Talkin’ Politics & Punk Rock With Anti-Flag’s Justin Sane (Starland Ballroom Sayreville, NJ - October 10, 2011)

Especially in the Irish culture, music was so integral, telling the story of oppression. First with the English occupation of Ireland, and then with the immigration from Ireland to the New World. There’s so much of the history of Ireland in the music, and that’s what makes the music so important to that culture. So, it was just a really important part of my family growing up, and it was just really in my blood, I guess. So, the short answer to your question is, because I grew up around music I knew I always wanted to be in a band. Then when I went to my first punk show, I was probably 12 or 13, and that was it, man! I was sold! I was like, that’s what I want to be! The very first punk band I saw was a local punk band in Pittsburg called Car Sickness - and I was young! Then I hung around for years going to local shows with my brothers and sisters, then I kind of took a break from it, I wasn’t that interested anymore. Then I went back again on my own and I saw this band called Knife Dance from Cleveland, and that was it for me! I was like, Oh, God! I gotta work on my guitar playing so I can be in a band!

Phil: I think you’re going to love this next question, but it goes to Tim! Tim, who were the first punk bands that you saw?

Tim: Bouncing Souls and Anti-Flag in Asbury, at the old Casino Skate Park!

Justin: Yeah!! That was a great show, I remember that show! That was an awesome show!

Tim: It was amazing! I remember Vision had their demo out on cassette at the time. I was like, 14! So, you guys are called Anti-Flag. Is there an ideology that the band kind of looks at as a whole, and if not what political ideology would you say you fall into?

Justin: The basic ideology that when we were coming up, when we named the band, was the idea that human beings are not a religion, are not sex, not straight or gay, we’re not nationalities, we’re not flags. We’re people who have to treat each other accordingly, and to this day I think that’s still the main push behind the name, Anti-Flag, when it’s on its most simple terms.

Tim: How do you feel about the protests going on, on Wall Street right now?

Justin: I went down on Saturday and played a set - it was amazing! I feel like, it’s about time! I was just in Europe and my friends in Spain, and Greece, and the UK, and the people there are saying to me, ‘Dude, when are the Americans going to get with it?’ And, boom! I feel like we finally have! I think that it’s an important statement, that fact that people are just showing up! I think what we’ve seen happen is, a lot of people believed that the ballot box was going to fix the problems of the country. They went to vote, and they voted for Obama, thinking, ‘Alright, we’re going to get some relief! We’ve had eight years of Republican rule, it’s bankrupted the country - we’ve got two wars that seem like they’re never going to end, Wall Street is just out of control, and they’ve completely crashed the country! We want something new - we want some new change!’ So, people went out, they voted for Obama, and guess what? NOTHING CHANGED!

As far as people can see, the banks are being given all kinds of literally billions of dollars with no strings attached. Then, there are these other people who have mortgages that are either upside down, or (mortgages) they can’t afford, or they lost their job and can’t afford to pay their bills. Or they just got out of college, and there’s no jobs to be had, and they have mountains worth of debt. And they’re saying, ‘OK, why are the richest people in this country paying the least in taxes? Why are the banks being given all this money with no strings attached, while the rest of us, the other 99% - to use Wall Street terminology - why are the rest of us left to hold the bag?’ And in that respect I think it’s real exciting to see that people have come to the point where they realize that just going to the ballot box is not going to be enough! We need to take it a step further, which is the idea of coming together in these various cities to make a statement - to send a message to Washington.

Furthermore, this could be the kind of movement that could grow into a third party. Something significant that could have an impact to push things in a new direction. It’s amazing because you see things on TV, and these news commentators are saying, ‘Oh, these people have no idea what they want!’ They (the reporters), don’t know anything! I don’t know how they’re missing the story - the story’s pretty simple. The story is, the banks got billions of dollars with no strings attached, and the richest 1% are contributing the least to our nation, and taking the most. That is something we want to turn around! That’s something we need to change, and there’s people right now having meetings every night by Wall Street, in New York, and other cities, talking about, ‘how do we change this?’ And they’re working on coming to a general consensus, and I think what you’ll see over time- I think you’re going to see a declaration. Very much like the Declaration of Independence, that we saw come out of the Continental Congress in the United States. I think that’s really exciting, and it’s vital, and it’s young. This isn’t just some movement that’s been old style politics, where there’s a bunch of old politicians who are in there pulling the strings- putting people up to staging this. This is real, and it’s exciting!

