Mayor Walsh Proclaims April 9 as Riot Grrrl Day

Bikini Kill/Kathleen Hanna photo via Wikimedia Commons

Mayor Marty Walsh has now officially one-upped himself after the ‘Roadrunner’ stunt: today, the mayor is proclaiming April 9 as ‘Riot Grrrl Day’ in the city of Boston in honor of original riot grrrl, Bikini Kill’s Kathleen Hanna.

Hanna, one of the most pivotal figures as a musician and activist in the hardcore-punk feminist movement, is in town this Thursday to lecture and perform at the Wilbur Theatre. There, Walsh’s chief of policy and the city’s unofficial arts aficionado, Joyce Linehan, will introduce Hanna and present her with the proclamation. Linehan and Hanna, funny enough, have known each other for about 20 years now.

“[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,” Linehan told Boston. “We knew each other from the indie rock world.”

That connection ended up evolving into the creation of Riot Grrrl Day “just because we can do that sort of thing here,” Linehan said.

The proclamation itself is signed by Mayor Walsh, and disclaims that it is in part adapted from Kathleen Hanna’s ‘Riot Grrrl Manifesto.’ A portion of the proclamation reads: “The riot grrrl philosophy has never felt more relevant, with misogyny still rampant in many cultural spaces;” and “Riot grrrls redefine the language used against them and continue to fight the newest incarnations of patriarchy. In doing so, they ironically confirm one ex-congressman’s accidental wisdom: ‘the female body has ways to try to shut that down.’ It sure does: women’s voices telling their stories can shut that down.”