“This will be our response to violence:
To make music more intensely,
More beautifully,
More devotedly,
 Than ever before.” 
 -Leonard Bernstein, in response to the assassination of JFK

OCCUPELLA: SINGING FOR THE 99%

Occupella organizes informal public singing at Bay Area occupation sites, marches and at BART stations. We sing to promote peace, justice, and an end to corporate domination, especially in support of the Occupy movement. We have an extensive online songbook of singable parodies, rewrites and traditional songs and some original songs written for OWS. Hear Betsy sing Take Me Out Of The Big Banks

MUSIC FOR COMPASSIONATE ACTION

We all know the ancient blessing/curse: May You Live In Interesting Times! These recent, very interesting, decades, have called me to create music of inspiration and encouragement to those engaging with the vital justice and compassion issues of our times. This music has helped raise funds for peace activists in Palestine, Iran, and many other countries. It has traveled to the Ganges and to Washington DC, to Kenya, Eastern Europe and to the doors of Bank America, BP Oil, and more. Singing together has united young people and old, moms and dads, clergy and laypeople, gay and straight, folks of all colors—as times of crisis give birth to a community and powerful harmony. To hear some of these songs, go to the links under “Listen”, and visit my CD pages. Curious about the interface of nonviolence, and direct action? Read my blog How Would Buddha Protest

SINGING FOR PEACE PROJECT
Resources for Singers and Song Leaders

The Singing For Peace project was born the week after September 11, 2001. A fellow singer and I met up at the downtown Berkeley transit station at evening rush hour to sing songs of peace and healing as people, still stunned and reeling, hurried by. Others heard about the singing and wanted to join.  Later, with the impending attack on Iraq in 2002, we began a weekly community Singing For Peace gathering at transit stations around the Bay Area.