Happy Riot Grrl Day, everybody

The mayor of Boston has declared April 9th Riot Grrl Day:

Joyce Linehan, the mayor’s Chief of Policy and Hanna’s longtime friend, will present Hanna with the proclamation at the event. According to Linehan,“[Kathleen’s agent] called me to see if I would introduce Kathleen, probably based on the fact that Kathleen, back in the day, used to stay at my house when bands came through town…We knew each other from the indie rock world.”

The proclamation, signed by Walsh himself, says that it is in part a reference to Hanna’s “Riot Grrrl Manifesto.” A portion of the document also details why the 20 year old manifesto continues to be pertinent today, stating, “The riot grrrl philosophy has never felt more relevant, with misogyny still rampant in many cultural spaces…”

It's not just Boston that needs this. With the lead letter in this week's NME asking why women are being groped at gigs in 2015, we need a worldwide - or at least a musicworldwide - Riot Grrl Day. We need every day to be a Riot Grrl Day.

Riot Grrl, 1996

Enormous thanks to @coldbrain for alerting me to Dirty Girls, a film shot in 1996 at an LA High School, capturing the clash between Riot Grrls and the rest of the schoolyard. It's fairly safe to say there isn't much of a meeting of minds between the two groups, but despite the odd outbreak of unintentional self-awareness ("my housekeeper gave me this") it's impossible not to root for the Dirty Girls. And give quiet thanks you never had to go to an LA High School.

"I'm not a person to judge what's right and wrong in life, but this is, like, dark and nightmarey."