Wednesday, April 13, 2011

The Sound Strike Would Prefer You Keep Your Opinions to Yourself

Posted By on Wed, Apr 13, 2011 at 11:30 AM

I thought I was being generous when I let the Arizona music boycott organization The Sound Strike know that one of the artists on their roster, Steve Earle, was seemingly breaking ranks by coming to Tucson, but whoever is running things over there didn't seem to think so, blocking me from their page. Turns out, I wasn't the only one:

Yesterday, a federal appeals court again blocked SB 1070, which you can read all about on our Feathered Bastard blog, meaning the extremist Arizona immigration law will likely never take effect. That's great news for people who support the state's migrant community, but not necessarily for people interested in using Arizona's obvious troubles to make a larger political point.

Moreover, the musical boycott of the state has faced several high-profile defections in recent weeks. Though organizers were apparently able to bully guyliner-wearing pop-punk band My Chemical Romance into backing out of their Arizona show a few months back, they haven't had such luck with Steve Earle and Los Tigres del Norte.

Earle, a country-rock singer-songwriter with a strong activist streak, is listed on The Sound Strike's artist roster but has a gig scheduled at Tucson's Rialto Theatre on July 4.

Los Tigres del Norte, a Mexican-bred norteño combo, is also listed as boycotting although they have a show scheduled in Tucson on April 24.

How is Sound Strike organizer Javier Gonzalez, the man who bragged that "haters got schooled" after a group of polite Arizonans begged him to end the boycott and pitch in to help the state during a recent forum, taking this? Not well, it seems.

As the walls close in and the boycott looks more and more ridiculous — bigoted California voters passed an "eerily similar" law that met the exact same fate, thankfully killed by courts before it could do any damage to that state's migrant community — organizers are clawing to maintain relevance.

And they're willing to hide facts to do it.

Witness what happened to Dan Gibson. Gibson is Tucson Weekly's web producer (he also writes a bit for us) and so he shared the news about the upcoming Steve Earle concert on The Sound Strike's Facebook page. He was both friendly and professional but the comment was deleted and he was subsequently banned from posting on Sound Strike's Facebook. Having heard this, I left a comment asking why he was banned for sharing information and was myself banned. When I tweeted this, another local man also asked why we were both banned and was himself banned.

That's right: The Sound Strike will ban you just for asking why a journalist was banned for pointing out their propaganda is inaccurate because the boycott roster includes artists who are playing concerts in the state.

Calls and e-mails to the organization have, of course, not been returned.

[Phoenix New Times]

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