Mark Andersen

Mark Andersen was raised on a farm/ranch on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation in Sheridan County, Montana. He has been the co-director of We Are Family Senior Outreach Network since 2004, a co-founder of punk activist collective Positive Force DC in 1985 and the co-author of Dance Of Days: Two Decades of Punk In the Nation's Capital and We Are The Clash: Reagan, Thatcher, and the Last Stand of a Band That Mattered and author of All The Power: Revolution Without Illusion. Mark has done outreach, organizing and advocacy in inner city DC since the late 1980s and has served on many non-profit boards. He has a master's degree in International Relations from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (1986) and a bachelor's degree in Political Science with a minor in History from Montana State University (1983) and has contributed to numerous other books, including We Owe You Nothing, Expanded Edition (Punk Planet/Akashic Books, 2007) Sober Living For The Revolution: Hardcore Punk, Straight Edge and Radical Politics (PM Press, 2010) Rad Dad: Dispatches From The Frontier of Fatherhood (PM Press/Microcosm Publishing, 2011), Political Rock: Musicians Who Changed the World (Ashgate, 2013), and Pump Me Up: DC Subculture of the 1980s (R Rock Enterprises, 2013). He has been profiled in the Washington Post, National Catholic Reporter, Washington City Paper, National Public Radio, and Express Weekend and has been featured in full length films such as Positive Force: More Than A Witness, Salad Days: A Decade Of Punk In Washington DC, The Legend of Cool Disco Dan, and the HBO Series Sonic Highways. He lives with his beloved Tulin Ozdeger and their two children, Soren and Sevgi along with their cat Cici and dog Galway in the Brightwood/16th Street Heights neighborhood of Washington DC.