As we engage a study of Christian Fundamentalism and what has proven to be its less than democratic interventions in contemporary cultural contexts, it is worth taking note that such authoritarianism and the divine right to rule informing it is an ancient European tradition whose current structures, in both its Catholic and Protestant manifestations, can be traced back to the hierarchal and “temporal organization” of the Roman empire—the western most provinces of which extended into the heart of northern Europe (Diop, 1987). Europeans brought to the Americas the basic idea that the King is the King and the world is his domain because God said so (Malott, 2008). However, according to Donald A. Grinde (1992) in “Iroquois Political Theory and the Roots of American Democracy” many of the “founding fathers” of the U.S., Benjamin Franklin most notably, rejected this European model drawing instead on the brilliance of the Iroquois system of shared governance designed to ensure democracy and peace by putting power and decision making in the hands of the people united in a confederation of nations and not in the divine right of a ruler. Grinde and others in Exiled in the Land of the Free (Lyons & Mohawk, 1992) document, in great detail, the generosity of the Iroquois leaders in assisting Euro-Americans, before, during and after the American Revolution, in creating a unified Nation composed of the original thirteen colonies as the foundation for long-term peace, freedom, liberty and democracy in North America. Despite the eventual corruption of the United States, and the forceful resurrection of the Columbian pedagogy of conquest and plunder, which, it can be argued, was never completely subverted (Malott, 2008), many non-Native Americans have continued to hold onto the Indigenous ideals of democracy, freedom and liberty, such as the abolitionists of the mid-nineteenth century, among countless others (Grinde, 1992; Smith, 1984). However, we might say that this democratic tradition, commonly associated with European critical theory (i.e. Marxism), is an appropriation because the Native American source of these generous gifts, in the contemporary context, tends not to be cited. For those already engaged in the life-long pursuit of knowledge, this is an easily amendable flaw—requiring of such Western-trained critical theorists/educators an active epistemological and material engagement with Native Studies and Indigenous communities the world over (Ewen, 1994; Kincheloe, 2008). We might say that the critical theoretical tradition, rooted in Indigenous conceptions of freedom and liberty, represents a rich history of opposition to anti-democratic, authoritarian forms of institutionalized power—private (corporate), federal (state), and religious (Clergy/Church), the focus of the present inquiry.As we will see below, the content of the present chapter underscores one location where this antagonistic relationship between democracy (counter-hegemony) and authoritarianism (hegemony) has manifested itself—that is, in the culture war between fundamentalist conservatives and progressive to radical artists in the underground punk rock music scene. Above all else, what this analysis demonstrates is the complex and contradictory nature of social production and re-production and the multiple challenges for counter-hegemonic movement (Malott & Peña, 2004).As alluded to in the above quote, Smith (1984) locates the primary difference between competing approaches to American Christianity in the way the nature of sin is articulated, which demonstrates the difference between a democratic perspective and one based on hierarchical mysticism. That is, are those in poverty simply suffering the wrath of God by paying for their inherent weakness and bad habits, or are they “more sinned against than sinning” (p. 562)? Following Smith (1984), we begin with the recognition that religion has been put to use as a tool of both coercion, as well as a vehicle for justice. However, the object of critique here is the hegemonic tendencies within the contemporary fundamentalist movement. This chapter focuses on one moment of the relatively recent Christian fundamentalist censorship movement. That is, I analyze the use of Christian fundamentalist “values” by right wing politicians in the creation of a reactionary politics of intolerance to silence dissent in music—a decidedly European approach. Because the leaders of the Christian right arguably began their holy culture war against music on those most outside the control of corporate influence and regulation, this chapter looks at not only the attempts to silence the spaces of underground, transgressive culture, but also the ways in which the independents have fought back. First, however, I briefly outline the concrete context that gave way to the current wave of fundamentalism.***During the United States’ formative years, between the mid and late eighteenth century, when its leaders were seeking frequent council from the Iroquois’s many experts on large-scale democratic governance, Ben Franklin and the like were warned that if their many anti-democratic contradictions were not resolved, such as the enslaving of Africans, and a democratically-unaccountable, hierarchical system of income distribution more generally, they should expect serious problems in their future (Lyons & Mohawk, 1992). Current problems and controversies surrounding the US therefore do not seem to be surprising to contemporary Iroquois leaders, such as Chief Oren Lyons of the Turtle Clan, Onondaga Nation, Iroquois Confederacy and professor at SUNY/Buffalo (Lyons, 2005; Lyons & Mohawk, 1992). For example, at the height of the U.S.’s post-World War II global economic hegemony that peaked during the 1960s, a time when America was the envy of the world, the African American community created a civil rights movement demanding a fair share of the pie that would eventually transform into a leading force of revolutionary struggle against a system that seemed unable or unwilling to resolve its own contradictions at the expense of millions of people of color and working people as a whole (Jones & Jefferies, 1998; Lusane, 1998). Convinced the reform-based non-violent initiatives of the civil rights movement were a dead-end, in 1969 Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale started the Black Panther Party (BPP) for Self Defense designed to go beyond the traditional goal of gaining equal opportunity within the system that exists, and rather transgress it entirely. While the BPP and the many movements it inspired, such as the American Indian Movement and the Young Lords, were certainly not free from hegemonic contradictions as its members and leaders dealt or failed to deal with their own internalized oppressions, they were able to spawn a crisis in the U.S. capitalist system, which was most obviously marked by the breakdown of the Nation’s ability to garner its own population’s consent. The second, and ongoing, phase of this crisis has included the bosses attempt to regain social control through restricting access to resources. The political theory behind the policies that were created in this vain has been dubbed neoliberalism. As a result, the wealthiest country in the world, the United States, has the largest gap between the rich and the poor of any industrialized nation, which, in the international community, is common knowledge. Accompanying this economic disempowerment has been a refocused propaganda campaign to indoctrinate the youth whose belief in the system has been continuing to erode. Central to these efforts has been the use of religion.In her classic text, Religion: The Social Context (1992), McGuire situates the emergence of the most recent surge of Christian fundamentalism in the United States as a direct response by the bosses to the “social and political turmoil of the 1960s and 1970s” (McGuire, 1992, p. 218) that led to civil rights legislature and the desegregation of schools (Marsden, 2006). As the bosses consciously devised new methods of plundering the earth, and extracting value from human labor power, an increasing number of the world’s people have been entering the ranks of the poor, the impoverished and the pissed off. Scared of the swelling tides of discontent, the ruling class continues to draw on whatever tactics they have at their disposal to keep the masses in line, such as fear. What has proven especially effective in keeping people scared and in line? Religion. The war launched by Tipper Gore and continued by Joe Lieberman and Lynne Cheney for example, against underground cultures not only reflects how scared elites are of their own populations, but the extent to which fundamentalism has influenced mainstream politics. What is the ruling class scared of? They are scared of what the billions of people around the world they use and abuse everyday have done and are doing to end their own suffering. Again, this is not a new fear. It is not a secret to the powers that be that people are not as stupid as they would have us believe we are. In the United States the ruling elites can only wish working people were as dumb as the schools are designed to make them, paraphrasing Jello Biafra (1991). Contextualizing the ruling class’s cultural attack on the poor and oppressed in the US, Biafra (1998) argues that, ultimately, this campaign, outlined below, is an attempt to silence the spokespersons of an increasingly disgruntled populous.The AttackBefore we proceed with our discussion on censorship, what I have dubbed for the purposes of this essay, “the attack,” let us pause for a moment and consider how fundamentalism has been defined and characterized by leading scholars in the field of religious studies. According to George Marsden (1991) in Understanding Fundamentalism and EvangelicalismAn American fundamentalist is an evangelical who is militant in opposition to liberal theology in the churches or to changes in cultural values or mores, such as those associated with secular “humanism…” Fundamentalists