Joe Strummer (front) and Tymon Dogg. Strummer performing a set of shows with his new band the Mescaleros at St. Anne’s Warehouse in Brooklyn, NY April 2002. Strummer died a few months later on December 22, 2002. Photo: Antonino D’Ambrosio

As the writer, director and producer of Let Fury Have the Hour, I would like to take a moment to welcome you all to our virtual home. Here you will be able to keep up with all that is happening with the film as we travel around this country and the globe tracking the movement of world citizenship. Over three decades ago a punk band out of London launched a counter-culture movement within a counter-culture. Where the Sex Pistols got a disenfranchised generation to yell and scream, the Clash gave people a reason to yell and scream and more importantly the hope that if they acted—in anyway—they could do something about it and maybe change things for the better. With Joe Strummer writing the lyrics to songs that became anthems calling for people to unite, the band challenged their fans to look at themselves and the world around them and ask the simple yet daring questions:

Are you taking over
or are you taking orders?
Are you going backwards
Or are you going forwards?

Joe Strummer himself posed these questions to me—first when I heard the music when I was twelve-years old growing-up in and around the Italian immigrant community in West and Northeast Philadelphia–and then some nineteen years later as I sat with him backstage after he performed with the Mescaleros at St. Anne’s Warehouse in Brooklyn. It was April 2002 and Strummer was deeply concerned about the state of the world, particularly the United States’ march to war in Iraq. We spoke for hours and never did he once seem pessimistic about where we as a people—citizens of the world—were headed. With a refreshing mix of sincerity and authenticity, Strummer reinforced his belief that even though the world may sometimes be a scary place it is indeed worth fighting for. Reiterating what he had told others many times before he leaned over and told me, “Ya know Antonino, sometimes you just gotta say ‘the hell with it, we’re going to win this time.’” And that’s what this film does, shouting out from every corner of the globe: “This World is Worth Fighting For.”

Antonino D’Ambrosio, Colli Al Volturno, Italy–Philadelphia, PA–Brooklyn, NY

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