tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-49108332224745076032009-05-26T06:58:19.989-07:00I started up this blog in November 2006, which is also when I decided to try writing more newspaper article-length little essays about life, stories from the road, news analysis, etc. My main website is <a href="http://www.davidrovics.com">www.davidrovics.com</a>.David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.comBlogger24125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4910833222474507603.post-85929937662986489362009-03-19T00:44:00.000-07:002009-03-19T00:50:37.095-07:00

I was in Olympia, Washington driving towards Evergreen State College when I got a phone call from someone in the occupied West Bank of Palestine. An Evergreen graduate named Rachel Corrie had been killed a few days before by an Israeli soldier in an armored bulldozer, and someone with an Australian accent on my cell phone named Tom was wondering whether it was OK for the International Solidarity

David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4910833222474507603.post-73271723074871263022008-11-07T10:04:00.000-08:002008-11-07T10:12:03.203-08:00

Friends around the world keep asking me questions. Are you excited? What do you think of Obama? Others are simply congratulating me. And I must say, it was a thrilling moment.As a teenager, in 1984, I volunteered for the Mondale/Ferraro campaign, mostly pushing bumper stickers. An anti-nuclear group was doing this, in the belief that Mondale would be less likely to cause Armageddon. I grew

David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4910833222474507603.post-27243443767234570462008-05-25T03:40:00.000-07:002008-05-28T23:04:59.880-07:00

I was watching my baby daughter sleep in her carseat outside of the Sacramento airport about ten hours ago when I noticed a missed call from Brendan Phillips. He's in a band called Fast Rattler with several friends of mine, two of whom live in my new hometown of Portland, Oregon, one of whom needed a ride home from the Greyhound station. I called back, and soon thereafter heard the news from

David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4910833222474507603.post-28483997870164036002008-03-31T17:42:00.000-07:002008-03-31T17:46:08.156-07:00

Or, who are these people and why do they keep yelling at me?I found myself once again singing at an antiwar rally two weeks ago, and once again being confronted by a red-faced white man with an ominous hand-written sign reading, "9/11 was a lie." Most of the crowd was filing off for the post-rally march, aside from a few of my loyal fans who were sticking around for the rest of my set. Among

David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.com48tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4910833222474507603.post-37913472231151318772008-03-23T21:11:00.000-07:002008-03-23T21:22:48.305-07:00

An Open Letter to the US Left on the Relevance of CultureBeing an activist is a hard, relatively thankless, generally unpaid job. There are some really wonderful people who are going to be offended by this essay, and I apologize in advance if you’re one of them, but what I say here had to be said. We’re all hopefully trying to make the world a better place, and sometimes that means having open

David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4910833222474507603.post-5602324372990923492007-12-21T04:08:00.000-08:002008-02-21T12:08:52.211-08:00

Idle ramblings on raising babies and children (and burning down the schools). I’ve been spending most of my time lately hanging out with a baby – my daughter, Leila. She’ll be two at the end of next month. I’m often with her from dawn to dusk, five or six days a week, while her mother attends medical school. Spending all this time with her, naturally she starts to rub off on me in a big way,

David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4910833222474507603.post-51510550379928268802007-10-09T06:18:00.000-07:002008-02-21T12:12:49.352-08:00

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), representing massive multinational corporations with tentacles in every corner of the global economy including the music business, has just won a lawsuit against a mother of two who refused to be pushed around. Jamie Thomas’ pockets were not nearly deep enough to mount the kind of legal defense for the occasion, but she rightly thought

David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4910833222474507603.post-74111267240564217322007-09-10T17:40:00.000-07:002008-02-21T12:17:03.891-08:00

My friend Robert woke me up from my slumber at his cabin next to the Hoosier National Forest. “They’re saying we’re under attack.” I came inside and listened to NPR with him. At this point they weren’t sure whether it was military or commercial planes involved. My immediate thought was, there’s no country’s leadership in the world who’d do this, no leader wants to attack the US on US

David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4910833222474507603.post-12304055234884244502007-08-12T07:50:00.000-07:002008-02-21T12:21:56.479-08:00

Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution: “Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes. In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be

David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4910833222474507603.post-24037062918732928452007-06-08T03:28:00.001-07:002008-02-21T12:23:27.749-08:00

The riots in Rostock, Germany began around 3 pm last Saturday. In European riots outside of G8 meetings and such, generally all sides refrain from using lethal weapons. (If anybody breaks with this tradition – such as Genoa in 2000 or Gothenberg in 2001 – it is always the police.) The riots on Saturday were part of a long series of such confrontations around Germany, around Europe, around the

David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4910833222474507603.post-66424595365640524172007-05-13T01:46:00.000-07:002008-02-21T12:24:32.833-08:00

Bill Rodgers died in a jail cell in Flagstaff, Arizona, fist raised above him, plastic bag over his head, of an apparent suicide, on the 2005 winter solstice. Two weeks before in Prescott, Bill’s baby, the Catalyst Infoshop had been raided by fifteen federal officers and he was taken away.Bill was essentially accused of destroying corporate property. If he had been arrested for these crimes in,

David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4910833222474507603.post-23729492782448271992007-03-09T14:11:00.000-08:002008-02-21T12:25:32.965-08:00

I was awoken before dawn last Thursday by the ringing of my cell phone. On the line was a friend from Copenhagen. “I’m sorry to call so early. It’s happened.” Having very recently spent a lot of time in Denmark, I knew right away what this meant. Denmark’s flagship anarchist squat, one of Europe’s oldest squatted social centers, had been attacked by the police. “They landed helicopters on

