Thou Shalt Not Kill

I have a local music shop which I am absolutely obsessed with. In fact, I have to restrict myself from going to this particular shopping centre because if I go, I know I will be drawn to this CD store and therefore will be seduced by the CD covers and will end up spending another $30 I can’t afford to spend.

But anyway, I couldn’t stop my fingers turning the keys in the ignition yesterday and proceeded to go to the shops just for the sake of this music shop. For the past few weeks I have been debating as to whether I should buy this one album that for some reason keeps drawing me to it. But I have always put it back in favour of other things – last week it was The Supremes, the other week it was Marvin Gaye, the other time it was Tracy Chapman…and so on and so on.

But this time I didn’t spend hardly any time in the $5 bin like I usually do. I went straight to this section and before I knew it my hands had picked up Michael Franti and Spearhead’s third album “Stay Human”.



Boy, I’m glad I did. For one of the first times in my life, I sat down and actually listened to the album right way through. Usually I always stop on a few songs and listen to them over and over again until I get sick of it. But this album basically cries for you to listen to it.

It really is like a storytelling album. Michael Franti is a social activist and his work on “Stay Human” is like a digitally eternal protest against the death penalty. Interspersed throughout the songs are radio segments from a fictional radio show where Franti plays DJ Soulshine and with his female counterpart they broadcast the fictional story of Sister Fatima.

Here is Franti explaining the story in the inner sleeve of the album:

For those of you who do not know, Sister Fatima was accused and convicted of the 1991 slaying of prominent business couple James and Ellen Buchanan. There was very little physical evidence submitted in the trial, as their bodies have yet to be located and no murder weapon was found. The evidence used to condemn Sister Fatima was the testimony of “eyewitnesses” who claimed to have seen Sister Fatima having an argument with the Buchanan’s the week of the murder. According to witnesses the nature of the argument was over the lease agreement of the medical marijuana office Sister Fatima ran, which was housed in a building owned by the Buchanan’s.

…Many now believe Sister Fatima, who had been a police target since the late Sixties because of her outspoken views on racial equality, police violence, environmental issues, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender rights, and the compassionate use of medical marijuana, was framed as a means of silencing her.”

The segments include interviews with the Governor, who is running an election campaign based around the execution of Sister Fatima, who is due to take the lethal injection the night of the election.

The story is really well-developed and I really thing the radio segments make the album. Although I don’t believe that there would ever be a governor as heartless and stupid as the one portrayed on the album (but there probably is, I mean, look at our Prime Minister who used Children Overboard in an election).

The songs are quite simply, amazing. I’m not a music whiz so I don’t know where he gets his influences from but I’ve been reading a few reviews and they seem to refer to him as Marvin Gaye in his “What’s Going On” (love that song!) phase and Gil Scott-Heron.

I really love hip hop but I think I am more a lover of spoken word poetry, which is why I adore Mos Def, and I think this is why I enjoy Michael Franti so much. His lyrics could be poetry and each line seems to mean something. A lot of the reviews on the net point to Stay Human (all the freaky people), Soulshine and Sometimes as the best songs on the album, but I was drawn to the first one “Oh My God”.

Here is the song, and below are the lyrics:

P.S. This version doesn’t sound the same as on the actual album, but it sounds like him :P

(chorus)
Oh-my, oh-my God!
Out here mama they got us livin’ suicide
Singin’ oh-my, oh-my God!
Out here mama they got us livin’ genocide

Slam bam I come unseen
But like gasoline you can tell I’m in the tank
Like money in the bank
I smell appealing, but I’m toxic, can send ya reeling
Without an inklin’, keep a thinkin’
‘cause you gave cash to the feds, left your school district for dead
Fucked you up in the head, but still they sayin’ nothins wrong
Sellin’ firewater but outlawing the bong
Still believing the system is workin’
While half of my people are still outta workin’
Anonymous notes left in the pockets and coats
Of judges and juries from ‘Frisco to Jersey
Threats and protests politicians mob debts
Trumped up charges and phony arrests
Stage a lethal injection, the night before the lection
‘cause he got donations from the prison guard’s union

(chorus)

Listen in to my stethoscope on a rope
Internal lullabies, human cries
Thumps and silence, the language of violence
Algorithmic, cataclysmic, seismic, biorhythmic
You can make a life longer, but you can’t save it
You can make a clone and then you try to enslave it?
Stealin’ DNA samples from the unborn
And then you comin’ after us
‘cause we sampled a James Brown horn?
Scientists who’s God is progress
A four-headed sheep is their latest project
The CIA runnin’ like their Jones from Indiana
But they still won’t talk about that (Jim) Jones
(People’s Temple mass suicide) in Guyana.
This ain’t no cartoon
No one slips on bananas
Do you really think that car killed Diana
Hell I shot Ronald Reagan, I shot JFK
I slept with Marilyn she sung me happy birthday
Singin’

