Although I lived three blocks from Food For Thought at the time, these lightly publicized shows passed below my radar. Meanwhile, my disillu- sion with punk was being augmented by other ugly American realities on display before my small-town eyes.
Mere blocks from the Capitol and White House, wretched pockets of violence, poverty and despair festered. In what the re-elected Ronald Reagan dubbed "Morning For America," some Americans had learned to step over other Americans, the multiplying street people that were the consequence of Reaganomics. When a homeless World War II vet named Jesse Carpenter froze to death across the street from the White House shortly before Reagan’s multi-million dollar inaugural, some activists protested, most visibly the inspirational "Christian-anarchist" Community for Creative Nonviolence. Beyond that, few seemed out- raged—including punks—as far as I could see.
For me, if punk was to remain relevant, it needed to step past rhet- oric to organized action. I was not alone in this sentiment. Although few were willing to take matters as far as the Subhumans’ Gerry Hannah had done—imprisoned as one of the "Vancouver Five" for his involvement in a series of political bombings in Canada—such actions bespoke a grow- ing sense that now was the time to turn from word to deed.
Even before Reagan settled in for his second term, there was a process underway on the West Coast that was pushing hardcore punk— or what remained of it—toward more explicit and active radical politics. According to an analysis done by Jeff Goldthorpe in Socialist Review in 1993, "by 1983, squatter activism, critiques by popular bands and fan’zines of punk’s impulsive self-destruction"—ncluding straight edge, of course—"and other activist initiatives (like the Rock Against Reagan Tour) had set the stage for a punk style of protest, if not a full blown politics." A key step in the development of this "punk style of protest" was the linkage in the Bay Area between punks and the Livermore Action Group
Thomson, and neophytes Scott McCloud and Alexis Fleisig formed a band called Lunchmeat. In suburban Virginia, high school freshman Dave Grohl was switching from guitar to drums to join a group with Chris Page, Bryant Mason, and Dave Smith. Originally called Freak Baby, the quartet became Mission Impossible. “Lunchmeat and Mission Impossible were totally inspiring to see, high school kids playing again,” said MacKaye. “Their whole scene was similar to how ours was in early Minor Threat and Teen Idles.”
Not surprisingly, MacKaye was one of those pushing for a revival from behind the scenes. Every Rites of Spring and Beefeater show made MacKaye yearn to be back in a band. Equally inspired was Chris Bald, who was in the front at the first Rites of Spring show and many after that. “ROS was the most incredible band ever to come out of this city,” he said years later. “They came as close as any band ever has to putting words on the feelings I felt for this whole movement.” Bald began to work with MacKaye and Nelson as they tried to assemble the right band to follow Minor Threat.
MacKaye was also working to expand Dischord’s horizons. In early 1985, he went to the U.K. to make an arrangement with John Loder and Southern Studios. After the success of Out of Step, Loder
was willing to use Southern’s money to help underwrite more
who organized events like the nonviolent blockades of Livermore Labs, perhaps the most important nuclear weapons development facility in America. A small but growing (and very visible) faction in the LAG coali- tion were what would be called "peace punks," many of whom had been inspired by the anarchist UK punk band Crass and the confrontational "Stop The City" punk-connected demonstrations in the financial district of London in 1982 and 1983.
According to Goldthorpe, this punk protest style "took on a definite form" during LAG’s "Hall Of Shame Tour" in San Francisco’s financial district. "Unlike most affinity groups, who were sitting in the entrances of target institutions and waiting to get arrested by prior negotiation with police, punk affinity groups held screaming ‘die-ins’ in the middle of the street, moving on before the police could catch up with them. The sober decison to ‘get arrested’ was replaced by the anxious and exhilirating game of avoiding arrest while continuing to disrupt normalcy, and inventing theater in the city streets."
