protest | The Bad Penny (beta)

Archive for protest

On Tyranny: Thalia Zedek Suggests ‘Artists Should Boycott Playing the United States’

Posted in Features, Interviews, On Tyranny, On Tyranny with tags authoritarianism, fascism, Mihret Kebede, On Tyranny, protest, resistance, Thalia Zedek, tyranny on 12/21/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

*Please subscribe to this channel for future installments of The Bad Penny’s “On Tyranny” series, which focuses on the damage that Authoritarian America is causing to the careers and personal lives of artists.*

The legendary Thalia Zedek’s influence on alternative music through her groups Uzi, Live Skull and Come cannot be overstated. Additionally, a long-lost EP by another one of her projects, Via, finally saw the light of day courtesy of Dromedary Records.

This week, Zedek became the highest-profile artist yet to participate in “On Tyranny.” She talks about how she is taking action to fight the attack on democracy by Trump and corporations; how she fears for the safety of Ethiopian poet Mihret Kebede, with whom she has collaborated; and why drastic moves like foreign artists refusing to tour the United States until the country rights itself should be on the table.

Continue reading →

On Tyranny: Sound Off on No Kings 2: A Communiqué About Community

Posted in Sound Off with tags authoritarianism, community, fascism, No Kings, On Tyranny, protest, tyranny on 10/18/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

This article was originally published in 2009 but, on what could be one of the most consequential days in America in the 21st century, if not in the entire history of the nation, it is now back online for your reading — and, hopefully, galvanizing — pleasure. Find your local No Kings rally here and, for the sake of free speech and freedom itself, please attend. Need further convincing? Read my 43-part series called On Tyranny, in which artists of every stripe tell me how they are being damaged and fear even more atrocious reprisals if the Trump regime and the right-wing scourge plaguing our country continues to run roughshod, unchecked, over the Constitution we have so woefully taken for granted for far too long.

—

Week four of the IndiePit Blog is coming to a close. And what a month it has been. From interviews galore to liberal doses of commentary throughout to some wacky features, hopefully the content has been as much a treat to read as it has been to write.

If you’ve noticed, each week has closed with an installment of a series called “Sound Off” – in which, like the back end of a newspaper’s op-ed section, some closing thoughts on the week are provided.

Continue reading →