Shift Across America

-Political affiliation
Its quite liberal, I’d say its bordering on anarchist I guess :D

-Religion
Ya, sure…agnostic, you know. There’s a watchmater I suppose. I wouldn’t call him a big dude with a big beard but something did it.

-Age
34

-Job/Title/Role in Community
(Arts & Entertainment editor @ The Weekly Dig)
With the Dig, we’re massively reliant on the local economy and local businesses. As an alt weekly, an independent alt weekly….we really rely on the ads that we take from local businesses to make our paper go and for me to get paid and for me to eat.

(On his role in building communities around Electronic Music)
Without dancing, you end up staring at a stage for two hours. And there’s a lot more that we can do if we can dance together (Quoting DJ Bruno) "If we can dance together, we can live together. "

-What is your relationship with the Local Indie Community
It’s symbiotic. I, at every turn.try to support local businesses and I hope that that is reciprocated. I like local products better in general anyway, the decision’s easy when it comes to supporting local businesses…they have the best stuff anyway. Why would I buy the crappy thing and not the good thing.

-If your local indie community was an Animal, what would it be and why?
Maybe Giraffe, cuz its elegant, its very large, but its also a bit awkward at times. It can reach tall branches….and it’s beautiful, it’s a beautiful creature. And we wanna keep it growing and make a herd of giraffes.

-Which local biz would you and your community miss most if it were gone. Why?
I live in Jamacia Plain… we had a business that was kicked out because of rents, called Milky Way. It brought Gay/Lesbian community, Black, White, Mambo, Salsa…they supported every facet, they had their hands in the community…and when they had to move, there was this great tremendous outcry, this was a terrible terrible thing. They moved…people just immediately came back. So for me, it’s the Milky Way.

-What one piece of advice from your organizing can you share with the other people and organizations who will see this?
You just can’t stop…working. It just has to be a constant thing. Whether it’s a mobile phone, texting….you can’t even go like 30 minutes without doing something…unfortunately (laughs). But fortunately we’re able to make this our lives and we love our lives
…and it takes a LOONG time for things to pay off, so if you’ve been working one year, two years, three years constantly, you just gotta keep going.

(David started working on Speaking in Code 5 years ago...great trailer on that link)

-If you had a message to deliver to all the other organizations and people who are part of this movement, what would it be?
You just can’t hate on anything. I said once that I didn’t like a certain kind of music…and a year later in my job they were like “oh you won’t cover that cuz you don’t like it”. And even just that tiny bit of diss…are like weeds that just grow and grow and grow. If you take hate out of the situation, its like a garden, if you take a weed out of a garden its just gonna look more beautiful.
Listen to this interview in its entirety here

David Day is the editor of Shift Across America

Process note:
The transcriptions are taking the most time right now, so they'll continue to be an abridged version/summary. You can hear the full version of events by listening to audio or watching video.
I'm combining Boston & Somerville together for this first segment of interviews.