6 | What We're Left With

Summary

Podcast Summary: Dan Taberski’s Manifesto

Episode 6: What We’re Left With
Release Date: August 10, 2026
Host: Dan Tabersky
Podcast: Audible Originals | Please & Thanks Productions

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Episode Overview

In the culminating episode of "Manifesto", Dan Tabersky brings his exploration of manifestos to a close by following two pivotal declarations written in 1990—separated by 3,000 miles but united in urgency and rage. Through the stories of punk legend Kathleen Hanna and activists Avram Finkelstein and David Robinson, Tabersky interrogates the transformative and personal power of manifestos, their relationship to anger, activism, and violence, and ultimately, how writing a manifesto can stitch together both individual and collective strength in times of crisis.

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Key Themes & Discussion Points

1. The Personal Nature of Rage and Manifestos

• Rage as a Motivating Force:
  • Avram Finkelstein: “Oh, I think rage is an essential motivating force.” (01:51)
  • Kathleen Hanna: “That is my forte is getting mad and then letting the stream of consciousness rage just come out.” (25:20)
• Manifestos as Personal Letters:
  • Tabersky suggests sometimes manifestos are written as much for the author as anyone else:
    • “Sometimes… you’re writing that manifesto for you so you can hear the things that you need to hear, even if you gotta say them yourself.” (29:19)

2. Kathleen Hanna’s Journey: From Osmonds Fan to Riot Grrrl

• Hanna’s punk awakening and transition from “sweet and innocent” Osmonds fandom to the fiercely feminist, confrontational world of Bikini Kill (04:01–06:51).
• Facing hostile, male-dominated punk scenes:
  • “The men would… come to our shows just to yell, mainly. Shut up. Just shut up, shut up, shut up…” (06:38)
• Manifesto genesis:
  • Volunteering, street activism, and zine culture as prelude to the Riot Grrrl Manifesto
  • First flyers on street harassment signed by the “Girl Sprouts”:
    • “You have every right to walk alone any place at any time you want. …growing change in our community starting today.” (10:26)
  • Creating a front-row space for girls at shows:
    • “All girls to the front. I’m not kidding. All girls to the front.” (12:51)

3. Queer Rage and the AIDS Crisis: New York, 1990

• Avram Finkelstein and David Robinson’s activism:
  • Context: Epidemic, violence, and fear in Lower Manhattan, exemplified by a 1990 pipe bomb at Uncle Charlie’s bar (15:52).
  • ACT UP: Harnessing rage for direct action against government and pharmaceutical apathy (18:01).
  • The birth of “Queers Read This” and “Silence = Death”:
    • “Turn anger, fear, grief into action. Silence = Death.” (38:43)
• Speaking truth, even when it’s uncomfortable:
  • David Robinson: “I hate Jesse Helms. I hate Ronald Reagan, too. Yes, I hate the fucking Pope… I hate every sector of the straight establishment in this country.” (23:26–23:50)
  • “People should be able to listen to this kind of anger and not immediately force somebody to add all the footnotes…” (24:48)

4. Writing Manifestos as Acts of Self-Building

• Riot Grrrl Manifesto as self-invention:
  • Kathleen Hanna: “I feel like when I wrote this manifesto, it was to a future version of myself. …I was getting in touch with that version of myself that I was only beginning to see was possible.” (30:40)
• Tabersky’s 10th principle: “Write it for yourself. Use it to make yourself feel big.” (30:18)
• Riot Grrrl’s collaborative, viral manifesto-making:
  • “What I wrote in the zine next to it was, this is one idea. Please write your own. …And so there actually are like a hundred different riot grrrl manifestos.” (27:50)

5. Violence: Always There, Even If You Try to Avoid It

• The ever-present threat and question of violence in social change:
  • ACT UP’s consideration of escalating to riots if ignored (38:34)
  • “Violence stays on the table. Frankly, you couldn’t take it off the table even if you wanted to.” (40:55)
  • Tabersky: “The violence that swells when people feel cornered by power isn’t quite so compliant. You can’t manage the elemental.” (40:55)

6. After the Manifesto: Channeling Rage, Seeking Harmony

• Emotional aftermath for activists/artists:
  • Legacy actions: David Robinson’s act of throwing his late lover’s ashes on the White House lawn in protest (37:00)
  • The need for other kinds of music, for harmony:
    • “To live inside that fury every day is its own kind of defeat. So find your other voices, those other songs to sing… Harmonize with yourself.” (49:10)
• Kathleen Hanna today: Performance as healing, finally allowing herself release (45:17–45:57)
• David Robinson’s later life: Birdwatching, teaching, turning focus to other issues and sources of beauty (47:58–48:43)

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Memorable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• “Rage is an essential motivating force.” —Avram Finkelstein (01:51)
• “We don’t want you here and we don’t care what you have to say.” —on 1990s punk scene gender hostility (05:54)
• “All girls to the front. I’m not kidding. All girls to the front.” —Kathleen Hanna (12:51)
• “This is how I talk. If you don’t like it, I’m sorry. It’s just the way it fucking is.” —Kathleen Hanna (06:51)
• “Turn anger, fear, grief into action. Silence equals death.” —Silence = Death poster (38:43)
• “Sometimes… you’re writing that manifesto for you so you can hear the things that you need to hear, even if you gotta say them yourself.” —Dan Tabersky (29:19)
• “People should be able to listen to this kind of anger and not immediately force somebody to add all the footnotes…” —David Robinson (24:48)
• “Write it for yourself. Use it to make yourself feel big.” —Dan Tabersky (30:18)
• “Violence stays on the table. Frankly, you couldn’t take it off the table even if you wanted to.” —Dan Tabersky (40:55)
• “To live inside that fury every day is its own kind of defeat. So find your other voices… Harmonize with yourself.” —Dan Tabersky (49:10)

