Jonah Matranga is best known as vocalist with post-hardcore band Far, whose most recent album At Night We Live came out in 2010. As a solo musician he has just completed the album Voices & Dedication, and is currently recording with Ian Love of Rival Schools before returning to the UK in April.
As a native of San Francisco, Matranga has been active in the city’s Occupy movement, creating links between the camp and the progressive Glide church choir, with whom he sings. Matranga is an avowed supporter of civic action as a means of political change, and has been following Occupy demonstrations in San Francisco, New York and London.
While the Occupy London camp at St Paul’s Cathedral faces the ongoing threat of permanent eviction, demonstrators have now established five official sites in the city. On January 23, one hundred days since establishing the camp at St Paul’s, demonstrators took residence at Roman House to protest against the private finances of the City of London Corporation.
In November Matranga toured the UK with Howard J Kenny and Tony Wright, now performing solo as VerseChorusVerse. Before flying out of London, Matranga was keen to visit the camp at St Paul’s Cathedral to see how the movement is progressing in the UK. Here, he teams up with AU to discuss the world’s fastest-growing political force.
What has your experience of Occupy been before today?
I’ve been to New York and San Francisco quite a bit. I played a concert in Indiana so I went over to Occupy Bloomington which was a much smaller, out-of-the-way encampment. It was vibrant and healthy and didn’t have some of the problems that the bigger camps have had. Apparently the local government were totally cool about them being there.
But I think we have very short attention spans, and I think Occupy is overstaying its welcome in our local and personal media. Everyone likes to move it along to whatever’s next. The cool thing about Occupy is that it’s not about one goal or deadline or outcome. And it’s already a success because we’re here having these conversations.
That said, a lot of people actually want to move on to whatever the next place is. For me the logical next step in the States is elections. I think things move to legislation. I’m not of the mind that this is an Arab Spring situation where we’re tearing down dictators. Some people have that mindset but I think we have pretty well-functioning democracies.
So I’m very excited about Occupy because it’s given me and a lot of other people a very non-elitist, non-exclusive way to be engaged, at any level. Whether it’s sleeping, or posting stuff, or talking or doing voting drives or other direct actions or doing strikes, there’s so much to plug in to now.
For me it’s heading towards having elected officials that actually walk the walk when it comes to wealth disparity, controlling the banks and plugging tax loopholes for the mega-rich. Those are the three building blocks.
Jonah Matranga interviewed in London, simultaneously filmed by @jamie_f. iPhone photo by @bullishchick
What’s the feeling about the police response in the USA?
In a really morbid way it’s been the best thing that’s happened. I don’t wish anyone to be hurt at all, but before the police did some really stupid stuff like shooting an Iraq veteran in the head and putting him into a coma, pepper-spraying an 84-year-old lady and pepper-spraying seated students at a peaceful college campus in a really posh part of California…
The first was in Oakland when the Iraq vet got shot. That was the first thing that woke people up. ‘Oh, one: it’s not just a bunch of hippies in drum circles, there are actual people with issues from all over the spectrum here, and two: that’s just insane and awful’.
The mainstream media could not ignore it. They still do their best to caricature it and to make light of it and call the occupiers destructive and violent, but the more coverage there is, the more we’re seeing that the police themselves are actually quite confused.
I think a lot of occupiers aren’t mad at the police, I think we’re mad at the elected officials who are using their police forces irresponsibly and really inappropriately, frankly. It’s not their job, there are plenty other places the police could be that are a lot more worthwhile than Occupy camps.
But again we’re not talking about a dictatorship here, we’re not talking about a police state. I’m not interested in being hyperbolic. I’m interested in talking about the issues that have brought us all here.
Historically speaking, the 1960s in America occupies a great space in people’s imagination as a time of political activism. Are there any links between then and what’s happening today?
I think mostly on the negative side. I think there are a lot of baby boomers who are now totally sold out and of the establishment, who were themselves at rallies in the Sixties and hated them, or who loved them then and grew up and got confused and bitter.
A parallel that I take is Vietnam, for instance. Until footage started showing up of young middle-class white boys dead and until the coffins started coming back, it was hard to get any traction against Vietnam. There were a lot of people that were against it, but again it was compartmentalised.
