So last night, for the first time in years, I went to a straight-up punk show at a Vancouver metal bar. Besides the predictable but entertaining power chords, the show was also the book launch for the latest from Gofuckyerself Press. Before the second act, the author went on stage and (once suitably bespectacled) read a brief excerpt.

In the dialogue, two characters were decrying the impact that the 2010 Olympics was having on the besieged poor in the Downtown Eastside, while drinking heavily at a rooftop hotel bar. It would be hard to accuse the author of literature, but that would also be missing the point. At the scene’s climax, the protagonist hurls a broken whiskey bottle from the roof onto a police car parked out front. “It was a glorious blow for the revolution,” the author read, laced with irony.

I’d been cringing a bit throughout the reading, but the self-deprecation in that line nearly redeemed it all. It made me think. While in recent years, I’ve largely stopped believing in the feasibility of ‘the revolution,’ or ultimately even in its desirability. I’d thought that was the product of a maturation in my political views (perhaps part of why I haven’t been to any punk shows in a while), but hearing the same sentiment coming from the mouth of a dyed-in-the-wool lifer punk threw me off a bit.

It made me realize that if even in the hearts of its staunchest supporters, ‘the revolution’ is just sort of an vague abstraction that will - and possibly can - never come to fruition, it still has its place. Things may get better, or they may not, but the punks want to remind us that this isn’t the best it can be. This is not the end of history.

When dire situations drive people to radical action, you have to ask why. White-collar office workers who commute from the suburbs in Honda Civics don’t throw Molotov cocktails. Violence is inexcusable, but then again, its rarely the resort of people who feel socially and politically enfranchised.

There was something Sisyphean in the author’s words. Being part of the angry detritus as society’s margins isn’t pretty, but maybe somebody’s got to do it. If only to pinch us awake every now and then.