Flobots is Denver’s hip-hop and non-profit group best known for their 2007 major label debut “Fight with Tools.” Flobots.org, their eponymous contrition to the local community advocacy, has expanded to include the nation and its youth with FightwithTools.org, a social-networking site for people with “a love of music and a desire to engage.”
Causecast’s Brandon Deroche caught up with Flobots at the Night of Hopes and Dreams event for the Somaly Mam Foundation to discuss their unique brand of music and activism, and how the two collide…
Check out the video interview below from causecast.org
Causecast: How did you guys come to be involved with the event tonight? What it’s about, and how it came to be, and so forth.
Andy Guerrero: We found out about this event through Nicholas Lumpp, who’s actually a board member of our non-profit – the Flobots started a non-profit at www.Flobots.org – and he told us about it, wanted a few of us to come out and play after the party, so we got to go to the dinner beforehand, and it was awesome – Somaly Mam Foundation, [which combats] sex-trafficking in Cambodia and Somaly Mam was, actually had been a sex-slave beforehand, and now dedicated her life to saving these individuals. So that’s how we found out about it, and then, came out tonight, I guess.
CC: Do you know how much money was raised tonight?
Jamie Laurie: I think, it was somewhere in the neighborhood of, a lot of money, was raised. I mean, one of the people who was honored tonight was, a woman who biked across – from I think, from Siagon to Phnom Penh, and raised, herself, like 79,000 dollars. So that’s what one person was able to do. I think the entire event was able to do well over that.
CC: Do you want to talk about what causes you guys are passionate about?
Jamie: I think, one of the things for us have to be, relatively new to the national stage as musicians, is that, I think when you start thinking if you’re sort of activist-artists about what it would be like to have a huge audience, you just assume that once you get there you will, you know, get a list of your important causes, and tell everyone to basically do what you would do. I think that temptation’s a bit there, and it’s important to really be vocal about what you care about. But, I think our approach has been a little bit different. We thought, is it more important that what people do or how they’re thinking about the world around them? We thought, well, if we can encourage people to be active, to use their own brains to engage in their communities to look at the world around them, and make their own decisions about the best way to move forward, that is ultimately more powerful in the end. And I think, our main thing has been, be engaged, get engaged, use the tools within you, as our album title says, our last album, Fight with Tools, and you have the power to make a difference in your community.
CC: So you have the Flobots.org, but then you have Fight with Tools, as well.
Jamie: Yeah, Fight with Tools is a program of Flobots.org.
CC: What are your goals with Fight with Tools? And what you’re looking to do with it?
Brer Rabbit: In another way, it’s taking who might be music fans, and might be a little bit interested in trying to do something, and helping them coach themselves along the way to activist work, in a way that makes sense to themselves. It’s one thing to say, hey go and volunteer at a soup kitchen, and then somebody goes and does that, and they come back and they’re empty. So it’s about ‘ideafying’ something that you can be an expert on, which is your own community, and you can contact our national coordinator, and then we can coach you through any of the ways to be more effective in that cause that you’ve identified. So we’re trying to show that people can be experts in their own communities, and actually be the resources that the communities need. And in that same process, like, maybe if the music was their jumping off point, now, they are resources for us, to get other people to respond to them.
Andy: Let me explain further: Flobots.org is our, kind of, house, for other programs that we want to do. So, we also do music programs in the Denver Children’s Home, where we teach kids how to play guitar, piano, write and record their own songs, do the lyrics and stuff. So we have that program and Fight with Tools for another program like that. And we kind of use that as a house to do other things and hopefully new projects in the future, as well.
CC: So, do you guys feel that the world right now is in a state of transition? And if so, do you think we’re heading towards an optimistic future, or dark and grim future?