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Important Segment Timestamps

• Defining the manifesto and the power of rage: 00:00–03:34
• Kathleen Hanna’s punk roots and early activism: 04:01–14:45
• Avram Finkelstein, AIDS activism, birth of Queers Read This: 15:52–24:20
• Writing, meaning, and risk of manifestos: 24:20–30:59
• Manifestos—the Rocky Balboa metaphor: 31:29–34:01
• Legacy, violence, and movement-building: 34:01–41:46
• Aftermath and personal evolution (Hanna and Robinson): 44:29–49:10

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Conclusion

In its sweeping, final chapter, "Manifesto" distills a complicated truth: manifestos are not just political explosives aimed at the world, but are also tools for forging oneself and a chosen family amid chaos. Through tales of anger, activism, violence averted (and sometimes not), and the necessity of harmonizing rage with hope, Tabersky frames the manifesto as a living, personal practice—a rallying cry, a comfort, and, perhaps, a promise made first and foremost to the self.

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Listen to the full episode for deeper context, stories of frontline activism, and the raw voices that shaped a generation’s fight for survival and dignity.

Transcript

[Dan Tabursky]

Audible subscribers can binge all episodes of Dan Tabursky's manifesto early and ad free. Join Audible today by downloading the Audible app or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts. When someone tries to hand you something as you're walking down the street, do you smile and take it? Do you smile and refuse it? Or do you ignore them in a huff like a big old grump? I'm the grump kind. Get out of my face, Sugar daddies Gentlemen's club. I know where you are. I. I'll find you if I need you. Anyway, imagine how much more annoying this all was before the Internet, when handing shit out on the street was one of the only ways to get people to hear your message when it wasn't an option yet to just type out some gripe, post it, and wait for those thousands of thumbs up amens to come rolling in as if you'd done anything. Well, in the summer of 1990, in Lower Manhattan, amidst all the outstretched arms trying to get you to take that liquor store coupon or that flyer for a psychic reading, someone was also trying to get people to take a manifesto, an urgent one. It was printed on newsprint like a four page broadsheet and the blaring headline queers read this. And from the very first line, it made no bones about how high the stakes were here. How can I tell you? How can I convince you, brother sister, that your life is in danger? Thousands of copies were handed out that summer. The manifesto was full of fear and fury and exasperation. You could practically smell the angry sweat of the person who wrote it, which was anyone's guess. The manifesto was unsigned, leaving the author at the time a mystery.

[Avram Finkelstein]

Oh, I think rage is an essential motivating force.

[Dan Tabursky]

It didn't take me long to find out who was responsible. Artist and activist Avram Finkelstein.

[Avram Finkelstein]

I think I've always been Rachel. I think I still am.

[Dan Tabursky]

Rachel, do you mind my saying, you seem very separate from the rage that you're talking about. It's unusual to hear somebody talk about their rage in that, from that sort of remove.

[Avram Finkelstein]

I don't sound angry.

[Dan Tabursky]

You don't sound angry.

[Avram Finkelstein]

Well, I've been angry my entire life, so all of us have the aptitude for rage.

[Dan Tabursky]

This is the story of two manifestos being written at almost the exact same time, 3,000 miles apart. Neither is about theory or policy or political pipe dreams. For these two manifestos, the threat is right in their face. The fear existential. And while we've heard a lot about what a manifesto can mean for the world or for a movement. I mean, not to be crass about it, but what's in it for me? Are you the ones worn out by our rage? Looking for inspiration? A way to beat back the cynicism? Well, I think I found it. I'm Dan Tabursky from Audible originals and please and thanks Productions. This is the conclusion of Manifesto episode six. What we're left with.

[Narrator (Generation Y promo)]

If someone's charged and found guilty of murder, appeals their conviction, gets a retrial, and is found guilty a second time, do you think there's any way they're actually innocent? Well, if you're interested, follow the generation Y wherever you get your podcasts.

[Dan Tabursky]

Just so you know, punk legend Kathleen Hannah did not start off screaming bloody murder on stage. Music history could have gone down a completely different way. First of all, is it true that your first concert was the fucking Osmonds?

[Kathleen Hanna]

Yes, it was.

[Dan Tabursky]

Kathleen was nine years old and a Donnie and Marie superfan.

[Kathleen Hanna]

I wanted to be Donnie, Yeah. But then I guess it's kind of complicated that. I kind of had a crush on Marie, But I didn't really have a crush on Donnie. I, like, wanted to be him. I would, like, stay, stand in my room after school. I was always, like, running to my room to put on sweet and innocent and sing along to it. It's like, yes, so sweet.

[Chorus/Background voices]

So come back when you're older. Cause you're too sweet

[Kathleen Hanna]

and innocent.

[Dan Tabursky]

That's where you get your hardcore sensibility.

[Kathleen Hanna]

Yeah. So that's where I began as a punk. I was a Osmond's punk.

[Dan Tabursky]

Sweet and innocent. Never really had a chance with Kathleen Hanna, Especially when she hit high school and began going to punk shows.

[Kathleen Hanna]

I mean, also, I was kind of like one of those girls who, like, if my boyfriend was wearing a leather jacket, I was wearing a leather jacket. You know what I mean? And, like, he was into punk, so I went to the punk shows. But then I just kept going with my girlfriends after we broke up.

[Dan Tabursky]

And she loved it and got the sense that she might even be made for it. In 1990, Kathleen started punk band Bikini Kill with two other girls and a guy playing lead guitar. Kathleen was the front woman. And the punk scene in Olympia, Washington, where Kathleen landed after high school was like punk scenes everywhere. Almost entirely dudes. Dudes in bands with names like Rancid and Propagandi. Dudes in mosh pits, bloody and screaming. Dudes. That from gig number one, gave Kathleen and Bikini kill a message loud and clear. We don't want you here and we don't care what you have to say.