are a subtype of evangelicals and militancy is crucial to their outlook. Fundamentalists are not just religious conservatives, they are conservatives who are willing to take a stand and fight. (p. 1)Marsden (1991) puts special emphasis on the militancy of fundamentalists. It is precisely this militancy, what we might call right-wing activism, that has made fundamentalism such a powerful tool for mobilizing against those proclaimed to be enemies of God. However, the relative success of the fundamentalists cannot be attributed solely to its militancy. Such militancy would be useless if it were not for its anti-intellectualism because of its absurd propositions, such as blaming teen suicide and gang violence on rock n’ roll and rap/hip-hop music. Anti-intellectualism has been a defining characteristic of fundamentalism throughout its history. According to George Marsden (2006) in his critically acclaimed Fundamentalism and American Culture, since at least the first half of the twentieth century, fundamentalists have been accused of being ignoramuses, bigots, against reason, over-emphasizing emotion, and motivated by a desire to support, without question, the status quo. As a result, the right-wing fundamentalist religious movement has been widely critiqued as nothing more than a ruse to foster civil obedience among an increasingly impoverished, miseducated, alienated, and disgruntled citizenry. Commenting on the irony within this use of Chrisitianity, Mumia Abu-Jamal (1997), himself a victim of severe state-censorship, commentsIsn’t it odd that Christendom—that huge body of humankind that claims spiritual descent from the Jewish carpenter of Nazareth—claims to prey to and adore a being who was a prisoner of Roman power, an inmate on the empire’s death row? That the one it considers the personification of the Creator of the Universe was tortured, humiliated, beaten, and crucified on a barren scrap of land on the imperial periphery, at Golgatha, the place of the skull? That the majority of its adherents strenuously support the State’s execution of thousands of imprisoned citizens? That the overwhelming majority of its judges, prosecutors, and lawyers—those who condemn, prosecute, and sell out the condemned—claim to be followers of the fettered, spat-upon, naked God? (Abu-Jamal, 1997, p. 39)Is it not also odd that an increasing number of American Christian leaders, most notably TV-evangelical fundamentalists such as Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, support the usage of their God to not only silence the condemned, as noted above, but to condemn those who deviate from their own set of beliefs? Perhaps this phenomena is not so much “odd,” but, again, indicative of the tendency within contemporary right-wing Christian fundamentalism, according to the late prominent theologian, Vine Deloria (1994), among many others, to not be informed by the “actual scholarly knowledge of Jesus and his times, the nature of the Roman world, and the movement of the early church” (p. 231), but by their own “traditional mythologies of American life” (Deloria, 1994, p. 226)—in a word, their anti-intellectualism. Such mythologies tend to be informed by a version of the Protestant work ethic that explains the accumulation of wealth as God’s reward for those who have been good Christians—and a good Christian in this context is one who uncritically works hard for the bosses and is intolerant of any ideas or values that differ from those held by the conservative right. The absence of historical and scholarly knowledge and the perspective it offers has enabled today’s leading fundamentalists to remain secure in their ideology “because it is the idealized, law-abiding, goody-goody projections of themselves, which they call Jesus, that forms the object of their devotion” (Deloria, 1994, p. 231).As alluded to above, what distinguishes this contemporary fundamentalism from the movement of the 1920s “…is its deep involvement in mainstream national politics” whose adherents have currently been estimated to be in the hundreds of millions (Marsden, 2006, p. 232). Most significantly signaling the political rise of fundamentalism in the contemporary era was Ronald Reagan’s successful campaign for governor of California in 1966 made possible by the support of the religious right (Marsden, 2006). President Reagan therefore ushered in a new wave of fundamentalist-elected presidents, and in so doing marked an era of national, militant anti-intellectualism that has remained very much alive and well into the present moment. As a primary influence of Tipper Gore’s campaign against popular music—a campaign based on the laughable assumption that rock music is responsible for social problems such as teen suicide, teen pregnancy and drug use—the Reagan/Bush era has had deep ramifications with long-lasting implications. In her book, Raising PG Kids in an X-Rated Society, Tipper Gore (1987) notes that, “President Reagan, in announcing plans for a new national strategy against illegal drugs, pointed directly to the influence of rock music on drug use” (p. 133). In making her case, Gore (1987) quotes Reagan, who, essentially, has argued that rock musicians have rendered drug use socially acceptable by making their own usage public and part of their persona thereby contributing to the increase in teen consumption and, paradoxically, to both suicide and sex. Nowhere in this discourse of sin and temptation are structural factors mentioned, such as the alienating and exploitative nature of capitalist work and consumer society, for possible explanations as to why youth might find appealing the temporary relief from the daily reality of their lives offered by some mind-altering substances. The conservatives also deny any possible benefits, such as a critical perspective on material reality, offered by a temporary change in consciousness. Rather, it is the assumed immoral aspects of popular culture that supposedly account for what is considered to be the deviant behavior of an easily influenced youth. It therefore follows that popular culture must be regulated to protect the children. What could be better suited for this work in an American context than the anti-intellectualism and militancy of right-wing Christian fundamentalism?However, while Tipper Gore and her gang, like Reagan before them, tend not to be openly avid fundamentalists, they are firmly aligned and have been described as serving as a political front for this contemporary Christian inquisition under the guise of “protecting the children” (Biafra, 1998). One need only browse through her book, Raising PG Kids in an X-Rated Society, mentioned above, to begin to notice Gore’s connection to fundamentalism. For example, in describing the early development of the Parent Music Resource Center (PMRC), which turned out to be one of the most influential strong arms of the early anti-rock censorship movement, Gore (1987) notes that In May of 1985, we set out to alert other parents in our community [of porn rock]. [We]…arranged for Jeff Ling…a youth minister at a suburban Virginia church, to give a slide presentation graphically illustrating the worst excesses in rock music…aimed at the teenage market. We invited the public, community leaders, our friends (some of whom hold public office), and representatives of the music industry. (p. 19)From the beginning, therefore, the PMRC can be understood as a form of covert fundamentalist activism—that is, anti-intellectual militancy. What came from these first engagements was an attempt to get the large music publishers, such as Warner Brothers, Capitol, and RCA, to include lyrics with their albums so radio stations could more efficiently detect sexual and violent content inappropriate for their audience. Gore (1987) notes that record companies “were not so excited” referring to Lenny Waronker’s comment that it “smells of censorship” (p. 21). Dedicated in their cause and therefore unwilling to give up Gore and the PMRC then turned to Stan Gortikov for advice, president of the recording industry’s trade group, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). What emerged was a “strategy” Gore (1987) characterized as “simple,” which included building “a consumer movement to put pressure on the industry” (Gore, 1987, p. 22). While Gore and the fundamentalists come from the ruling class and are staunch supporters of capitalism, they have not hesitated to punish capitalists who profit from dangerous ideas—that is, ideas that are either deemed a threat to the social order by outright revolution and socialism, for example, or ideas deemed to be morally and/or culturally deviant such as masturbating in public as alluded to in a popular 1980s Prince song, “Darling Nikki,” that Tipper seems to have had a difficult time appreciating. Reflecting on the experience of having heard the song with her daughter Tipper (1987) writes I couldn’t believe my ears! The vulgar lyrics [masturbating with a magazine] embarrassed both of us. At first I was stunned—then I got mad! Millions of Americans were buying Purple Rain with no idea what to expect. Thousands of parents were giving the album to their children… (p. 17)There is substantial evidence pointing to the existence of a real crisis disproportionately effecting children that is indeed cause for alarm. However, contrary to the story told by Gore (1987) and other conservative elites, the source is primarily economic, not cultural. The attack on social programs and the driving down of wages that defined the 1980s has resulted in children, especially children of color, comprising the most impoverished group in the United States (Albelda, et al, 1988). Nowhere in her book does Gore mention the trickle-down, neoliberal economic policies that have caused real and measurable damages to children since at least the 1980s (see Ackerman, 1982), but rather hysterically points the finger at Prince (and others) for singing about a girl rubbing herself in a hotel lobby. In their campaign to define the parameters of public discourse