Music Festival 2025

 ICE: They are disappearing immigrants, hardworking community members, to El Salvador’s notorious Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT) prison without due process, legal justification, or public accountability. https://www.nilc.org/resources/tracking-the-cecot-disappearances/ This is why we must do everything to physically resist ICE. This is a glimpse of what happens at CECOT: "For six consecutive days, the inmates were subjected to lengthy beatings, three inmates told me. On the last day, male guards brought in their female colleagues, who struck the naked prisoners as the male guards recorded videos on their phones and laughed. The female guards would count to 20 as they administered the beatings, and if the prisoners complained or cried out, they would start again." The government has been bending reality, demonizing and gaslighting on the facts about immigration. Read here to learn what's really going on: https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/report/mas...

Thoughts from a friend. Musician #2:  Living From Unconditional Love in a World of Conflict Many spiritual traditions teach that the highest state of being is unconditional love — a love that embraces all beings equally, without exception. It sounds beautiful, but when faced with the realities of violence, cruelty, or injustice, the idea can feel impossible. Does loving unconditionally mean letting anything happen, even terrible acts like murder, rape, or crime? Not at all. Unconditional love does not mean passivity. It does not mean standing by while harm occurs. Rather, it means responding to all beings — victim and perpetrator alike — from a place of love, not hate. Imagine witnessing someone being attacked. Out of love for the victim, you would do everything in your power to stop the violence. That action might even involve restraining or harming the attacker if necessary. But here’s the key: your motivation matters. If you act from vengeance — “You are evil, and I must destroy...

 https://gqkvx3-df.myshopify.com/ Go easy on me as I'm still figuring out how to make everything look pretty and have a lot more content to create.  That aside, I'm making pro-music stickers, magnets, and cards for distribution to combat disinformation. However, I'm happy to send the files for free to anyone interested in printing them out on their own. And if you comment or email my store, you can request designs for specific causes for consideration. My first store was taken down for "adult content," so I'll just place those files here instead. My new store is suitable for anyone and everyone. Some of my old stickers: I do believe it is our duty to protect the values of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness by physically resisting ICE from taking members of our community. They are disappearing them to El Salvador’s notorious Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT) prison without due process, legal justification, or public accountability. https://www...

Thoughts from a friend. Musician #2. Fundamental Christianity The article that I wrote this morning tries to understand how America slowly went from loving immigrants to hating them. I point the finger straight at Fundamental Christianity. Between 1910 and 1915, a set of 90 essays called The Fundamentals were published by wealthy conservative Protestants. These writings were distributed for free to pastors and churches across the U.S. They were a reaction against what the authors saw as threats from modern science, biblical criticism, and social change. The essays defended certain “essential” doctrines as the non-negotiable core of Christianity. From these, the movement we now call fundamentalism emerged. 
1. The inerrancy of the Bible (no errors, literally true) 
 2. The virgin birth of Jesus 
 3. The substitutionary atonement (Jesus died to pay for human sin in a legal sense) 
 4. The bodily resurrection of Jesus  5. The authenticity of miracles 
These became known as “the five f...

Unfortunately, we have reached the point where if we do nothing, we give over music that we established in 1776, to the powers that we first divorced ourselves from. I enjoyed music, and I want my kids and grandkids to enjoy music too.  If you love music festivals, we have to act quickly. If we do nothing, the music stops. Let's get to the chase. What you can do: --Carry a pencil in your purse/on yourself, and write messages in bathroom stalls countering disinformation. For example: Our d3mocr@cy is in danger. Trump is a p3doph!le. Leave the website links to ACLU, D3mocr@cy Forward, or any other group that cares about music. You can also create sticky notes and simply stick them in every public space you visit. --Pick one group or cause that you care about and donate. Even $5 a month makes a huge difference. If every fan of music in the nation funded just one of these causes they cared about, we'd be doing very well. Here are links to some of them: https://www.aclu.org/ https:/...