Alice Bag

“Después de treinta anos la rebelión tiene que ser reinventada por la juventud de la nueva generación…me gustaría que la juventud me brinde un desafío, que no me ofrezcan lo familiar, lo que me guste inmediatamente. Nada que me ha hecho crecer a sido confortable o familiar. Las ideas progresivas, como el art progresivo a veces afrenta al espectador precisamente porque son ideas nuevas, no familiares. Si todas tus amistades visten como tú, escuchan la misma música que tú y piensan como tú seria como vivir en el vacío. La vida es más emocionante cuando estamos en la posición incómoda de tener que evaluar nuestras creencias. Esto nos hace fortalecer nuestras creencias o deshacernos de ellas.” - Alice Bag, interview with Exilio Interior

The full interview is posted in its entirety here.
http://exiliointeriorzine.blogspot.com/2011/11/alice-bag-despues-de-30-anos-la.html

Just found my old FSLN flag from 1986 in a box with with my kitchen aprons. #Sandinista #Nicaragua

The FSLN overthrew Anastasio Somoza Debayle in 1979, ending the Somoza dynasty, and established a revolutionary government in its place. Following their seizure of power, the Sandinistas ruled Nicaragua from 1979 to 1990, first as part of a Junta of National Reconstruction. They instituted a policy of mass literacy, devoted significant resources to health care, and promoted gender equality. A militia, known as the Contras was formed in 1981 to overthrow the Sandinista government and was funded and trained by the US Central Intelligence Agency. In 1984 elections were held and described as free and fair by international observers but were boycotted by some opposition parties. The FSLN won the majority of the votes, and those who did oppose the Sandinistas won approximately a third of the seats. Despite the clear electoral victory for the Sandinistas, the Contras continued their violent attacks on both state and civilian targets, until 1989.

“If Jesus himself, or Mohammed, or Buddha spoke to me personally and said that women are inferior to men, I would still reject that as false dogma because I know with every ounce of my being that this is not true.”  - Alice Bag, Interview with SF Chronicle 2012.

Photo of Pat Bag and Alice Bag by Louis Jacinto.

Ear Drum Destroyer, my old friend and trusty stage microphone from back in the day. 

I can’t tell you how insanely happy this makes me. #AllINeedAreMindsForMolding #BagRevolution

“We honestly thought that we would stay anonymous forever and that no one would ever know for certain who was in the Bags.” 

Q: What was the process of getting the book Violence Girl together? Was it hard to write?

Alice: It was easy because I am very disciplined. I blogged each entry every morning and I had a rule that I couldn’t eat lunch until I had written a whole entry. I get very hungry…

Q: How would you compare punk nowadays with punk 30 years ago?

Alice: I can’t answer that because I don’t go out to many shows aside from when I am on tour, so I really don’t know but it is exciting to me to see so many groups nowadays with women, with members who are lesbian, gay, transgender, bisexual, people of color. For me, that is what it was like in the early punk scene. It really was a sampling of LA, you had people from everywhere. My guitarist Craig Lee, his family was pretty much rich, I mean they lived in Beverly Hills and his mother was a producer… how he got into a band with a Mexican girl from East LA – you know, it was just the music, it was just the creativity that we had in common. And that’s what it should be: stripped down to the ideas, the creativity. It’s not about all that other stuff. Of course, we bring that other stuff with us but it’s not what we’re exchanging. We’re really working at the level of ‘what are your ideas?’” 

100andtwenty2:

The Bags - Alice Bag - Photo: Herb Wrede

“The whole time I was growing up I’d hung on to the belief that although I could not control the situations around me, I was in charge of how I responded to them. Now it seemed that even the comfort of feeling self-possessed, of feeling that my actions were the result of my own will was questionable. Surely this wasn’t who I wanted to be. I looked around me at the hovel I was living in, I looked at my injured arms, I looked out the window where only a tiny patch of sky was visible and I felt small, dwarfed by the magnificent, boundless knowledge of galaxies, not just physical galaxies, but galaxies of ideas, of life forms, of concepts beyond the scope of my vision. In that moment of understanding my miniscule place in the universe, I also felt a part of it. I heard the universe whisper to me. With my own limited vocabulary, I tried to answer.” - 1st draft from a chapter of Violence Girl, Beyond Good and Evil - Alice Bag

More specifically, this is what a Chicana punk feminist looks like.