Don’t Forget the Struggle, Don’t Forget the Streets
I was inspired by the Walter Schreifels song “An Open Letter to the Scene” and the life and death of former Warzone frontman Ray Beez, I’ve been reflecting on my own experience in the punk and hardcore scene during the late ‘80s to mid ‘90s. That song is just the spark; what follows is my story, my observations, and my take on what it means to keep the spirit alive in a world that’s always trying to snuff it out.
listen to the Don’t forget the struggle, Don’t forget the streets episode
I grew up in the punk/hardcore scene. Skater, surfer, played in shitty punk bands. Wore X’s on my hands to signify I was “nailed to the X” I was dedicated to it. But as time passed and people grew, as they inevitably do, I watched the hardcore scene fall apart. Sell out. Cuck itself. The alternative music craze took over MTV, and the culture of my youth was swallowed whole. I watched straight-edge kids abandon their ethos for drugs, alcohol, and vice, or join Hare Krishna cults (not sure which is worse). Working-class skinheads morphed into long-haired Rastafarian wannabes singing Peter Tosh’s “Legalize It.” (Side note: “Pick Myself Up” is a far superior song.) Liberty spiked and safety pin pierced gutter punks went to college and eventually became professors of gender studies or whatever worthless progressive philosophy they teach today.
Back then, I had a zine. It was just a few pages folded and stapled together—nothing fancy. The only contributors were me and my friend Brian Blackburn, a guy who walked the neighborhood with a two-foot Knox Gelatin mohawk. With that zine, we were trying to get noticed, trying to be cool enough to have something featured in Maximum Rocknroll. For those not familiar, Maximum Rocknroll, it was a DIY, volunteer-run zine that embodied the worldwide punk underground. It documented the music, the scene, and the politics that made punk more than music. Punk was smashing authority, rejecting corporate control, and building something real. And Maximum Rocknroll? It was the pinnacle for any punk who wanted their voice heard beyond a microphone.
I remember one article I wrote for our little zine, that I was convinced would get published in MRR. I ranted about the founding fathers of the United States, their Masonic origins, their empire-building, their land theft, their slave trading…blah blah blah. I was 15 at the time, so cut me some slack for being shallow, but my heart was in the right place. I felt punk writing it. You get the sentiment: Fuck the government. Fuck the man. Fuck their systems of control. As Crass put it: “Big A, little A, bouncing B. The system might have got you, but it won’t get me.”
But it did. It got me too. Even I sold out, in a big way, by signing up to kill for the man.
So there it was: the skins sold out. The straight-edge kids sold out. The gutter punks sold out. The members of the punk and hardcore scene I grew up with became crunchy granola liberals, progressive college professors, and some of the biggest proponents of the nanny state and political correctness. The anti-system, DIY ethos gave way to the Seattle grunge scene and corporate copycat posers like Blink-182, Green Day, Offspring, and Rancid. Yeah, they had punk roots, but they sold out harder than George Lucas to Disney.
And here we are today. I’m getting those same vibes not from the cypherpunk, privacy, and sovereign pleb communities we exist in, but the overall libertarian sound money community right now. The DIY, in-your-face ethos is still there, but it’s fraying at the edges. Meetups like Lake Satoshi and PubKey are keeping the spirit alive, providing spaces to connect and share ideas. Our mode of communication and expression has shifted—it’s now Twitter, Telegram, and NOSTR instead of zines printed at school or the public library.
The sellouts? They’re everywhere. Some are taking Jack Dorsey money, others are kissing Elon’s ass and still more are begging Trump to save them while throwing tantrums when he doesn’t deliver in the way they expect. There are wannabe celebrities attending yacht parties, snapping open-mouthed selfies with famous influencers…looking like a nest of baby birds begging for the half-digested food of engagement. All the while, our oppressors continue grinding us underfoot, just as they’ve done for thousands of years. Enjoy your yacht party but remember—those deck chairs aren’t suitable flotation devices.
My advice? Don’t forget yourself. Don’t forget the struggle. Don’t forget the scene.