concerning the wellbeing of children it should not be surprising that Gore and the PMRC fundamentalists turned to public school organizations for support. Publicly aligned with the National Congress of Parents and Teachers (PTA), the PMRC was determined to force the music industry into a “solution” that was “palatable” to their particular right-wing, fundamentalist sensibilities. The PMRC’s media blitz designed to expose “the dangers” of “porn rock” was wildly successful as they drew national attention from radio, television, magazine, and newspaper media outlets (Gore, 1987). The success of this campaign has been attributed to the fact that the architects of the PMRC were the wives of powerful legislators and politicians, such as Tipper’s husband, former democratic vice president Al Gore who was a senator during the height of the PMRC (Fischer, 2003).Responding to critics that contend that the PMRC’s movement against music violates artists First Amendment rights, Gore (1987) argued that they did not advocate the banning “of even the most offensive” records, but rather, sought to inform consumers of the content of their musical purchases through a labeling system designed to “protect…children from explicit messages that they are not mature enough to understand or deal with” (pp. 26-27). The “Explicit Lyrics—Parental Advisory” labels that came out of this campaign have been dubbed “Tipper Stickers” by proponents of the independent music scene. Gore (1987) has commented that the success of this labeling system has provided an invaluable tool in assisting parents in “avoid[ing] the twisted tyranny of explicitness in the public domain” propagated by “a few warped artists [and] their brand of rock music [that] has become a Trojan Horse, rolling explicit sex and violence into our homes” (pp. 28-29). The result of this labeling system, as we will see below, has limited the ability of small independent record labels to get their albums into the large chain stores keeping them out of the hands of the majority of Americans who live outside the large urban centers.***The view of the world endorsed by Christian fundamentalism, its axiology and ontology, for example, by definition, has made itself personally responsible for eradicating all competing philosophical perspectives. In the realm of popular music the fundamentalist axiology (what is good and bad) is based on the assumption that Paul McCartney of the Beatles and Mike Love of the Beach Boys are good because they, like Tipper, are “disturbed by the entertainment industry’s penchant for the violent and explicit,” and that the Dead Kennedys and Prince, for example, are bad because they represent the “moral and artistic decline of American entertainment” (Gore, 1987, p. 167). The ontological (the nature of the universe) perspective behind these axiological assumptions is that God is the center of the universe and the white middle-class puritanical culture of many fundamentalist leaders represents the highest level of moral development, rendering its adherents responsible for forcing it on the rest of humanity. However, this work of God has not proven too glamorous to be mediated by market mechanisms. Because the independent record labels tend to be far less economically endowed compared to the major labels (that are parts of much larger international multimedia empires), it has been deemed more efficient, economically, to go after the fiscally-impaired smaller companies first, as it has been assumed that they are easier to bankrupt and thus silence. In the early days of the contemporary censorship movement during the late 1980s its leaders publicly despised artists such as Ozzy Ozbourne and Prince (Gore, 1987), but these widely popular employees of some of the world’s largest corporations were often too expensive as cultural targets. The fundamentalists would have to settle with Jello Biafra, original Dead Kennedys front man and founder of Alternative Tentacles Records (Biafra, 1991). On April, 15 1986 Biafra received a group of unexpected visitors at his San Francisco flat—nine San Francisco and Los Angeles police officers searching for the “harmful matter” he was suspected of distributing. That harmful matter included a record, Frankenchrist by Biafra’s band, the Dead Kennedys. In the album was a reproduction of a painting by Swiss artist H.R. Giger, entitled “Penis Landscape.” In their search of his apartment they came across a number of Alternative Tentacles releases, including an album by the Butthole Surfers. After the discovery Biafra reported that the police inquired “are you involved with them too?” (Biafra, 1989). After two and half hours of interrogation and tearing apart his house, the police left with three copies of the Frankenchrist record, a few extra copies of the Giger poster, Biafra’s personal mail, and some legal documents leaving Jello suspicious that they had been conducting surveillance and gathering intelligence on the underground music scene for a long time. A few months later Biafra and four other people were charged with one count each by the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office with the distribution of harmful matter to minors with the maximum penalty of one year in jail and a two thousand dollar fine (Biafra, 1987, 1989, 1991, 1998). The PMRC’s “truth in packaging laws” were in effect and it was therefore argued that the Dead Kennedys record, Frankenchrist, was in violation because copies were not fitted with the required “Parental Advisory” sticker at time of purchase. Instead, the records were adorned with the mockingly sarcastic label that made fun of the “Tipper Sticker.” The evening these charges were made public the prosecuting attorney (the City Attorney from LA) went on the news arguing that “we feel this is a cost-effective way of sending a message that we are going to prosecute offenders” (Biafra, 1989). Again, targeting the Dead Kennedys was deemed “cost-effective” because they were small and relatively powerless. What was the message being sent? According to Biafra, the state was telling record stores that if they wanted to avoid problems with the police, they should not carry Dead Kennedys records, which effectively blackballed their music for years to come. Even though the charges were eventually dropped after a lengthy trial, Biafra and his co-conspirators nevertheless paid a high price, that is, eighty thousand dollars and a year and a half of their lives in court. The chain store that sold the record not only took the Frankenchrist album off the shelf, they took all the records they ever made off all their shelves in all their stores throughout the United States. The damage, as it were, had been done (Biafra, 1989). Not only have the fundamentalists gone after music and alternative culture through laws and legislature, but they continue to use media in an attempt to scare kids away from the evils of devil music such as heavy metal, punk rock and rap/hip hop. The recent Hell House phenomenon stands as a scary example. The roughly thirty year old “Hell House” phenomena, popularized by Jerry Falwell, is a prime example of how fundamentalists use scare tactics to foster a strict dogma of behavior and belief. At hundreds of active Hell Houses in service around Halloween in North America “customers” are led through a number of scenes, acted out by real people in full drama right before your very eyes, designed to highlight the consequences (which is always going to hell and suffering for eternity) of abortion, gay-marriage, homosexuality in general, teaching of evolution in school, and listening to rap, heavy metal and punk music, for example. As we will see below, these outrageous claims by fundamentalists have provided the underground punk music scene’s push back with a seemingly unlimited supply of material for sarcastic songs. Central to this discussion will be the direction Biafra has taken Alternative Tentacles since 1979-1980 as a form of transformative, cultural-resistance, which, at its core, has been philosophical (see conclusion).The Push BackOne of the consequences of the “distribution of harmful matter to minors” charges and the subsequent court case outlined above was the breakup of the Dead Kennedys. However, over the years Jello Biafra has continued to make music with a number of bands, many of whom have been signed with his label, Alternative Tentacles, such as Nomeansno. As a result of the trial Biafra also began a long career making records and touring as a spoken word artist informing the public of the Christian fundamentalist campaign against alternative culture based on his personal experience. His first spoken word record, No More Cocoons, came out in 1987. Since then he has published hours and hours of lively, hilarious, fact-filled commentary on the nature of power and how it is exercised. Shedding light on his method of collecting, organizing and analyzing information, which is the stuff of his spoken word performances, Biafra comments in an interview with V. Vale (2001)A lot of what I know comes from articles or anecdotes people send me or tell me…I read commercial mags and daily papers…it’s important to analyze what they want you to think. Noam Chomsky reads the Wall Street Journal and a lot of the business magazines because they are much more open with each other about what their dirty plans and visions are. (p. 183)The publication of Biafra’s first spoken word album marked the beginning of a new kind of punk record—the lecture/commentary—which, in affect, deepened the democratic impulses of Alternative Tentacles and the punk movement more generally. Milagros Peña and I (2004) document the development of these trends in our book Punk Rockers’ Revolution: A Pedagogy of Race, Class, and Gender where we analyze message trends over time on three record labels, Alternative Tentacles, SST, and Epitaph. What follows is an updated, summative version of our findings focusing on Alternative Tentacles, which underscores the contemporary relevance of punk as a force of