DOWN TO THIS

"Home Alive doesn't use language like, 'We want to raise awareness of violence,' because everybody's fucking aware of violence," says Valerie Agnew, 7 Year Bitch drummer and co-founder of Home Alive. "Violence has been there forever, it's gonna be there forever — it's a fact of life. So instead of being all whiny and 'Oh, stop the violence' and 'End the violence now' and this kind of bumpersticker lame-ass liberal politicking that I hate; what we're saying is it's a fucking war and you better learn how to fight it."

Doesn't sound like your typical community-action program PR? Well, there's nothing typical about Home Alive, a Seattle-based collection of artists and musicians that provide affordable self-defense instruction primarily for women (on a sliding scale from free to $50, based on ability). Home Alive was formed three years ago, about a month after Agnew's friend Mia Zapata, lead singer of the promising punk combo the Gits, was raped and murdered outside a Seattle music club. It was a shock to the Seattle music community and the police, Agnew remembers, were slow to release any information to the public — even though Zapata's murder seemed premeditated. That was the basis for Home Alive's founding.

"I was at my wits end — if I didn't do something about it I was going to fucking kill somebody," Agnew remembers. "So I called Gretta [Harley] and all the other people that are now in Home Alive and we all had the same belief: If Mia had any kind of self-defense training at all she probably could have gotten away. Because Mia was really tough and streetwise and we saw her very much the same way we see ourselves — not as victim types. We realized that there was a lot of self-defense training available in Seattle, but it wasn't visible. And the best way to make it visible was obvious, like putting the plug in the socket: through the music community."

Initially the idea was to set up a booth to pass out informational materials at Seattle gigs, but Home Alive has grown remarkably since. The organization now has its own office, publishes its own newsletter, and is increasing the amount of classes it offers. In addition, the collective recently compiled Home Alive, The Art Of Self Defense, a double CD on Epic featuring 45 musical and spoken word artists ranging from the Fastbacks, Soundgarden, Alcohol Funnycar, Nirvana, Pearl Jam and 7 Year Bitch to Lydia Lunch, Exene Cervenka, Jim Carroll, Jello Biafra and Mia Zapata herself. While viewpoints expressed on the CD are varied (check the Supersuckers' "She's My Bitch" directly followed by Tribe 8's "Frat Pig"), everything from the performances to the visually arresting packaging was donated by the artists.

Says Agnew, "Initially we were just going to do a small release on a local Seattle label, press like 5000 or so and put it out ourselves. But once we started getting the word out it grew into this huge project; we ended up with over 100 submissions! It was stressful as hell, but we learned a lot about the music business real quick — it was like a crash course in major-label trauma! And all the bands, all the club owners in Seattle, the recording studios, just everybody's helped out — even a local cafe donated pizzas."

Local is the word for Home Alive — the CD liner notes make clear that all profits stay in the Seattle area. But the group provides detailed information for people wishing to form similar grassroots organizations in their own communities and has received news of groups from over 40 universities around the country now holding benefits for local rape crisis relief and domestic violence centers. Another compilation record which predates Home Alive is Free to Fight (available from Candy Ass, POB 42382, Portland OR 97242) which contains a 75 page booklet on women's self-defense that was released prior to Home Alive by the Portland group Movements in Change.

"It's just really important to deal with violence in more realistic terms," Agnew stresses. "Instead of saying, 'That's just the way it is' and not doing anything about it, there are things that you can do which are fairly simple that will at least increase your chances of surviving something like that. I'm just sick and tired of people like going, 'Poor me, poor me, these people are oppressing me.' Well you can sit around and be oppressed or you can learn how to get away, or outsmart them — or fucking kick their ass. Our idea is 'Whatever you gotta do, do it."

The Home Alive website can be reached at http://www.homealive.org