Mary Morello
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Mary Morello (born in 1924 in Marseilles, Illinois) founded in 1987 the anti-censorship group Parents For Rock And Rap[1]. She is sometimes referred to as Tipper Gore's nemesis[2] in the 1980s battle over music censorship.
[edit] Biography
In 1954 she earned a masters degree in African and Latin American history from Chicago's Loyola University. She spent the rest of the decade teaching English in Germany, Spain and Japan, circling the globe on a freighter.[3].
From 1960-63, she lived in Kenya, where she married her husband Ngethe Njoroge[4], a Kenyan revolutionary who later was the first Kenyan delegate to the United Nations. He was a guerrilla in the Mau Mau uprising (1950-1960) that freed Kenya from British rule[5]. (1963)
In the 1960s, Morello was involved in the Civil Rights Movement and NAACP. She is also a long time activist for the Chicago Urban League.
In 1964, she and her husband moved to Harlem, New York[6], where she gave birth to son Tom Morello, born May 30. Tom is known from the band Rage Against the Machine and as former band member of Audioslave and Lock Up. He eventually grew up to be one rock's all-time greatest guitarists, ranking #26 on Rolling Stone Magazine's list of such.
After her divorce when Tom was 1[5], she and her son moved to Libertyville, Illinois, a small suburb north of Chicago in 1965. She took a job at Libertyville High School teaching social studies and US history[3]. In 1987, she quit her teaching job after 22 years, and founded Parents For Rock And Rap[1] an anticensorship counterweight to Tipper Gore's PMRC.
She made three trips to the Soviet Union, through Siberia and Mongolia.
In 1991, she and many others battled against legislation being proposed in Washington titled S.983, or "Pornography Victims Compensation Act." (Later retitled S.1521.). The legislation was officially Dead-On-Arrival, because of grass-roots anti-censorship activism. On June 24, 1996 she received the Hugh Hefner First Amendment Award[7] in Arts and Entertainment for her work with Parents For Rock And Rap.
In the fall of 1991, she began a volunteer teaching job at the Salvation Army[8] Rehabilitation Center in Waukegan, Illinois, where she taught adult literacy. She has also been involved in the Cuba Coalition in Chicago, which works toward lifting the U.S. embargo against Cuba.
In a Rage Against the Machine concert in 1994, she introduced them as the "Best Band in the Fucking Universe". For the Rage Against The Machine reunion, she did this memorable appearance once again, on August, 24th 2007.
She is also known for her involvement in the 1999 debate on the incarceration of death row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal, convicted (some believe wrongly) of the 1982 shooting of a Philadelphia police officer. In an editorial she said:
"When a cop is shot someone must be found guilty. As my son Tom says, "...all rational thinking goes out the window." A cop being killed is no different that any other person being killed. They choose their profession."[9]
In 2007 she had a podcast together with Cindy Sheehan called The Mary Morello and Cindy Sheehan Show[10].
[edit] References
- ^ a b Johnson, Kevin (2003). PARENTS FOR ROCK & RAP (HTML). Rock Out Censorship. Retrieved on [[January 9, 2008]].
- ^ Reference Lost see talk page.
- ^ a b Axis of Justice (HTML). Axis of Justice (August 6, 2007). Retrieved on [[January 9, 2008]].
- ^ SEIU.org (HTML). SEIU.org (2007). Retrieved on [[January 9, 2008]].
- ^ a b Holthouse, David (September 26, 1996). Bottled Anger Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello pours forth the vitriol (HTML). Phoenix New Times. Retrieved on [[January 9, 2008]].
- ^ Beaubien, Greg (August 23, 1995). FREEDOM FIGHTER 71-Year-Old Mary Morello Vigorously Campaigns For Rock 'n' Roll's Right To Rap Free (HTML). Chicago Tribune. Retrieved on [[January 9, 2008]].
- ^ BCFE Names 1995/1996 Heroes and Villains (HTML). Electronic Frontier Foundation (1996). Retrieved on [[January 9, 2008]].
- ^ DiNovella, Elizabeth. Tom Morello Interview (HTML). The Progressive Magazine. Retrieved on [[January 9, 2008]].
- ^ Morello, Mary (November, 1999). Guest Editorial By Mary Morello (HTML). Volume 3, Issue 1. The Microphone: The Mass Mic Newsletter. Retrieved on [[January 9, 2008]].
- ^ Axis of Justice (HTML). Axis of Justice. Retrieved on [[January 9, 2008]].
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