Follow Up to "Don't Punch Me"

A couple of months ago I wrote a column about physical violence at underage punk shows in New Orleans. I had so many thoughts about what was going on and about how to address violence in our communities and promised to continue the discussion later because I couldn't fit it all into one column.

The feedback that I got from writing that column and others (like the one I wrote months before that about ironic bigotry for shock value) makes me realize that there are just so many different ways of relating to punk, and that my way of relating to it is a minority perspective, and I use the word minority recognizing all of its connotations.

I grew up going to shows in a town where if certain people in the audience were making it impossible for the rest of the audience to enjoy the show by being violent or otherwise intolerable, certain bands would stop playing and wait for the idiocy to die down before they started playing again. That is punk to me: Creating the kind of atmosphere you want to have around you. Realizing that you are in charge of your own experience.

The point of writing that column wasn't to slam a local band but to show how a community or scene can deal with conflict in a way that doesn't dismiss or vilify the accused party so that actual change can happen. I guess that was a naïve goal because even though I thought I dealt with the issue respectfully, the negative feedback I got was pretty similar to what I would've gotten if I had explicitly called them out as being fucked up misogynist pigs. Looking back at my own history of calling out and being called out, I always imagine that a more diplomatic approach would bring better results, but that doesn't seem to be the case, so ladies, feminists, people in the scene who wish to confront difficult issues in your communities, go ahead and do it and don't mince your words. It doesn't matter how you say it, you'll get a nasty, defensive response that evades accountability no matter what. Even so, it's still worth doing. Just be ready.

Thanks to the people who wrote me about the difficult situations they've encountered in their own communities—from being sexually harassed in front of your peers and not being supported, to thinking about how to call out a rapist who is well known and liked in your community. These are important struggles that seem to happen in the margins, issues that most people don't have to deal with.

Local scenes are important, but most, outside of major cities, are very small and limited in their scope. Even though I've lived in cities with pretty large scenes, I don't think I would've been able to survive socially in punk if I hadn't been able to get in touch with other brown punks and queer punks through writing, traveling and living in different cities over the years. I continue to write this column for the minority of kids who need this liberating tool that is punk rock but who might also potentially be alienated by the people who make up the majority of the subculture. I want to retain you. I don't want you to leave! We are each others' audience and your experiences validate mine. We can support each other, even from really far away.

Anyway, it's time to retreat for a while. It's finally cooled down in New Orleans. The days are short and the nights are long and that means I'm spending way more time inside writing songs, making plans for next year, talking on the phone to faraway friends, working on projects and listening to a shit ton of music. Listening to music is the number one way that I create my own ideal world for myself. Here is my winter listening top 10 in no particular order.

1. Trash Kit

2. Lydia Lunch – Queen of Siam

3. Fugazi - Repeater

4. Next Stop... Soweto: Township Sounds from the Golden Age of Mbaqanga

5. Neonates (tape)

6. Chin Chin – Sound of the Westway

7. Hans-a-plast – 2

8. Echo and the Bunnymen – Songs to Learn and Sing

9. Moss Icon – Lyburnum Wits End Liberation Fly

10. Mydolls – A World of Her Own

...and lots of old mixtapes!

Write me: shotgunseamstress@gmail.com

The Revolution Will Not Be Funded

Five folks who put on all-ages punk shows around town got together a few months ago to talk about creating a permanent all-ages venue in New Orleans, where we live. We are all in bands and we all book shows for bands on tour and we're all invested in providing an alternative to the 21+ bar show in a city where bar shows reign supreme. Some of us have been frustrated at the process of looking high and low for a house or other DIY space to put a show every time a band gets in touch to say that they'll be coming through town. We figured it would be worth it to sit down and talk about the possibility of having a spot that is available every night of the week and commercially zoned so we'd never have to worry about cops.

Of course, our first big questions were, where would this new all-ages venue be and how would we afford it? We were unanimously against charging high prices at the door in order to cover rent. It's enough to worry about getting gas money for bands without having to also worry about covering rent, and none of us seemed interested in passing the extra costs on to the people who would be coming to the shows. Next option? Become a non-profit, one of us suggested. Get funding from an outside source to make this thing work.

Throughout our discussion, it was understood that everyone wanted to make sure everything was going to be legit, which makes sense. Every house show you put on, you wonder if the cops are gonna come by and shut it down. It would be awesome to have DIY all-ages shows and not have to worry about all that. I get that. But then again, a bigger part of me is wondering, isn't this what DIY and punk and anarchism is all about is operating outside of the law and operating without funding?

