up. But that's not how guys are supposed to think. Me? I ' l l never act my gender. I may be an old pervert. Chronologically I'm old, even if I refuse to act it. A pervert? Well, if we go back to the Latin root it comes from pervertere "overthrow, overturn, corrupt, subvert, abuse... sounds pretty punkrock to me. So m y answer to the guy who called me that? Guilty as charged... and I ' m just getting started. E N D N O T E S : [email subscribers (god@ mykelboard.com) or blog viewers (mykelsblog.blogspot.com/) w i l l get live links and a chance to post comments on the column. Your zines, CDs/records, and... er... private videos... can and should be sent to me at: M y k e l Board, PO Box 137, Prince Street Station, New York N Y 10012] ~>Drug your kids for money dept: Does your child have bad moods? Poor school performance? Difficulty focusing? Even if s/ he doesn't, could you use some extra cash? "Compensation for time and travel." Let us drug your k i d and we'll pay you!!! So says a company called Acurian Health that encourages parents to submit their kids to drug testing... and w i l l pay them cash to do so. Get those welfare kids into something productive... like drugs! Go to w w w . KidsDepressionStudy.com for details. ~>Speaking of act your gender dept.: I ' m i n love. I went to Brooklyn to see my friends World War IX and Blackout Shoppers play at the Trash Bar. Opening for them was this band called inCircles. The girl vocalist/ guitar player is amazing. She moves on stage like Sam McPheeters or that dancing guitar player i n Meryl (sp?). Wow! Best new band I've seen i n ages. A n d that girl, hah! Guitar hero showdown time! No boy is gonna match that! ->Record stores are not dead dept: Used to be that Bushwick was the scary part of NY. N o w it's got an organic bakery... scary i n a different way. But, it also has a great record store: Heaven Street records. N o CDs, but they have an extremely tolerant buying policy. They're honest, and owner Sean sings barefoot w i t h Cult of Youth. Find 'em on Facebook and ask 'em to carry your records! They probably w i l l . ->Faith in humanity... even the Swiss dept: The Nation reports that the residents of Wolfenschiessen, Switzerland polled slightly in favor of a nuclear waste facility near their town. A n industry group figured that they could get more support by giving money to each citizen who endorsed the facility. Instead, local support for the plan went down. The bribe cut the rate of acceptance in half. Even when locals were offered more than $8,000 each, they turned against the program.
Yow! PUNK ROCK, I ' d say. —>Was the harasser acting her gender? dept: The Associated Press reports that the w i d o w of a New York City police officer says her husband committed suicide because his female supervisor demanded sex from him in exchange for a favorable work schedule and job assignments. The w i d o w is now suing. According to the suit, the cop's career depended on his "submission to the sexual advances" of his married supervisor. "Officer Schindler was made to understand that he w o u l d suffer tangible detriment in his job, job assignments, working conditions and future prospects if he d i d not submit to the sexual advances," the suit says. , The pressure was too much and the cop shot himself. You haven't heard this story, but if the dead cop were a woman, I bet you w o u l d have. —>Google Acts Its Race dept: A new study has found racial bias in ad results from Google. Harvard Professor Latanya Sweeney studied names typically associated w i t h African Americans. She found they were 25% more likely to produce Google ads offering background checks or suggesting the person had a criminal record. Sweeney conducted the study after a search for her o w n name turned up an ad reading, Latanya Sweeney, Arrested? w i t h a link offering background checks. Sweeney concluded: "There is discrimination in the delivery of these ads." —>Oh yeah dept: I expect you figured it out. M y last column, about taking over the dictatorship of MRR, was an A p r i l Fool's column. The endnotes, however, were all true.
