If you loved seeing Hamilton win at the Grammys this past weekend and have seen The Force Awakens multiple times, an epic rap battle has awakened just for you:
This comes courtesy of the US Rebel Alliance, whose leaders include Andrew Slack of the Harry Potter Alliance, Mark Ruffalo, and Jonny 5 of The Flobots, who wrote and performed the rap about the dangers of money in politics. The video also includes Joey Richter from Team StarKid (I thought Alexander Hamilton was Puerto Rican now? So confused…) Their goal is to “use the language of this generation–hip hop–to highlight quite possibly the biggest problem of this generation–the corruption of politics by money,” according to Slack.
If you haven’t heard of Slack, you should’ve. He’s the guy who gave Ted Cruz a lightsaber, challenged him to sign a “Jedi Pledge” to get money out of politics, and then heckled him (and was almost arrested) when Cruz refused to answer his questions.
In a press release, Mark Ruffalo stated, “Using culture as a reference to change the world is age-old. When you look at the power of culture to illuminate, the beautiful thing about the cultural approach, it transcends the politics, it gets us back to our common humanity.”
Well, it’s sure speaking to this nerd’s inner luminous Jedi core. Money in politics has emerged as a top campaign issue for 2016, and has been attributed to the rise of the popularity of candidates Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, both of whom repeatedly point to the amounts of money their opponents have to raise in order to run (Trump is largely self-funding, Sanders has a large network of small donors). Hillary Clinton has also repeatedly called for measures that would overturn the Supreme Court case Citizens United, which allowed for unlimited, undosclosed corporate money to be spent in elections through using SuperPACs. The death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has also put money in politics issues back in political play, as he was one of the court’s stalwarts who says that money is speech and corporations are people.
Rebel Alliance leader Andrew Slack added, “The Internet has allowed the Nerds to inherit the Earth,” said US Rebel Alliance founder Andrew Slack. “Because there are three groups who run the Internet: Silicon Valley, the porn industry, and NERDY ASS FANDOM. We here at the US Rebel Alliance are on the side of the nerds fighting to better the world. Nerds are the Jedi of 2016.”
“The US Rebel Alliance is fighting for publicly financed elections and the repeal of Citizens United. We want to remove the problem of people with all the money buying elections, and thus buying policy that works more for the wealthy than the rest of the galaxy. To this end, the US Rebel Alliance is out to recruit brave and honorable fighters to fly into battle with us. Join the Alliance at USRebelAlliance.org.”
It’s good to see nerds using their talents for good. And to hear from Flobots again.