A couple of months later, I was talking to this lady Corrina who sings for this local band called Crackbox. She's been thinking about starting Home Alive out here (if you don't know about the original Home Alive in Seattle, please look it up!) She's done self-defense training for women here and there in the past and wants to start having classes again on a regular basis here in New Orleans. Awesome idea. I've been to self-defense trainings that my friends and housemates organized when I lived in Portland and they were really important events. When Corrina started talking about how she wanted to get grants to fund a workshop featuring the women who founded Home Alive Seattle, I asked her why she didn't start small and just teach a class or two herself in someone's house or at Nowe Miasto, this warehouse in Mid-City where a bunch of our friends live.

It could be that I'm misunderstanding some part of Corrina's plan, and that non-profit funding would be the most ideal way for her to make Home Alive New Orleans real. But after our conversation I was really confused about why her idea had to be a non-profit, especially right away. I'm not telling this story to criticize her or her idea; I'd love to see women's self-defense classes happen in whatever way they're gonna happen in this city and when it does, I'll support it in any way I can. I just wonder, why make it so complicated? I want everyone to feel empowered to make things happen now with the whatever resources you have at the moment. Isn't that kind of urgency and self-determination central to who we are as a community?

I really think it's time to rethink the whole non-profit style of organizing and making things happen. As I understand it, in order to apply for grants, you have to register with the U.S. government as a 501c3 organization, which is the same as having non-profit status. I really do think it's a bad sign that the vast majority of today's activism in our country (whether it be political or cultural) is registered through the United States government. It wasn't always this way, and I think that the transition to non-profit activism has everything to do with our government being able to keep tabs on and contain political and cultural resistance.

Also, most grant money ultimately flows down from rich individuals and families who are just looking for a tax shelter for all of their damn money. When rich folks start up a foundation, it's so that they can hoard more of their wealth instead of letting their money flow into the public sphere in the form of taxes. In other words, if you're working on the books for minimum wage or close to it, you're probably paying more percentage-wise in taxes than a rich person is. I think accepting money from foundations in the form of grants reinforces the mythology that all life springs from corporations and corporate money, and that we are helpless without it. In many ways, being a non-profit makes your anti-establishment political or cultural organization part of the establishment.

I learned a lot of this stuff in 2003 when I went to this conference in California put on by this organization called INCITE Women of Color Against Violence. It's a bunch of academics and some activists that run it, and I know there's also a semi-active INCITE chapter here in New Orleans. Anyway, the conference was called “The Revolution Will Not Be Funded” and they also put a book by the same title, shortly after the conference. Don't let those middle-aged lady professors fool you, they are radical. They call the land of non-profits the Non-profit Industrial Complex and take us back to a time when activism didn't have corporate funding. The Black Panthers were not a non-profit, dude! And you can talk all the trash you want about how the National Organization of Women (NOW) is full of liberal, 2nd-wave feminist, white lady uselessness, but you gotta acknowledge the fact that as of the early 2000s they were (and probably still are) totally funded by individuals who believe in them, their members. NOW is not a non-profit.

As far as the all-ages show space thing goes, I also disagree with the idea that people can own property and believe that property ownership is a figment of our capitalist imaginations. I already pay my landlord rent every month, so I'm not really down to be involved in yet another rental contract with yet another landlord, even if it's being paid for with someone else's money. The more I think about it, the more meaning I find in the hunt for another underground space to put my next show.

I know people who do great things with their non-profits. An old friend of mine created the Prison Birth Project in Massachusetts where she acts as a midwife and doula to women in prison who are pregnant and giving birth. This is important work and there's no way I'm going to denounce it just because I am critical of non-profits. She's got a kid and she deserves to get paid for her work, just like anyone else. Besides, all of us are always picking and choosing which aspects of capitalism we're willing to deal with and which one's we're not. It's hard to be an anti-capitalist purist in a capitalist reality. I just want us all to be strategic about when we engage with the the system. It seems like turning your newest idea into a non-profit organization has become such a natural way to imagine things working, but it's not natural. It's actually a relatively new way of organizing ourselves. I think we should all look at the history of non-profit organizing and question it and consider whether it's absolutely necessary to use that model.

From The Revolution Will Not Be Funded:

“And what are our priorities? Perhaps the real problem is that we don’t spend enough time imagining what we want and then doing the work to sustain that vision. That is one of the fundamental ways the corporate-capitalist system tames us: by robbing us of our time and flooding us in a sea of bureaucratic red tape, which we are told is a necessary evil for guaranteeing our organization’s existence. We are too busy being told to market ourselves by pimping our communities’ poverty in proposals, selling “results” in reports and accounting for our finances in financial reviews.

