Stadium Activism

Incorporating activism into a rock concert, as exemplified by U2.

Reporting from Amsterdam, The Guardian’s Dorian Lynskey wrote:

Inside the city’s ArenA, the color green floods a giant mosaic of video screens, below which stand the four members of U2, three weeks into their 360 tour. As the band strike up Sunday Bloody Sunday, the screens flash images of protesters on the streets of Tehran alongside lines in Farsi by the Persian poet Rumi. Thus, a song written 26 years ago about political violence in Northern Ireland finds a new and pressing context.

The sequence vividly illustrates U2’s unique brand of stadium activism. There’s also a tribute to the incarcerated Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi during Walk On, and a recorded message from Desmond Tutu for the One campaign, co-founded by Bono to mobilize support for developing country debt relief and HIV/Aids treatment, among other issues.

According to Lynskey, U2 “have always worked on the principle that in the awareness-raising business something, however imperfect, is better than nothing.” But, he said: “Iran-watchers might justifiably argue that an emotive one-minute montage simplifies, even trivialises, a complicated situation.”