Chris L. Terry

James Spooner Spooner

Black Punk Now

“Let Me Be Misunderstood” Short film by Kash Abdulmalik

Brenda Lopez

Long story short, I ain't changing him  and I don't want to. I didn't change who I was for him either, and that was cause I had an anthem and a community. That's what hardcore was and is for me, just what I needed, right when needed it. I was born a punk…

To know thyself is punk, and to accept what comes with the passage of time is punk.

In terms of rage, I think punk is probably the only musical avenue, besides hip-hop, that re. ally adequately expresses Black rage. It realy adequately expresses all that our ancestors been through, because I feel like rock mu- sic really just honestly channels all of that. It channels oppression and hostility towards the status quo. If you're Black and you get into a mosh pit, it allows you to release everything that you've been upset over. And after you come out of it, you feel like you could conquer the world. It's just so liberating to me. Black music has its different avenues and what emotions you can express. I think punk is the best way to chan- nel our collective rage.

Sabrina D. 

Mosh pits flare for the rest our set; the Black and Brown kids even feel safe to unglue themselves from the walls. In thc cacophony, some hop off tables. Others climb over my amnplifier to jump into the crowd. This is the energy we live for—back home, movement is mandatory, marginalized punks releasing demons gifted from oppression in the dance circles, finding each other's rhythm to bare unity believed to be fables. When songs end, some scream, "More!” Others scream, "Fuck me up!" to fill the silence between songs their cocaine brains cannot stand. None of this is the polite applause of empty bars. This is the earthquake that shatters buildings built by old money, the masters' tools smelted into a language we use speak over white words. For thirty minutes, we are the loudest band on the planet.

The wallflowers say nothing, voices trapped in the maelstrom of white chaos, even their hands go mute when it is time for applause. My hands crawl to the top of my head to undo the locks; they fall over my face like prison cell bars, but then cloud the cheers from my ears as though the sun was being hidden from the earth. This is how we live, anyway—within static where our voices should be so clear, but white noise consumes all the good sound. They pretend to care about us[, then pretend to be us].

“Skateboard Whiplash” in My Echelon Summer by Honeychild Coleman

A hang-up is a metal blade and my hands are cut on your receiver 

If you won't be my receptacle, you won't be my lover either 

“That's so romantic," Cayce said, matter-of-factly, after reading my freshly penned lyrics. Uh oh, I've broken the Cool Chick Facade. Once that guard is down, they can find an easy out by projecting anything onto you to make you feel shame. It's another toxic masculinity power move, nevermind that you’re having this raw experience together. 

Black punk, at its best, offers us the rare opportunity to nakedly pursue freedom. Black punk means creativity, resilience, an actively intersectional political awareness and engagement (or willingness to put in the work to learn), and a fundamental drive to interrogate the hegemony of dominant cultural norms, in the world and within, on every level through exploration and radical self-honesty.

A freedom technology is anything that uplifts access or removes internal or external barriers to Black liberation, joy, accessibility, peace, healing, prosperity, etc., individually and collectively. 

“What are the words you do not yet have? What do you need to say? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence?”

Opt Out - A Conversation with Matt Mitchell; Interview by Ashaki M. Jackson

The public is often keen to serve as witness and jury when watching widely available videos of police killing Black civilians. The presumption that Black people are inherently immoral or external to America's design--thus deserving of being watched closely—is a tenet of how this nation functions. Cameras sprouting from lamp posts, home security systems, Cambridge Analytica, and Amazon's Alexa are surrogates, allowing the net of who is watched to be cast much wider and the watchers to be further obscured.

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