What is that scene? What is that struggle? To me, the scene is still the DIY community. It’s the sovereign plebeian who looks to God, himself, his family, and his friends as the source of his thriving. The most punk thing you can be today is a homesteader. The most punk thing you can be today is someone who works tirelessly to build your eight forms of capital, seeing financial capital as just one part of the ecosystem of sovereignty. The worldwide scene is the Meshtadel, and the Ungovernable Misfit is a node within that Meshtadel. The stronger his node, the stronger the links between us all. And the stronger we all are, the closer we are to breaking free of their chains.
To me, this is Ungovernable Misfits. This is the new punk movement, built on hard work, community, integrity, love, family, and friendship. It’s made up of people who will never sell out. The remnant who never lose sight of what brought them together in the first place.
Ungovernable Misfits will always be the remnant of that punk and hardcore scene to me. The ones who never sold out. Max and I talked to all of you about this on our first pod together over three years ago. I think that’s why he and I are friends today. We find each other. We create these gigabit links between the Meshtadel nodes. These bonds transcend culture and age. Hell, the hardcore scene was just a continuation of the ’70s punk scene and often you’d see a 14-year-old skanking in the pit with 40-year-old at all ages shows. I have this bond with so many of you in our Ungovernable Misfits community. And through this show, I hope we can build that community even even more, supporting each other, encouraging one another, and trading goods and services outside of a system that treats us like chattel.
Point being we’re an ungovernable punk scene in our own way, meeting at an all-ages show, band practice in the basement, writing articles for a zine no one reads. So, write those articles, your zine is NOSTR or your late-night ramblings on a telegram post. It can even be UngovernableMisfits.com or Bugle.news. Perhaps they are the new Maximum Rock n Roll. Express yourself through music, doesn’t have to be the AI music everyone is so excited about nowadays. Bust out a guitar, 4 power chords, intro, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, take that shit to the bridge, chorus, and outro and you got yourself a song. Plant a garden, raise some chickens, or better yet cows, sheep, and pigs. Teach your kids everything you know and don’t know. Lift something heavy. Eat healthy. Build big, resilient families. Run a bitcoin node and mine to that node. Get involved in your local (that’s right I said LOCAL) communities. Take a hard look at the skills you’ve lost or never learned and start working on them right now. Learn how to fix things, how to cook from scratch, how to build with your hands. Learn basic first aid and emergency preparedness to handle injuries, power outages, or natural disasters without relying on external systems. Acquire backup means of communication like a Meshtastic or a VHF/UHF handheld radio. Start preserving food by learning canning, fermenting, and dehydrating (reminds me I need some Barnjerky). Write code and build something. Help someone secure their privacy. Share your knowledge freely and collaborate to create solutions that empower the individual over the system. Start a compost pile. Upcycle or whatever the fuck they call it and start repairing instead of throwing things away and buying new. Of course, do all that without becoming a complete hoarder (I know easier said than done and I say this from experience) Develop your own source of energy be it a nat gas generator, gay ass solar panels, or bio diesel or back diesel generator, hell hook a tube up to a cow’s ass and mine Bitcoin off of that fart wind and harness that miner’s heat! Create a barter network or “Meshconomy” and trade goods and services with like-minded people in your community or the larger Meshtadel to build mutual aid and bypass the conventional cucked economy. This is the new hardcore/punk/DIY/dissident scene. These are now the most punk activities you can participate in.
Stay punk, never sell out, and be an inspiration to others, or else they’ll sell out or never even be punk in the first place. I hope this message lights a fire in all of your collective asses to never forget the struggle that brought you here. Remember the blood, sweat, and raw determination that shaped who you are and why you got involved in Ungovernable Misfits in the first place. Never forget the streets that led you here—the cracked pavement, the makeshift venues, the late-night conversations, the frustrations, hopes, and dreams you shared with your loved ones around the fire, the bonds formed in rebellion and hope. Carry that spirit forward, and let it guide you to build something greater, something real, something that cannot be bought or broken. Stay true, stay punk, stay a MISFIT, stay UNGOVERNABLE.