Empty Walls
Put forth on October 20, 2007 by XicanoPwr
Posted in Misc, War, YouTube
Serj Tankian of System of a Down finished working on his first solo album Elect the Dead, which will be released, Tuesday, October 23, 2007. “Empty Walls” is the first single and first track off the album. Here is a summary of the video from Wikipedia. (h/t to Voto Latino)
The video shows young children playing in a kindergarten, with their playing imitating the War on Terror. In the beginning of the video there is a little girl playing with blocks in the shape of the World Trade Center, both of which are knocked over by a toy airplane thrown by a boy, clearly making the girl upset. There are various different images displayed in the coming scenes that are symbolic of the War in Iraq (such as the children preparing for “war”, a teddy bear being pulled down like the statue of Saddam Hussein, a presidential figure declaring “Mission Accomplished”, imitation of the torture at Abu Ghraib, a car bombing, etc.). All the while Serj, dressed in a top hat and suit, sings as they play. The video concludes as the children all look out the window of the day care they are in and solemnly watch a Marine Corps detail load a flag draped casket into a hearse. The video is slightly humorous at first glance due to the silly nature of the scene, but has a much deeper message of the cost of the war in Iraq and how it affects people’s lives.
As I look at this video, the only thing that comes to mind the those who are pushing hard to pass the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act (DREAM Act). While some undocumented are able to adjust their status from conditional to permanent legal resident status by attending college, roughly half the qualified 350,000 undocumented students will “very likely to serve in the Armed Forces.” The question is how can look at these kids in the eye as they are being shipped off to Iraq because a military recruiter reached them before a college recruiter. What will become of these students Dead on the battlefield in Iraq or Afghanistan? Killing more Iraqis, adding more to the 600,000 plus dead? Can you really live with this?
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Tags: Dream Act, Serj Tankian, video, War | 
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This is the blog of Edmundo "XicanoPwr" Rocha, a social worker, an activist, freelance writer and founder and editor of The Sanctuary. My interests include: immigration reform, critical race theory and it's interaction with equality/inequality and freedom/oppression as they relate to the experiences of people of color in the Americas.
Para Justicia y Libertad is a Latino-centered political blog focusing on the humanistic perspective of politics, history, and society as they relate to the Latina/o community throughout Texas and the United States.
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