METAL MISSION
Otep’s fight for social justice takes on new urgency under Trump
Otep Shamaya has never been shy about taking on society’s biggest issues headon. Now the current president has evoked her anger, and she’s not holding back.
“If I had the choice between George W. Bush, who I despised because I come from a military family and all of his policies threatened my family, who are part of the LGBT community, between George W. Bush and Donald Trump, I would take Bush any day of the week and twice on Sunday,” she said. “I’d take Nixon back. I wasn’t alive during Nixon, but I’ve seen the stories and I’ve seen the videos. Nixon was our paranoid scoundrel. George W. Bush was our fake tough guy idiot, but Trump belongs to the Russians. He’s owned by the Russians, and we can’t simply abide a foreign power being able to blackmail and have influence over the most powerful nation in the world.”
Her fire is in her metal music, whether she is standing up for women’s rights, the LGBT community, animal rights, the working class and more.
“I’ve been an activist since I started the band 15 years ago,” she said. “I didn’t know it at the time that I was going to be considered an activist. I’ll say that. The people that I looked up to in music were like Rage Against the Machine, Public Enemy and other artists from hiphop who spoke about social changes and social issues, who spoke about revolution and fighting back against corrupt cops and corrupt politicians. That (affected) me as a young person, and that fed into what I wrote, so from the beginning I just wrote my truth.”
Currently, her truth is rising up against President Donald Trump and his administration.
“We’re all Americans we all pay our taxes,” she said. “It says life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all people. It says all are created equal, and that’s the foundation of what this wonderful idea of what this nation is built upon. It’s built upon an idea. It’s not a bloodline; it’s not a monarchy; it’s an idea that all are created equal, an idea that we are a nation of immigrants. Give me your tired, give me your poor, give me your huddled masses, and they’re trying to change the narrative, and me and other artists like me, the few of them that are, are not going to let them change the narrative.”
Shamaya said that as an artist she has a platform to speak out and support the cause of those rising up.
“I’ve tried very hard to do what Nina Simone, the great Nina Simone, said,” Shamaya said of the singer, musician and activist. “The legendary Nina Simone, had said the duty of the artist is to reflect our times, and that’s what I’ve tried to do. … But I also speak for those who can’t speak for themselves ... and try to empower them to try to remember that they have a voice.”