For this first ever Waywards video interview, I spoke with David Rovics, an independent musician and touring singer-songwriter who has performed in more than two dozen countries. David is now on tour in Europe.
Since the nineties, he has written songs and performed in solidarity with labor and anti-capitalist struggles, to support housing justice, and as part of international environmental and anti-war movements. He played at Global Justice demonstrations in the early aughts, including the DC protests against the IMF and the World Back in April 2000, the ~500,000-strong gathering against the US war on Iraq in February 2003, the G8 protest in Scotland in 2005, as well as at the G20 protest in Pittsburgh in 2009 (and at the next one in Toronto in 2010). Circa 2011, when the Occupy Wall Street movement made waves throughout various cities, he played for an Occupy Portland crowd.
David is a member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). He’s part of the Artists for Rent Control network and the related Portland Emergency Eviction Response (PEER) effort. A number of his written commentaries and essays are available at CounterPunch. He also hosts a podcast, This Week With David Rovics.
As of late, he’s been the subject of controversy and has elicited ire from particular political circles for purportedly promoting persons others have deemed problematic, as David has addressed and as we discussed in the interview.
We also talked about what he wrote with respect to the above in a piece for CounterPunch. In addition, I asked him about the Portland chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America nixing his scheduled performance at a pro-labor rally in February.
David and I also discussed his long-standing involvement in and support for anti-authoritarian and liberatory social movements, labor actions, uprisings, rebellions, community organizing, mutual aid initiatives and art for social transformation. We briefly deliberated political praxis, strategy and tactics. We touched specifically on his music-making work against gentrification, evictions, landlord avarice and rapidly rising rent in Portland and beyond.
Toward the end of our conversation, I asked David what music resonates with him today and about his future plans for his own craft. I inquired about any intentions he might have to experiment, record new material, collaborate with various artists and venture into new artistic directions. Before we wrapped up, I mentioned some of my favorite David Rovics songs — “Ballad of a Wobbly,” “I Remember Warsaw,” “Just a Renter,” “The Last Lincoln Veteran,” and “Behind the Barricades,” among others.
You can become a member of David’s Community-Supported Art program here. You can support him on Patreon here. You can donate to his Musical Instrument Fund here.
