Thursday, January 23, 2025

The Power and the Limits of Punk

(Composed when the author was beginning a phase-out of his decade-long involvement in the Chicago hardcore punk scene in the 1980's.)

The power of punk lies in its being a type of culture that is owned and administered by the people who are a part of it. In many instances, punks (many of whom are young) own the means of communication — the record companies, the fanzines, the performance halls. In this light, punk, therefore has a larger possibility of being a truly human culture not alienated from its participants like the “mass culture” of mainstream society….Mass culture doesn’t have at heart the interests of those who involve themselves in it. The means of communication are owned by an elite that has only one interest — money. Music, in this culture, becomes a commodity much like labor has become a commodity in capitalist society. Punk has negated the passive role left for consumers of popular “art” and “music” in America. The interests of its participants are usually (but not always) reflected in punk culture.

BUT PUNK DOES NOT GO FAR ENOUGH, however.

To criticize the conformity and mass boredom of society is a first step, but it isn’t the last one. Or shouldn’t be. Punk does not articulate enough of a critique of politics, economics, and culture. And although there are differing beliefs among punks, those who can see further than mindless rebellion must begin to articulate their concerns in theory and translate this theory into action. If this critique is not formulated or articulated, punk will be INCorporated into American, capitalist society which will degrade punk into being yet one more useless and non-threatening trend.

American capitalist society can and has commodified rebellion ans alienation (even as it has (re)produced this alienation and rebellion itself). Yet punk has already reproduced a very negative aspect of American culture: anti-intellectualism and the fetishism of action. Those concerned with the future of punk and the future of society must first come to value critical thinking as part and parcel of any activist projects. Only then can full-blown resistance take root.

Monday, November 18, 2024

Bridgeheads: Direct Action at the Rock Island Arsenal

Bridgeheads

John Jankowski

Not so long ago, more of us gave a shit. Even young people, who seem much more content with i-phone activism these days than street theater or walking picket lines. I’m not trying to be hippie-nostalgic, nor am I wagging a proverbial finger at today’s “apathetic youth.” We had our reasons for doing what we did back in the ’80s. Remember Reagan’s “Star Wars” and “first-strike nukes?” Iran-Contra and the criminal activities of Ollie North, et.al.? How about nuns murdered and even archbishops assassinated in Central America? Or C.I.A.-trained death squads, the “disappearing” of thousands of so-called “communists,” and covert action?

The evils still lurk. And maybe because a presumed-liberal black man with a “progressive”-sounding name occupies the Oval Office, some of the state-sponsored criminal activity is hidden a little better. And maybe, for the same reason, some isn’t. It doesn’t take much effort, however, to find a reason to get off one’s ass and take to the streets. You just need to decide that it’s worth it.

Did you ever consider that perhaps Big Brother would like us all to think he’s much bigger, much more omniscient and omnipresent than he truly is? After all, doesn’t it serve his interests for us to presume so? That way, we self-censor, we self-check any potential thought crimes that might lead to lifting a picket sign, hoisting a banner, or — God forbid — participating in a form of direct action that challenges the walking dead around us to think, to recalibrate what Thoreau referred to as their “lives of quiet desperation?”

The Machine still stands, still clicking along full-throttle. The raging has been reduced to a whimper. Even punks seem content with being heard and not seen.

But it need not be so; and it wasn’t so. Even here in the Midwest. I was a witness. I was a participant. I risked arrest, losing my job, and being alienated from my family. Mistakes were made but regrets were not. It was a matter of not letting history “make” me. It was a matter of choosing to make history myself. With others. Out of love. For others.

Here’s a piece of history being made. I’ll blog more on the subject in the future.

https://www.upi.com/Archives/1984/06/04/About-75-people-were-arrested-today-during-a-demonstration/3197455169600/