Adam Clayton Says It's Time to Act Against Gun Deaths in America

Adam Clayton from U2 can't perform at Concert Across America to End Gun Violence this year but he sent this important message about preventing gun deaths in America and mobilizing with music. Learn more about #ConcertAcrossAmerica at http://concertacrossamerica.org. @u2 

Bono meets Pope Francis

Bono was at the Vatican Wednesday for a private meeting with Pope Francis.  According to the Catholic News Agency, the private visit lasted a little more than 30 minutes  and the two talked about topics ranging from commerce and development to the sexual abuse scandal: Irishman Bono, born Paul David Hewson, also said that having just come from Ireland, they "inevitably"  spoke about "the pope's feelings about what has happened in the Church." He said he explained to Francis that to some it looks like "the abusers are being more  protected than the victims," and that he "could see the pain" in the pope's face.  "I felt he was sincere, and I think he's an extraordinary man for extraordinary times," Bono said. Bono also signed an agreement on behalf of the ONE Campaign to work with Scholas Occurentes,  an educational foundation supported by Pope Francis. "We haven't figured out what we are going to do  together," Bono said, "but we sort of have a crush on each other" -- that quote is  according to the Catholic publication Crux. The Vatican has posted this brief video with highlights from Bono's visit with Pope Francis. www.atu2.com

U2 made a surprise visit to refugees in Paris

U2 surprise guests at the restaurant beneath Madeleine Church in Paris on an off day from the E+I tour. 
The artist JR, friend of Bono's, posted it in his Instagram account.

Happy Birthday!!!

Happy birthday, David Howell Evans (a.k.a. The Edge)!!!

Bono gave an interview to Italian radio station RTL 102.5. He talked about Beck’s remix of "Love Is Bigger Than Anything In Its Way" and the Experience + Innocence Tour. The European leg of the tour will start at the end of this month. Bono also talked about immigration issues in Europe and the U.S. He said it’s a complicated situation, but he believes in people’s compassion.

www.atu2.com

Meet Edel Rodriguez, the artist behind the eXPERIENCE + iNNOCENCE Tour graphics

You may not know his name, writes Cathleen Falsani, but you probably recognize Edel Rodriguez’s work—bold, satirical posters, magazine covers and illustrations tackling injustices and lampooning political figures (most notably the 45th President of the United States) that have earned him the nickname, ‘America’s Illustrator-In-Chief.’

Many of Rodriguez’s images of Donald Trump, whom he depicts without facial features save for a gaping mouth on a flame-orange head topped by bright yellow hair, have gone viral worldwide—perhaps most famously his cover for Der Spiegel with Trump in a Ku Klux Klan hood and his cover of Time magazine (where he once served as international art director) showing the shouting president with his hair a towering inferno of flames.

Rodriguez brought that same keen-eyed artistic and political sensibility to the more than 40 illustrations he’s created for the eXPERIENCE + iNNOCENCE Tour.

Born in Havana, Cuba, Rodriguez immigrated to the United States with his parents and sister in the Mariel boatlift of 1980 when he was nine years old. (Years later he discovered that a Newsweek photographer, Mario Ruiz, had been on the same boat. In the photographs above Edel is the boy in the red jacket and green and white striped sweater, his sister in the blue sweater, his mother has blonde hair and his father is the man with glasses and moustache.) He says U2 had a significant influence in shaping his nascent political and artistic identity as a teenager.

‘I had a bootleg [cassette] tape copy of ‘War’,’ Rodriguez said in an interview from his home in New York. ‘Here was this band that was singing about politics and war and all these issues. The reason I left Cuba was all of these politics, so I connected with the band about those kinds of things that I wasn’t hearing in a lot of rock ‘n’ roll back then. I just listened to them all the time when I was working and painting. And here we are, 30 years later.’

Rodriguez’s work on the eXPERIENCE + iNNOCENCE Tour came about after he met the band’s stage designer and frequent creative collaborator Es Devlin earlier this year in Cape Town, South Africa at the Design Indaba conference where they both were presenters.

‘We hit it off and spent like every lunch and dinner chatting and goofing off. And through talking I said, ‘I’d like to do something with you, but I don’t know what.’ And she says, ‘Do you want to work with U2?’ I was like, ‘What? Are you insane?’’ Devlin forwarded images of some of his work to Willie Williams, who showed them to the band.

‘Bono was aware of my work,’ Rodriguez said. ‘Right away we started talking about what I could do for the show. It was still being developed at the time. Whenever Bono has an idea, I’ve just been sending him things…I’m just available for whenever they need me. ‘You’re like one of us,’ Bono told me. ‘You see things and you react.’

