watch Patti Smith, Michael Stipe, Joan Baez & more sing "People Have the Power"
Patti Smith‘s classic anthem “People Have the Power” is a song you’re almost guaranteed to hear at one of her concerts — she usually closes with it — and today she’s shared an all-star collaborative version of the song for National Voter Registration Day and to celebrate the sixth anniversary of her daughter Jesse Paris Smith‘s climate change awareness charity Pathway to Paris.
This socially distant video features musicians, activists, artists and students from around the world, and includes Joan Baez, Michael Stipe, Cyndi Lauper, Lenny Kaye, Ben Harper, Tony Hawk, Chris Stills, The Strokes’ Nikolai Fraiture, Yeah Yeah Yeahs‘ Nick Zinner, Micah Nelson, Rain Phoenix, Jackson Smith, Stella McCartney, Tibetan singer (and Pathway to Paris Board Member) Tenzin Choegyal, and more.
Paris Smith writes:
A vision for the future includes a just transition out of the era of fossil fuels and into an era of 100% renewable energy, including the critical issues of racial justice, gender equality, protected rights of the indigenous and the end of suffocating poverty. An adoption of true human compassion while dismantling a climate of fear, leaving prejudice and hate in the past and moving toward a future of global unity.
The current pandemic surrounding Covid-19 has shown moments and threads of hope and optimism, but it also has shown just how fractured the communication of our planet remains. This same frustration has been experienced for decades with the climate crisis and just about any unifying global issue of great urgency. We struggle to adapt and survive based on the information we are given and the immense lack of alignment in our decision making. There couldn’t be a more urgent time for the country and the planet to unify as one collective force, and yet we see more examples of the failure of this concept to take hold. Our current reality is one of immense suffering and a promise of continued disaster if we do not get together on our agreements, set more ambitious goals and make drastic plans for change today.
Watch the video below.
https://vimeo.com/459419656
