Photo courtesy of the artist
The singer/songwriter ANOHNI has become one of the more politically outspoken artists this election season, with her new album HOPELESSNESS addressing everything from ecocide to drone warfare and Barack Obama's presidency. On Facebook this weekend, however, she addressed Americans directly, telling its citizens quite bluntly, "You are being used.""Did you all get the memo?" she wrote, "This election cycle in the USA is not about ecocide, the dying oceans and the extermination of biodiversity, grotesque income disparity, corporate sovereignty and US warcrimes that have played a big part in the destabilization and radicalization of the Middle East! No, it is about transgendered bathroom access! Once again, both parties goad us into becoming smokescreens for their insidious initiatives."Referring to North Carolina's Anti-LGBTQ HB2 Bill, commonly known as the bathroom bill that has been widely protested, ANOHNI took her views a step further, citing the bill as a cypher for a greater election agenda: "Transpeople, we are being used. I have watched it on every election cycle for the last 30 years. They used to wheel out the gays every election year to convince America to vote for Reagan and then the Bush dynasty, or else succumb to homosexual encroachment in schools and churches! Now they are trying to do it to trans people, taking advantage of our vulnerabilities to flood the media with titilating identity politics on an election year."Read the full statement below. ANOHNI will perform her new album HOPELESSNESS as part of the Red Bull Music Academy in New York this week.