From the archives: The Big Issue, 2004

Remember the dark days of Dubya winning his second term? I spoke to voters in the States in the lead up to that election, and although things are different for this 2010 UK election, the sense of frustration and political impotence that I got then feels depressingly resonant. We desperately need electoral reform in this country, not because our Big 2 are morally (not to mention fiscally) bankrupt (although they may be) but because, like America, we disenfranchise swathes of voters based on the lottery of postcode. Which is so dangerous.


America hanging in the balance
by Stef Macbeth
Published in The Big Issue, October 2004


At The Great Lakes Bar on Fifth Avenue, New York, Jim is getting ready for a busy night. "People will be getting pretty blitzed," he says. "The weekend starts on Thursday here." And will the presidential race be on everyone's lips tonight? "Yeah," he sighs, with almost as much enthusiasm as the talking clock. "People will be talking about it ? but only like they talk about anything else."

According to the 28-year-old barman at this student hangout, the atmosphere here is hardly one of election fever; more ambivalence. No one's too enamoured with John Kerry but at the same time they're pretty keen to get rid of George W Bush. "It's a case of the lesser of two evils," Jim says. You can hear the resignation in his voice. Will he be voting? "Yeah, I'll be voting. But then I always do."

While much of America's youth share Jim's cynicism for candidates at the upcoming presidential election in November, they don't all share the same desire to vote. In the 2000 election just 32 per cent of Americans aged 18-24 voted, the lowest figure since 18-year-olds were given the vote back in 1972 in a haze of student protest and mass political engagement.

But America's youth can swing this election. Or so believes a group of political activists currently touring the US in a bid to get young people voting. The League of Pissed Off Voters aims to engage disillusioned 17 to 35-year-olds in the democratic process. They are convinced they have a strategy that will translate such lofty claims into reality - and, crucially, votes.

On tour with their book, How to Get Stupid White Men Out of Office - The Anti-Politics Unboring Guide To Power, the collective have made it their mission to convince young people that they truly can swing this election. The 2000 presidential election was decided by 537 votes in Florida, the book states. It also estimates there are five million progressives aged 17-35 whose votes would be enough to change their country's political landscape. Those two factors combined mean that in November young people - whether they know it or not - have the future of American politics in their hands.

"We are the voting mass - or at least we should be," says Adrienne Maree Brown, co-editor of the book and The League's programme manager. At 25, she is one of their older members. As she says, she's part of a powerful generation of young voters. Potentially.

"We're young - we aren't settled in our ways yet, we have passion and energy and firepower and mobility. We have the most at stake, it's our world, old people just live in it. Every single candidate should be courting the youth vote, asking us what we want."

Of course they have no reason to yet. But that's what The League is trying to change: "We're making ourselves the most important population to win for any candidate," says Brown, who first voted when she was 22, in the last national election. Her involvement with the book comes from the "disengaged what-difference-does-one-vote-make pissed-off young voter perspective."

The name may sound like a joke but The League of Pissed Off Voters is deadly serious, as serious as Brown's voice when she pointedly tells me that the only way that anyone can get away with stealing an election or committing election fraud is if the community aren't paying attention.

Ostensibly non-partisan, they are however pretty blatant about their first target: to get Bush out of office. It is all part of a bigger plan, says Brown: "the 'Get Bush out now' campaign motivates people to get involved but once people are engaged with it they realise there are so many other areas they can do good work in."

It's this fluidity between short-term policies and long-term aims that sets The League apart from nearly everyone else who's trying to woo young voters. Their campaign doesn’t end on election day.

According to Brown, their message is not falling on deaf ears. Features on The League have recently appeared in publications such as The Nation and The Village Voice - even though the group's small budget so far meant that a media campaign was out of the question. It is a sign the American public is starting to take notice. "People are so ready for this to exist," she says. "Something different and something truly long-term. So far, so good but we won’t know until after the election, of course."

Brown's sense that people are responding well and are engaging in a way that they didn't in 2000 is echoed by Khalilah Brown-Dean, a political scientist at Yale: "Not since the Civil Rights Movement have we seen such a concerted effort to strengthen the voice of young Americans. People are finally realising that young people in this country have the potential to significantly shape the outcome of this election."

Brown-Dean thinks that the reasons why young people haven't voted in the past are twofold. Part of it is that many young American's view politicians as an irrelevance and voting simply a waste of time.

"They have witnessed various candidates promise to advance the interests of young people, yet rarely see them follow through on those promises." She cites a survey carried out by Harvard University's Institute of Politics which found that 83.5 per cent of undergraduate students had not been contacted by any political party during the 2000 election campaign.

"In this regard, politicians need to do more to help young people understand how the process of politics governs every aspect of their lives. From deciding which brands of shoes are available in department stores because of trade policies, to determining the costs of higher education, the political process holds important implications for the future of our young people."