Soon punks were to apply these tactics on their own, most notably at the Democratic and Republican Conventions in the summer of 1984 under the name "the War Chest Tour." The basic approach was, as Goldthorpe noted, " to invade corporate space (usually just the lobby) creating a playground of protest, raucously denouncing, leafletting, dying-in, and generally disrupting business as usual." While Goldthorpe believed that "the War Chest Tour had been consistently outmanuevered and marginalized by the authorities", he also saw that these actions nonetheless helped to create a "loose new community" that were labeled as "punk rock protesters." Inspired by the Tours, punks in and around the Nevada band, Seven Seconds, created an affinity group called Positive Force.
This development sent out ripples across the nation. One of those energized by the actions was Kevin Mattson, who Sharon Cheslow later called "DC’s first peace punk." Kevin had long felt marginalized by harDCore’s general insistence on "personal politics." As time passed, his attacks on the narrowness of DC punk had grown increasingly savage.
Dischord projects. With this funding to float the label between projects, it could release more records and keep the older ones in print.
While in Britain, MacKaye met the anarcho-punk band Crass. Surrounded by these new friends and abundant vegetarian
food, another personal puzzle was solved. “My final thing was that out of all animals, humans are the only ones that can make the choice” to kill or not to kill, MacKaye realized. “Since we can make the choice, we should use it. I suddenly realized that the only reason that I rejected the vegetari- an thing was out of convenience, because everywhere you go they serve meat, because everybody else was eating it.”
MacKaye emphasized that this was his own decision. “It was the same thing as alcohol, I real- ized. [Vegetarianism] is such a log- ical step for straightedge, it’s such a logical step for my thing. As much as Tomas influenced me, he did not make me a vegetarian. I made myself a vegetarian. [Personal decisions] are the only ones that make a difference.”
As 1985 dawned, D.C. punk shows were crowded and frequently dangerous. On New
Oppression, Kevin had more or less forsaken music for ever-more seri- ous activism, helping to organize a "Student Union to Pro m o t e Awareness" (SUPA) at Bethesda Chevy Chase High School, and working with the Student Action Corps for Animals and the Washington Peace Center.
Since its birth in the early 60’s, the Peace Center—which was housed in a Quaker house of worship—had become the major hub for peace and justice work in the DC area. Indeed, during the Vietnam War, it had the dubious honor of having its offices burgalized and its phones tapped by the FBI. When the "punk politics" that had originated in the UK and SF came to DC, mostly via Kevin, the Peace Center would play a support role similar to that of LAG in California.
After the Convention actions, a national coalition called "No Business As Usual" was formed to focus this new style of protest on pre- venting nuclear war. Although NBAU was influenced by the Revolutionary Communist Party—never too popular in DC punk circles— Kevin quickly became involved. As he later wrote "It is time to step out of the boundaries of ‘protest and dissent as usual.’ Our actions must become much more effective and disruptive. . . the normal day-to-day routines of people have to be creatively disrupted. People have to be challenged and made to deal with the situation. . . the normal processes of government have to be shut down." The Peace Center agreed to pro- vide space for Kevin to help organize the DC portion of a nation-wide NBAU day of protest on April 29, 1985.
In a spotlight on a Dead Kennedys concert set to happen in DC the same day, City Paper writer (and old-wave DC punk) Michael Marriote noted that "last July’s Democratic National Convention proved the poten- tial of a burgeoning punk politics: four days of roving, creative demon- strations condemning both political parties culminated in a number of arrests and an end to the notion of American punks as apathetic, incon- sequential counterparts to their British brethren. . . this year the move- ment goes national. April 29 has been declared No Business As Usual Day. Exact details of the day’s demonstrations are unclear but the objec-
Year’s Eve, a planned Lansburgh concert with Black Market Baby, Scream, Reagan Youth, Malefice, and Sacrilege was shifted at the last moment to Georgetown’s Key Theater—without the theater owner’s knowledge. The disorganized event became a frenzy of violence. Rumors that a fan had died proved untrue, but a concertgoer was stabbed, and more than one left bloody and bruised.
