A few weeks back, the punk band NOFX pulled out of this year's Punk Rock Bowling Festival because they were still getting pushback for some mean things that they said in the past.
I took to social media and defended NOFX's right to Free Speech and was kind of stunned that the responses were about 50/50 between my opinion "they're punks, that's what they do," and the opposing opinion "freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences."
I was left saddened at the state of punk....
Until today (at Consequence of Sound:)
Police Appear to Shoot "Less Lethal" Rounds into Crowd to Break Up Underground LA Punk Show: Wild footage apparently shows LAPD shooting into a crowd of people moshing around a bonfire.
Kudos to the following bands on the bill:
Dead City "Fuck the Opps"
Barrage "Quarantined"
Wacko "Nu Religion"
N8NOFACE "I Can't Behave"
Section H8 "Phase One"
Chlorox Dream "Bozo's Trombone"
(Sorry, couldn't find Self-Sabotage and Alpha & Omega on Bandcamp.)
Just a reminder, police have been hassling punks for 40 years now. The original complaint was that the punk show BELOW the bridges was distracting drivers ON the bridges.
Replace punks with "Peaceful Protesters" and replace below the bridge with "blocking traffic."
How is shooting projectiles to disperse the crowd going to go over? That would be the lead story at CNN for a week.
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