[Kathleen Hanna]

And we'd show up at the show and the poster would be a picture of a bunch of women in like suggestively Nazi armbands. Like we were feminazis. And that's the poster they used to like advertise our show. And then the promoters like think it's really funny to play the mentors. Find her feeler, fucker, forget her as we walk in the door Finder, feeler,

[Chorus/Background voices]

fucker, forget finder dealer fucker, forgetter.

[Kathleen Hanna]

And from the second we get there, it's just all these men, like standing around with their arms crossed, staring at us, waiting for us to fuck up. You got the final killer and then we have to go on stage, we're

[Chorus/Background voices]

begin to kill and we're fucker than you.

[Kathleen Hanna]

The men would like, would come to our shows just to yell, mainly. Shut up. Just shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up. Scream at us or throw stuff at us or threaten us.

[Dan Tabursky]

Look, this is how I talk.

[Kathleen Hanna]

If you don't like it, I'm sorry. It's just the way it fucking is.

[Dan Tabursky]

Why go back to that environment where you walk in and they're playing shitty songs and like men are standing there waiting for you to fuck up and you get up in between songs, you're trying to talk and they're shouting shit at you. What inside you made you keep going back to that.

[Kathleen Hanna]

You mean, why did I go back to my abusive husband? Yeah.

[Dan Tabursky]

What Kathleen was feeling, what she was screaming about on stage, she had been actually living. Being a girl in America in the 1980s.

[Kathleen Hanna]

I lived in a place like basically a small town where guys would. If you were up before 8 in the morning and you were walking on the street or you were out late, they'd pull up next to you in their trucks and be like, hey, want to get in? You know, and you're just like. You felt five inches from being disappeared forever. When you're a woman walking alone on the street and then next guy pulls up, ask for directions and you're like, get the fuck away from me. And then you're a bitch. And it really takes away your ability to like be neighborly and friendly. And then you're blamed for it. And it's a real like mind fuck situation.

[Dan Tabursky]

And that mind fuck was translating right into the punk scene right up on stage.

[Kathleen Hanna]

I just remember being like. It started to feel like cosplay before I even knew that was a word. Like, it started to feel like all the guys who would come, who they Would just do the same exact thing. They would say the same stupid shit, the same threats, the same whatever. They. They. You know guys who, like, masturbate in their cars because they like to see this look of fear on women's faces.

[Dan Tabursky]

Yeah.

[Kathleen Hanna]

I was like, oh, that's what's happening. And they're looking at me to provide this certain performance. So then I just, you know, stopped reacting.

[Chorus/Background voices]

Oh.

[Kathleen Hanna]

They see that we're on fire, and they want to dump water on us. That just means we're doing the right thing.

[Dan Tabursky]

Kathleen Hanna didn't start out trying to write a manifesto. But it's funny how, in retrospect, she was making a beeline right, for one. The whole time. She's volunteering at a domestic violence shelter. She's running a group for teen sexual assault survivors.

[Kathleen Hanna]

You know, like, I was doing a lot of activism, like, act up stuff, like, you know, had a slide projector and was projecting statistics about AIDS on the building across the street from mine.

[Dan Tabursky]

She's doing spoken word poetry for small crowds around Olympia.

[Chorus/Background voices]

I am your worst nightmare come to life. I'm a girl who you can't shut up. There's not a guy big enough can handle this mouth. I'm gonna tell everyone what you did to me. It was the middle of the night in my house Was the middle of the night in my house Was the middle of the night.

[Dan Tabursky]

She's reading, she's protesting. She's getting madder and madder and madder.

[Chorus/Background voices]

It was the middle of the night in my house. It was the middle of the night in my house Was the middle of the night in my.

[Kathleen Hanna]

I mean, like, I couldn't relax. Like, I was so. I was so inflamed and embroiled in this stuff.

[Dan Tabursky]

And you can kind of see the cream thickening and that growing feeling that she wanted to say something big, not just on stage. She wanted to say something to the girls that she sees in the audience trying to exorcise their own demons, have a little bit of their own fun. Girls like she had once been who put up with the same shit that she did. A message much bigger than any one song or set, but also, at the same time, much more targeted than a song on the radio could have delivered.

[Kathleen Hanna]

I had these many aha moments, and I was like, I want to share everything I'm learning with everybody.

[Dan Tabursky]

She starts putting things down on paper. I think it was the first flyer made was about street harassment.

[Kathleen Hanna]

Yeah.

[Dan Tabursky]

And it's. It's just like. It just says, like, just. You have every right to walk alone any place at any time you want. If a man tries to stop you or ask you intrusive questions, you're not responsible to answer him. He's trying to harass you. And you are not obliged to be nice to someone who's being a jerk and treating you disrespectfully. You do this whole thing, and then you sign it, affectionately yours, the Girl Sprouts. Not girl Scouts, Girl Sprouts. And it says, like, a little quote, like, what your motto is. It says, growing change in our community starting today.

[Kathleen Hanna]

I forgot about that.

[Dan Tabursky]

And I'm just curious how many members of the Girl Sprouts there were at the time.

[Kathleen Hanna]

There was one girl Sprout, and I believe her name was me.

[Dan Tabursky]

Make it seem like you're an army, right? Be legion. Kathleen dives deep into the world of making zines. There are DIY magazines, like blogs before blogs, handmade, stapled together and shared at shows and through the mail to fans.

[Kathleen Hanna]

And then I did another one, and it just had a bunch of points like, vulnerability equals strength and dork equals cool. It was just like this kind of list of stuff of, like, cry on the bus. And I folded it up and I put it in books at libraries, and I went to high schools, and I handed them out

[Dan Tabursky]

at the same time as she's slipping and spinning transpiring notes into library books. Bikini Kill's fandom and the punk scene grows, especially with girls and some guys for sure, but still, we were very

[Kathleen Hanna]

confrontational, and there was a lot of things being thrown at us and threats and stuff.

