09/16/2020
From our founder, Jason Samel: Tomorrow is the 9th anniversary of Occupy Wall Street!! I produced a 99 song for the 99% box set “Occupy This Album”, to raise awareness about the movement. I was lucky enough to work with nearly all of my musical and activist heroes on the record including Matt Pless. Singer/Songwriter, Pete Seeger, Willie Nelson, T***s and The Maytals, Michael Moore, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Steve Earle, Warren Haynes, Jackson Browne, Crosby, Stills and Nash, Ani Difranco, David Amram, Tom Chapin, Immortal Technique, Loudoun Wainwright III, DJ Logic, Blondie, Devo, and sooo many more! It was the first album I’d ever produced. Prior, I had only produced a song or two of my own in the studio in my attic, and they were horrible! Occupy This Album won the Independent Music Awards for Best Compilation of 2012, and it’s the project I am most proud of in my life, and began my career in the music industry as a music activist.
I was at Zucotti park on the second day of the movement, where the invasion into YOUR mind on issues of income inequality, racism, a free and safe open source internet, fracking, of politics, free college, cancel all student debt, the movement my friend Jerry Ashton started to abolish medical debt in the United States, and pretty much Bernie Sanders entire platform, which became that of the DNC’s! WE started the conversation, now it’s YOUR job to continue it!
I learned to raise my voice when someone was hurting me from my mother. Like most kids parents told them back then she always told me that if someone hurts you, tell someone. Since swazstikas were spray painted around my community of Smithtown when I was 8 years old I decided to not just stand up for myself and my community and I spoke out at an all adults meeting concerning these issues. That led me to creating a not for profit children’s organization The Children’s Rainbow Coalition with a wonderful pastor who had worked closely with MLK back in the day.
When I went to Summit, and I called my parents and told them of the abuse that was handed to me they didn’t believe me. The school is SO manipulative that the head counselor of my dorm Johnny Mac (aka Barney Rubble) always told my parents I was lying, and out of control. They stole my voice from me! My own parents didn’t trust or believe me any more. I was left in a world where my voice no longer mattered, and after Summit I did nothing to return to activism, and began to hate the world around me. Love became a foreign word to me.
THEN when I was 33 years old Occupy Wall Street happened, and I again became more inspired than I’d ever been, and haven’t been able to shut my mouth since!
Just 3 months ago I began unfolding from all of the trauma I had experienced while at Summit. My voice only became more enraged and my drive to stomp abuse out, and raise others voices only grew. The channel 12 news story is due out very soon, and once it comes out I am going to be more vocal than ever on issues of abuse, PTSD, and mental health. I pray that you join me in this jounrey by sharing my posts in urging folks to follow and be involved with mine and so many other students from Summit’s stories at The Summit School Exposed!
Summit, you stole my voice from me and tens of thousands of other students. We are coming for you. We want our voices back!
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/michael-moore-covers-bob-dylan-for-occupy-album-187579/amp/
Filmmaker sings protest anthem on compilation including Patti Smith, Ani DiFranco Yo La Tengo and more