Rodriguez’s artwork is used throughout the eXPERIENCE + iNNOCENCE show, and is particularly prominent during the pre-show and during the second act arc between ‘Staring At The Sun’ and ‘Get Out Of Your Own Way’. His vibrant illustrations in red, white, and black incorporate text from the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution—' When the government becomes destructive it is the right of the people to abolish it’, ‘Inalienable rights—The Want, Will, and Hopes of the People’, and ‘Let facts be submitted to a candid world’—and slogans from (RED) and the ONE Campaign including ‘Poverty Is Sexist,’ ‘Educate a girl, empower a community.’ They also cover pressing social issues such as immigration, gun violence, and free speech with protest signs that read, ‘Refugees Welcome,’ ‘ENGLISH, MATH, SCIENCE, GUNS’, and ‘Fight Back!’

After ‘Staring At The Sun’ and ‘Pride (In The Name Of Love)’, which feature video footage of white supremacists and tiki-torch-bearing neo-Nazis marching in Charlottesville and elsewhere, Bono wanted him to create an image that would bring people together, Rodriguez said. That led to the huge white-on-red banner that says, ‘We the People’.

If Rodriguez has to choose a favorite among the more than three dozen images he’s made for the tour, he says it’s the face of the Statue of Liberty in red on a white background with the words ‘Life, Liberty + the Pursuit of Happiness’ in black letters.

‘Coming from Cuba, where statues have important spiritual meaning, the Statue of Liberty is kind of like a saint for immigrants,’ he said. ‘And the way it’s being treated now feels like it’s being defiled somehow. In the U.S. it’s sort of looked at as a tourist thing, but to Latin Americans it really is like a religious icon in many ways. It means a lot to me as an immigrant, it means a lot to a lot of people, and it’s being desecrated.’

These are dangerous times and his artwork gets people ‘riled up’ for better and for worse. ‘A lot of people warn me: You should be careful. You should stop. Does Bono stop singing about this? No. It’s just what you do…Art in itself is a fight against other forces. My calling, my work is to speak about things I see that are injustices,’ he said. It’s the artist’s responsibility to keep making art that is authentic and honest. ‘People have to pay attention. You can’t avoid an image. They have to look at it. They have to see it.’

Rodriguez and his 80-year-old father, Tato, visited with Bono during sound check before the first show at New York City’s Madison Square Garden earlier this month. He had that 30-year-old bootleg cassette of ‘War’ with him and showed the lead vocalist. ‘I wanted him to know what it meant to me,’ he said.

‘I’ll keep going just like U2 will keep going,’ he said. ‘That’s what’s important about making art and music, that people can look back and see—document and protest and let the chips fall where they may. I’m not going to stay silent. I can’t believe people even think that’s a choice.’

https://www.u2.com

Bono adds voice to Irish UN Security Council bid

The Irish government has formally launched the country's bid for a seat on the United Nations Security Council.

U2 frontman Bono added his voice to Ireland's bid to secure a two-year term on the council in 2021.

He said "compromise is a word that the Irish people understand very, very well". The band staged a concert for diplomats on Monday night.

Irish PM (Taoiseach) Leo Varadkar said Ireland would bring hard-won insights and practical lessons to the table.

He said Ireland understood the need to listen and the importance of respecting differences.

Bono warned that "we live in a time when institutions as vital to human progress as the United Nations are under attack".

He said the UN needed "storytellers" because words mattered and one word mattered in particular.

"The word is compromise because that's how you achieve peace and compromise is a word that the Irish people understand very, very well," he said.

"It is part of our story, our recent story, and we are storytellers.

"So you honourable peace activists, if you need some storytellers to describe what's really important about this place… let us tell the story."

Mr Varadkar said that in the past 60 years, the Irish military, police and civilian personnel had served in dozens of countries around the globe, including Lebanon, Cyprus, the Balkans, East Timor, Liberia and the Congo.

"Since the first Irish troops first were deployed on UN peacekeeping operations in 1958, not a single day has passed without Irish participation in UN peace support operations," he said .

"Over the past sixty years, tens of thousands of Irish women and men have worn the blue helmets on UN peacekeeping operations. We are as proud of the blue helmet as we are of the harp or the shamrock.

"Every village, town and neighbourhood in our small country has sent men and women to serve on United Nations peacekeeping missions.

"Everyone knows someone who has served in the UN, if not several. Peacekeeping has become a part of our national identity.

www.bbc.com
video:/www.irishmirror.ie