Rise Against team up with activist collective Indecline for The Numbers video

Chicago punks Rise Against have released the video for new song The Numbers, from their forthcoming album Nowhere Generation. Celebrating the work of activists, the band worked with Indecline – a collective of activist artists, filmmakers, photographers and others – to highlight the song’s message of standing up to make a change.

Speaking of their involvement, Indecline commented, “The Numbers has given our collective another opportunity not only to work with a band we’ve looked to for inspiration since their early records, but also a chance to create the kind of strong visual content that aims to inspire and educate.

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“Beyond simply showcasing global protest movements, this video is to serve as a reminder that we are all living in a golden age of resistance and need to use our privileges to commit ourselves to wholeheartedly pulling the rope in the opposite direction. Or, to put it more bluntly, don’t be like your parents’ generation. Give a fuck and prove it.”

Speaking to Kerrang! about Nowhere Generation’s message, Tim McIlrath explained how young people are often painted as the snowflake generation, but that doesn’t fit with what he sees.

“[People] talk about millennials and the younger generation like, 'They’re entitled, helpless and whiny.' And I couldn’t square that with what I was seeing with our crowd. The jokes didn’t make sense to me because the young people I meet are really smart, incredible and hard-working, and they want a better future. But they’re dealing with a lot of things that my generation, and my parents’ generation, didn’t: income disparity, environmental degradation, the barrier of entry for jobs…

"When you saddle young people with incredible amounts of debt, it really slows them down in terms progress in their life," the frontman continued. "And so you have this generation that we’ve thrown up all these obstacles in front of and we’ve told them, 'If you work hard, we’ll reward you with the American Dream!’ But we keep moving the goalposts back saying, 'Well, you’ve got to keep working hard.’ And then, just when they think they’ve climbed to the top of the mountain, there’s even more. The jokes about millennials aren’t real. This is the way anybody would react to having the rug pulled out from under them each time.”

Nowhere Generation is released on June 14 via Spinefarm.

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