Everybody Has Room For Jello
Political activists usually run separately to the political systems that they try to work with. There are a few exceptions of which most turn out to be enormously gripping and often quite funny.
One such example is Eric Reed Boucher, an ordinary citizen from San Francisco. You may know him better as Jello Biafra, one time San Francisco mayoral candidate and lead singer of The Dead Kennedy's.
Jello Biafra is known for his support of direct action, for promoting movements such as 'hacktivism' and his Camcorder Truth Jihad. He is probably best called an anarchist-in-waiting and is a prominent member of the American Green party.
Since the demise of the band, (and subsequent vicious lawsuit) Jello Biafra has become an effective critic of the Republicans, the Democrats and the American political process in general. He is known for doing this by working as a journalist for the Independent Media Centre and by touring with many spoken word shows and albums getting Punk generations involved in politics.
In his spoken word explorations Biafra combines anecdotes with an immense archive of statistics, without which he'd be little more effective than Henry Rollins. What drives this is his life on the fringe of politics. This life started when Biafra ran against Dianne Feinstein in the 1979 San Francisco mayoral election, eventually seeing him on the receiving end as an independent business owner. He is constantly being threatened by proposed legislation concerning the music industry.
In 1979 Jello Biafra announced that he was running as a mayoral candidate despite having no platform on which to run at the time. When the election came around he ended up in fourth place out of a field of 10 candidates and caused a further run-off election which Democrat Dianne Feinstein (now Senator) eventually won. In the election campaign Jello did manage to come up with a stable manifesto which was equal parts both sensible and outrageous. He proposed that if elected; all businessmen shall have to go to work wearing clown suits for example. However the same manifesto also included a plan to pedestrianise parts of the city by grassing over all the roads and proposed legislation that would make squatting legal in buildings left vacant for tax purposes.
Being invited on all the radio and television shows to do interviews along with all the 'real candidates' gave Jello heaps of media attention so much so that he became a serious cause of concern for the incumbent mayor Feinstein. His fourth place share of the vote of 3.5% and that of the third placed Sister Boom Boom (a San Franciscan drag queen) caused the run-off election to be held. In order to seem aware of the plight of San Franciscans, Feinstein offered take on board the a few of the non-republican candidates manifesto pledges in return for their support. Jello Biafra suggested two, including the squatting proposal to the Feinstein team, they said we'll look them over. Jello gave the weakest of endorsements and not one piece of his manifesto went anywhere near Feinstein's.
From the mid-Eighties Jello Biafra involved himself in many forms of political activism and began touring with his spoken word material. This material was initially derived from experiences in the 'Frankenchrist' legal case that was being fought by him and the Dead Kennedy's over the inclusion of a poster contained within the record's sleeve that was deemed 'offensive'.
In 2000, Jello Biafra was nominated as a presidential candidate for the Green party, he accepted the nomination because he thought his name would generate involvement and interest for the Green party. It did, but at the Green party convention Ralph Nader won the convention's support. He went on to collect two million votes at the election. Despite describing himself as an anarchist, Jello is still a member of the Green party because he believes that anarchism wouldn't work at the moment in our society. In siding with the Greens, Jello is trying to do good in an otherwise democratically corrupt system.
Jello believes that the system is so corrupt that it let him to decide not to vote for a long period after 1980, he lost faith in trusting anyone from any one of the main parties. In fact it took a talking to from Frank Zappa to get him back into voting. The reason; voting down sports stadiums. Uniquely in USA, Americans have the chance to vote on things other than candidates when the enter the polling booth. These 'things' are ballot initiatives or propositions which are essentially a public vote on something proposed by state and local governments that 'the governments are too chicken to decide on themselves. A good recent example would be 'Proposition 8', which repealed the right for same sex couples to marry. Jello Biafra has developed a passion for these ballot initiatives and spends a large part of his live shows encouraging his American audiences to register to vote for that reason.
Another large part of his spoken word shows is spent on explaining the truth about seeming innocuous events that have happened on the political scene. As a resident of California, Jello often speaks of what happened during the period of gubernatorial unrest in 2003 when Governor Gray Davis was recalled from office. The recall was sparked by the early 2000s California electricity crisis, which Davis in reality had little to do with as he was effectively being conned by the electricity companies who created false supply and demand problems. Once the recall election was announced, the Republicans started a campaign stating that the Californian's were paying too much tax and that if they were elected into office everyone would get a tax rebate. Arnold Schwarzenegger was quickly swept into power and Jello Biafra was overjoyed to soon find a 3 dollar rebate in his mailbox. Oh joy.
Jello keeps uncovering another side to the politics that we read about, making him appear like a left wing fundamentalist to some but he soldiers on. He has recently penned a 7,500 word open letter to Barack Obama giving suggestions to his government about what they should do whilst having the next four years in the White house. [http://bit.ly/biafraopenletter] And while being swayed by Obama's great oratories and his acceptance speech, he remains unconvinced of his good intentions; 'I did not vote for him because of his record in Congress voting for the PATRIOT Act, the anti-immigrant wall, numerous corporate breaks and subsidies, the FISA bill legalizing all the NSA's illegal wire-tapping, etc.' He is still a man of his principles. He still also disagrees with the us of his band's songs in TV commercials and movies. Especially the decision to have the song 'Too Drunk To Fuck' played over the attempted rape scene in Planet Terror.
His character and animation of whatever he talks about is truly energising, Jello Biafra can make even Bob Dole seem electrifying. His political preaching is helping make getting involved with politics cool, giving serious subjects an approachable humorous spin with a healthy dose of raw statistics and information. This is encouraging to hear in a world of messy and corrupted politics with politicians that the public can't seem to trust.
First and foremost Jello Biafra is an undying voice of greater involvement in the world today. As a musician he lays it down like this; 'People respect and listen to artists far more than politicians. In an age of dumbed-down, censored, Soviet-style mass media it is up to artists to be what Chuck D once called 'The real CNN'. If we don’t wake people up to what’s going on, who will? '. He's almost inspirational.
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