Punk Rock & the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election

The 2004 U.S. Presidential Elections presented the Punk rock subculture with a dilemma: to continue its long-standing practice of railing against the system through lyrics, liner notes and stage banter (preaching to the choir) or to spread its message to a wider audience (bringing the gospel to the masses) through grass-roots activism on a national scale. Solely pursuing the former would allow Punk to maintain its hardcore purity, but by sacrificing its reputation as a lived and shared experience of fighting the status quo; the latter action would risk selling out Punk's stance of independence in order to build a coalition of like-minded (if mainstream and non-Punk) voters with the goal of denying a second term to the incumbent President George W. Bush. This paper traces the history of Punk rock in order to show how the subculture built around and constantly building Punk music is, inherently, both political diatribe and political practice. This history establishes the efficacy of the Do-It-Yourself dogma as a means of spreading Punk philosophy through Punk (-influenced) music to an ever-widening audience and as a blueprint for building a political movement based upon anger.