Another piece that was destined for my unreleased zine:

Plea For Action

Louis Posen and Mike Park are two people in the punk community that are highly admirable and whom deserve much respect. Each running their own independent record label, respectively, Subcity (an off shoot of Hopeless) and Asian Man. Not only have they managed to run a successful business in the fickle world of music, bring us the music of many a great band – Alkaline Trio, Thrice, Against All Authority, Fifteen, The Lawrence Arms anyone? – but, they also care about what’s going on in the community around them. Both donate proceeds of album sales to charities, both hold tours to support different organizations that bring awareness to social issues – Posen helping orchestrate the Take Action Tour with the Hopeline (a national youth suicide hotline) which strives to empower youths to make positive choices and to prevent suicide while Park and the Plea For Peace Tour spreads a message of unity, fighting racism and positive ideas through music.

Together Park and Posen have a combined punk cred somewhere in the sphere of 40+ years. Not too bad, eh? Park first bought to the punk/ska scene as an avid fan in high school during the eighties. “The first band that really caught my attention was 7 Seconds. I just loved the energy of the music but then I also liked reading the lyrics and getting to know what the songs were about. I really think that band really paved the way for me to come up with a lot of the ideas I come up with today. Positive ideas through music,” Park states.

Posen, started along the punk road initially as a fan (as we all do) also in the eighties, first listening to bigger bands, The Clash and The Ramones before taking in his first indie punk show at the Reseda Country Club to the sweet sounds of LA punk heroes, X. “It wasn’t until the late eighties that I found independent punk rock, Lookout Records and all the East Bay stuff that was going on in Northern California,” Posen explains. He remained purely a fan up until he went to college, where he studied film. “I was starting to do music videos and I contacted NOFX to do a music video for them. It was my first time working within the punk scene. It started from there”, Posen informs before continuing “My second music video was for Guttermouth and during the filming for that the band talked about wanting to put out a seven inch between records and they asked me if I would do it and that’s how the label started.”

Park became actively involved in the punk scene via playing in bands. “I think probably every kid once in a lifetime wants to be in a band,” he says. “That same situation was there for me. I just went another step further by actually starting a band and continuing in bands after high school and still to this day being in bands. I haven’t stopped for the last twenty years.”

Over the years Park and Posen have seen many changes both for the better and for the worse in punk rock – most notable change being, the serge in it’s popularity and the crossover from underground to the mainstream. “The big difference now is the commercialisation of punk rock,” starts Park. “What has happened is that it’s become watered down to some degree. A lot of the energy, the fire and rage of what I remember punk as being in the early days, it’s just changed – it’s become a lot more safe. That’s not to diss any band. That’s their prerogative of what they want to do.” Posen comments, “Life is always changing, in the punk community and beyond. It’s hard to tell which things are for better or for worse because the time in your life, changes your perspective. If I was sixteen years old getting into punk rock now, it might be a similar experience. Over time it (punk) seems to be more accessible to people and there’s a wider audience maybe from when I first got into it. I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing. It does bring on some things some people could call negative, mainstreamism or corporate mentality but for the most part, I think more people hearing the music is better.”

Both the Take Action and Plea For Peace tours that cross the US annually (Plea For Peace also holding shows in Japan) are the perfect vehicle for taking the music (and the message) to more people. Funnily enough, Plea For Peace and Take Action were a united tour de force for a space of two years. Mike explains, “I’ve known Louis for so long and just the idea that he also is trying to do something special it just made sense that we join forces to try to put our energies together to make the tour as strong as possible.”

After much success, 2003 saw the tours go their separate ways. “I broke away from that relationship, not out of anger or anything, I just felt that our ideas are a bit different in the sense that, Louis is very organised and I’m not,” Mike offers. Louis comments, “Plea For Peace from the beginning was about anti-racism and keeping it D.I.Y and the Take Action tour being primarily about empowering kids to make positive choices and to prevent suicide. It was getting larger and larger with sponsors and I just think the styles of tours were very different.” “I don’t like corporate sponsorship. I’m very politically correct in a lot of ways and Louis doesn’t mind having sponsorship,” says Park adding, “There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s just something I had to do for myself.”

The separation of the tours was completely amicable. “Louis is really one of the good guys. I really have a lot of respect for him,” Mike states. “We’ve very supportive about what he’s doing,” says Louis. “We actually released his solo album on Subcity which benefits the Plea For Peace Foundation. They (the tours) were separated before we bought them together and then we separated them again.”

