Big Brother Keeps Me Company Now

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Conor Oberst on "The People's Key" and anti-immigration laws

Q:
Last summer, you did several shows to protest anti-immigration laws in Arizona and Nebraska. Did that influence the album?
The album is about humanity. That's sort of the crux of that matter -- we're all human beings and these imaginary lines and borders are really silly when you think about work and families and the need for people to survive and carry on with their lives. It seems so basic to me. It's not new, but this new wave of xenophobic, barbaric nationalism is totally scary and something that needs to be stopped in its tracks immediately. This is the opposite of what I was told America was all about.
In a lot of these communities that we're trying to deal with, it's not some abstract thing. It's hate targeting Latino people. It becomes something that needs action, to say "This isn't right. You can't treat people like this. You can't ask someone for their papers because their skin is a little darker than you'd like it to be." That's what got me really fired up about it. Having spent time in Mexico and having a lot of people close to me that come from there, I took it as a direct affront to people I love.
We're doing the Soundstrike thing, so to spend time with Zack de la Rocha and Tom Morello from Rage Against the Machine opened my eyes. They're really brilliant people and it's such a powerful band. Their level of engagement and intelligence and thoughtfulness and the way they communicate with their audience and the activists that are down there, I learned a lot from that. A lot of money we've been trying to funnel is to this place the Florence Project, which gives free legal aid to people that are in these mega prisons in Arizona.

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