Downtown Boys - “Wave Of History” (Official Video)

Downtown Boys’ video for Full Communism single “Wave Of History” is a radical infographic, a collection of facts that should be grouped together in American elementary school social studies classes, but probably aren’t. These accumulated figures accentuate the historical basis for contemporary domestic issues that have plagued U.S. society since its foundation, namely: economic inequality, and racial injustice. Though Faye Orlove illustrated and directed the video long before Freddie Gray’s funeral and Baltimore’s subsequent uprising last week, there hasn’t been a more salient time to watch it. Downtown Boys devote this to communities of color marred by police brutality; they offered the following statement:

Currently, there is a war between the people and the police state. We are in a watershed moment in which people are being disrespected, brutalized, and even killed because of the color of their skin. We are in a state of emergency. Downtown Boys would like to use this moment to assert that we do not mourn broken windows, but we mourn broken bodies.
“A culture less revolution is like an unsharpened arrow it means that in the process if making the revolution we lose our vision.” — Larry Neal, “Any Day Now”