Green Day at Gilman, photo by Murray Bowles
In 1988, the peace punks who congregated at 924 Gilman Street in Berkeley, California, had a choice to make: To meet encroaching skinheads with violence or to fight back with the tactics of non-violence. Choices were made, the inevitable schisms from within ensued, and life went on, as the new documentary, Turn It Around: The Story of East Bay Punk, tells. While the story and other tales of punk rock glory illustrate punk’s inherent contradictions and what happens when utopian ideals like egalitarianism and rule-by-committee are put to the test, the film is also in perfect synch with the hate speech controversy happening on the UC campus this fall.
“The film played in Charlottesville a few weeks back,” explained its director, Corbett Redford. “Someone from the audience commented, ‘This is how allies work. Allies stand up.’”
The punks of Gilman, far more of them straight, white, and male than queer, people of color, or women, did indeed stand up to the Nazi strain in their midst. And yet, the politics of waging peace and the how music fits into those politics is often more nuanced and complicated than taking up of pitchforks, tiki torches, or baseball bats.
READ THE WHOLE STORY AT DOWN WITH TYRANNY!
Filed under: Arts and Culture, film, Punk, 924 Gilman, Berkeley, Free Speech, Green Day, Hate Speech, Turn It Around: The Story of East Bay Punk
Denise Sullivan 