[Dan Tabursky]

Explain that. Why were you so confrontational? Like what? To the crowd? Like, to the men in the crowd or the crowd?

[Kathleen Hanna]

Well, I wasn't like, fuck you guys.

[Dan Tabursky]

Although counterpoint, one of the songs they were singing to those guys was called Suck My left one.

[Chorus/Background voices]

Suck my left One.

[Dan Tabursky]

And still standing on that stage, Kathleen is struck seeing the things her girl fans are having to put up with.

[Kathleen Hanna]

I'm like, man, you know, going to a show is supposed to be where we get to dance and have a fun time. And, like, we're being pushed to the back. And girls who don't want to mosh because there's some guys who are using that opportunity to grope them or push them on the ground, have to stand in the back because everyone's moshing.

[Dan Tabursky]

So she begins to intervene, yelling, girls to the front. At each show.

[Chorus/Background voices]

All girls to the front. I'm not kidding. All girls to the front.

[Dan Tabursky]

She gets the usual fuck yous and shut ups. But she keeps doing it anyway. Girls to the front.

[Kathleen Hanna]

A lot of times girls who were in the back would all hold hands and fucking run up to the front and they were so psyched.

[Chorus/Background voices]

My personal preference is no girls in the sand pit. I don't know about you, if you guys could just take a picture.

[Kathleen Hanna]

You know, when three girls who are best friends in North Dakota show up at your show and cry the whole time in the front row, it's worth it. All people need sometimes is permission, you know, and like, if I have this power of having the microphone and being on stage, what am I gonna fucking use it for?

[Dan Tabursky]

Kathleen Hanna was becoming something. Almost taking stock and excavating her own resources that she found inside. Courage, poetry, real action, finding out what she's made of.

[Kathleen Hanna]

And that was much that was like I was stepping towards writing some kind of manifesto. Like really I was entering preacher mode, you know, Like I grew up like making fun of like Ernest Angley and Jim Baker. And my mom watched those shows like all the time, like laughing at them. But I remember thinking there's so many great pastors, preachers who like talk about real things. And like I wanted to be somebody like that who like got up and like was poetic and said things that were like really meaningful and that moved people. I was starting to write in this way that was very much almost like religious, you know what I mean?

[Narrator (Generation Y promo)]

There's a guy named Mark Lundy and he lives in New Zealand. He's married to his wife Christine, and they have a seven year old daughter, Amber. Mark happens to be a traveling salesman and on the morning of August 29th of 2000, he takes off on a business trip. Mark's not doing too well financially. Mark has upped his life insurance policy on his family and Mark is spending the night with a sex worker. Meanwhile, Mark's wife and daughter will be brutally murdered inside their home. At their funeral, Mark falls down in despair and people have to physically carry him away. All of the onlookers thought this was an overreaction and the investigators into this crime, well, let's just say that Mark is their number one suspect. The only problem is they place the time of death between 7 and 7:15pm while Mark is over 130 kilometers away. If you want to know what happens next, follow the Generation Y wherever you get your podcasts.

[Dan Tabursky]

As Kathleen Hanna was doing her thing in the punk clubs around Olympia, there was another club on the other side of the country in Lower Manhattan. A bar on Greenwich Avenue called Uncle Charlie's. Uncle Charlie's was the kind of place that didn't play the Knicks game on the TVs above the bar. They played Dorothy skipping down the yellow brick road to Donna. Summer samples intercut with the best slaps from Mommie Dearest and hardcore porn. It had also recently become the kind of place where the clientele were checking each other out for more than just a hookup or a boyfriend for the summer. They were looking to see who had become too thin in the face or who was maybe hiding a new lesion with an upturned collar. On April 28, 1990, a homemade pipe bomb went off at Uncle Charlie's. No one dead, but three people injured and a lot of people at the end of their rope. It was the surge of the AIDS epidemic and rising violence against queer folks in New York City.

[David Robinson]

I moved to New York hoping to be part of gay liberation and not finding any.

[Dan Tabursky]

David Robinson grew up in suburban New Jersey in the 1970s. It's about 60 minutes from downtown Manhattan, but might as well have been 60 light years.

[David Robinson]

I had been bullied really sadistically. When I was in middle school. There was one kid who sat behind me in math class and from the minute the bell rang to start class to the minute it ended, he just whispered under his breath, faggot, faggot, faggot,

[Dan Tabursky]

faggot, faggot, faggot, faggot. When David finally arrived in New York in the late 80s, he was waiting tables and studying to be a dancer. And he had no interest in hiding who he was or what was up.

[David Robinson]

Yeah, I was probably wearing some very visibly gay activist shirt. So it might be a silence equals death shirt. It might be a shirt that said big fag. It might say Missy. My partner made a couple of those for me. And then there was. I saw a poster in the subway that a flyer that had been wheat pasted up that announced a massive AIDS demonstration on Wall Street. It turns out it was the first ACT UP demo.

[Chorus/Background voices]

We are angry. We want action. We are angry. We want action.

[Dan Tabursky]

David goes about 250 people show up, descending on Wall Street. Recurring theme. Anyone? This time protesting pharmaceutical companies and the FDA for dragging their asses on AIDS treatments. On finding a cure, David is shy at first. He doesn't even remember joining the angry chanting that day. But he stayed and became an early member of ACT up, the infamous direct action group to fight AIDS and apathy.

[Chorus/Background voices]

Release the drugs. Release the drugs. Release the drugs. Release the drugs.

[Dan Tabursky]

That was their first big action. By their second, David Robinson was shy no more. He Even got roughed up by police. He was hooked.

