Pot fiend to headline GOP National Convention
The news that the coolest man on the planet and America's most
famous pothead, Willie Nelson, will headline a concert at the Republican
National Convention almost ruined my afternoon. Say it ain't freaking so, I
begged my friend. It was so.
On
August 29, 2012 the great American Outlaw, Willie-by-God-Nelson and singer
songwriter Jerry Jeff Walker will perform during the Republican National
Convention in Tampa, Florida.
This is the same Willie Nelson who is headlining the "Railroad Revival
Tour" with Band of Horses this October. This is the same Willie Nelson who
founded the TeaPot Party - "Tax it, regulate it, and legalize it!". This is
"BioWillie" for heaven's sake...playing a concert in a town crammed with Cheneys,
Bushs, all four hundred Romneys and every red meat Drill Baby Driller you can
swing a silly hat at.
Turns
out the Farm Aid founder is just Willie being Willie. His performance that
evening will benefit Got Your 6, a non-partisan entertainment industry led
movement committed, according Greg Propper, the campaign manager, to empowering
military veterans and their families and
to "doing what Hollywood does best and create a new conversation in America,
one where veterans and military families are perceived as the massive civilian
assets they are."
Got
Your 6, a name derived from the clock-based military vernacular meaning "got
your back", is about a month old and was formed under the umbrella of
ServiceNation, which was the first campaign of Be The Change, Inc. out of Cambridge. Got Your 6 has
pulled together non-profits as disparate as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, The
Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of American, the Pat Tillman Foundation, the
American Red Cross and the Sierra Club in an "everybody in" top to bottom
rethinking of how to reintegrate the over one
million veterans who will be returning home in the next five years.
Propper
cites a poll of post-9/11 vets who responded that they were treated 90 percent
of the time with pity and 10 percent of the time with respect. Got Your 6 and
their non-profit partners and Hollywood plan
on changing that. And the Red Headed Stranger venturing into to red red Tampa at the end of August
is a great start.
Got Your 6 is going to Charlotte
too with a concert September 5, 2012 featuring Grammy-nominated rapper Flo
Rida.
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