Jamie: That’s actually – that is a very good question. I think we absolutely are in a time of transition. I think we have the advantage of having just experienced sort of a hopeful hump, you know – something happened last year where we made a transition as a country about who do we fundamentally see ourselves as. I think we all thought that those who believed in peace, those that believed in talking through our problems, or considering our country to be one among equals, I think we thought we were in the minority. We realized we’re not – we’re in the majority. That’s who America is. We fundamentally see ourselves that way. And yet now we can’t just think about what America is. Now we have to look at what a broken world it is, and what are the limits of our resources on this planet? And I think, sustainability has been a focus in our organization, but it’s the focus everywhere, because it’s gotten to the point where it’s really life or death. A lot of the changes we could see in the next few decades could fundamentally reshape human life on Earth. So we absolutely are in a place of transition. If we make the right decisions, it could be a transition where people could survive; if we make the wrong decisions, it’ll be one of really great disparity and well, pretty…
Brer Rabbit: It’s pretty much what our next album is dedicated to. It’s exactly, what do we do, at this point of transition? We’re uniquely situated in history‘s cycle. Right now, people can make a difference that will ensure the survival of the play, if the activists are in the way. If we decide not to, then 2012 and all these other apocalypse things, will come to be, in their own way, will complete a prophecy later. So, right now, it’s really one of these points where people have in their hands whether or not they want to be able to pass this world onto their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
CC: So, obviously you see music as a vehicle for creating social change.
Brer Rabbit: Yes.
CC: And what has inspired you guys, or who has anyone inspired you guys, or have you had an ah-ha moment in your personal life that has made you guys want to be active and do things for other people?
Brer Rabbit: For all of us, it’s been different. And that’s actually one of the things that we try to reflect when we’re talking to other people about it. It’s not as though everybody comes in at the same point. But I think Jesse could probably speak to the turning point for the band as a whole.
Jesse Walker: We’ve been involved with an organization called PeaceJam, that brings [Nobel Peace Prize Laureates] together with people in the United States. We played a show that was sort of a peace-jam kick-off event for a thing they were doing in Denver. And it was really, kind of an amazing moment. I mean, the Dalai Lama was there, Desmond Tutu was there. I think it was the first time that the light sort of clicked on for us as a band, that music really was as powerful as we might have, as we had suspected it might be. I think that was really the moment where we decided that, if we’re really going to do this, if we’re going to have this band and try to be successful, then we need to make sure that we’re also pushing in the sort of, social direction that we were sort of feeling from that point. That was the big thing for everybody.
CC: I like to ask people: everyone talks about this word, peace. What does peace really mean? What does peace mean to you guys?
Jamie: I mean, people will talk about that, non-violence is not the absence of violence, and I think that goes – that same thing is true of peace. Peace is not simply the absence of war, If you look at the United States, you have income disparity, you have poverty, you have tremendous injustice. That is very often the roots of the rage and the roots of the, just the kind of the very material forces that will create violence in the United States. The same things is true on the global stage, you know – resources are not distributed equally, people are not surviving the way they need to be on many places on the globe, and that’s not peace. And so the absence of fighting is absolutely not peace. And maybe someone else wants to take it a step further…
Brer Rabbit: I think one of the things is, peace is very much bandied about as term, as like a nebulous goal. But I think there’s different things we could look at, like little concrete steps leading up to something that we don’t understand quite well. ‘Cuz peace is very much a goal that I think everybody is aspiring towards, but it’s hard to make a goal that you don’t, that you don’t recognize. And I think that one of the main things that you’ll see on the steps towards peace, is people being receptive to other people’s opinions. Like, people being more focused on dialogues, opposed to a debate, like sitting down and actually listening to the opinion of somebody who’s on the opposite side, and understanding them as a human being. I think one of the first big steps towards peace-building is that mutual composites of humanity together, and I think it’s very easy to see how we systematize the opposite. So, one of the things that we are trying to do with our small voice, is try to encourage people to those enemies. This dichotomist thinking that we’re in right now, will only breed another type of tyranny. What we’re asking, what people keep on asking for is a revolution, and what happens to the revolution is that somebody ends up on the top, somebody ends up on the bottom. That breeds discontent. But if we get a dialogue, and people share, exist in a plurality of opinions, and everybody could be heard, then I think that’s one of the first steps towards this peace that we have not yet experienced.
