a song of protest from Bruce Springsteen on American Society & its culture of Police Violence
from http://dearkitty.blogsome.com/ Dear Kitty. Some Blog.
March 20, 2009
Protest songs about police and dictators
American Skin (41 Shots) Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band 2000
Springsteen’s lament for Guinean immigrant Amadou Diallo – shot 41 times by New York City police officers for reaching for his wallet in 1999 – led to the unthinkable: Bruce being booed at Madison Square Garden. The track, recorded for a live E Street reunion record, also marked the moment in which Springsteen was brought back from the critical and commercial wilds to become the documenting voice of modern America, something he confirmed with 2002’s majestic The Rising album. WD
( OriginalYOUTUBE :Embedding disabled by NYPD & the Neocon Trolls let's see how long this version stays up?)
American Amnesia & NY POLICE Anti-Free Speech
If NYPD not guilty why did they fire 41 shots into an unarmed man ???
New York police want to boycott 'the Boss', Martin Kettle in Washington * The Guardian, Tuesday 13 June 2000
His New York concerts have sold out - but Bruce Springsteen certainly hasn't. So much so that the police officers' union wants members to boycott the Boss because of his new song about a police killing.
The song, American Skin, does not mention Amadou Diallo by name. But the repeated line "41 shots" leaves no room for doubt that its subject is the killing of the unarmed West African immigrant by New York police officers in February 1999.
Four white NYPD officers fired 41 shots at Diallo in the entrance to his Bronx block of flats. The four were acquitted earlier this year, after claiming they thought that a wallet the dead man was reaching for was a gun.
As Springsteen and the E-Street Band began a 10-night run in New York last night, the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, the main NYPD union, has urged members to boycott any duties during the concerts and not to attend as paying guests. The president of the Fraternal Order of Police called the singer "a dirtbag".
Springsteen's song, not yet recorded, opens with eight repetitions of the line "41 shots". The chorus runs: "Is it a gun? Is it a knife? Is it a wallet? This is your life. It ain't no secret. The secret my friend, you can get killed just for living in your American skin."
"I happen to like Springsteen," New York police officer Orlando Vega told the New York Daily News yesterday, "but we're trying to work in the community, and him opening up old wounds just makes our jobs more difficult".
Diallo's mother has said she wants to meet Springsteen to thank him for keeping her son's case in the public eye. Since the acquittal, the Diallo killing has largely disappeared from the front pages and has barely figured in the Senate election battle between Hillary Clinton and Rick Lazio.
"The anger is nowhere and nothing is happening," the veteran New York columnist Jimmy Breslin wrote on Sunday. "At the last hour, only Bruce Springsteen comes in to remind this city of its duty never to forget a horror."
take care .
GORD.