Less than a week later, the Wilson Center hosted its largest punk show ever, with nearly 1,000 fans. No problems were apparent when the opening act, Madhouse, took the stage. Although Madhouse’s music was by design slower and more nuanced than most hardcore punk, and thus only marginally “skankable,” slamdanc- ing began almost immediately. Midway through the set, Monica Richards made an innocent joke about skinhead girls.
Suddenly the front of the stage was swarming with skinheads taunting Richards, who had once sported a shaved head herself. “I really made a mistake because this was the new generation of skin- heads,” she said later. “They were throwing lit cigarettes at me and saying things like ‘take off your shirt’.” As the abuse continued, Richards motioned for the band to play “Cut,” a chilling song based on personal experience. “I said, ‘This song is about rape—which I’ve been through!’ These stupid boys, who had just discovered
matter what it takes."
The details of the demo were "unclear" for a good reason; most were made up on the spot as to make it difficult for the police to stymie the plans. Although there were at most 100 demonstrators, nearly as many police showed up. The protest lurched through the federal district, one moment staging a "die-in" in the street or next to a crowded side- walk cafe as Kevin or one of the other organizers gave speeches with bullhorns explaining the action. Just as suddenly as we had fallen, we would leap up and run down the street, the cops in hot pursuit, only to dodge into the lobby of a government building. After "dying" yet again, the group would charge out the door before the startled guards could react.
Tense, exhilarating scenes like these were repeated in more than two dozen cities and college campuses across the USA that day. The protest went on for several hours with a slowly dwindling number of protesters and police, ending up at the Washington Post where the only arrest of the day took place when one of the protesters rushed too far into the building and got nabbed. At the time, Kevin wrote that the day "was an extreme success in that it disrupted the normal processes of Washington DC and made people see that (other) people are angry at the threat of nuclear war and are beginning to ACT.”
While few objective observers would have echoed Kevin’s enthusi- astic assessment, the day was significant. Unlike the movement of the late 1960s, we were up against a newly re-elected, popular president with- out a galvanizing issue like the draft. In this context , NBAU was a good beginning, even if its rhetoric seemed dangerously out of touch with its actual strength. If NBAU had hardly succeeded in stopping "business as usual," for many of its young participants, it was nonetheless a powerful first step into action.
Kevin became a big inspiration to me, as did Chris Bald, who I met through my new friend Danny Ingram. Chris shared his excitement about Rites of Spring and plans for what was beginning to be called "Revolution Summer." Already I had begun to turn my angst towards the
their penises, all said ‘Fuck you!’”
Richards threw herself into the song, spitting venom straight at the skinheads: “I see your face in every man/I feel your hate in every man/I smell your breath/I feel your body/I feel your hate/hate. . . hate. . . hate. . .” It was
a gripping moment, entirely wast- ed on the front row. The kids con- tinued heckling, unchallenged by anyone in the crowd. When the set ended, Ingram leaped from behind the drum set to confront the skin- heads, who just slinked away. Later Richards and Ingram would recall this show as their definitive break from harDCore.
There was a parade of stage divers as Marginal Man and COC continued the show. In between sets, the space was brazenly vandalized, including a small partition systematically destroyed while onlookers chatted obliviously or even cheered on the destruction. When the headlining Circle Jerks came on, singer Keith Morris requested that fans stay off the stage, for a very good reason: He was still recovering from a bro- ken back. Although most people honored Morris’s request, the slamdancing grew even more fevered. When the band began its anthem, “Live Fast, Die Young,” Morris pulled up his shirt to reveal the back brace underneath. It was-
gy punk had brought to me years before. During a pilgrimage to SF punk mecca, the Mabuhay Gardens, shortly before my move to DC, I had learned of Another State of Mind, a film about the 1982 Better Youth Organization tour that had featured DC and Minor Threat prominently. Since the film had never been shown in DC, I decided to arrange a ben- efit premiere that also would help to launch the new activist group.