David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4910833222474507603.post-32776137985847321782007-02-13T03:47:00.000-08:002008-02-21T12:26:55.435-08:00

Among other events in recent history, the formation of the group Independent Jewish Voices in the UK has once again pushed the debate on Israel and Palestine into the spotlight. Along with this, the usual, tired and outrageously misplaced allegations of “self-hatred” are made by the more shrill voices among the “Israel can do no wrong” lobby. Here are some of my ruminations on this

David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4910833222474507603.post-22468040169810192007-01-29T08:25:00.000-08:002008-02-21T12:28:32.258-08:00

The organizers with United for Peace and Justice and all of those participating have once again pulled off a giant protest march and rally. As has happened once or twice a year since the invasion of Afghanistan, hundreds of thousands of people have converged for a national protest, this time in Washington, DC.The major media outlets decided this time that the protest was worth covering. This time

David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4910833222474507603.post-65592637860692802592007-01-03T18:22:00.000-08:002008-02-21T12:29:23.957-08:00

The great butcher has himself been butchered. The timing is auspicious. These symbolic little “victories” in the otherwise bleak occupation of Iraq often seem to be timed for US consumption. If this one was, then it couldn’t have been a coincidence that it comes on the same long holiday weekend as the death of the 3,000th American soldier there.And three thousand is not just a round number --

David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4910833222474507603.post-25098827134515761482006-12-25T16:14:00.000-08:002008-02-21T12:30:33.644-08:00

Once when I was touring Denmark my friend Jenka was visiting Europe at the same time. I picked her up at the airport and we headed into Copenhagen. As we were approaching the city, she got excited. “Wow,” she said, “it’s like a constant Critical Mass bike ride!”As we wait at traffic lights at major intersections we pass through, the traffic passing by ahead of us generally includes a few cars and

David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4910833222474507603.post-42191639482248885182006-12-18T12:11:00.000-08:002008-02-21T12:32:04.380-08:00

I was in San Francisco, California a couple months ago, and I saw Klee Benally there. It had been a long time since I’d seen him. I tend to go where the gigs take me, which often means going in and out of certain orbits in unpredictable ways. There at the American Indian Center of San Francisco, Klee was the master of ceremonies for an event that was attended by 200 or so people, mostly

David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4910833222474507603.post-6635752410622283642006-12-07T02:15:00.000-08:002008-02-21T12:33:42.727-08:00

There are certain things that jump out at you as soon as you arrive in Denmark. One thing you’ll notice, especially if you come from a place within that large mass of the world that is at least a bit closer to the equator, is that there is rarely anything you’d call direct sunlight. It’s twilight most of the time. In the summer it’s only really dark for an hour or so, but it’s never completely

David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4910833222474507603.post-27189234056099759272006-11-29T01:05:00.000-08:002008-02-21T12:34:54.967-08:00

Our taxi dropped us off at the checkpoint outside Nablus, so we could then walk through the checkpoint and take another taxi into the city. With the travel restrictions and hundreds of checkpoints everywhere, this is the way you have to travel, if you’re lucky enough to be allowed to travel at all.There, on the outskirts of this ancient Palestinian city, as with every other city in the West Bank

David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4910833222474507603.post-27409778797330893582006-11-22T06:25:00.000-08:002008-02-21T12:35:46.976-08:00

As usual, it was almost completely ignored by the corporate media. But once again, tens of thousands of people of conscience made what has become an annual pilgrimage to Columbus, Georgia, to protest a large terrorist training camp. The camp is located within Fort Benning, and once again, there we were outside one of the entrances to the military base, remembering the dead, hoping to prevent

David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4910833222474507603.post-24477251629732650402006-11-22T06:23:00.000-08:002008-02-21T12:36:39.367-08:00

I drive off the ferry into the new Dublin. Much of it still looks like the old Dublin, before the EU and Celtic Tigerhood. The Liffey is still there, the foot bridges over it, the majestic buildings, the Winding Stair bookstore. I can still smell the sweat of the men marching to their deaths on the Easter Rising. Somebody on Grafton Street is still playing “The Foggy Dew” on uilean pipes. But the

David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4910833222474507603.post-19886411080863495092006-11-22T06:21:00.000-08:002008-02-21T12:37:43.375-08:00

It’s all over the news, Pierre Gemayel has been murdered in Beirut. Gemayel was a member of the Phalange party, who’s pro-Israeli militia in 1982 carried out a massacre of thousands of Palestinian women and children in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. A lot of people are upset with the Phalangists since then, and recent developments haven’t helped. Namely the airborne demolition of the

David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4910833222474507603.post-75348864187105504322006-11-22T06:18:00.000-08:002008-02-21T12:38:30.939-08:00

I arrived in Mexico City just before the Day of the Dead. For many people it’s a Hallowe’en sort of celebration, but typically with far more original and elaborate costumes than you’d find in the US, at least anywhere outside New Orleans. For others the day is a time to remember the martyrs among the dead, especially the dozens killed in the past few months in Oaxaca. I had been planning the

David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4910833222474507603.post-67082981583289630212006-11-22T06:08:00.000-08:002008-02-21T12:39:53.263-08:00

brad will was a dear friend, and a true revolutionary. he died the way countless and uncounted numbers of beautiful people have died in recent centuries -- he was shot in the chest by rightwing paramilitaries. he was filming the scene around one of thousands of barricades that have shut down oaxaca city since last june, when the governor there tried to ban public expressions of dissent, thus

David Rovicshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08824363072665133467noreply@blogger.com1