Regardless, I’ve started to challenge myself and ask, “Do I really stick out at these shows?” Partly because I always end up leaving with a new friend when I attend a show alone.
And mostly because whenever I go to a show, the band’s lead singer stops their set to discuss a political issue that belongs to the ideologies of the left. As a black woman, this makes me feel safe. As an avid music fan and someone who is hyper-fixated on the history of anything and everything, I’m intrigued.
Uncovering Punk’s Anti-Establishment Roots
For the next few days after the concert, I did a deep dive into punk music and its anti-establishment roots. In the mid-70s, the punk subculture emerged in the United Kingdom and New York.
The punk movement began among teens and young adults looking for a more combative approach to rebelling against societal norms compared to the tamer peace and love movements of the 60s and early 70s. Punk music is and has always been grounded in counterculture — from fighting for working-class inequality to fashion to non-conformity in the realm of self-expression.
I discovered that you can’t separate punk music from politics, even in the slightest.
@mycelium_queen Replying to @mycelium_queen ♬ original sound - Mycelium Queen 🦋
Death Versus Bad Brain
As soon as I was old enough to go to shows alone, I submerged myself in the DIY scene. I had no idea what I was doing, I scoured the internet to find “small concerts,” as I called them, in Boston, where I went to high school.
I identified with punk for myself. But when I made the connection between punk and politics, I opened myself up to a whole new world of music.
Lyrics like: “Politicians in my eyes / They could care less about you / they could care less about me as long as they are to end the place they want to be,” from the band Death — considered to be the pioneers of punk music as a genre — spoke to me.
I was even more pleased that the actual founders of the genre — originally a jazz fusion turned hardcore punk band called Bad Brain — were Black Musicians.
I once declared that I’m only an amalgamation of those who came before me, so hearing this quite literally brought tears to my eyes (I’m so far from joking, it’s almost funny again). At my favorite DIY punk, emo, and rock concerts I belong just as much as anyone else.
I’ve always loved that punk music and its subculture take a stand for its listeners.
Feminist Punk: The Riot Grrrl Movement
Shortly after fully immersing myself in the scene, I was introduced to Bikini Kill and the Riot Grrrl movement. Emerging in the early 90’s, the Riot Grrl movement came about out of necessity for a space for women in the punk scene. Riot Grrrl directly combats sexism and works to normalize female anger and sexuality.
In 2023, I began filming a documentary about Boone, North Carolina — a small town rich in music, culture, and activism, especially for the LGBTQ+ community. My production team and I soon noticed that the conversations solely about the music scene quickly became political, especially for Babe Haven, a Riot Grrrl band hailing from Boone.
I now have the pleasure of calling the band members my friends. They’re an integral part of the history of punk and the Riot Grrrl movement, from their songs about objectification of women, like “Uppercut” and “Daddy’s Little Girl” to firsthand accounts of the band from those who believe that punk music has always been all about men — particularly white men.
“Riot grrrl is the way we dress, the way we talk, and the way we stand up for ourselves and other feminine folk. It’s aggressively inclusive, and that’s why we’re so drawn to it. We have on one hand, this outlet for our collective anger and grief, and on the other, we have this platform for queer and feminine celebration.” – Babe Haven
Jonathan Courchesne
Through the Looking Glass
Now, my eyes are peeled for signs and signals of the punk scene and its connection to politics. From the moment of silence for Gaza at a November concert to the New Jersey-based punk band Funeral Doors’ moment of silence for Gaza, and Brooklyn-based band Talon in February.
I remember standing in the crowds at that concert in February as the business casual people entered the bar, expecting a relaxing after-work drink with some light chatter in the background. I watched their faces as they slowly backed out of the door. While they heard howling, the fans listented to Juni, the lead singer of Funeral Doors, screaming, “F*ck trans genocide!”
Everyone was immersed in the safe space the band had provided us. Somewhere in the crowd, there was someone — or 3 or 4 individuals — struggling to truly be who they are. And — if only for a brief moment — they felt like they belonged.
Lead singer of Funeral DoorsERYNN WAKEFIELD
Inevitable Misunderstanding
Although there are essential conversations happening within the punk and DIY communities about what it means to be a part of the subculture, we still have work to do. Recently, I had an extremely jarring experience as I was peacefully scrolling through TikTok.