“In essence, our organizations have become mini-corporations, because on some level, we have internalized the idea that power—the ability to create change—equals money.” --Amara Perez, Sisters in Action for Power, Portland, Oregon

It's always either love or hate: shotgunseamstress@gmail.com

Don't Punch Me in the Face

There's this really bizarre phenomenon happening in the New Orleans underage punk scene right now. Me and my friend Candice found out about this local band called Vapo-Rats. They are an old-school sounding hardcore band comprised of 17 year old boys. We were initially excited about them because they're so young, because they had a black member, and because the recordings they made with their old guitar player (the black kid) were very reminiscent of Void.

Candice invited them to play a show with her band Necro Hippies, and the show was awesome except for one thing. Near the end of their set, Vapo-Rats' bass player punched this girl in the face! I was standing up close and saw the whole thing. I saw her fall back rather theatrically with a smile on her face, and almost instantly jump right up to shake the bassist's hand. My initial shock at the blow was quickly replaced with an eye roll; to me it seemed like seventeen year old horseplay.

After the show, some older punks were talking about what had happened and lots of people were understandably upset. To others at the show, this behavior was completely appalling and intolerable. I went up to the bass player to ask him what was up and to tell him how it made people feel to see that kind of behavior at a show. I told him that to me it seemed like a joke but that it didn't look that way to a lot of other people.

Almost immediately, his girlfriend jumps in between me and bass player/girl puncher dude (Why do girls do this? Your dudefriend can speak for himself!) and starts to explain, “Thank you for understanding it's a joke. They play around like this all the time. She even asked him to hit her. See, look at them.” At this point, I look over to see the girl that got punched in the face pummeling the bassist in the stomach with her fists. It's obvious that they're just playing around. Bass player's girlfriend continues, “Sometimes people just wanna get punched in the face. I mean, isn't it sexist that guys can hit guys but guys can't hit girls?”

Good lord. What kind of logic is that? Why is that the way that this girl and her friends are choosing to exercise their power as women, and is that even what's happening here?

This woman named Breonne who is the singer in this local band named Small Bones, who also played that night, had a really interesting take on the whole thing. I've had the good fortune of being in non-violent punk scenes that were pretty gender balanced and woman and queer positive most of my adult life. Breonne came up in a very male-dominated scene and this experience made he question the nature of these girls' consent. Looking back, she realized that, yeah, girls might say, “I want you to hit me,” but they say so only because there's this pressure to prove themselves to the boys in their scene. Please, if you are a person of any gender and you exist in a straight boy-dominated punk scene, think twice about the inherent pressure of being “one of the guys” and how that pressure informs your behavior.

At the Necro Hippies show, there were more girls in the pit than I ever saw at the shows I went to when I lived in DC. I felt like I couldn't really superimpose my own experience on the experiences of these kids because it looked so different to me, at least on the surface. As a girl watching scrawny white boys get naked and mosh to Pg. 99 in a church basement in DC, I felt like a complete outsider. I was probably only there to watch The Others (long defunct girl-fronted pop punk from DC) or one of Katy Otto's old bands, anyway. Another huge difference is the amount of underage drinking that goes on here in New Orleans that I don't remember seeing nearly as much in DC, where there was (and hopefully still is) more of a straight-edge culture in the punk scene.

I finally took a side on this whole issue a few weeks later when me and Candice had some folks come and pay us a visit from Pensacola. We heard that Vapo-Rats was playing a show downtown and we decided to walk over and check it out. We had missed Vapo-Rats but the show was still going on. There were tons of kids, and some of them looked really young, like way younger than 17. This pretty, long-haired girl who was obviously wasted to oblivion kept coming over to us to talk. She was nice but she was sooo drunk.

We didn't pay to get in. We were just peaking through the back door at the spectacle inside, and I'm glad we were being total deadbeats that evening because I wouldn't have wanted to support what I saw with my hard earned cash. In the middle of some band's set, this dude raises his hand, halls off and slaps this girl who is obviously shocked and hurt. It was loud and it was hard and I immediately felt stunned and disgusted. Twice is enough for me to see it as a pattern. I turned around and left right away.

What the fuck, New Orleans?! Candice said she saw the girl go back and shake his hand as if it was all an agreement, but she also noticed that the girl had also turned around and left the space after she was hit, as if her first impulse was to just get the fuck out of that place. This time, it felt out of control, and not at all like horseplay. And both times I've witnessed it, it was women being assaulted by men, not vice versa, and not even men fighting other men. FUCK THAT.

I think the real reason I wanted to talk about this is to tie it into a larger conversation about accountability in the punk scene. Instead of boycotting their band, Candice set up a date with the singer in Vapo-Rats and she broke it down for him. Violence, particularly violence against women, isn't cool (unless it's self-defense, which is another topic for another day), nor is it cool to write stupid shit about clowns raping people in the liner notes of your CD. The singer, who wasn't directly involved in any of these situations, but who does have an influence on how his band's shows go down, was really receptive to Candice's comments.

