Medea Benjamin: We were singing and dancing and having our own teach-in, while the two very uninteresting candidates were talking to each other.
Zach Witness: We ended up doing a whole album together.
Benjamin: Isn't this all about oil?
Witness: Not at all. This rumour started that I had died.
Benjamin: That's an example of how you try to create the news and subvert the process.
•••
Witness: He’s like a North Star to me—he kind of embodies the greatest version of myself that I'm trying to become, but in my own way, you know?
Benjamin: When he started talking about how this war was necessary for our security, I got up.
Witness: I looked like I was 12.
Benjamin: That reaches a lot of people.
Witness: And that’s exactly what happened. So maybe astrologically, there's even something going on there.
•••
Benjamin: And we certainly stretch every one of those dollars to make them go a long way.
Witness: Absolutely. But after being immersed in that world for several years, it became constricting.
Benjamin: I go back to Mother Jones, who said, "Don't warn, organize."
Witness: I remember the first time she pulled up in her Porsche outside my mum’s house—the license plate said “She Ill” – it was kind of nuts.
Benjamin: On the other hand, the whole political thing of people wearing buttons and t-shirts with your name on them—trying to sell yourself—is really creepy.
—Raymond Cummings has written for Splice Today since 2010