Filmmaker, rapper, and community organizer Boots Riley says the point of his art is to "instigate class struggle."
"The system is the way that we relate to each other, right? It's the way one group — the working class — gets exploited by another group — the ruling class," he says. "There's no getting out of it until we overturn this, until we have a movement that creates a whole different system."
Riley's new film, I Love Boosters, is a direct challenge to the system. The movie centers on a crew of women shoplifters — or boosters — in the Bay Area who steal from luxury fashion stores and sell the goods at lower prices to people who can't afford retail. The film takes its name from the song Riley wrote with his hip-hop group The Coup.
"I have been a broke rapper for a long time," Riley says. "Having to stay fly is just a job requirement. So I've definitely had to deal with a lot of boosters."
Riley's previous films include Sorry to Bother You and I'm a Virgo. He says if some of his art makes people feel uncomfortable, well, that's the point. "What I want to do is compel people and repel people at the same time," he says. "I want that push and pull. ... I want people to think about, engage with this work in a different way."
Interview highlights
On how he got into labor organizing as a teen
When I was 14 or 15 and I got involved in supporting people who were organizing a cannery worker strike in Watsonville, Calif. So I got invited to a youth event. … [A group of girls] were like, "Hey, you wanna go to the beach?" And I was like, "Oh yeah, I definitely wanna go to the beach with y'all." And they're like, "But first we're gonna stop off and support the Watsonville cannery worker strike." So that's kinda how I got hoodwinked into it. …
[I had] flirtatious goals and these girls were talking about things that were on the news, world events, things that I purposely was trying to ignore because I didn't have a sense that I could have any effect on it, right? … It didn't matter if I paid attention or not because what am I gonna do? These are just things that happened.
They were talking about it, and I realized they felt that they could have something to do with it. They had agency with what happened. And it was connected to this cannery worker strike that we were going to. That this was not only about someone trying to get higher wages, but it was about how you might be able to create a movement that has the power to affect those who are in power. ... So I went in that one trip from wanting to get with these girls to wanting to be them.
On organizing a walkout strike at his high school when he was a teen
I'm a revolutionary at that point. I'm communist by then. … [We start] this walkout against year-round schools. It's pretty easy to get high schoolers to walk out against the idea of going to school year-round. [We] get 2,000 students to walk out. … I have the bullhorn, and we're in front of the school, and I'm saying things about what we're gonna do. The plan is to march down to the school board and the principal, Mr. O'Leary, who is an ex-cop, … he walks out there, and he says, "Riley, give me that bullhorn." ...
And as I was handing it to him ... a good 15 or 20 students come and help me to try to pull it from him. But again, he's buff. He's swinging us all around, and we eventually get the bullhorn back from him, but this [student] cuts his arm and it splurts out onto O'Leary's shirt. We all marched down. … I think it scared the school board to where as soon as we got there, they came out and announced they were reversing their decision. …
And the next day [in the newspaper] there was a color picture of Principal O'Leary with blood all over him saying that students attacked Principal O'Leary ... and so that was a quick lesson.
On what made him want to pursue music
We were working in the Double Rock projects in San Francisco — this is '89 — and there was a case in which a woman ... and her two twin 8-year-old sons got beat by the police. And the neighborhood of Double Rock came out and started charging the police, and the cops shot in the air. The crowd ran away and the story that everybody tells, the thing that made everyone turn around was someone started chanting, "Fight the power! Fight the power!" … The song from Do the Right Thing, "Fight the Power," was all over the radio. And that was a unifying rallying cry. So I started seeing what music and now art in general, how it could have that place. ... The way the music might drop out or something come in, it makes your heart pump in a certain way. It makes you feel connected.
Ann Marie Baldonado and Susan Nyakundi produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the web.
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