counter-hegemony. Theoretically, our study rejected a commonly held belief among Frankfurt School theorists such as Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer who argued that popular culture is an embodiment of the ideas, values and beliefs of the dominant culture and therefore has no redeeming qualities. We were equally dissatisfied with the romantic idea that subcultures such as punk rock are not affected by the hegemony that permeates the dominant society and therefore manifest themselves as pure forms of counter-hegemony. What drew our attention were more complex understandings of cultural reproduction and production in the theories of resistance found in the work of scholars such as Paul Willis (1977) and his ground breaking study of student resistance. For me it has been Paulo Freire’s many books that provide the most comprehensive theoretical context to understand the complex and contradictory nature of this phenomenon. Freire consistently argues that the goal of education in an authoritarian society (such as the US) is to condition the minds of working people to accept their subordination as natural and inevitable. Such indoctrination is a direct attack on a people’s humanity, on their creativity. While these forms of manipulation are unquestionably destructive and limit the possibility for humanization, they can never be complete. In other words, while ones humanity can be limited, it can never be totally destroyed. That is, people have the capacity to become conscious of their own consciousness, and therefore the potential to become revolutionaries. However, as men and women engage in the never ending process of reflection and action, their hegemonic conditioning, what they have inherited, inevitably gets in the way of what they strive to acquire, that is, counter-hegemonic consciousness. When we study the consciously counter-hegemonic spaces created by punk rockers, we will therefore find elements of that which has been inherited, such as sexism, re-emerge in that which is attempting to be acquired. The extent to which our practice is free of hegemony, generally speaking, depends on our willingness to critically reflect on ourselves and change our actions accordingly. After scientifically analyzing message trends over time, I can say with confidence that Alternative Tentacles has become more counter-hegemonic over time. While the amount of content coded as counter-hegemonic remained relatively consistent between the 1980s and 1990s (around 80%), the message presenters became less white and less male. As a result of these findings, we began talking about punk rock not so much as defined by a particular musical style or aesthetic, but as an increasingly democratized cultural space. As mentioned above, it has been the spoken word record that has opened up new possibilities within spaces created by punk rockers. Alternative Tentacles, in collaboration with AK Press, has published dozens of such records by revolutionaries from all walks of life from Earth First! activist Judi Bari to former Black Panther Party and Community Party USA member Angela Davis. The list of spoken word titles offered by Alternative Tentacles/AK Press speaks for itself in terms of just one area in which the label has contributed to counter-hegemonic struggle. While the following list is not comprehensive, it offers an instructive representative sample• Noam Chomsky: The Emerging Framework of World Power• Noam Chomsky: Case Studies in Hypocrisy: U.S. Human Rights Policy: Rhetoric & Practice• Noam Chomsky: New War on Terrorism• Noam Chomsky: Propaganda and Control of the Public mind• Ward Churchill: Monkeywrenching the New World Order• Ward Churchill: In a Pig’s Eye: Reflections on the Police State, Repression, and Native America• Angel Davis: The Prison Industrial Complex• Greg Palast: Live from the Armed Madhouse• Robert Fisk: War, Journalism, and the Middle East• Judi Bari: Who Bombed Judi Bari?• Michael Parenti: Rulers of the Planet• Mumia Abu-Jamal: All Things Censored• Jello Biafra: If Evolution is Outlawed, Only Outlaws will Evolve• Jello Biafra: I Blow Minds for a Living• Jello Biafra: Beyond the Valley of the Gift Police• Jello Biafra: Become the Media• Jello Biafra: In the Grip of Official Treason• Howard Zinn: A People’s History of the United States• Jim Hightower: The People are Revolting (in the very best sense of that word)Because people who are into punk rock tend to follow closely what the labels are doing, publishing Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Ward Churchill, and Michael Parenti lectures, for example, has had the effect of exposing people to ideas that would not otherwise have had such exposure—hats off to Biafra, a brilliant idea. As a result, we might say that not only did the “distribution of harmful matter to minors” charges fail to silence Biafra and stop Alternative Tentacles as a form of cultural counter-hegemony, but in some ways it made them more effective having had the experience of being attacked directly—and surviving. It must be noted that the economic implications have been long-lasting as the label struggles this very moment. While the spoken word phenomenon has been an important development for Alternative Tentacles, which Biafra himself has used to expose the new and old Tippers and their PMRCs in his many “Talk[s] on Censorship” over the years, and in so doing, demonstrating the connection between the fundamentalists and the White House, what follows is a look at some recent song lyrics that serve the same function.***Sarcastically referring to the prominent Christian leader Billy Graham’s questionable professional training and subsequent theological praxis Deloria (1994) comments, “having never attended a seminary, he did not have the opportunity to study Christian history or doctrine and had no chance to be led astray by the facts” (p. 226). Similarly, the recent sarcasm within the song “Leaving Jesusland” (2006), by legendary punk rock band, NOFX, can be contextualized within the preceding analysis offered by Deloria (1994). In his opening verse, “Fat Mike,” NOFX lead vocalist and bass player, sings We call the heartland, not very smart land IQ’s generally low and threat levels are high They got a mandate, they don’t want man-dates They got so many hates and people to despise…While the message transmitted though Jesusland is clear and, as we have seen above, relatively accurate, as critical educators we are compelled to mention, if only as a side note, that associating IQ with intelligence uncritically legitimizes the often racist biases built into the tests themselves. However, the anti-intellectualism within the fundamentalist movement is well-documented (Marsden, 2006), and NOFX’s intended message and critique therefore remain relevant. Not only does the analysis offered by NOFX, and other punk bands discussed below, extend our understanding of fundamentalism, but it also demonstrates the widespread opposition to restrictive dogmas within organic, cultural spaces such as those created and recreated by punk rockers—the object of attack by prominent ring wing Christian fundamentalists, explored above. At its finer moments punk rock therefore acts as a keeper of hope, an ontological human need (Freire, 1992).The most transgressive of the small independent labels, noted above, has arguably been Alternative Tentacles (Malott & Peña, 2004). Since its inception Alternative Tentacles has consistently supported and endorsed publications that firmly transgress the basic structures of power and challenge conservative values of intolerance (Malott & Peña, 2004). In “Jesus was a terrorist” by Jello Biafra with Nomeansno (1991) Biafra echoes the irony that surrounds the fundamentalist movementJesus was a terroristEnemy of the state…Today bible-thumping cannibalsReap money from his name…Again, such lyrics point to the hypocrisy of right-wing Christian fundamentalists who claim to be followers of the rebel-leader Jesus while simultaneously persecuting contemporary revolutionaries, which Biafra (1987, 1989, 1991, 2000) has also consistently done through his spoken word performances. Echoing this sentiment in “Christian? Christ-like?,” another Alternative Tentacles spoken word artist, Mumia Abu-Jamal (1997), speaking from Pennsylvania’s death-row, notes that “Christianity became, in America, the faith of the slavemaster, the alleged belief of the rich, the protector of the propertied. For the slave, though, it was more farce than faith; in his eyes what was truly worshipped by all was wealth” (p. 45). Another relatively recent Alternative Tentacles release, New Dark Age Parade (2006) by one of Canada’s most influential punk bands of the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Subhumans (not to be confused with the UK Subhumans), offer yet another voice critiquing Christian hypocrisy focusing on their propensity for violence. In their hard-hitting song “I Got Religion” the Subhumans sarcastically speak from the perspective of a “born again” shedding light into their understanding of the mind of the converted under the influence of white-supremacist, war-mongering fundamentalist doctrine. In their opening verse musician and political activist Gerry Hannah writes, “I’ve been born again and now I’m lily-white. I want to prove my faith and get into a fight.” Bringing the collective implications of this white-God-laden-violence into clear focus, the song, reaching a crescendo, indignantly continuesI want to start a war and show my master’s wrathI want to leave a bloody ruined aftermathI’m always free from guilt whatever I may doI can always tell them it was god who told me toIn another track, “Clash of the Intransigents,” which again takes aim at the violence that often surrounds religious fundamentalism, in both Christian and Islamic manifestations, the Subhumans (2006) offer a faith-centered analysis of the United States’ invasion of the Middle-East Killing a family won’t get you to heaven Saluting a flag won’t make your country secureIt’s time to say no