I really feel like Candice did the best thing for the situation. I'm sure her reaction would've been much different if they were 25, or even 20 for that matter. But the fact is, they're kids who are making mistakes and who will hopefully learn from them.

I feel like if you're still involved in the punk scene as you get older, the best thing you can do with all of your experience is be kind of mentor or role model to younger kids who are just getting started. I know it sounds cheesy, but I remember being much younger, dealing with calling out a rapist in our community, and really feeling like it would've helped to have some advice from someone older who had already been through it. We had zines written by other women who had done what we were doing and we had each other, but we were all in our young 20s, and militant as fuck. We couldn't see both sides, the way I can now.

As a person who has both called other people out publicly on their behavior and been publicly called out on her behavior, I have so much to say about the process of accountability particularly within punk and radical communities. I am also very curious about how all people, but especially women and queers are handling their shit across the country and the world. If you're trying to tackle issues of violence, assault, abuse or rape in public or personal settings in your community I'd like to know about it. I also have so many things to say about what I call “call-out culture” within punk rock and when and how it should be used, but I think I'm going to have to save those comments for another column.

People like to say, and I myself has said, that the same injustices that are found outside of the punk scene can be found inside of it as well. I still think that's true, but let's not lose perspective. The fact is, many punks hang out in a pretty insular world and have no real gauge when it comes to comparing their interpersonal struggles with those that are happening in “the real world.” I guess all I'm saying is that even though I always want to see us confronting hard issues head-on, I also want to see less drama and judgment and more understanding and compassion when it comes to resolving conflict in our communities.

This is one of those columns where I feel like I've left so much unsaid but I promise to revisit some of this stuff later.

Get in touch: shotgunseamstress@gmail.com

Bummer

I finally made it out to Pensacola Beach a couple weeks ago for the first time since the oil spill. The closer I got to the beach, the bigger the lump got in my throat and when I got there, all I could do was cry. I cried because of this huge uncontrollable disaster. I cried because I was exhausted and because I'm going through a break up. I cried because I was relieved, in some weird way, that the ocean still exists, and still feels powerful and vast. And the ocean absorbed all of my sorrow and washed it away. Not all of it, but enough. Mostly, I just went to the Gulf of Mexico to wish it well. For a moment early in the spring when the spill began, people were talking about how there was to be "no beach" this summer. But Pensacola is the most amazing beach I've ever been to and I felt like it was stupid to never see it again, even if it's been ruined. It's like, if you had a friend in the hospital who was sick, would you just never go visit them and just figure they're going to die anyway? Of course, not. You go and you wish them well. So as pathetic as a gesture as it seems, that's what I did. And that made me cry some more. Sometimes all you can do is just let all of the grief move through you, just flow through. At the spot where I was at, the water still looked blue and the sand still looked white and we could see clean birds flying over head. Life does go on. I feel irritated by people's apocalyptic anxieties recently. It's not that I don't believe that the world is ending, and it's not that I do believe it, either. The fact is that none of us know what's going to happen. Since none of us knows the future, our choices are to fear for the worst or hope for the best and I choose to hope for the best, even in spite of all the doomy gloomy evidence to the contrary. Once upon a time a wise counselor told me that anxiety is fearing for the worst when the worst hasn't even happened yet, and when yr not even certain that the worst will ever in fact happen. I had a bunch of anxiety during the last half of my 20s and I finally got over it after a lot of hard work. Now, I'm living for today. I'm alive now and I love it, and I'm gonna keep singing and playing music and celebrating my life and life in general until I can't do it anymore.

Feminist Power

Everyone's different, so not everyone's going to agree about whether feminism is still relevant or necessary. I mean, if you're a middle class, college educated white lady with a sensitive white guy boyfriend and you feel liberated cuz you have a hyphenated last name, maybe you feel like the coast is clear and that women are no longer oppressed and we don't need feminism anymore. I'm only saying this because I read this blurb about how Venus magazine has changed hands and how the new publisher says that feminism is outdated and no longer relevant to their magazine. I'm not an avid Venus reader so this decision barely affects me at all, but it did make me want to use the space I have to explain why I think that the idea that feminism is irrelevant is bullshit.

Even though I'm black and gay, I don't really identify as oppressed because I live in the U.S. and I can live where I want and travel around and I have a roof over my head and I've had a lucky life with relatively minor things to complain about. But I don't feel like we still need feminism because I specifically believe that all women are oppressed relative to men (I believe something way more complicated about that relationship that would take a whole other column to explain). I believe that feminism is still relevant because it speaks to the necessity to generally redefine power in our society and globally. If you've read any news lately, how can you not agree that we obviously need a new understanding of power if we want any peace?

