By Pauline Gutierrez, Jan. 28, 2025
In an era of political, social and economic instability, the punk subculture continues to encourage political consciousness in young adults, as it has for decades. It provides a way for people to express themselves and validates the internal conflicts and contentions they have about society.
Punk emerged in the mid to late ‘70s — about ’74 to ’79 — as a music-based subculture, an alternative to mainstream rock music and a form of social rebellion. Most significantly, it surfaced during a time of deindustrialization, slowed economic growth and financialization of the economy, leading to our current state of staggering economic inequality.
This created living conditions that, at the time, frustrated and embittered working-class youths, much like they do today, and fueled the development of countercultures and youth subcultures. Some of these living conditions included high inflation and unemployment — which in the U.K. affected over one million individuals, and “stagflation” or simultaneous inflation, and recession in the U.S., coupled with a rise in unemployment.
Punk in its inception was more than a music-based subculture. It was, and is, an expression nurtured by pains, fears, anxieties and personal frustrations manifesting themselves in the volatile rejection of the current circumstance. This volatile rejection takes many forms because anyone can experience punk. Within the punk subculture, this volatile rejection is expressed in music, dress–torn or ragged clothes adorned with safety pins and scrawled over with the names of bands. Significantly, it has cultivated a disdain for apathy in young adults.
Though punk may be seen as a subculture of primarily white working-class youths, punk pioneers were actually very diverse. In Los Angeles in particular, many pioneering punk bands had Hispanic members such as Ron Reyes of Black Flag, Alice Bag of the Bags, and Jeffery Lee Pierce of The Gun Club. The Plugz and The Zeros were comprised of Hispanic members. Punk provided a means for working-class Hispanic youth to express themselves at a time when they didn’t have access to resources such as art education.
Ziggy Leiva, a 20-year-old electrical engineering student, grew up in South Gate but attended schools in Bellflower and Downey. According to Leiva, he did not attend the local public schools in South Gate due to the city’s poor education system. While attending schools outside of South Gate, he was exposed to significant wealth disparities between himself and other students, such as witnessing some teenagers driving to school in luxury cars.
At a young age, Leiva’s parents encouraged him to pursue engineering in hopes that he would become conventionally successful and financially stable. A sentiment he understands but partly rejects because of the constraints it places on his aspirations.
“I was sort of conditioned at an age to believe that I had to pursue engineering, and I never knew why,” Leiva said. “I understand where they (his parents) are coming from… but at the same time it sucks because I feel like it limits me within my passions or being able to fully express myself.”
He became interested in punk at 14 after being drawn in by the simplistic composition of the music, specifically the use of power chords and quick tempos, which for him defied traditional forms of music. He eventually grew to find punk relatable personally, as it validated some of the concerns he had about the limitations placed on minority communities by socioeconomic factors, especially about education, and provided a form of resistance to these constraints.
“There was a certain era where there were these rich white kids in Washington, D.C. playing music, taking the punk lifestyle but not really understanding where it comes from,” Leiva said. “I want to take those concepts and be able to make something out of it.”
For Leiva, punk has also encouraged him to educate himself on a variety of different social and political issues pertaining to his community in hopes that he could one day contribute to positive change.
“Now I really want to make that change. I want to be that change that the punk bands have instilled in me. I feel empowered through them.” Levia said.
Alexis Duran, a 21-year-old animal science student from Boyle Heights moved to Bakersfield in middle school and returned to Los Angeles to attend college.
She discovered punk music in high school, but it wasn’t until she came across bands with people of color and front women that she began to relate to it more.
In referring to pioneering punk bands, those such as the Misfits who formed during the late ‘70s, Duran said that although those bands resonated with her, she found it hard to relate to them as they were all typically white men. She eventually became interested in Latin American punk as she found it more relatable.
Duran emphasized the importance of finding “Your scene within the scene,” a space within the broader punk subculture where an individual feels comfortable and supported. Duran’s space within punk, essentially the Latin Punk scene, provides a sense of community and distilled the sense of angst and frustration she experienced as a teenager.
“Getting into it as a teenager, it was more so rooted in pure anger,” Duran said. “You get to know the messages behind the music. You get to know what exactly is being talked about and it opens your eyes a little more.”
