The rollout for Chicano Batman‘s new album Freedom Is Free could have been the typical series of singles, interviews, and videos. Their first single for the album dropped in the wake of the U.S. presidential election, and ever since, every bit of news from the band has had as much to do with activism and resistance as the music itself. When the title track was released, it took on a deeper anti-capitalist meaning in the current political context. Then they dropped their version of the protest song “This Land Is Your Land” in support of immigrants affected by the Muslim ban. Freedom Is Free has become a statement of defiance in these trying times.
Now they have penned an open letter to Donald Trump in a new monthly series hosted by culture outlet FLOOD Magazine. In “Dear Mr. President,” artists and other personalities write directly to the head of the White House. For the first installment, Chicano Batman write about every time His Orangeness has attacked anyone who’s not male, white, or rich, laying the responsibility for the hostile political climate squarely on his hands. They compare the transparent hatred and bigotry of his administration to the effects of a particularly destructive drug, and capture it with such poetic frankness that the closing statement of the letter lands like a slap in the face of injustice.
Read an excerpt from the letter below, and the full piece over at FLOOD.
“We know what you are doing
You make it crystal clear with the way you are doing it
You sound like Andrew Jackson on steroids,
Ready to annihilate the Lakota Nation in the digital age
With a pipeline sticking blood-hungry mercenaries on grandmothers
You capitalize on bigotry and convert it into executive action to satisfy
A constituency that only vote against their own interests as they swallow the GMO corn that they eat
As they swallow the arsenic on tap in Gary, as the toxic minerals lodge themselves in the lungs of miners
And all kinds of workers in the heartland that do the bidding of international capital which you so crystal clearly represent
Like crystal meth the effects are ugly aren’t they?”