When we were starting the Portland chapter of Anarchist People of Color in 2003, I remember sitting in the small group that comprised us, talking about how we wanted to define ourselves. You know, one of those boring activist conversations that seems to never end, but that we were 100% invested in having at the time. I remember talking about how even though I considered myself an anarchist, in my heart, I identified with feminism the most and I wanted that to somehow be reflected in our organization. Luette, my fellow organizer (who I recently just got back in touch with: Hey, girl!), expressed that there were aspects of feminism that she just couldn't relate to. She was probably thinking of Andrea Dworkin! I told her I felt the same way about anarchism, picturing Rick Mackin and his ilk, in all their manarchist glory. We decided to compromise and define ourselves as an anarcho-feminist group, and since then I've been able to see more and more clearly--in theory and in real life--how these two concepts work together and help us think of new ways to redistribute and rethink power dynamics. We decided to take the best of both of those worlds and leave the rest behind.

I could use war, or border politics or the U.S. Government as examples of why and how anarcho-feminist ideas can change your community and the world, but I'm going to use a far more simple example. And why not get personal since the personal is indeed political?

As you may well know, I set up shows in New Orleans for queer, female-fronted, and all-girl bands who pass through town on tour. I started doing it a year ago and at that point, I envisioned it as a collective. I set up a website for networking with bands & individuals and handed the password out to every girl or queer person I knew who was interested. I played music with lots of different women, and did my best to encourage them to start bands, have confidence in their skills and be involved with putting on shows. I got some help with flyering here and there, but mostly I did everything on my own. After months of operating that way, it inevitably became my "baby." I'm having fun doing it, and the process feels simple enough. I didn't realize until I talked to this fellow lady punk I know named Rachel the other day that a lot of women find the process of setting up a show daunting partly because of the technical aspects of it, for example, running a PA. I've been doing this stuff for a while now, and honestly I forgot that different people are at different stages of learning about it. I had actually begun to assume that most people weren't really interested in the process.

For me, being a feminist means, in part, learning not to put the idea of expertise on a pedestal. (Who knows, maybe this is something DIY culture taught me but I'm crediting it to feminism now. I guess in the end, it's all one and the same to me.) Somehow along the way, I realized that prioritizing technical knowledge over experiential knowledge is patriarchal. It's like how you might have a girl friend who never claims to know how to play music even though you've seen her play guitar in her bedroom a million times. What is that perceived gap between playing music and calling yourself a musician? What does it mean to "know how" to do something? Why isn't the action of doing something evidence that you know how to do it? Why do people, especially women, convince themselves that they don't know how to do things they already do? Why is it perceived that there is only one correct way to do something and that you probably need to take lessons or read a manual in order to learn it? (Is that enough questions for ya?)

Knowledge really is power. Convincing yourself or allowing yourself to be convinced that you don't or can't know things is dis-empowering. I recently checked out this book from the Iron Rail called The Power of Feminist Theory: Domination, Resistance, Solidarity by Amy Allen. In all honesty, it's a little bit dry but not overly academic, so if you're excited about the topic, it'll be a pretty easy read. Plus, it's pretty short, and it's especially great if you've read this kind of thing before but you need a refresher because it's pretty straight-to-the-point.

Allen breaks down three ways of defining power: as a resource, as domination and as empowerment. Feminists who think of power as a resource are basically the ones who think of Hillary Clinton as their saviour. They see power as a resource that has been unequally distributed and they think everything will be fine once women have as much access to power as men. They want more female CEOs and politicians. They don't see anything wrong with the power structure as long as women have an equal place in it. They are dying to wear pantsuits--definitely not going to create the kind of change in the world that I'd like to see.

Feminists who see power as domination define all women as oppressed compared to all men. They wish to end male domination and see power as something defined only by patriarchal violence and the subjugation of women. This conception of power is very black & white and relies on a strict dichotomy, and it doesn't do a very good job accounting for how race, class and numerous other factors change the experience of power for men and women. Plus, not everyone's either a man or a woman, right? This idea of power is compelling, but not the real deal.

Then there's the idea of power as empowerment. I was talking to this woman Gia, who helps to run a woman of color lead space in New Orleans called Gris Gris Lab and she said she doesn't like the word "empowerment" and prefers to talk about "building power." We didn't get to go in depth about it, but I assume she thinks that saying "empower" can give the idea that the group or individual you're refering to has no power and needs to be given power from an outside source. Obviously, that's not what I believe and I don't think that's what Amy Allen is getting at, either.

