EMERGENCE

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For Immediate Release

Nov. 1, 2008

Contact Information: Liza Smith, cell: 720-296-7429, liza@igc.org

Drop Beats Not Bombs

6-State Tour Uses Hip-Hop and Creative Action to Engage Youth

On November 5th, Detroit-based hip-hop MC and community activist Invincible, Colombian conscientious objector Paula Galeano, U.S. counter-recruitment organizer Isaac Martin, and FOR artist/activists will launch a six-state music and organizing tour. The events on university campuses will train and empower youth to resist militarism through creative action, and will work to build the international conscientious objector’s movement. Their 13-city caravan-style journey begins in Minnesota and will end in New York City.

The innovative tour, a collaboration of the Fellowship of Reconciliation and the Not Your Soldier Project, brings together young activists from Colombia and the United States committed to resisting militarism collectively and creatively. Through powerful personal narrative, insightful political music, and interactive workshops, the group will work to connect with young people who face militarism on a daily basis.

Invincible - who has been described by Talib Kweli as "one of the most talented emcees I've ever heard, black or white, male or female..." – said, "I joined this tour because it illuminates the connections between violence against marginalized communities in the U.S. with our government's oppressive foreign policies abroad. Through hip-hop, community media, and creative expression we can show how injustice - in the form of police brutality, the prison system, the military poverty draft, etc. - can be resisted, and create alternatives to these limited options."

Hip-hop concerts will be offered alongside presentations and classroom visits with Paula Galeano, who joins the tour directly from war-torn Colombia. Galeano serves as director of the Medellin-based conscientious objector organization La Red Juvenil, which uses arts-based organizing to educate youth about alternatives to the military in the face of extreme daily violence.

Across the world, young people are standing up and saying “no” to military recruiters and refusing to fight what they deem as unjust and unnecessary wars. Hundreds of U.S. soldiers have applied for Conscientious Objector status since the beginning of the Iraq war in 2003. The Drop Beats Not Bombs tour will support youth and communities that are mobilizing to find positive opportunities outside of the military.

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