Why We Need RATM Now More than Ever...

If you're a fan of Rage Against the Machine, you're already hotly anticipating their next move. They reunited at Coachella, are touring in Australia, and rumors are swirling wild and fast. Nobody would love to see that more than me, considering that I only started listening to them after they broke up, and popular culture seemed to forget about them. In high school, I saw little white kids wearing RATM shirts, and I thought, what's so great about them? but seeing them in concert would be a dream come true nonetheless. They broke up on October 28, 2000, and subsequently missed some of the most defining points of our generation. These last 7 years have the been the most politically turbulent, the most culturally active, the most Rage-Against-the-Machine-y as I've ever seen. Until 2000, they had the opportunity to just be voices out of many. There wasn't anything to unite, divide, and then unite us all over again. And then the chance came. We needed someone who could voice our rage, and make the powers that be know that we weren't going to take it anymore. But there was no one. Eminem tried, but he had already alienated so many people that we couldn't be a cohesive voice. It didn't have to be a musical act, however, it could have been anyone. The MLK of our generation, the mavericks, the change makers. Too many people were afraid to stand up, but everybody wanted to follow. The void wasn't filled, though, and we've had 9/11, Bush stealing a presidency, the increasing fundamentalist Christian leanings of our government, and the general decline of our country as a world power, and no one to voice those feelings. The revolution was poised for a comeback, but there was no one to push us all over that cliff. Perhaps you think I'm being a little melodramatic; it couldn't be that easy, right? One single song, or band, can't bring about change of that magnitude, or make that big of a difference. Well, if you saw what I saw; if you saw the way that young people responded to Rage, you'd know that the change is not only possible, but if the stars had aligned and moved just right, it would have happened. Now, what can we do now? The rage is tempering off, and even though RATM might be coming back, there's no need for them now, right? Well, wrong. The feeling is there, we just need to harvest it and move it towards positive change. I'm not saying that we need celebrities to tell us what to do and what to believe in, and further, what to support, or disdain. However, RATM brought people who might never been on the same side of an issue. They were about as high profile as you can get with the politics that they had, and they made people, young people care. And if you've ever tried to do the same, you can understand how difficult that can be. They took young people out of our apathy, and made activists and generally angry people out of us all. And if the recent events of Jena can tell us, an angry people is a people moved to action. Action is the end result that we want. Action makes people do something like riding a bus halfway across the country to protest injustice. It makes people give money, time, and effort to put a stop to some of the most horrendous crimes against humanity. And whether that crime is locking up a Nobel Peace Prize winner, or the systematic destruction of a country and it's people for dubious means, angry people move toward solutions. So, I welcome back Rage, and though I know it's not too late, I hope that they don't forget the same. They can make it back, be relevant, stir people to action, and with this feeling, we'll achieve change.