everybody's looking for relief, the united states versus disbelief
reflections on a song about police brutality by my first favorite band, fall out boy, ten years after i discovered it & our current political climate
Grab some water, this one's a long one. (cw: police brutality, violence)
I started listening to Fall Out Boy in seventh grade. Either through watching their music videos on VH1’s Top 20 Video Countdown (which I’d watch every Saturday morning with my mom and, if I overslept, would make the commitment to wake up an hour earlier on Sunday mornings to catch the re-run) or hearing their singles on the radio.
Long before I’d be discovering music through Twitter, Spotify, Bandcamp, Property of Zack, Sophie’s Floorboard, Tumblr, Groove Shark, Sputnik Reviews, Turntable.fm, Absolute Punk message boards, and everyone's favorite, email, they were the first band I every truly got into and the first band I looked up on YouTube. One day, using my dad’s black Dell laptop which would immediately shut off if you moved the charger even just the sliiighest bit and sitting on my sister’s floor, I found the song Dead On Arrival. Through a fan-made lyric video, not the music video. Why one of their current singles wasn’t the first to display on the first page of results, I can’t tell you. What did I even type into that search bar? I’d still like to know.
Soon after, I owned every record of theirs (pre-hiatus, though I do admit my Tumblr url is still favorite-record to this day) starting with Take This To Your Grave after my dad bought it for me on a family outing to Best Buy. The one I could never find was always Infinity On High. Maybe that album would be my favorite of theirs had it made it onto my iPod classic at the same time as the others but after listening to songs from it through Believers Never Die, I illegally downloaded that record through MediaFire.
Earlier this year, while in the passenger seat of my life-long friend Sage’s car through the steep curves of Asheville, North Carolina’s lush parkway and foggy look out points, deep into our hours long drive and catching up after months of not seeing each other, post listening to a 40 minute song from Skyrim’s 2011 soundtrack, “Bang The Doldrums” came up on shuffle. I had put that song into her iTunes all those years before and it never left just like how, even through distance, she never left me.
I listened to IOH for the first time in years on my three hour drive back to Nashville after leaving Asheville but it wasn’t until earlier this week after discussing my favorite FOB album with my new dear friend (and push to start this newsletter) James (thanks for that) over an Instagram video call (I don’t have an IPhone, sorry.), that I dug up an old memory.
Lying deep beneath Jay-Z’s announcement of “Welcome, it’s here!” on “Thriller”, past one of Rock Band's ‘Five Most Unexpectedly Rockin' Downloadable Songs’ , “This Ain’t a Scene…”, and - just hold on, we’re getting there- now Emo Night staple & nostalgia ridden classic, “Thnks For The Mmrs”, sits “You’re Crashing But You’re No Wave”, which features Butch Walker as the foreman and the Los Angeles Master Chorale as the jury, just above the album’s closing track.
“The D.A. is dressed to the nines
In the mirror he practices all his lines
To his closing argument twelve hearts beat in favor
I'm guessing that he read the morning paper
The headline reads: "The man hangs, but the jury doesn't."
In fan-made lyric videos for the song, there’s arguments and questions about the song’s meaning with the most frequent (at least via top comments) being that it’s about the 1960 classic To Kill A Mockingbird. The old memory in question (still with me?) is a comment I read all those years before that stuck out from the rest. It pointed out the fact that the song was about the case of Fred Hampton Jr, an American political activist & only child of Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton.
In December 1969, Hampton Sr. was shot and killed, at the age of 21, in his bed during a predawn raid at his Chicago apartment by a tactical unit of the Cook County State's Attorney's Office in conjunction with the Chicago Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation; during the raid, another Panther was killed and several seriously wounded. In January 1970, a coroner's jury held an inquest and ruled the deaths of Hampton and activist Mark Clark to be justifiable homicide.
Fred Hampton Jr., who was born after his father was killed, was convicted of aggravated arson in 1993 after a Korean grocery store was set on fire during the LA Riots in 1992 following the acquittal of LAPD officers who beat Rodney King. Hampton was sentenced to eighteen years in prison, and was paroled on September 14, 2001.
As NPR states, 27 years ago, “four Los Angeles policemen — three of them white — were acquitted of the savage beating of Rodney King, an African-American man. Caught on camera by a bystander, graphic video of the attack was broadcast into homes across the nation and worldwide. Fury over the acquittal — stoked by years of racial and economic inequality in the city — spilled over into the streets, resulting in five days of rioting in Los Angeles. It ignited a national conversation about racial and economic disparity and police use of force.”