to this unholy destruction…I question your theologyFollowing this verse the first two lines of the “Clash of the Intransigents” chorus, “Is an act divine when it’s written in blood? Are a people free when they’re dead in the mud?,” captures the essence of this genuinely old-school sounding (harsh and aggressive with the harmonic smoothness of pop) punk album, “New Dark Age Parade,” as a whole. The record’s artwork contributes significantly to the album’s message. The cover displays an image embodying the signifiers of a white, nuclear, middle-class family taken from a 1950s magazine. The father, mother, and son (holding the family dog), standing arm-in-arm, are all smiling adorning cheeks bright with redness. This essentialist image of the white American family is situated in the context of a sky filled with the silhouettes of World War II United States fighter plains. The backdrop of these images is alternating bright yellow and light yellow sunrays contributing to the sense of uneasy happiness the cover art engenders. Adding a final layer of contrast the header bears a bold black and white “SUBHUMANS,” the accompanying footer similarly reads “NEW DARK AGE PARADE,” so as not to leave any doubt in the viewers minds as to what the title refers to. While the Subhumans’ record draws on the use of cleaver irony—a shallow, manufactured happiness in the context of the death and destruction indicative of war, all cloaked in the essentialist anti-intellectualism of religious fundamentalism—Nausea, another Alternative Tentacles band, transmits similar messages but contributes to a slightly different tradition, or sub-genre, within the punk movement. One of Nausea’s (2006) recent AT re-issues, “The Punk Terrorist Anthology Vol. 1,” rather than employing the cleaver sarcasm and irony of pop-punk bands such as the Subhumans and NOFX, for example, draw on the gritty and grimy, harshness of hardcore punk rock in their images, lyrics, and sound. The cover of “The Punk Terrorist Anthology Vol. 1” makes no attempt at subtlety. The background displays a torn and tattered US flag held together with safety pins. Placed on top of this stained and corroding symbol of patriotism is an upside-down, white, crucified, and bloodied Jesus figure. Nausea is written across the top in a font we might aptly dub electrocuted. Emblazoned along the bottom of the composition in a font that looks like jagged handwriting is the name of the album, “The Punk Terrorist Anthology Vol. 1.” As a whole this hardcore cover art would surely offend any patriotic Christian—clearly the intended effect. The song titles and lyrics, as we will see, are represented well by the record’s artwork. Of particular interest here are the songs “Cybergod,” “Body of Christ,” and “Godless.” In “Cybergod” (2006), for example, lyricists “Al” and “Amy” spew out the following lyrics over a grinding guitar and driving drum beat His omnipresent power is felt in every home… You know without his guidance you surely would be lost… Praise the Cybergod for the fools you put in power… Praise the Cybergod for a world of miseryThe message is clear: TV evangelicals serve hegemonic interests by equating happiness with “money and fast cars” and by defining religiosity as unquestioning obedience to the self-appointed representatives of God. In short, like other critics, punk rock and otherwise, Nausea takes aim at the exploitative and destructive nature of mindless anti-intellectual fundamentalist Christianity. In “Godless” Nausea (2006) offers not just a critique of right-wing Christian fundamentalism but also a personal rejection of its attempt to control all of social life. Again, Al and Amy unleash the following lyrical assault Take your religious chains You don’t own my soul You’ve…blessed us with this living hell Your pious solve their problems with their gunsSuch straightforward verses in Godless are accompanied by a chorus that warns mainstream religious leaders to “beware” of their “Godhood” because “they will rebel,” which demonstrates a strong sense of agency not uncommon within the Do It Yourself (DIY) punk movement. Providing one of the most interesting challenges to “the faith of the slavemaster” on Alternative Tentacles are the self-identified fundamentalist Christian punk rockers, the Knights of the New Crusade, who sing about kicking big-money fundamentalists out of the church for using the Good Word to get rich. Their two releases, “My God is Alive! Sorry About Yours” (2005) and “A Challenge to the Cowards of Christendom” (2006) together offer over twenty tracks of the most comprehensive accounts of Christian hypocrisy in musical form to date. An example of their lyrics from the Cowards of Christendom (2006) include, “some of the people who get on our case for being Knights are under the influence of the same war-mongering demons as the politicians who ignore the commandments that Jesus affirmed.” The Knights’ lyrics, such as these, are sung over a garage punk sound that is about as raw as it comes. Their look?—they appear to be Knights Templar’s taken right out of a movie about the middle-ages. The Knights have seemed to have left most of their reviewers—reviewers who typically review AT releases—utterly confused. Are they for real, or are they a joke gone too far? No one seems to know for sure, but the consensus seems to be that they may actually mean what they say, and say what they mean. They have states that their own personal mission is to “take Christianity back from the powerful hypocrites who have hijacked it and to make Christian rock that actually rocks.” While their critiques of right-wing Christian fundamentalism are not uncommon within the cultural spaces of left-wing/counter-hegemonic punk rock, their positionality as white-Christian-fundamentalists against greed and war, as far as I know, is one hundred percent original. I must admit, however, even though the conceptual ground from which punk rock has been built is tension and paradox, the contradiction between The Knights’ identification with the Crusading Christians of the middle-ages that created Christopher Columbus and his lasting spirit of conquest and plunder and their simultaneous call for peace and democracy, leaves me a bit uneasy. Again, it can not be overstressed that The Knights of the New Crusade are an aberration in the punk scene. While it is a common practice for punk rocker’s to call themselves what they are protesting, such as the left-wing, activist punk band Riot Cop who sing about their own experiences battling riot police in the streets as part of the struggle against the capitalist system of dehumanization and exploitation, The Knights of the New Crusade argue that they are re-appropriating Christianity from corruption. In other words, as Riot Cop resist what they call themselves; The Knights also resist what they call themselves while simultaneously embracing what they call themselves through a process of re-appropriation. However, The Knights maintain the appearance of the old soldiers of Christian imperialists without a trace of sarcasm or comedy—they seem to be serious. Because of the magnitude of what their image represents—a long legacy of genocidal greed and intolerance predating Columbus by millennia—I am not ready to fully embrace The Knights as Biafra possibly has done as indicated by his signing them to his label. One more twist: as an avid proponent of democratic practice and embracing the Zapatista idea of a world where many worlds fit, I feel more enlightened and aware of the concrete context of ideas and interventions as a result of having been exposed to The Knights. That is, my understanding of punk rock, Christianity and social protest as part of the complex and contradictory nature of social production and re-production (change) has been enhanced.ConclusionWhat this analysis demonstrates is that the hegemonic struggle to maintain a hierarchy of power and privilege in the material world, the concrete context, at its heart, is cultural, as argued by the late Italian Communist Party member, Antonio Gramsci, after being imprisoned for his beliefs during the First World War. Situating this struggle over the hearts and minds of men and women and therefore the relationships that define our existence in the context of philosophy, Jonathan Israel (2006) notesOnly philosophy can cause a true ‘revolution’… A revolutionary shift is a shift in understanding, something which, though intimately driven by the long-term processes of social change, economic development, and institutional adaptation, is in itself a product of ‘philosophy’ since only philosophy can transform our mental picture of the world and its basic categories…Most modern readers [however] resist attempts to envisage ‘philosophy’ as what defines the human condition. (p. 13)Philosophy, from this perspective, is the lens through which we view the world, and ultimately, informs our daily interventions and interactions in the world. Every conscious, functioning person has a particular way they think about and make sense of the world, which we can call our philosophy—everyone therefore has one. It follows that every song is written from one or more philosophical perspectives. Popular music, in complex and contradictory ways, both accommodates and resists dominant society. Censorship, as described throughout this chapter, is thus an attempt to control public debate and discussion, and therefore philosophy, by setting strict parameters for defining acceptable speech and/or art. However, those who systematically study this phenomenon take note of the many ways that censorship manifests itself. For example, Martin Cloonan (2004) has noted that “it may not even be possible to come up with a definition of musical censorship which is suitable for every time and place” (p. 3). The form of censorship identified throughout this chapter has been called “suppression.” Suppression, according to Cloonan (2004), “…might mean making distribution of a published record illegal” (p. 5). It is my hope that our study of this