However, Brown-Dean does not think that a lack of understanding surrounding the political process amongst young people tells the full story.
"Many young people have realised that voting is not the only means of taking part in the political process. Young people in the US have an important history of involvement in other areas of participation including protest, civil disobedience and the use of counterculture to promote their political interests," she says.

"Rather than condemning them for their relatively low rate of turnout, we need to examine the institutional and societal barriers to their participation."

Much of The League's work is about bringing communities together. The rest is focused on getting those communities politically active and talking in a constructive way.

"We're not trying to reinvent the wheel," Brown continues. "A lot of the resources we need are already out there - it's just a case of finding them and making sure people are making use of them."

To do this they're using a cocktail of alternative methods - from mix-tapes to brunches - anything that might help democratise the language of politics and allow the whole community to take part in the debate.

On the website there are tips on how to make a Voter Guide, a non-partisan leaflet detailing what voters need to know about the candidates standing in their area. "Use your own language", it urges. "You don't need to sound like a boring-ass politician to write about one."

The issues being fought at this election are particularly resonant for young voters: same-sex marriages, US Foreign Policy and economic empowerment. Add to that 9/11, Iraq and Michael Moore and it's clear that people have a lot more to care about this time round.

The evidence out on the streets of New York seems to back this up. At the A1 Record store in the heart of New York's East Village, young scenesters flick through hip-hop promos. Jeremy, the store manager, like many young Americans, didn't vote in the 2000 election because he felt it "didn't concern him". But this time around he is in no doubt about whether to vote or not.

"If Bush gets re-elected he will destroy everything. He represents a tiny portion of America. I mean the guy's a dimwit. He's ignorant, he's stupid? Who wants a President like that?" he spits.

"He might have fooled some people last time but he won’t be able to do it again."

Brown, however, isn't relying on anger to swing this election. People need to be angry - and voting - to make a difference. "No one can document the number of people who are angry. By going out to vote it means that win or lose you always have a documentable number of how many people are dissatisfied with a government's policies?" she says.

"We're trying to get people to see that even if they don’t feel a duty to themselves to vote, they need to do it for all the people around the world who do not have the right to vote in our election yet have been affected by our country's policies. We have an international responsibility right now."

The final Optimo

Huge thanks to Graeme for the pic - see the rest at http://www.flickr.com/photos/sonof/sets/72157623948440076/

Last weekend I took a 1000 mile round trip in 24 hours to attend the last ever Optimo (Espacio). Below is the piece I wrote for Dummy magazine.



A 'sweaty, cheering, hugging mass of people' raise their fists together as Glasgow's greatest weekly party bows out after twelve and a half years.




A kid with the most incredible mop of carrot coloured hair is passing around a bottle of cheap rosé. We've been waiting in line for well over an hour, at least 500 [correction: 1500 (the Sub holds 400)] of us, snaking up towards the Clyde and round as far as the railway arches. Even by Optimo standards it's a big queue, thick (around eight people deep in places) as well as long. And it's not even 9pm on this drizzly Sunday evening in Glasgow. A roar erupts as the Sub Club's doors open and the first wave of people descend to its murky depths. And so it begins.

Optimo (Espacio) was already a local treasure when I arrived in Glasgow in 2000. Back then they were in a temporary home following a fire at the Sub Club, Scotland's spiritual birthplace for musical subcultures and illicit dances since the fifties. Keith McIvor (JD Twitch) and Jonnie Wilkes had been doing the weekly Sunday night slot there since 1997. Such a disruption might have scuppered lesser nights, but even by this point, I'm quite sure they could have done it on the moon and Optimo's hedonistic rabble of artists and students and misfits and mavens would have found a way to be there.

This wasn't always so. By all accounts, for the first year only a handful of people would turn up. Keith always says that it 'just happened' one night, about a year after he and Jonnie had launched the club – partly as a reaction to an inward-looking, cooler-than-thou techno scene that had a grip on Glasgow nightlife at that time – people suddenly got it; something clicked into place and the passion between DJ and dance floor, promoter and party goer, geekery and hedonism that so defines Optimo, took root.

Tonight, over a decade on, we're here to say goodbye to what London DJ Rory Phillips calls 'the last of the UK's great weekly parties', a club night that is legendary in its own lifetime. It's hard to describe the position Optimo – and its maverick creators – hold in Glasgow, not just among their fans but throughout the city and beyond. People who've never set foot in a club know Optimo, even if just by the lack of activity from their staff, colleagues and students on a Monday. And yet, Optimo isn't, wasn't, just about getting off your face. At its heart was a lust for life: a generosity of spirit that brought out the best in people, with a fierce intelligence and sense of timing that allowed them to continually challenge both the format and the audience without disappearing into self-indulgence.