Tim: There was a leak right before the protest happened that Morgan Chase actually donated the largest sum of money anyone had ever donated to the New York Policemen’s Benevolent Association. Something like over 40 million dollars?

Justin: I heard different numbers - I heard 4 million dollars. Regardless, I think they’re sending a message, which is, ‘hey, you take care of us, we’ll take care of you.’ And that’s exactly the kind of thing that the rest of the country feels left behind, and of course people feel infuriated when they see the police beating up on the average citizen, to keep people off of Wall Street. Right now, Wall Street is the symbol of Capitalism gone wrong- the most insane workings of Capitalism, and of course there’s people that are as frustrated with the police when they see those kind of things. I don’t think the police are sending the right kind of message to people as far as whose side they’re on.

Tim: You touched on Obama a little bit in your last couple of answers… I was just going to ask generally, just how you think he’s doing. What are your thoughts on Obama?

Justin: I didn’t think Obama was going to be a savior; sorry. I think Obama has basically surpassed my lowest expectations! It’s amazing to me how much Obama has laid down and given up the ghost! For example, on the Health Care debate, Obama said, ‘ok, single-payer health care - off the table. Government option - off the table. I mean, you don’t go into a negotiation by saying, ‘I’m basically going to give the other guy what they want, and everything I want, I’m going to take off the table.’ We see this time and time again, and there hasn’t been significant finical reform of Wall Street under Obama. Obama’s been very friendly toward Wall Street. The kind of derivatives that were being sold, the financial instruments that were being sold that caused the mortgage crisis are still being sold! Hasn’t changed! Obama hasn’t led the way to say, ‘we have to fix this, we have to change this.’ There’s more drone attacks in Afghanistan and they’re more deadly today than it was under Bush. When you look at almost every front, Barrack Obama has been really regressive.

Look at this energy policy… within a very short time after the Gulf oil spill they had already given permission to oil companies to drill again. AND, even after Fukushima, he wanted to build new nuclear power plants!! Germany is working on a plan to get off of nuclear power all together, by 2015, but what’s Obama want to do? He wants to build more! The reality is that’s not even a symptom of what’s wrong with Barrack Obama; it’s a symptom of what’s wrong with this system! The system is completely broken, and nobody can get elected without getting millions and millions, and MILLIONS of dollars! Hundreds of millions! If Obama is re-elected, he’ll probably be re-elected as the first BILLION DOLLAR PRESIDENT! He’s looking to raise a BILLION DOLLARS! You don’t raise a billion dollars by looking out for the Average Joe’s interest. You raise a billion dollars by taking care of the interests of Wall Street, the energy industry, oil, gas, pharmaceuticals, weapons, et cetera, et cetera. It goes on and on, and that’s the reality of whoever’s going to be elected president, and these are the kind of issues that the people that are occupying Wall Street are bringing up. These are the kinds of things that people are frustrated with, and that’s why I hope something positive will come out of people making that kind of statement.

Tim: Again, you’re touching on all the questions I’m about to ask (laughing)! Afghanistan, we’ve been there 10 years now.

Justin: Well, we should have never gone into Afghanistan. You fight terrorism with a scalpel, not a sledge hammer! Could you imagine if somebody robbed a bank in New York state, so they unleash the full wrath of the United States military on New York State to find bank robber?! It’s madness! And we knew it was madness, and it comes back to the reason why I was against the war in Afghanistan from the beginning. It wasn’t about fighting terrorism; it wasn’t about taking care of Osama Bin Laden. If it really had been, then the Bush administration would have stayed on point until they got him. It was about the resources of Afghanistan… You don’t have to be a fuckin’ genius; you just got to look back into the history of warfare. That’s what warfare’s about… it’s about empires, it’s about the conquest of natural resources… it really hasn’t changed that much.

I feel really sorry for these guys who go over with really good intentions fighting for freedom, liberty, and justice, and all these really good things. I’ve got a cousin who’s been in Iraq and Afghanistan, and he’s my favorite cousin, he’s a Marine. It didn’t take him long to realize that’s not what he was there fighting for. It’s really disheartening to me to see good young men and women go there for all the right reasons, and as far as I can see when I look at it, they’re just pawns of something that is much bigger than what they believed what they were fighting for. And when you asked what Anti-Flag was about… ultimately it was about, probably the most fundamental basic message that Anti-Flag over the years has been our constant theme.