[David Robinson]

The impact was so clear. More and more people joining and more and more actions and more and more results, actual results.

[Dan Tabursky]

They were speeding up experimental drug trials. They were demanding more investment and just getting more attention to what the rest of the country seemed so uninterested in.

[Chorus/Background voices]

They have been ignoring us all these

[David Robinson]

years, and the only way you get

[Chorus/Background voices]

attention from them is to hit them where it hurts.

[Dan Tabursky]

And sick people dying, people are taking to the streets to fight for their own lives.

[Chorus/Background voices]

I've been diagnosed with athylated complex for two and a half years now, and there's absolutely no drug I can take. That's slowly getting worse and worse. That's why we're here, to make a point.

[Dan Tabursky]

David's involvement goes deeper still. He's writing for an alt weekly about the gay plague and queer violence. He begins facilitating ACT UP meetings rather than just attending. He's protesting the surge in queer bashings on the streets. But by 1990, David Robinson feels that all that momentum was beginning to stall.

[David Robinson]

By about the third year, we had to accept that this is not ending anytime soon, that people are continuing to die, that this was going to be a lot longer and more grueling than I think in some level we had hoped. And now I was with a partner who had aids. So, yeah, I was enraged.

[Avram Finkelstein]

Oh, I think rage is an essential tool.

[Dan Tabursky]

And that brings us back to Avram Finkelstein, the angriest boy in New York.

[Avram Finkelstein]

I think we're trained to think that rage is destructive, but it isn't always. It's part of agency.

[Dan Tabursky]

Avram was the source of that. Anonymously written queers read this manifesto handed out in New York in 1990. Avram is 74 now and still making work at his studio in Queens. Piled high with the reminders of a lifetime of art and activism.

[Avram Finkelstein]

And this is. You're gonna have to pull them out.

[David Robinson]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Dan Tabursky]

Turns out Avram is manifesto royalty. He had been one of the creators of the famous Silence equals death poster from 1987. 15,000 had died of AIDS that year. 19,000 died the next. Over 23,000 the year after that, and the year after that is when Avram and a group of artists and activists made queers read this.

[Avram Finkelstein]

Sorry, can you turn that page? You'll have a much easier time of it.

[Dan Tabursky]

He. He still has an original copy. The black and white of the newsprint now black and yellowed. The idea was a group written manifesto. Not just one angry voice, but many angry voices made one in one Document. But the target audience wasn't pharmaceutical companies or the CDC or George H.W. gay isn't a normal lifestyle, Bush. It was a message to their own people, to themselves, not just in New York, but around the country, that their fear isn't good enough in the face of violence. And their apathy is unforgivable in the face of a plague. But question, and not a perfunctory one. How do you spread the word when there's no Internet to spread it? If you say something but no one can hear it, did you even say anything at all?

[Avram Finkelstein]

The Pride March in New York City. A million people at the time used

[Dan Tabursky]

to come to it from all over the Eastern seaboard.

[Avram Finkelstein]

It's like shooting fish in a barrel.

[Dan Tabursky]

They run off 20,000 copies of the manifesto at an offset printing press on 14th Street. And they follow the parade down 5th Avenue, handing out their manifesto, scattering them like seed bombs and hoping some would take root.

[Chorus/Background voices]

We're here. We're fabulous. Get used to it. We're here. We're here.

[Avram Finkelstein]

People were so starving for information that we gave out all 20,000.

[Dan Tabursky]

About 12 people in all contributed their rage to the manifesto, all anonymously. But the most notorious of the contributions would later be attributed to. To Mr. Big Fag Missy himself, David Robinson. Can I quote you?

[David Robinson]

Yeah. Oh, definitely.

[Dan Tabursky]

All right, I'm gonna quote you. I hate Jesse Helms.

[David Robinson]

Yes.

[Dan Tabursky]

I hate Ronald Reagan, too. Yes, I hate the fucking Pope. I hate John fucking Cardinal fucking o'. Connor. And I hate the whole fucking Catholic Church. I hate every sector of the straight establishment in this country. The worst of whom actively want all queers dead. The best of whom never stick their necks out to keep us alive.

[Chorus/Background voices]

Yeah.

[Dan Tabursky]

I hate having to convince straight people that lesbians and gays live in a war zone, that we're surrounded by bomb blasts only we seem to hear that our bodies and souls are heaped high, dead from fright or bashed or raped, dying of grief or disease, stripped of our personhood. I mean, were you nervous about putting stuff out there that virulent?

[David Robinson]

I wasn't nervous about saying anything of that. Maybe saying, I hate the whole fucking Catholic Church. I might have been a little nervous about that.

[Dan Tabursky]

They've taught us that good queers don't get mad. They taught us so well that we not only hide our anger from them, we hide it from each other. We even hide it from ourselves. We hide it with substance abuse and suicide and overachieving. In the hope of proving our worth. They bash us and stab us and shoot us and bomb Us in ever increasing numbers. And still we freak out when angry queers carry banners or signs that say bash back.

[David Robinson]

People should be able to listen to this kind of anger and not immediately force somebody to add all the footnotes, you know, or all the little bits of explanation. If we're angry at the people who are letting us die, who are encouraging, who want us to die, are the ones who just don't care. That's legit. So stop telling the queer next to you that they can't say, I fucking hate straight people.

[Chorus/Background voices]

Fuck it.

[David Robinson]

You know,

[Kathleen Hanna]

like, that is my forte is getting mad and then letting the stream of consciousness rage just come out.

[Dan Tabursky]

Soon after queers read this dropped, Kathleen Hannah finally writes what becomes known as the Riot Grrrl Manifesto. It's typed out on one page on a manual typewriter, and at the top it says, riot girl is with girl spelled G R R RL So you can say it with a bit of a growl. And I gotta say, as manifestos go, it looks familiar. It looks a lot like the Declaration of Independence, by the way. What?