one case of censorship has challenged the reader to begin reflecting on her or his own particular philosophical orientation and interests it serves.If we do not realize or believe that we are all informed by a philosophy, it is because we have not yet become conscious of our own consciousness (Freire, 2005). That is, we have not yet begun reflecting on the values, ideas and beliefs about the world and everything in it we have internalized as a result of living in a particular context. In other words, it means that we have not yet realized that the differences between our own thought and that of those who live on the other side of the world, for example, is simultaneously philosophical and material. Our philosophy, the way we see and make sense of the world, determines what we value and the choices we make, but always situated in a concrete context—ourselves being part of that context, and the mind as the individual’s primary mediator between the physicalness of our own bodies, and the physicalness of the material, animate and inanimate, that surrounds us. For example, do we passively accept the assumed inevitability of capitalism, or are we informed by an ontology of hope that refuses to submit to a deterministic cynicism? Without the development of a critical consciousness, we do not need an external censor to turn off the radio, we will censor ourselves, and therefore fail to act as responsible subjects dedicated to a world where many worlds fit, to paraphrase the Zapatisas of southeast Mexico.***According to Hopi profits (whose spirituality is so thoroughly grounded in the concrete physicalness of the Earth that it is authoritative in the realm of the world’s ancient Indigenous traditions) at the beginning of this world, the fourth world, like at the beginning of the previous three worlds, all of humanity was given the same simple directions by the mysterious force that makes possible the existence of life, which people call many things such as God and The Great Spirit: to take care of the world and everything in it (including each other). As was the case in the first three worlds, humanity is once again failing to follow these simple directions most noticeably marked by the dehumanizing process of value production, the environmental degradation that has emerged out of an ontology that separates human affairs from the rest of the natural world, and the epistemological assumption that views intellect as naturally and unevenly distributed among so called “races,” and between sexes. Unless we correct our praxis in the world and toward each other, argue the Hopi, that is, return to the role of caretakers rather than anti-democratic, censoring plunderers, this fourth world too will end. The Hopi point to recent dramatic changes in global weather patterns as indicators of the earth’s response to great imbalance. Hopi Elder Thomas Banyacya (1994), in an address to the United Nations, summarizes this prophecy in the following passageOur world is in terrible shape again even though the Great Spirit gave us different languages and sent us to the four corners of the world; and told us to take care of the earth and all that is in it. The Hopi ceremonial rattle represents Mother Earth. The line running around it is a time line and indicates that we are in the final days of the prophecy. What have you as individuals, as nations, and as the world body been doing to take care of this earth? In the earth today, humans poison their own food, water, and air with pollution. Many of us, including the children, are left to starve. Many wars are still being fought. Greed and concern for material things is a common disease. (pp. 114-115)Western scientists have made similar observations and catastrophic predictions regarding global warming and the destruction of the earth’s ecosystems. The social scientists of Western academia have also commented on the destructive nature of what Kincheloe (2005) has been dubbed a “machine cosmology” that animates the industrialization and commodification of life. This ontological imposition manifests itself through a process of homogenization—toward a system of knowledge production with but one channel, that is, a radio that transmits just one authoritarian message betraying the spirit of democratic, heterogeneous wholeness. It is this radical, democratic togetherness that the Hopi identify as the primary responsibility of humanity, which therefore constitutes the substance of the challenge it poses to the theory and practice of whatever it is we are doing. The historical analysis of the cultural spaces of punk rock discussed above demonstrates a shift toward the vision of the Hopi through a policy of inclusiveness. The challenge is to move more fully back and forth between the realms of culture and commodities into the highly purposeful context of the radical classroom, and eventually into more locations of value production and beyond and back again. In other words, to achieve the critical balance the Hopi speak of requires the simultaneous rethinking of every aspect of social life in unison, that is, complete and total transformation, in a word, revolution. Ready, set, let’s go! ReferencesAbu-Jamal, M. (1997). Death Blossoms: Reflections from a Prisoner of Conscious. Farmington, PA: Plough Publishing House.Ackerman, F. (1982). Reaganomics: Rhetoric vs. Reality. New York: South End Press.Albelda, R., McCrate, E., Melendez, E., Lapidus, J., & The Center for Popular Economics. (1988). Mink Coats Don’t Trickle Down: The Economic Attack on Women and People of Color. New York: South End Press.Banyacya, T. (1994). Thomas Banyacya: Hopi Elder (North America). In Alexander Ewen (Ed). Voice of Indigenous Peoples: A Plea to the World. Santa Fe, NM: Clear Light Publishers.Barber-Kersovan, A. (2004). Music as a parallel power structure. In Marie Korpe (Ed.). Shoot the Singer: Music Censorship Today. New York: Zed Books.Biafra, J. (1987). No More Cocoons: Spoken Word Album #1. San Francisco, CA: Alternative Tentacles, Virus 59.Biafra, J. (1989). High Priest of Harmful Matter: Tales from the Trial: Spoken Word Album #2. San Francisco, CA: Alternative Tentacles, Virus 59.Biafra, J. (1991). I Blow Minds for a Living: Spoken Word Album #3. San Francisco, CA: Alternative Tentacles, Virus 94.Biafra, J. (1998). If Evolution is Outlawed, Then Only Outlaws will Evolve: Spoken Word Album #5. San Francisco, CA: Alternative Tentacles, Virus 201.Biafra, J. (2000). Become the Media. San Francisco, CA: Alternative Tentacles, Virus 260.Biafra, J. with Nomeansno. (1991) The Sky is Falling and I want my Mommy. San Francisco, CA: Alternative Tentacles, Virus 85.Cloonan, M. (2004). What is Music Censorship? Towards a better understanding of the term. In Marie Korpe (Ed.). Shoot the Singer: Music Censorship Today. New York: Zed Books.Cole-Malott, D. & Malott, C. (in press). Jamaica. In Brad Porfilio and Curry Malott (Eds.). The Destructive Path of Neoliberalism: An International Examination of Education. New York: Sense.Deloria, V. (1994). God Is Red: A Native View of Religion. Golden, Colorado: Fulcrum.Diop, C.A. (1987). Precolonial Black Africa: A Comparative Study of the Political and Social Systems of Europe and Black Africa, from Antiquity to the Formation of Modern States. New York: Lawrence Hill Books.Ewen, A. (Ed.) (1994). Voices of Indigenous People: Native People Address the United Nations. Santa Fe, NM: Clear Light Publishers.Fischer, P. (2003). Challenging Music as Expression in the United States. In Martin Cloonan and Reebee Garofalo (Eds.). Policing Pop. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Freire, P. (1999). Pedagogy of Hope: Reliving Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum.Freire, P. (2005). Teachers as Cultural Workers: Letters to Those who Dare Teach.Gore, T. (1987). Raising PG Kids in an X-Rated Society. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press.Grinde, D.A. (1992). Iroquois Political Theory and the Roots of American Democracy. In Chief Oren Lyons & John Mohawk (Eds.), Exiled in the Land of the Free: Democracy, Indian Nations, and the U.S. Constitution. Santa Fe, NM: Clear Light Publishers.Israel, J. (2006). Enlightenment Contested. London: Oxford University Press.Jones, C. & Jefferies, J. (1998). “Don’t Believe the Hype”: Debunking the Panther Mythology. In Charles E. Jones (Ed), The Black Panther Party Reconsidered. Baltimore: Black Classic Press.Kincheloe, J. (2005). Critical Constructivism Primer. New York: Peter Lang.Kincheloe, J. (2008). Critical Pedagogy in the Twenty-first Century: Evolution for Survival. In Peter McLaren and Joe Kincheloe (Eds.). Critical Pedagogy: Where are we now? New York: Peter Lang.Lusane, C. (1998). To Fight for the People: The Black Panther Party and Black Politics in the 1990s. In Charles E. Jones (Ed), The Black Panther Party Reconsidered. Baltimore: Black Classic Press.Lyons, O. (2005). Preamble. In Akwesasne Notes (Eds.). Basic Call to Consciousness. Summertown, Tennessee: Native Voices.Lyons, O. & Mohawk, J. (1992). Exiled in the Land of the Free: Democracy, Indian Nations, and the U.S. Constitution. Santa Fe, NM: Clear Light Publishers.Malott, C. (2008). A Call to Action: An Introduction to Education, Philosophy and Native North America. New York: Peter Lang.Malott, C. & Peña, M. (2004). Punk Rockers’ Revolution: A Pedagogy of Race, Class, and Gender. New York: Peter Lang.Marsden, G. (1991). Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.Marsden, G. (2006). Fundamentalism and American Culture, second adition. New York: Oxford University Press.McGuire, M. (1992). Religion: The Social Context. Belmont, California: Wadsworth.Nausea. (2006). The Punk Terrorist Anthology Vol. 1. San Francisco, CA: Alternative Tentacles, Virus 348.NOFX. (2006). Wolves in Wolves’ Clothing. San Francisco, CA: Fat Wreck Chords.Nuzum, E. (2004). Crash into me, baby: America’s Implicit music censorship since 11 Septmeber. In Marie Korpe (Ed.). Shoot the Singer: Music Censorship Today. New York: Zed Books.Smith, P. (1984). The Rise of

