ACTIVISM SHARES CELEBRITY STAGE

Actor Woody Harrelson is among presenters for the Berkeley stop on the
politicized Spitfire Tour

BERKELEY -- The Spitfire Tour of musicians, actors and activists at
Zellerbach Hall on Sunday combined astute political analysis in verse and
rap with the spirit of "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure."

The object of the monthlong, nationwide tour of campuses, organizers say, is
"to expose, enlighten and entertain, while instigating action." Sunday's
show had moments profound and simplistic, exciting and boring. How much
political action it instigated is unclear; the audience seemed largely to
agree with everything the panelists said.

Sometime MTV host Kennedy, speaking on "personal responsibility," led off
with a diatribe against Big Government. One spectator, a Greenpeace
activist, said parts of it sounded like an invective by the so-called
Christian Right.

"Members of the right use 'personal responsibility' to deny people access"
to social services, said the Greenpeace member during a question-and-answer
session, uttering one of the few challenges to what the panelists said.

Government should get out of the way of people's creativity, Kennedy said.

Citing the example of a woman who sued McDonald's after spilling hot coffee
on herself, she railed against frivolous lawsuits.

She also bemoaned President Clinton's "injustices in public life," saying
that "getting Clinton on the Lewinsky thing is like getting Al Capone on
taxes."

She applauded the early European settlers in America as "radicals sick of
poverty, sick of the crown" who just wanted "the right to do as they wish."

That produced the first of the evening's rare moments of dissension, when
rapper Michael Franti, who followed Kennedy, called the settlers "people who
came over here to steal" and destroy indigenous culture.

Franti rapped about garlic, rice and beans, amused with tales of customs
inspectors ("I'm tall and black and I got dreads, so I just open it up and
lay it out") and pointed to the dichotomy of a society that coos about
babies yet is hostile to education funding.

"Babies are like puppies -- they're cute," he said. "Soon as they get old
enough to piss on your couch, nobody likes them anymore."

He ended with a rousing call for action with a rap on the sounds of the
streets that had the crowd moving in rhythm.

Julia Butterfly spoke by cell-phone hookup from the top of a 1,000-year-old
redwood tree she calls Luna. She has lived in the tree for the past 10
months as a protest against clear-cutting of old-growth forests by Pacific
Lumber Co.

"When we hurt the earth, we hurt you, we hurt me," she said, garnering the
biggest ovation of the night.

Todd McCormick, who has had bouts with cancer 10 times since he was 2 years
old, told about how marijuana saved his life.

Like Prohibition, today's crusade against drugs criminalizes the innocent,
empowers criminal gangs, threatens civil liberties, misuses police resources
and denies sufferers of cancer, multiple sclerosis, AIDS and other diseases
their only relief, said McCormick, who was arrested by federal agents for
growing marijuana in his house.

Among the more personal presentations, Exene Cervenka, former singer with
the disbanded punk rock band X, read poems about love and madness, giving a
breathless tour of her love life during the 1960s and 1970s.

"We could all be not-crazy if we found our soul mate," she said.

Then she read from her poem "American Tripping," which ended on the
disturbing note, "The future is war."

Actor Woody Harrelson strutted barefoot all over the stage, engaging the
audience in the manner of a talk-show host.

His presentation, titled "The Environment, Hemp and Associated Issues," was
mostly about himself.

"Machupicchu is a pretty cool place where the Incas used to hang out," he
said, talking about a trip to Peru in search of a spiritual dimension to his
life.

"Wars are not fought for democracy; they're fought for capitalism," he said,
saying that American companies supplied Iraq with war materials during the
Persian Gulf War.

And on marijuana:

"I don't have the right to smoke a flower that makes me feel good?"

Moderator Krist Novoselic of the rock group Nirvana called for proportional
representation as a way to ensure all views are represented in a democracy.

Edition: WCT, Section: A, Page: 3

Checked-by: Don Beck