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Advocates PR  Krist
Novoselic is the former
bass player for the band Nirvana, founder of the band Sweet 75
and president of The Joint Artists & Music Promotions Action
Committee (JAMPAC).
JAMPAC is a two tiered, non-profit organization working to ensure
complete and total artistic freedoms to all artists and music
industry companies. JAMPAC is the only organization of it's kind in
the United States working on a grassroots level advocating on behalf
of the music community while contributing directly to pro-music
candidates.
Following is a speech Novoselic gave at several forums in the fall of 1998 that were part of the Spitfire tour. He ends with a strong pitch for proportional representation. For more information on JAMPAC, see ( www.jampac.com). Hello, My name is Krist Novoselic
and I would like to welcome you to the first ever Spitfire forum. I
will be your moderator tonight. I am really excited about tonight's
presentation. We will be hearing from Traci Conatay, Amy Ray, Todd
McCormick, Kennedy and Woody Harrelson. There are a few ways to
refer to what we are going to talk about tonight. We can call it
politics, issues, or basically what we, as a collective of people,
are going to do with ourselves.
I'd like to start things off with
how I became interested in politics. I grew up in a small
geographically and culturally isolated town. It seemed like there
were two ways you could be as a person there. You were either
straight or you were messed up. I don't know if I chose it or if I
fell into it by default but I was messed up. I just shuffled through
the party social scene, achieving different levels of inebriation. I
got tired of the messed up scene and I couldn't fit into the
straight one so after a while I became isolated. I worked every
night after school and I blew my cash on buying material things. At
one point I met some people who were into punk rock. It blew my mind
wide open! It was a way to be. I was tired of being alone. No one
wants to be alone. Punk was so new and exciting and I took from it
what worked for me. I didn't put on some kind of uniform or adhere
to some ideology. For me, punk was about being yourself while still
feeling you belonged.
Punk was so deep. I discovered
that most of the bands weren't singing about mindless pastimes like
cruising on a Saturday night. They were talking about society. I
loved the scathing political commentary. There was also literature
in the form of fanzines. The music and the zines were an honest
oasis from the unrelenting commercial media world of economic
agenda's that I felt trapped in. I was finally somewhat happy in the
world because as Henry Rollins said in Black Flag; "Living in the
mainstream is such a lame dream". I wasn't living in the mainstream.
I was neither straight nor messed up. I felt whole because I was
myself and I was part of a community.
When people ask me about the rise
of Nirvana I tell them that the mainstream came to Nirvana, we
didn't go to the mainstream. We were self conscious about being in
the mainstream. We tried to take advantage of the situation by
talking about the things we cared about and exert the ethic's we had
cultivated from our punk rock world. We went out of our way to talk
about human rights and injustice. We did so because if the
mainstream came a knocking, we had to be straight with them and say
where we were coming from. It also helped us justify the mess we got
ourselves into.
We all have our reasons on why we
see things the way we do. Those reasons come from our individual
experiences. After the end of Nirvana, after the dust settled a
little bit, I learned profound lessons on the nature of the human
collective. I recognized idolatry as a human attribute that
manifests in the structure that we call media. I am struck by the
power of the creation of idols, deities and messiahs and I'm wary of
the structures built around them. Ultimately I see idolatry as an
ancient shtick, a tool for control and a barrier to personal growth.
I believe that as we all have a personal destiny, we all as human
beings together have a collective one . Our destinies are to be in a
place where we can be all that we can be. Our mission as people and
as a collective is to at least try. Humankind will one day wind up
in a great place. I believe that when, and if ever that happens,
idolatry will not have a place there. We must be our true selves
while we also live in a community. No one really wants to be alone.
Living in a community takes considering people and the reasons why
they see things the way they do.
I guess that my involvement in
politics is a remedy to fretting about idolatry. Discussion and
deliberation, consensus then execution is democracy at it's best.
When it's burdened by ideology and theology it's at its worst.