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For Maximum Rocknroll, from the Penetang Prison When I was contacted by MRR and offered an opportunity to write a guest column, I was humbled and honoured. M y first inclination was to write about the experience of following the Pussy Riot trial from inside an Ontario Prison. I am on the home stretch of a 20-month sentence for my part i n organizing for the riot that graced the streets of Toronto i n the summer of 2010 when the G20 Summit came to town, militarizing the city and bringing w i t h it the so-called leaders of the world's richest countries who, at that meeting,
committed the global economy to ten-totwenty years of an austerity agenda. Austerity is a next phase of global capitalism whereby social spending, education, health care, welfare, social services, etc—is to be cut i n order to keep the capitalist system as profitable as possible for the wealthiest of people, making the poor and middle class pay for the State sponsored bailouts of recklessly greedy bankers and corporate robber barons. Writing from the Central North Correctional Centre of stolen Anishinaabe land, the Pussy Riot trial—which brought pictures of protesters clad i n brightly coloured balaclavas and protest-punk lyrics into my life inside prison via the pages of the daily newspaper—seemed liked an appropriate topic to write about for a punk magazine. The criminalization of dissent is something in common between their case and mine. That topic w o u l d have allowed me to write about the reality that all imprisonment is inherently political, and the politics of criminalization—of the poor, migrants, people of colour, queer and trans people, indigenous people, people struggling w i t h mental health needs, anyone whose very existence challenges the dominant norms of this society—in general. My second thought was to write about Canadian protest-punk, which was immensely important to our community organizing during my years i n KitchenerWaterloo. It has been of tremendous emotional importance to me personally. One of the founders and operators of Revel Time records, was once a member of the direct action collective that was one of the primary avenues for all of my organizing in the years leading up to the No2010 campagin. In addition to working towards the Toronto G20 Summit, that campaign also included organizing against the now defunct North American Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) which was a jacked up and militarized successor to NAFTA, and also against the 2010 Vancouver Olympics under the banners "Homes not Games" and " N o Olympics on Stolen Native Land." RTR bands and like-minded groups—from the Class War Kids to the Rotten—were the musical backbone of the (mostly talk) radio show that I was lucky enough to co-host on Sound FM (100.3) i n Waterloo. Those bands w o u l d also usually play shows at the K W Community Centre for Social Justice (which was opened and operated by the previously mentioned collective, but has since shut down) when they passed through town. I don't know how I w o u l d have made it through a year and a half of restrictive bail conditions (including six months of house
COLUMNS arrest) without the latest albums from t w o Vancouver bands, Cambridge and the Rebel Spell. But I'm not going to write about those things. Instead, I am going to use the opportunity of having access to this space to address a long standing concern of mine which I saw examples of i n some columns from the December issue, including Mariam Bastari's column which contained a valiant defense of MRR against the intrinsically bogus charge of being too "PC". The concern itself can be addressed i n its essence through the often repeated phrase, "Nazi punks fuck off". But on one hand, an easily marketable slogan that so easily fits on a patch or sticker begs to be deconstructed and to have a deeper meaning drawn from it. O n the other hand, Nazi punks fucking off isn't good enough; their apologists too, and all those who have allowed punk to be a place where Nazi scum can develop and fester, all need to fuck off as well—or better yet, work to make p u n k a more anti-racist place in general. Despite the traditional presence of antiracist elements, punk—as an entity—has for a long time served as a haven for neoNazi sub-culture. Yes, punk has also been a force that has fostered street level anti-fascist and anti-racist organizing, propaganda, and confrontation. However, the presence of antifa does not erase the endurance of Nazism and overt white supremacy i n punk scenes. Antifa and anti-racist contingencies i n the w o r l d of punk need to step up their game to eliminate Nazism from the broader punk movement. Punk, as an entity, needs to be more actively aware of (and challenge) how it functions i n the larger socio-political system, which is deeply rooted i n a culture and ongoing history of white supremacy. White supremacy is not just a platform held by neo-Nazi and other intentionally explicitly racist groups. Rather, it is the underlying foundational basis for national legitimacy i n most Western countries. It is not less than the institutionalized and dominant norms and culture of so called modern western civilization. In the N o r t h American content, i n addition to the day-to-day racism experienced by people of colour that is no insidiously inescapable, white supremacy is the m y t h of legitimate nationhood i n countries premised on land theft, ethnic cleansing, slavery and genocide. It is cultures that continue to propagate the mythologies of "founding nations" and "founding fathers"—all colonial migrants settlers—while having the audacity to talk of "illegal immigration." It is governments that rule w i t h the language of freedom and equality while conducting racist
