Shiragirl Demand Our "Rights Back Right Now"

In 1986, The Beastie Boys were telling us we need to fight for our right to party. We were still in the days of Reagan telling us the country was a "shining city on a hill", and our history had been that of a nearly unbroken streak where progress was slow, yet always moving forward. Fighting for the right to party seemed like the most important thing in the world to a young generation, because we couldn't imagine things ever going backwards. Optimism abounded, because all we knew was a world that was getting more open, more accepting, and more free. (Or so I've been told - I'm not old enough to actually remember the Reagan years I lived through.)

That is not the world we live in anymore. Now, we know first-hand what it's like to have our rights begin to be stripped away. We know what it's like to step backwards in time, to experience regression in ways that our fore-bearers would be ashamed of. The centuries of progress have for the first time stalled, and the promise of a country where all people are free to pursue their happiness is one we have to work to keep.

What once seemed like doom-saying is now reality, because The Supreme Court decided that rights can be taken away on a whim, and that a particular strain of religious belief can become the dogma we all must be shackled to. The decision to overturn Roe vs Wade was not just a setback for women, but for the entire idea of freedom.

Shira Yevin, and her Gritty In Pink group, have been on the front lines screaming into the madding crowds about the dangers we are facing. One year ago, they took to the streets of Los Angeles to use music to protest the way a batch of unaccountable 'scholars' used the idea of 'originalism' to go back to the days when our founding documents didn't recognize women as full and equal people under the law. They were stabbing the country in the back trying to make room to shove the rib back into Adam's torso.

Today, Shiragirl return with this call to arms not to forget, not to become complacent, and not to accept that where we are today is where we must wind up.

The lyrics prod us that the forces against us "are never gonna roll back fifty years of progress", with enough snarl in the vocals you can almost hear Shira's bared teeth. Rather than scold all those who have sat by and said nothing as our political landscape has become a hellscape akin to an asshole measuring contest, Shira instead prefers to use this as a rallying cry to remind us we can be better than this. Let's be clear; the rights that are on the line today are not the end of the story, and it will only be too late that the next group figures out they didn't mobilize early and strong enough to stop the rising tide of hate.

After the choruses, electronic bits come in and serve as a breakdown. They have that glitchy, skittering sound, which is a perfect metaphor for the glitch in the system we hope this period of time is going to be. "Defeat is temporary," she reminds us, although that is dependent on us making it reality. I was rather surprised, and disappointed, that these recent years of tumult never resulted in a swath of political music fighting back against a society that didn't give a damn whether any of us lived or died. It's rather depressing that "American Idiot" is the last major, mainstream piece of political protest music. (I'm as guilty as anyone of this. I haven't written a single political song in my life. I did try once, but I couldn't get past the inevitable 'Agent Orange' pun.)

It's easy to get worn down by the endless negativity of the news cycle, and how it can feel inevitable that evil is going to win out, because evil is willing to burn everything down to get its way. That's why we need people to stand up, speak out, and remind us that those people who are trying to recreate a past that never existed only have the power they do because we grant it to them. If we stick together, if we make clear equality is not up for negotiation, the authority that comes with a black robe can easily be replaced by the realization those people have nothing underneath but shame and fear.

It's fitting this song comes out on the last day of Pride, because we know which rights are going to be in the cross-hairs next. Those people have not been subtle about how much of society they want to erase, which requires an equally unsubtle rebuttal. Ok, that was a terrible rhyme, but you get the point.

Shiragirl, and all their friends and collaborators, are on the front lines fighting for justice. We don't get proper civics education, and Shira is doing us all a favor by being our teacher, slapping us upside the head with a ruler for not having learned that history only stays in the past if we keep moving forward. It may take us a bit of time to get our rights back, but so long as we have artists harnessing the power of punk to speak to us, we're not going to go quietly into that good night.