[Kathleen Hanna]

Well, thank you. I'm a big Benjamin Franklin fan. That's usually my Halloween costume.

[Dan Tabursky]

Sexy Ben Franklin.

[Kathleen Hanna]

Benjamin Franklin, Yeah.

[Dan Tabursky]

The Riot Grrrl Manifesto's got the repetition of the Declaration of Independence, the call and response, like list of grievances. Because we're angry at a society that tells us girl equals dumb, girl equals bad, girl equals weak. Because we're unwilling to let our real and valid anger be diffused or turned against us. Because I believe with my whole heart, mind, body that girls constitute a revolutionary soul force that can and change the world for real. Just. Just a line from it. Because we recognize fantasies of instant macho gun revolution as impractical lies meant to keep us simply dreaming instead of becoming our dreams.

[Kathleen Hanna]

Yeah, I mean, all the dudes seem to have this magic bullet idea of change and that it wasn't a slog, you know, It's a slog. It's like changing one mind or connecting two people together or whatever. That's. Those are the meaningful things that end up rippling out. It's a slog. But it's also a slog that can involve music and having a good time and sometimes throwing a party and inviting people and making them the center of attention who are always left out is part of that.

[Dan Tabursky]

Wow.

[Kathleen Hanna]

You know what I mean? And then it leads to something else. And telling other girls, hey, do you have a band? Just asking them, do you have a band? When they've never been asked that the

[Dan Tabursky]

Riot Grrrl manifesto was published in bikini kill zine 2 and available to fans for a buck through the mail. A bargain considering 20 years earlier, the scum manifesto sold on the street for the same price.

[Kathleen Hanna]

Another thing about this particular manifesto was that what I wrote in the zine next to it was, this is one idea. Please write your own. You know, and then other girls started writing their own. And so there actually are like a hundred different riot grrrl manifestos. This is just one.

[Dan Tabursky]

Along the way, Kathleen gives an interview about riot grrrl and what a phenomenon it is.

[Kathleen Hanna]

And I lied and I said that there was like 200 chapters all over the world, and at the time there was only one that we had just started.

[Dan Tabursky]

I know this trick.

[Kathleen Hanna]

And then. I'm not saying that because of that one article, everything changed. But people went looking for meetings and couldn't find them, and so they formed their own groups. And then by the end of that year, there was like 50 or 60 groups. You know, and I. And I think it's also like if you feel like you're somebody who nobody listens to and who people are constantly telling you you're wrong and what you're doing is not only wrong, but it's stupid and embarrassing and you suck and you should die because you don't deserve to even be on stage saying anything or like whatever. It really is kind of like a cave that you crawl into. And then you write this manifesto like, I'm a really fucking big deal. You gotta listen to me.

[Dan Tabursky]

Oh my God. I began this project thinking of manifestos as a bomb with a blast radius. The impact is outward, not in or a megaphone. You don't point a megaphone at yourself. You point it at the world. The ones that need to know that girl doesn't equal bad. No matter what anyone says or that you don't have to accept death by virus just because no one else is doing anything about it. But sometimes, without even knowing it, sometimes you're writing that manifesto for you so you can hear the things that you need to hear, even if you gotta say them yourself.

[Kathleen Hanna]

It's sort of like sewing a superhero costume, you know what I mean? Like, it's like, I deserve. I deserve to write this. I am a big enough deal. I deserve to write whatever I want.

[Dan Tabursky]

Point 10, the second to last point on my 11 point manifesto on manifestos. Write it for yourself. Use it to make yourself feel big. Manifestos aren't just for building the world you want, but for building yourself into the person you want to Be who can make that world with their own two hands.

[Kathleen Hanna]

I feel like when I wrote this manifesto, it was to a future version of myself. A stronger, more powerful, more confident version of myself wrote this. And through writing this, I was getting in touch with that version of myself that I was only beginning to see was possible.

[Dan Tabursky]

Yeah, you were manifesting it. Yeah, you were making it true. It was future true.

[Kathleen Hanna]

It wasn't just about other people. It was about me.

[Dan Tabursky]

The dollar buys a nickel's worth. Banks are going bust.

[Chorus/Background voices]

Shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running.

[Dan Tabursky]

Okay, so we started this whole thing with two manifestos from the bicentennial, the Declaration of Independence and this speech from the movie network. Now I want to add a third manifesto from 1976, even though it's not technically a manifesto. But. What are you gonna do, turn me off? There's like eight minutes left. Besides, it's manifesto like. You know the movie Rocky, I ain't had no problem.

[Chorus/Background voices]

I ain't had enough. Legs are gone.

[Dan Tabursky]

Everything is gone.

[Chorus/Background voices]

No one's getting a nut.

[Dan Tabursky]

Sylvester Stallone plays Rocky Balboa, a down on his luck boxer who mumbles like a son of a bitch and then stumbles onto a chance to fight the heavyweight champion of the world.

[Chorus/Background voices]

A Apollo Creed guy comes up, offers me a fight. Big deal. Wanna fight the fight? Yeah, I'll fight the big fight.

[Dan Tabursky]

A fight everyone expects Rocky to lose hard.

[Chorus/Background voices]

Okay. Now, when you walk into the ring, you're the number one heavyweight of the world. You'll be ready, won't you? Why?

[Dan Tabursky]

Well, there's the scene in the movie where Rocky is sparring in the ring. He's training for the big fight. And hanging on the outside of the ropes is Mickey, his grizzled old boxing coach. And he's just, like, yelling at him

[Chorus/Background voices]

because I waited for 50 years to make you rip. You'll be able to spit nails, kid,

[Dan Tabursky]

just riling him up that he can do anything.

[Chorus/Background voices]

Like the guy says, you're gonna eat lightning and you're gonna crap thunder. You're gonna become a very dangerous.

