IVAW at LA Rising!

Members of the Los Angeles chapter were joined by organizers from the Operation Recovery Campaign to attend the LA Rising festival at the Memorial Coliseum. The event, headlined by Rage Against the Machine, was aimed at bringing awareness to social and political issues including the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

The show was opened by Muse, Rise Against, Ms. Lauren Hill, Immortal Technique, and El Gran Silencio.

IVAW was invited by RATM guitarist Tom Morello to participate in the "re-education camp" - a tent area that was set up at the Coliseum to house all of the social action groups that were invited to the event. IVAW-LA chapter president Cameron White was given 20 ticket by RATM to invite veterans to come to the event, help spread IVAW's message and enjoy the music.

IVAW's promo video was selected by the participating artists and featured at the show right before RATM played their song Testify (starts at 0:48).

Earlier, the band Rise Against dedicated their song Hero of War to IVAW (starts at 1:32).

They also discuss why they support IVAW in this clip from RATM's Guerilla Video series (starts at 6:29):

The event helped IVAW-LA re-invigorate the chapter, which has been inactive for over a year. Members were able to connect with civilians, veteran and active duty military members and people attending the concert from all over the US. Members from the local chapter were very excited to get involved and the event was highly successful.

The Los Angeles chapter will be participating in the art project "LA vs. War" in September. This project will be similar to the "YO! What happened to Peace?" project from 2008.