The final element of my plan fell into place when I picked up the March issue of MRR and read about the Positive Force affinity groups that had sprung up in Reno and then spread to Las Vegas. According to PFLV member Michelle Cernuto, "Positive Force is meant to be a network of affinity groups in places like Las Vegas, San Francisco, Los Angeles, etc. . . " The next step seemed obvious: why not have a Positive Force DC?
At about the same time, Kevin also read the MRR article and arrived at much the same conclusion. Although we had slightly different concepts of what the group would be about—I focusing on its work within the punk community, Kevin on building a DC-area youth activist group that expanded on his work with SUPA, SACA and NBAU—it seemed to make sense to work together.
"Another State Of Mind" proved an effective fundraiser and out- reach tool, bringing out a broad spectrum of DC punks, and raising $800 for CCNV and the Coalition for a New Foreign and Military Policy. The following Saturday—June 15, 1985—Positive Force DC held its first public meeting. Given that American punk was a largely white, middle- class movement, the original PF DC was a diverse group. Neo-hippie high school activists mixed uneasily with mohawked Crass-punks, RCP members, older anarchists, bright-eyed young posi-punks with no ideol- ogy but a desire to learn and to do—and me, a farm boy grad student beaming amidst the chaos.
Although the Yippies and RCP had skulked on the edges of DC punk since the late 70s, Positive Force was the first organized political group from within the DC punk scene, and one of the first anywhere. Soon we would have powerful new allies, for the energy within the resurgent Dischord scene was also building towards eruption.
n’t clear if he intended the gesture as warning or glorification, but the crowd cheered. After this chaotic show, the Wilson Center was closed to punk.
A new venue, Sanctuary Theater, opened—and just as quickly closed when the first two shows (one with GI, MIA, and Phlegm, the other with GBH and Lethal Intent) were accompanied by violence. “There were some real radical punk rockers throwing bottles at cars and throwing a rat at a taxi,” Metrozine reported tartly. “There were plenty of great fights to see. As for the bands,
hell if I know.”
At the NPC office, the term “Revolution Summer” popped out. Initially, it was just a joke about an imaginary uprising against an unpopular NPC supervisor, but something about the term clicked with Pickering. Since her work at NPC was not very strenuous—“I was bored out of my mind!” she laughed—Pickering began making a series of missives, assembled from cutout letters like ransom notes. “NPC paid for everything, they had the Xerox machine, they had the stamps, they had envelopes. We had a lot of energy at this point and we thought maybe we could inspire other people.” The notes were a variation on a general theme: “Be on your toes. This is. . . REVO- LUTION SUMMER.” She began to send them out in unmarked envelopes to the old Georgetown punk core group.
Pickering later called the anonymous notes “corny and cheesy,” yet they roused some of the people who received them. “I think it kind of reinspired the group ethic, the family ethic that people were thinking of you even if you weren’t hanging out, they were thinking of you, they knew you wanted this,” Burnham reflected later.
“Amy was the ‘mother of the revolution’,” said Squip later. “The original punk philosophy was ‘fight bullshit’ and ‘do something real.’ The punk scene was doing neither of those things. Revolution Summer was about getting back into fighting bullshit again.”
Increasingly politicized by his work at theNational Journal, Bald was interested in the daily
demonstrations organized by TransAfrica outside the South African Embassy. One night he had a strange dream: Beefeater was playing its song “Apartheid No” on a flatbed truck on Massachusetts Avenue, the D.C. street known as “Embassy Row.” Bald told Squip about the dream. After deciding that such an exploit was unlikely in the waking world, they struck on a different idea. Why not just take drums and a bunch of punks to the Embassy to make as loud a racket as possible?
For all the good that TransAfrica was doing, the protests were becoming routine. Kept two blocks from the Embassy by a regulation banning protests within 200 yards of a diplomatic build- ing, the protesters marched in all-too-orderly pickets, getting arrested as if on cue. “We thought we’d inject a little spontaneity into it,” Picciotto said. As Pickering’s anonymous letters heralding “Revolution Summer” began to arrive, plans were laid for what would be the first Punk Percussion