wars overseas and continuing colonial and imperial ethnic cleansing w i t h i n their o w n violently imposed illegitimate boarders. White supremacy is the ongoing social construction of whiteness as superior, and the domination over people of colour, indigenous peoples, and migrants. It is the normalization of white privilege and entitlement, and the idea of whiteness and white-centered culture as the norm. Hate crimes committed by neoNazis and other white nationalists are merely the most obvious and basest expressions of this all-pervasive system. The dominance of whiteness is readily apparent in the entity that is punk. Further, there is far too much acceptance of Nazism and casual association w i t h Nazi symbols. The presence of these symbols casts the entire entity as a racist character, regardless of intentions. Symbols send messages to people, and the presence of these symbols define the character of an entire space by its taint; this is a reality that cannot be shrugged off (no matter how " p u n k " it might be to shrug things off and not give a shit about other people). Fortunately, there are real and meaningful anti-racist tendencies w i t h i n the broader entity. Those of us that identify as anti-racist— especially white people (like myself)—need to fight to normalize that tendency. A n d let's be clear about two things: There is no such thing as reserve-racism. A n d if one does not intentionally act i n anti-racist ways, then that is to act in racist ways (by perpetuating the normalcy of the dominance of whiteness).
of supremacy) is the right thing to do. A n d I can't think of any reasons other than racism, cowardice, or ignorance (or perhaps ignorance's more innocent cousin, naivete) to deny the white privilege that is so predominant in a movement like punk (as it is i n most activist movements as well). A n d whether i n activist movements of i n the entity that is punk (or the places where they intersect and overlap), we should not defend our privilege, we should smash it. I need to close by recognizing that I could have just as easily written a similar column about patriarchy and misogyny. With respect to these all too pervasive dynamics—like w i t h whiteness—punk is but a crust reflection of dominant culture. Punk may be i n revolt against dominant culture, but the revolution is at best ongoing, if it can even be said to have begun. In punk the seeds are there, as they have been from the beginning. The time is now to smash racism, smash patriarchy, smash the state, smash the system. Given that I only have (just over) 90 days left in my sentence at the time of writing, the best way to reach me is through m y blog—www.alexhundert.wordpress.com— where you can also read more of my prison writings. Also, support your local Anarchist Black Cross and any other orgs working to support imprisoned people and to smash the system. Alex Hundert CNCC Unit 5 / 1501 Fuller Ave / Penetanguishenge, O N L 9 M 2H4 / Canada.
Making space for white supremacy and budding Nazism under the guise of championing free speech is itself a grossly racist action. Likewise, posturing as "antiPC" is a form of racism that makes space and creates cover for the most violent and dangerous forms of supremacy, which is not something that should be accepted as part of punk culture. The political organizing for which I have seen imprisoned has always sought to hold anti-racism at its core. The collective which for years I was a part of, much like punk, was dominated by white folks. Sometimes we fail to be good allies to people of colour and indigenous people, but we always strive to do better. A group of a scene or a movement that is predominantly white is exhibiting the patterns of societal white supremacy. This does not make the group or its members irredeemably racist. It does however make imperative a constant anti-racist praxis. I n difference places at different times that w i l l look and feel different, as it w i l l be informed by local contexts and circumstances. But I fail to imagine any circumstance i n which apologizing for Nazis (or tamer expressions
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Lame is Punk! New Orleans. "Hee heee. Why are y o u looking at the ground?" Bren has come up behind me, putting her hand on my back. She usually teases before saying hi. But it's true, while I keep my right hand extended for my o w n interior sense of balance, my left hand on my lap, my thighs clutching a beer, I am keeping my eyes on the cratered tarmac. We're marching in Eris/ Heiress, the anarchist parade. A band fronted by my silky pretty and fierce as fuck friend Tiara is leading the way i n a Cinderella coach pulled by a truck. Things are never smooth, but we've got grease for days. " I ' m having a great time, I swear. But someone has to make sure we don't fall."