Empowerment is just a new way to define power--not as domination, but as "the ability to transform oneself, others, and the world," writes Allen. It means that if you have confidence, skills or knowledge, you don't lord it over other people or use it to bolster your own ego, you share it. The secret surprise is that you also get it back. It's about seeing power as a nurturing force in the world. Allen writes that the main influence for this idea of empowerment is motherhood (in it's most ideal incarnation)--fostering growth, not submission through domination. This type of power benefits everyone, not just women, and it can be applied to a variety of relationships, not just ones between women and men. It also works really well with anti-authoritarian and non-hierarchical ways of organizing ourselves. Power to the people, not over the people, right? This is an old idea that has yet to gain the popularity it deserves.

Tell me, how are these ideas no longer relevant? Until they are widespread and mainstream, they will continue to be relevant.

Anyway, back to my story. I am unintentionally hogging No More Fiction but I've realized that, and I'm ready to turn it over to the people in the interest of empowering queer punks and lady punks to create their own events and spaces in this city. Combining ideas about anti-authoritarianism with feminist ideas about redefining power should be central to the work we do, no matter how small the project. Even if I'm not psyched on putting on yet another folk-punk show, maybe that's an opportunity for another queer punk or lady punk to get practice putting on a show. Of course it's a two way street--people have to be interested and put in work to be involved. We're going to have a skillshare for queers & women this Thursday to share knowledge about the technical aspects of music that people often find mysterious and off-putting. I hope that event marks a change in the way NMF operates in this town from now on.

I want to give a shout out to the Bloody Rag Collective that is putting on shows for bands with women and trans folks in Chicago. I admire your collective approach and maybe one of these days we can overcome geography and join forces somehow.

Old columns at shotgunseamstress.blogspot.com
Send your comments & criticisms here: shotgunseamstress@gmail.com

No More Swastikas in Punk, Please.

I went to a dance night last weekend to support some friends of mine who were DJing and one of the first things my girlfriend spots is a dude in a swastika t-shirt. Turns out he's in one of the bands playing that night, so he's not just a random guy in a swastika shirt, he's the center of attention. I'm not mentioning any names, because I don't wish to draw any more attention to this person or his band; they're well-known enough in this town. I will mention, that this t-shirt is related to an old New Orleans punk band who used the image of a swastika made of crawfish (what a horrible idea on so many levels!) to be shocking. Of course, the wearer of the shirt claims not to be racist. I'm not sure if anyone's every asked him if he knows that the swastika is mainly an anti-Semitic symbol that is also homophobic and fascist. I'm guessing it wouldn't make a difference.

As you may well have guessed, I've never been into using bigoted symbols or language jokingly, for shock value or for irony. In fact, it's been pissing me off for almost a decade now and I've finally hit my wall. Back around 2003 or so, this band Japanther was blowing up all over the country and it was no different in Portland. All of the sudden, everyone I knew had a Japanther poster hanging up in their bedroom or kitchen. Fine. Later on, it came out that Japanther was connected to the infamous Vice Magazine and their label Vice Records. I happened to find an article by one of the founders of that magazine in an online right wing journal called The American Conservative, in which he basically admitted that Vice had a right wing agenda.

Of course, a lot of people in my community were concerned. I remember, my housemate, Nate, contacted Japanther directly to ask them what was up. I also remember getting into an argument with another woman in my community who just wouldn't believe what I was telling her I had read in that article because, at least at the time, Vice's primary mode of spreading it's right wing ideas was through--you guessed it--irony and low-rate humor. For many, it's more difficult to see these kinds of messages clearly when everything's a joke. I never read an entire issue of that magazine and I haven't laid eyes on a copy of it in years, thankfully, but that situation really sticks with me.

Even though we've come a long way as a nation and a community when it comes to bigotry, the coast is not clear! Not even close. There was just a racist coup of a local government in Northern Louisiana a couple of months ago! (If you don't believe me, google "racist coup"!) I live in a town where Orleans Parish Prison is filled with poor folks and people of color and the majority of the black citizens are poor. I get confused with my ex-girlfriend who is also black on a regular basis and it happens to other people of color I know on a regular basis as well. God forbid I ever "fit the description" of someone who's done anything illegal. Look at all the anti-immigration and pro-life legislation going down in Arizona, and the white supremacist groups that are most likely making Barack Obama's life a nightmare. I live in a town that was allowed to flood on purpose because it's citizens were mostly poor and black. Rape is still a problem. Hate crimes against queers are still too common. These are just a few examples of the war that is being waged in the United States right now. Knowing all of this, how can you make a joke of it? Oh, it's because you're a straight, white male and none of this affects you directly so you don't have to care. I'm so fucking disgusted with that shit.