In January of 1995, I helped found
JAMPAC, the Joint Artists and Music Promotions Political Action
Committee. The music community in Washington State needed to start
being proactive in the face of recurring censorship attempts by the
State Legislature. We approached things in a conventional and
comprehensive way. I think doing things like burning a flag are a
good way to express yourself. I mean having a visual aid can come in
mighty handy when you want to get something off your chest. The most
profound lesson I learned with JAMPAC is how accessible our
democracy an be. Sure you can burn a flag on the steps of the
legislature but I've found you can be effective and less alienating
by walking into that legislature and asserting yourself as a
citizen. I must say that being a white male comes in handy in these
regards but we all have the right to walk into the public place we
call the state legislature or city hall. We all have the right to
testify in front of legislative committees and county commissions.
We have the right to tell our law makers what we think of them, good
or bad. We have the right to give lawmakers who see things our way
support. An effective way of showing your support to a lawmaker or
lawmaker is to give them money. Now with the money factor we start
to see inadequacies in the system because some people have more
money than others
As JAMPAC engaged the system,
these inadequacies became more apparent. As a matter of fact, our
two party system is wracked with inadequacies. JAMPAC's mission is
to advocate on behalf of the music community in Washington State.
Part of that advocacy is supporting pro-music candidates. Sure some
candidates support free speech and music but their stance on
non-music issues could at times be problematic for JAMPAC and its
contributors. Also, while most of our endorsed candidates won in the
last election, (we made a lot of safe bets), we put time into some
races supporting a candidate with money and grass roots efforts and
that candidate would lose by a very slim margin. So essentially, all
of that time, money and votes were wasted.
People approach me and ask if
JAMPAC is an anti-censorship organization. I tell them no, the
organization is more dynamic than that. In fact we are not so much
opposed to censorship as we are for freedom of speech. Personally I
want to be for something. Taking the positive is so motivating to
me. Taking the positive, is to me, the definition of progress. What
breaks my heart is when I can't bring this ethic into the voting
booth. So many times, I've found myself voting for the lesser of two
evils. And what gets me mad is that if the greater of those evils
wins I still have to pay taxes. Why is it that in the United States
of America, if a candidate wins just 50.1% of the district, they
represent all 100% of it. So the 49.9% of voters whose candidate
lost, their vote doesn't even warrant any representation at all? I
believe that is one of the main reasons we have so much voter apathy
in this country. Why is it that when you go into a store there a
many choices of the kind of breakfast cereal you can buy but when
you walk into a voting booth there are only two real choices for a
candidate to elect. You can either vote for candidate A, candidate B
or throw your vote away on a third party. In our two party system, a
third party candidate is the spoiler vote, usually dividing the
majority of voters. This happened in the 1992 presidential election.
Because of the three way race, Bill Clinton was not elected by a
majority of voters.
If you are feeling uninspired by
what I'm saying, I want to share with you the good news. The good
news is that there is another way. It's called proportional
representation. There is information about it in the lobby.
Proportional representation is the way 95% of the democracies in
this world elect lawmakers. Here is how it works in a nutshell.
Currently, in the United States, we have, single member districts
with winner take all elections. We vote for two real candidates from
the major parties or a token candidate from some third party. The
winner of the most votes represents 100% of the district. With
proportional representation there are larger multi-member districts.
For example, in a ten member district, if a candidate and party wins
50% of the vote, they receive 5 seats of the districts delegation.
If the candidate and party receive 30% they receive 3 seats. A 10%
showing would receive one seat. This way most everybody is a winner,
voters and candidates. Once elected, coalitions would be built to
form either a right or left wing majority in the legislature. With
this system, most people go to the polls knowing that they are going
to vote for someone who really shares there perspective and not for
the lesser of two evils.
I believe that proportional
representation will greatly diminish voter apathy. It is an actual
solution to the campaign finance problems we have. It solves the
serious situation of taxation without representation. It will give
Americans something they expect and should demand, real choice. In a
few weeks we still have a choice. I don't want to diminish the power
of voting this November. I plan on voting. I want to walk into that
booth and have my say. I want to express myself on issues that I
have an opinion of. Tonight we have some perspectives to share with
you. Our hope, in sharing these perspectives is to offer people
information that they can use to help them walk into that voting
booth in a few weeks armed with a very potent weapon. That weapon is
knowledge and it's up to you with how you're going to use that
knowledge to assert yourself as an informed citizen.
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