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The music I put here are songs from bands I have been in and projects I am currently working on. It is all intended to be counter-hegemonic. That is, against all forms of oppression and exploitation, and therefore anti-racist, anti-sexist, against all forms of coercive power, private (capitalist) or public (government). In short, the music has attempted to promote being respectful of the Earth's right to its glorious diversity among the two-leggeds, the four-leggends, the winged and finned ones, vegetation, free-flowing waterways, and everything else that exists naturally such as freedom and creativity. As a teacher-educator these ideas also inform my scholarship. What follows is therefore a brief description of two recent books I wrote. My intention here is to be part of the struggle to strengthen the best part of the punk movement, which is its DIY ethic of creating a more just society ourselves because full democratic participation by every single person is the only way to achieve real justice, peace and democracy. Besides, the bosses can't be relied upon to do the right thing (they have been shooting at us and robbing us non-stop for the past 500 years with disasterous consequences) so we have to make sure we do the right thing and not act in unison with the aggressors.

The first book, Punk Rockers' Revolution is a study of lyrics over time. I systematically analyzed the lyrics of songs from Alternative Tentacles, SST and Epitaph. I was interested in how the messages and the message-presenters changed over time. Did they become more or less resistant or accommodative to dominant society over time? The messages remained highly counter-hegemonic over time although the message presenters became less white and less male. As a result, punk's democratic potential increased as the range of perspectives and issues subsequently increased. Check it out. I wrote it in 1998, but didn't publish it until 2004. Peter Lang, a pretty rad small indie academic press put it out.