Once you started seeing serious footage of what actually was going on, what people were talking about and worried and angry about – which unfortunately happens for the middle class when they see their own, as opposed to people of other colours or classes – that wakes people up.
That’s a parallel that I take from the Sixties and I hope it can move past this sort of decadent, excessive disorganised thing and move on to a sort of ‘do something with this energy’ thing.
Have you heard people in the States talking about events like the Berkeley Free Speech Movement in 1965, the Chicago Democratic National Convention in 1968, or even Kent State in 1970?
Sure. My sister was born on May 4, 1970, so Kent State has been a big thing in my psyche, growing up. I certainly hope it doesn’t come to that. I don’t think it will frankly, which I think is a sign that we do have a really healthy democracy.
The only problem, if there’s a problem with that, is that it’s led to a bit of passivity. Basically everyone around here and most of the people at the Occupy camps are doing okay. No-one’s sort of desperate yet.
What I want to point out to lots of middle class people who might be disparaging about Occupy or who might not get it or just might not feel able is that right now the people really taking the hit are the working class and the extreme poor. We don’t see that world.
However anyone that can do the numbers knows that if we don’t have a shift in our economic and social policies, this will come for the middle class. It’s already coming for the middle class but it’s really going to come in 10, 20 years.
There is an anarchistic element to the Occupy movement. It’s highlighted and blown out of proportion but it’s there, and I’d be the first to say that I think they’re a bunch of jackasses.
I’m not interested in that at all. I’m interested in peaceful civil disobedience. I think it works; if you look at history it works. I don’t think the idea of ‘revolution’ in the way that we’ve seen it in other countries is appropriate or realistic in the UK or the States. I don’t think that’s a really great direction to push it.
“It’s simple social physics: we are literally in this together.” Nikon D40 photo by @bullishchick
After having had a walk around the London camp, what are your impressions? Do you feel optimistic?
I love it. I swear, this is already a victory. This has been here a couple months now, Zuccotti’s been up for months now [NB: the New York camp was evicted shortly after Jonah spoke to us], so look at all that’s changed. Just from a couple people camping out in New York City. This is astonishing. This is a shift I’ve not seen in my lifetime, socially, in terms of movement.
It’s funny, I arrived here and got off the tube, I was walking round looking up at St Paul’s thinking ‘I hope I don’t see just four lonely people with bongo drums on the corner’. It was this wonderful feeling to get here and see: yes, here we are.
But I don’t see this as the endgame. I think Occupy Wall Street was the perfect rallying cry around the world because the fact is, Wall Street is the global government at this point. That’s just real. So I think this is great, and this isn’t the endgame.
This is just a gathering point. This is going to church! This is people getting together and testifying and doing their thing. But the whole point of church was never to get together and feel good about going to church, the point of church is getting together and having conversations and leaving church to go out into the community and do cool shit.
So that to me is what this is: a congregation. A global congregation getting together and talking, then heading out and proselytizing not about any particular set of beliefs but about some core values that we all could really use a lesson in.
A lot of people will know you for your music, from Far, making you a kind of ambassador between the States and the UK. If you had a message for campers in London, what would it be?
It’s simple social physics: we are literally in this together. My travelling and my knowledge is mostly of the West, but everyone can see that as goes Wall Street, so goes the UK, so goes western Europe – western Europe is in a serious mess right now – and so goes the rest of the world.
What I’d say to the UK is what I’d say in the States: be careful of complacency. You’ve probably got it pretty good right now, and that will change. And more so, usually a couple miles from where you live, there are people living lives that you will never ever understand. Lives that you wouldn’t think would be lived in a civilized country. And it’s getting a lot worse fast.
I’m hoping Occupy is going to be shot in the arm for people – not on the left or the right – but for people who are interested in the people around them and having a sustainable world. It’s a reasonable thing to ask for. I don’t think anyone here is asking to be rich.
At Night We Live by Far is out now. Jonah Matranga’s latest solo record and many more are available on a pay-as-you-please basis from his official website.
Lead photo by Andy Watson
AU Magazine
