a dialogue with the film maker Alex Rivera, whose science fiction film about the near future of the American border is eerily prescient about what’s going on in Arizona now. This remix is just something I wanted to send out to the list. I’m also including a link about the whole Tea Party scenario in relationship to Arizona, and the political climate in the U.S. today. The Right wing is energized and pushing their brand of ideology more than ever. Progressives need tools to push back—HARD. The most poweful tool to fight Tea Party type ignorance is information. I hope you’ll take the time to read this mini-essay by Greg Grandin about the history of “American Exceptionalism”—it’s a reasonably well argued treatise on the Tea Party phenomenon and its relationship to many of the political and environmental issues facing global culture NOW.

Good magazine linked to a great visual explainer from Al-Jazeera that shows exactly what happened on the Deepwater Horizon rig to cause the spill, how the oil is leaking, and what options exist for stopping it.

Also,here’s a photo gallery of humanity’s worst eco-disasters.