My second book is called A Call to Action, which challenges all of us to consider what we might do to subvert the entire global colonialist project because it is that system of plunder that threatens the existence of all life on this planet. A sick book that was just released, also on Peter Lang.

World-renowned Marxist educator, Peter McLaren, said this about A Call to Action:

"Decolonizing pedagogy is a major task of those of us who work in the field of critical education and Curry Stephenson Malott's A Call to Action is a major advance in this endeavor--an important book that needs to be engaged by critical educators everywhere."

Paulo Freire: Pedagogy of the Oppressed and every other book he wrote

Noam Chomsky: all his shit

Marx: Capital Volumes 1-3, and The Communist Manifesto with Engels

Cheikh Anta Diop: Precolonial Black Africa and The African Origin of Civilization

James Baldwin: The Fire Next Time

George Jackson: Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

Joe Kincheloe and Shirley Steinberg: all of it, the whole mountain

Akwesasne Notes: Basic Call to Consciousness: Native Voices

***UPDATE***

Alex Ewen (Ed.). (1994). Voice of Indigenous Peoples: Native Peoples Address the United Nations. Santa Fe, New Mexico. Clear Light Publishers.

Noam Chomsky. (2007). What We Say Goes: Conversations on U.S. Power in a Changing World: Interviews with David Barsamian. New York: Metropolitan Books.

Peter McLaren & Joe Kincheloe (Eds.). (2007). Critical Pedagogy: Where Are We Now? New York: Peter Lang.

Leila E. Villaverde. (2008). Feminist Theories and Education: Primer. New York: Peter Lang.

 

many, many more, will continue to add as time permits

happy to suggest readings

Critical Pedagogy: It is the process of acquiring a critical consciousness. That is, gaining the ability to read both the word and the world. It is the insight that enables people to step back from themselves and understand how we are a part of the larger social structure in which we are embedded. The idea is to be able to understand how we as working people are both oppressed by the ruling class and consent to our own oppression through our participation in the capitalist system. The goal is to transform the relationships that govern our lives. In other words, create economic relationships that are non-exploitative of human labor power, and that respect the sacredness of all life. For this to happen democratically, the idea that absolute truth cannot come from a single source needs to be embraced and lived in practice. One of the major tasks of the critical pedagogue is therefore to both listen and pose challenges. Critical pedagogues can be teachers, artists, activists, punk rockers, etc. In short, critical pedagogy is a way of engaging the world and all that is in it.

Books, computer, guitar, and an active mind