Mom+Pop 10th Anniversary at Brooklyn Steel
photo by Ryan Muir

Tom Morello contributes to new police brutality protest film, honoring George Floyd’s birthday

Wednesday (10/14) would have been George Floyd’s 47th birthday, and to commemorate the date and pay homage, Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello teamed up with Brave New Films (an organization whose “mission is to champion social justice issues by using a model of media, education, and grassroots volunteer involvement that inspires, empowers, motivates and teaches civic participation and makes a difference”) to release a short film entitled No Justice, No Peace.

The film was created with the intention of shedding light on the current racial injustices occurring in the United States in contrast to the Trump administration’s position on these issues, with Floyd’s and other cases of police brutality serving as the film’s backbone. It finds Tom’s track, “Marching on Ferguson” played over footage of Floyd’s murder, protests that occurred recently, and news footage covering the related murders of Oscar Grant, Eric Garner, and Breonna Taylor. The track was initially released in 2014 after the shooting and killing of Michael Brown by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson to raise money to “support defending the protestors in the Ferguson area who have faced attacks, wrongful arrest, and violence from the police.”

Of the new video, Tom said:

For too long, people of color have been told when, how and how loud we should use our voices. Silence hasn’t been enough to protect us. Breonna Taylor was silently sleeping when she was murdered. Quiet pleas have not worked. George Floyd pled faintly with the cops as they kneeled on his back until his last breath. This summer, once again, we raised our voices in protest, and the world took notice. We will not be told to maintain hushed tones about anger, pain and discontent with the status quo. This song and this film are a middle finger to the silence that ‘polite society’ has asked of people in pain. From the streets to the ballot boxes, we will make our voices heard.

Tom is also heavily featured in the new Anti-Flag documentary, which gets a wide release on November 6. His Rage Against the Machine bandmate Zack de la Rocha will join Run The Jewels during their livestream this Friday (10/17).

Watch No Justice, No Peace: