It's Official:
Voting Bush
Is 'Not Punk'

By Thom White

LOS ANGELES -- December 15, 2003 -- NOFX's Fat Mike Burkett is spearheading an effort to coordinate punk rock fans to stop George W. Bush from being elected in 2004. Burkett's record label Fat Wreck Chords is releasing a "Rock Against Bush" compilation CD in April 2004, and proceeds from the CD ($8.98 retail price) and summer tour will help defray the costs of the "Punkvoter" project that aims to mobilize young voters against the sitting president, and features many notable mainstream punk & alternative acts.

An alphabetical list of just some of the top bands appearing on the "Rock Against Bush" tour is quite impressive: Anti-Flag, Bad Religion, Blink, Circle Jerks, Dag Nasty (reunion!), Descendents, The Donnas, Foo Fighters, Green Day, Mike Watt, Mudhoney, Pennywise, Propagandhi, Tilt, Tool (and many more!).

Punkvoter.com, a web site started by Fat Mike, will serve as a meeting ground and source of information for those following the "Rock Against Bush" tour and voter registration drive. Members of Punkvoter intend to "expose the Bush Administration's incredibly bad policies" and "educate, register, and mobilize over 500,000 of today's youth as one voice."

The owners of two leading California punk labels, Brett Gurewitz of Epitaph Records, and Jello Biafra (Eric Boucher) of Alternative Tentacles, are sponsoring Punkvoter and the "Rock Against Bush" tour. Wayne Kramer of MC5 and Billy Gould of Faith No More are also taking leading roles to make sure the campaign is a success and that George W. Bush is not chosen president again in 2004.

The "Rock Against Bush" compilation CD will appear in April 2004 as part of the national public relations effort kicking off the tour. But NOFX plans to kickstart their Punkvoter / "Rock Against Bush" campaign live in March 2004 with some spontaneous revolutionary action at the South By Southwest (SXSW) music convention in Austin, Texas. The "Rock Against Bush" tour will thus begin by piercing into the heart of Bush Country, a bold first step indeed, before moving on to rough American battleground states closer to the November 2 election to continue spreading the gospel word against the president.

NOFX first gave notice that they would be getting more 'political' with their 1999 release The Decline, an 18-minute punk rock epic that alluded to a cultural 'decline' in the USA and unleashed a politically-charged assault against religious Americans who come bearing arms. NOFX's latest record The War on Errorism (2003) is even more blunt in its opposition to policies of the current administration.

'Speaking with one voice'

Punkvoter's first goal is to convince rock fans to not vote for George W. Bush. There are many reasons to be angry with Bush the Younger. One could list off a number of domestic issues, but it is sufficient to mention the 448 dead American souls (as of 12/12/2003), the 11,000 maimed American servicemen, and the uncounted number of dead and mutilated, yet liberated, Iraqis (tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions, it is difficult to know) that have resulted from an invasion originally advertised by the Bush Administration as necessary to protect Americans against Iraq's WMDs. If, on March 19, 2003, the American democracy in fact unleashed its massively destructive weapons on another nation, Iraq, that did not possess any weapons of mass destruction (as her foreign ministers had protested profusely for months in advance), was this invasion & conquest really necessary to protect Americans?

The apparent non-existence of these dreadful weapons that threatened the homeland has obliged Bush & Co. to invent and spin more PR-friendly reasons to justify the aggressive war -- Saddam's personal evilness, or the Pollyannish possibility that all these U.S. bombs and independent contractors might bring freedom and democracy to Iraq. Many Americans have perished or been injured in accidents while on mission fighting in an Iraq war that is anything but accidental. Remember August 2002 to March 2003: Cheney, Rumsfeld, Blair, Bush, Wolfowitz, Perle, Rice, Powell, all said military action, regime change, invasion was necessary to protect Americans. Was it?

Bush, the Yale graduate from a rich conservative family, has failed. Will Dean, the Yale graduate from a rich conservative family, treat Americans (and our volunteer army) any better? According to a report quoting John Kerry campaign staffers, Dean is receiving loads of money from Republican donors hedging their bets against Bush Jr.'s re-election.

Political investors in Dr. Dean appear to be secure in the knowledge that his administration will do nothing to put an end to this permanent War on Terror. Dean is also a strong advocate of sending American soldiers to act as militarized police in foreign countries (peacekeeping), so it is unlikely that he'll be bringin' the boys & girls home from these draining foreign wars anytime in his first term. It looks like "the fix is in," with two middle-of-the-road compassionate neoconservative globalist candidates, Bush the Younger and Howard Dean, now slated to face off in the televised 2004 Republicrat race.

Punkvoter wants American youth to "speak with one voice" in the 2004 election. If Dean becomes the establishment "opposition" to Bush, will Punkvoter simply throw its weight behind this "Bush-Lite" candidate? It remains to be seen whether NOFX et al. will encourage Americans to do critical thinking and to vote their conscious, or simply urge young kids to cast a 'calculated vote' for Howard Dean, the elite candidate who is less apparently evil.

But with such little difference between the two leading candidates, the 2004 presidential election offers an excellent opportunity for populist third and fourth parties to increase their presence, and for Punkvoter to exercise its might behind an independent, Green Party, or libertarian candidate who offered a true policy alternative to the Bush Administration's warmongering agenda.

Punkvoter issues

The Punkvoter platform is a little vague and has no substantive position on the invasion of Iraq or the fancifully-named War on Terrorism. Punkvoter's on-line platform falls back with familiar political vocabulary about personal freedom, the environment, and economic responsibility.

Under the "personal freedom" section, Punkvoter concentrates on defending sexual freedom ("reproductive freedom"). Punkvoter is totally opposed to banning condoms, birth control drugs, and also does not want the business of aborting fetuses to be restricted.

Unlike most progressive advocates who use the catch-all catch phrase "social justice" to promote their income redistribution and collective planning programs, Punkvoter promotes the idea of "economic responsibility." Echoing the labor union chant "Health care, not warfare" made famous at anti-war protests in 2002-03, the Punkvoter platform asserts that all this money being spent to blow up and liberate Iraq could be better used to provide cheaper drugs and doctor visits for Americans.

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With its plan to concentrate resources in certain 'swing states,' the strategy for Punkvoter mirrors that of the George Soros-funded America Coming Together program which also has as its principal aim the expulsion of George Bush Jr. from the White House. Punkvoter is aiming to register and mobilize over a half-million voters, and enough votes to throw certain states' presidential elections against Bush, thus handing the votes in the Electoral College to an opposing candidate.

The "Rock Against Bush" campaign recalls the successful 1993 "Rock for Choice" pro-abortion alternative rock tour that featured L7 and Pearl Jam and, with heavy promotion by MTV and the Democratic Party, helped buoy youth support for Bill Clinton. Look for a lot of touring in the Midwest, Great Lakes, Northwest, and in Texas. If Punkvoter can turn the tide against our clown prince and his war-profiteering cronies in Texas, a supposed Bush stronghold, there might be hope yet that Bush can be defeated and some of his disastrous foreign and domestic policies reversed.

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