A civil lawsuit was later filed on behalf of the survivors and the relatives of Fred Hampton Sr. and Clark. It was resolved in 1982 by a settlement of $1.85 million; the City of Chicago, Cook County, and the federal government each paid one-third to a group of nine plaintiffs.
Up until sitting down on my couch while on said video call, did I learn that this was, indeed, the story behind the song and why Pete Wentz decided to tell it. Stating in a 2007 Rolling Stone Q&A with Austin Scaggs:
My oldest memory surrounding the police is one that I’ve heard my mom tell many times. One day, while my sister and I were small children, an officer stopped her outside of the house that we lived in and shared my my dad’s parents, where she was asked “do you live here?” as she was pulling up to unlock the gate. I assumed she showed her ID or something of the sort (there’s so many questions for my mom that I now have to ask) and later that day, she told my dad about her fear of that happening again.
My only interactions with the police have been from being pulled over. Once for speeding on my least favorite road to the way to my former home in Newberry that goes from 60 MPH to 35 MPH and to this day does not have enough streetlights, where I was given a warning and due to having only my expired insurance card in my car instead of the new one which (apparently) came in the mail. My only consequence was going to the court house and paying $10 after showing proof of insurance.
The second time was outside of Conor’s house in Ohio shortly after leaving DIY prom which I drove to and from alone. The officer who stopped me, stating that I made a rolling stop, took a long time running my ID, saying that Florida IDs are “confusing” and asked what I was doing in Ohio. I explained that I had recently moved to Tennessee, and was up there was visiting a friend. I felt lucky that I memorized the address, pointing out that the street was just up the road. I got a verbal warning.
As a hispanic, queer, cis person, I know that I will never fully be able to understand the experiences that Black people, especially Black trans women, are subjected to everyday at the hands of the police as well as through media representation, microaggressions, and countless other means.
Across social media, we've all seen the horrifying and graphic images and videos of protesters being shot by rubber bullets, faced with tear gas, arrested, and many other horrifying examples of police brutality while conservatives protested with guns at capitol buildings just months prior against wearing masks & stay at home orders and were met with no violence. (Since we’re already talking about the current, and still growing, pandemic, Nashville, can you please shut down the bars already?).
Today, we’re experiencing what “may be the largest movement in U.S history” as a result of our broken police system (I know there’s a lot of links in here but this one’s a video. Check out Patriot Act if you haven’t) in a country built on slavery.
Following the murder of George Floyd - A football and basketball player. Hip hop artists. Religious Mentor. Truck driver. Bouncer. A person. - on May 25 for allegedly using a counterfeit $20 bill in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Shortly following, mass protests began across America in support of the Black Lives Matter movement as well as internationally, similar to 2014 following Mike Brown’s death in St. Louis, Missouri.
The movement was formed by founders Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi in 2013 following the use of the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter on social media after the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of 17 year old Trayvon Martin 17 months earlier, in February 2012.
Over these past few months, we’ve seen:
Officials in Washington, DC, Califronia, Nevada and Texas ban chokeholds.
Confederate statues being pulled down by protesters such as in Richmond, VA.
Colleges across the country rescinding admissions offers following racist social media posts
And many, many other changes following more currently ongoing protests and demands for change along with plenty of empty gestures. We all know those murals aren’t enough. Police have killed 598 people in 2020 alone.
We’ve also seen well the sharing of resources such as (if you have the ability consider donating to one of the following):
Victim Memorial Funds (list)
Mental Health Organizations (list)
Bail Funds (list)
Black LGBTQ Funds (list)
Legal Defense Funds (& organizations, list)
just to name a few.
Or, sign a petition:
Today, these protests are continuing in cities such as in Portland, Los Angeles, Nashville, and Chicago. And many of us look to mediums such as music for escape or a method of coping, whether that be through consumption or creation, while the future of the music industry is largely unknown. Just as Fall Out Boy did in 2007 and many before them & since, an array of artists are creating and re-fashioning songs that many will later reflect on and use to learn about our current state.
And hopefully, one day, we’ll be left with something to say other than “isn’t it tragic?”
I am a Big Music Fan and excessive playlister. If you want to throw any funds my way, they’ll be donated to the Nashville Free Store (open every Saturday from 12pm-6pm CT) & Nashville Community Fridge (always open & regularly stocked) located at Drkmttr (the city’s only all-ages venue) here in, you guessed it, Nashville.