Tim: This is more of an antidote that I wanted to tell you, and see what your reaction is. Me and a bunch of my friends were up in Montreal, and we went to a Disco, and the only reason we went in was because some pretty girls went in… because we all HATE DISCO!!

Justin: Sounds like a plan to me!

Tim: When we got upstairs to the disco we found out that it was just a club, and this club was playing nothing but punk rock, ska, and metal! They had a stage for dancing, and the mosh pit beneath, and we’re having a great time partying, and “Die for Your Government” (an Anti-Flag song) comes on, and we were sitting/moshing to “Die for Your Government,” and at the end of the song my buddy looks at me and goes, ‘Do you realize we were moshing to “Die for Your Government” in Canada?’ I don’t think it has the same meaning!

Justin; Well, I think it does, I think a lot of foreigners look at the United States, and I think they get the meaning behind the song. First of all it’s a song that you could attribute that song to any nation, and any regime. We’ve traveled all over the world, and I think we’ve met kids all over the world that figured out that going to war for any regime is a waste of time, and that’s exciting to me! That’s the message I want kids to get. But a lot of people look at it and say, ‘that’s an anthem about the kind of Imperialism that a war in Afghanistan- a war in Iraq is about. That’s unfortunately something that the United States has been exporting around the world for a very long time. I respect that people can relate to that song in a pretty literal way, as far as the song was written. The song wasn’t meant to be a knock on the United States, I’ve lived overseas, I’ve traveled all over the world. I would rather live here! I love living in this country, it’s a great country, it’s a great people.

But I’m not blind to the problems, and it blows my mind, this kind of blind nationalism, the stance that people take. I think it leads us into wars of folly! Look at Afghanistan ten years later - it’s a war of folly! And the reason being is that, the reasons that we’re given to fight the war are not why we are fighting the war. So, of course the outcome isn’t going to go the way you want it to go, because it doesn’t matter if we win or lose in Afghanistan, it’s about the riches that are acquired as a result, for certain groups of people as a result of invading Afghanistan. Same thing in Iraq; a lot of people say, ‘The war in Iraq was a disaster!’ Well, it wasn’t a disaster for certain oil companies, weapons manufacturers, and Big Business. In that respect, Bush delivered for his constituents. So, actually if you think about the reasons they invaded Iraq, from their point of view, Iraq probably worked out pretty good. At least that’s how I look at it, and maybe it’s just a different way to look at it.

Phil: When you went to the Wall Street protests, and you played a set, what songs did you play?

Justin: I think it was “One Trillion Dollars,” “The Press Corps…” I did a solo record about eight years ago under my name, Justin Sane, called “Life, Love, and the Pursuit of Justice.” A little different than Anti-Flag musically and topically. I played a couple of songs off of that, I played a Clash cover, “Should I Stay or Should I Go.” We played “This is the End,” an Anti-Flag song, and a few others.

Phil: Was it just you that played?

Justin: Well it was just me for the first eight songs, then our bass player came and sang the last song with me. It was fun, and it was wild, because you go up to play a song, and there’s no mic. It totally changed the dynamic of what you can perform, what you can do. I have a lot of solo songs that I thought were very apropos to the setting, and to the topic, but they’re very quiet songs, and so I just couldn’t do them. So, you gotta pick songs that will really throw your voice. The reality was that most people couldn’t hear the guitar, but they could hear me singing. A couple of songs they really helped out on, they knew the words, and that made it a lot more fun. I tried to focus what I played based on that issue.

Phil: It doesn’t get much more DIY than that!

Justin: It was fuckin’ punk, dude! It was cool! What people don’t realize is that the police will not allow them at all on Wall Street to use any kind of amplification device. So, when you see people talking, they call it ‘The Human Mic.’ When I’ll say, ‘hello, how are you?’ Then everybody repeats, ‘hello, how are you?’ That way everyone can hear what you said. So if you see speeches from there that’s what’s going on. It’s really cool, but it’s really ingenious, we’ve been going to protests for like, twenty years, and I’ve never seen anything like that! I was really impressed! To be honest, it’s those little things like that, that are going on there that really give me hope! I was at a point where it was like, Gulf oil spill, Fukushima… Just so many things where you really feel like, God, what’s it going to take for people to stand up and finally say, ‘We need a change?’ Then, all of a sudden here comes this movement, and I had almost given up hope in a way, but all of a sudden I have hope again! It’s the little things like this ‘Human Mic’ concept. There are these really creative people, it’s like the next generation coming that have new ideas. They’re willing to stick it out until something new percolates, and that’s inspiring, you know?!