I came across a string of videos about right-wing punks trying to claim the subculture for themselves. Soon after my feed was flooded with stitches and clapbacks from left-wing people explaining the subculture of punk music and the inability to remove it from left-leaning political discourse.
@c4b1n_1n_th3_wxxds_ Sorry i look kinda bad 💀 ive bad a rough few weeks . . . . . . #punk #punkstyle #punkclothing #punkrock #punkfashion #crustpunk #folkpunk #queer #gay #lgbtq #pride #leftist #leftistpolitics #anarchism #Anarchy #Socialism #anarchocommunism ♬ original sound - C4b1n 🔻
Punk's Proclamation: A Movement Rooted in People’s Power
I’ve said it time and time again: artists must reflect the times. It’s both comforting and empowering that this genre I love so much does not deny me. And it wouldn’t be what it is without me. As silly as it sounds, I often return to a meme, one that declares that people — if they choose to create — need to carry the burden of the world they’re living in. This has only proven to be true.
Punk music and the subculture behind it aren’t merely screaming and studded belts from your local Hot Topic (if they’re a thing anymore). The punk scene highlights the struggles of the working class, sheds light on political issues relating to marginalized groups, fosters community, and fights for what’s right.
Punk music has always held a space for me; all I had to do was claim it.
@wormtriip via Instagram
Big Data and Our Elections
Blaming Russia is too easy
Still, the creation of Russia's bot army had to be predicated on some form of information, and many have accused Putin's government of tracking users' Facebook data in an attempt to gain a psychological understanding of the average American voter. This is where Aleksandr Kogan comes into play. Kogan sold the data of some 87 million Facebook users (collected via a quiz app) to Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm hired by the Trump campaign. Cambridge Analytica's goal was to create psychographic voting profiles. While there's no definitive connection between Cambridge Analytica and Russia, the precedent set by CA and their illegal exploitation of Facebook is a frightening one. If a private company is collecting data on citizens, it's a pretty safe bet that governments around the world are doing the same. While the Democratic Party's Russophobia is definitely a reaction to losing in 2016 more than anything else, but it accidentally shed light on an important issue: our data isn't safe, and with recent improvements AI and voice recognition software, we'll soon have the technology to not only create comprehensive individual psych profiles, but to tailor campaigns to individual voters.
Obviously companies like Google and Facebook have large stores of internal data, and they've certainly been amenable to selling it, but academic researchers (like Kogan) also have large data caches. Behavioral psychologists use Facebook in studies all the time, and the academic world isn't particularly well-known for its cyber security. Even in the event that these databases aren't hacked, there's nothing to prevent a researcher from selling their findings after their study is complete. The quick fix is to let Facebook block third parties from collecting data on its users, and for its part, Facebook has done just that. They've begun blocking apps from collecting information, and have also limited the number of researchers allowed to look at data on the site. Only academics researching political elections through the lens of social media are permitted to apply for access to Facebook's database.
Cambridge Analytica
At a glance, these robust safety measures are a breath of fresh air. It isn't often that a tech company is so committed to its customers' privacy. That said, when things look too good to be true, they usually are. If Facebook continues its path to prohibition, "only Facebook will really know very much about how Facebook actually operates and how people act on Facebook," warns Dr. Rasmus Kleis Nielsen of Oxford University. Sure, measures like these could protect data from outsiders, but it would also give a private company sole proprietorship over the most comprehensive database of human behaviors and tendencies ever created. Facebook would have even more sway over our local and national elections than it already does, and would gain a monopoly over 2 billion people's personal data. Essentially, Facebook could name its price. Because of the way the Internet works, there's no way to effectively protect our Facebook data without severely compromising our freedom. And even if we were to let Zuckerberg shut everyone out of Facebook's data vaults, this doesn't prevent other websites or services from collecting information on us. It doesn't make us any safer. Our sensitive information is freely available to anyone who knows how to access it.
As technology improves, it's going to become more and more difficult to tell what is and isn't fake news–whether or not that article you just read was an advertisement for Tide or some political campaign you weren't aware of. For better or worse, we've set out to map the entire spectrum of human behaviors. Eventually, marketing campaigns will be so advanced, so accurate in their mapping of our desires, we may forget that we ever had the capacity to think. Somewhere, the ghost of B.F. Skinner smiling.
