{"id":973496,"date":"2019-11-14T09:07:47","date_gmt":"2019-11-14T16:07:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=908575"},"modified":"2019-11-14T09:07:47","modified_gmt":"2019-11-14T16:07:47","slug":"why-david-byrne-became-a-u-s-citizen-after-six-decades","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/music-news\/why-david-byrne-became-a-u-s-citizen-after-six-decades\/","title":{"rendered":"Why David Byrne Became a U.S. Citizen After Six Decades"},"content":{"rendered":"
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David Byrne<\/a> has, in recent years, become an outspoken advocate for voter registration. Now he\u2019s made convincing people to register to vote a major part of new Broadway production, American Utopia<\/em><\/a>. During the show, he shines a light on 20 percent of the audience to highlight the amount of people who turn out to vote. He then takes it a step further at the show by encouraging people to register in the lobby and, more importantly, commit to voting. \u201cI would have thought, \u2018Oh, come on. They\u2019re all registered,’\u201d he tells Rolling Stone<\/em>. \u201cBut they\u2019re not.\u201d<\/p>\n

Getting people to register is an extension of the groundwork Byrne laid during the 2016 election, when he went to the South to sign up potential voters, as well as carrying on the traditions of Rock the Vote<\/a> and campaigns like R.E.M.\u2019s inclusion of voter registration cards for 1991\u2019s Out of Time<\/em>. (Neil Young has also been outspoken about his desire to become a citizen so he can vote<\/a>, even though his progress has been stymied by his marijuana use admission<\/a>.) Regardless, Byrne would like to see the people who are eligible to vote actually take advantage of that privilege. \u201cLook at the people showing up at the polls, and it\u2019s like 25 percent. It\u2019s pathetic,\u201d he said in 2016<\/a>. \u201cI had British citizenship with a green card and I became an American citizen so that I could vote.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Byrne is proud of the progress the organization HeadCount<\/a> has made so far at his shows. His office reports that, on average, six to 10 people were registering to vote at each American Utopia <\/em>performance, ahead of the election earlier this month. \u201cThey\u2019re actually getting people to register,\u201d he says. \u201cThey want to push it further and, as I say in the show, get people to commit to vote. That is a bigger step. The registration they can do right there in the lobby; getting people to commit to, \u2018Yes, I will vote in the November election,\u2019 that\u2019s a tougher step.\u201d<\/p>\n

Voting has always been important to Byrne. After all, it\u2019s the reason the artist, who was born in Scotland and moved to the U.S. via Canada before he was 10, became a U.S. citizen in 2012. When Rolling Stone<\/em> asks him why it took him so long, he laughs sheepishly. \u201cWell, I was busted,\u201d he says. \u201cI had the mistaken idea, I guess \u2014 or maybe not \u2014 but I had a green card and I had an idea that the law was that people with green cards, permanent residents, could vote for everything except president \u2014 which I did.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then one time, shortly before I got my citizenship, I went into the local elementary school where you vote and they finally must have checked against citizenship, immigration, whatever else, and they said, \u2018You can\u2019t vote!’\u201d <\/em>he continues. \u201cI said, \u2018OK, I\u2019ll be back.\u2019 They were good-natured about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

How long did it take after that for him to become a citizen? \u201cNot long,\u201d he says. \u201cI applied right away after that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since American Utopia<\/em> closes in February, Byrne is still deciding what he wants to do to ramp up to the 2020 election. He\u2019s not opposed to repeating what he did in 2016 and trying to get people to sign up. \u201cIt depends on my schedule,\u201d he says. \u201cWhen I went to North Carolina for the last one, I was determined to be nonpartisan about it. It was about getting people to vote and making sure they have information. I can see doing that again. I\u2019m less comfortable stumping for a candidate, but trying to get people out there, get ranked voting, get rid of gerrymandering and trying to make voting more representative.\u201d<\/p>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

David Byrne has, in recent years, become an outspoken advocate for voter registration. Now he\u2019s made convincing people to register to vote a major part of new Broadway production, American Utopia. During the show, he shines a light on 20 percent of the audience to highlight the amount of people who turn out to vote. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-973496","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-13 11:12:39","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KFMU Solar Powered Radio","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/973496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=973496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/973496\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=973496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=973496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=973496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}