The ultimate problem with ironic humor when combined with symbols or language that many people find degrading is that the people who use it are being ambiguous about what they really believe. You're saying something racist, but then you say you're not racist, which means you've actually said nothing. Instead of saying something you don't mean, why not say something you do mean? If you're a bigot, admit it so I know never to come near you or go to any of your events. If you're not, then why hide behind irony? What is it that you're really passionate about? What is it that you really believe? Why not be clear? These days, I'm feeling that, "I'm not racist/homophobic/etc." doesn't mean shit to me unless you're explicitly saying and showing, "I am anti-racist," or "I am against homophobia."

It's time to pick a side. There is no being neutral when it comes to these things. Saying "I am not political," is a cop-out that basically means, "I'm fine with the way things are." And being fine with the way things are means that you support racism, classism, heterosexism and the patriarchy because that is the default in our society. If you're not against those things, then you're going along with it even if you don't mean to be because those forms of oppression constitute normalcy here in the U.S.A. Besides, what are you, depressed? How can you not have a passionate opinion one way or another about some of the most important issues of our time?

The old-school, straight-white-dude-dominated, New Orleans punk scene needs to catch up or get left behind. I am not talking about the old time and New Orleans jazz punk scene, which, as far as I've seen, creates welcoming DIY spaces in this city. The old-timers I'm talking about know who they are! This city is changing, for better or for worse, and all the punks you've alienated and written off as PC aren't just going to move to San Francisco or New York to get away from your stupidity. We're staying and we're creating our own scenes that are going be better than yours--stronger, smarter, and better music, too.

Old colums at shotgunseamstress.blogspot.com

Taqwacore

Yesterday was the last day "Taqwacore: The Birth of Punk Islam" was playing at this small art venue called Zeitgeist here in New Orleans, so me & my friend/band-mate Candice went to go catch it while we could. I'd never heard of the book The Taqwacores until last night, so I had no idea what to expect exactly. The book, according to what I gathered from discussion throughout the documentary, was Knight's way of fusing together two worlds he took part in that never overlapped, except for in his own life.

Essentially, The Taqwacores is an Islamic punk rock fantasy, set in Buffalo, New York complete with “burqa-wearing riot girls, mohawked Sufis, straightedge Sunnis, Shi’a skinheads, Indonesian skaters, Sudanese rude boys, gay Muslims, drunk Muslims, and feminists.” The author, Michael Muhammad Knight is a white U.S. born convert who found Islam as an adult.

Knight says he assumed that writing the book would end his relationship with Islam, but instead it re-inspired it. How did a white punk dude end up converting to Islam in the first place? Knight makes it known in the movie is that his dad was a "rapist and a white supremacist" (Knight's own words.) His conversion to Islam is said in the movie to be a reaction to being raised by a bigot.

The movie follows Boston based, Pakistani-American punk band The Kominas on tour in a painted green school bus with "TAQWA" stenciled across the front. (Taqwa, by the way, is a concept in Islam that refers to the idea of a higher consciousness.) Knight and solo performer Omar Waqar accompany The Kominas on their journey, bringing taqwacore to the rest of the nation, and eventually to Pakistan.

Punk rock has always used adversity as its ammunition and the taqwacore bands represented in the movie each had that raw, fuck-you thing going on, but that's where the similarities end. As a term, taqwacore--like afro-punk or queercore--speaks more about an identity than a particular sound. Aside from The Kominas, the other band you see the most footage of is Secret Trial Five, an all-girl band with queer members that formed in Vancouver and has since relocated to Toronto. They sound nothing like The Kominas and have actually withdrawn their affiliation with taqwacore since the movie was made. According to the band's website, they find the term limiting and they reject the assumption that their band came to exist due to the fictional writings of a white American convert.

At no point in the movie does Knight try to lay down some kind of Islamic punk ideology. In that way, we see punk's influence; taqwacore is anti-ideology. There are no rules. Even as they worship Allah and cover their tour van with pro-Islam graffiti, they simultaneously stand for blasphemy and irreverence. Throughout the movie, jaws dropped when bands sang lyrics like, “I am an Islamist/I am the anti-christ!” Knight talks about the fact that he portrays Muslim punk characters in his book drinking and doing drugs but then admits that he himself has never had a beer in his life. Alternately, they show the band on tour smoking a shit ton of hash when they're in Pakistan. Their stance seems to be, "We do what we want and we call ourselves what we want," and they dare you to disagree.

It is this type ambiguous location that gives taqwacore it's power. Like Knight says in the movie, taqwacore exists to piss everyone off. They exist to piss of mainstream America, which is largely miseducated about Islam. They aim to piss off Islamic conservatives who are patriarchal and who call music and dance haram (a forbidden act). They aim to piss off the typical punk rock atheist who thinks that organized religion just cannot go hand in hand with punk rock.