Jersey Beater Tim Norek and Anti Flag's Justin Sane, photo by Phil Rainone

Tim: I felt the same way; I started feeling hope again before this, during the Arab Spring. Seeing what’s going on, on Wall Street reminds me a lot of what I watched going on over there. We really have a lot to thank for those guys over there.

Justin: We really do! I think one thing that people learned from over there is that, revolutions are very, very difficult, especially in this day and age to be successful, without having the military lined up. And unfortunately what we see in Egypt now is, kind of, the figureheads are gone, but the old guard and the military are still there. They’ve got a really, really uphill climb! And in that respect, John Lennon’s birthday was on Saturday, and I was listening to some interviews where people were talking about him. He would sing, ‘You say you want a Revolution,’ and in it he talks about that it’s great to say you want a revolution - you want to smash the state, and burn everything down - but the reality is, what comes after that? In that respect I’m really hopeful. I always felt the same way, what comes after that? It’s really important that whatever moves forward is that it’s creative, and peaceful. It’s going to take the momentum of the masses behind it to really push for it, and put something into place. To get to a point in this country where people are just shooting at each other is just a concept that is just so beyond insane! I think the people in Egypt have the right idea where they’re continuing to put this pressure on, but it’s going to be ugly, and it’s going to take time. I hope that in this country we can be more creative and more peaceful, than to the point where the people in Egypt have been pushed. There’s almost no choice there. My heart really goes out to them, because they’re dealing with people that have been able to get away with really ugly, physical oppression for a long time, and that’s really hard to start from!

Phil: Are you reissuing any of your albums right now?

Justin: We’ve reissued, ‘A New Kind of Army,’ we’ve got about 5,000 copies of ‘Bright Lights…’ on vinyl which I’m sure we’re going to do something with. I may be reissuing my solo records. I just did a solo tour in Germany, I just did squats and youth centers. A big part of the reason I did it in Germany was because of the kinds of venues that are there. It’s kind of like doing a basement show here, but in a little bit of a different way. A lot of people said, ‘Why did you do it in Germany,’ and the biggest reason was one of my buddies asked me to do it. He was like, ‘C’mon get in the car and let’s go, do this, it’ll be fun!’ And it was a lot of fun! It got me excited to do it here. I think I’ll hit basements, small clubs, bars, so it should be pretty cool! I’ve been working on some new songs, so hopefully I’ll have a chance to nail them down, record them and see how things go from there.

Tim: Just so you know, New Brunswick still has a thriving basement scene.

Justin: Yeah! I tried to get some various bands there. It’s there and in a lot of places. I mean it’s funny, you do shows for different people and it’s like, ‘Punks dead!’ I get bummed, Anti-Flag’s played the whole gambit from playing for two people, ten of our friends in Pittsburg in a basement, to this summer we played for 40,000 people in Italy… and we’ve done everything in between and I came back from the summer run, than I went to Germany and played for 50 people a night. I came home and did a basement show in Pittsburg.

To me that’s where the creativity and excitement of music is! That is the heart of what keeps punk rock special! There are very few other music scenes where you can go play these really big shows, but you can still hang with your friends and go to a basement, and that’s what keeps it real! That’s what keeps it honest and keeps you connect with what excited you about playing music in the first place! I can’t imagine having people who start bands and become really famous, but they never NEVER played a show in a basement! How do you understand what music’s about, it’s weird to me! Regardless of how big or how small punk rock is in the mainstream I love that the heart and soul of punk rock is something that won’t really go away, because anyone’s who’s ever gone to a basement show knows what a special thing it is! It’s so much more than just a show, so that will always be around. I think the reality is, punk rock will always thrive, even if it’s just a basement show, that’s cool with me, that’s what’s exciting about punk rock!
That night, Justin and Anti-Flag went on to play Starland Ballroom, and you could feel the euphoric energy that the band was pumping out and the crowd was giving back. I think as long as we have bands like Anti-Flag, we’re all the better for it, and so are they!