Jesse Barnett (Stick To Your Guns) is the latest musician to comment on the possibility of a strike amid the unfair practices within the industry. According him, artists “MUST organize [their selves] as workers FIRST.”

Barnett said the following in a series of tweets:

“There’s a lot of talk about striking in the music industry as of late. We, music workers, under no circumstance should try to attempt something like that right now. We MUST organize ourselves as workers FIRST. We can’t be arrogant and we can’t be stupid.

We MUST follow the lead of the global labor movement and their millennia of experience with organizing against corporate pigs. We CAN NOT be chauvinistic in our analysis. We MUST be internationalist in our demands because this affects music workers world-wide.

Patience, love, organization and strategy will make it so our demands can be backed up with unrelenting militance. I’m tired people. I’ve been doing this for 20 years and I’m tired. Let’s stop asking for crumbs or even worse, asking for a seat at their table.

I make music for me. I make music for others. I make music for many reasons but that’s not all that I am as a person. That other guy who has a whole life at home that he has to leave, deserves his peace. And so do you.

So if nothing else let’s organize just under that one idea: that we deserve peace. And then let’s hit them in the fucking mouth with it.”

In other news, Barnett will also be hitting the road in Europe on a solo acoustic tour. Here’s the dates:

04/19 Nurnberg, GER – Hirsch
04/20 Hanover, GER – Bei Chez Heinz
04/21 Hamburg, GER – Logo
04/23 Duffel, BEL – Cinema Plaza
04/24 Eindhoven, NET – Dynamo
04/25 Paris, FRA – Esspace
04/26 Oberhausen, GER – Kulttempel
04/27 Stuttgart, GER – Club Cann
04/28 Karlsruhe, GER – Die Stadtmitte
04/29 Lindau, GER – Club Vaudeville
05/01 Wien, AUT – B 72
05/02 Munchen, GER – Backstage
05/03 Zurich, SWI – Exil
05/05 Milan, ITA – Legend Club
05/06 Dresden, GER – Blauer Salon
05/07 Berlin, GER – Cassiopeia

Stick To Your Guns’ Jesse Barnett has been accused of voicing support for Vladimir Putin amid Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. The allegations, which stem from conversations on social media (see HERE and HERE), have resulted in the band being removed from upcoming shows in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Poland.

Barnett issued the following statement:

“Recently there have been accusations made against me that I am a Pro Putin supporter and that I am a supporter of the war in Ukraine. People have began to call me a neo-nazi and fascist. These are not claims that I take lightly. I have tried with all of my heart and soul to be a person who adds something good to this world and who is someone who leads with justice in mind.

With that being said, I know that my view points have sometimes been controversial, leading to consequences. (Being banned from venues for being pro Palestine, being banned from venues for anti religious views, not being allowed to play certain places due to my staunch anti police stance etc etc.) What’s different here is that the claims of me being a fascist, a fascist sympathizer or a genocide denier are not ones that I can just brush off. I am not a supporter of Putin or his war in Ukraine. He is not a model of anything I believe to be just or good in this world.

There is a quote I love from a poet named Warsan Shire that goes ‘No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark’. The war in Ukraine has turned many working peoples homes into the mouth of a shark. I do not support this anywhere in the world. I believe that all people have the right to live in peace. ANYONE who takes that right away from innocent people doesn’t deserve to breathe.

Now for some self criticism: I have allowed my hatred for America and the way it meddles in the affairs of countries across the globe to cloud my judgement when it comes to how I engage with people online. I am so passionately against America’s abhorrent treatment of human beings both in the U.S. and abroad that I made myself, in many times, unable to be reasoned with. This is something I have reflected on.

I can sometimes engage with people online in a way that is so unrecognizable to my friends, peers and family who truly know me and because of this I misrepresent myself and who I am. I think that I can get so caught up in telling myself ‘the internet isn’t real’ that I forget there are real people behind the accounts. To put it plainly, that shit straight up sucks of me.

The internet is a miserable place to try to have these massive and important discussions in any sort of meaningful way and more often than not, it has lead me to become overly aggressive and dismissive of people where I lash out and say things I sometimes don’t mean. Moving forward I will do my absolute best to better represent myself and the values that I genuinely hold true.”