The most powerful parts of the movie are when The Kominas and Secret Trial Five play to mainstream Muslim audiences both here in the U.S. and also in Pakistan (just The Kominas.) Punk rock is supposed to shake things up in the world, but that is happening less and less as punk rock becomes more insular. We play to each other; we preach to the choir. The Kominas and Secret Trial Five somehow got booked to play this huge Muslim gathering (according to the website, the largest one in the country) and I was literally holding my breath, waiting to see how the audience would react.

Of course, people were outraged, especially when Secret Trial Five took stage because both bands had been told that no female singers would be tolerated at the event. But at the same time, you see teenage girls wearing their veils, looking the way teenage girls did in the 1950s and 60s at rock n roll concerts, freaking the fuck out and taking pictures with their cell phones. As the bands played on, you start to see some smiles and then you see some people start to dance and clap along. Music is amazing. I feel certain that The Kominas and Secret Trial Five changed at least a couple of those people's lives that night.

When The Kominas travel to Pakistan, they put on a totally DIY show on a rooftop in the city. They show the band passing out flyers ahead of time in the streets and getting into debates with strangers about whether non-traditional musical celebration has a place in Islam. There was no pre-established punk scene to rely on so trying to do something like that took an extra leap of faith. The evening of the show, you can see them begin to wonder if anyone at all will show up, but when it turns into a huge block party, you can't help but share in that feeling of triumph the band displays while they play. Punk rock makes dreams come true. You can tell that they'd all somehow accomplished something that they never dreamed was possible, and it was really inspiring to watch.

I'm not excited about this movie because I love to see organized religion and punk rock meet, or even because taqwacore is another space that people of color are carving out for themselves within punk rock. In fact, it was hard for me to not feel a little bit judgmental watching people who call themselves punk pray in mosques and participate in religious rituals. Furthermore, I instantly felt instantly cynical when I learned that Knight was a white guy. The Muslim struggle in the U.S. today isn't just about religion, it's a struggle against racism and xenophobia. The Taqwacore website states plainly, "The Islamic punk music scene would never have existed if it weren’t for [Knight's] 2003 novel, The Taqwacores.” But even though Knight speaks throughout the whole movie with the utmost humility, which is kind of endearing, in the end it's annoying that a white guy gets the credit for starting taqwacore because it just can't be true. As I mentioned before, Secret Trial Five deny that they spawned from the book, and claim independent origins.

I think the beauty of movies like Taqwacore as well as others like, "Trembling Before G-d," a documentary about gay & lesbian orthodox and Hasidic Jews, is that it shows people being something that everyone says cannot be or does not exist. When we say that certain individuals or groups “aren't punk” because they make choices that don't fit into our definition of what punk is, we are denying their right to define themselves as they wish. We also force people who are looking for a home in punk to leave part of their identity —part of who they are— at the door so that they can be accepted, i.e. “You can hang out, as long as you don't talk about __________.” This is just one way that punk continues to be a subculture that alienates individuals who would probably make our communities stronger if they felt more welcome.

As people who are interested in creating an anti-oppressive society, we can't buy into that way of thinking or behaving. As a black person, a queer person and the child of parents from a former British colony in Africa, I can't help but tie the importance of self-definition and self-determination to larger post-colonial struggles, or to the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan or even to the LGBTQI struggle here in the U.S. and around the world.

When we deny someone's identity or choices, we deny reality, and if there's anything I want my politics to be it's realistic. In reality, the most surprising combinations of identities and beliefs can be housed in one body. I know black gay Republicans, anarcho-feminist Muslims, black punk Jehovah's witnesses and more. In order to move forward and create a non-oppressive society, we have to recognize and accept all of the subversion and cultural permutation that are inevitable parts of life, and that ultimately we all benefit from. At some point, we all have to admit that the words that we use to define ourselves, whether it's punk, feminist, Muslim, Christian, queer, or woman, are all words that mean a wide variety of things to the people who use those words on themselves, and that there's nothing we can do to control how those words get used or by whom.

Believe me, you don't wanna hear yourself say, “I don't understand how people get so sucked into religion,” in the same way you might hear someone else say, “I don't understand why someone born as a male would want to be female.” It's worth it to be able to come to that place where you can imagine how something that makes no sense to you in your life can make perfect sense to someone else without writing them off as stupid or insane.

I want to thank the Anarchist People of Color (APOC) movement that began at the first APOC conference in Detrioit in 2003 for helping me to see where anarchism and identity politics meet, and also Candice for proof-reading this and helping me hash out my ideas.