(chorus)

Well politicians got lipstick on the collar
The whole media started to holler
But I don’t give a fuck who they screwin’ in private
I wanna know who they screwin’ in public
Robbin’, cheatin’, stealin’
White collar criminal
McDonald eatin’, you deserve a beatin’
Send you home a weepin’, with a fat bill for your Caribbean weekend
For just about anything they can bust us
False advertising sayin’ “Halls of Justice”
You tellin’ the youth don’t be so violent
They you drop bombs on every single continent
Mandatory minimum sentencin’
‘cause he got caught with a pocket fulla medicine
Do that again another ten up in the pen
I feel so mad I wanna bomb an institution.

(chorus)

But what I really wanted to talk about was my views on the death penalty. It is an issue that has been in the media of late and ironically, one that I had a huge argument with my Christian friend about.

I am totally against the death penalty. To me, it makes no sense to kill someone in exchange for a crime. The common mantra “Two wrongs don’t make a right” never seems to apply to the death penalty.

I thought Kevin Rudd was entirely hypocritical when he condemned the Shadow Foreign Minister Robert McClelland on his comments that Labor would campaign against the death penalty for bali bombers:

PETA DONALD: Labor's foreign affairs spokesman, Robert McClelland, made a speech to a human rights forum in Sydney last night, with the title: Time for Australia to Stand up for International Human Rights.

He made the point that 80 per cent of known executions are happening in Asia, in 14 states with the death penalty.

In government, he said, Labor would initiate a regional coalition, joining with the countries in Asia that have abolished capital punishment, to encourage others to do the same.

Robert McClelland also criticised the mixed messages coming from Australia, citing the Prime Minister's support for the execution of the Bali bombers, while at the same time saying Australia is against the death penalty.

The speech did not please the former foreign affairs spokesman, now leader, Kevin Rudd, particularly the reference to the politically sensitive issue of the Bali bombers.

KEVIN RUDD: I believe that terrorists should rot in jail for the term of their natural lives, and then one day be removed in a pine box.

Beyond that, when it comes to the question of the death penalty, no diplomatic intervention will ever be made by any government that I lead in support of any individual terrorist's life.

We have only indicated in the past, and will maintain a policy in the future, of intervening diplomatically in support of Australian nationals who face capital sentences abroad.

On the wider question of the death penalty, the Liberal Party's policy, like Labor's policy, is identical, and that is our global opposition to the death penalty.

In terms of the prosecution of that matter, that is best done multilaterally through the United Nations.

Fair enough, what the Bali Bombers did no was despicable. But that doesn’t mean that they deserve the death penalty. And I don’t believe McClelland was saying that Labor would intervene to save a terrorist’s life – he said Labor would intervene to stop the death penalty in Asia altogether. It was obvious Rudd was just playing politics on an issue that very likely could have cost Labor some votes – especially in the crucial area of national security, which is what the conservative government seems to view as their strength.

The idea that terrorists should somehow be exempt from debate on the death penalty seems illogical to me. But it was a point that my friend tried to argue to me recently. She said that in cases such as Saddaam Hussein, the death penalty was more than justified. This coming from a Christian who says no to abortion because it is murder and thus “Thou Shalt Not Kill”.

I think “Thou Shalt Not Kill” extends even to the lives of terrorists. I am so glad that Australia doesn’t legalize murder in terms of a capital punishment system but it saddens me that there are countries around the world that still think it is necessary. And then it saddens me even more when our own opposition leader and Government seem to want to turn a blind eye to it just because the victims of the system happen to be terrorists.


I like this quote in the pages of Michael Franti’s album:

Questions about capital punishment often tend to revolve around tangential issues – whether, for example, death should be painful or not. So that now, death by lethal injection is represented as the best, least painful, and thus more human death. AThis doesn’t confront the real issue, which is whether there is not something profoundly wrong with giving the state the right to kill. No method of state death can eradicate the fact that capital punishment is racist and class-baised.”

-Angela Davis – prison industrial complex activist.

So often the debate on capital punishment does revolve on the little details. But the debate forgets the main point – you are killing another human being. You are taking part in the murder of another human being.

But back to the album, I recommend everyone buy it! I’m going to devote myself to buying Michael Franti’s back catalogue now even though Stay Human will most likely be on my rotate for a very long time to come.