For Duran, punk music allowed her to gain clarity from her sense of frustration and develop a political consciousness. Some of the ways in which Duran explores her political consciousness is by reading and going to shows that raise money for causes she supports.
“Because of punk, I got really into politics and why this whole world is set up the way it is and how it affects us at the bottom of the class system,” Duran said.
Esia Medrano, a 21-year-old mechanical engineering student from Bakersfield, became interested in punk following the COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing 2020 election. During this period, he witnessed his family members struggle with unemployment.
“I saw a lot of family members losing their jobs,” Medrano said. “Seeing where everything was turning to s— kind of made me turn inward and look at why this is happening.”
According to Medrano, he developed an interest in Marxist literature which, coupled with family hardship, helped to radicalize him.
“That period was just a really tough time for everyone,” Medrano said. “My family members were losing their jobs. My mom, she didn’t lose her job, but my dad lost his job, and he had to find a new job again. Same thing with a lot of my closer relatives as well.”
For Medrano, these experiences were a precursor to his interest in the punk subculture because the experience of economic hardship, coupled with political radicalism, constituted the kind of expression that is inherently punk.
For Medrano, the sentiments he developed during the pandemic are distilled in songs such as “Tiempos de Miseria” by Los Crudos, a volatile thrash song that vehemently condemns economic inequality with provocative lines translated here as “Enough of having people living in misery. There is no money to support a family,” and “Let them go to hell because they are liars,” referring to the rich bureaucrats and the press.
“There’s not a lot of people within the punk subculture that are talking about what Los Crudos are talking about,” Medrano said. “I feel like they did a really good job of conveying their anger.”
Pricilla Hernandez, a 25-year-old bassist for the Los Angeles-based hardcore punk band En La Muerte, grew up in Highland Park and began playing an instrument around 12.
She was introduced to rock music by her parents who incorporated a lot of punk. She was also influenced by her brother, the current frontman for En La Muerte, who played drums and with whom she went on to form the band.
According to Hernandez, she was heavily influenced by punk bands from the ‘80s such as Black Flag and Bad Brains and can perceive parallels between the issues covered by these bands in their era and the issues that plague society today.
“The things that I create have to do with what’s going on around me,” said Hernandez. “I think it’s interesting what my experiences versus somebody in the ‘80s who is experiencing these things firsthand and what they’re generating out of that.”
Some of the things that Hernandez speaks of can be found in the lyrics to songs such as “War,” the third track off their album Silencio, with lines such as “Politicians start a war… sit in their iron thrones and leave it to the poor.”
The confrontational aspects of punk overlap with the resistance aspect because resistance lends itself easily to confrontation. Some of the first punk bands to form, such as The Damned (1976) and The Cramps (1976), were not overtly political in their lyrics, but this didn’t stop them from being confrontational.
For Noah Gallego, a 23-year-old English student from La Puente, the aesthetic of punk is a form of resistance because it is inherently confrontational.
Gallego was exposed to punk music at a young age having been raised by parents who were into rock music and attended regimented private Catholic school throughout his formative education.
According to Gallego, while attending these institutions he was shown propaganda opposing same-sex marriage and was made to participate in activism opposing abortion. He eventually developed a desire to break away from the narrow constraints imposed on him by his conservative education. Punk provided a way to resist these constraints.
“I couldn’t imagine coming out of this not wanting to feel liberated,” Gallego said. “Because I was like ‘This is not representative of who I am. This is not how I want to express myself. I want to find my own way.’”
He came into punk in 2022 following the overturn of Roe V. Wade.
“That really was the sort of catalyzing point where I was just like, ‘I got to do something about this because if there’s one thing I don’t f— with, it’s the government having something to say about my body,” Gallego said.
Part of Gallego’s response or resistance rooted in punk to the attack on bodily autonomy is his outward appearance, a black blazer clad in pins and chains with spiked hair, which is distinctively punk.
“I can’t be at every protest,” Gallego said. “I can’t do all these things, but what I can do 24/7 is just be as confrontational as possible. That’s why I wear what I wear, and I look the way I look. This is a message I communicate through my style. “
Feature image courtesy of Esia Medrano
