President Bush had better watch his back. A growing number of punk rockers are gunning for him and there’s nothing the Secret Service, the CIA or any other government entity can do to protect him because it’s all legit. Members of about 200 American punk bands such as NOFX, Anti-Flag and Pennywise have joined forces with record labels including Fat Wreck… return to article
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Reader Comments (7)Page 1 of 1 pagesExcellent piece. I’d never head of “conservative punks” before reading this. Kinda oxymoronic, don’t ya think?
Posted by John Wenzel on Apr 9, 2004 at 11:22 PM Nice to see a man “guided by voices” writing for In These Times. Good job, Don.
Posted by Geoff Burkman on Apr 10, 2004 at 4:00 AM P.S. Why does the “Conservative Punks” link take me to www.plannedchildhood.org? Am I just too dense to understand?
Posted by Geoff Burkman on Apr 10, 2004 at 4:23 AM Folks,
Get to the real source in Los Angeles of the punk voter effort:http://www.diypolitics.org/home.html
regards,
rr
Posted by Richi Ray on Apr 10, 2004 at 4:21 PM I have to say that groups like Punk Voter and Rock the Vote can make it more difficult for local activist groups to do outreach. I don’t know if most of the punk music fans reading this will remember this, but I’m sure others will remember Earth Days from the early 1990s, or the radio festivals held back then with many local groups participating in those events? I’m in Indianapolis, a pretty conservative city, and I worked with the local Green Vote group, but even when the elder Bush was in office I got permission directly from local promoters and radio stations to have a table at some pretty big concerts at the time. We were trained by the election board to register voters, and had our literature and buttons and stickers and even t-shirts out when the bands didn’t complain, and they usually didn’t complain.
Today, when my kids try to do the same thing with their human rights club they are told they can’t do it because the station has a deal with Rock the Vote and they’re only group that can register voters with them. Now I’m sure that Rock the Vote would say that they don’t have an exclusive contract with Clear Channel or whoever is next down the line, and they’re right, it’s just as much the stations or venues’ choice preferentially deal with business-friendly activist groups.
Regardless of politics, it seems harder for activist groups to work with the scene today because there are national groups which venues and promoters have preferred relations with. It’s nice that Fat Mike has invited PETA and NARAL to table outside of NOFX concerts, but NOFX hardly tours, and how the does any other group get ahold of ANYONE at his label and let them know we’d like to table with the bands on his label when come to town? We’ve been told we need permission and the name of a tour manager to do their shows, and that’s reasonable. But we’ve tried to do that with his “Fat Wreck Chords” label now for over a year since the “Punk Voter” website went up, and after several people tried several ways to reach them we gave up on that label. Not the scene, as difficult as it is to work with today, but on that label anyway.
Posted by Marylin Carter on Apr 11, 2004 at 1:16 PM tHIS SITE SUCKS BIG TIME!!!
VOTE FOR FRANKENKERRY IF YOUR
THAT STUPID!!
Posted by DE on Apr 20, 2004 at 1:20 PM I think you can be more original than that!!!!
That title’s taken…FRANKENCHRIST…
Anyway, this site forgot to mention that Biafra was mostly encouraging voters toward local issues and votes such as those for the house, the senate, commissioners, and propossed city projects(like that baseball stadium I WASN’T old enough to vote on…against)=(
Posted by Jillian Calderon on Sep 28, 2004 at 4:44 PM Page 1 of 1 pages -
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