BY KEITH STEVENSON
March 13th, 2021: On this day one year ago, I exited Chicago’s O’Hare airport holding the no-knock-arrest-warrant for my industry in the form of an altered flight itinerary clutched in my fist. At that point, the music industry was the first ‘viral casualty’ on the American landscape that was largely unaware of what lie ahead. Three days later, Chicago would be one of the first cities to shut down. As my eyes gaped at a large Wicker Park intersection during rush hour with barely a car in sight, I realized it was time to retreat home to Colorado where the term “quarantine” had yet to infiltrate the scene. Waves of uncertainty rolled through me as I struggled to process what was happening in that moment, but no part of me could foresee what the tides of 2020 would soon bring.
By May, reality set in that live music was not coming back anytime soon, this wasn’t a case of simply hunkering down off the road for ‘a bit.’ The aloof twilight of those couple months of much needed R&R after a decade of hard touring was beginning to peel away like the foil of so many scotch bottles. The fear was beginning to creep into my psyche as the abysmal sentence cast upon my artistry was being read aloud. Watching the industry I built my entire life around and had given more than a pound of flesh to- get callously vaporized mid-stride left me shaken to my core. Much like our canceled tour dates, those life altering perils I was beginning to wrestle with in quarantine would soon be obliterated from my mind when the real fires were met with the proverbial can of gasoline.
I awoke at an unreasonably early midday hour in the Moab Desert on the 26th of May to a message from a friend that said, “Those fucking PIGS in Minneapolis just lynched a black man in the street.” I was foggy and way behind schedule, so I put the troubling words out of mind for the time being and set off for Denver with a long-lost art school compatriot who was flying out the next morning. We shared stories of our respective past 16 years and our current artistic trials and tribulations during quarantine while he reveled at seeing I-70’s grandiose landscapes between Grand Junction and Denver for the first time. It wasn’t until after we parted ways at that hallowed ghost town of an airport that I had time to dig into what happened. My heart dropped as it has too many times before at this particular brand of vile and treacherous loss. Already tripping on a cracked foundation, reading what happened to George Floyd and bearing witness to his harrowing final 8 minutes and 46 seconds on this Earth sent me headfirst into yet another earth rattling life alteration.
As I watched the uprising begin in Minneapolis, it was noticeably different than other public outcries I’d seen at the unjust murders of black and brown bodies by the hand of the state’s fascist thugs . . . these folks weren’t fucking around, and other major cities were starting to follow suit. I’ll never forget the live feed of that crowd overtaking the third precinct HQ and setting it ablaze after it was surrendered to the men and women who’d been pushed far past their breaking point by the injustices burned into their collective history in this country. I realized that the ‘silver lining’ in the recent destruction of my way of life was that in this historical moment, I now had the presence to fully dedicate myself to the cause that has been important to me since reading Black Panther and political prisoner, Mumia Abu Jamal’s Live from Death Row at age 15. Over the next 36 hours I felt my DNA restructuring itself and preparing for what was next. I was ready to put my life on the line for this fight. In that revealing moment, these are the words I wrote:
Our country is a tree whose roots are grounded through the inheritance of the genocide of its indigenous people and grown from the photosynthesis of chattel slavery. Its branches stretch out through the sole motive of providing shade and comfort to a wealthy ruling class, while subjugating all trees around it.
Not through any amount of atmospheric pressure or even the changing of seasons, do it’s leaves ever turn a different hue. Yet still we sit beneath, and hopelessly ponder why the fruit it bears tastes of venom and contempt. . . It is time to grab the fucking chainsaw.
It was around 4am on the 29th of May. I was frantically assembling what protective and medical gear I could find during the height of a pandemic and preparing to head into Denver, from which I’d ultimately return as a radicalized version of my former self. I didn’t bring my rage into the streets to haphazardly unleash it under the guise of the mounting protests. I showed up to peacefully support black lives and voices for a demonstration of solidarity that remained peaceful until the pigs responded to their seething critique with militarized ultraviolence. Over the course of that ghastly Friday, I witnessed unprovoked stormtroopers indiscriminately tear gassing men, women and children. I was pelted with pepper balls, covered in CS gas, had flashbang and concussion grenades detonated around me, saw limp bodies forever altered, and acted as a medic neutralizing tear-gas in the panicked eyes of strangers. I watched the state commit countless war crimes against its own citizens that would never be allowed against our fucking enemies in war, all while being emboldened by the shameless public bolstering of white nationalism from the neo-fascist regime in DC.
Time that would normally be occupied by endless art deadlines, emails and touring was replaced by guerilla training, mutual aid and the fog of war atop stolen Arapaho soil. I could write a book’s worth of details on all I saw and took part in over the next disturbing 90 days, but the world doesn’t need another front-line account of a white ally’s experience within a movement for racial justice. To live simultaneously through the largest civil rights uprising in our history and the most destructive global pandemic of any living generation, while being deeply affected by both, was certainly new territory. . . The air was different during those times and will likely never taste the same again. Up until May of 2020, I could’ve easily counted how many times I’d cried in the past 20 years on one hand. Now, at the dawn of 2021, I’ve long since lost track.
“Until the colour of a man’s skin is of no more significance than the colour of his eyes – it’s a war.”
–Haile Selassie I
