Punk Rock Gave Me Life
Michelle Fowle, Cambridge Indivisible Co-Founder and Co-Chair
I never fit into this world. Not because I couldn’t, but because I knew better. Even when I was young, something in me resisted the neat lines, the empty politeness, the pressure to play along. I didn’t know what that meant yet — just that the world felt false, and I wasn’t built for false.
I used to think punk shows were deadly. The stories made it sound like stepping into one would chew you up and spit you out. For a while, I believed it.
Then I went.
And instead of death, I found life.
The noise hit me like a wave — guitars jagged and relentless, drums like a fist pounding at the walls, voices screaming not just into microphones but into the void of everything broken around us. It was messy, sweaty, chaotic. And it was the truest thing I’d ever felt.
Most of those shows weren’t in polished venues. They were in backyards and dive bars all over Southern California — Club Mesa in Costa Mesa, Bogart’s and Fender’s in Long Beach, gigs in Los Angeles, Huntington Beach, Anaheim, San Diego, and wherever else a show could be thrown together. Walking into those rooms, the air was thick — sweat, smoke, spilled beer, the hum of amps waiting to erupt. The walls were scuffed and scarred, the bathrooms disasters, but none of that mattered. What mattered was the electricity: the moment when the lights cut down, the feedback screamed, and the crowd surged forward as if pulled by the same current.
And weaving it all together were the zines. Flipside, Slash, Ink Disease, We Got Power!, No Mag — plus the countless one-offs copied late at night at Kinko’s and passed hand to hand. Crooked staples, smudged ink, collages of headlines and stolen images — they weren’t just about bands. They were roadmaps. They told us where the next shows were, who was speaking out, what injustices were being fought, and which voices needed to be heard. They weren’t background — they were the heartbeat of the scene.
Those zines cracked me open. They gave me the words for what I already knew: the world was a lie, and we didn’t have to accept it. They showed me you didn’t wait for permission to speak or act. You just did it — with a typewriter, scissors, glue, and a copy machine.
Looking back, I see it clearly now: I was an activist already, even if I didn’t have that word yet. Every backyard show was a gathering. Every dive bar gig was an assembly. Every zine was a call to action. Every scream was a refusal to stay quiet.
And that’s exactly what Grant Wong points to in his piece Why America Still Needs Punk Rock: punk has always been about more than music. It was — and still is — about resisting conformity, about exposing the cracks in the system, about daring to build something different when the world insists there’s no alternative. Punk taught me that not fitting in wasn’t the problem. It was the point.
And that through-line never left me. Today, when I write press releases, design handouts, paint protest signs, or organize people into the streets, it’s the same fire. DIY, raw, unapologetic. Don’t wait for permission. Don’t wait for someone else to tell the story. Create it. Spread it. Live it.
I thought punk would kill me. Instead, it gave me language, direction, purpose. It taught me to see the lie, name it, and fight it. And it still does.