[Dan Tabursky]

This is basically every other scene in this movie. Brocky getting yelled at by Mickey. You know why? Because Rocky needs it. Rocky needs to be reminded. We all need to be reminded. Not in a cautious, afraid, you're breakable kind of way, but in the boxing coach kind of way that I know you're tired and afraid for the world and your kids world, but we are screwing them. And yes, it's a slog, but you've got people, your people. To remind you that this is who we are and this is what we could be, and this is what's at stake. So it's time to gut up and snap out of it and get your head back in the goddamn game. Soon after queers read this, read the riot act to its own community, some of its writers helped form Queer Nation, a new group pushing for gay militancy in the fight against aids. But also beyond it.

[Avram Finkelstein]

We're here.

[Dan Tabursky]

We're queer. Get used to it. That's them. They begin holding kiss ins, flooding straight bars with queer patrons. Safety in numbers. They protest church groups and tell evangelists, 2, 4, 6, 8. How do you know your kids are straight? From there, Queer Nation members help start the Pink Panthers, patrolling the streets for gay bashers. On armed with whistles and walkie talkies, they teach how to fight back at a karate school on Bleecker Street. One tabloid sums it up. Pink Panthers protect pansies. Eat lightning. Crap thunder. That summer, David Robinson and his partner moved to San Francisco and continued their activism out there. When I was going through Abraham Finkelstein's files and papers and artwork again, he keeps everything. I found a letter that David had written, or part of a letter, actually, that seemed to imply that eventually David Robinson did reach the limit of his rage supply, that his anger in the end hadn't been enough, and that just two years after queers read this, David was ready to wave the white flag and give up. There was another letter in Abrams archives, and it was from you. It was from 1992.

[Chorus/Background voices]

Yeah.

[Dan Tabursky]

Can I read a little bit of it?

[Avram Finkelstein]

Of course.

[Dan Tabursky]

Okay. Okay. It begins, My lover died on April 18th. My sweet, brave, angry, sexy, irreplaceable lover. War and peace. Died of AIDS on April 18, 1992. I saw AIDS as a solvable problem. I thought if we could mobilize enough of us, the faggots, junkies, spics, poor people most affected by aids, we could force the men who own and run this country to help us find a cure. But I no longer torture myself trying to mobilize that army of passionately committed AIDS activists or even hoping for it. It will not arise because. And that's it. I only have the first page of the letter, and I don't know how it goes. It sounds like you're about to sort of lose your faith a little bit. Do you remember. Do you remember what you were. Do you remember what that was, what you were trying to say?

[David Robinson]

Honestly, I actually think still I was trying to motivate people by expressing the hopelessness Because I did end up doing an action that was directly about taking the absolute worst of our. Of our grief, what had happened, and still trying to make a difference.

[Dan Tabursky]

A few months after he wrote that letter, David Robinson led a procession down the streets of Washington, D.C. like a funeral. And in David's hands, he's holding a gold box.

[David Robinson]

We brought the ashes of people we loved who had died of aids. We march to the White House.

[Dan Tabursky]

As the marchers fight past police on horseback guarding the White House gate, clouds of ash begin to form and rise.

[David Robinson]

Threw them over the fence onto the, you know, the lawn of the White House. And in a public, you know, this.

[Dan Tabursky]

You did that.

[Avram Finkelstein]

Yeah.

[David Robinson]

My love is ashes.

[Avram Finkelstein]

Yeah.

[David Robinson]

Yeah. I would have used his body. It stripped away all of the symbolism and metaphor about the deaths and brought it to the reality of. This is what we're left with, you know, bones, ashes. This is the. We're not talking about anything abstract was what we were saying. This is what we are losing,

[Kathleen Hanna]

And

[David Robinson]

this is what must stop.

[Dan Tabursky]

There's a story Abram Finkelstein told me about that other manifesto he helped create, the one before queers read this during the onset of the plague. It's a poster, a field of total black. And in the center is a single hot pink triangle. And below that, two words and the symbol connecting them. Silence equals death. And then in very small text at the bottom that you'd only see if you were right up close to it, like a secret, and says, why is Reagan silent about aids? What's really going on at the center for Disease Control, the Federal Drug Administration, and the Vatican? Gays and lesbians are not expendable. Use your power. Vote. Boycott. Defend yourselves. Turn anger, fear, grief into action. Turn anger, fear, grief into action. Silence Equals death may not mean anything to you, but if you were queer in New York in the late 80s, in or out, and saw those posters wheat pasted on a wall, it meant everything. It meant someone was trying to fight back, that whoever made this poster could be 10, it could be 10,000, that maybe they had a plan to stop our demise. Or at the very least, that we were going to go down shooting. Well, apparently I didn't know the half of it. Almost no one did. What Avram told me was that the plan originally involved more than just this one poster. The plan was that Silence Equals Death was going to be the first in a series of three posters, and the last was going to call for riots, violence in the streets during the 1988 presidential election. You can see the mockups that Avram sketched in his old journals from the time. Posters that say gay riots 1988. We are not expendable. Gay riots are the only way. But it never came to that. Just weeks after the silence equals death posters showed up around the city. ACT UP was formed. Help had arrived. Their own community had stepped up and they were going to save themselves. But violence had been on the table most definitely. I don't quite know how to parse the feeling I got when Avram told me this, when I saw the renderings of how far they were willing to go. But it felt a lot like pride. This whole time I have been circling around how to avoid the violence. Can we move forward without the bullet, without the bomb? It's an instinct, really, that civilized people do, I think, to keep pointing at that imaginary line that we just won't cross. None of the manifesto writers or followers I met were looking for violence outright. But in their exasperation at their circumstances, violence always seemed to be there. Circling, waiting for our patients to finally die.

[Kathleen Hanna]

Violence is needed sometimes.