Jamie: Just to add one more thing: it seems like, some of the greatest peacemakers, what they’re able to do is, have the courage to challenge structures and systems of oppression without demonizing the people within those structures, and always inviting people, even the people who are in, who are the oppressors in the situation, always inviting them to transform themselves into part of, to consist in the new reality that is more peaceful. That’s what peace is, man.
Brer Rabbit: Yeah, that’s it (laughs).
Jamie: That’s what I heard.
CC: My goal is essentially to rally a coalition of bands and artists that are all fighting for the same thing. Are there any bands or artists that you consider allies in what you do? Whether you know them or not.
Andy: I can speak to… Early this year we got to go on tour with Rise Against, in the UK, and -
Jamie: And Anti-Flag.
Andy: And Anti-Flag, and those are two bands that I think are very like-minded, although they’re different styles of music, and that was just one great experience, you feel, even though they’re really different styles of music, you went on there, and even the fans that were there were very receptive, to us, you know, being the opening band. And I think it was more because our music shared the same ideals, and we as bands believe in similar causes, and I think that really was kind of an amazing thing. So, they’re great people. They had a PETA booth at every show in the UK, and they also, Anti-Flag brought in… You should tell a story about, one of the stories…
Jamie: Yeah, while we were in the UK, we were in Manchester, I read a little bit that there were a lot of student demonstrations at different universities around the world, about what was happening in Gaza, and so, we actually went and hung out with the students occupying Manchester University and we talked with them for a little while, said we’d come for them the next day, and Anti-Flag, they couldn’t, you know – they were going to come with us but they couldn’t come, so they said, oh, see if those guys would come and make an announcement onstage. So the next day, the spokesman came, you know, left temporarily, their occupation and came for the concert and they invited him out on stage and, in five minutes to say what they‘re telling us. So, I think, you know, Anti-Flag and Rise Against, absolutely, but there’s quite a few other groups too. I think Spearhead has been an inspiration to all of us. We’ve brushed shoulders here and there with Michael Franti and he’s absolutely inspirational. Sean Williams… K’Naan. And The Coup – I mean, one of our big moments last year was right during the DNC, there was a red-coaters against the war, called a, march, they were essentially through Denver towards the Pepsi Center, where Barack Obama was. We held a concert beforehand, Rage Against the Machine, The Coup, Wayne Kramer, and State Radio. That was a really huge moment for us, I’m proud that we could experience that, where we really saw that, we could be ten thousand people in the coliseum listening to music, and then we’re ten thousand people on the streets, marching behind these veterans, who were protesting this war.
Andy: And also, you Fight with Tools, that’s something that we, our new goal is to partner with artists and have them on the site, and hopefully, like -
Jamie: – Matt Morris
Andy: Yeah, Matt Morris is one of our first partners, and we’re hoping to use the site to partner with artists and get better free interactive elements so that if they have cause like that, it can be a better resource for them as well, so we’re still in the baby stages of testing and, you know, we’re as new to, I suppose, being a band at the national level as also having a non-profit that’s trying to do work at the national level.
Brer Rabbit: One of the things that excites us the most, is that, more so than the people that inspire us, is all the musicians out there that are inspiring people today, and what would happen if they decided to activate their fans. And what kind of wholesale changes we might see. And then beyond that, how musicians might be able to find a life outside of the ‘commodification engine’ that we’ve got going right now; if you’re actually plugged into a community that you’re feeding and helping power, that community will give you so much more back. And as a matter of fact, that’s the old model, or at least the way it used to be, before the big corporations used other ways. So it’s also, like, another way to reinterpret ourselves as musicians and actually add to our longevity: by tying ourselves back into our community. So that’s one of the things we’re hoping to do with, more so with Fight with Tools, by working with other musicians, and that’s why we’re at this [benefit event].
CC: Is there anything else you’d like to say?
Jamie: Our band will have an album out next year.
Brer Rabbit: Yes. At some time.
Jamie: It’s gonna be good.
Brer Rabbit: And it’ll have a title. Be very excited.
Jamie: Be excited.
Check out 2 nights of the Flobots at the Fox Theatre coming up!
