Militant youths everywhere: your rebellion is hollow. You oppose the war and you figure the way to really stick it to the man is to protest the crap out of it. That's right, we're going to lawfully gather, and we're going to have placards and we're going to chant. That will show them! Actually, no. It will do nothing. That's because the people you are protesting against are baby boomers who protested themselves, and they did it better and more effectively because no one was expecting affluent middle class teens to become disaffected militants. Now, not only is it expected, it’s practically taught in college. In the government’s eyes, this whole protesting thing is just a phase and eventually you'll all wake up and become Republicans when you grow up.

But if you want to see how your parents did it, check out the new documentary "Chicago 10." It tells the story of the trial of anti-war protestors following the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.  The film uses real archival footage from the events surrounding the DNC and blends it with animated court room sequences, showing the trial of Abbie Hoffman, Bobby Seale and the rest of the infamous “Chicago 8” and uses music from Rage against the Machine and the Beastie Boys, among others.

Here's director Brett Morgan to explain why he used contemporary music to drive the story.  (Actuality #1)  “I didn’t want people to watch this film and have the soundtrack of their parents’ lives or their grandparents’ lives. I wanted them to have the soundtrack of their lives or ultimately my life. I’m 39 (years old) so Rage was something I listened to in college. I just didn’t think there was room for yet another film about the 60s with Buffalo Springfield. I don’t want to see that film. I think it would alienate kids. I think that one of the things that I wanted to do was enable them to see their parents not as 45 year olds and 55 year olds, but as 22 year olds.” 

And what this will show you more than anything is that these kinds of protests don't work anymore. Time to step up your disillusionment. Find something that will scare old people again.  

Some people agonize over songs. They spend weeks crafting the music, writing and re-writing the lyrics, so that eventually they have something worth taking to the studio. Not Serj. He just takes a nap.

(Actuality #5) "One of the songs on the record, ‘Baby,’ was actually written in a dream. It came to me in a dream in Paris years ago. I’m talking about the cords, the vocals, the melody, the lyrics. I woke up from that dream and called my cell phone from the hotel phone and sang into it. Not just the vocals but also the guitar part."