Quizzing Louis about general feedback on Take Action’s sponsorship he replies, “From our point of view Take Action and the Hopeline is about raising as much awareness as possible. It seems contradictory to keep that underground. ‘Let’s keep saving lives quiet and let’s not tell anyone how to do it’ that just doesn’t seem to make much sense. People like Hot Topic, Hurley and Tower Records could come to the plate to make this happen, I think that’s great. I think that’s better than them spending the money back on themselves or other corporate things they could be spending it on. I really admire them for stepping out and doing something with their resources.”

As with when anyone tries to do something positive, there will always come those who want to rain on your parade and that question your integrity and motives. So how does Mike feel about comments like ‘aren’t you preaching to the converted?’ “I get that all the time, it doesn’t make sense to me when I hear that argument,” Mike says. “I’m like what’s your option? To stay silent and hide in a hole! Even if I’m preaching to the converted at least I’m preaching to someone to reemphasize an important idea. It’s imperative that you do that. If we all believe in one thing and we all stay silent about it our ideas will change, if we keep pushing the message what ever that may be, your personal ideas, then you should share it.”

On the suggestion that some people may question his motives Louis answers, “Very early on when we started Subcity there were a few people and a few interviews that I did where that was questioned. Like ‘are you trying to get a lot of publicity?’ Some sort of different motive rather than trying to make a positive difference. I think people have seen over the years that we’ve kept our promises. We’ve been very consistent over the years, donating money every six months and we haven’t over publicised it or gone beyond what it is. Although, we think the more awareness the better it is for those organisations. Everyone is free to think how they want but I think over time people have seen that we’ve lived up to what we’re promoting.”

To date Subcity has raised $300,000. “Five percent of the suggested retail list price is given to a charity,” Louis explains. “Most of our records are $13.98, so that’s five percent of that, so that’s 70 cents of a full length record. With albums, the artist chooses the charity. We check them out to check that they’re a legitimate organisation.” Organizations Subcity support include: Prison Radio, Women’s Justice Center, the Redwood Justice Fund among around seventeen more including Park’s own foundation that shares his tour’s moniker, Plea For Peace.

“It’s just an extension of wanting to do more,” he begins on the reason for starting the foundation. “It’s hard because I don’t have a lot of time, I feel guilty because I feel the organisation suffers. Really all I can offer for the last few years is being able to help organise a tour and pick a different charity and work towards sharing their message and also raising money for their organisation, but the long term goal is to open up a teen center in Northern California. We want to focus it on the arts for kids who are into music, theater, drawing – whatever, maybe kids who aren’t into sports or aren’t into other activities that people see as normal. We want to try and give them an outlet. It’s a lot of work, there’s a lot of red tape, and you need a lot of money.”

Money and figures aside, at the heart of the projects is the fact that two regular guys like you and me are making a difference, a positive difference, in the community. “We’ve received some really powerful letters, people that have gone to the Take Action show and it’s changed their life,” Posen informs. “I recall a letter from a kid who said he was really depressed after getting back from the Warped tour. I don’t know why? I don’t really want to speculate. He had listened to the Take Action CD and had listened to the depression screening that’s on the CD-rom. He took the depression screening and he realised that he was depressed and he talked to his parents about it and they got him help and now he’s feeling a lot better and now he wanted to start volunteering for the Hopeline. I thought that was an incredible letter.” Park has also received an abundance of positive letters, “It’s letters from kids and it’s also from personal encounters with kids who tell me that what I’m doing has helped them, helped shaped them, or helped them in times of crisis. That’s the only way I can really measure up what I’m doing has any worth. There’s tons of people in the underground, I get letters all the time from punks that are anarchists that have radical ideas, they visit prison inmates that have no other communication with the outside world, they do organic farming…they’re all unknown people but they have a place in my heart.”

So, is the number of people in the punk community working for a positive change growing? “I think so, yeah,” says Louis. “We’ve definitely noticed there’s a swing to do something positive. What we’re doing and Plea For Peace and there’s Punkvoter. There’s a lot of stuff that’s going on on the social-political side right now.” While agreeing numbers of punks working for positive change seem to be growing Mike seems a little more skeptical, “We’ll see, we’ll wait ’til after the election year and then see how many people are pro-active in politics. Because it’s an election year you have so many organisations that are asking bands to be part of this or that, so right now everyone’s jumping on, being part of this or that but I’d like to see in 2005 and 2006 how many bands are actually pursing some type of social cause.”
As Posen simply says, “Each of us have the ability to do something.”

Please check out:

http://takeactiontour.com/
http://pleaforpeace.com/

http://subcity.net/
http://hopelessrecords.com/
http://www.asianmanrecords.com/