[Dan Tabursky]

I heard it from the Luigi supporters outside the courthouse.

[Kathleen Hanna]

Rich people have never moved off their butts. And all the government has never given any group anything. You just ask for it. They have always given it. When they feared something, they feared the violence. If you want revolution, somebody has to die.

[Dan Tabursky]

There are desperate, homeless, hungry people everywhere. I heard it with Michael Peligati, the security guard who occupied Wall Street. What do desperate, homeless, hungry people do? They have nothing to lose. They lose it. I heard it from Thomas F.N. jefferson and his blood of patriots. And it can very well.

[Chorus/Background voices]

It will happen again.

[Dan Tabursky]

Let's just be reassured. It will happen again.

[Kathleen Hanna]

Such is the nature of man.

[Dan Tabursky]

Wow.

[Chorus/Background voices]

Do you give a fuck about humanity?

[Dan Tabursky]

It was there with the free Staters getting right in people's faces. It was there with the pubic practical jokes, God help us. Every taboo trampled upon. It was in throwing what's left of your lover on the doorstep of the President of the United States. The final point of Dan Taburski's 11.5 manifesto on manifestos is the one that surprises me the most. Number 11. Violence stays on the table. Frankly, you couldn't take it off the table even if you wanted to. The violence that comes from power is strategic. It's surgical. It's a choice. But the violence that swells when people feel cornered by power isn't quite so compliant. You can't manage the elemental. You can't stop the flood waters just by saying stop. After the riot. Grrrl Manifesto, Kathleen Hannah went on, of course, to become one of the most influential punk musicians in history, and not just with girls.

[Kathleen Hanna]

Thank y' all for coming out on a Monday night.

[Dan Tabursky]

This is Kathleen and Bikini Kill on stage during their reunion tour.

[Kathleen Hanna]

We're Bikini Kill and we want revolution.

[Chorus/Background voices]

Crazy.

[Dan Tabursky]

And she's still got a set of lungs on her, still a built in, in exit strategy for the rage down deep. For me, I see punker. I see you on stage and I see. It feels like it's volume. It's like it's loud, it's screaming, it's getting it out. Like, was that part of the. Is that how you experience it when you're doing it? Is it a release like that?

[Kathleen Hanna]

Yeah, it wasn't exactly therapeutic back then because I really had to spend a lot of time on safety issues. I really had to kind of stay very present in the room and watch the audience for safety. So I wasn't, like, transcending or having a therapy moment.

[Dan Tabursky]

Wow. So interesting. To me, it just looks like release.

[Kathleen Hanna]

Well, now that I'm older and that, like, I think we're a lot less threatening because we're older and we get a lot less shit. And people are kind of like, oh,

[Dan Tabursky]

they were right the whole time.

[Kathleen Hanna]

Now I totally let myself feel it in my body.

[Dan Tabursky]

And that after the manifesto, after the artful scream comes perhaps, if we're lucky, calm and a little peace.

[Kathleen Hanna]

You know, I do have moments where there are certain songs about certain things that have happened in my life that were not the best. You know, I can intellectually understand that, you know, sexual assault was not my fault or, like, whatever, but as a control freak, I want to control it and think, if I would have just done this. And I think that for so long, even though I would do therapy and read books and be like, it's not your fault, I. I didn't work it out of my body. You know what I mean? Like, I. I worked on it intellectually. I worked on it neck up.

[Dan Tabursky]

Now when she's on stage, that's changed.

[Kathleen Hanna]

I've been able to close my eyes, throw myself into a song, and really work some of that stuff out. Now I'm able to sort of, like, sink into the music and really disappear into it.

[Dan Tabursky]

And as for David Robinson, David posted this video you're hearing just last year. It's just him standing in a wooded spot in a park, listening and smiling.

[David Robinson]

That is a wood thrush singing,

[Dan Tabursky]

soaking up the music of a wood thrush almost floating in it.

[David Robinson]

Such a beautiful sound.

[Dan Tabursky]

In the years after queers read this and all the triumphs of his work then, and all the loss despite it, David Robinson has continued his activism throughout his life. He taught English to kids and the power of choosing just the right words, and much of his focus turned to environmental issues. He's become an avid bird watcher, the kind of guy who's come to understand what it is exactly that makes birdsong so beautiful.

[Avram Finkelstein]

They sing out of both of the

[David Robinson]

voice boxes birds have tube some birds, thrushes especially, can make different notes at time the same at the same time because they're playing through two pipes at once. They can harmonize with themselves,

[Dan Tabursky]

turn anger, fear, grief into action. But know this too, that same angry note over and over. Eventually it just becomes noise. And to live inside that fury every day is its own kind of defeat. So find your other voices, those other songs to sing, different high notes to hit, not in place of the angry notes, just alongside. Harmonize with yourself. You're going to need it for the long slog ahead. Listen to Dan Tabirsky's Manifesto on the Audible app or wherever you get your podcasts. Audible subscribers can binge all episodes of Dan Taburski's Manifesto early and ad free right now. Join Audible in the Audible app or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts. Dan Tabursky's Manifesto is produced by Audible Originals and Please and Thanks Productions. It's produced by Ben Goldberg and Zandra Ellen. Our fact checker is Natsumi Ajasaka. Original music mixing and mastering by Greg Martin Dan Tabursky's Manifesto was written and executive produced by me, Dan Tabursky Executive producers for Please and Thanks Productions Joel Lovell and Henry Malofsky. Managing producer for Audible is Sierra Franco. Executive producer for Audible is Julia Lowery Henderson. The head of Creative Development at Audible is Kate Navin. The head of Audible Originals North America is Marshall Louie and the Chief Content Officer is Rachel Giazza. Copyright 2026 by Audible Originals LLC, sound recording Copyright 2026 by Audible Originates LL.