Issue link: https://bluemagazine.uberflip.com/i/24995
BY SARAH FERG USON As Beastie Boy Adam Yauch stepped to the microphone amidst the cheers of those gathered, he hard ly seemed the bombastic rock star. "The most important thing [about the China-Tibet struggle] is that the betans are staying nonviolent, " he told a crowd of 400 supporters during a ra lly outside the United , Nations on March 10, 1997. The rally commemorated the Tibetan uprising of 1959, where 87,000 Tibetans killed. "It's really a gift to all of humanity that they're taking this kind of a stand. " One might say the same of Yauch. After founding the Milarepa Fund, (a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the preservation of Tibetan Iturel, Yauch and his fellow Beasties su rprised altern a-rockers and tradi ional Buddhists al ike when they brought Tibetan monks on the 1 Lollapalooza tour in an effort to expose people to the culture that is being ruta lly repressed in Tibet. . • But it was last summer's mammoth Tibetan Freedom Concert, staged by Yauch and Milarepa in San Francisco, that brought the Tibetans' nonviolent strug gle for liberation to the forefront of pop consciousness, signaling a new stage in nineties-style activism for generation too often written off as "slackers with atti tude." By the end of last summer, Students for a Fre Tibet, one of the activist groups Milarepa supports, ha more than doubled its membership to 280 chapters i high schools and colleges across the U.S. and abroad. "A reason [for the growing interest in Tibet] i that it's something the world really needs, " says Yauch "While we in the West have been cultivating our physica l world-like wh can build the fastest computer or the fastest car-the Tibetans have be modernizing their view of real ity by really delving into what brings about happiness. Compared to them, we're like a bunch of kindergartners running around with all our toys." , It may come as a surprise to hear a guy who once helped spark riots with his Licensed to III anthem "(You Gotta Fight) For Your Right to Party, " now professing the supreme power of nonviolence. Yauch, on the other hand, finds no contradiction: "It's kind of a natural evolution to me. It