Often seen as rule-breakers, Twitch and Wilkes could never be accused of lacking artistic discipline or the ability to deliver a single minded vision. The artists they booked were difficult and unfamiliar – people like Jimi Tenor, James Chance, Whitehouse, The Bug and, famously, Liquid Liquid, pioneers of New York's no wave movement in the eighties, reunited and reassembled thanks to the efforts of these DJs who'd named their club after their seminal track, Optimo.

Likewise, as DJs, you never quite know what kind of a set you'll get. Twitch, in particular, has that rare ability to hop from genre to genre without making it sound like a 15 year old on Youtube who's incapable of concentrating on anything for more than 30 seconds. An early adopter of Ableton, he combines an infatuation with the odder parts of the musical spectrum with an encyclopaedic knowledge of over half a century of pop. But it's their ability to pace a night, to whip the crowd into a frenzy and then change direction without losing anyone that is the genius of Optimo. This kind of obsessive inventiveness is perhaps one of the reasons they evaded label after label that the music and fashion industries would occasionally try to attach to this club that was cool so frequently yet so indifferently throughout its twelve and a half year lifespan.

For the final night they've made a funeral wreath which adorns the dance floor [just got an email from Twitch – this was a surprise gift from three fans, delivered to the club by a local funeral directors]. They're streaming the set live on Awdio, for all the fans around the world who can't be there. #optimo is trending heavily on Twitter. At some point they play The Stooges 'I wanna be your dog'. The atmosphere is charged, no one cares about the sweat that drips from the ceiling. And everyone's dancing with such intensity; cheering, hugging, singing along, as all the nights and all the moments roll into one. Atomic. Beat the clock. Release the beast. Le Rock. By the time we get to the inevitable Liquid Liquid finale, the emotion in the room is reaching feverish levels. And then we're all singing along to Stand On The Word and then Nina Simone, and for that moment, nothing else is. The preacher's right: we are together, we are unified; and yes, we do raise our fists together.

Of course it had to end. Everyone who understands Optimo, who, as Keith would say 'gets it' knew it couldn't, and shouldn't, go on forever. It was a moment in time. A joyous, crazy, rich, life-defining moment that went on for over a decade, and will, in the hazy memories of those of us who experienced it, live forever. They loved our ears.


Optimo's Fabric mix is out May 10.

trends for 2009

I've just started getting emails about predictions for next year. With all the usual caveats that come with this sort of thing, here's my first theme for 2009.

"Intelligent Participation"

This will manifest itself in:

1. TV drama with interactive storylines will be big. British soap opera Emmerdale ran an interactive murder mystery storyline last year. I think we're going to get much more of this sort of thing, with a move towards incorporating meaningful audience participation into 'serious' drama too.

2. Curator as expert (rebirth of the expert?) As a reaction against the 'anything goes' culture of youtube (and 2.0 generally??), the quality of curatorship will be under closer scrutiny than ever before. We don't have time to wade through all the clutter.

3. Old media will secure the brightest talent from new media (promise of better job security, bigger budgets and unprecedented creative freedom). This will result in more diverse, niche and courageous programming/editorial that understands (and is therefore less intimidated by) its audience.

4. Dull stuff will be easier to ignore. With more intelligent interaction we'll be able to discriminate between turkeys and guilty pleasures.

5. We'll all be less guilty about our guilty pleasures and more independent in our choices.

6. Economic uncertainty and fear of terrorism will be balanced by a cultural optimism and an outpouring of creativity.

You know times are strange when 'evil' global banks seem more concerned with political freedom and social democracy than the politicians...

Interesting new ad here


Cleverly HSBC don't take sides, although at first sight it appears they're endorsing the activists against the heavy-handed authorities(!) By presenting the protesters as human beings with complicated lives full of betrayals and anger and reconciliations and all the things that make up the human condition, the ad gives the bank's 'we understand diversity' message some real depth. You can't get further away from the world of global financial services than this, yet the domestic story here has a kind of universal truth that I think elevates this ad above mere sentimentality.

Maybe I'm just relieved that in a world where Sarah Palin can turn around the fortunes of a very shaky Republican campaign by playing to people's basest prejudices, fears, and black and white thinking, that one of the world's biggest financial institutions - amid all the fears of recession - will take the time to tell human stories in a non-judgmental, non-partisan way.

"We recognise how people value things differently. So what we learn from one customer helps us better serve another."

It's easy to be cynical about such sentiment, but right now I'm quite glad someone is saying it - all the more so because it's an evil corporate bank saying it.

Lead India

Brand strategy as an agent of social change? Maybe. JWT India just picked up a Cannes Lion for this. A massive, massive idea.

a new viral for Cadbury?

Office Worker Goes Absolutely Insane - Watch more free videos

Nokia evolves

Microsite for Nokia Evolve, Nokia's new low impact handset. Lovely mix of video and animation, good interviews, pleasing to navigate, and the tone of voice is spot on. The interactive 'domino rally' metaphor edges on the corny but it's so neat, and so pleasing, that it wins me over. I might buy one.